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Krummholz the Twisted

Posted by Comrade on January 14, 2022
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One of my goals for last year was to finally get some paint onto my Nurgle daemon prince. I’ve had the model itself for a few years — it’s the Wargames Exclusive Chaos Rotten Prince of Daemons. A very cool model, with lots of biomechanical details that put him firmly in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium

I didn’t have a ton of free time last year to tackle this model, and I particularly don’t really like painting large centerpiece models (they stress me out, and this hobby is supposed to be a stress reliever, what!). So I dithered for awhile until I remembered that I had some cash sitting in my Paypal account, just collecting dust, and it hit me — I could have someone else paint this sucker up for me!

So, I commissioned a paint job from a painter I found online whose style matched mine pretty well.

I present to you Krummholz the Twisted, daemon prince of Nurgle.

I’ve known this guy’s name for years, well before I got the model itself. I keep a note open on my phone where I jot down all sorts of cool words and names that might make their way into my narrative games. I always name my champions and unit leaders and even vehicles and warbeasts, so I’m constantly on the hunt for names and phrases with gnarly, death-metal affectations.

Krummholz is a German word that describes the stunted, crooked trees that grow at the very top of windswept peaks and cliffs. They are constantly battered by gale-force winds, never able to grow up straight and strong. Ever since I heard the term, I knew it would make a great name for a hunched, monstrous daemon prince.

In my narrative, Krummholz is a former officer in the Death Guard legion who has long since surrendered his humanity in exchange for the fecund gifts of Nurgle. He leads the Maggot Magnates warband and has been particularly active in planning and executing the massive encirclement operation in Warzone Endymion. If we ever play out the mini-campaign that I have been developing in my head, Krummholz will be a key participant.

This model turned out very well and overall I was pleased with this commission. It’s not something I’d choose to do regularly, but it was a nice splurge during a year when we all needed to practice a little self-care.

Grimdark Future: The Infected City

Posted by Comrade on October 15, 2021
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We’ve been dipping a toe into the wonderful, rules-lite world of One Page Rules lately, and I finally had an opportunity to take some photos and do a writeup.

One Page Rules publishes Grimdark Future, a fantastic fast-playing game inspired by Warhammer 40,000 (but minus the codex creep and insufferable meta that has come to characterize the actual game itself). Grimdark Future Firefight offers the same fast-playing rules in a skirmish-sized package. GF: Firefight is a great alternative to Necromunda or Kill Team.

We got together at John’s house last weekend to roll some dice and push some plastic, and both goals were accomplished in short order. I brought over my Infected City terrain (commissioned by the excellent Morti5 Studio) and we set up a 2-versus-2 battle featuring my Plague Marines and Paul’s Tyranids versus John’s Inquisitor & retinue and Daniel’s Ultramarines.

It was a classic good-versus-evil matchup! The (self) righteous defenders of the Imperium squared off against the oozing, slithering, skittering hordes of Nurgle and the Great Devourer.

List-building for GF: Firefight is extraordinarily simple. Just pick your guy, figure out what he’s armed with, and move on to the next figure. It’s very much a WYSIWYG approach without a lot of invisible wargear or gotcha strategems. Our warbands ranged in size from Paul’s Tyranids (just 3 frightful models) to John’s Inquisitorial horde (12ish models, as I recall).

We placed 5 objectives onto the battlefield, using some newly painted markers that John had just knocked out. They were little baby Tyranids, so we decided that the narrative plot hook involved the Tyranids seeking to retrieve some hatchlings from a plague-infected city. The forces of Nurgle were only too happy to run interference on this operation…

We quickly found out that my Plague Marines were extremely tough and hard to kill, by virtue of their high defense value and Regeneration ability that gave them a chance to shrug off wounds taken in battle. They began plodding forward, an inexorable green-armored wave of putrescence, while in their wake mobs of plague zombies fanned out to hold the seized objectives.

John and Daniel had the advantage in numbers, but they were plagued by poor dice rolls from the start. And they quickly found that they had to deal with the Death Guard as well as the fearsome, fast-moving Tyranid monsters led by Paul.

In truth, once the gigantic alien horrors fell upon them, there was no escape. There were just too many targets, and not enough guns.

Daniel had some success on the right flank, keeping my Plague Lord on the ropes for the entire game as he struggled to just stay alive. Fast-moving bikers looped around the flank and threatened our mission objectives. But again — once the Ultramarines drew the attention of Paul’s Tyranids, they were not long for this world.

