Well I think it looked great, having not seen it set up until the Friday of the big game it was quite a sight. I was happy the walls all fit together well.
SUPER-HEAVY ALLOTMENT
Some thought after the game that giving each side free superheavies was unbalanced. I don't know if i agree with that assessment. The one superheavy that really had a big impact was Jedly's Reaver titan, but that is to be expected, the thing is a beast. If the attackers had some sort of a plan to deal with it, I think they would have been better off.
WALL STRUCTURE POINTS
Each wall section was armour 14 and 10 structure points any glance or pen removed a structure point. Some suggested that if it were say 5 structure points they would have come down quicker and allowed our armies into the fortress faster. (Until 5 wall sections were down, the attackers couldn't deepstrike into the fortress.) I assumed with the modified force charts and the large amount of points the attackers had available to them that 10 wasn't too many, I may have been mistaken.
DEPLOYMENT
The defenders didn't deploy a single unit on top of the walls. A good descision probably given the scenario rules. I think perhaps I should have required either some units to be on the walls or made their deployment zone closer to the walls. Their deploying farther away allowed them to engage the attackers with little fear of immediate retaliation.
The attackers deployment, in hindsight, was wrong. The rules were fine I think but where we deployed what armies was the real problem. I take full responsibility for it because I was the general and I basically decided where everyone was going to deploy. I should have though it out more. I should have realized that the middle of the board would eventually become flooded with defender's armies once their reserves arrived, and it would be very difficult for the attackers to press home their initial advantage once that happened.
I had not foreseen that huge pushback in the center of the board. I think had my 8,000 point army and Eth's 8,000 points of Orks been the two flanking armies coming in from the sides, we may have had a different out come. I think both of our armies could have really broken through the walls and hit the smaller amount of defenders on the flanks pretty hard and we could have kept our momentum throughout the game.
This was once again another game possibly determined at deployment.
NUMBER OF TURNS/NUMBER OF POINTS
We were able to play through 7 full turns in 14 hours. That averages out to 2 hours per game turn. Not bad and probably a D-Company big game record. Considering the total number of points was around 120,000 I think we did alright.
STUFF THAT SUCKED
The reaver titan's giant missile thingy that killed 4 rhinos, 2 hqs, and a vindicator of mine on turn 1. It was a huge shot. I still had enough left to play a big role in the game and I think if he hadn't shot me, I would have overrun the defenders completely.
People dropping out. When I originally proposed this game, I came up with 13 defenders at 4,000 points each and 15 attackers at 4,000 points each. Had we have been able to have that many players I bet we could have played 10 turns. The smaller size armies allow for faster game play.
THINGS THAT ROCKED
The venue was great. The hotel staff were awesome, very attentive to our needs and just plain nice, which can be rare. The room was fantastic it was big enough and far enough away from the rest of the hotel that we could be as loud as we wanted and stay up as late as we wanted to without bothering anyone. I'd like to thank Stormcaller for setting it all up for us.
The Bastions were great, I'd like to thank Pen Dull for putting them together and painting them. They looked fantastic, and were big enough that it really gave the game some much needed weight. I wanted it to look like this was an important fortress and those massive bastions did the trick.
The help that Eth gave me with getting my materials to build the walls was more then I could have asked for. I never would have finished them all without his assistance.
The ability to bounce rules off of Lord Bran Redmaw and Seti and Pen Dull was also very helpful in getting the rules to the place they needed to be.
Of course I'd like to thank everyone for showing up and thanks to Pete and AJ for bringing extra points so that the defenders would have enough to balance the game.
Overall everything worked out as I wanted it to, with the exception of my team losing of course, but you can't have everything!
Without further ado; here are some pics:
