November Darkside Tournament: Chaos for the Win!

 

This past weekend Chris and I made a trip down to Sarasota to play at Darkside Games. Chris brought along a new Blood Angel test list and I brought along a simple, bland Chaos list to dip into the waters to see how they would do.

Chaos Army List: Siege of Faith (Iron Warriors and Word Bearers) (Double FOC)

Dark Apostle, Veteran of the Long War

Warpsmith with Combi-Melta, Veteran of the Long War

4 Squads of 10 Chaos Marines: Plasma Guns x2, Veterans of the Long War, Close Combat Weapon

Havoks x5: Mark of Nurgle, Veterans of the Long War, Autocannons x2, Missile Launchers x2

Obliterators x2

Vindicators x2

Defilers x2

Aegis Defense Line (no weapon upgrade)

My first game was against another dark brother of Chaos playing the Black Legion. We joked that Horus had sent the Black Legion to bring my two warbands in line for a new crusade and they told him to sod off!

He had from memory:

Winged Demon Prince

Skulltaker (allied HQ)

2 HellBrutes with double talons

2 Units of Warp Talons

1 Unit of Chosen with assorted weapons in Rhino

2 Units of Chaos Marines in Rhinos, assorted weapons, double close combat weapons

2 Allied units of Bloodletters

We placed our objectives face down, picked sides and flipped the tokens and he failed to seize. All I can say is this game was brutal. I had a good defense pattern setup and it was rough for him right from the start. He got the wrong wave first off.

Turn 1, one HellBrute was immobile, one Rhino down

Turn 2, the other Hellbrute goes down, the Demon Prince dies, another Rhino gone, various Marines die, he deep strikes a unit of Bloodletters behind the line. All but 1 was dead at the end of my turn.

Turn 3: First unit of Warp Talons lands (dies to shooting); a second unit with Skulltaker gets gunned down to massed firepower, more CSMs dies...

Turn 4: Last Warp Talon squad lands, gunned down….I start picking off the rest of his CSMs…

Turn 5: Chosen make assault with 3 men I think, kills a few men, I hold then swamp him.

An epic moment in the game that was great laughs:

• Each time that the Bloodletters appeared I could only hear the Iron Warriors going, “Check with the Word Bearers, see if they summoned any demons…” (pause) “No?” *clicks his bolt gun* “BLAST THEM!* *DAKAKAKAKAAKA*
• The Dark Apostle and his Chosen in a challenge with power mauls…he took a wound off me the first round, the second round we failed to wound, the last we killed one another.

 

I sustained no losses in my army and won with a good score for the first round.

 

 

My opponent!

The Defence Line

The last demon standing...

Epic finish for the Dark Apostle vs the Chosen! Both dead!

 

Second Round: Tau and Chaos

The second round was against a regular player Matt that had a hybrid Chaos Tau mix taking it out for a spin. We had a lovely game here of Hammer and Anvil deployment and kill points. We both setup behind our Aegis lines and prepared for the gun exchange.

His list:

Tau Commander with melta and plasma rifle, darksun filter

Tau Broadside with darksun filter

Tau Broadsides (leader) both had darksun filters; I think one had the Target Lock

1 small unit of Fire Warriors

Big block of Kroot

Aegis line with Lascannon

Large block of CSM, with the fearless banner, not sure what weapons he had…

Chaos Lord with Khorne Mark, the special axe, mounted with some nasty assault buffs

Heldrake

Hammerhead with Railgun, darksun filter

Hellfiend with triple plasma cannons

Game was night fight first turn and went on how I expected. All on the dice….we both had some good luck and bad luck, plenty of saves all over. The game was a major shooting exchange as we both knew going out of our lines would have been suicide. So, the game was us taking turns shooting at one another, making morale tests and such...

Towards the end I tore up his CSM unit that came at my lines and the Lord was the only unit to make it, besides the Heldrake passing overhead.

