A Weekend of Gaming Part 1 - 40K Zone Mortalis

I had a big weekend of gaming. So as not to overload you with photos all at once, we'll focus on Saturday's gaming. My friend Brian Parisi has volunteered to provide a couple of Zone Mortalis tables for the 40K Warzone Tournament at Adepticon this year. I hadn't seen them yet so we decided to make a day of trying them out and seeing if there were any tweaks that needed to be made in order to make them comply with my Stratagem List that goes along with the tournament. We spent a little while analyzing the pieces he constructed and then set up a suitable 3'x3' layout. At the 40K Warzone Tournament the players will be fielding 1000 point forces so 3'x3' is ample space for an hour and a half game.

We used last year's Zone Mortalis mission and deployed on 6" deployment zones on opposing sides. I took the Familiar Ground Stratagem which gave me Move Through Cover and Scout for all of my Infantry. In the picture below you can see my firebase, a Dreadnought castled with a Techmarine with Power Field Generator, backed up by a 6 man Devastator Squad. You can see two Adepticon poker chips in the shot, representing 2 of the 4 objectives in the mission. This grouping of models was sitting on a 3rd. You can also see a bulkhead dead straight ahead. Brian's army lurked largely on the other side.

This is about as much as you need to see of my army since everyone died in bloody slaughter.

Below are the forces on the other side of the bulkhead, including Chaos Terminators, Obliterators, and Cultists, among others.

A formidable battle line waiting to advance.

As a distraction I sent my valiant Scouts up a straight passage hugging the right flank of the board. Brian sent 2 Spawn up said flank to intercept them.

Scouts vs Spawn was not a fair match up. And to add insult to injury I dropped one of the Scouts when I got home from gaming and he broke in two.

My distraction was insufficient and though I thought I had a commanding view of the center of the board, Brian flooded the opposing quarter with Obliterators, Noise Marines, and Cultists evening out the domination of the objectives.

Overwhelmed is the only way I can describe how I felt.

Meanwhile, on my left flank, a seemingly inconsequential group of 6 Chaos Space Marines with the Mark of Slannesh moved up to threaten my own dominant quarter.

People cry about how useless Chaos Space Marines are. The might not be as points efficient as the other choices in the Codex, but they where superior to my Tacticals in every way.

While the Chaos Cultists held the back objective, Brian made his move on the center of the board while punishing me with fire from the Noise Marines.

I never put a dent in this squad. Their white armor looks fantastic against the brown backdrop though doesn't it?

Bringing up the rear, the Chaos Terminators smashed their way through the bulkhead, but I was so overwhelmed by the other 750 points of his army, he could have left them in his figure case.

This unit would have scared me if the rest of his army wasn't so effective that they were completely unnecessary and took no part in the game other than as more eye candy.

All told, the Angels of Absolution suffered indignity after indignity has he smashed his way through my squads of Tactical Marines. I ultimately ended up conceding as he had 3 objectives at the end of turn 5 and there was no way I could bounce back. It would have been disheartening if I wasn't playing against a beautiful army on beautiful tables. Okay, maybe it was still a "little" disheartening, but as you can tell from the pics I love the spectacle of wargaming and Brian delivers the goods. It was a pleasure playing against him and I hope everyone at the 40K Warzone Tournament appreciates the time and effort he put into these awesome tables.

Oh, and thanks to Brian and Mike for introducing me to Seven Wonders after the Zone Mortalis game. It was a good time. To be continued tomorrow with a recount of Sunday's gaming.

Also, check out Broken Contract Blog to see some great work in progress shots of the Security Officer concept sketches and an early incarnation of what might be the new Broken Contract logo.

-Nick