Team Tournament Batreps

On 3/19, Lee and I attended a team tournament hosted at Skull N Bones. There was a total of 8 teams including a Ringer played by the TO running a double list to keep things event. All three games was great, didn’t walk 9 away with a single bad thing to say. Even with rules debates and discussions we was either able to find it in the codex, discuss it to the point we was able to resolve things or a simple 4+ put us back on track.

List 1: Cmnd Squad with Chimera with Astropath, Officer of Fleet and 3 plasma guns, Valkyrie Squadron of 2 with missile pods,, two vet squads with 3 melta guns each, Vet squad with 3 plasma guns in Chimera, Leman Russ Demolisher with Plasma cannon sponsons and a heavy flamer x2.

List 2: Cmnd Squad with Shraken with 2 bodyguards, Chimera and 3 flamers. Vendetta Gunship x2 (separate choices), Vet squad with 3 melta guns and demo charges, Vet squad with Demo charges, 3 plasma guns and chimera. Another vet squad with chimera with 3 plasma guns, 5 storm troopers with 3 melta guns and a Medusa tank with bastion shells.

Game 1 vs.  Carlos / Phillip (IG and Tyranids)

These guys are brothers and great to play against. Phillip had a very cool army that was a converted Tyranid list. There is pro’s and con’s to a DIY army that “counts as”. The pro is that it looks amazing, gives you room to be creative and unique. The downside is sometimes you get confused what the hell something is.

Their list was roughly: 1 Cmnd HQ with a medic and plasma guns, large blob platoon with several lascannons  (x3), Pt HQ in another Chimera with grenade launchers, 2 Leman Russes, 1 Executioner with plasma on the side with Pask in command. I think there was a heavy weapons team of lascannons also. Nid side was the large MC that generates Gaunts (Tevera something) that regenerates and had some psychic powers, 2 units of Gaunts, 3 Tyrant Guard, 1 large MC that burrowed underground and 3 Zonathropes, There was also a Broodlord with Genestalers.

They won the dice off and the mission was DOW, each side could put out 1 troop and 1 HQ. Deploying a large Gaunt ‘Horde, a block of IG troops and a large MC Nid leader…we held all in reserve. There were two objectives in each deployment zone.

Turn 1 was them milling about and moving the rest of their army on. Only the Genestealers in reserve. Turn 2 they failed to get their stealers out. They advanced again. I rolled reserves and my dice was on fire! Not a single roll below 3+ (+1 bonus due to the Astropath). We intended to flank the Valks and Vendettas but didn’t make it clear to them. We had discussed it and thought they had heard it, once it became an issue we checked the rules (as someone claimed in one tournament he could reserve and decide what to do…boy did I get burned). Not pushing the issue we dropped the birds out in the line. This sucked as this really hurt our plans to a point for side pressure.

The game was back and forth with some shooting, Pask’s tank blew up, we lost a few things, the first unit of Gaunts got chewed up and finally the big MCs both was laid to rest with some good shooting. The Tyrant Guard tried to contest one objective but Vets, Chimeras and Vets swarmed them to ensure they would not survive. Even if they passed their shooting Shraken would have walked in and finished the last wounded one off.  We managed to flat out one flyer to contest one of their objectives and we each held one for a draw with 2 bonus points.

Game 2 was Vs the Store Ringer Army of Blood Angels played by Bill.

His list was Mestiphon, Librarian, Sang. Priest, Terminators with SS/TH combo with Land Raider, 2 Razorbacks with melta guns in assault squads, good sized Death Company with power weapons and a fist in a Storm Raven, Second Raven both had multi meltas and lascannons. Demolisher, Death Company Dread and a regular Dread (one had the blood claws), There may have been more but I can’t recall.

Mission here was kill points but you had to pick one of the two lists from the other player as the ones to count as kill points. We picked the list with more that included the Librarian, Land Raider, Terminators, etc... he random rolled and took my list.

