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.