Spoils of War Rectification part 2e

Ok, home stretch, more 40k played in 2 days than the last 20 months!

Game 5 - 2000pts

Everyone on the team did well last turn, so I chose the same table as last time, it offered good cover and line of site. I sit down, wondering who was going to step up... And its Nids! Standard deplyment, 3 objectives.

Ok, I'm thinking, I reckon I should have enough tools to kill lots of small nids, and make a dent in the bigguns... I was quite impressed just how much bugflesh you can fit into 2000!

Something like...

Trygon Prime
2 Mawlocks
1 Tervigon
20 Gargoyles
10 Genestealers with broodlord
3 Hive Guard
Several Raveners
6 Warriors
1 Venomthrope
A bunch of Termagants to start.
2 Zoanthropes

Impressed... Shocked.... Worried!

I'm only going to show the 1 of 2 pictures I remembered to take of the game:



This is at the end, where he claims 1 objective, and contests the one on the left.

He didn't kill that much, and I killed bugger all. It was largely inifective shooting at everything that had a cover save! Tervigon gives Gargoyles FNP from catalyst (really annoying) combined with 5+ cover from venomthrope (very annoying), they in turn give most of the small bugs cover saves, while the big bugs passed all their 3+/5+(venomthrope).

If I'd remembered to move the crisis squad on the right hand side, then I may have been able to contest there?

Gaaaah!

Nice guy, obviously knew exactly what to do to make the army stay alive in all the right places.

And finished.

Spoils of War Rectification part 2d

Ok, I've had a weeks break from writing batreps, and its almost 3 weeks since the event, but I think I remember enough to set out the outlines.

Game 4, Sunday morning.

This round we got to choose our tables and opponents. Our eyes met across the crowded room, and I knew that I wanted to play Space marines. Plain, vanilla space marines.

Roll up Jose (sorry to the other guys who's names I can't remember!), 1500 points of Crimson fists. I set up and went first on this killpoints mission...



Ummm... Target number 1 the landradier methinks?! In my first turn I take out the landraider and rhino. Potshots all round after that, failling to do much of any significance.
His turn 1, struggles to move the termies forward as fast as possible, fluffs the run roll. Moves the vinidicator forward towards the my mobile wing, shot scatters off (phew!) He takes out out a piranha, even with the disruption pods.
My next turn. Target number 1 eliminated, target number 2 (*twitch* thunderhammer stormshield termies) eliminated, only remaining member the chaplain... In other news, I blow his rhino on the left, and skoot the remaining piranha for a side melta shot, detroying it.
This is the beginning of his turn 2:




Does well to land the pod very close, and out jumps your friendly neighborhood Dread, who fails to hit anything. Walking dread takes out the final piranha, and he proceeds to land a pie plate on my forward kroot squad from the deathwind launcher on the pod... Ouch!



I think he calls quits on turn 4 after I remove his near tac squad, and immobilise and disarm his drop dread. I win 7-1!

He didn't have a great dice game, but even so, this flavour of Tau just eats up that kind of army!

Nice guy, hard matchup for him.

Spoils of War Rectification part 2c

A brief break followed game two where Team Epsilon (go the good guys!) consolled each other and apparently did quite well! Apart from me that is. Boo.

Game 3, I got to choose the table - I thought the ice world look was cool, some cover, plenty of shooty space. I sat down and a nice canadian chap joined me. From team Aquilla (Imperial Guard).

I chose normal deployment, he chose kill points. Cool I thought, we both suffer killpoint hemorraging right?

At 2000 points, he had 7 Chimeras, 2 LR battletanks, 9 Sentinels, a vendetta, and a boss squad with psycher and orbital barrage calling guy.

I'm not going to go into detail with this one. Because it hurts.

1) I made the mistake (not learned from game 1 against guard) that the trick is to take the fight to them. They were all outside of the transports, no cover, and I had the firewarriors and kroot to do a half decent amount of damage. I didn't do this of course.

2) I couldn't do diddly.
I miss.
I fail to wound.
I can't make a coversave or disruption pod save. I tried to buy new dice, but nobody would sell me any!


This is the second to last turn.

I shot some stuff, charged in with the kroot in an attempt to maybe do something. Lost 7 to 1 I think.

He was a great oponent, had a great attitude, the army had some great oldskool guard and he had obviously lavished some care.

