June BatRep: Anthem Games 6/2/12

Well, I loaded up the Space Wolves and headed to Anthem Games with Chris for our first tournament in June. We had a great lunch at Burger 21 that is by far the best burger I have ever had! I want to take my wife there as they have two types of vegetarian burger options and sweet potato fries among other cool things. The best way I can say is take 5 Guys and mix it with a Steak and Shake with beer and wine as options in a very nice clean modern malt shop style.

We got there and the start was a bit delayed as the tables had to get setup and we had a bonus play show up unannounced that did not register. One guy later left thinking it was "elimination" so the other player that dropped earlier got to play two games still to enjoy his day at the store.

The missions was based on the Nova open format so each mission has a primary and there is a winner and looser, if there is a draw it goes to secondary, then to the third and worst case VPs at the end to break the tie.

This was by far a weird tournament, I have been to several with NO Tyranids and this time 3 players show with bugs! We had 3 Wolves, 2 Blood Angels, I think two Gay Knights (Er Gray Knights), one or two Chaos players also...the ringer was an Ork player....

My first draw was against Ty and his Blood Angels his list was 4 Las/Plas Razorbacks with 5 man squads inside, a Land Raider Crusader loaded with assault based terminators with a Chaplain, Sanguinary Priest and Librarian wearing Terminator armor also, he also had a pair of Baals (NO I DID NOT SAY BALLS!). We had spearhead for the first game and I won the roll to go first....the deployment was simple for me, I setup the Long Fangs in buildings and the Razorbacks behind buildings for cover. The scout squads and the pack leader ready to flank.

Meet Ty, Blood Angel Commander

Ty lines up his approach towards the Wolves.

The Wolves spring into action.

Scouts surround the survivors of a blown up Razorback.

Space Wolf Scouts take cover in the ruins after wiping out another Blood Angels squad.

The game was brutal as I was just tearing up Ty's list......sadly I assumed we would not roll that famous 1 or 2 and have an extra turn to reclaim one of my objectives and either contest or control one of his two by the end of 6th. Well, I ate my choice with humble pie and took a loss my first game. The sad thing is if I had played a bit more defensive I would have taken the game for a win on the secondary as I had the Victory Points to ensure the win. *sigh*

On with game 2, this time against another Blood Angel! My opponent's name was Adam and a great guy also to go up against, his list had some similar options of a Crusader, Mephsiton, Terminators, two Storm Ravens each with a Death Company Dread, one with Death Company and the other with normal troops. Again I won the roll and deployed first. My goal was to try to keep him at bay and with Pitched Deployment I should have good odds. The game was about table quarters....I just had to play this smart and I should be able to win.

Adam seized the game on me again and advanced towards my lines and opted to hold the Stormravens in reserve. This gave me a turn or two to breathe before things could get ugly. I opened up the first shot with a single melta shot from a Rhino, hits, 6 to the armor roll, fails the smoke and rolled a 6 to glance it knocking it to a 5 (-2 pen, +1 melta). Lucky stroke there for the game. At that point I kept putting pressure on but I made a few tactical mistakes in the game that really screwed me over. Namely not shooting or assaulting his Dreadnought and there was one other point I forgot to shoot with a unit. Towards the end of the game the scout unit with the Battle Leader and Wolf Guard came in late and opted to hide behind a large chunk of scenery and hide.

As we played it out with viscous fighting all around we tallied up the results.
Table Quarters= Draw (I had two and he had two)
Kill Points=Tie
Objectives= 1 each (Tie!)
VPs= WIN for me!

Adam, the other Blood Angel Cmdr

The lucky shot!

Melee battles all over the board!

So, on to the third round against Adam's friend, Adam (yes, so I played two Blood Angels and two people named Adam at this even, weird right?) with Space Wolves. He just had a rough game prior against my friend Chris with his Space Wolves so this was his double down against the same army.

We had kill points this game with Dawn of War. He had a heavy drop pod list with 7 pods I think with 2 dreads with multi meltas, several squads, two Rune Priests, a Wolf Priest and Arjak with Terminators.

Well, I won the dice, gave him first turn. I held everything into reserve and he slammed his pods down on my side. Game on! We just sat there beating the hell out of one another, the sad part was that my dice failed me towards the 2nd round and I was slowly being taken apart. In the end Adam had won it with luck and I think if I perhaps castled more to one side or the other and used the Rhinos to slow him down I may could have won the game. Instead I took a direct head on approach typical of the Space Wolf sagas and went for the gusto! Well, it failed.

Adam, the other Wolf

The Pods slam down....

My forces deploy....

Terminator Crunch time!

The Dread that would not die!

The points was tallied up and Chris won 1st place and I won best painted (since Chris already had the top prize!) so I got the bride's maid award. I was happy with that, I rarely get the best painted as my painting is table worthy but never up to snuff of better painters out there. I had the prize award put on my card and saved up for July for the 6th Edition roll out, hey bonus there! Free rules next month or very low cost impact to the wallet. I did buy the Ork flyer to add to the horde of Orks!

Overall it was a great outing, good food, 3 great games against 3 good opponents. My only gripe is the lack of sleep the past week due to one of my dogs going insane due to old age....we just got him on meds and I hope it works so we can keep him in the family a bit longer. I just hate the zombie feeling when I game and I feel that I would have done a bit better with some rest on my side. Oh well...such as life is....