The Aftermath: dramatt

While I’m also fairly late in talking about our latest tournament I suppose that some of you might like to hear how the games went down. Loki and Ishamael have already done a good job of explaining the tournament style and the setup, so I’ll just jump right to my army list.

1850 Point Tournament List
HQ
Reclusiarch 130

Troops
Assault Squad 215
10-man w/sarge power weapon, meltagun
Assault Squad 215
10-man w/sarge power weapon, meltagun
Assault Squad 215
10-man w/sarge power weapon, meltagun

Elites
Furioso Dreadnought 140
w/ Blood talons + extra armor
Assault Terminators 300
3 lightning claws, 4 storm shield/thunder hammer
Sanguinary Priests 255
2 w/ jump packs + Corbulo

Heavy Support
Dreadnought 105

Dedicated Transports
Land Raider Crusader 275
w/ multi-melta + extra armor


Game 1:
Game 1 saw me go up against the only other guy here playing a Blood Angel army. However, it really wasn’t a mirror match as he was playing a very different style than I was. Rather than focus on the all-out assault like I was, he was playing a much more balanced list that could be run under all most any marine codex and still work. It had three tac squads in rhinos, two assault squads (one with a captain with lightning claws), 3 multi-melta land speeders, and a full dev team with two missile launchers and 2 lascannons. The game went largely in my favor due to our starting positions. I won the roll off to go first and placed all of my units as far up as I could and centered around the middle. He choose to meet me in the middle, placing his land speeders on the front line and his devs close behind while keeping his assault teams and rhinos towards the back. He failed to seize the initiative, but managed to make two of his tac squads “happy” due to the red thirst. I managed to make one assault squad and the furioso dreadnought “happy” as well, but due to the presence of the priests it didn’t matter much. Turn one I surged as far forward as I could and took some pot shots at the land speeders, but failed to cause any damage. His turn one saw him fan one speeder out to the side while the other two mostly stayed put and fired into the land raider, but only shook it up a little. His dev choose to stay put and fired into the land raider, but only scratched the paint. This surprised me as this put his devs in assault range from pretty much my entire army, but then I realized that that was exactly what he had intended as his rhinos and assault squads were positioned a little behind ready to counter-charge my whole army once I’d finished his devs. Seeing this plan allowed me to come up with one of my own. I charged my termies into his devs and managed to fan out enough to also hit and destroy the two land speeders that had stuck around, with the land raider taking out the third after the termies got out. The rest of my army positioned itself behind the termies, but out of charge range of his army, ready to counter his counter-assault. With so many deadly terminators right in the middle of his field he had no choice, but to throw his entire army at them after his shooting failed to kill anyone (2+ saves with 4+ FNP is great for that especially with 3+ invuls for melta shots and the like). While they did get thoroughly devastated by that many guys attacking at once, one lightning claw and the reclusiarch managed to hold strong so that on the next turn my three assault squads fell on them like a ton of bricks and showed the kind of devastion that thirty furious charge assault marines can dish out. After that it was all over, except for the clean-up with me finishing the last of his rhinos off during turn 6 for a complete table.

Game 2:
Game 2 saw me playing another marine player, this one running Imperial Fists out of the vanilla marine codex. Night fighting was in effect the entire game, but my best range being 24” and getting first turn, we spent the entire game too close to each other for it to have any real effect. His army was a pretty balanced one using three tac squads, one on foot, one in a land raider with Lysander, and a six man squad in a razorback. He also had a shooty dreadnought using a twin-linked lascannon and a missle launcher, an assault squad with librarian, a sniper scout squad, infiltrating scout bikers, and regular bikers. The game was pretty straight-forward with me controlling the two points on my half of the field and him controlling one on his side with the two of us fighting over the point towards the middle (technically on his side). It pretty much stayed his way with him feeding me a squad at a time in order to keep my guys in the middle locked in combat. With Lysander making some awesome saves my guys didn’t go much of anywhere. Since the game was a fixed number of turns it turned into a draw when on the bottom of the last turn the razorback, which had just hid until this point zoomed out to contest one of my points causing a 1-1 draw. I knew it was coming, but unfortunately there was nothing I could send to stop it without losing one of my points anyway.

