With a new year, another epic apocalypse showdown is on the horizon. This year’s Yearhammer battle will see the forces of Imperium, Chaos and Xenos throwing down in an epic three-way battle. With so much going on this year, we decided to break up the Battle Report into two parts: The Rules and The Battle. Read on to see how the game played out!

Prep and Deployment

• Max and Jason set the board up the night before so when everyone came over, we could get straight to battle!
• Each team had 30 minutes to deploy up to 100 PL of their list. No restrictions. Everyone deployed at the same time.
• The mischievous nurglings had just enough room to create a Ring of Rot around the center objective, claiming it before the game even started for Team Chaos. Needless to say, the other teams were not pleased by this.
• Bo was so into Team Chaos this year, he made special Sons of Gloom stickers for everyone!

Round 01

• With the start of the game, each team could bring in any Titanic, Deep Striking and Fly units.
• Team Chaos brought a pair of Daemon Princes of Tzeentch, a heldrake, a pair of Death Guard Renegade Knights and some Terminator support to help out the nurglings in the center of the board.
• Team Xenos, which a bunch of Eldar and Necrons already on the board, their alliance with the Tau brought Riptides and suits a plenty to bring the fire power this first turn. This turn also saw an Eldar Wraightknight join the fight!
• Team Imperium brought in a few units but were waiting for the next turn to show more of their cards…

Round 02

• With Round 2 ready to go, each team could bring in Vehicle reinforcements (as well as any unit types allowed from Round 01). All gloves were thrown off now!
• Team Chaos decided to hold out this round, bringing out some Rhinos (but hiding them in cover) and a few other supporting Drone units.
• Team Xenos decided to walk their big gun onto the battlefield: The Tau Supremacy Suit! There would be casualties this round!
• Team Imperium had a surprised for the other teams, ALL THE VEHICLES! Two Shadowswords, a Typhon, loads of artillery and a few drop pods full of shooty death, a Knight Castellan and their Warlord: Roboute Guilliman to make sure those big guns wouldn’t tire.

Round 03

• With the start of Round 03, any unit was fair game to bring into the game…
• Team Chaos had been holding on but lost some key units to the big guns on the table. Tired of their loses, the Primarch brothers of Magnus and Mortarion entered the battle….but Mortraion’s visit to the battle was very short lived, being focus fired out by the Eldar and other Xeno forces.
• Magnus would have his revenge, facing down a parking lot of Imperium armor!
• At this point, it was a VERY close game between the Xenos and Imperium at this point. But with Chaos holding still holding the middle objective they were technically not out of the running
• With the game fast approaching 12 hours played, the crew decided to call it a night around 11:30, saving the rest of the shooting for Team Imperium for Day 02.

Round 04

• With the Imperium’s round of shooting complete, Round 04 started to kick off. To try and make sure we could get through 5 rounds we started to add time limits to each phase. There was some miscommunication on this approach and some teams had some more time than others, but a lot of models found themselves out of the game either way…
• Team Chaos made all their advances towards the center to help support the Daemons from the approaching enemies. It was their only chance for victory!
• Team Xenos tried to spread out to capture other objectives in both the Imperium and Chaos zones.

The Final Round

• By the time Round 5 had approached, the crew were getting tired and some had to get home. We collectively decided to focus Round 5 only on the center objective. If a unit couldn’t move/shoot/fight there, it was ignored.
• Who ever held that objective at the end would have a decisive victory!!
• Team Imperium had the first move this turn and it proved to be critical, using their flyer bases to block off big chunks of access to the center from Chaos and Xeno forces.
• In the end, the Imperium had the strong firepower to hold off the other forces….

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Final Score:
Team Chaos: 134 VP
Team Imperium: 379 VP
Xenos: 200 VP

The Xenos got the blood they wanted and satisfied their revenge from last years loss…. for now.  With Grandfather’s blessing, Team Chaos held out in the middle for most of the game but Team Imperium’s big guns never tired and they were able to rid the objective of most of the Chaos Forces to claim another victory in their Apocalypse dominance!!

Will new alliances form? Will current ones crumble? Can the Imperium claim another victory in the yearly brawl? We’ll find out in 2020!

If you enjoyed this battle report, be sure to check out our previous New Year mega battles: Yearhammer 2016, Yearhammer 2017, Yearhammer 2018

(PS: we apologize for the blurriness of some of the photos. One of the phones had a smudgy lens and we were all moving around fast to take photos so the game could keep going. Thanks for still checking them out!)