Apocalypse - Battle for Independence

My gaming group decided to put together an Apocalypse game on July 3rd since Ravenblood was going to be open from 10am to midnight that day.

We ended up putting together a 11,000 vs 11,000pt game. Necron and Tyranid vs Marines and my Eldar.

I brought 4,000pts of Eldar to the battle, nothing too crazy considering I didn't user any of my jet bikes for my Apocalypse list. I ended up running with the following:

HQ: (635)

Autarch w/ Hawk Wings, Power Weapon, Mandiblasters (110)
Avatar of Khaine (155)
Farseer w/ Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing, Spirit Stones, Guide, Doom, Fortune, Mind War (195)
5 Warlocks w/ Destructor (175)

Elites: (828)

Howling Banshees w/ Exarch, Executioner, Warshout, Acrobatic (192)
Striking Scorpions w/ Exarch, Scorpions Claw, Stalkers, Shadow Strike (212)
Fire Dragons w/ Exarch, Fire Pike, Crack Shot, Tank Hunters (200)
Wraithguard w/ Warlock, singing spear, spirit seer, conceal (224)

Fast Attack: (507)

Warp Spiders w/ Exarch, Dual Death Spinners, Power Blades, Surprise Assault, Withdraw (250)
Swooping Hawks w/ Exarch, Sunrifle, Skyleap, Intercept (257)

Heavy Support: (1197)

Fire Prism (190)
Vengines, HoloFields, SpiritStones, Shuriken Cannon
Falcon (195)
Vengines, HoloFields, SpiritStones, Scatter Laser
3x War Walkers, Spirit Stones, 6 Scatter Lasers (195)
Wraith Lord w/ Sword + Scatter Laser (120)
Wraith Lord w/ Scatter Laser + Star Cannon (140)
Wraith Lord w/ Bright Lance (130)
Dark Reapers w/ Exarch, Tempest Launcher, Fast Shot (227)

Transports: (320)

Wave Serpent w/ Vengines, Sstones, 2x Star Cannons (155)
Wave Serpent w/ Vengines, Sstones, 2x Bright Lances (165)

My brother was coming down from Rochester for the 4th of July weekend and we ended up picking up a couple random stragglers in the Apocalypse game with small 500pt forces so I ended up drafting a small force for him to play to balance out the points:

HQ (230)

Asurmen (230)

Troops (354)

Dire Avengers w/ Exarch, Power Weapon/Shimmer Shield, Blade Storm, Defend (177)
Dire Avengers w/ Exarch, Power Weapon/Shimmer Shield, Blade Storm, Defend (177)

I thought it would be pretty awesome for a small Eldar detachment led by Asurmen to be on the field and he agreed.

about 15 minutes before we started setting up for the game Austin handed me an Avatar... it was still in its box with a 30$ price tag on the side. Apparently he had just had it hanging around in his house for the last few years. I had that Avatar assembled and primed in less than 8 minutes and on the field once we realized that the Tyranid player had more points then we had previously forecasted... he just kept putting more and more gaunts on the table with each passing moment!

The Tyranid were also fielding a lot of custom units. All of those old Armor Cast yellow and red and green monstrosities were pretty intimidating on the table top. S6, T6, with either super heavy flamers, massive venom cannons, or some kind of twisted ability to carry troops... I never knew what to expect when I saw them hitting the table.

We showed up to set up around 12, threw the first die at 2:45 and decided to call it at the end of turn 5 at 11pm.

I ended up squaring off against Doc, our Necron player. I let the Mon-keigh deal with the Tyranid swarm and took on the Nightbringer and the Necron Monolith guns blazing. I finally ended up taking out the Monolith with 10 fire dragons popping out of a wave serpent, the Nightbringer fell to a full 2 turns of shooting from my Wraithlords and Wraithguard units.

I fed my Warp Spiders and Swopping Hawks to the Tyranid naively thinking that if myself and the Blood Angels deep striked behind their lines we could buy our troops some more time... they had liquified us in a matter of moments. I was able to skyleap my Swooping Hawks Exarch off the table just barely... losing 10 spiders, 9 hawks, and an Autarch to the ravenous tide of the Tyranid march.

In the end I think I learned several very important lessons from this Apocalypse game...

1) Too many people! Our team had 6 people against a team of 3. We had too many people getting in each others way, or arguing about movement and just standing around when it came time for shooting. It was pretty frustrating. I was making a bee-line for a major Tyranid assault force and then a guy with a Land Raider decided HE was going that way regardless of what I said and blocked my movement for two turns as he got all tangled up in my lines with that wretched machine.

2) No clear objectives! I tried to get everyone to work out a where/why/how of the battle and lay down some objectives, but nobody else was interested. They just wanted to shoot each other. In the end, we couldn't figure out who had won because nobody had really kept track. We all just marched toward each other in neat lines and fired...

3) No control over terrain placement... the Tyranid player placed all the terrain on his table edge. This amounted to him covering it in all sorts of LOS blocking 'impassable' terrain. He was very adament about not being wipied out by our weapons in the first turn. In the end his terrain kept anybody from doing anything and bottlenecked his own forces so badly they never made it halfway across the table. Our side became a hodgepodge of all of the rivers and roads and buildings that myself and my friend have spent so much money buying and building. We weren't about to walk into an Apocalypse game and NOT get to use all of our awesome terrain. It ended up being WAY too much and blocked all the stupid Mon-Keigh trucks and created a nasty traffic jam.

How would I do it differently?

1) Have a clearly defined "story" to the game. Make sure that people have a vested interest in the game and don't just want to "shoot everybody".
2) Terrain placement should make SENSE not just make your team un-shootable for 2 or 3 turns.
3) OBJECTIVES.
4) Smaller point values. (Maybe like 5,000 per team)
5) Smaller teams! 2v2, anything larger becomes unmanageable garbage.
6) Invite Only. No more 'rogue elements' coming in and mucking up months of well laid plans.