We both agreed after the second turn that the dice gods were firmly on his side.

It was just one of those games, y'know?

Lesson learned - Guard are juicy and fragile, go beat them.

Spoils of War Rectification part 2b

Ok, after lunch* we had game two, 1500 points.


In the previous round team Epsilon (go the good guys!) didn't do that well, I headed towards a decent looking table with plenty of good lanes of fire while providing plenty of cover for jump-shoot-jump antics. It was an intact cityscape**.


His army was fairly hard, but I figured I could give it a good run:


Khorne Prince with wings
3x8 Khorne Bezerkers plus rhino's (havoc launchers)
2x2 Obliterators
And I think a 3 man terminator squad, but I'm not sure.


He chose table quarter deployment, I chose 3 objectives (the badly painted white and silver dudes in this game). I deployed standard bubblewrap, he hid everything where he could.

I think I went first, popped one rhino (the bezerkers hid) and imobilised another. And this is where the realisation dawned that I'd probably lose this game. The buildings count as vehicles, armour 12, with access points, shooting points and on half of them, roof hatches. I now hate buildings.
He'd placed to oblits on a building in his back corner, and when I tried to shoot them, I couldn't. Because they're in a building/vehicle. I could, and did blow up the building, but it took alot of shots which should have been shooting closer scary stuff. See the ruin in the first picture.


End of my turn 1 I think.


He jumped his scary prince a building closer, took some pot shots, killed a few kroot. Drove the rhino through the gap (see next picture). Hid the disembarked Bezerkers in a building.

Do I bother to shoot the buildings and try to get out the bezerkers, or shoot at the stuff I can see? That was a decision I had to make, and he took advantage of.

I blocked the Rhino scooting close with the piranhas (hate the model, love the function!) and blew it up. Couldn't get anything in to shoot the prince, and failed to appreciate the function of Wings.



End of my second turn I think.


Next turn he moves the prince into the convenient gap I left him behind the kroot and in front of the broadsides. Crap. He kills the piranhas, plus assorted shooting. To be honest on this board the obliterators didn't seem to do much. They were annoying, difficult to kill, and killed some stuff, but they're not great. He charges the Prince into the afformentioned broadsides and wipes them out in a roll. Never mind eh? Lesson learned. He also manages to charge one of the kroot squads with the closest squad, leaving one alive (he runs, and kills a bezerker shooting over his shoulder, neat!)


Turn 3 or 4?


The rest was a bit of a blur, I killed the deamon prince in one turn of shooting with whatever I had, moved the piranha drones for some blocking, didn't really manage much.

Basically at the call of time (turn 5 I think) he claimed two objectives with the bezerker squad at the back, stretched. I contest the closest one. I was so busy playing keep away that I forgot I had some speed to contest his objective, but it probably wouldn't have helped much.

He won, got a +1 on the special table condition, I got 0.

Nice guy, used the table well to his advantage. I was more annoyed with the table than him.

Lessons:
Don't play with buildings when you're a shooting army.
Remember your mobility
Things with wings can fly


* The catering and support people deserve more of a mention that a page note. The brownies were sooooooo good.

** Oh how I wish I paid more attention in class.

Spoils of War Rectification part 2a

Right - the painful part. I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped using:

Shas'o MP PR

2X2 Fireknives

2 Deathrains

3 Stealthsuits

2x 6 Firewarriors

2 x10 Kroot + 4 hounds

2 x 6 Pathfinders w Devilfish

2 melta Piranhas

3 Broadsides

2 Hammerheads

Drones smattered in logical places

Broadly based on the Stelek bubblewrap hybrid theory, this was everything I could scrape together or kitbash to make up 2000.

Game 1: 1000 Vs Imperial Guard

Right, first game was my choice of player (I didn't see the army before hand... May have chosen differently?). He chose standard deployment and I chose D3+2 objective mission.

Deployment - green things are objectives.

His army was pretty much all infantry platoons with as many heavy bolters and lascannons as he could squeeze in. Two autocannon sentinels went into reserve. Que the start of theme for the weekend, I think I killed a sentinel and a 10 man squad. 5 turns, thats it. He knocked out the pathfinders early on. I hugged cover and took as many potshots as I could.

About turn 4. Lone remianing Deathrain with flamer trying his luck.

