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.

Darkside 2250 tournament (April)

Well, this is long overdue to post, so I will just post the highlights.

Chris and I hit Darkside this month and brought some interesting armies. Chris broke out his Blood Angels again to give them another try under the new rules and I put together a Chaos army with IG allies.

Chris was able to go 2 wins and 1 loss. I ended with 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw. A mistake on my part caused the draw and should have been a win for me but I really didn’t care. I felt like I was not in the running for the top and I was having a great game anyway with Cajun in the last round.

All three games was great except for the middle one with the Tyranids which I have to say was unique and refreshing to play but wow the gaunt unit doing like 60 shots on a flank with rerolls (gah!) Very annoying…..it was a one hit wonder but wow it was a rough game. Maybe if I had another turn or two it could have been a game changer for me as we NEVER got past turn 3. So, it was to the Tyranid player’s advantage at that point, I was slowly chewing down his army and as I said I could have turned it around given another turn or two. It was just a simple case of a new player with a large army that just plays slowly, it sucks but not much you can do about it.

A strange gaming weekend!

Well, Chris and I went to Darkside for a 2k tournament this weekend but met with both disappointment and a good time out gaming still. When we got there there was only a total of 3 players in attendance. Several others said they would be there but ended up being no shows. One guy stopped by the shop that played and went back home to get his very cool and nicely converted Nurgle themed IG.

I managed to get in two regular games and Chris had one before we thought it would be a blast to do a 2 on 2. We diced for random pairings and had a blast.

The first game against IG was a rough one that I managed to win simply by surviving shooting and getting the luck of the dice of having the objectives near me to grab at the end of the game.

The second game against the breath taking IG was a kick in the pants for me as my dice was hot and cold (more cold than anything) that just determined the tone of the game. I was plowed under by the volume of firepower this IG list had. Still, it was a good game and a great guy to play against.

The last 2 vs 2 was Chris with his Blood Angels and Space Wolves allies with the Nurgle IG vs IG with my Chaos. The game ended up a loss for us as the pods enveloped one side and took one objective the center was up for grabs but they managed to snare it at the end and I was shot enough that my cultists failed their LD test and ran like children from the field. I think we had about 4 solid turns before I noticed it was getting late and we had a long ride back.

Brain (the owner) bought pizza for everyone and the fee paid was returned due to the bust in attendance. Chris and I was able to take to Mike about Bolt Action some and I think we have a plan to get a regular once a month group together in the future. I did purchase the  Dark Angels Codex with the remainder of my store credit with a bit of cash and picked up some Army Painter Angel Green to primer my Dark Angels green to get them painted quicker. Now that I have a nice new codex there is no longer an excuse to not paint them! Chris nabbed up a Manticore as he has been getting the bug to upgrade his IG that I have been using in the past as new allies. I suggested he should blow off the dust from  his Tau as they get a new book so and the Eldar is just over the rise and he should start painting up what he has to be ready!

All in all, it was a good day of gaming and hanging out. Sucks about the tournament, but prizes are not everything when you have a good time in any case. Still, it would have been fun to bring him some more Dark Angels goodies like the new fighter, Terminator and Bike command boxed sets! Oh well!

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!

Wolf/Tau List at 1850 for Tournament

Well tomorrow is my first tournament using the 6^th edition rules with only 3 games under my belt which is a bit less than I would have wanted to have but things have been crazy the past few months preventing me from being able to really get any more games in.

So, I have gone with a simple analysis of a focused fire army with strong scoring with the ability to hand HTH within limited standards. To me 6^th is much like 4^th where Chris and I had our Word Bearer armies loaded up with 8-9 troop choices and foot slogging. We would push forward with heavy weapon support, demons would drop out later out of icons and mid and long range firepower weakened our opponents. This army follows that same concept. Push to the mid field or objectives at least, hold them and damage the other army quickly.

At 1850 I quickly found that I had to trim the fat and even remove a few things I would have rather kept in the list if possible. Still, I think I was able to cobble together a fairly strong list using Space Wolves as the core and Tau as the allies.

Here is the list as it stands:

Rune Priest       Living Lighting, Murderous Hurricane

Rune Priest       Living Lighting, Jaws of the Wolf

2 Squads of 10 Grey Hunters with 2 Melta Guns, Rhino, Power Weapon

2 Squads of 5 Grey Hunters with Rhinos, one with a flamer (escorts for the RPs)

3 Long Fang Squads (two 6 man, one 5 man) all with missiles.

Commander Shas’o  Flamer, Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Hard Wired Blacksun Filter, Drone Controller with 2 Gun Drones

3 Crisis Suits with Flamer and Twin Linked Missile Pods, Leader has Hard Wired Drone Controller with 2 Gun Drones and a Blacksun Filter

6 Fire Warriors

3 Broadsides with Blacksun Filters, Leader with Hard wired Drone Controller with two Shield Drones.

As they are not “battle brothers” but rather “allies of convenience” I am working with two armies. Other than being able to add a few ICs to the other army nothing is a huge impact for either list. The Tau Commander can join the Fire Warriors or Stay in a Crisis uint as it merges 4 suits with 4 drones making a fairly strong unit size and decent firepower that ignores night fight along with the Broadsides. Three Long Fangs adds more long range threat with two squads for objective grabbing further in, while the other two and Fire Warriors grabs objectives closer to home near the end of the game.

