Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Warp Rift Formations in Apocalypse

Before the Chaos Daemons Codex was released, Apocalypse already contained rules for fielding large cohorts of daemons. The Warp Rift Formation especially caught my eye when Apocalypse came out. I've pretty much used it in every Apocalypse game I've played since with chaos marines!

What are we getting for the points investment? At a most obvious level, we get a forward base - a forward icon - for the daemons to deep-strike in at. This is great for a chaos space marine force who are no longer tied to rushing forth icons across no mans land, but largely irrelevant for daemon armies who use daemonic assault regardless (recall the chaos space marine daemons have to deep strike off an icon - if there are no icons, they cannot enter play - full stop!). But the daemons that do use the warp rift have to be placed inside the rift at the start of the game. This can be a good thing, but can also be a damaging thing.

The reason that it can be damaging is the way in which cunning opponents will counter the rift's presence. All that has to be done by the canny Imperial Guard player is to over-whelm the position of the rift and ensure that there is no room left whatsoever for the daemons to be placed on to the board. It's a legitimate move, but annoying. The chaos space marine player is well advised to carefully consider where to place the rift as a consequence.

This drawback probably makes the rift not so worthwhile taking for purely its icon status. The other effect of increasing the strength of psyker's powers can be awesome, however. Coupled with shutting down other psykers through automatic perils of the warp attacks mean that the rift can be very deadly if played right. An increased strength breath of chaos, doom bolt, or Nurgle's rot attack from a daemon prince can be amazing!

I still need to figure out a cool way of representing Warp Rifts on the tabletop though - suggestions welcome.

3 comments:

Sasha Klebnikov said...

take a look at the lizardmen battle report, a couple of WDs ago. Use several circles of plywood, and put a steel/aluminum bar through the middle. Glue large amounts of v fine steel wool, that has been already sprayed in the middle, and cover with several coats of laquer.

Cawshis Clay said...

Is the warp rift supposed to represent an actual rip in the universe? Or is it like a giant icon to the Chaos Gods? The first would be tough! Maybe a brightly painted foam ball with colored-wires/bits sticking out of floating about a piece of destroyed terrain? Like a plasma lamp, but painted up nice. It'd be tough, with my limited skills, to paint it up though…

Right away for the second, I thought about a giant pile of skulls and bodies covered in gore with a bleeding symbol of Khrone rising above it. Or you can do a diseased area, like a horribly mutated tree surrounding by dead-ground, cracked and overflowing with ooze.

jabberjabber said...

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

Cawshis: My interpretation is that it is meant to represent an actual rip in the Universe rather than an icon - so its the tougher option to model & paint!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Facebook

Sequestered Industries