ARMY OF THE WEEK: 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!