The game ended with a solid win for me, he only had the Heldrake, the Tau Commander, and a Single Broadside left at the end….with my losses including both Vindicators and one Defiler….

Epic Game moment:

• Matt’s Chaos Lord charges my Iron Warrior Chaos Marine unit, he does a challenge, squashes the Aspiring Champion, rolls on the rewards table (POOF SPAWN) Guess Chaos didn’t take kindly to a rising star being killed off. The Iron Warriors promptly turned their bolters on the Spawn standing 2” away and promptly died.

 

Matt got First Blood; neither of us got the other’s commander…so points were low short of the win.

Matt that twisted Tau and Chaos commander.

My deployment

Towards the end of the game, notice those two green templates near my lines? Those WERE my Vindicators!

Chaos General charges! Kills my champion.

Life is like a box of chocolates....never know what you are going to get when you roll on that Chaos boon table...Forrest Gump playing 40k

My last round was against Marines

We had the two objective (or as I call it the draw game) with Dawn of War.

His list:

Pedro Cantor

Lysander

3 Tactical Squads with Drop Pods

2 Sternguard squads with Drop Pods, assorted combi weapons

3 Thunderfire cannons

Aegis line down, we setup….off to the races! This was just a game of drop the Sternguard and Characters down first, then a game of firepower on firepower….a real drop down and drag out game. Overall it was good; we had a few annoyances with the game. Namely the table being both nice and not very level for dice rolling, there were several instances of dice balancing to see if it was flat or not, rerolls and such. Including one I thought was a hit but my opponent said it scattered. Usually, I leave dice out and try to be slow about this sort of thing but being in the finals and tired is never a good combo and I picked up my dice. He said that it rolled down in a low spot on the table after the hit came up. In any case we just agreed to a reroll to avoid argument. He was ill (he had told me earlier he had been sick and his meds was wearing off) and tired, I was just tired….

The game ended on a draw, with me winning overall by 1 point and my opponent taking second place right after me. Chris had three losses with his Blood Angels but it was a very much hit or miss list. One mission was a repeat of his last time at Darkside playing the same CronAir list on the same open table with the SAME missions (kill points). If he had the objective games he would have had a better chance, alas he is going to blow off his Chaos and polish up the Space Wolves with Blood Angel allies now.

Last round opponent...

The defence line...

Porta-pods arrive....

Turn 3 drop pods...

Towards the end, epic shot deending the line...

First 6th Edition Tournament at Darkside (Sept)

Well, on September 8th Chris and I loaded up the SUV and headed on down to Sarasota to play 40k at Darkside Comics. Chris brought a purest Space Wolf list, lots of scoring and some heavy support with Rune Priests. My army was much of the same but with less Grey Hunters and I had Tau in tow including a Crisis Suit commander and Crisis Team, a small scoring Fire Warrior squad and a trio of Broadsides.

What was slightly annoying is I had the lists printed up and copied at work on Friday and then that same day GW drops the FAQ going, "Oh yea, Target locks are back in..." ARG!!!! Well, I went with what I had and dealt with the lack of Target Locks that I hardly felt.

The turnout was excellent and we had a variety of armies which is always refreshing to see what people will come up with. We also had a few of the usual common lists floating about the net including a flying Demon List and the Necron Airforce.

Overall, I ended in 2nd place just behind the army I had a draw against on the last round Tyranids and Marine Bikes taking third. The two big netlists did not do well because the guy playing the demons normally has Space Wolves and the other guy plays Necrons but has swapped play styles, it will take him some time to relearn how to use the new list to be effective.

My first game was against Dark Angels and one of the guys I enjoy playing at the store there. He had a good list of Dark Angels including a Whirlwind, several Terminator (some Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield) and others (with assault cannons and storm bolters) with Ravenwing bikers with plasma guns. Samuel and Belial leading. So everything scored but the Whirlwind.

I won the dice off with 2 objectives to one on his side of the table forcing him to be on the offensive. Which is good for hist list but I was better at being defensive. He did manage to seize against me.

