We only had a few people turn up for the local tournament, but that was kind of expected on a holiday/shopping weekend. When I arrived the tables that were set up were scarce of any real terrain. I tried to petition for a bit more ruins and LOS stuff, but the tables didn't change at all. So all the games were pretty much played in a shooting gallery with a forests and craters filling the tables, but a model in one corner could pretty easily see a model placed in the opposite corner... which is not really how 40k should be played. Oh well. This was an advantage for my army, as no one had anywhere to hide. The missions were all Eternal War, and it felt like we were a bit back in 6th edition with that. Maelstrom of War missions are very beneficial to everyone, as you can play to the strengths of your own army and try to exploit the weaknesses of your opponents. Eternal War missions are just about bullying the other player until the have nothing left to really threaten end game objective grabbing.
I brought my 2,000 point tournament list.
Game 1 vs. Tau
My opponent's list was a ton of commanders with drone commander and markerlight drones, each breaking up to be placed in one of four units of 2 Crisis Suits with missile pods each. He had 1 Riptide with Ion Cannon, 2 Hammerheads, and a Skyray. There were 2 Crisis Suits with Fusion Blasters in reserves.
Deployment was Vanguard Strike and the mission was Crusade with four objectives. I made sure each objective I had to place was pretty center-field, as I wanted to go for his throat in assaults. My warlord trait ended up being Move Through Cover and Stealth (Ruins), and amusingly we played on the one table with some ruins on the very back sides of each table edge. He got +1 to steal the initiative with his Warlord trait, which after a special thing he had put him at +2. I deployed to shunt into his face, and he deployed to shoot at mine, while keeping a few things a bit safe in case he didn't seize on me.
He seized. His first turn of shooting went fine. Overall I had 1 Dreadknight lose 2 wounds. He assault moved a bit to shuffle some things around. My first turn shunted all my Dreadknights in his throat, while keeping a 5-man combat squaded Interceptor unit in my backfield behind the only LOS that would help them for a late game objective grab. My terminators moved up a bit and tossed Invisibility on a Dreadknight and then ran forward. After all of my shooting I ended up immobilizing the Skyray, killing about 2 Crisis suits between a few units, and taking out about 7 or 8 marker light drones between his four crisis suit squads. Three had to make Morale checks, but all passed.
On his turn 2 he made both of his reserve rolls for his Fusion blaster crisis suits. Each squad came in, and each mis-haped in the same fashion. I was allowed to place them where I wanted, so I put them in my back corners - forcing them to move through my entire power armored marines before they could do what they needed... take down Dreadknights. He killed a Dreadknight in shooting and assault moved a bit back. My turn two had me grab some objectives, as we were closing in on time for the round (we weren't really playing slowly, but we only had 2 hour rounds with deployment on the clock). I shot more stuff, taking down quite a few Crisis Suits. I assaulted a Skyray and both Hammerheads and took them all down. Time was called and I had 7 VPs to his 5.
Game 2 vs. Orks
This game was against a good friend of mine, and it was a bit amusing that he switched to playing his Orks when I switched to Grey Knights. Unfortunately he was going to have trouble against my army, and this particular mission made the bout even worse. Purge the Alien. We had Dawn of War deployment and I won the roll off to deploy and go first. I got the Infiltrate Warlord Trait, so I held back three of my Dreadknights to counter deploy against his army. He deployed to suck up as much damage as he could, and I deployed to do as much. I was heavy on killing capability on my right side, as I wanted to thrust in some units to throw away my left flank so I could work my way to his right.
His list was the same as before (Battle Report 1), but he switched out a battlewagon and boys for some 2 units of Lootas and 2 units of Kannons for some firepower.
He failed to Seize on me and I shunted most of my army, sans 2 of the Dreadknights. I did a risky deep strike with my Strike squad, but it paid off as the didn't scatter. I chased a unit of lootas and kannons off the board, and did a reasonable amount of damage. I put Invisibility on a front Dreadknight that was blocking off major charge lanes to some other things. He unloaded bullets and charges, but after three complete turns of combat I was up 15 VPs to his 7. A Dreadknight in a particular pivotal combat ended up rolling Perils and got a '6' result from casting Sanctuary, so he ended up with a 2++. Between the mission and the open terrain, it was a battle that would have taken a miracle of bad rolling for me to lose.
Game 3 vs. Space Wolves
I was dreading facing this army as it had some trouble stuff for my army. I was ahead in VPs by a pretty huge margin, and everyone else was already 1 and 1 going in, as I was the only undefeated player in this small tournament. My hubris almost got the best of me.
His list was something like Bjorn, Dreadnought, 2 Razorbacks /w 5-man Grey Hunters (each with Power Fist and Flamer), a 10-man Blood Claw unit with 2 power fists and plasma pistol, an Iron Priest, a Wolf Lord with Storm Shield and Wolf Claw, a 3-man Thunderwolf Cavalry unit with Storm Shields, and 7 Terminators in a Stormfang(Stormwolf?). It could do some serious damage, and it did.
The deployment type was Dawn of War, and the mission was the Relic. I opted to go first and set up first, so I created a line of models ready to shunt. He fortressed up in the middle of his deployment area. I was seized on and everything moved forward. He did two wounds to a Dreadknight in his first turn of shooting. I did some pretty poor planning and put a lot of my units in charge range for next turn. I ended up rolling a bit adequately in the shooting phase, but only really took down the Dreadnought. I positioned a unit of Interceptors and Dreadknight (who was invisible) to charge his Thunderwolves. I killed two thunderwolves and we got locked in combat.
Turn 2 had the Terminators come in the Stormfang/wolf. The flier took down a Dreadknight. Bjorn charged a Dreadknight and ended up making three 5++ saves and then tore my Dreadknight to death. My invisible dreadknight ended up getting hit twice with a Frost Axe and almost went down. In hindsight, I should have challenged with my Dreadknight to force the wounds on his Wolf Lord. My turn 2 had my Terminators turn Invisible and charge into the thunderwolves, which ended up taking them all down. I tried to force my full HP Dreadknight down Bjorns throat, but failed the charge range.
His turn 3 saw some Grey Hunter charges into my Interceptor units, who were quite wounded. They managed to get some attacks off and take down most of each squad, however. His terminators charged my invisible terminators after getting out and picking up the Relic. He charged 5 inches and ended up having to consolidate his Relic holder, which put him at more than 6" during any phase, so he dropped the relic. Bjorn ignored the DK I was trying to get into him. My wounded Dreadknight went into the Stormfang/wolf while it was hovering as it had no other chance to kill it. My full Dreadknight shunted over to the relic and ran back, as I expected my Terminators to tie up his terminators since I had a bit of an upper hand since they were invisible.
Bjorn charged into the DK that took down the Stormfang/wolf and smashed it to bits. The small amount that was left shuffled about and shot at what they could. Terminators did damage to each other. I tried to charge my DK into a nearby unit of Grey Hunters, but failed. Invisibility went off on my Terminators, and Sanctuary went off on my DK. Time was called, and with the Relic I had 4 VPs to his 1.
-------------------------------
Overall I had a lot of fun, but if I knew the turnout was going to be lite I would have tried a bit harder to build more than a pretty obnoxious list in such a friendly tournament. No one brought a Lord of War or an Imperial Knight, minus our local Chaos Daemons player who brought the Forgeworld Nurgle dude. I'm going to break down my list a bit later so I can start some serious painting, so I'll be building another 1500-2000 point list to play while stuff is on my painting table. I'm researching some interesting Inquisition conversion ideas now.
No comments:
Post a Comment