Team Tournament in December at Darkside Comics.

Chris and I loaded up for our only tournament for December at Darkside Comics. We went with a good pairing of Space Wolves and Imperial Guard. Alas, I forgot my chip to the camera and at the start of round 1 I was annoyed I forgot to check the camera! ARG!

Space Wolves:

2 Rune Priests, 1 with a Chooser of the Slain, both with living lighting and Jaws of the Wolf and Murderous Hurricane.

3 Troop choices of Grey Hunters with a power weapon and melta gun with a rhino. Two was 8 strong and 1 was 9 strong.

4 Wolf Guard with comi-melta and power fists, they join the Scouts and the three Grey Hunters.

Long Fangs x6 with 5 missile launchers, razorback with heavy bolters.

Large scout squad with melta gun and power fist.

Imperial Guard:

Command Squad with 4 melta guns, Chimera and Astropath

Vet Squad with Harker, 3 melta guns and Chimera

Storm Trooper Squad with melta and plasma with Chimera

1 Platoon Command with 4 flamers.

3 Troop squads in Chimeras with melta guns.

Leman Russ with Lascannon.

Vendetta

Game 1 vs Necrons and Orks

I am bad with names and forgot the Necron player’s name, but Zack was playing orks. Both of these guys are regulars at the store and great guys. Never played against the Necron player before but we have had several great conversations in the past about the Necrons among other armies discussed... Zack and I have often been paired off in many tournaments.

Their list from memory….

Necrons:

Doom Ark (the cannon that is STR 9)

Several Cypteks with lances with the STR 8, AP 1 shots.

Large unit of Immortals

2 Units of Warriors with Ghost Arks

Praetorians with shields and swords with a standard Necron Lord.

Orks:

Mad Doc

2 Large Ork blocks with cybork, big shootas and a Nob with a Klaw.

2 Units of Kommandos with one with a Klaw and the other with Snikrot.

Dreadnought

We played the first Scenario from Adepticon 2011, with the command token that allows you to issue one USR to one unit. The primary was to hold the center of the table with the most units with the highest VPs and the Secondary was to Capture and Control (two objectives, one in each deployment zone).

They won the dice off and deployed first. Their objective was off to the side with the gun and troop ark holding the objective. The Immortals to the middle, off to the other side where our objective was the two ork blocks and the Dreadnought. The last transport was near the middle to swoop down the middle.

We hid one Rhino behind a building and a Leman Russ behind a large terrain feature to avoid being shot at by the big cannon of doom the Long Fangs deployed in cover to take the big guns opening shot. The opening was as we expected, they advanced up and we lost a rhino on turn 1 to shooting. Turn 1 for us was quick moving into a building and the Long Fangs shot down the Doom Ark in a blazing doom.

Turn 2 nothing much happened, some shooting but no major losses and several orks moving towards us. We rolled reserves, Chris got one unit of Grey Hunters and nothing else. I got everything but one troop choice. I flanked the Vendetta near the objective with the command squad in it. Harker and the Vets appear behind the Necron lord to threaten the back side. The Stormtroopers pile in behind the Orks ready to burn them.

The rest of the game saw the Wolf Scouts assaulting the Immortals, my vendetta flanking near their objective. I sacrificed Harker and his crew to draw the Necron Lord and his unit. The next turn the Wolf Scouts finished the Immortals as the rest of the army was slowly chewed down to nothing. We managed to repel both Kommando units after taking the loss of a Leman Russ and a Chimera and the large squad of Orks was reduced to ash leaving Mad Doc’s large unit to deal with. Sadly, as there were  closer units he ran back towards Harker and lost ground moving to the center. We wiped out the Necrons in the center and piled as many units as we could into the middle for the win taking a full 28 points for the win.

Game 2 vs. Space Wolves and Grey Knights

Our next game was against Steve and Matt with Grey Knights and Space Wolves.

Their lists:

Space Wolves:

Wolf Lord with runic armor, talisman, mounted on a wolf with saga of the bear and had a frost weapon or claw with a storm shield.

Wolf Guard Battle Leader, same with the Hunter Saga (which was illegal, infantry only, GREAT JOB ARMY BUILDER). Matt said he saw someone using it at another event but here is what you get when something isn’t proofed.

1 Unit of Grey Hunters with a Rhino, think they had a power fist or power weapon with plasma or melta.

1 Unit of Long Fangs with mix of missiles and lascannons.

Large unit of Thunderpups with storm shields, power fist…the usual unit mix.  Not sure if the whole unit had storm shields or just part.

Wolf Scouts with power weapons and melta guns.

Grey Knights

Drago

Complex unit of Paladins with Apoth, mix of weapons, etc…for wound allocation shenanigans.

1 unit of Grey Knights with psycannons.

