Tournament Report

Captain Vanilla here, with my reflections and thoughts after the tournament that occurred this past Saturday!

Damn this is late. Stupid Latin.

Anyway, it was a 3-round Battle Points type tournament, 1750 points. My list consisted of:

Librarian
3x 10 Tactical Marines- Melta, Combi-Melta, Missile
10 Tactical Marines- Flamer, Combi-Melta, Missile
4x Razorbacks
3x Dreadnoughts- 2x Twin-Linked Autocannons
3x Land Speeders- Heavy Flamer, Multi-melta
2x Predators- Heavy Bolter Sponsons

So, the first mission was a variation of bases where objectives fly from the center of the board every subsequent turn, make a blast of variable strength and AP, and in the center of that blast, generates another objective. My opponent in this game was a foot-based Loganwing, with Wolf Guard hanging out in Grey Hunter squads with Terminator Armor and Cyclones. Two squads of Long Fangs as well, with five missiles. In this round I got lucky when it came to where the objectives deviated, which they always did. Essentially, I made an iron wall to advance behind and block his advances to the objectives late-game, deep struck the Speeders behind his line by his objective, and proceeded to flame things up and disrupt and focus down portions of his army. In the end, I had Ahriman teleport on turns 4 and 5, on 4 his squad fried one of his last one-man troop choices, then ported again to get atop his objective. I ended with all five objectives due to blocking, and a poor run roll from my opponent.

Game two was a VP mission wherein one must kill everything of a given target to get its VPs. I was playing against Orks, which was a normal list consisting of some hundred-something boyz, a battle wagon, and a couple trukks with Warbosses and Nobz inside. I set my army in a kind of right triangle position to tempt him to attack my far right, which had a dreadnought and a predator, and leveraged the rest of my army to de-mech and kill the boyz. One mistake that I made was that I did not plug up a mobility hole with a second speeder, primarily because I thought the base of a tree was wider than it actually was. Had he assaulted more units, my left flank would have been in dire straits- I spoke to him about that after the game. Using my weight of fire and flamers, I proceeded to kill Orks until the game ended, leaving him with something like ten boyz or so. What was awkward was that, even though I was clearly in control of the game in the later turns, he encouraged me to table him, but I simply didn't have enough things in range to do so.

Game three was interesting, albeit the weakest of the missions. There's an objective in the center of the table. Short table edge deployment, 24 inches out. Center of your front 24 inch line is another objective. The center one is a bomb that must be taken to the enemy objective. You must start your turn in b2b with the bomb, then you may only move 6 inches per turn, and on the turn where you start it with the bomb in b2b with the enemy objective, he chucks it in to give you a Major Victory. This time around I drew a Grey Knights opponent, whom had a bunch of Terminators, a Land Raider Crusader, and a Dreadknight. This game I decided as I set up would be a straight-up blitzkrieg, by applying enough bodies and fire that I get the objective completed before he can respond enough. Forgot to mention this, but I went second in all my games. So, he shunts the Dreadknight up, and picks the bomb up. I then apply all my firepower on that one target, and the weight of fire is enough to kill it before I need to use the meltaguns and Null Zone combo. So, I run a combat squad up, pick the bomb up, and wait. His Land Raider advances towards the objective, his dreadnought comes out. I speed my reserve razorback up, and melta the hell out of the Land Raider, advance the bomb, and even assault the terminators inside, hoping to draw combat. Which is what happened. The dread gets even closer to the point, his reserve terminators make for the point, and I have to make a goodly amount of saves on the bomb-carrying team. Next turn, I have my speeders zoom up to block his movement except through difficult terrain, and throw more bodies into the terminator combat, hoping to kill the last terminator off, and get the bomb in b2b with the thermal exhaust port. The dread gets immobilized, and the difficult terrain keeps him from getting the assault off on my team, and next turn I toss the bomb in and score a Major Victory.

Then we just played until the turn limit ran out, which resulted in my infantry getting sliced by halberds, especially my Librarian, and I walked away with second place in the event, which was enough to purchase the Predator I needed for my 2k list, which is virtually done.

While mission 3 is the weakest, with mission 1 not that far behind it because of variability, mission 3 was the most tense for me, but that came from how I decided to play it. Blitz the point, put the opponent on his heels, and use pawns' lives to get the job done. It required mobility, sacrificial units, and forethought, which surprisingly is in keeping with the 5th ed concepts.

The most interesting thing to come out of the event was that an Ork player took the 1st place, which really speaks towards generalship and ability.

Anyway, wanted to write this quickly, so here are my thoughts in a shell, and I wish I had pics!

dovie'andi se'tovya sagain, Ishamael