Again we lost the roll, he picked his side and table quarter, placed the objectives out in the empty table quarter center. He took his first two turns. Reserve rolls were good. I think only two or three units failed to show. We split up the forces to both corners and flanked the Vendettas and Valks behind.

The Demolisher died early on, we battered the Ravens but they hung in there for a while until we blew one up and the other was disabled with no weapons and unable to move. Some quick shooting only saw the loss of one Demolisher tank and then the death of Mestiphon, the dread with him and his Raven. The game went back and forth with some silly instances with the dice. The Medusa was beat on by the Blood Claws from the Dreadnought for 3 turns, making it immobile first turn, ripping the gun off the second, and the third time blowing it up. The Cmnd squad kept pace with a Blood Angel marine that refused to die. The rest of the game was a simple clean up. The only hard point was blowing up that blasted Land Raider! We had the worst luck against it. Finally on the last turn, the dice said BOOM! Out came the Librarian and Priest. Taking down the Raider and Librarian helped us in the end.

Lee and I thought we had lost that mission but ended up scoring well enough to win….

Game 3 vs. Adam / Joe with Space Wolves and IG

Space Wolves: Typhoon Speeder with multi melta, 2 Long Fang Packs with missile launchers, 2 rhinos with a 10 and 5 man Grey hunter squads with melta guns, the large one had Mark of the Wulfin, power weapon or fist and a banner and a Rune Priest with Bjorn with a lascannon arm.

IG had a Cmnd squad (I think they had an Astropath and a Master of the Fleet), blob of troops with lascannons again, heavy weapons squad, command squads both (HQ and Troop) had lascannons, 3 Griffons, 2 Vendettas with a Vet Squad inside one with meltas and another 3 meltas with Vets in another Chimera.

Mission was we had to assign a command counter to this game, thus each HQ could give a unit Fearless, Relentless, Fleet, +1 WS/BS. Stealth, Furious Charge, Tank Hunters or Feel no Pain.

They won the dice off, setup their 12” zone, primary was to kill 666 points from each side. Secondary was Capture and Control. There were 3 objectives. One in each deployment zone and one in the center.

The reserve rolls was ugly! I paid for my great rolls on the first game! I brought on a Cmnd Squad and a single Vendetta with melta vets. The start of the game was beautiful as we blew up two Griffons and blasted the main gun off the other. The Melta vets burned most of the Long Fangs to a crisp and promptly were assaulted by their pack leader that kicked their ass. Oddly, they escaped, managed to blow up a Chimera, as they fell back, we opted to use a command counter towards the end of the game to make the Fearless, thus they rallied the last turn.

This game was some back and forth shooting and a see saw game if there was one for this event. We added up the points killed. Oddly, we lost very little on our side and we were under a 100 for each of their sides to achieve the goal. They rolled a 1 or 2 to continue and ended the game. If we had another turn we could have turned that into a win perhaps rolling over both sides. The center was contested; nobody was near Bjorn (which I was kicking myself that we didn’t try for, except there were some serious risks taking it) and had a draw on objectives. We picked up some serious bonus points to take the win 7 to 2.

After mission thoughts:

·        Game 1 we should have been clear on the flanking intent. That was our fault in the end and IMO would have been a game changer.

·        Game 2 we had some bad position points picked for some units and caused some things to work against one another.

·        Game 3 we could have been more aggressive taking Bjorn as an objective after he was blown apart.

·        Keeping the STs and Vets in the Vendettas and Valks, about half the time it was worthwhile to invest them in them. The STs should have deep struck instead.

After talking about the list we have some ideas we could refine this list for another team event in the future or had a few great new concepts to try out for another one.

Pics to appear later....too tired to upload them down. Check back tomorrow!

Game 1 Deployment

Pic of the converted Gaunts.

Big guy takes it like a monster should!

Converted Zonathorpes

Close up

Battle for the objective hidden in the water.

Genestealers sneaking up on the Valks

The line prepares for the final push.

Knock knock!

Splash! Chimera excels in water!

Final push to reake the other objective.

Carlos and his bro...

The table for turn 2...