This could have been a very tough game for me but when he split is forces instead of going for one flank or the other allowed me to use the mass firepower I had and down him. If he had flanked as we later discussed, he would have tangled up my units gained more cover saves and if he did not turbo boost that second time but instead added more shots into the mix I would have been in some serious trouble.

Deployment

Tau and Space wolves react to the Dark Angels

Rhinos Shield from one way as Ravenwing bikes race towards their target.

My second game was against Vanilla Marines and Grey Knights. This was a rough game as we had lots of rules look ups, several questions and my opponent got a few cell phone calls during the game. I usually don't mind this  but they was getting to be a bit annoying (nuff said). We had the Hammer and Anvil mission with kill points.

I don't recall if we rolled for night fight or not, but most of his stuff was off the table until turn 2. He had an Defense Line with the Quad Autocannon, a TL AC Dread (GK) and a Thunderfire cannon behind. The other side had a mess of scouts with sniper rifles, cloaks and a missile launcher with a Librarian. The building was upgraded to a 3+ by the Librarian, so the cloaks was giving a 2+ gah!

I managed to take out the quad gun for first blood, then after that the Long Fangs was shot down. At this point, his snipers shot at me and I shot at the mostly until turn 2 when his flyer and  Land Raider arrived. At this point I just shot him apart by turn 3 and was wrapping the game up at this point by 5 where we got night fight.

None of his stuff made it down field and I opted not to try to get the bonus for being in his deployment zone. 

Only got one picture for this game as we was so busy playing or looking stuff up that I didn't take many snaps.

Deployment...

My last game was against Psychic Monstrous Creatures Tyranids. What was in this list? A Tyrant that was a beast in close combat, some zonathropes, two big MCs that could make Gaunts, the other large serpent MC that can dig, two squads of the Yrgymel Genestealers, two pods full of Gaunts with an assload of shooting.

I won deployment again, we had the pyramid style deployment so the bugs was going to be on me quickly and we had the Relic mission. I knew if I played it safe he would get it and win.

The game resulted in a draw with nobody getting the Relic as I shot down his lone gaunt with it, then in a combat consolidation I touched it and had it, the the Tyrant with one wound chomped him and the relic went a few inches (per the rules) away...

 Carnage after turn 1...

later in the game finishing off the Genestealers...amusing moment

They tried to charge the Tau, failed...

Tau Fire Warriors opened up and wiped the depleted unit to one stealer!

The Pod arrives!

As a bonus treat a great guy (forget his name right now) has this amazing Nurgle themed IG....wow...let the pics do the story for you these are his Vendettas and a few other items...

Wow!

The detail with green stuff!

Rotors on these!

A shot of the rotor.

Chimera!

25k Views and a 1850 test game of 40k!

The blog just rolled over 25k in views...I am working to improve content and giving a few months to see how 6th is going to progress before putting forth tactics and such...

AND....

Last night I played my third official game of 6^th edition with my friend Chris at my house. This was a “learning curve” game as we like to call it when the rules changed. We played a few games like this after 5^th dropped, so 6^th was the same method for us to learn the new changes to the rules.

I forgot to take pictures, but it was not until later I knew the camera was back at the house after my wife’s parents borrowed it to take pictures for Craigslist. Oh well!

We got in 4 rounds before we called the game. If we went longer I may have been able to pull a win out and Chris ended up with the win after I encouraged him to try to shoot one squad to make them break and try to charge the squad in the ruins with his Blood Angels that just mowed down my surviving Space Wolves hidden there in cover.

The mission we played was Relic on the long table deployment (Hammer and Anvil) with me winning deployment and first turn.

