apocalypse

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Hobgoblin: More Thoughts and Musings

Posted by Comrade on November 10, 2025
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We’ve settled on Hobgoblin as the game of choice for our annual holiday mega-battle (affectionally known as Apoc-Luck, since we each bring a dish and break for dinner midway through the evening).

These games are typically structured around simple scenarios, with instructions to each player that can be summed up as “bring all your painted models and we’ll shoehorn everything into a game.” Game balance goes out the window in favor of a grand spectacle of beautifully painted armies clashing on the field of battle surrounded by gorgeous terrain and scenery. Here’s a pic from last year’s Apoc-Luck game which sums up the aesthetic we’re aiming for.

I’ve done a few writeups here of our previous Apoc-Luck game days; check ’em out at the links below.

We’re planning a learning game of Hobgoblin later this month so other guys in the club can get up to speed on it. Personally, I think it’s an inspired choice for a mega-battle. Hobgoblin was developed specifically to accommodate this sort of play style: huge armies clashing, plenty of high drama without a lot of fussing and fiddling with modifiers and stats.

The lore of Hobgoblin is surprisingly well developed as well, which is a refreshing option after many years playing Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy (both serviceable rulesets, of course, but bereft of lore until rather recently in their development).

So I wanted to record some thoughts and musings about Hobgoblin here, to inspire me and possibly serve other players out there who are dipping a toe in the game.

Hobgoblin is a game of matchups

In Hobgoblin, everyone builds their armies from the same core list of a dozen or so units, flavored with a short list of fun keyword abilities. Units have various to-hit target numbers based on what they’re going up against. Again, that’s shared knowledge … both your opponent and you both know that Monstrous Infantry are going to absolutely chew up ranged units or cavalry if they can get off a charge.

As you can see in this photo below from a game earlier this summer, John’s cave troll (a Beast, in the parlance of Hobgoblin) got in amongst my dwarven front line infantry and absolutely wrecked face with his big ol’ rock. John got the matchup he wanted, and I suffered as a result.

Doom Comes to Us All

In Hobgoblin, units don’t take casualties — they accumulate doom tokens, which slowly (or quickly, if you’re me) build up until the unit breaks and flees in terror. There are a few ways to remove doom tokens, but those techniques are really more about managing doom — delaying the inevitable — than they are about actually healing a unit up to its starting “hit points.”

Because of that, it’s important to understand that units will die in Hobgoblin. You can count on that, and you need to position your remaining units to take advantage of that certainty. Second rank units (reinforcements, coming up behind wavering units) are very important. They can plug gaps in the line and charge a weakened unit. You can’t move through friendly or enemy units, of course. So until the front line units die, you need to carefully marshal your second rank reinforcements to ensure they’re fresh and ready to charge in when the time comes.

Magic and Cursed Artefects Are Fun and Wildly Unbalanced

If the basic units you’ll use to build your Hobgoblin army seem bog standard, the same cannot be said of the magic system. Magic in Hobgoblin is dark, terrifying, and flavorful in a way that I’ve never encountered in a game before. The schools of magic, called “Abyssal Allegiances” in Hobgoblin, are straight out of a Lovecraftian tome. They’re utterly unique, and each Allegiance offers spells that affect the game in weird and different ways.

Same with Cursed Artefacts — in a standard game, you and your opponent each select one or roll randomly. It gets assigned to one unit (usually your general) and typically gives a distinct, narrowly applicable set of abilities to your unit or army. For example, you can have both players move twice in a turn, or steal a magic point from the opposing player, or remove doom from a friendly unit.

Abyssal Allegiances are extraordinarily fun; I love the flavor behind them, and the chance to swing for the fences with a particularly potent ability. They also have the potential to whiff badly as the game plays out. You may find that you unit positioning, combined with terrain placement or unexpected casualties, means your spells don’t do much for the majority of the game. For that reason, I have a hard time evaluating their effectiveness, and I’d definitely say they’re generally unbalanced against each other. Some Abyssal Allegiances just feel outright better in most circumstances. Of course, that makes a player like me much more likely to try to force the issue and make a “weaker” Allegiance work.

So all in all, I’m excited to dig into Hobgoblin this month, and to build a gigantic list for next month’s Apoc-Luck game. Stay tuned for more!

Grimdark Future: The Scouring of Hundvolst

Posted by Comrade on October 13, 2025
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I’m slowly working through my backlog of photos and content that I’ve been meaning to post over the last year or two.

