The First War for Kolozs Prime: Apocalypse

Apocalypse Now! Picture included for sense of scale.

Read up on the lore here.

See the rulespack here. Note that we played fast and loose with our own rulespack, as will be evident later.

Participants list, with all points being rough approximations: 

Team Chaos: ~ 21k points

• Orks ~5k points
• Emperor's Children ~ 2k points 
• Necrons ~7k points
• Imperial Guard ~7k points

Team Imperium: ~19k points

• Knights ~ 5k points 
• Admech/ Titan ~ 4k  points
• Custodes ~ 5k
• Blood Angels ~2k
• Black Templars ~3k points 

You may notice that Team Chaos barely has 10% chaos in it. In the end we decided that it was the Ordo Chronos calling the shots, and I got to be the team's warmaster.

We deployed simultaneously, everybody all at once. Even so it took more than an hour. I found myself facing the full might of the Custodes, with Knights reinforcing. 

Emperor's Children on my right. Orks facing Knights, Black Templars and Blood Angels.

Necrons facing more Knights and the Adeptus Mechanicus/Titanicus.

Behold, the Warhound. Absolute respect to its owner.

Battle round 1

The Custodes walked up and cleared my heavy weapons teams. The Knights opened up with their meltas, destroying several of my artillery, and an insane long charge with a Lancer into a Leman Russ. I surged forth with brave Catachans screening, and Necrons teleported in to help. Custodes immediately popped their 4+ FnP but I sneakily shot my artillery across the board at marines instead.

We pushed at the enemy all across the table.

Orks rushed up, braving the shooting.

Unfortunately my shooting proved rather ineffective. I even charged the Lancer with Dreir and his death riders.

The Necrons on the other hand destroyed the Titan in a single shooting phase! We were both happy and sad.

Battle round 2

As expected, the combined forces of the Custodes and Knights laid in me fiercely. But I had enough around our critical point (the Atmospheric Ascender) to hold it against them.

The Rogal Dorn exploded spectacularly, damaging the Void Dragon (big sad) and the Custodes (big happy).

Counterattacks decimated our forces across the table. But with more stuff around the objective, I deployed my scions in masse to strike at the custodes dreadnoughts and armigers.

The Necrons, facing the least resistance, pushed up the hardest.

On the far side, Darth Vader entered the battle atop his personal flying transport, the Valkyrie called "The Super Star Destroyer". We did our best to kill all the Custodes reinforcements teleporting in, solidifying our grip on the right flank even as we lost the left.

The Orks and Templars seemed evenly matched.

The high point of the game for me was shooting all 3 Deathstrikes missiles. Although the Custodes infantry had long charged away, I hit 3 Dreadnoughts (killing none) but also the Lancers (killing one).

We ended day of play after the second round.

Battle round 3

A bit more rushed, so no pictures. Team Imperium pushed hard all around, landing assassins to kill our Warmaster, Lord Inquisitor Darth Vader. Ghazghkull and Lucius also died, for massive points on their side. On our end, we held two objectives and shot a free Deathstrike missile at them.

I was getting mopped up on the left, but I compensated on the right by folding up the Mechanicus forces and the Custodes reinforcements.

Orks were getting slaughtered, so I landed my aquilons to body block the marines.

The end

At this point it was already getting late in the day, and the guys visiting from another city decided to call the end. We also realized that we did not keep the points as per the rulespack. As we were looking at each other, confused, the organizer declared  the game a draw. After 4 Deathstrike missile launches, the planet was going to be scrapped anyway.

Afterthought

This was a blast. Seeing around 40,000 points on the table, most of it painted, and including an actual Titan, was definitely a formative experience of my wargaming carrier. Ending in a draw made it all the more funny.

As for gameplay, a lot was decided on the first roll-off, with Team Imperium taking the first turn.

I also messed up deployment, with my screens not fitting in front of the artillery where they belonged, and then being deployed elsewhere to be irrelevant.

But that's all lessons learned for next time - for there will be a next time.

There were several high and low points of the game, not limited to:

• detonating 3 deathstrike missiles in the same spot, taking down a wounded Lancer
• Ratlings one-shotting a Blood Angel Terminator Captain
• Ratlings one-shotting the Emperor's Champion
• lobbing artillery across the table, frustrating the marine players
• lobbing an earthshaker round to the literal other end of the table killing a lone Navigator
• Vindicare Assassins rolling all the 1's. But also one-shotting a Custodes biker captain
• Vanquisher cannon rolling all the 1's
• Lord Vader tanking 2 assassins, then dying to a Skitarii sniper
• sending up a Cadian squad in between the Necrons, with an attached Commissar to keep them in line