During the final turn, John sent his newly painted Ordo Xeno Inquisitor into the fray, and it was everything we hoped for — he dealt fearsome damage and proved his worth as a servant of the Emperor. Then, of course, he got eaten.

All in all, it was a fun game that was surprisingly close once we added up the victory conditions at the end. Grimdark Future is just so darn fast and simple, both in terms of gameplay and list building. The alternating unit activation is such a modern mechanic, and it keeps all players engaged throughout the game. It’s definitely got me re-energized to play some grimdark games with my large collection of 40k models. Stay tuned for more!

Battle Report: Apocalypse in the Forgotten Reach, Part Two

Posted by Comrade on December 21, 2019
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The tank commander wiped grime from his goggles and peered out the murky viewport. Another explosion rocked the battle tank, slamming him against the cabin bulkhead. Behind him, a panel blew out in a shower of sparks. Through the billowing smoke on the battlefield, the commander saw another tank from his detachment lurch into view, tracks churning mud, sponson bolters spitting death even as its turret tracked around, seeking the enemy. In the distance, just glimpsed amid the chaos of the battle, entrenched Guardsmen fired volleys with their lasguns. Dirt and debris rained down from the near-constant explosions ripping apart the Imperials’ battle line.

“Target acquired!” the gunner bellowed from over his shoulder. “Tracking … it’s closing fast!”

“Bugs?” the commander asked.

“No … the auspex is going haywire!” the gunner replied, his voice hoarse and ragged. He looked at his scanning device again, not believing what he saw.

“It’s not … no … BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

I’m back with the second installment in my two-part battle report of our recent Apoc-Luck game. If you haven’t read Part One, click here to jump in. Part Two focuses on the latter turns of our Apocalypse game.

The last couple of turns took place at increasingly close ranges, which you might expect given that the players were competing to seize and hold various objectives scattered across the battlefield.

Without a doubt, close range combat favored the enemies of the Imperium. The photo above represents a fearsome assault by no fewer than three Chaos dreadnoughts led by Torrigahl Bitterborne, the murderous daemon prince of the Night Lords. Over two turns, they breached the infantry lines, slaughtered dozens of brave Guardsmen, and began ripping apart several battle tanks and APCs.

John was able to deal with this menace, but only just — it took some careful maneuvering and the full force of his armored units to defeat the daemon prince and get a little breathing room. Of course, by that point, the Tyranids were upon them.

Paul’s Tyranids were moving at what can only be described as a gallop for most of the game. Here’s a photo of him leaning across the table to move his genestealers some ungodly number of inches. Nothing was safe!

The front ranks of Tyranids got annihilated as they closed in, predictably, but there was plenty more where that came from. The second line was composed of bigger bugs!

Being claw-to-barrel with a Tyranid carnifex is really not where these tankers wanted to find themselves. But they were tough nuts to crack even for a bunch of hungering monsters. The back-and-forth in the center of the battle continued unabated, with corpses piled three meters deep at the defense lines. Acidic poison burned into thick adamantium armor while tank treads pulped dozens of Tyranid infantry. Heretic Astartes blasted apart the defenders with stupendous displays of firepower, followed up by bloodthirsty hand-to-hand combat. Truly, it was total war in the Forgotten Reach.

The Tide Turns

As the third turn wrapped up, Paul’s Hive Queen (a gorgeously painted model first glimpsed in last year’s Apoc-Luck game) arrived and claimed the ancient ziggurat at the center of the battlefield. Her mere presence caused the heads of nearby Guardsmen to burst like ripe melons. Those who survived were cut to ribbons by her scything claws. An unlucky few were carried off to be consigned to a short, agonizing tenure in the Queen’s breeding pits. The Emperor protects.

The latter turns saw players commit their strategic reserves to shore up different areas of the battle. John’s Tempestus Scions arrived and neatly outflanked the Night Lords in the center, claiming the objective during a critical turn. Shortly thereafter I returned the favor, dropping a flight of Raptors (led by Haarken Worldclaimer) onto the Scions as they were consolidating their position in the center. Here’s a photo of that pitched battle. You can see a portion of Paul’s starship bulkhead terrain piece, complete with a removable turret gun. Sweet!

The Salamanders continued pouring fire into the surging mass of Tyranids rushing across the battlefield at them. Their vanguard elements (Terminators and a Land Raider) got slaughtered, but their strongpoint remained secure even as the endgame approached.

