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.