Chris had Space Wolves with Blood Angels allies. His core list was a Rune Priest, several Grey Hunter squads in 3 Rhinos and one Razorback with mostly melta guns, power weapons and two Long Fang Squads. His Blood Angels allies was a Librarian (with the sword power and Blood Lance), two jump squads (full) with melta guns x2 and power weapon. His Rune Priest with Living Lighting and Murderous Hurricane. Warlord trait: Acute Senses (hahahaha)

My Space Wolves list included a Rune Priest (same powers), 4 squads (3 Rhinos and 1 Razorback) with 1 squad with 2 melta guns, the Razorback squad had a melta and the two others had a pair of Plasma. There was also 3 Long Fang Squads with 14 missiles. I was allied with Tau with a Commander (flamer/plasma/missile pod) with two gun drones joining a 6 man Fire Warrior Team. 3 Crisis Suits with 2 Gun Drones on the leader with a flamer and twin linked pods on each. A trio of Broadsides rounded out the army with a pair of shield drones. Warlord Trait: -1 to enemy reserve rolls. Against BA with a reroll to jump reserves was almost a joke.

Lessons learned:

1)      Forgot to roll Night Fight. Stealth/Shroud could have helped with first turn casualties.

2)      “Abhor the Witch” totally forgotten.

3)      Better placement of key squad members to avoid wound allocation early on. I.e. don’t stick them in the front and put Long Fang Pack leaders to the front.

4)      6^th was much like 4^th with shooting being king of the game.

5)      Plasma is the new black, or weapon of choice.

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....

Darkside Battle Report

Wow! This has been sitting in draft mode for some time! With everything going on with my mother-in-law in the hospital and the Kalm among other things has totally pushed finishing this battle report until now!

Went to Darkside this past weekend to play in their 2k 40k RTT for this month taking my WIP Space Wolves to see how they would fare in a pretest game before the May tournament in Alabama.

Overall we had a good showing of armies with variety including 3 Space Wolves, a few Blood Angels, Tyranids, IG, Orks and Vanilla Marines not sure if any Necrons or Dark Eldar slipped into the mix but that is from what I recall seeing.

Here is the list I brought:

Wolf Lord in Runic Armor, Storm Shield, Frost Weapon, Saga of the Bear

Wolf Pack Leader with Wolf Claw, Storm Shield, Runic Armor, Hunter Saga

Rune Priest with living lighting, murderous Hurricane, Chooser of the slain

Rune Priest with living lighting, jaws of the wolf and chooser of the slain

7 Wolf Scouts with 2 power weapons and 1 melta gun

4 Wolf Guard with power fists and combi meltas and 1 with frost weapon

1 Wolf Guard in Terminator armor with Cyclone Launcher

3 Long Fang Packs with 14 missiles (Cyclone joins the small pack)

2 Grey Hunter packs of 7 in Rhino, melta gun and power weapon

2 Grey Hunter packs of 6 with Rhino, melta gun/flamer (one in each) and power weapons

My first game was with a local player to the store with his Orks by the name of Cajun (serious this is his real name, not a nickname). Here is what his list looked like:

Ghazghkull Thraka

Warboss with Klaw and Twin Linked Shoota

Storm Boyz

Loota Boyz

25 Boyz with two Rockets and a Nob with a Klaw and bosspole and eavy armor

30 Boyz with big shootas with Nob (same way)

Unit of Gretchin with two Handlers

Unit of Nobz (in a Battlewagon) with an assorted load of weapons and a Pain Nob

3 Killer Kans with 2 grotzookas and 1 scorcha

The First game was the 2010 Adepticon mission “The Shortest Distance between Two Points”. Used the diagonal deployment. I won the dice off and setup on my side of the table loading up a building with Long Fangs. His Orks spread out on the other side ready to move all over and grab up table quarters. The twist to the mission was the warp flux that would allow one unit to deep strike and assault instead of shooting…this was nasty for some games. I am thankful the Ork player was afraid to do this until the last turn.

Primary:   Pushback, the player with the model closest to their board edge loses.

Secondary: More Force org slots alive at the end.

Tertiary: Table Quarters

My plan was simple, Pack Leader joined the Scouts, flanking. The rest setup with the Long Fangs in a building, the Rhinos ready to hold the two table quarters and keep the Orks at bay.