2 Riflemen Dreads with psyammo

What you have here is a clear min/max list that is designed to be low kill points, loaded with a few death star units to handle all issues.

We won the dice off and let them pick the table side.

As it was Dawn of War they deployed their very little the Paladins I recall was sitting near both objectives in the center. Ours was off to the side opposite. We setup nothing holding much to move in first turn and flanking with Harker, Scouts and Stormtroopers.

A dread and Long Fangs took up one building on the far right (of them); center was a Rhino with the Grey Hunters and his Paladins with Drago in a building for cover. One unit of Grey Knights to reserve, the Thunderwolves setup to charge down the middle to our objective and the scouts went into flanking reserve. They elected their Thunderwolves and one Dread to be a Troop choice at the start of the game.

There isn’t much too really say about this game except our dice was just bad, real bad. That along with their rolls was on fire, Matt was not failing a single shield save except two the whole game I think when we shot at the Thunderwolves. It wasn’t till the end when he separated the Battle Leader was he taken down.

By the end of the game was able to contest only one objective. Sadly if the dice was in our favor we could have contested two more objectives. This would have left them with a lower score of 5 points instead of 15 for their win along with other bonus points and the secondary objective against our zero for the game.  I forgot special orders for “run run” with two units that could have helped on two of those and that was my fault. Orders has always been a weak point for me with IG due to the nature of how I mech up.

If I had the Manticore or the Executioner with plasma cannons I feel the game could have played out differently. That and some better dice rolls.

Game 3 vs. Necrons and Grey Knights

The last game was a great match against Grant and George that helped take the sour edge of the final game.

Their lists:

Grey Knights:

Librarian: Hammerhand, Might of Titan, Quicksilver, Sanctuary, The Shrouding, Warp Rift.

Grey Knight Terminator squad with halberds and a demon hammer with a psycannon.

Dreadnought with Psybolt Ammo with an Assault cannon

Stormraven Gunship with twin linked plasma and multi meltas.

Grey Knights Strike Squad in a Razorback with force swords. Razorback had a heavy bolter with psybolt ammo.

Vindicare Assassin

Another Terminator Squad similar to the first.

Necrons

Overlord with Res Orb, Tachyon Arrow

Royal Court with 2 Harbringers of Destruction with  Lances and one of Transmogrification that had the Tremor Stave and Harp of Dissonance.

5 Immortals with Telsa Carbines

10 Warriors in Ghost Ark

10 Warriors in Ghost Ark

7 Scarab Swarms

Monolith

Deathmarks

The game:  Declare one list that counts for kill points. At this point my IG was picked and we choose the Necrons. The other objective was two objectives on each side of the table.

Deployment: Table Quarters (objectives was placed in the opposite quarters in the center). They won the dice and deployed first.

The game:

Overall this was a good game, we had a few rules bumps but each time we was able to resolve them and keep the tempo of the game going at  a great pace. I held most of my stuff in reserve to ensure they could not shoot it and have less turns to score kill points.

Here are some of the highlights I recall from the game:

Vindicare getting splattered by a missile early in the game after a failed cover save.

Early on we wiped the scars from the table quickly and moved to disable the transports with the Necron Warriors inside. I was able to flank the Stormtroopers and Chris got his scouts to appear near them and we was able to attack from a weak angle that helped us change the tide of the game. On that corner of the table, only towards the end did the Grey Knights leave the Razorback to engage us and by then the game was pretty much over. The Deathmarks landed and was shot off the board the turn they landed with ruthless firepower. Our goal was to keep the pressure on for kill points.

One of the most comical moments was trying to blow up the Monolith. We either could not hit it, fail to pen it or we would roll poorly on the glance/pen chart getting nothing but Stun and Shaken results! Finally we took off the big gun towards the end! What a steak of bad luck again!

Sadly, I forgot to roll for Harker after the first reserves and Chris even reminded me later (and I thought everything was on)! Would have it made a difference? Maybe but not by much, they would have either help wipe out the Necron HQ or perhaps would have been able to roll on and grab the other objective for a few more bonus points.

We held one objective and had more kill points than they did to score up a decent tally. Depending on how things went with the rules error (see below) or Harker showing up this could have shifted our game by a few points putting us back into the rankings as we was just four points shy of third place.

I did discover one rule error after the game that nobody caught when the Raven went flat out and was shot down. Instead of the passengers disembarking they should have been dead per the FAQ. This would have been a huge game changer for us as we would not have wasted time trying to kill the Dreadnought, Librarian and his Terminator Squad but instead moving towards objectives, removing the other Grey Knight Squad and blowing up the Monolith earlier instead of allowing it to linger on the field.

Lesson learned is what I say, I should rebuild my FAQ binder I used to haul around with me but I got sick of dragging that extra material so I gave up the ghost a few months back. Now it comes back to bite me! Hah!