Turn 3 carnage....

Meph knocks on the Chimera to ask Shraken out to tea,

Overkill on the Vets...

Burning Rhino...

Carnage among the Death Company.

Medusa and Command Squad at the mercy of the Blood Angels

Surviving Death Company

Adam and Joe

Turn 1 and two movements.

End of the game, last ditch to take the center objective.

Tournament Batreps

Chris and I went to a tournament in Sarasota on Saturday for a day out of gaming. I went 1-1-1 which isn’t bad with an untested army that I don’t usually play. One bad aspect was how sore my back was after moving several large office printers and scanners from an office we was closing down and relocating all the equipment. My lower back hurt like hell and did dampen the experience a little. I tried to not let it show or sour my mood while playing. Still, it is distracting and very annoying of the timing of the tournament to having go help move crap for work. Oh well! Still had a good time and great food!

Started the morning off with breakfast at Yoder’s Amish restaurant with a good breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and home fries along with two fresh baked pies made from scratch! The pies are what make Yoder’s awesome! A butterscotch pie for my wife and me along with our neighbor and her dad and a rhubarb pie for my wife’s mom. She loves their fresh baked pies!

What I brought to the tournament was a demon list. Not your typical one that you see with Bloodcrushers and at times Fateweaver. Mine was more on the basis of big MCs with lots of 4+ with enough firepower to deal with meched up armies.

·        Keeper of Secrets with Pavine

·        Great Unclean One

·        3 units of 3 Flamers of Tzeench with one with Bolt of Tzeench

·        2 Units of 10 Bloodletters

·        1 Unit of 9 Pink Horrors with Changling and a bolt of Tzeench upgrade.

·        1 Unit of 6 Plaguebearers

·        2 Demon Princes with MOT and Bolt of Tzeench.

·        1 Demon Prince with wings with MOT with Bolt of Tzeench.

My first game was against Space Marines. His list was:

·        2 Master of the Forge with conversion beamers (one on bike, the other with a servitor)

·        2 Scout Squads with Camo Cloaks and Sniper Rifles with missile launchers

·        2 Scout Squads for flanking with close combat weapons and pistols with power fists.

·        6 Ironclad Dreadnoughts with 2 HK missiles each. (3 as elite, 3 as heavy using MotF special rules). Each was loaded up with melta and flamers.

The mission was spearhead with 3 objectives. One in the center, then we each placed another in our deployment zone.

I won the roll to decide who goes first and elected to go second. He setup a standard pattern picking two buildings to reinforce before deploying and put his scouts in there giving them an effective 2+ cover save with cloaks. 4+ cover + 1 for the cloak + 1 for the building reinforcement.  He setup one Master of the Forge in the corner with a scout squad in front to screen him. Each dread went back to back trying to limit my ability to shoot the rear. The other scout squad took a forward spot in the building with the objective. I placed my objective on the end. His first turn was quick; turbo boosted the bike and moved the dreads slightly.

 Picked my demon wave, 3 flamers, Keeper and the two wingless princes and rolled the dice, getting a 3! Yay! I got my wave! Down they came with decent scatters, no dead on rolls. The Keeper used Pavine and pulled one scout squad out; a squad of flamers hosed them down burning them to ash. I put one wound on the biker with him saving a 3+ against the bolt and one flame wounded him with no chance of saving it. I also caused one or two dreads (forgot how many) that could not shoot…ugh! Hate extra armor!

Both scout squads showed up on turn 2, he moved into cover for both. One flanking near my Keeper and Flamers, the other heading to my objective. The dreads started to move about and the shooting opened up. Shooting didn’t yield much for him, a few wounds. He charges two Dreads into one Prince. A squad of flamers gets assaulted and wiped. The prince smashes one Dread to a pulp and is tied up with the other. 4 others are dancing about causing problems.

My second turn, Pappy Nurgle came in with a bad scatter (back to reserves). Only a unit of Bloodletters and Horrors showed. Ugh! Time to make lemonade! I ran the Bloodletters towards his scouts near my objective. The Horrors landed behind one dread, another unit of Flamers got behind another.

