Infinite State Automaton

WARNING: This post is all about Warhammer.

Today I fought a 15,000 vs 15,000 point Warhammer Apocalypse battle. There were three players per side - my Dark Angel Space Marines, my brothers Blood Angel Space Marines, Jason's mix of *cough* Tyranid, Ork and Space Marine super heavies, versus Williams Tau, Lawries Guard, and Lance's Ork and Eldar allies.

Normally Shane and I aren't allowed to play on the same team because, to be an arrogant tool, we're crazy good. We have a lot of experience working together against random enemies. Our most enjoyable times are "Everybody puts everything that they have on the table, versus everything that we are able to field."

Also, we have a lot of tanks. Sooo many tanks. Normally you can only field three tanks at a time in Warhammer. However, in Apocalypse, you can field anything you want.

So for this reason we fielded my brand new Baneblade, seven vindicators, a predator annihilator, a predator destructor, three whirlwinds, and three land raiders, a vanquisher tank hunter, and nine dreadnoughts. Our ally Jason had forgotten to bring any infantry (...) so our already tank heavy army was suddenly bolstered with a super heavy thunderhawk, on Orkified Baneblade (Skullhammer?), TWO Stomba Mekka-gargents, some kind of Tyranid bio-tank, and some kind of battle fortress of a type I'd never seen before.

And before those of you who come here from the Warhammer 40k link accuse me of fielding an unbalanced army; I fielded a whopping seventy tactical marines and related officers. Shane took twenty tacticals, forty assault marines, death company, and fifteen terminators stuffed in to the land raiders.

Our enemy had also stacked on the tanks. There were two enemy baneblade super heavy tanks, three Leman Russ types, a hellhound, a hydra flak tank, two Valkyrie fighter bombers, and four chimera APC's in the guard forces. The Tau had two Hammerhead tank destroyers, two skyray missile gunships, some devilfish, and a few bunches of a new kind of flyer called a pirahna that I hadn't encountered before. William had also taken four of the highly annoying remora stealth fighter flyer drones. The ork and eldar vehicles were quite light, with only a falcon, a wraithlord, some warwalkers, and some ork buggies and a battle waggon.

The battle went very badly. We deployed second and the enemy went first. My forces took massive casualties; I have won almost all of our group tournaments so naturally I was targetted first for elimination. Of course I anticipated this so kept most of my best units a short distance back from the front lines so that they couldn't take such heavy damage, however this meant the bulk of my forces - my tactical marines - were almost entirely wiped out. Firepower that was supposed to have been levelled at my largely resistant tanks exploded my infantry rather easily. The ones who I had deployed in cover survived to some extent, but honestly from the first turn the casualties were too high for my infantry to play any effective battle from that point on.

However, because they focused on me, they left my brother - and Jason's super heavies - largely unscathed. Shane lost four assault marines in the first turn. Jason didn't lose anything. I lost almost four full squads of tacticals, over half of my infantry in the first turn!

This was the first battle for any of the Baneblades that were playing today, and every one of us wanted to be the one who was first to destroy a Baneblade...and none of us wanted to lose theirs first. I had taken the tank hunter Aphrael to keep my Baneblade protected - Aphrael is effectively a tank sniper and I had counted on my opponents wanting to attack the more threatening Baneblade and leave Aphrael unscathed. Unfortunately this didn't work and Aphrael was exploded in turn two without achieving anything. Very sad.

Aside from turn one, all of our firepower was surprisingly ineffective. Usually you would expect massive megadeaths in Apocalypse, but all day everything was bouncing off of the targets armor, or failing to hit at all. My Annihilator smoked a Leman Russ, but was unable to destroy anything else despite having a clean line of sight the whole game. My Baneblade managed to get a couple of good shots off at the core of the Eldar army, trashing the wraithlord and a number of very strong units - at the time it seemed inconsequential, but in the long run it won us the game.

Everyone tried so hard to blow up everybody elses super heavies. The Ork Stompas were damaged so heavily, they were both immobilised and all of their weapons were destroyed except their lowest machine guns. My Baneblade took extensive damage - it's main cannon was knocked out and the vehicle was immobilised. We managed to knock a few structure points off of the enemy Baneblades, but we weren't able to kill any.

So, the trophy for the first Baneblade kill remains up in the air.

We took a lot of damage, a lot of casualties. If the game went on for a few more turns, I would probably have been wiped out - however Jason had largely remained unscathed. The Eldar and Ork army was almost entirely destroyed (as was mine), while the Tau were annoyingly almost untouched throughout the game. Not for want of trying! William's units are extremely tricky to trap and destroy due to their fire and forget/shoot'n'scoot nature. I had fielded artillery pieces (the whirlwinds) to deal with this, but by the time enemy came within range the whirlwinds had been disrupted by the enemy basilisk and were ineffective. One of the surviving whirlwinds later claimed the objective in that part of the battlefield, though.

In the end, out of six objectives, I held two, Shane held one, Jason held one. William held one, and Laurie held one. We had four, they had two. Despite the massive mauling our forces had taken, we were victorious.

It felt like a hollow victory, to be honest. When I looked at the battlefield, the enemy force still looked very strong, while most of our units were heavily damaged and destroyed.

I made some silly errors.
A) I had taken the Masters of the Chapter detachment, not realising that the officers had to remain in the same unit. I prefer to distribute my officers throughout the entire army so that their abilities are more utilised by all, instead of concentrated in one position. In the game, this highly expensive and dangerous unit didn't accomplish anything. Even so, had I been able to split them up, the level of firepower directed at my forces probably would have been too much for even them to survive.
B) I used the dreadnoughts in place of the officers to provide fire support and assault resistance throughout the ranks. This was a mistake - dreadnoughts, although highly durable in assault, aren't very effective in it if on their own. I would have been better off to have deployed the Dreadnoughts in two or three groups and allowing them to operate on their own.
C) I forgot to use my orbital bombardment!!!
D) I didn't coordinate my timed bombardments with my allies effectively, and this meant that on the last turn I accidentally friendly-fired Jason's carnifex detachment. Fortunately they were able to shrug off most of the damage, but it was still very embarassing.
E) I didn't write my army list until after midnight, which meant going to bed at 3 am, and subsequently getting up at 6 left me unable to brain.

There's one thing I am trying to figure out. Every Apocalypse game has done the same thing so far:

Turn 1: My army takes HORRENDOUS MASSIVE CASUALTIES. I do barely anything in return.
Turn 2: My army takes some damage. I make some kind of good response.
Turn 3: I take a small amount of damage. My opponent gets smashed to little pieces.

It's completely different from a normal game of Warhammer, where the balance of power is largely even until near the end of the game, where the result of careful strategy and planning finally is revealed, and it can often come down literally to the last throw of the dice. This kind of tremendous turn around just does not happen in normal games. It's only in the Apocalypse level, which is simply a normal Warhammer game that is 3-5 times bigger than normal.

I take great pride in my Space Marines and I go to great lengths to protect them. I don't throw their lives away, nor do I leave them isolated and undefended. So if I can find out the reason for my army suddenly becoming so strong, even when it had taken such a massive beating, maybe I can work out what I can do to avoid the massive beating in the first place.

So I am going to nap now...