One such info dump is our annual 40k Apocalypse game, which took place in December 2024. We used Grimdark Future for our ruleset of choice, since it was quick and easy to pick up and play; it has served our group well over the years.

For the game, Paul and I set up a narrative scenario featuring the siege of Hundvolt, an Imperial feudal world that had unfortunately drawn the attention of the evil factions operating near Warzone Endymion. Here’s the capsule blurb we came up with:

The feudal world of Hundvolst has suffered mightily under the yoke of the Imperial tithe. For
decades, village elders have watched as their sons and daughters were conscripted and
shipped off planet.
Now, the war has come to Hundvolst. Invading forces led by Heretic Astartes and foul xenos
scum have laid waste to the planet even as Imperial defenders mount a dogged defense. Mighty
armies churn the verdant soil of Hundvolst, reducing the planet’s forested hills and idyllic
villages into charred rubble.
The invasion is reaching its apotheosis. Imperial Navy ships, operating under a directive from
the Ordo Malleus, have taken up station above the benighted planet. In mere hours, they will
deliver the Exterminatus unto the cursed planet, scouring the surface of all life and rendering it
inert and lifeless – such is the Emperor’s divine wrath.
As the sun sets on Hundvolst, ragged Imperial units fall back to their evacuation sites. Several
plucky force commanders stage a daring raid to liberate the knucklebone of St. Theodosia the
Spiteful, seeking to spirit the saint’s relic away from the doomed planet and keep it from the vile
clutches of xenos and heretic alike.

The scenario was intended to give us a reason to set up a weird mash-up of a feudal low-tech Imperial world being fought over by monstrous sci-fi war machines and armies. We wanted an excuse to set up a battlefield with our immense shared collection of gorgeous Tabletop World resin fantasy buildings, for one thing. We combined those with Daniel’s Sector Imperialis tiles to create a pleasing aesthetic.

The game itself was absolutely massive, with each player bringing about ~5,000 points of their respective factions. It was a glorious stew of beautiful models, vehicles, monsters, and war machines. All fully painted, as is our standard approach here at Comrade’s Wargames.

The cathedral in the building above housed the main objective — the knucklebone of St. Theodosia the Spiteful. The factions were competing to see who could seize the knucklebone before the virus bombs of the Exterminatus arrived to turn the surface of Hundvolst into a primordial soup of biological matter.

Here’s a peek at the action inside the cathedral. It was a bloodbath as the forces of Chaos tried repeatedly to gain control of the sanctuary, only to be pushed back by the combined guns of the Imperial Guard and Adeptus Sororitas!

To be honest, I’m a year removed from the blow-by-blow action of the game, so it’s all a little hazy. I know we had some hot daemon-on-tank action, as seen below, followed by a gallant last stand by a gas mask-wearing commissar.

The streets nearer to the cathedral were choked with tanks as the heavy armor maneuvered for position. Troops scampered from cover to cover as the steel behemoths traded shots. The stone and thatch buildings provided tempting positions for heavy weapon squads, too.

The defenders of the Imperium — Astartes, Sororitas, Custodes, and Astra Militarum — mounted a brave defense, selling themselves dearly even as the clock ticked down toward the planet’s doom.

As the night wore on, the defenders rallied again and again in the face of the unending onslaught. But the forces of Chaos would not be denied their prize. Slowly, through gritted teeth and white knuckles, the defenders were pressed back and the attackers surged forward.

The battle reached its culmination as the forces of Chaos seized the knucklebone and began an extraction from the cathedral. Alas, this extraction turned into a rout as the combined forces of the Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard fell upon the vile Heretic Astartes.

In a surprise no one saw coming, the defenders of the Imperium seized the holy relic, and an extraction squad managed to make it to a waiting Valkyrie gunship which lifted off mere moments before virus bombs rained down on the planet’s surface.

The image above shows the rearguard defending the landing site until the Valkyrie could escape. And then — a curtain was drawn back on the poor feudal world of Hundvolst, and no further missive is recorded herein about the fate of the world. Perhaps in a thousand years, Imperial surveyors might return and divine some clue about the ultimate fate of those trapped on the surface when the virus bombs fell. Or perhaps not.

Conclusion

As in years past, Grimdark Future gave us a great game that kept everyone engaged and rolling dice until the bitter end. We brought food and drink and enjoyed a meal together about midway through the game, as is our tradition with these end-of-the-year Apocalypse sized games.