Game 3:
Game 3 was against our very own Heretic and was more or less the battle for second place. The Dawn of War set-up used isn’t as advantageous for my army as it is for most other assault armies as my assault squads rely heavily on the attached priests I usually choose to have everything walk on to the board turn one. Furthermore, using the modified system of kill points where each of my priests is worth 2 kill points can be something of a disadvantage. However, these are very small disadvantages when compared to the problems Heretic and his Tau army had. His tau list almost never has a good time against assault based armies and Dawn of War means he loses his first turn heavy shots from broadsides and no markerlights from the pathfinders. To be honest, it wasn’t a very fair match-up and the fact that I was making good rolls and he practically couldn’t buy a save didn’t help. I’ll leave it to him to better describe the contents of his army. His strategy, of grouping together and trying to use the devilfish as assault screens, was the best he could have done under the circumstances, but my power armor and FNP made me practically immune to anything his fire warriors could dish out. The 5 crisis suits and the commander (in two squads of 3) dished out some unsaveable hurt, but just not enough to stop me from rolling through his infantry to table him. To illustrate his luck the very first time I fired anything was a meltagun out of 6” into a devilfish blowing it up and taking a total of 10 fire warriors with it. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have any bad luck of my own, as at one point later in the game a squad of 8 assault marines and their priest had to jump into a crater to get within assault range of the last fire warrior squad remaining. Three of them got 1s on the dangerous terrain test and died causing a Leadership test, which they failed and ran away. Of course by that point it didn’t matter much. MVP for me that game was definitely my second priest with a jump pack (who is going to get his own name after this game). He and his squad were able to slip in around the devilfish screen on the right side and because of that got to assault and wipe out/sweeping advance a fire warrior squad, a team of 2 broadsides, and a team of 3 crisis suits (not the one with the commander though). This definitely earned the attention of the rest of the tau as they then turned their guns on the squads and with tons of fire warrior fire and the plasma from the other suit team quickly mowed down the squad until only the priest was left alive. That priest was then able to assault a group of pathfinders killing a couple and running them down when they tried to flee. Out in the open again he didn’t take too much fire and saved what he did take as the tau had to worry about the other squad of assault marines and the terminators who had busted their way through the devilfish screen and taken out the front fire warriors. In trying to keep out of the way of the termies and remaining assault squads, but still be in rapid fire plasma range the commander and his two suits left themselves open to assault by the priest who did just that. The priest was able to cause 2 wounds, one of which was not saved and then passed two saves of his own to win combat by one. The commander managed to fail his leadership and got run down by the lone priest.

All-in-all it was a horrible game on many levels for Heretic, but he took it well and I can’t complain as it gave me second place in the tournament.

Some thoughts from the Battlefield

Good evening folks, I have a question for you that first seriously occurred to me this Saturday. I was playing at the Game Preserve tournament with many of you and a situation came up where my sportsmanship and desire to win were at odds.

Ishmael and I played our second game since he has started his new Tau army and it was a both a good game and a solid win for me. Because of this win I was matched up with Lucas. Before the game, during the lunch break, I was walking back into the game room and saw the matchup sheet and found out that Lucas and I were in the winner's bracket along with Loki and Lucas' brother. While Lucas and I took our time with playing the game and while the game was still going on we found out that Lucas' brother had beaten Loki.

Now I was faced with a dilemma: If I won Lucas' brother and I would be the only two undefeated players in the tournament and would square off for the grand prize. I might have been able to pull out at least third place with a loss and two wins, but if I tied Lucas there was a possibility I would be able to play someone else. Lucas' brother's army is based on the use of Capt. Shrike making his army fleet, a horrible thing for Tau, especially when used with twenty terminators and twenty assault marines. So the question became "do I want to win and play Zach or tie and face some unknown opponent?" As I've said before I view playing your best game as a way of honoring your opponent and showing that you believe they are a worthwhile player.

Which is more important to you, giving your opponent the best game you can or playing in the hopes of winning the tournament as a whole?

