The Last Hurrah of 6th: 5/17 & 5/18 Tournament Reports

Hello hello hello readers, I come today with a jubilant and triumphant spring in my step, for I bear news of the last gasp of 6th edition. With it comes reports from each side of the rules, both as a player and as an event organizer. So, with that in mind, we will begin a chronological progression, first with Bloomington's monthly throwdown, with me as a player, and then to Columbus's first tournament in over a year, which I orchestrated. Hit the break for the full details.


Before we delve too deep, I offer my sincerest apologies for my month of absence. I have been transitioning into a new job, and moving into new residence, as well as helping friends move out of theirs. In my absence, I've had to offer the biggest of props to my fellow writers, Godfrey and Trooper, for their continued publication of content. Now, without further ado, we close 6th edition.

Bloomington, as has become the usual, saw my Necrons in attendance, in the absence of my having found a suitable list for my Ravens. I'm hopeful that my Marines will become more attractive to me in the wake of what I'm experiencing thus far with 7th, as well as with my experimenting with newer and more diverse build ideas.

Round 1 - Vs Space Wolves

My first round saw me finally able to play against a longtime friend, whom we here at Rites refer to affectionately as "Scoob". This wolf loving viking at heart is a Space Wolf through and through, and has come on to the tournament scene with style since picking up the remnants of ZerkeX's Wolves. His least featured Grimnar (his warlord) in a drop pod with 4 TH/SS wolf guard terminators, Fenresian Wolf Pack led by a TH/SS Wolf Lord, 3 Thunderwolf Cavalry with various weaponry, 2 teams of meltagun toting Wolf Scouts, 2 Grey Hunter squads, and a team of Missile Fangs with attached Rune Priest. All in all, an aggressive and fairly fluffy list, featuring tons of wolves. When faced with Kill Points on long edge deployment. Not only did I win the roll to pick my side, I got to choose to go second, knowing my foe would swiftly advance toward me.

My deployment saw me castle up in response to him, hoping to guard against first blood plays from lucky missile shots. His drop pod came down in my deployment zone, and saw me wheel most of my army to deny him as many points as possible, via killing his warlord, snagging first blood (scarabs hurt drop pods), and denying him first blood. His reserve rolls didn't pan out well for him, and my last ditch effort to score linebreaker ended with him having taken but a single point from me, and my having left but a single grey hunter squad standing.

Round 2 - Vs Lion's Rampart (Son of Horus, Imperial Fists tactics)

Son of Horus and I have known each other for about the last 5 years, and have had the unfortunate circumstance that any event one attends is almost always hosted by the other. He and I have talked game design, business, Warhammer Fantasy, and all too often, Space Marines (he liking his and me not playing mine). Imagine our surprise to get the chance to test each other's mettle at such an event as the last of 6th. His list featured a lightning claw captain, two assault squads, three tactical squads (two of which toted meltaguns, heavy bolters, and powerfist vet sergeants, the third packed a plasma gun and plasma cannon, each of which were holed up in rhinos) a lascannon devastator team, and an imperial knight.

We were on short edge deployment, with heavy support scoring, and had four objectives to fight over, one in each of our deployment zones and two in midfield that would devolve into a gamelong scrum. He scored first blood on my command barge, but my lines held, and a late game drop from immortals secured me linebreaker. He misplayed by locking his knight out of combat by having his captain challenge my destroyer lord, and I misplayed by shooting instead of running on my last player turn. Each of these say the game end in a flat dead draw. Each of us held a single objective, and had scored a lone secondary. All in all, an excellent game, by far one of my best in recent memory.

Round 3 - Vs 49 plague marines

After some complications on time, third round was a bit crunched, pushing us into relic on diagonal deployment. This round saw me playing another Bloomington local, Jim. The man is always fun, fluffy, and flashy; bringing a radically different army each and every month. This month, he had 49 plague marines in tow, which he managed to roll up Master of Deception for, allowing two squads of which to infiltrate. Unfortunately for him, just as with the last time we played relic against one another, my destroyer lord managed to net scoring for his warlord trait, which, after sending my wraiths and scarabs forward to mosh pit his swarm of blighted legionnaires. Unfortunately the game didn't pan out well for him (poor saving rolls first round leading to about 10 casualties), leaving my army to grab all three secondaries and control the objective.

On the whole, the event in Bloomington reminded me of everything I love about playing 40k. Great games with great friends. I didn't need 7th edition, so much as I needed this event. At the end of the day, Horus and I split second and third (who can ask for anything more from a draw?), and I walked away with a box of genestealers, hoping to have something fun to play in kill team.

The Columbus bash saw me hosting a mission of my own design that I've been fiddling with for the last year or so. The specifics of the mission can be found in my Google Drive at this link.

On the whole, players received it well, and appreciated the broad diversity of things to do and ways to win, as well as the simplicity of totaling the winner at the end of the game. Havoc has even gone so far as to suggest the there's almost no other mission he'd rather be playing in a tournament setting. That said, there are some major tweaks required, not the least of which include tweaks to the wording on mobile objectives, as I'd like to limit moving such objects to units which have a weapons skill, as well as only to models which have objective secured (not extending to independent characters). Otherwise, I was pleased to see players quickly having to crunch numbers on who was winning and how to best wrest that advantage away from their foes, fighting tooth and nail for every inch. Most every game ended in a bloody mess.

All that taken in, so ends 6th.