Battle of the Abyss

The Warmaster had sounded the Call, and Legio Amare Feles had answered. Though a shadow of their once great former selves the three remaining engines, their brave crews, and support personnel  embarked at Xoxigar Secondus - their home forgeworld - and travelled forth to Malice, where the enemy had decided to make their stand... 

This weekend I attended the Battle of the Abyss - an annual apocalypse event held here in Saskatoon. This was my first such event and only the second 40K tournament I've ever been to.

It was a team event - two players joined forces to field 300 Power Level (~6000points) of stuff. The players could each have up to four detachments. I partnered up with a fellow named Halsten. I'd heard he was playing Mechanicus/Knights and I had lots of Imperial Guard and a Warhound Titan, and figured we could probably put tougher a decent force. Originally I was going to take the one Warhound and the Shadowsword and a Brigade Detachment of the Tallarn.... But, then I got another Warhound Titan... an then a Reaver Battle Titan... and we thought it would be funny just to take those. The three titans totally 270 Power Level - so Halsten only needed to bring his 30PL Knight Valiant.

Our force looked like this:

Team: Big Cogs Keep on Turnin’

Tim's Force

Super Heavy Detachment 
- Ecrite Arcus maniple of Legio Amare Feles
- Adeptus Titanicus - +1 Command Point
Lords of War (3-5)

Reaver Battle Titan - Leonem Caeruleum
-First Princeps Ilyan Curtis, Moderati Petrus Hook (Steersman), Moderati Bernhardt Sumner (Sensors, Communications, Weapons), Tech Priest Mor-15 and Tech Priest Gi-16-ERT.
- 120 Power Level – Warlord
-Apocalypse Missile launcher, Dual Turbo-Laser Destructor, Titan Inferno gun, Titanic Stride

Warhound Scout Titan - Tigris Viridi
- Princeps Mozzer, Moderati Joyce (Steersman) and Moderati Marr (Sensors, Communications, Weapons), Tech Priest Ro-Urk350 and Tech Priest Pom-Fret681.
- 75 Power Level
- Dual Turbo-Laser Destructor, Titan Vulcan Mega-bolter, Titanic Stride

Warhound Scout Titan – Pardus Purpura
- Princeps Smythe, Moderati Cooper (Steersman) and Moderati Gallup (Sensors, Communications, Weapons), Tech Priest 0-Donnel and Tech Priest 6-Abrels.
-75 Power Level
- Dual Turbo-Laser Destructor, Titan Vulcan Mega-bolter, Titanic Stride

Detachment Total Power Level: 70


Halsten’s Force

Super Heavy Auxiliary Detachment 
– Imperial Knights – 0 Command Points
Lords of War (1)

Knight Valiant – Dragonslayer
- Konungr Sigurd
- 30 Power Level – Warlord

Detachment Total Power Level: 30

Force Total Power Level: 300

THE GAMES

The Great Enemy had succeeded is sewing confusion among the arriving Imperial troops. The befouled the noosphere with virulent scrapcode and combat cogitators frequently misinterpreted friendly returns as that of the Enemy and much unintended infighting ensued. 

There were 32 participants in 16 teams playing at eight 6'x8' tables. Each table had static terrain set up and there were seven specific missions (one for each table - though two tables had the same mission). Unfortunately, about 75% of those teams were Imperial forces of one sort or another... 

All the scenarios were outlined in the mission pack that I was able to download and read through before the tournament. 

Most of them the first player was determined by bidding for how long you were going to take to set up (between 30 second and 5 minutes - in 3 second increments) the lowest bidder would pick their table edge, set up first, and then take the first turn IF they could set up within the time they bid. 

Having only FOUR models in total, I was pretty certain we were going to get the first turn - always - 

GAME ONE 

Legio Amare Feles were ordered to destroy a factorum that had, according to the latest intelligence data, fallen into the hands of The Enemy. It was imperative that they technology and stores and materiel within did not fall into their hands! Unfortunately, the factorum had not ever fallen into the Enemy's hands, and was currently guarded by the soldiers of the 222nd Hesperan Infantry, supported the 1st Hesperan Armoured regiment as well as a number of Mechanicus Knights... 

For our first game we played Mission #1 against The Steel and Salt (John and Ben) 

The one exception to the set up/start rules was Mission #1... for some reason you still bid for set up and the lowest bidder set up first and was considered the "attacker".... but the defender got to shoot first - Oh and the defender also had to set up have (in terms of number of units) their forces in reserve and would come on in the second round.... 

To WIN the attacker had to destroy a building in the defenders set up zone... the building itself was Toughness 9 had 40 wounds and a 2+ save AND VOID SHIELD saves of 3+... If the attacker destroys the building they win. If they don't they lose... so the attacker has to direct a cRaZy amount of firepower at that building to have a hope of levelling it in four rounds (did I mention all the games are only four rounds, oh, they're four rounds all right!) 

I briefly considered trying to convince Halsten to bid 5 minutes on this one and be the defender... but we ended up being the "attacker".... 

All set up and ready for Game One. 