After this the game went back and forth quickly after my turn 2, each taking turns smacking one another around. I did make two dreads immobile; another one blew up with another Demon Prince crushing it in a fight. I lost both units of Flamers, Horrors and the Keeper to dreadnought combats. Pappy scattered poorly again into the same scout squad as before and was toasted with a roll of 1 with that annoying ONE being called by the other player. Game fell to the 4^th round and he wanted to play one more. We rushed the last round. His scouts charged my Bloodletters and promptly ate his squad of Scouts. The last Prince came in on 4 and on 5 the Bloodletters landed dead on to contest the center, he had his objective and I had mine with the Plague Bearers with the rest of the Bloodletters near to ensure I had it still. The Demon prince failed to remove the scouts and ended in a draw. If the scouts had fled I would have taken the game for a win. He ended up with 3 bonus points and I ended with one.

The game was good, but there were some constant rules issues, some he was wrong about, and one I was wrong about. The big problem was he claimed that he caused 4 wounds to my Prince in one combat and I only counted 3 saving many of the 4+ saves. I pulled it, I know he wasn’t paying attention to the rolls and I was rolling slowly not picking them up fast. He was spending about half the game talking to his buddy trying to explain the game of 40k to him to get him to play. It was annoying to a point and a bit rude to another player. That is a thing to do during open gaming night if you ask me. I wasn’t going to argue it but I knew he was bucking for a win and I knew how it was going to end with either a draw or a win to me if the rolls were with me.

Space Marine Deployment

Here comes the Demons!

Another view...

Tzeench takes the bridge and canal!

Here they come!

Demon prince trying to pumel the second Dreadnought (this is when that 3 or 4 wound issue came up)

Blood for the Blood God!

Nurgle takes the objective.

The last demon prince prepares to assult!

Meet the player...

Second game was against a nice guy, a Tau player and his first tournament. He brought this to the table:

·        Commander with bodyguards with missile pods and plasma rifles. Targeters and multitrackers as wargear upgrades with shield drones.

·        Another Crisis team with a leader, 2 shield drones, and twin linked missile pods and a targeting array.

·        3 Broadsides with targeting array with 2 shield drones.

·        2 Hammerheads with Smart missiles

·        2 Devilfish with drones and 6 Fire Warriors

·        10 Kroot Squad

·        6 Stealth Suits with one fusion gun.

·        2 Piranna Speeders with fusion guns also.

Game was Dawn of War and Kill Points. I won the dice off, gave him first turn. He setup his HQ only.  Deep striking the Stealth suits and flanking the Kroot. Everything else walking in first turn. He took his first turn moving on everything. One hammerhead in a corner, one in the center, with the broadsides in the other corner running to cover, Crisis suits near to protect them and the Devilfish between the Hammerheads. The speeders took to the center of the board.

I landed my wave (same as before) and got the 3+ Blessing of the Chaos Gods.  Landed everything close to one side on the right near his hammerheads and Devilfish and the HQ. Pavine lashed the HQ out into the open, then a pair of flamers BBQ’ed them to nothing. Leaving the HQ with one wound and a drone. The other Flamer squad appears on the other side flaming the Crisis suits. The center Hammerhead died to a blast from one of the demon princes and the other blew the burst cannon off a Devilfish. 

The Kroot showed up on the side with the Keeper shooting down one of my Flamer squads. Most of the other shooting ended up with one Prince with 3 wounds inflicted and another had 2 on him with the Keeper with one.

I rolled a 1 to shoot Pavine and failed the test for the power to work. The Flamers burned the Kroot to ash and the Keeper finished them off. The 2 wound prince went over and crushed the commander and the last drone. The other prince assaulted the Tau Fire Warriors that got out of a Devilfish to shoot him up in the turn prior. He remained locked with them for that turn passing their LD test. The other Flamers chased his Crisis Suits.

