Tuesday, June 15, 2010

A 500pt tourney part 1

So I'm home sick today, had a fever and took a day off of work. Also today, my cute little (7 years old) puppy is at the vet having surgery. She blew a tendon in her "knee", so she had to go to a specialist to get it fixed. She has to stay over night and everything. Days that I stay home sick are the times I enjoy her company while I lay around and watch movies. It's a lonely day with out her so I figured I'd do my write up of the 500 point tournament I went to this past weekend.



"Bring your 500 point 40K army and do battle against SIX other opponents, in one hour battles. Tables will be 4' x 4', and missions will be 4 objective missions and 2 modified kill point missions. Restrictions: 500 point limit. No models with more than 3 wounds. No models with more than 6 toughness. No vehicles with more than 12 armor on any one side. No special "named" characters."

That is the general rules for the tournament. It made it so no landraiders or monstrous creatures could be brought. That really screwed over my tyranids. What was worse was that marines AV is bumped to 13 for their special weapons. I later found out that some armies didn't have it so bad.

My list was this.
Alpha warrior, lashwhip and bonesword and scything talons
5 warriors with scything talons and deathspitters + 1 with barbed strangler and scything talons
7 genestealers
2 biovores.

I was expecting a good amount of foot infantry armies, and I expected orks to be everywhere running wild. What I discovered was that IG even at 500 points were crazy and I should have brought hive guard. You live and you learn I guess.

So my friend and his girlfriend were also signed up for the same day. I managed to play both of them. My friend decided to just have fun and brought a Deathcompany list. Reclusiarch, 9 deathcompany, and a DC dread with blood talons. That's right, 4 out of 6 missions were objective based and he can't hold objectives. His girlfriend brought her orks. But all of that in good time.

Game 1: Tau

Commander: fragmentation lauchner, fusion blaster, missiles
Suit: missiles, plasma,
Suit: missiles, ion cyclonic blaster
9 fire warriors
9 fire warriors
12 kroot

I'm going to call him Scotty, I really like him, fun to play against and a nice guy. I honestly felt bad for stomping him so badly. Now he wasn't bad, but obviously still new. And sadly there wasn't much terrain on our table for him to take advantage of. As seen above, I put my warriors forward, biovores behind, and genestealers outflanking. He lined up his warriors, hid his suits behind the hill, and outflanked his kroot. I had first turn, moved everything up six, and unleashed my fury upon the Tau. My biovore hit with both barrage shots, giving me like 8 hits on the squad, even after he maximized the distance between them. I killed half of the left squad with that one multi-barrage, they didn't get pinned, but ended up running off the table. My warriors then shot a barbed strangler shot and killed a few and pinned the second squad.
On his turn, he jumped his suits out, put a few wounds on my warriors that I was able to allocate around. On my second turn, my genestealers came in right behind his suits and wiped them out in combat, while my warriors shot the rest of the fire warriors to corpses.

His turn two he just had his kroot left, and they didn't come in, so I skipped my next turn and let him roll for turn three reserves. I was sitting in the middle of the map with warriors and biovores. I wasn't going to move much if I had taken my turn. Turn three they came in on the side, shot at my warriors and I made my saves. Next turn I shot them to three guys, who assaulted me on their turn and died.
Overall it was a fun game, I wished him the best of luck, gave him some advice and tips. He would later be a very important person in deciding the final rankings.

Game 2 : Imperial guard
The TO even poked fun saying this guy was still in Ard boyz mode. His list was this.
CCS: meltaguns x3, Chimera, heavy flamer, mutilaser.
Vets (10) melta gun x2, chimera, H flamer, m-laser
Vets (10) melta gun x2, chimera, H flamer, m-laser
Hydra flak tank.
And here is where I hate the restrictions. They hinder most armies, but IG yet again prevail. Their tanks are still AV12 in the front, and the hydra comes in at almost half of the cost of a rifleman dreadnaught. sigh, I was missing my Hive guards heavily this game.

