You can sleep when you're dead!

Archfiend of Dezdemon's Ork horde, being packed in the deployment zone of the first mission of Ard Boyz. He ended up winning the Ard boyz with two massacres and a major win if I recall. He has also joined myself and the others in blogging at The Back 40k, and he has his own ork centered blog at Da Waaagh zone!

So I'm just now getting to my Ard Boyz write up, but better late than never. I have a few regrets from that day, but its behind us and only room for improvement until next year. I came in fourth place, which was a very close race in the rankings. First place had 63 points, second had 43, third had 42, and I had 41. 

Firstly my list:

Tervigon; catalyst, toxin sacs, adrenal gland, stinger salvo
195
Tervigon; catalyst, toxin sacs, adrenal gland, stinger salvo
195
Hive guard x3
150
Hive guard x3
150
Zoanthropes x3 With a Spore pod
220
Genestealers x11
154
Genestealers x11
154
Genestealers x11
154
Genestealers x11
154
Genestealers x11
154
Warriors x4; deathspitters x3, Barbed strangler
150
Tyrannofex; Rupture cannon, cluster spines, desiccator larvae
265
Tyrannofex; Rupture cannon, cluster spines, desiccator larvae
265
Biovores x3
135
The list did pretty well for itself, besides half of my genestealers running from combat each game, but eh, what can you do.

Round 1
TheGravemind vs BlueMoon

Now he was using a Chaos marine army devoted to Nurgle, an army I had faced before at his tournament, but under different generalship. I won first turn, and went ahead and deployed. He then deployed in turn and I had my first turn of shooting against him. I kept most of my things where they were, and shot the rhinos with my tyrannofexes. One blew up and another one couldn't shoot. He spent the next turn or two running up towards me. 

I made a gaunt buffer to prevent the demon princes from assaulting my guys. I ended up being greedy and assaulting the demon prince to tie him up. They did a wound and survived to one gaunt on his turn, so that helped. I had biovores I had forgot for a turn, but they managed to do some wounds and actually kill a marine or two through the game.

With the daemon princes getting close at hand on my left, I had to also worry about the bikers coming from my right.

It eventually turned into this, bikers assault hive guard and tyrannofex, do some wounds, I assault in with gaunts, win combat and break them. last biker runs and I assault terminators to keep them busy.

On the other side, I get the bad luck of my first four genestealers squads to outflank onto my left side. So a plague marine squad and two deamon princes and 44 genestealers later, one daemon prince surrounded by 10-20 genestealers on the objective that had been there the entirety of the game.

As you can see, his deamon prince would not die off of that objective. Mean while his Greater summoned deamon was able to assault, wipe out a half strength genestealer squad and consolidate to contest my base objective. He was able to run a plague squad onto my right objective that was left alone the entire game. His back objective was where my fifth genestealer squad finally came in at, but ran one inch short of grabbing it, as did his plague squad that was heading towards it. My final folly that arose from my lack of sleep, was that on my last turn, my pod and zoanthropes finally came in. I dropped the pod onto his back objective to contest, but foolishly deployed my zoanthropes on the wrong side to give them a better shot. They were too far away to contest, and he killed my pod with an obliterator.

So that ended with a Major victory for Bluemoon. He killed more scoring units (counting the gaunts and all) I had more troops in his deployment via outflanking genestealers, we tied on Hq deaths, and I know he did not kill my tyrannofex, but I don't remember if I got his highest point unit.

Game 2
TheGravemind vs Plain marines

This gentleman had a very generic and balanced Space marine list in my opinion. I was very confident I was going to do well against him given proper opportunities.

This time I infiltrated two squads and outflanked the other three stealers.

He had two tac squads with razorbacks with lascannons. A master of the forge with servitors in a LRC, a whirlwind in the back, a typhoon speeder, five man snipers with telion, five man scouts in a storm, and a five man terminator squad that deep struck in. He was a newer player and that ended up being part of my down fall.

Pretty much I forgot how much I hated Spear head deployment. I infiltrated stealers into each undeployed quarter in terrain and decided to hold them there. I then spent the next three turns shooting into his vehicles to no avail. I managed to kill a razorback and then assault the troops with outflanking genestealers. They then consolidated into the ruins with another squad. Between my three squads coming in on that side (one killing the whirlwind turn two) I managed to take down a lot of his back field support, but at a great cost. Assaulting through cover sucks horribly.

What happened was between his newness and the distance of spear head, nothing in my army saw action besides the genestealers on my right side. He killed three squads of stealers, and had one at half strength. I had half of a dev squad, a tactical squad, razorback, and had the land raider at half strength. It came to about only 500 of 2,500 points killed on either side, with a 135 point difference. A draw for us. Luckly between it all, I had three of the four quarters.

This led to the third round starting with the top two facing with around 40 points each, and the next four having 15-20 points.

By my third game I had been awake for over 24 hours and I was not that awake to be honest, I forgot to take pictures. I was paired against an eldar player that honestly isn't the most competitive fellow, and didn't seem to be having that good of luck either.
He had
Seers in a serpent/falcon
avengers in a falcon/serpent (he had one of each, don't remember which was which)
Fire prism
gaurdian jet bikes
shining spears
banshees
harliquins
avatar
three war walkers.

I had first turn and was able to hugely cripple him. I weapon destroyed, immobilized, and or shake/stunned all of his vehicles in my first turn, leaving him none of them operational on his turn. My biovores took out all but 2 banshees in their barrage. His harliquins assaulted my genestealers, killed half, and lost combat and died. Genestealers came in and between everything else killed his two transports and their passengers besides the seer who was road blocked and safe till next turned. I assaulted and shot the avatar with mass termagaunts and managed to do a wound. That tied him up. I then followed up next turn with a tervigon, adrenal glands and toxin sacs allowed for two wounds to go through and ended up killing him. Three or so squads of genestealers in his deployment zone caused trouble when his jetbikes started showing up. With half an hour left in the round, he had a single shining spear in combat, and two guardian jet bikes left, both in combat and surround by genestealers. Of mine he had killed the two squads of gaunts and half of a stealer squad, he went ahead and called the last models dead and pulled the last jetbikes so he could start packing.

That gave me 21 to 2 killpoints, a Massacre. It also gave me the double KP battle point. I had 2,500 victory points from this game alone giving me easily the bonus point. My genestealers gave me another for being in his deployment, I got the last for having hive guard, a tyrannofex, and stealers all in the center.

So maxed points in the third round gave me a chance for Top three. But Bluemoon also managed to do well in his third game (He faced the winning guy in his second match up).
First place massacred second place pushing him to third, giving 2nd to bluemoon, and leaving me two points away from second/third place.

Overall very fun, but not my best performance on lack of sleep, and I even went on to make all my bad life decisions that weekend clocking in a total of 4 hours of sleep over three days. In the end I still had fun, and ended up using some saved up store credit to buy some possessed marines because I thought they looked cool.