In the end, 6 firewarriors in an imobilised devilfish sat on the objective at the back right, an outflanking kroot squad claimed the objective left center, suits contested his left objective, and a weaponless piranha contested his center. This was at the end of turn 5, and a 3+ would have seen me knocked off the two contested objectives. He rolls... It's cocked! He rolls again... It's a 1.

Fa'MaGed'on 4 Points.

I was relieved; he was a good sport, but the frustration of knowing he'd have won with another turn was clear!

Lesson 1, unlearned: when you can see 100 near naked humans and you're mostly well protected, get up close and kick him.

Lesson 2, disruption pods are priceless.

Spoils of War Rectification part 1

Wow, what a weekend. 54 players, 6 teams, 26 tables, 5 games, 17 hours.

This was my first event of any sort, and in a way I'm happy that it was a slightly laid back campaign style tournament.

The format was slightly escalation with 5 games: 1000pt (no heavy support or special characters, max of 3 fast/ellite total), 2 x 1500pt, 2 x 2000pt (1 forgeworld 'extra' or an extra HS/E/FA slot).

Yes, so I may have lost out a little bit with these tweaks, but largely it didn't make a huge impact. So I could have done with a pie plate in game 1, and an extra set of suits in game 5, but in the end neither would have made a huge difference, I plain didn't own the extra models, and the other guy had exactly the same advantages/disadvantages.

Players were arranged into teams:

Team Primus – Space Marines of all loyal chapters.
Team Aquila – Imperial Guard, Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters.
Team Chaotica – Chaos Space Marines, Daemons and Traitor Guard.
Team Epsilon – Tau and Eldar.
Team Reavers – Dark Eldar, Necrons and Tyranids.
Team Waaargh! – Orks.

I loved this idea - for the most part because it prevented mirror matches, and also it had a cool effect on table/opponent choice...

For each round, the winning team from the previous round (it was random in the first) chose their tables. Then the team with the next highest points, etc. When all the tables had one person on it, the subsequent players filled up the opponent lots. The first player to a table chose deployment type, the second player chose mission, both out of the main rulebook.
Then play continued normally.

I like this in principle. In actuallity, it screwed me on a couple of games - more to come later.

Finally teams were given small bonus cards based on random/wins from previous round. These were fairly small effects, a sniper shot, minefield, fearless troop, that sort of thing. In all 5 of my games, this did exactly nothing. I know that some of my teammates had great success with outflanking Wraithguard in a serpent, or redeplying an opponents unit to spin a tank 180 for rear shots. Next, a very brief run down of my games (with a few pics)...

Points to me

I've been painting. Lots. More than I have in several years I think, and I'm fed up at work, so I'm adding up my painting points.

4 Tanks = 40
2 Skimmers (monstous creatures) = 10
5 Large Infantry = 10
16 Infantry = 16
44 Infantry finishing touches and bases (0.5pt) = 22

98 Points! That almost makes up for last years painting fail.

And more importantly, I now have a fully painted (ok, so I want to add some highlights and a few details to really finish) up to scratch, 2000pt army. I've got about 500 points of extra unused stuff (some kroot riders, a devilsfish, another crisis suit that'll be painted in chicken colours [don't ask], and a dozen assorted infantry). But that can all wait as I'm properly burnt out on painting!

Spoils of War

As someone may have noticed I've been quiet for the last month or so*.

I've been feverishly preparing for Bristol Vanguard's Spoils of War 3/2010.

It's a 1000/1500/2000 pt campaign driven weekend, and looking at my armies, I balanced effectivness (I still want to win, even if its fluffy), how much I needed to paint (I may have chosen poorly), and how little I needed to buy to get the army up to scratch (Zero, zilch, win!).

So, my options were Dark Angels (any flavour), Eldar, or Tau.

Deathwing, I'm just not comfortable with in a multigame situation where I want to win.
Ravenwing - too much to paint, and see above
Greenwing - I hate painting rhino's & predators, and I thought there was just too much to paint.

Eldar - I'm not happy with the paint job on too much of the army, even though I own everything I need**. Also completly unpractised on using biker councils, and with the potential prolliferation of counter psykers out there, the army can fall apart.

Tau - quite alot to paint, potentially effective if I'm awake, and I own everything.

Tau it is then!


To follow: lists, painting and hopefully battle reps and reviews afterwards!


















* Yeah I know, I've never posted that often, and it's not like anyone reads this. *echo* *echo* *echo*
**Probably twice over!