Cajun failed to seize and I started my turn with a salvo of shots to his Kans and killing some Storm boyz……my early goal was to get an immobile result to lock in the Primary. Alas, they either lost weapons, stunned or blown up for the opening turns.  His ork army spread out over the early turns to table quarters and try to take on my units to reduce Force org slots and try to keep me from advancing enough to avoid the Primary.

The game unfolded well as a side shot on the Battlewagon opened a nice door and the scouts slipped in behind the Orks taking out a 25 ork mob with some support from the missiles and living lighting. They quickly did not flee back into cover only to get shot up by the other mob but neither they nor the armless Kan still alive was unable to charge them. The Pack Leader and the Last scout charges the 30 man Ork horde in a desperate hope to detain them. It worked also as the Pack Leader only took a single wound for the remainder of the game as he was able to fend off the ork attacks with his runic armor and storm shield. This kept them closer to the edge than mine as I deep struck two Long Fangs during the last two turns and moved the other to get away from the edge also to ensure the win. Ghazghkull popping over towards the end helped me out as they died to him. A bad choice IMO, I would have gone for something else.

When the last round was up, I had the Primary with more than double with a disabled Rhino on the board. I had more Force Org slots left and I had 2 table quarters to his one. Taking the bonus points maxed out my score.

Cajun!

Wolves Advance!

Orks take to the field!

The Wolf Guard Battle Leader makes a stand!

My second game was against Clark and his Space Marines. Clark has won Ard Boyz Nationals and has always been a long time overall winner in tournaments. This would be a good game and a hard win to take.

His list was something like this:

Shrike

Cassisus

Large block of Thunder Hammer/ Storm Shield Terminators

3 Thunderfire cannons

3-4 Razorbacks with twin linked lascannons

3-4 squads with lascannons and melta guns, sgt had power fists or weapons (forgot what)

3 Attack Bikes with Multi-meltas

This was a standard Dawn of War with tunnels, this had some weird rules including holding a unit back and being able to place it using a tunnel (the opponent can that is). Clark placed a squad broken into combat squads and a Razorback on the table. I put a rhino with a Rune Priest and Grey Hunters on the table. This table was annoying due to a large fortress in the middle but also helped me from being fleet of footed to death.

The objectives were:

Primary: Capture the Tunnels (4)

Secondary: Victory Points (must be more than 225)

Tertiary: Kill the most expensive HQ

Clark won the roll to pick the table edge but I seized on him! Whoo!

Well, we had a crazy game with units rolling in from the board edge and I rolled in to the center using the fortress as cover. His turn rolled in some units using the tunnels (I did not) and some from his edge. One Thunderfire died due to going into scenery and promptly joined a squad I shot up on my turn. Then the game was one, both armies was out!

I was able to multi-charge Clark taking out 3 attack bikes, a thunderfire and stunning a Razorback in the deal….then I was promptly shot apart. The squad of scouts then split from the Pack Leader (with only 2 models) to deal with the trouble. The Lord ate one combat squad and the Scouts finished off another in hand to hand. Then they both died to a brutal flurry of shots. My Long Fangs was deployed right in his face and died bravely despite the odds. I had his appear my squad and promptly vaporized them also.

The end of the game was down to a scuffle of units left….I think he had 1 Razorback without weapons, 1 terminator and a surviving combat squad in said Razorback.  I managed to kill most of the army namely the Terminators with Jaws of the Wolf and Murderous Hurricane with several missile shots. I lost two units with the Rune Priests both times but it was worth it.

Then we counted up the results:

Primary: Draw (contested) with the Terminator survivor!

Secondary: Tie, not over 225

Tertiary: I won, mine was alive.

Clark

The Long Fangs expect their guests!

Fire! Fire!