The defenders all set up... Ben's force was three knights and two armiger and John's force was a Shadowsword superheavy tank, a Crapload of Leman Russ tanks and a pile of infantry - there was enough units of infantry, that they left those in reserve and we had to face the full might of their massed tanks and Knights... 

The confused returns indicated a heavy enemy presence before the target factorum. 

The two Warhound Scout Titans, Tigris Viridi and Pardus Purpura, flanked to the left of Leonem Caeruleum, the Reaver Battle titan.

Unsure of who these approaching engines of war belonged to, the soldiers of the 1st Hesperan Armoured decided it prudent to shoot first and ask questions later... 

Halsten, in the middle, flanked by John (left) and Ben (right). They utterly HAMMERED us. They took down the Reaver Titan on their first turn, before it even had a chance to get a shot off.... Mind you, it took a Shadowsword, five Leman Russ and a couple Knights to bring it down...

The volume of fire compelled the Reaver Titan to fall back, The Enemy would not be allowed an Engine Kill here today.... 

While The Enemy were distracted with the Reaver, Tigris Viridi and Pardus Purpura, launched their attack on The Enemy's flank. The Shadowsword superheavy tank was destroyed. 

With the Reaver retiring, however, The Armoured fist was able to turn it's attention to The Warhounds. Their concentrated fire severely damaged Tigris Viridi and it to was compelled to withdraw. 

Reinforcements arrived, along with a second Shadowsword! 

(In the event all teams had access to a stratagem that cost 2/3/4 Command Points that allowed them, as the end of their movement phase to bring on forces that had been previously lost in the game worth 10/20/30 Power Level... Wasn't very useful for us as only Halsten's Knight had a low enough Power Level that we could even possibly make use of the stratagem... and we'd have to spend ALL of the command Points we had to make that happen...) 

With the Reaver out of the way, the Knights of the Cog were able to turn their attention towards the Engines as well. 

Eventually one of the Knights of the Cog figured out what was going on and was able to secured a tight beam communication line with Leonem Caeruleum and sort out the situation, but not before the Warhounds sustained grievous damage... 

Turn three... only thing we had left on the table was one Titan.... with two wounds remaining. They finished it off with their first shots.

I expected to lose some titans in a few games... but WOW... what a discouraging was to start the event - tabled at the beginning of Turn Three!!!

The confusion and damage done to both parties was regrettable, luckily the vast resources of the Mechanicus on Malice were able to see the three engines repaired and returned to action in the very short time... 

Ben's force of Mechanicus Knights. 

He scrath-built a cockpit interior for one of them! 

Elsewhere during round one of the event:



Another Warhound Titan - owned by Jeremy.



His force faced an Imperial guard force of massed artillery (and massed air units!)



The "Hipster Knights" setting up to fight some genuine Chaos dudes over an Ork Scrap Pile.



So. Many. Knights!



Chaos!!!



This was definitely one of the craziest scenarios - there was six scrap piles surrounding a Gargant under construction. Teams scored victory points by controlling scrap piles... but once per turn the Gargant  unleashed a blast from it's Mega-Supa-Kill-Cannon and destroyed one of the scrap piles, and all units that were contesting it!? Yikes!



Table next to ours had some more Knights and Custodes fighting a swarm of T'au.


The T'wu had a big flying thing and some pretty huge walker thingies.



Man, we are just living the dream of playing Battletech in 28mm...



The battlefield on each table was made up of two 4x6 matts butted together. This was an odd one - though there were two mats on this table - they weren't considered contiguous. you couldn't simply drive or walk from one to the other or target an enemy on one from the other - because one was considered UNDER the other and you could only move between them via teleporters, or lifts, or... something...? More Guard and another Team of T'au



M'reens of some variety or another...



Fighting a Hierophant Bio-Titan!! aaaaand apparently a Shadowsword...?! Genestealer Cults, perhaps?



A force of Necrons teamed up with... Marines...? Fighting more Imperial soup...?



Oh, yeah, and some dude from Regina drove up for the day and brought along his Foregeworld WARLORD TITAN!!! It was pretty insane looking. I'd kind of wanted to see if I could set up my titans with it to get some comparison shots, but he ended his last game before us and put it away...


GAME TWO

Confusion still reigned supreme among the forces of the Imperium. While the Mechanicum finally started sorting out the scrapcode that had infested the noosphere and could now identify each other, they were still having trouble identifying other imperial units.. 

In our second game we faced ANOTEHR force up Imperial types!

We played Mission #2 against The Hippos Gets a Bear Hug (Beau and Daniel)

I can't remember the fluff behind this scenario, but basically both sides had a building they had to defend. Teams scored two victory points for every wound done to their enemy's building... BUT Teams also got points equal to the wounds of each enemy vehicle they destroy...

Once again Leonem Caeruleum advance on the right...

...while the Warhound Scout Titans flanked to the left... 

Enemy Super heavies were engaged! 

In the first round each of the Warhounds destroyed a Shadowsword with their Turbo Dual-Laser Destructor and wrecked other stuff with their Vulcan Mega-bolters (took out a chimera and part of the embarked squad and severely damaged a Leman Russ). The Reaver damaged a Baneblade and a Leman Russ.



