Apocalypse at Recon 2013

Earlier this year at the HMGS-South Recon convention in Orlando (April 18th-21st), a group of friends and I decided to put on a big display game of Warhammer 40K Apocalypse, taking full advantage of the availability of space and the relative lack of time constraints. We decided to go with Orks vs Imperial Guard as initially my friend Jon Donovan and I were going to provide both armies ourselves and (a) I have Guard and he has Orks, (b) both armies were fully painted (one of the criteria we wanted to ensure was followed - this was a display game after all) and (c) both armies had superheavy vehicles available to them. Once we got  the word out however and the players at my local store (Docking Bay 94 in Coconut Creek, FL) that were making the trip started to get involved, the armies began to expand at a considerable rate!

By the time we got the convention, the Imperial Guard forces were up to over forty vehicles including five superheavies plus another six flyers and around 180 infantry, and the Ork forces were up to five Stompas, maybe a dozen vehicles plus six flyers and well over 300 infantry. This doesn't include assorted Dreads, Kans, Sentinels, Buggies etc.

The personal touch on one of Jon's Stompas, a custom built Goff Rok'n'Rolla - 'Skwish Runnicles' lol. I feel so special :)

On to the table setup! We played on a 12' by 6' ruined cityscape defined by a river running down the middle with three bridges spanning it (more on this later). Some of buildings towered over the battlefield!

The generals assembled ready to unleash hell....

Now on to various shots from during the battle - my apologies for the blurriness of some of these pics, they were all taken on my phone. Highlights included one Baneblade shot scattering off a Stompa onto the tower block behind it and causing the building to collapse completely, including the Shokk Attack Gun mob standing on top of it! Towards the end of the battle one of the Stompas unleashed it's Super-Gatla Gun and proceeded to walk down a line of Guard tanks destroying them one at a time before stopping due to running out of targets!

At the end of the day the battle went to the Guard; some of the Orks complained that the bridges unfairly funneled their advance into a killing ground but since hardly any Ork units actually made it to any of the bridges in the first place their comments were dismissed as simple whining lol. Either way everyone involved had an incredible time and agreed that the sheer spectacle of the battle made all the blood, sweat and tears involved in putting everything together totally worthwhile!

After this we all agreed that the next project of a similar size would be a large scale fantasy battle, which we actually played last weekend (August 17th) - blog update to follow!

I highly recommend the HMGS-South conventions, btw - I've been going for years now since the old days in Tampa, and the current Orlando home is a great site for the con. Well worth checking out! Hurricon (the fall convention) is coming up soon on September 26th-29th and it's definitely worth making the trip if you can swing it.

Bob