At this point the game just went downhill for him. Pappy Nurgle tied up the Broadsides for 3 turns before he got killed in close combat. Yea, a real scream! The Prince and Bloodletters finished the Broadsides off on 5 and 6. The Crisis teams died on 3, one speeder went down on 4, chased the other around until the very end. The last Hammerhead died on 3 due to the Keeper ripping it apart.

When we called it there was just a single Piranna left and he said would have died that turn and gave concession. I gave him some advice like always move your vehicles; he didn’t do this a few times. I didn’t want to auto hit his vehicles. We talked afterwards about changes to his list that would make it successful.

I had a full points with with all bonus points.

Second Turn, Kroot arrive!

Demon Princes wreck havok in the Tau lines!

Plaguebearers vs Drones

Flamers hunting vehicles and troops!

Keeper of Secrets about to impart an ass kicking!

Pappy Nurgle throwing down with the Broadsides!

Plaguebearers working to finish off gun drones.

Da guy supporting the Greater Good!

Last game was against a veteran player from my area in New Port Richey by the name of Lance. Great player and longtime Dark Eldar player. The new codex was evil and there is nothing that I could do and knew right off this game was an uphill fight.

He had this from memory:

·        Lord with Incubbi in a raider.

·        One Raider with Wytches and some character.

·        4 Venoms with 5-6 Dark Eldar Warriors with double splinter cannons.

·        Some other Raider, I think it had Dark Eldar Warriors in it.

·        3 Ravangers

·        2 Beastmasters with the dogs.

He picked to go second and held all in reserve. The mission was pitched battle and a combo of Kill Points and two objectives.

I picked my units. Rolled the dice and got a 2, the wrong wave! Great! Everything landed and he brought in his units.

It was just a downhill game from here. I had some good rolls most of the game but not good enough. He pounded each unit to nothing. I had a bad scatter and lost another unit to the warp. Another went to the corner of the table and out of the game. No way the Bloodletters could make it anywhere. It ended with one Demon Prince surrounded and we called it. Just no way to survive 4+ Poison saves by the bucket load and nasty close combat units.

It was a tough army but no match for a Demon list that is outdated. To me it is like racing a Pinto against a Porsche. Bad dice rolls just rolled it into a bad game in general. Oh well!

First turn drop down the middle.

Spread out!

Incubi about to wipe out the Plaguebearers!

Flamers removed all but 4 and then they die!

Pappy wrecking their ride!

Preparing for another unit to go poof!

Beastmasters attack! There is some Bloodletters hidden!

Meet Lance, master of Dark Eldar

After the tournament we went to 5 Guys for the ritual burgers and fries. Helped purge the rough edges of the day away and tastes great!

Not sure what I could do to tune the army differently. The first and last game was tough armies for me to play. The first facing high armor dreadnoughts and the last all that poison 4+ shooting and nasty assault options. Bad luck hit me on the third game and I was hot and cold during the first.

I think the biggest disappointment was the lack of painted armies in all three games. While my stuff was not 100% finished and had to borrow a few items from Chris. Everything was painted which is a big thing for me.

Another one down!

Rob over at Heyoh has been poking me to get this guy finished. He is for now.....I am not totally happy with the yellow beak and may go back at some point to repaint it another color. Tried a bone/denab stone color and it just didn't cut it either. May consider black/grey tone instead. Hrm....

Rob, this one is for you!

This demon prince has been sitting in my "to do pile" for a long, long time. I made him over 5 years ago back when I was developing a 1000 Sons list. He is built with a variety of model bits including: A metal spawn arm, uppper body and sword are from the Chaos Cultist from the Inquisitor line, the head is the old Demon Prince of Tzeench head, the wings are from the plastic pegasus kit and the legs are from a metal demon prince kit.

Front Shot

Rear pic of the wings...

Side shot with some detail...

Da other side!

Close up, not a great one....

The sword, this was painted with a new paint I found that was a metallic green, then washed it with my special sauce of Future Floor Wax, black ink and water with some Boltgun highlights.

Rear shot to see some of the sword handle detail.