I tried slowing down Alan's Guard and Doug's marines again. I'm told I'm doing better, but my last model died in the shooting phase of their turn 4. More lascannon helped, but I've much more work to do before I can really make them sweat. I think I'm going to have to break down and bring in more marines, fewer demons. I didn't want to do this a my marines are all painted in imperial style and have fluff which favors the imperials.
We had some rule things come up with respect to Apocalypse stuff you don't often see in the vanilla 40K. Going through three items...
I heard some people have been playing Disruptor Beacons as only effecting deep strike and demon summoning. The rule is all enemies coming out of reserve. This would include flank marchers, flyers, or on small tables even vanilla units entering the game from their own rear board edge.
I have always seen void shields played similarly to Dark Eldar shadow fields. You have to resolve attacks one at a time, because after the shield goes down, it hurts more. I was using Scheduled Bombardment to hit a large landing area protected by a void shield, the landing area being big enough that all five circles of the clover leaf template hit the shield. The first hit was strong enough to take down the void shield. In all games I've seen played, the other three hits would then get through to do damage to the target. If Rob Sims or any other titanic regulars could comment, I'd appreciate it. Alan had an interpretation where multiple hits from the same attack were discarded even after the void shield was down.
The convoluted one, though, was Long Range Ack Ack. One is supposed to declare intent to use the stratagem at the start of an enemy movement phase. It takes effect "immediately." It can be used to target flyers.
I started out playing Eldar. I've cast Guide and Fortune a lot. To me, start of the movement phase means before any model has been moved. Hard case opponents have often said one cannot use start of the movement phase powers if one doesn't declare them before any models are moved. To me, resolving the attack immediately would also mean before any models have been moved. That one can target flyers means one can target flyers.
Alan said he had seen 'start of the movement phase' played as at any point in the movement phase. This is generous, but clearly wrong. He wanted to play 'immediately' as meaning after the enemy player moves as many flyers as he feels like moving. He wanted to play 'flyers' as 'flyers in flyer mode', as opposed to in in hover mode. Granted, the rules for what a hit does may be different depending on whether one is flying or hovering, but 3 hits is still three hits, and he wanted to disregard the hits totally. We eventually four plused it, but I honestly cannot see where Alan came up with his interpretation of a rather straight forward stratagem.
Anyone playing the current scenario might want to talk this over before playing. The primary objective for this month is a flyer. If the bad guys don't have an anti aircraft vehicle, Long Range Ack Ack is the major way available for the bad guys to contest the scenario. It is a big deal as we've been playing things at BG. If the Imperial faction turns the flyer away to avoid the ack ack fire on turn 3 in a straight game, the flyer can re-enter play on turn 4 and land on turn 5. However, we've been playing 4 turn games. Thus, the order player cannot turn away without conceding the major victory condition. This scenario can turn on those three shots.
