VICTORIOUS!
Well, all I can say is what a battle! On one side was Tyler and Mike and myself, with Corey, John and Ernie on the other side. Space Marines, Eldar and Orks facing more Eldar, Imperial Guard and more Space Marines. I got to be the supreme commander for my side. With each player fielding 6,000 points, that was 18,000 points per side, 36,000 total on the table. We took up about 15 feet of table, and even at that we were pretty tightly packed.
We got whomped a good one at the beginning of the first turn when the IG's Mantacores opened up with an artillery barrage, breaking two of my warbands before they even got a chance to activate. Then the other side walloped us some more. We were holding our own, but barely. We used turn one to get our forces in position.
Turn two things went drastically different. The Mantacores were busy reloading, being slow firing (can only fire every other turn) so we got a relief from that steel rain. Tyler rolled up the left flank, and I rolled up the right. Both of us pulled off coordinated assaults on multiple enemy formations.
You see, if two enemy formations are too close to each other, then you can declare them "intermingled" and treat them as one formation for all intents and purposes for the assault. Using a method known as clipping, you "clip" one small side of the enemy formation. You bring overwhelming force to bear on one little part of the enemy formation, doing a lot of casualties on their side while avoiding a lot on your side because not everybody can shoot back at you. By having more kills than your opponent, you get a head start on the combat resolution roll, where you roll two dice and see who actually wins the assault (that's what you do, but there are a lot of modifiers to the roll. I won't go into them here). If you win, you break the enemy formations and they must withdraw. If you have multiple formations involved, all of them must withdraw.
It was about 8pm when we hit the halfway point of the second turn (we started at 2pm. Remember, we have about 100+ units per side, and each activation takes 2-5 minutes) and we had to wrap up, but the inertia had swung to our side. We had about 10-15 more activations left than they did, and they knew we were going to savage them with those activations. It would have taken another turn to sew it up, but we were on top and everybody knew it. we were driving both flanks inward, and we were consolidating our hold on the center.
I feel pretty good with this win, it's one of the few times when I've gotten to be supreme commander and won. But I must admit, I couldn't have done it without my teammates. It was truly a team effort. This is something that we'll have to try again, albeit with a slightly less point value so we can get through all three turns.