The Aftermath: Loki

Sorry for the delay on the report from my end. I have been busy with work the past few days and the thought of an in depth post was not first on my mind when I got home, so without any delay, here's my review of the Bloomington event.

Ok so I will give some basic information regarding the event that was missed in the prior post by Brother Ishamael. The event was 1850 per army, with standard force organization allowed. Rules were standard Rogue Trader meaning that Painting accounted for up to 40 points. I will break down how the R.T. rules work.

Each game allows a both players points according to how they performed. Usually its 10/10 for a tie, 13/8 narrow victory/defeat, 17/3 crushing victory/defeat, and 20/0 if the defeated player is tabled. Now on top of this battle points are available for completing goals in the game (such as killing the enemy's most valuable unit, holding the enemy objective, etc.) These usually add an addition point per.

Once all games are finished, the army's standings are determined by adding the points from all of their games, and their painting score, and divided by the number of games they played. As you can see this can give a good edge to those who played well and even more so if you have a well painted army to score in the mid thirties or so.


Here are the tables so you can get a feel for what the boards were all like.




This is the experimental list I ran using a powerful synergy and the best of Kantor's "Hold the Line" rule. If you are not interested, skip to the "Game 1" section.

HQ
Kantor

Lysander

ELITES
Sternguard Veterans (10)

Sternguard Veterans (10)
Drop Pod

Ironclad Dreadnought
Drop Pod

TROOPS
Tactical Squad (10)

Scout Snipers (6)

HEAVY SUPPORT
Land Raider Crusader

The sterns had a power weapon and 5 combi-meltas each. The Tactical Squad had a meltagun, multi-melta, a Power Fist, and a combi-melta. Scouts had Telion

Game 1
So this game was against a well known face to me, our own ZerkeX. Having played him many a time in the kitchen, it was a bit of a disappointment to us both as we had hoped to play new faces in the event.

We both played good games, and both experienced good and bad luck. However, I will admit to a degree that I had superior luck in many cases in that game.

Overall, it was an interesting game, and the scenario used victory points, which was a refreshing change, but in the end, the only model remaining on his side of the board through a mistake was his lone wolf, which (following it's rules) gave me points for not dying, giving me a total of 1850.

Game 2
This game was not much of a game in my books. If I were to forcibly throw a game with nothing but pre-game information, I doubt I could have done much more to shaft my army in this round. Keep in mind I am not saying this was the case, only that the odds were very heavily against me from square one.

I had to stare down 20 fleet TH/SS Terminators, on Spear Head Deployment (great... no where to run) with bases placed in a unique style (1 per board quarter) with only a limitation of 12 inches from board edge and each other. My opponent placed his first in the middle of the board, slight offset to one quarter, and his second 12" straight down the middle line in his own quarter.

Now that is a tough nut to crack already... but wait folks there's more. Night Fight for the whole game. WHAT!?!?!? So my inherently shooting based army has to face down an inherently assault based army... with NIGHT FIGHT!?!?!? Where's the balance? I guess it was long forgotten.

Needless to say I was steam rolled, narrowly avoiding getting tabled with nothing more than 2 scouts and Telion left.

Game 3

Well I hope this game gives a benefit to the shooting armies out there since they got raped by the last game... DAWN OF WHAT!?!?!?!

Yeah, Dawn of War deployment for game three was not exactly what I was hoping to see for the final round.

I played against Harly-Lord Eldar (Harlequins and Wraith Lords) and managed a solid win, but it was a tooth and nails fight to the finish.

I attempted to cluster my forces on the left flank after having lost my ironclad to firedragons turn one... A tactical mistake on my part. But it took any a sternguard to finally topple the massive pile of Eldar and Lords stomping towards my force.

In the end, I managed to pile a healthy win using a kill point system based on what slot it was from

HQ = 3
Elites = 2
Troops = 1
Ded. Transports = 1
Fast Attack = 2
Heavy Support = 2

Pulled an astonishing 20 to 5, which surprised me as turn two looked like it was going to be uphill both ways in the snow.