The Brave little Knight of the Cog charged right into the midst of the enemy and sewed destruction wherever it went! 

(as if anything about a Valiant is "little"... but Halsten's Knight wrecked another Chimera and messed up some guard and marines on bikes)



Pretty sure the tournament package said that to be used all models had to be painted to a three colour minimum... yet I saw so many primed black models... bare grey plastic models... This one didn't even have TRACKS on it!? Perhaps he was modelling these as the burned out wrecks he was expecting they'd become...?



Having finished off the Baneblade in front of it, Leonem Caeruleum started vaporizing Leman Russ tanks.



They used the Bring It Back stratagem to bring back one of their Shadowswords... which the Warhounds promptly blew up again.



In a last ditch effort to gain some points out opponents teleported in a PILE of Terminators that tried to charge the building and score a few points trying to wreck it up close and personal-like. They did do some damage to it - like, 20 wounds, which was worth 40 points... but by that time, we'd scored 146 points for destroyed vehicles...



The war hounds started blasting apart Terminators with their Vulcna Megabolters and destroyed another returned Shadowsword... The rEAver incinerated a unit or two or Terminators with it's Titan Inferno Cannon...

It was Brutal....

Elsewhere during Round Two:



In Game Two, Ben and John, who had defeated us in Game One, faced the Warlord Titan!



Titan-Killers that they are, they brought down the behemoth!!!



It was, apparently, a very close thing, however!



Cody and Jeremy face the T'au.



More Knights fighting T'au



Skiploads of Guard fighting buckeloads of Knights...



Sooooo many Knights....



While the titans were fun to play and all, and I love my Guard armies... coming out to this event really made me want to get to work on my Aeldari... or maybe an Ork or Chaos army...

I could get a couple of Stompas and team up with Finnegan next year....?



Necrons and marines fighting... other marines...?



The Gauss pylons looked cool... I have no idea if they did anything... but they looked cool.



Another fight over the Ork Scrapyard.



the one actual chaos force faced the massed artillery and massed airpower of the Astra Militarum.

 

So many GUNS!



Wicked cool-looking demon engine.



These guys had two Marauder Bombers, tow or three Vulture gunships and at least three or four Valkyries... it was CrAzY seeing them all on the table!


GAME THREE

Finally Command got their poop in a group and set the engines of Legio Amare Feles against some REAL enemy...

For our third game we faced some gen-u-ine Chaos players - The Rust Buckets (Chad and Stuart).

The Scenario (called Birth of Chaos) involved first destroying two pillars, and then destroying an alter of sorts to the Chaos Gods... Not sure why the chaos guys would want to destroy it...?



Chad deploying his forces of the dark powers.



One victory point was awarded for each tower destroyed. each player was allowed to destroy two, but only one per turn. Once the towers were destroyed the Altar could be targeted. It had 100 wounds and teams scored 1 victory point per 20 wounds of damaged done to the alter.

Halstens Knight destroyed one tower each turn. During the first turn the Titans took out two Renegade Knights and did some damage to the Lords of Skulls and brought Magnus down to two wounds.

On rounds two, after Halsten's Knight destroyed the second tower, Leonem Caeruleum brought down the alter in a single round of shooting. BOOM. and that right there pretty much won us the game... but we kept going for secondary objectives....

Destroying the altar caused a big explosion which carried off a bunch of the chaos forces that had bunched up around it.



Pardus Purpura had a hard time dealing with these two armoured vehicles... and their laser cannons just kept poking holes in him...



Leonem Caeruleum just dealt death in which ever direction it faced. Armigers, Mortarion, Asorted Chaos dudes... all died before the might other Imperial God Engine...

And that was that... Nine hours of apocalypse gaming.

Elsewhere during Round Three:



Swarms of Knights fighting the Warlord Battle Titan.



I think a lot of knight got smashed...



T'au fighting massed Guard..



Am I the only one that hears Wagners "Flight of the Valkyries" when looking at this picture...?

Maybe they could have called this scenario "Xenos Don't Surf!"
 

Setting up to fight over the Scrap Pile again. These were two teams that has won both of their previous games (including Ben and John)

 

It was a crazy, crazy fight... 




Final Standings - Middle of the pack. Not bad considering I went into the game fully expecting to lose every game. Not by being tabled - mind you. I expected the majority of our stuff to still be standing, but lose due to victory points from not being able to hold enough objectives with our (numerically) small force, etc...

It was a long, but tiring day. Overall I really enjoyed the day. Played some fun games against some fabulous people. Totally looking forward to going again next year.

Big thanks to all the organizers who clearly put a LOT of work into making this even run to smoothly!

I should probably get signed up for the Battleforce Recon tournament coming up in April - I really enjoyed that one last year. I'd originally been toying with the idea of trying to finish up a Brigade of Valhallans by then... but now I'm wondering if I could get 1000 points of ELDAR finished up by then...?

Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hmmm... some painting...? maybe another battle report? When I got home Finnegan was asking what I was doing tomorrow and suggested he might be interested in a game of 40K or Kill Team.