The last game was against Clark’s friend Kris with his Space Wolf list. This list was an interesting mix and was a Space Wolf version of Death Company denial as I call it. That is no scoring units; you just work to table your opponent to deny them any chance to win along with you if you can’t. His list was like this:

Canius

2 Lords w/ Runic Armor, Storm shields, power fist/frost weapon on a Thunderwolf

3 Units of Long Fangs with Missile Launchers

3 Units of 15 Wolves

2 Units of Thunderwolves with some assorted mixed gear

This army is built on the straight brutality and using cover to your best advantage.

We had this crazy minefield mission and I lost the roll to setup but did manage to seize again. We had the standard 12” deployment zone and he spread out with his Long Fangs in the building on one side and another set of Long Fangs on the other. He had two Stasis rockets in his Long Fangs. I gave mine to the two 7 man Grey Hunter Units.

Primary: Kill Points

Secondary: Recon, get more scoring units within the opponents deployment zone.

Tertiary: Kill the least expensive unit.

The Seize helped me by launching two stasis shots keeping his Thunderwolves and Long Fangs at bay. I also forced him to move his two other Long Fangs due to a corner castle keeping the shots off my army.

The game was pretty much cut and dry, he moved forward made bunch of saves using cover. Lose a few wolves and take a few more to the minefield once he moved beyond 6”. I knew I could not win the Secondary so I set to weather the worst. I did manage to clear all the wolf units and did some wounds to the Thunderwolves on the way in. Sadly, it was not enough as I started to take some losses. If the game had ended earlier on the dice I may have done better.

In the end he had the Kill Points, neither had the Secondary and we both had a tie on the last with no bonus points for either.

Kris

The Wolves advance through the minefield!

Kris ended up winning third and Clark won overall due to the Eldar player gave up after the first round. 

The Waaagghh at the Kalm! Part 5

The Waaagghh at the Kalm! Part 4

We got up for the breakfast at the hotel that was ok, except for the OJ! Ugh! It tasted like water with some orange juice in it…well I said something else but I want to keep this clean! Yea, we are OJ snobs it seems as Florida has spoiled me on one of my favorite juices to enjoy morning, noon or night!

We then went outside and hung out talking to various people waiting for the bus and limo to pull up and take the next wave over to the bar. This was another cool perk of the event as we didn’t have to drive after drinking and the van/limo was nice touches!

Upon arrival to the bar it was a madhouse…packed with tables and gamers scrambling to get their armies ready for the big day. We got checked in and I setup my cart as Chris loaded up his tray with his army. The Space Wolves was ready to rock. We munched down a second breakfast that was WAY better than the hotel including the OJ that was much better! I was able to walk around some and snap a few shots of several great looking armies and display boards before the event started. I knew once things got rolling it was going to be a crazy day.

Announcements was made, a honorum of given to a lost gamer that passed away and we got our table assignments and shot glass objective markers. It was funny that George Flowers dropped one when he was showing it off and giving an update that the winner of the first game would get a bonus shot glass! Off to our tables!

My first game was against Shawn Williams and his IG. He had a great looking winter guard look going and it was packed with armor. Here is what his list looked like:

Cmnd HQ: Chimera, 4 Plasma Guns, Plasma Pistol (officer)

Marbro

Battle Psyker Squad with Chimera

3 Veteran Units with Chimeras and 3 Melta Guns

Platoon HQ with Chimera and 3 Flamers

Special Weapons team with 3 Demo Charges

3 Platoon Squads with a Chimera each

Vendetta

Plasma Sentinel

Leman Russ Executioner

Mainticore

2 Hydras (squadron)

We took a look at the mission (a parody of Army of Darkness) and setup everything, then we rolled the dice to see who setups and goes first. After looking over his list I knew I was screwed if he won the dice roll, it was one of those games of “he who goes first will more than likely have the edge to win”.

We had a straight 12” deployment, 3 objective markers down the center of the table in even spacing. One of the three was the Orkinomicron and the other two was Vortex traps.