Overall I had fun at the event and managed to place third. I will say the scenarios were not very balanced in that they game assault armies a major advantage (and seeing as the first two placing armies were TH//SS fleet termies [yes them] and Blood Angels, I'd wager I'm on to something). The only thing saving my skin and giving my third was a healthy painting score. The organizers realized this fact, and i am confident they will look to fix this in their future events. I have been to 4 of their events now, and each one has been enjoyable. Baring the game two bum-rape I received, I had a really good time.

So let me open it up to you the readers. What are your thoughts on these style of events? Do you have any ideas for custom conditions (hopefully more balanced than one sided)? We would love to hear them. But until the next time, may your dice comes up sixes.

Cheers!

Liturgies of Blood: It's a Bird, It's a Plane... Nope, It's a Bad Idea

Today’s chosen topic will be deep striking land raiders. Currently this option only exists for the deep-strike heavy Blood Angels, but that isn’t why we are looking at this today. Nope, for today we are going to discuss the retardation inherent in the very idea.
The first time you hear about deep striking land raiders is likely something along the lines of “That’s cool” (if you play space marines) or “That’s broken” (if you don’t). But then you start to think about it and realize that there aren’t very many benefits to doing this due to the following reasons:

1. Inherent in all deep strike is that you don’t always get it to come in when you want it or need it, and it may arrive too late in the game to be much use.

2. When it does come in it only gets to fire one weapon (thanks to Machine Spirit) and the guys inside don’t get to assault.

3. The land raider is a large model and scattering into another unit or terrain is far far more likely than with small based models.

Now let’s go over each of these reasons in detail. The first reason given is probably the least important as it applies to anything that deep strikes or outflanks, but most units that are held in reserve are back-up type support who are more useful showing up behind enemy lines and blowing something away before getting blown away themselves the next turn, which is something that while more useful early game is still helpful late game if they don’t arrive for the first couple of turns. Often this isn’t the case with a land raider and its occupying squad. These guys are often the big power unit of an army and their presence on the field is necessary. Not having your hammer unit until turn four or five can be disastrous. Furthermore, even if it does show up as early as turn two there aren’t many places that it couldn’t have just moved to with two turns of 12in movement plus the size of your deployment zone. Now a lot of people might say that its showing up without being shot at on the way there, and they are right. But remember it is also showing up with shooting its own guns, or the squad inside doing anything. Plus the shots that would have been fired at it didn’t go away, they just targeted something else in your army, are the kinds of shots that can faze a land raider are the kind of shots that can wreak havoc or other things.

Also we have to remember that when it does come it can only fire one weapon when it does show up. While one shot is better than no shots, it is all you can get while if you moved the land raider you could move it less than the full 12 or not at all in order to get more of the full fire power that the raider can provide. But the point of the land raider is usually not its guns, but its ability to move your heavy hitters up to the front line and have them pop out and kill something. The assault vehicle rule is arguably the most important rule that the land raider has, but when you deep strike you don’t get to use it. What is the point of an Assault Vehicle that you can’t assault out of when you need to?

However, so far all of these problems are only make the idea bad in nearly any situation, while this third large problem catapults the idea into the area of ridiculous. Despite the land raider being a huge nearly unkillable vehicle that is ties only with the monolith for highest armor rating (outside of apocalypse) it has no special rules that allow it to deep strike without horrible consequences. Imagine a giant the giant hunk of metal containing some of the deadliest fighters in the 40k universe, and right below that falling machine of death is a single grot. And then the grot wins. That’s right the grot doesn’t even take a single hit and the land raider goes straight to the mishap table. Now I can understand when this happens to small unstable vehicle like a skimmer, or individual infantry that are teleporting in from the warp, but a land raider falling from the sky? That just seems ridiculous. How much work would it have taken to write the land raider some of its own special rules for deep striking like the monolith?

The Aftermath: Ishamael

by Ishamael

Hey fellas, Ishamael here with some quick batreps at the tournament we attended yesterday! Unfortunately, Loki's got the pictures, so I can't give my commentary on the tables until the pics become declassified. At any rate, the Tau I took was the list from last time, only with the upgrade to a Shas'O added, as I had 25 points to spend, and a BS5 suit is everybody's friend. So, the format will be mission, opponent, highlights.