The strongpoint was protected from above by the angular shape of the Thunderhawk gunship, but a mighty Tyranid harridan swooped in toward the end of the game, grappling the Thunderhawk in mid-air and ripping the aircraft apart with its gnarled talons. Here’s a photo of the last thing the Thunderhawk saw before all contact was lost with it.

Big Bird was pissed.

After a few turns of scoring, the enemies of mankind began to pull away in the points total, as they held more objectives and contested others. The endgame loomed, and the Imperium players began focusing their efforts on the few objectives that might realistically help them achieve victory. Their impending demise came into sharp focus, however, with the arrival of the Paul’s heirophant bio-titan!

Yes, it’s true: the hero of last year’s Apoc-Luck game returned with a vengeance, stampeding across the battlefield and dicing up men and machines alike. The heirophant carved a swathe of destruction across the center of the board and enabled Paul to decisively claim the central ziggurat.

Here, by tradition, is a photo of John contemplating his doom while the heirophant pulps his poor dudes in the foreground. This is a photo that I’ve managed to capture every year without fail. You can see some late-arriving Chaos Terminators in the foreground, too, contributing to the mopping-up activities.

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We did one more round of scoring, which confirmed what we suspected — the enemies of the Imperium had triumphed!

Thus, the game concluded with a victory for the Night Lords, Alpha Legion, and Tyranids. Alex narrated the outcome: the enemies of mankind had succeeded in destroying the entire Forgotten Reach, rupturing the webway and enabling the Chaos god Malice to leave the Caluphel Sector and wreak havoc on the wider galaxy. “Oops.”

Conclusion — and Secret Santa Exchange!

Once again we had a great game. This year we tried a few new things, including using the actual Apocalypse ruleset. Personally, I think this was a good decision that enabled us to play a satisfactory game within a reasonable amount of time. Everyone had plenty of fun new toys to put on the table, and Apocalypse ensured they all saw some action over the course of the game.

This year, I organized a Secret Santa-style miniature swap. The guidelines were pretty simple: We drew names from a hat (actually Elfster), then selected a single infantry-sized miniature to paint up for that person. Everybody provided some general guidance as to what armies they played and what they might like to receive, but other than that it was up to the individual painter. The goal was to spend less than $20, and players were strongly encouraged to gift a mini that was already in their collection.

The results were impressive, to say the least! Here’s a group shot of all the minis that were painted and exchanged at the game this month.

Let’s see … we’ve got some fantasy wizards, knights, and monsters, a Master of Possession, a 3D-printed Sisters of Battle bunker, and even a Great Unclean One (lightly converted to get into the holiday spirit). Wow! Everybody went home with something new. We’ll definitely be doing this swap again next year!

After that, Alex reviewed the point totals for all the campaign participants and ceremonially crowned Paul the winner of this year’s campaign. He was presented with our trophy plaque, engraved with his name to memorialize his achievement for all time. Well done, Paul!

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So that’s a wrap on our third (!) annual Apoc-Luck game. The event grows more fun and more epic with each passing year. The storyline of the Caluphel Sector is wide open at this point. If you’ve read this far, do me a favor and leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see next year!

 

Battle Report: Apocalypse in the Forgotten Reach, Part One

Posted by Comrade on December 21, 2019
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Like creeping behemoths, the armies converged on the Forgotten Reach. Eldritch in nature, unfathomable in scope, the bizarre realm was in truth a vast webway underpinning the entirety of the Caluphel Sector. Dubbed the Forgotten Reach, the webway appeared to be a cyclopean megastructure that existed beneath the physical realm in the Caluphel Sector. Its purpose and origin was shrouded in mystery.

After years fighting across the myriad worlds of the sector, the enemies of the Imperium — slavering Tyranids beyond number, and foul raiding parties of Heretic Astartes — felt themselves being summoned into the Forgotten Reach by an inscrutable, unknowable force. To oppose them, the Imperium mustered a desperate defense consisting of the Salamanders Astartes chapter alongside the massed ranks of the Juventius Provisional Imperial Authority and the mighty 42nd Auxiliary Armored Fist Relief Battalion.

Descending into the Forgotten Reach, the defenders met the attackers amid the wreckage of an ancient starship, near a mysterious ziggurat that pulsed with psychic power. As war machines roared and bio-titans shrieked, the two sides clashed in an epic battle for the very fate of the sector.

