Defense of Baal - Planetstrike

[pararanger]

So... the local shop will be having a 24 hour gaming event starting New Years Eve at 3pm. The central game for the 24 hours just happens to be a Defense of Baal Planetstrike match. Being as there are only 3 BA players here (Myself and Volcatus being 2 of them), we will use other players to balance out the sides once we've split into our BA and Demon/Tyranid teams. We're aiming for 2000pts per player and limiting unique/named models to one per team.

 

Now my big questions are these. Since it's the defense of everything BA, should this be a standard Planetstike type match or should it incorporate some Apocalypse type flavor into it? I'm honestly on the fence about it. Earlier in the year I organized an Apoc/Cities of Death mash up that went fairly well. And I've organized some rather large scale SpaceHulk themed tournaments that were a flying success. I've only been playing 40k for about 18 months now, but am no stranger to tabletop gaming. So I would like to draw upon the vast amount of experience from all of you. I took over the responsibility of organizing and running 40k events from our shop owner to pull the stress of it off his shoulders.

 

I ask your input on this because I honestly can't make up my mind. I want this to be among the more talked about matches in the store over the next year. If it was a match you were attending, what would you want to see?

 

I thank you all in advance.

[JamesI]

I would allow the mixing in of Apoc stuff. Sounds like lots of fun, take lots of pictures and defend Baal at all costs!

[mysteriousmaskedmystery]

if you're doing apoch, i'd normally say up the points cost per player, but i'm not sure, how big a table are you going to be playing on? if there are too many points per square inch it will make it nearly impossible for the attacker to deep strike successfully. 2000 might be a lot if you have like 3 or 4 players per side.

 

personally, i'd leave apoch out, you can't use the set up rules, since planet strike has specific rules covering who sets up where and when and who goes first anyway, and D strength weapons doesn't add anything to the game and you already said you are limiting the number of unique characters and such, so what apoch rules are you considering adding? the strategems? i think planet strike already has some and letting them pick from the apoch rules too will only add to people trying to turn it into a competitive game rather than a fun one.

[librisrouge]

if you're doing apoch, i'd normally say up the points cost per player, but i'm not sure, how big a table are you going to be playing on? if there are too many points per square inch it will make it nearly impossible for the attacker to deep strike successfully. 2000 might be a lot if you have like 3 or 4 players per side.

 

personally, i'd leave apoch out, you can't use the set up rules, since planet strike has specific rules covering who sets up where and when and who goes first anyway, and D strength weapons doesn't add anything to the game and you already said you are limiting the number of unique characters and such, so what apoch rules are you considering adding? the strategems? i think planet strike already has some and letting them pick from the apoch rules too will only add to people trying to turn it into a competitive game rather than a fun one.

 

Seconded. I don't recommend mixing expansions, they aren't designed with intermingling in mind. Either apocolypse or planetstrike and go from there.

 

Besides that, if Baal falls you will be personally held accountable.

[pararanger]

A few of the players had asked to bring super heavies, and other Apoc only type equipment. Personally I'm 100% fine doing Planetstrike only, but then there's the speech I get about keeping the players happy. So... it's decided, no Apoc. I think so far we have about 8 confirmed players. I'm planning on setting three tables together for it. That usually gives us plenty of playing area in our Apoc matches.

[Volcatus]

As always man, thanks for putting these events together. I can't WAIT to play this one out.

[pararanger]

Well, after much agreement at the shop, we decided to turn this into a full on campaign. We're going to run through all 6 mission types in the Planetstrike book. We had a turn out of 11 players and about 23K points total.

 

Team 1-Defending: Blood Angels, Fleshtearers, Death Corps of Krieg, Tau, Grey Knights and Ultramarines.

Team 2-Attacking: Tyranids, Iron Warriors, Chaos Space Marines-Undivided, Orks and Necrons.

 

With a total of 9 objectives on the table, the attackers held 8 of them.

 

It was an incredibly bloody battle, starting with the attacking forces Firestorm Attack, with a total of 18 strikes on Baal's defenders.

 

Round 2 will happen sometime in January, with the subsequent rounds tentatively planned for each following month. Good times were had by all.

[Volcatus]

It was a lot of fun, so thanks again for setting this up, Para.

 

And even though we lost, we remembered our Red Thirst rolls for a change!

[pararanger]

It was a lot of fun, so thanks again for setting this up, Para.

 

And even though we lost, we remembered our Red Thirst rolls for a change!

 

I know! I was amazed! I'm glad everyone had a blast. I can't wait for the following rounds. It was actually very comforting having the wall of Broadsides on our side.

[red_starrise]

The game was great indeed, despite it only running for 2 turns lol. I was surprised at the fact that it seemed to take longer per turn than apocalypse but then again, in Apoc I've always started my whole army on the table whilst this game I had almost nothing on the table for the first turn so I sat around doing nothing for a good chunk of the turn lol. Ah well, wasn't a bad showing for the Iron Warriors.