Mission 1

Pitched Battle Deployment

Victory: Score more Victory Points than the opponent, as defined in the BRB.

So, of the 12 players in the tournament including myself, I get paired up with the only other Tau player there, our very own Heretic. His list was something like this:

Shas'el

3 Suits

2 Suits

4x 12 Fire Warrior squads with 3 Warfish

1 squad of 2 Piranhas

1 squad of 1 Broadside

1 squad of 2 Broadsides

Pathfinders w/ Warfish

I got first turn, set up, and got seized. This could have been worse, but essentially our first couple turns were putting the same damage on each other, including the piranha squadrons' drones going into CC with the opposing side's Pathfinders. On turn 3/4 the momentum swung his way when my Suits decided they wanted to go back home and relax on the beach. Lost my Shas'O's team to a leadership check that really spelled my doom. Although, I failed three leadership tests on my suits, and they only ran 4 inches each! Since our officer's game was too much fun, we ended up playing through half our lunch, when we decided to call it there. I lost by a 520 VP margin. But hey, my drones sissy-slapped a Broadside for several turns, and his drones tied my Pathfinders for three or so turns. Very entertaining game.

Mission 2

Spearhead Deployment

Victory: Score more objectives than your opponent.

Special Condition: Night Fighting all 6 turns of the game.

2 things. First, fuck this mission. 2, the TO saying that we should roll for deployment zones then objective placement, is what killed me. I'll get into fixed gamelength at the bottom, as each game was at a fixed length. So, it's Night Fight for six turns, I'm Tau fighting Blood Angels:

Captain w/lightning claws

3x Tac Squads w/meltaguns and some random heavy weapon, with Rhinos

2x Assault Squads

3x1 Multi-Melta Landspeeders

Devastator Team- something like 2 lascannons, missile launcher, heavy bolter. Don't know, wasn't sure if everything was WYSIWYG.

So hey, I get first turn, choose my zone, then he wins the roll off to place the first objective. In my deployment zone. Objectives are placed within one of the four table quarters, with no restrictions on being close to other objectives. I then get seized on. Just about this whole game revolved around my speeders countering his, and once in a great fucking while my Suit teams would see something and get to shoot. Acute Senses rocks for random shit like this. Eventually, it came down to either a contest or cap for me on my own home objective (worth one extra BP if I held it at the end of the game, btw). My Pathfinders, after turns of jerking eachother off, finally got to use of the least-used abilities for Markerlights: let other units auto-pass Night Fight. So hey, I kill things, then my Kroot get Tank Shocked, run away, and it turns into a Minor Loss, his 2 objectives to my 1. For it being so stacked against me, I thought I did decently well at mitigating the circumstances. Damn, I need those pictures. Next time we go there, I'll have a camera ready for better batreps. Moving on!

Mission 3

Dawn of War Deployment (fuck me running lol)

Victory: Modified Kill Points (HQ 3, every Elite, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support worth 2 each)

This time I got to fight Nidzilla 5e:

2x Hive Tyrants

3x Tervigons

2x Carnifexes

1x Old One Eye

3x Termagant squads

This is about the only mission that I got to use most of the Tau tricks I know. I get first turn, and do NOT get seized, so my Kroot push him back to about the 6 inch mark on his half, and they just fall back to my battle line. This game revolved around me keeping him at arms length and pelting him. Although I got to finally play the Tau this event like I planned, this game was a hollow victory against a baby seal, and Carnifexes only having 4 wounds is asking for death. Ended up in a slaughter, so I really don't have much to say on that. He was a great sport about it.

So, what are my reflections? Well, game 1 was fine, VPs are better than regular KPs, but playing the only other Tau player in the tournament was surprising, as we all had to write down which army we played at signup. Mission 2 was as rotten as Cthulhu's balls, allowing the players that brought assault armies to get a free pass to the next round. Game 3 could have royally fucked me over. Piranhas AND their Drones were worth 2 per squad, then my 3 Crisis Teams, Shas'O, then my Hammerhead and Broadsides. Luckily, only 6/8 of the KPs I gave up game 4 were my Piranhas and 2 for a squad of Drones. Could have been far worse.

