APOCALYPSE TIME! The background is the Devastation of Baal, as recounted in Guy Haley's book. The Leviathan fleet targets the Blood Angels system, the hive mind determined to annihilate the red warriors who had so troubled it in the past. Dante calls upon all the successor chapters of the Blood Angels to defend the planet. The narrative game intends to reconstruct the setting described in the book, leaving aside the moon of Baal secundus (where the demons will also arrive... that's another story). The BA defenses, prepared in the weeks preceding the invasion, are structured as follows (obviously simplified structure): 1st line: a moat filled with "thirsty water," a kind of semi-sentient liquid organism that devours and absorbs the fluids of anyone who comes into contact with it. The Tyranids are almost ready to cross it, filling it with their corpses. 2nd line: light fortifications manned by Baal civilian conscripts, equipped with laser rifles 3rd line: the outer walls. Heavy fortifications reinforced by a void shield, which prevents flying attacks and neutralizes heavy siege weapons. Internal defenses: The fortifications housing the Chapter's "vital organs.", basically: 4) the Arx Angelicum (where resides the generator of the void shield) 5) the Dome of Angel (the Chapter's sanctum). Blood Angels: 5.000 pts plus fortifications and free automatic firing positions (tarantula batteries and similar) Nids: 6.000 pts plus strats to bring back dead units in reserves Victory Points Objectives: 1) 10 pts to nids if they sacrifices 5 units to create "bridges" to pass the moat 2) 3 points to anyone that controls at least 2 of the tokens 3) 4 points to anyone that controls at least 2 of the tokens 4) 5 points 5) 10 points at the end of the game, 3 points during the game secondary missions Nids: Assassination, Storm Hostile Obj, Behind enemy lines BA: No prisoners, Overwhelming force, Bring it Down (any kill counts for only one of those) Spoiler: The Battlefield
I was playing Crusher Stampede, my teammate was playing Endless Swarm Battle duration: minimum 5 rounds, hopefully 6 Nids go first Spoiler: The Set-Up Mephiston looking at the enemy (why is he even here? ) Place your bets!
And here's a brief summary... Spoiler: Round 1 Nids fill the moat with expendable units and jump against the first line of defense, wiping the conscripts manning the bunkers. IN BA's turn, the retaliation won't be that hard, and losses will be replaced via strats Spoiler: Round 2 Nids sense the blood, and try to storm the walls! But behind the wall, the main untouched force of the BA is ready to unleash a storm of fire upon the first line of attackers, wiping them out Spoiler: Round 3 Surprise! as in the book, the sneaky nids penetrate the arx angelicum: a Lictor crushed the void generator (which hampered fly and gave inv. 4+ to defenders) and genestealers appear in the heart of the secondary fortress. The big nids push through the left and support the carnage. In their turn, BA repel the nids around the arx, and try to contain the incoming wave... Spoiler: Round 4 Objectives shift control each turn, Nids and BA both accumulate lots of killing points. Nids start now to pour everywhere, and are almost in full control of the Arx angelicum, but the main BA forces, entrenched around the Dome of Angels, despite being depleted, are fully operational (while nids cannot concentrate their full wrath) and are still able to deal with the enemy Spoiler: Round 5 only the Dome of Angels still stands, and now the Nids are charging it, taking its control for a little while. But in the BA turn, Dante and the sanguinary guard will be able to clear off the citadel (supported by the remaining imperial forces), collecting an incredible amount of killing points Spoiler: Round 6? it was too late, and there was no time for a sixth round... the one that could have proven to be decisive to see if the final push of the nids would have sufficed to wipe all BA from the board. Alas, we decided to stop the battle here.... both sides were curious to see the points, as nids were ahead in terms of main objective points, but BA were ahead in terms of secondary objectives... Spoiler: THE VERDICT it seems that, once again, BA were saved by the bell ringing... 82-82 was the final verdict, an incredible DRAW! What an incredible game...
Well, it's been... interesting to see where Horus Heresy 3.0's discourse has been going as of late, especially from the community itself. I've been wanting to hold off on final judgment of the edition until I get a chance to read the rulebook for myself, but the forecast doesn't seem to be looking good overall. For my part, there are some changes from the previous edition that were looking good for the game in spite of my own concerns for how open to abuse they appear to be - the reworking of the force org chart into a detachment-based system to break up spam lists, for instance. However, other changes make me question if there was any human-level input in their decision making at all. The biggest one recently is a matter of unit wargear options, or rather the inability to take it. I'm not just talking about the stuff that violates the "no model, no rule" policy that GW stamped down hard with in its other games, either. Even kits that they still sell with the wargear options included on the sprue can no longer take some of those options going into the new edition, or simply cannot be taken altogether. Say you wanted a unit or two of Templar Brethren as an Imperial Fists player. The kit itself allows you to take them with a power sword, a bolt pistol, and a combat shield, with the bolt pistol and combat shield affixed to the same arm as a single piece. It should therefore follow that such a model would be eligible to take both a combat shield and bolt pistol at the same time, right? Not according to the new unit profile for them, which states that they have to choose one or the other... when the kit doesn't even offer them separately in the first place. Okay, then let's go with a different example, like Tartaros Terminators. A plastic kit with multiple weapon options available to it, ranging from power swords and lightning claws to powerfists, along with combi-bolters on the side. Apparently powerfists are illegal on Tartaros terminators, regardless of whether you wanted to build them out of the box with them or not. For an example of models with no rules, destroyer squads have been a thing throughout HH 1.0 and 2.0 as one of the premier generic legion "warcrime" units to take. Now? Their resin models, both with jump packs and without, have no rules at all, and thus cannot be played short of a big fat sloppy PDF apology. And these are just the most immediate examples of this. It's sad, really. I still want for this edition to succeed on some level, but it comes across as being so horrifically mismanaged that it makes it really hard to opt in at all, not least of which knowing that I may not even have a single army to play with out of the 2 and a half that I own when the edition is finally released.
I have held back even reading the updates right now as they keep depressing me. I went to HH to get away from the nonsense 40k, IMO, has become and now it's starting to mesh up. I mostly liked 2nd so I don't really have any reason to change editions as I don't have a playgroup right now.