And seeing as how I’m writing this in October, it’s a good reminder that we have just a few months before the next Apocalypse game. I’ll try to come up with a suitably epic scenario and tabletop setup, so stay tuned!

Apoc-Luck 2022: The Gathering Storm

Posted by Comrade on January 17, 2023
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I’m back with a gameplay report for our December 2022 Apoc-Luck mega battle, featuring some stunning and dramatic photos. Recall from my previous post that we set out to do a large multiplayer game using Age of Fantasy. We rented out a local community center, gathered our armies large and small, and arrayed them for a glorious clash. The final tally put the combined points at roughly 15,000 per side, for a total of 30,000 points of toy soldiers on the table.

This post will share some incredible photos from the games themselves. I regret that I didn’t capture much of the turn-by-turn flow of the battles, as I was trying to both snap photos and pilot my chaos army to victory. In the later turns, I had to unfortunately step away for a phone call, which further inhibited my ability to capture the narrative flow.

The first game (The Twilight Forest) featured infantry-heavy armies maneuvering blocks of troops in a wooded glade. My chaos raiders, Paul’s orcs, and Rian’s chaos warriors faced off against John’s human peasant levies and Parker’s sneaky wood elves.

The second game (Blood in the Streets) was more of a “clash of the titans” affair, with lots of solo models and small units of larger miniatures smashing each other to pieces in the cobbled streets of a medieval village.

Here, in roughly chronological order, are pics from the first couple of turns of the first game (The Twilight Forest).

The Twilight Forest – Early Turns

Paul’s orcs looked fantastic together with Daniel’s loaner army (also orcs, also similarly painted).

My giant chaos army featured two (2) dragons, which swooped over the battlefield wreaking havoc.

My Putrid Blightkings led the way on the right flank, soaking up damage from skirmishers on the opposing side. Their advance paved the way for the bulk of the chaos infantry and support units.

Below you can see John’s human army marching to war under the House Begovic banner, along with a contingent of metal automatons.

Blood in the Streets – Early Turns

The photo below shows a closer look at Blood in the Streets, our second scenario which sprawled across a large battlefield dominated by a medieval village and some ruins on the periphery. The buildings are from Lawrence’s personal collection of Tabletop World pieces, and they are absolutely gorgeous – a real treat to play upon!

Lawrence’s Lizardmen raced onto the board and crashed headlong into the undead army helmed by Alex (Jim’s son, the drama!!) and Lawrence’s chaos daemons (composed almost exclusively of gigantic centerpiece models).

The Twilight Forest – Later Turns

The later turns saw the blocks of troops in the Twilight Forest crash perilously into each other. Skirmishers pelted the combatants with arrows and quarrels; dragons swooped over the battlefield breathing fire; and infantry hefted their spears to receive the charge. Epic and glorious in equal parts!

Paul’s orcs did a great job refusing the flank versus Parker’s wood elves. The elves took some early casualties and gave way, melting back into the forest as the orcs advanced.

Both my heavily armored chaos knights and John’s winged pegasus knights roamed the backfield, seeking a ripe target to receive their devastating charges. These units were strong, but fragile, operating more like a guided missile than a take-and-hold unit.

Blood in the Streets – Later Turns

The “big guys” clashed in a decisive battle in the medieval village. Dragons, zombies, dinosaurs, and more dragons sundered the earth with the force of their blows.

Endgame

Blood in the Streets reached its conclusion first – a decisive victory for the forces of darkness (Alex’s undead army and Lawrence’s chaos daemons).

I was focused primarily on the other battle (The Twilight Forest) which was also drawing to a close. We weren’t able to play quite as many turns as the other battle, due to a phone call that I received during the later turns that unfortunately pulled my attention away. But given the outcome of the game in the medieval village (a decisive win for the bad guys) it seemed clear that the forces of darkness would win the day.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the final photo of the game, shortly before we packed up, was a shot of Malathon Scar-wing, the great dragon of the north, swooping low over the battlefield to roast the terrified defenders.

Our 2022 Apoc-Luck game definitely pushed the boundaries of our gaming capabilities and delivered an epic tabletop spectacle. Playing a fantasy game (as opposed to Warhammer 40k) was a certainly a change, but a welcome one in my opinion. Age of Fantasy gave us a highly playable game with an easy-to-learn ruleset, even at a gigantic 30,000 point threshold.

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!