It was then I got the idea to book one of their massive tables for an apocalypse battle which would be brilliant for providing motivation for painting and a chance to get to use a load of models which would normally not see that much play plus for a couple of the guys in the group they do not play as much as I would like and I was hoping that being able to soak in the atmosphere of warhammer world would get their interest levels up and really stoke the creative juices and imagination and kick start a increase in the gaming levels and promote a lot more model collecting and painting.
First impressions of the revamped warhammer world - well the change to the front of the building is nice and creates a better external visual so you do not feel you are walking in to a warehouse as much. The shop changes have really cut down the gaming area, the loss of about a third of the tournament tables which is something of a shame and really suggests you are going to have to target weekends for apocalypse games carefully to avoid the place being so packed you cannot move let alone think / hear / play.
The forge world shop is lovely, they have some wonderful examples of their models on display, my only issue with it is that is possibly one of the most damgerous places for me and my wallet to be, the temptation for purchases is exceptionally high.
For this weekend I had booked up the Tau Research Station table which is a pretty nicely sized six by eight table with a bit of terrain but enough open spaces to allow larger models to move, it was not our first choice and due to us planning the main apocalypse battle to be 10k per side I was worried that it might actually be somewhat small but the combined collections of my gaming group are so significant that we had to run at least 10k to be able to ensure we were bringing some of the les used models and giving a decent representation to each of the four players in attendance.
For the Friday we were staging a 3k per side battle, on my side was the mechanicum I have been working on, some craftworld eldar, an imperial knight painted to an exceptional level (not by me i hasten to add) and we also brought my fire raptor simply because we had 210 points spare and were already including everything painted in our armies. Our opponent was bringing orks and khornate daemonkin with a stompa which was more than a little intimidating, especially with it being lovingly called "Mister Stampy" all the way up to Nottingham.
The Thallax and some tech thralls ready to rock
The myrmidon destructors which are exceptional models but have a somewhat annoying set of weapons in the available kit
The second Castellax I painted, these guys still need some work with transfers and additional details like more interesting bases, but I think they look pretty solid
The Iron Duke, this model is amazing and the paint job that has been done is top notch in my opinion
My Thanatar staning next to the Duke convincing me I will have to add a knight to the mechanicum army simply because it fits with the Thanatar and Castellax profile so well.
I won't go in to too much detail about the battle since there is a lot to cover from the weekend, as it was we completed turn two and the ork horde conceeded the battle, the 'good' guys had managed to remove a Gorkanaught, 6 killer kans, immobalise a maulerfiend, kill a bloodthirster, wipe out a large unit of looters, slaughter the stormboyz and so forth all within the second turn and there was simply not much left for the orks to utilise in an effort to stop us winning.
The myrmidion destructors for this battle had been equipped with irraditation engines and they were devestating, they butchered a unit of bloodletter with wall of death fire to the point that the sole survivor was out of charge range, the stormboy who managed to get in to combat with them found out that the two remaining guys power fist attacks are not to be ignored and they soaked a lot of shooting admittedly from a firepower light enemy but they were very effective. The knight was brutal to say the least hammering down the gorkanaught with it's thermal cannon and generally dishing out a ton of savage firepower - this worried me because for the main battle of the weekend I would be facing off against it.
We opted to fight these sides simply to get some experience with the armies, I had never had a chance to field the mechanicum in battle before, the eldar player had only had a chance to use them a couple of times, this was the first use of the knight and the orks were also getting their first outing and we figured this fight would be a great chance to get some experience and cut down on the mistakes and rules checking we would have to do in the following couple of days.
Mister Stampy in all of his glory
My learning points about the mechanicum mainly came down to the destructors being very potent, the Thanatar was effective and the thallax were useful but really with the shooting from a number of scatter bikes and the knight the mechanicum did not actually have to do that much for this battle.
More to follow in the upcoming posts, I will keep the battle details pretty light simply because I toook something like 250 photo's over the weekend and while some of them are rubbish I do want to get a lot of the decent ones up here. My friends also took some pictures and videos and I will see what I can do about getting them as well as their views on events.
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