OK, let’s get to it! The club gathered for our annual Apoc-Luck event earlier this month. As in years past, we rented out a local community center and set up a gigantic mega-battle to serve as the capstone to our 40k narrative campaign. This particular battle was masterminded by Alex, who developed the Forgotten Reach storyline over the course of the summer. The idea is that Malice, the renegade Chaos god who was inadvertently freed from his planet-sized prison at the conclusion of last year’s campaign, was now striving to break out of the Caluphel Sector itself by destroying the webway underpinning the sector.

I’ve structured this as a two-part battle report, with the first half focusing on the setup and opening turns, and the second part dealing with the endgame and a fun little Secret Santa mini swap. Click here to read Part Two!

Anyway, the armies should look fairly familiar if you’ve followed any of our games. Paul commanded a vast horde of Tyranids from Hive Fleet Tiamat, with some new and exciting additions that he painted up over the summer.

We called her “Big Bird.”

Allied with him were two Heretic Astartes players: Mark, commanding a small detachment of Alpha Legion backed up by a Chaos Knight and some Traitor Guard, and me, fielding (for the first time ever) the entirety of my modest Night Lords army. I have been adding quite a few new and nifty units to my Night Lords army over the last few months, so I was excited to get them onto the table.

On the other side of the table, Jim arrived with the full force of his Imperial Guard motorized battalion, anchored by a gnarly Baneblade and fearsome Knight. Gun barrels, sponsons, and armor, oh my!

John mustered a contingent of the Imperium’s finest, including a full complement of his newly painted Tempestus Scions, which played a crucial role in the latter half of the game. He also slammed down some new tanks and regular squads. Truly, it was a display of might fit for the Emperor. Extra corpse rations for everyone!

Lastly, Alex’s Salamanders took to the field and occupied a fortified strongpoint on the right flank of the battle, where they stayed pretty much the entire game, despite our earnest efforts to pry them out with a crowbar made of Tyranid claws.

Oh, and he also had a vicious Thunderhawk gunship, wonderfully assembled and painted by Jim, to win the air war. Read on to see how the battle in the skies played out…

We were joined at the beginning of the game by Vince and Lawrence, both of whom took part in dinner and our Secret Santa mini swap (more on that in the next post!). They had to leave before the actual Apocalypse game started, though. We kept them apprised of our progress throughout the evening via our Slack channel.

Alex set up six objective markers on the battlefield. We would score each objective marker at the end of each turn, which meant that there were 6 points per turn to potentially secure. Lastly, the side with the most HQ units on the ziggurat in the center of the battlefield could achieve a special narrative victory at the end of the game.

And now, a note about the rules. We were playing actual Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse, using the new boxed set that came out earlier this year. I have to say, it’s a fantastic ruleset for playing games at this scale. The game deliberately abstracts a lot of the more fiddly elements that slow down games of regular 40k. For example, most infantry squads have just 1 or 2 weapon descriptions that represent all of the offensive firepower they can produce. Likewise, most squads have just 1 wound, which means you remove entire squads as casualties (rather than individual models). Even big models like battle tanks and dreadnoughts rarely have more than 3 wounds.

All actions are taken at the detachment level (this is a mixed force that is about the size of a small 40k army). So the entire detachment fires, or charges, or retreats, rather than individual squads or vehicles.

This is abstract, yes, but it’s easy to get into the flow of the game. Once you accept the abstraction that is required to get all of your cool models onto the table, the game actually gives a decent sense of command and control. You feel like a warmaster, not just a battlefield general. Movement trays helped immensely with this task. For our game, we had roughly 500 Power Level per side … a modest sized game for Apocalypse, but more than sufficient for the six of us.

The game started with the Imperium defenders advancing carefully from behind their prepared positions, probing the xenos lines and exchanging ranging volleys with the Heretic Astartes elements. Behind them, armored APCs of the Imperial Guard rumbled into position as mobile reserves.

Elsewhere the Salamanders hunkered down in their improvised fortifications, unleashing devastating firepower on the Tyranids and Tzeentch-aligned Astartes advancing up the table at them.

Mark’s Alpha Legion guys were a joy to see on the tabletop — a real riot of color with plenty of old-school inspired Chaos conversions. They got into a pretty good scrap with both the Salamanders and a small contingent of Raven Guard that had been deployed as infiltrators.

