End Of 2014 Chiller

2014 has been a good social year for Corehammer with the WHFB Ill Blood tournament, The Dark Throne 40K tournament, plus a couple of trips to Sanctuary Gaming Centre, so we closed the year out in style, with a chiller at Warhammer World, with all and sundry invited. “Let’s have an all-day Apocalypse battle, with a narrative” said David Ager*, so we booked the 6′ by 12′ board, sorted out a Loyalist v Traitors/Xenos rumble, and the warrior lodge descended on Games Workshop HQ

*the fucker never turned up

It was great to see people travelling from all over the country to get involved and join in the fun, and we held court over half the gaming hall, rolled some dice, ripped each other and painted some miniatures.

The main distraction was the aforementioned all-day slog, The Battle For J’migan Bridge, where 12 of us attempted to play something silly like 10k points per side, with very few super-heavies, and a swathe of infantry.

Loyalist Astartes, represented by Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Imperial Fists, Raptors, 2 companies of Grey Knights and an Imperial Knight, faced off against the traitor legions of the Emperor’s Children, Iron Warriors, 12 Leman Russ battle tanks, Necrons, Tau and a cheeky flanking force of Tyranids. We soon learned that these games are an absolute nightmare, that take ages to set up, are unwieldly to manage, and bring nothing but headaches figuring out who is responsible for what models when their respective owner inevitably wanders off. It was like herding cats.

It was a good laugh though, with some great cinematic moments. Such as Nate’s storm of Space Wolf Drop Pods coming down in turn 1 and getting right in the grill of their hated brethren. Grey Knights arriving from deep-strike and upsetting Paul after they made a beeline for his daemonic coven. The Imperial Knight getting blindsided by some  Iron Warriors Terminator combi-weapons, stripping it down to one remaining hull point, before Paulo’s Fellblade took the remaining HP, and the ensuing mega-apocalyptic blast took out most of the Terminators. Poor Matt having to wait an eternity for his Blood Angels to arrive from reserve by deep-strike and then get taken out pretty quickly. Sketch’s Stormraven from the Raptors’ chapter made short work of a flying Daemon Prince, and the other one was punched in the face by a Venerable Dreadnought belonging to Duggan’s Grey Knights. Short work was made of the majority of the traitor legions. At the other end of the table, the tanks and xenos were happy throwing pie plates and all manner of firepower into the entrenched Imperial Fist lines and Devastator squads, so much that if left poor Pete’s flanking ‘nids with nothing to charge, and he’d have been lucky to have got into combat by turn 6 at that rate

 

Like I said, an absolute clusterfuck of a game that we’d still be playing a fortnight later, but it was an experience to say the least. Think we’ll be sticking to doubles at the most next time. Speaking of which, there’s another WHFB tournament that Stevie is hosting at Darksphere at the end of February. We’re also planning a Corehammer Games Day of sorts in early Spring, most likely at Sanctuary, as it’s central and we can play what the fuck we want, which will be handy for those getting hooked on X-Wing and Infinity. There’s also talk of an RPG sesh and maybe a  little painting workshop. The long-mooted Corehammer podcast may also be on the horizon. So here’s to more gaming and painting in 2015, and hope your luck’s changing with the roll of the dice