Objectives:

Control the Real Orkinomicron = 6pts

Capture the Enemy Keep – 5pts (declared building within deployment zone)

Kill Ash/Evil Ash = 4pts (players roll winner picks an IC to be Ash/Evil Ash)

Who Else Wants Some? Most expensive unit must kill 150% more VPs excluding HQs.

Ahhh! It Burns: 1pt (reveal a fake Orkinomicon) (could get this twice)

Setup was straight forward but slightly slow for both of us. He centered most of his army and was ready to surge forward and pound me with firepower for the early half and then check the objectives and clean up on points. Mine was simple, hide my armor, take cover with the Long Fangs and pray I seize. Otherwise take a beating and then push forward and pray I am on the right side for the Orcinomicron as the Capture the Keep was going to be tough unless I could get my scouts in there. The scouts held in reserve and the Battle Leader went solo due to the dumb INAT FAQ call.

Well, the game was just as I predicted. I failed to seize, Shawn pounded my army with shooting and I was punished by the Battle Psyker Squad. I could not get a clean shot on them or much else (considering I lost one Long Fang squad the first turn, one depleted to 1 man and the other took a single loss). The first two turns was also just horrible as I think I rolled more 1’s than binary code has. Dismal….I tried to figure out what I could salvage and hope I could distract him from some points and let the vortex help even the score.

Well, the Vortex did suck up a squad and Chimera and a few other figures (sadly we forgot to keep the vortex going each turn like the rules said. We thought they were one shot and this was an early AM game. This may have helped me a bit more and made him a bit more cautious with his army.

Towards the end the objective was in the middle, if I was lucky I could get a squad there but it would be tough and down to a run roll. They was shot down, fled back and rallied, 3” rally, moved and ran falling short to contest the 6 point objective.

We checked the rest of the points and he claimed the Capture the Keep, the rule was vague (it did not specify the entire unit, a percentage of the unit or just part) and I finally agreed. Shawn appeared to really want to win big and it was not worth pushing, after my rough week, I just wanted to throw some dice, have some fun and drink some beer. Who knows, maybe I would swing another award from their crazy pile of trophies.

I was able to break his HQ and I got credit for the killing Ash as my Evil Ash managed to live (the Wolf Guard Battle Leader that came in on a bad flank and was forced to hide in a tank to avoid being shot up.

He also claimed the 150% and I could not, then he got the two bonus points for checking the other two fake objectives. This left us 17-4 at the end of the first round. Not a great start but maybe if my next two games went better!

Overall, we had a great game. I was tired and forgot a few things as did Shawn but we both was cool about how to handling any issues there. Other than a small rules issue with LOS and cover saves that we did resolve was the only major issue we had the entire game.

Perhaps I could have been more aggressive but the dice was simply just against me for the first two turns and he taking the lead put me in a defensive posture the entire game. Oh well, on to the next game!

Here is some photo’s of the game!

Shawn, IG commander

Scout move...

Shot from my angle...

Amusing notes was found on each table...would you open the one that was the objective?

The second game was against John Brewer and his Orks!

After lunch we found our table and exchanged lists as well as glanced over the next mission called Winning, a spin on Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards gag.

John’s list was like this:

Ghazghkull Thraka

Big Mek with KFF and Burna

Two Units of 15 Lootas

15 Burna Boyz

18 boyz with shootas

3 units of boyz in trucks each with slugga and choppa and Nob with Klaw/pole.

3 Battle Wagons

The Objectives was like this:

Winning! 5pts, VPs (by 200) exclude HQs and any units killed by or in part by HQs.

Custody of the Twins – 5pts, control the two shot glasses

Fire the Crazy Guy – 5pts, one FOC is declared crazy, you must get it killed.

Domestic Abuse – 4pts, the Sheen and Richards declared models kill the other.

Adonis DNA: 1pt, if you win by 800 points or more.