The single largest army in this game was absolutely Paul’s Tyranid swarm. He’s put a lot of effort into this army over the last few years, and the results are outstanding. They’re beautiful and deadly and they surged out of their deployment zone with shocking speed. Woe to the Imperial defenders who thought they might get another turn to pour on the firepower!

I couldn’t resist posting a photo of the perfectly themed craft brew I picked out to commemorate our annual mega-battle. Apocalypse IPA!

Over on the right flank, the Night Lords secured their objectives early on, but they did so in the face of fearsome firepower. Jim and John sent their mobile reserve surging forward to strike back and knock the Night Lords off the objectives before they could rack up too many points. I returned fire as best I could, but it appeared that the skirmish on the right flank would be settled in a close quarters melee duel.

The photo above also shows a tremendous terrain set that Paul created specially for this game. It’s a 3D-printed crashed Imperial spaceship, and it’s just awesome. You can see the “nose” of the craft toward the center of the table, with a little curl of fire coming out of it. The bulkheads are in the midground and the shattered engine components are in the foreground. It’s a stunning centerpiece and we were lucky to play on it.

Apocalypse includes a unique and wonderful method of handling damage. As you might expect, big battles feature terrible firepower and nonstop casualties. And players of the current edition of Warhammer 40k will tell you how un-fun it is to see half (or all!) of your army wiped off the table before you’ve had a chance to respond. Apocalypse deals with this by placing damage markers of varying sizes next to models as they receive hits, then those markers are resolved simultaneously for all players at the end of each turn. This ensures that you always get a chance to shoot back, and it also opens up some interesting gameplay options related to damage markers and how various ability interact with them.

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Well, that pretty much encapsulates the opening turns. The Imperium had the firepower, but their enemies had speed and resilience (probably due to some better than average dice rolls). The stage is set for an absolutely brutal endgame. Click here to read Part Two of this battle report!

40k Battle Report: Waste Not, Want Not

Posted by Comrade on December 9, 2019
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Paul and I got together earlier this month for a trial game of Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse. We had been interested in trying out this ruleset ahead of our actual Apocalypse game that is coming up this month. In previous years, we’d just played using the regular 40k rules. The new Apocalypse rules have gotten quite a bit of good buzz, and Paul had dipped a toe in with a learning game of his own earlier this year.

The game was 60 Power Level per side — tiny for Apocalypse, but we kept it intentionally small so we could work through the rules. Paul ran his Tyranids and I captained my Night Lords in a savage clash on one of the moons of Cantho in the Erigaea Sub-Sector. Read on for a bit of lore from Paul that accurately encapsulated our battle.

The Last Thoughts of Zad Gryznic

We had nothing, but they came. Searching for the Emperor knows what. Redlands is a mining town, built of scraps and digging deeper. The mountains of earth and metal and forever-poly cover the planet. . . some sort of waste dumping ground for people or xenos during the Long Night. Or something like that. Who the fork knows. What I do know is that the lifters come every week and we load them with scrap we dig out of the mountains. Gotta be something worth the promethium.

Gotta be something else that brought the Night Lords.

They rounded up the townsfolk and flayed them all, one by one. I buried myself so I didn’t have to hear the screams. Didn’t work. I tell myself that they asked questions before flensing my friends alive. But deep down, I think the Lords did it for fun. Or whatever passes for fun for bastards like that. And when they were done, they loosed their machines on the scrap outbound for the next Lifter. Yeah, they were looking for something. I just gotta make it to tonight, I thought. They’ll find what they’re looking for and leave. It’ll get better.

It got worse.

Freaking Tyranid bioforms blot out the greasy sun and turn the sky mud brown and then green. Soon pods are landing and birthing these monsters and the Night Lords are firing in the air even as their slaves keep digging. One Lord is whipping his slave with his left hand while firing his weapon at a descending pod.

There’s so much noise, and I can taste poison on the air. It’s coming from the Tyranids. They’ve established a beachhead. A giant mother bug whose belly continuously shreds and bleeds as eggs and terrors rip their way out. She roars and staggers forward, leaving a trail of slime and chitin behind. Soon her children cover the town and are racing towards the Night Lords, frantically whipping their slaves.

But the Lords have their own monsters. A Prince of Night. I can’t look at him without images of Chaos addling my brain. But he has his minions about him too, and the horrors walking as machines. And the tanks adorned with human flesh and skulls. The smoke pouring from its smokestacks is the color of dried blood. Bolters crack and some of the Lords launch themselves into the air, their weapons blazing.