The terrain was okay, but some tables blatantly had more than others, including one table having a ridiculous amount of LoS-blocking walls.

So, I've been wondering about fixed game length. Each game in the tournament lasted 6 turns, then ended. In a normal 40k game, it can end on 5, 6, or 7 turns, which makes you think ahead as to what your plans are. Fixed game length leads to players not having to work as hard for their contest/control shenanigans, and I am surprised beyond belief that we did not have a Mechdar player there to show how bad such a length is. 2/3 missions were just "kill shit", with only 1 objectives game, which is entertaining, considering we go from VPs to a bullshit KP scenario.

Here's a quick recount of my experience. When I get ahold of some of the pictures I'll comment on the tables next!

See You Space Cowboy,

Ishamael

How do you prepare?

Well, the cast and crew of Rites of Battle will be chugging down to the Bloomington Game Preserve early tomorrow morning for a day of tournament action, so expect some Battle Reports and afterthoughts to come!

Yet, this has me wondering on how to prepare for the event.

First, some music to concentrate.

The truth of the matter is that I have had only five games with my Tau army, and lack enough experience points to really say that I'm sure as to how I will approach each table and opponent. Next, have I done enough good deeds for the Dice Gods to strangle the karmic cycle to allow me to hit with Twin-Lined BS 5 suits? In addition, of my entire army, only two Tau'r Rangers suits are painted, and painting can potentially be 40 of the possible 100 points to determine the victor. The rest of my army contains basic painting distinctions for special wargear, as well as knowing which squad of Kroot is which.

My 1850 list is as follows:

1 Commander Shas'el @ 92 Pts
Hard-wired Target Lock; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

3 Crisis Battlesuit @ 186 Pts
Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

3 Crisis Battlesuit @ 186 Pts
Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

3 Crisis Battlesuit @ 186 Pts
Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

10 Kroot Carnivore Squad @ 112 Pts
Add Kroot Hounds; Kroot Rifle (x10)
7 Kroot Hounds @ [42] Pts

10 Kroot Carnivore Squad @ 112 Pts
Add Kroot Hounds; Kroot Rifle (x10)
7 Kroot Hounds @ [42] Pts

6 Fire Warrior @ 60 Pts
Pulse Rifle (x6)

8 Pathfinder @ 216 Pts
Markerlight (x8); Pulse Carbine (x8)
1 Devilfish @ [120] Pts
Burst Cannon; Smart Missile System; Disruption Pod; Landing Gear; Marker Beacon; Multi-Tracker; Targeting Array

2 Piranha Light Skimmer @ 150 Pts
Fusion Blaster (x2); Gun Drones (x2); Disruption Pod (x1); Target Lock (x1); Targeting Array (x2)
2 Gun Drones @ [0] Pts
Twin Linked Pulse Carbines

2 Piranha Light Skimmer @ 150 Pts
Fusion Blaster (x2); Gun Drones (x2); Disruption Pod (x1); Target Lock (x1); Targeting Array (x2)
2 Gun Drones @ [0] Pts
Twin Linked Pulse Carbines

1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 175 Pts
Railgun; Smart Missile System; Disruption Pod; Landing Gear; Multi-Tracker; Targeting Array

1 Broadside Battlesuit @ 200 Pts
Team Leader; Twin linked Railgun; Broadside Battlesuit; Smart Missile System; Hard-wired Drone Controller; Hard-wired Target Lock; Shield Drone; Advanced Stabilisation System
1 Broadside Battlesuit @ [80] Pts
Twin linked Railgun; Smart Missile System; Advanced Stabilisation System
2 Shield Drone @ [30] Pts
Shield Generator

The lack of a second Hammerhead might be bad for one of my Suit teams, but either they find some LoS terrain to hind behind, or they just man up and get cover from being behind the Kroot. I know my basic battle plan, but it's going to be an interesting test of generalship on my behalf as to whether or not I do well with the Empire. Tau win or lose depending on you, a farcry from my very fun Khorne list.

So I figure I'll end it here with my preliminary thoughts, and with something that will be playing in my head all day tomorrow.

How do you prepare for tournament play?

See you Space Cowboy,

Ishamael