I am also going with the feeling that most games will not make it past turn 3 or 4 at best with the new rules. So, my goal is to push forward grab some objectives by turn 2 or 3 and bunker down. Try to get first turn to get First Blood and Focus on killing the commander. I am unsure I will get the final bonus of getting a unit in the enemy deployment but that remains to be seen. Maybe I can sneak something in or dare to deep strike some of the suits as it appears Linebreaker is based on a unit, but does not specify what.

Doing an army breakdown of firepower:

3 TL Rail Guns at ST 10, AP1

14 Missile Launchers, ST 8, AP2

4 Missile Pods dishing out 8 shots at STR 7, forgot the AP right now.

4 Melta Guns with STR 8, AP 1

5 Flamer STR 4. AP 5

6 STR 5 Fire Warrior Rifles

1 STR 6, AP 2 plasma rifle

2 Power Swords

2 Force Swords

Tons of Bolt Pistols, Storm Bolters and Bolters

2 STR 7 Living Lighting at d6 shots

Is there some weak points? Oh yea, against HTH I could have a rough time against a heavy close combat unit but I hope to shoot the crap out of them to ensure they are not a threat. Armor I am not worried about or other shooting. Flyers could be an issue (both vehicle and FMC) even so, if they are I will just dump a few shots at them and hope they go down....the twin linked Rail Guns for example...twice the chances to hit...

Darkside Team Tournament: June

Well, things have been getting a tad crazy over the past few weeks with my birthday, a trip to St. Augustine mixed in with the 6th Edition roll out chaos with the last week of the fiscal year at work that has kept me from posting as much as I would like. While I no longer have the lists from the event and details of the games are fuzzy now (after all these weeks), I am just going to present a series of pictures and and overview of the event.

As this was the last team event for 5th edition the turnout was very high as I invited another friend that brought over a few other guys from his area to play. Mixed with the local regulars, a few out of town regulars and a few new faces we had perhaps one of the best turnouts.

Chris and I brought "Blood Wolf" Team this time, this was a mix of Blood Angels and Space Wolves. The list was straight forward with two units of Wolf Scouts, Rune Priests, Grey Hunter Squads (I think 3) in Rhinos with melta guns and power weapons, Wolf Guard (mixed in the Grey Hunter and Scout Squads), one Long Fang squad was there if I recall correctly sprinkle in some Ferensian Wolves for fun. Chris has several jump troops with melta guns and inferno pistols, a Librarian with Blood Lance (and some other power), two Baal Predators rounded out his list.

Our first round was Tau and Grey Knights, an interesting mix of Rail Guns, Crisis Suits, a  unit of Fire Warriors and Kroot. The Grey Knights was very small with two units of Terminators, two Storm Ravens, Librarian and Dreadnought (or two).

The game was lost simply by some bad choices on our part, we had the upper hand by the end of the game but it was simply not enough to take the win. This was a great first round that was a blast...here is some shots...

Our opponents...

The table...

Our Deployment...

Their deployment...

Baal sneaks in...*dakadaka*

Our second game was double IG, lots of troops, Chimeras, tanks, heavy weapons...oh my! Chris and I went for the theory of reserves. He opted to drop this time as the table was more friendly to deep strike than the one prior. Otherwise his army would be turned to goo in a moment along with mine. I held back some troops and planned for the worst entrenching my Long Fangs in a tower and hiding mos to of my rhinos except one for reserves. We took a solid win from this table after a rough loss to start...

Commanders of the IG

First turn, Rhino goes all out into the lines and the other hides  as the squad inside bails out to allow the Rune Priest to line up a shot with living lighting.

DOA from the Blood Angels, dead on...

Hey! A tank! Nuke it!

Blood Angels wipe out conscripts...

Blood Angels amok in IG lines..

Space Wolves move to support...

Our last game was against IG and Sister's of Battle, wow this was a crazy game and again a great set of players...by this point we was happy with who we played and how we did...we took a stunning victory here as everything just went our way with the dice.

SOB player on the left (not SOB, but SOB) and IG on the right!

Early on, Rhino down, Wolves Advancing...

Later in the game Valk down, Wolves advancing to support the Blood Angels that deep struck.

Rune Priest is unaware Saint Celestine has arisen from the dead!

Epic fight with the Rune Priest dead!

3 great games, 3 great players and a decent mix of non-marine lists oddly. We had a blast and was a nice leader to our birthday week starting in a few days. We are looking forward to September next with 6th edition in the wings.