John won the roll and setup in the center of the W deployment he had to use. He was setup within range of the KFF and ready to go anywhere on the table ready for a first turn charge. I spread the Long Fangs out, split the Rhinos up and hid in cover from the Lootas to avoid being shot up early on.

I seized the first turn and started to pound his ork army with shooting. This was a game of just ups and downs. John could barely get to me to engage men but I also was holding back to avoid giving him an easy charge to give him any advantage.

When time was called we checked to see what we scored…neither of us won by VPs (right at 200 with the exclusions), I had one shot glass but not the second. Neither of us got our Crazy guy killed. Sheen and Richards never got to face off, another zero. As we were under 200, the 800 was out of the question. So, we both got big goose eggs!

John was a great opponent and we had fun just drinking beer, shooting the hell out of one another and clobbering one another in close combat…a true Space Wolf vs. Ork game!

Here are some shots of the game…

Meet John! A kick ass Ork!

Beat down in the ruins!

The beatings will continue until someone dies!

The table early on...

 

The last game was against Dark Angels played by Josh Alexander. He had a tough list of Dark Angels that looked something like this:

Belial,

6 Deathwing Terminators (troops), 2 with bolters/cyclones, 4 w/ thunder hammers/shields

2 Ravenwing bike squads (3 each) with 2 meltas and 2 attack bikes with multimeltas.

Tough, small, elite and fast was what I was facing with the mission being simply a two fold VP game. Your first score of Victory Points you killed. Then you got a Margin based on the difference for a bonus.

We rolled off to see the deployment zone and ended up with Spearhead (random deployment zone) and then for first turn that Josh won. I moved to bunker down in one corner and set my rhinos up to counter attack whatever heads my way.

He scout moved and I failed to seize. His shooting wasn’t that great the first turn as I passed most armor and cover saves, and then started to attack back in force. I mobbed forward Belial’s squad and another squad that landed near my army using the bike locator beacons and quickly removed the bikes from the game and turned into a slow grind game of trying to kill one squad off at a time to get some VPs…

When time was called I had 7 battle points and he had 4 with a +2 bonus for me. 

Josh was another great guy to play against and the Bourbon part of the way through the game really was enjoyable. A true gentleman and gamer here again…this is the type of player that makes travel 11 hours worthwhile.

Here are some shots of the game…

Shawn, a kick ass guy for a Dark Angel (and I can say that as I own DA also!)

Here comes the bikes and first wave!

The dogs of war cried out and the slaughter began!

Advance!

Fighting was brutal!

Awards were announced and it was enjoyable to watch the wrap up. What I liked about this event was the type of awards they gave out as they touched on other aspects of the hobby from your basic Overall, Sportsman and painting to awards to those that contribute to making the Kalm a reality to those that support the hobby community in a positive way. They also give an award for the biggest bar tab and furthest traveled award as fun awards. To me this is a true cornerstone event that pushes the hobby to the fullest by making a fun and special event.

Here is some other odd random shots I got of the event!

Random cool scenery!

My vote for the best dressed player there!

The ladies seemed to think so!

The bar sign...

A shot of Dave's shirt!

He was playing a grot revolution army.

Viva! Da Revolution!

There was of course some competitive players there at the event, but even for the most part they was restrained somewhat and they was not arseholes about how they played at the event as they knew this wasn’t that type of event. Sure, everyone wants a trophy but I was there to throw dice and have fun. It was the trip, the experience and hey I still got a cool trophy the night before so I was pleased.

It was mentioned on another blog and I have to agree now in retrospect, there WAS NO JUDGES! Really, that is amazing, boys and girls playing together and having a good time? Amazing is all I can say!

Apparently one player quit after the first turn when his Grey Knights was tabled. Wow, didn’t he read the mission statement for the Kalm? If I travel anywhere, I am going to play my games no matter what, I never understood the logic of some people going to an event and leaving (unless it was a legit emergency) to me it disrespects the players and the organizer(s). Oh well….I had fun and next year I plan to be there to kick some butt with either Dark Angels or Chaos Marines more than likely!