July 2k Darkside Tournament (narrative only)

Been a long time since I have posted...been a busy past few months.

My friend Chris and I hit the Darkside 40k tournament bringing 2000 points to have a day out playing some 40k games. After eating at Yoders (Amish food) we hit the store and setup our armies.

I had:

Sammuel with Speeder

2 Land Raider Crusaders with mutli-meltas

Land Speeder Shroud with Heavy Bolter

1 Command squad with Banner of Devastation

1 Tactical squad of 10 with a plasma gun and missile launcher (with Flakk)

1 Full Bike squad with 2 plasma guns and a Multi-melta Attack Bike

3 Partial Squads (3 Bikes) of Bikes with 2 Plasma and MM Attack Bike

1 Partial Squad with 2 Plasma Guns

I forgot the chip for my camera so I could not take any photos! Arg!

I got to my first game against a new Eldar player….he had three full units of Swooping Hawks with the named Swooping Hawk Character, Exarch, a Seer Council on Bikes, 4 Sniper Squads and 3 War Walkers with assorted weapons with a Wraithlord. He had not played since 4th edition and of course they hand out Adepticon Gladiator missions! Gah!

Overall, the game went well ending in a draw with me in the lead with a few points. The new Codex and not played a game since 4th really slowed down the game that I feel impacted the score. Throw in the complex and horrible rules written for Adepticon Gladiator and I am not surprised by this result at all. Sure, I could have clubbed him like a baby seal and took a huge win but that isn’t how I play. I know others at a tournament think that if you go you should know your rules and they won’t help you at all or very little. My only downfall during the game is not knowing the Eldar codex well as I have only glanced at the rules and not read them.

Mike was a great player to play against and I would enjoy a more social game with him with an ice cold beer or soda on a casual game night.

The second game was against Carlos that is part of the Skull and Bones crew (a local gaming club). They tend to be very competitive and his list was that and more, hyper-competitive is what I would say. Min/Max all the way and clearly out to gun for a win and while a tournament is about trying to win building an army to win for you. As always Carlos is a great guy to game against as usual but the army was just not enjoyable to play against.

He had two small cultist units, a Chaos Sorcerer, 3 Helldrakes (two with baleflamers), 3 Maulers (assault versions), a huge load of Slaanesh Demons, Damonettes on Steeds (a large unit with a character on a steed), a Greater Demon of Tzeench and a Soul Grinder.

In the end, I managed to damage the army despite the fact I made two tactical errors. The first was not shooting at full BS for my first Crusader (it didn’t move) and keeping the bikes nicely grouped up for the baleflamer (which I will admit are broken and I own one, I feel almost dirty getting a second with a baleflamer which is why I have not.) The dice was the other factor as I wiffed on several melta shots, I knew Carlos threw the armor out there knowing if I blew it up he would have a rough game, if it survived he had the game in a bag. Plus Carlos was one lucky SOB (and not Sister of Battle) when it came to jinks and saves on his big guys with that 5+ invulnerable saves. The Adepticon Gladiator rules again just pissed on this game with the weird scoring and made me not want to play in future events that use these missions.

My last game was pretty good despite the loss in the end but was a good game down to the wire. A strong Blood Angel list but not over the top: 2 Sanguinary Priests, 2 Jump squads (I think some melta), 1 large Death Company with a Priest (may have been the named one), Tycho in the flying bread box of doom, 2 Vindicators and 2 Furisoso Dreadnoughts….

Again, some bad dice luck didn’t help me much again but we did go down to the wire with both armies bloodied and battered on both sides.

It was a tie for best painted between Chris and me from what I understand and won it, we joked with rock, paper and scissors to see who gets the prize! Hey $15 got me a pot of paint and some Bolt Action Order dice!

It felt good to get out of the house with all the crazy stuff with my wife’s family with the surgery and it helped me recharge some. I think Chris needed to get away for the day also and have some fun despite everything. The dice was my worst complaint along with the really bad choice of the Gladiator Missions from Adepticon. The standard ones, those are fine in my book as I rarely have had issues with them. I figure I could shift the list around some to make the squads slightly larger perhaps to give them a bit of an edge in being able to survive as 3 man squads are just too small it seems.