And then the Tyranids charge. So fast. So forking fast. You think you have time to breathe, to look at how the Lords will respond, but the bugs have covered the field in a blink. The ancient cracked behemoth is leading a herd of elephantine tanks with teeth. And they leap onto building, bringing them down on top of Night Lords. No, one of the Lords, another Captain is battling the One Eyed. A Sorcerer is chanting a ritual. I cannot bear to listen. . . the horns of the Carnifex trumpet their rage. I can taste blood and poison — the poison in the air has made my eyes bleed. Bloody tears in my mouth. It’s nearly over. The Carnifex have destroyed the Lords near the tower, and only the Sorcerer remains. He’s looking at the other half of the battlefield.

A raging shriek of torn metal and dying Tyranids fills every sense. A whirlwind of bone swords is hacking into a Tank, while demons and Captains bring down the Mother. Raptors fly through air green with poison, raining their bolters down on a battlefield meters deep in blood and chitin. Body parts and metal fly into the air, catching fire or melting with acid, only to rain down on the battlefield before flying up again.

It’s too much for the Night Lords, but they do not seem displeased. I see a slave raise something from the trashheap he’s working. He goes down, cut in twain, but his Lord holds it in his fist, even as his brethren fall about him. The metal airships are coming for the remaining Night Lords, winged steel eagles trailing catch ropes knotted with femurs and feet. The Night Lords evacuate. They have paid an enormous price for a piece of metal lain buried for 20 millennia. I curse them and wish the Tyranids good aim as they pour bio fire into the retreating aircraft.

I have no time to smile. More pods of Tyranids are raining down, the earth shaking. The scrap heap in which I’m hiding shifts and my legs are pinned under metal. I can’t reach my weapon. I need to end my life quickly and painlessly. But it’s out of reach. A monster hears my frantic breathing. He’s coming. My eyes give up their integrity to the poison in the air and I can feel the warmth of them pour down my face. Trapped and blind I wait. Now? Now? Now?

Well there you have it! The Night Lords were driven off, but not before they took plenty of Tyranid trophies, plus a relic of unspeakable power that will probably turn up in our grand finale next weekend.

Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse was a surprisingly satisfying game. I had expected more complexity layered on top of something close to the existing 40k ruleset, but what I found instead was a well written “mass battle” game that sacrified granularity in the name of fast gameplay and big units. The game gives a decent sense of strategic command and control; you really feel like you’re in command of a battalion or company sized detachment. Details such as wargear and individual models’ equipment was abstracted to the point where most infantry squads had rather generic combat stats — melee attacks for Raptors, and a few ranged options for battle tanks. Infantry units are mounted on movement trays for easy movement (and removal, as they typically die like ants). I found this refreshing, as it meant I didn’t have to track the performance of individual models.

Instead, we could focus on the overall ebb and flow of the game. Where did I need to commit my reserves? Could I hold the flank and counter-charge with the survivors? (The answer to this last question was a resounding NO, as Paul’s Tyranids used their fearsome speed to overwhelm the Night Lords before they could strike a decisive blow.)

The game’s command card system adds another layer of strategy, too. I have grown wary wargames that try to add a deckbuilding component, as I find the mashup aesthetically uncomfortable most of the time. It works in Apocalypse, though, because they’re not core to the game’s mechanics. You can play an entire game of Apocalypse without using a single card, and not suffer too badly as a result. The cards add a fun strategic element, but they’re not essential, which is a nice touch.

We use Power Level for our games of 40k, and we used it for this Apocalypse game, too. I found the Power Levels of our armies to be roughly approximate in both 40k and Apocalypse — that is, 60 Power Level bought roughly the same units, in the same quantities, in Warhammer 40k as it did in Apocalypse. The difference was that Apocalypse speeds up gameplay to the point where a 60 Power Level game barely took us 2 hours to play out. Again, that’s a feature, not a bug.

By the end of the game (which Paul generously described as a tactical retreat by the Night Lords in the face of an overwhelming Tyranid assault), I could easily see how we could accomplish a large game (200+ Power Level per side) without much hassle. Tune in later this month to see how it all turns out in our annual Apoc-Luck game! We’ll have food, a day of gaming, plus our club’s first-ever Secret Santa gift exchange!