So The mission was three objectives roughly middle of the board, with deployment 18 inches from a corner. I deployed my guys up and outflanked the genestealers. There was a large hill center of the board, which gave me cover for part of the game. Pretty much the Hydra was killing a warrior a turn, on top of all of the chimera shots and such. I had pretty much given up from the beginning but I wanted to see what I could do. Well I got to one objective for one turn before having everything dead. My genestealers came in turn three, when it didn't matter. They came in, destroyed the hydra, and immobilized and weapon destroyed a chimera. 
I was already getting frustrated with this guy. He wasn't really being a jerk, but he was trying to pull off some bull, like driving through some trees, pushing them to the side, and claiming he has cover. I had to explain as well as I could that vehicles don't get area cover, especially when you plow through and move them. Then he tried to drive his hydra forward, held it up and then drove his chimera under it so it would be propped up so it would get and angle over the hill. I had to straight up tell him no on that one. And other little things like he kept hitting the trees and objectives and moving them. And now here is the part that really ticked me off, last turn, I was already all but destroyed, and he pulled all of his tanks so he could heavy flamer my genestealers.

So I'm tabled and he gets the victory, and oh what is this, he pulled himself off all of the objectives to do so. He argues that because I'm dead, he gets all of his turns uninterupted until turn seven to get back to them. The TO agreed that he gets the bonus points for holding all objectives ontop of the massacre points. I told the TO it was his decision but I disagree with it and thought it was bull. The objectives are supposed to be the objectives of the mission, hence the name, not killing the opponent. If you want the objectives and to kill me, then plan it out. It is like chess, you can have two queens and all I have is a king, but that does not guarantee a win, it could still go to a draw if you don't plan and play well.

So there is an objective behind the left trees, the black objective is knocked over from the right trees, and the yellow objective is below the hill. The chimera closest to the yellow is his command squad and the other is too far away. My genestealers were on the right side of the two top tanks.

Game 3: Death company
This was my buddy's army as listed above.
Reclusiarch
9 death company, hand flamer, 2 power swords, and a power fist.
DC dread with blood talons, melta gun, and storm bolter.
In his previous game he had gotten 21 wounds with his dreadnaught. I knew I needed to stay away as I had nothing that could hurt it.

The mission was center objective, have the most troops within 6 inches of it. Diagonal deployment. Special rules: Daylight fades. First two turns all units have -1 Bs as the sun is on the horizon. Starting turn three on, it is Night fight. Now that didn't effect either of us much/at all.
I hid my warriors and biovores far back behind the walls, and infiltrated my genestealers so he had to go the opposite direction from the objective. It worked for a turn or two, but I forgot the dread had fleet, so I got charged and killed after two turns by the dread. On the charge I got a rending penetrating hit, which only gave me a 2. On the next turn, I got a glance, which came to a 2 again. sigh. Mean while I killed 5 of the 9 death company with great biovore shots. The dread had to wrap around the terrain, but I had the Death company running right at my warriors with the chaplain in the front.
I made a decision, him or me, moved my warriors up, unloaded with my deathspitters, killing two more, and then charged. My alpha warrior managed to kill the Reclusiarch, and my warriors killed power weapon and chainsword guy, but the powerfist guy remained, and crunched some warriors. I was hoping to kill them off, and consolidate back away but I was stuck. The pile in then allowed the dreadnought to charge into the fray. My Alpha killed the power fist guy, and then I got slaughtered by the Dread. As I had predicted, I was tabled, and the Dread sat on the objective unharmed. But he got the win for the massacre.
Mean while my previous opponent, and a guy running a list almost exactly like his were playing on the table next to us. My friend and I had made a bet during the lunch break how their game would go. He said it would be one sided, I said draw. It was a draw, the only non-massacre either of them got that day.

So that's it for the first three games. I have three more to write about. I managed to keep the mission sheets for each one, along with pictures, so they should be pretty accurate. As a note, I may make a third post with all of the missions fully written up, as they are pretty good missions and the TO got many good compliments on them. So I'll finish up the battle reports when I get more energy, darn sickness.
Until then!

6 comments:

  1. Interesting format, I see you saw the problems firsthand :P

    Cool reports and minis.

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  2. The idea for the tournament sounds excellent! Nice images and reports. Thanks for sharing them.

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  3. I would have defiantly defined what those trees counted as before the game. Area terrain generally has a base, and the rules allow you to move the features around within that base to allow models to be placed. Without a base, I would have counted those trees as static terrain, blocking LOS and impassible. There are different schools of thought on how area terrain and vehicles interact. It's always a good idea to clear that up before a game.

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  4. Ya, they were static terrain, I really don't know what he was thinking. It was
    [tree][chimera][tree]
    and he claimed he had cover even though I had full view of his front side (not that it mattered I had nothing that could hurt AV12)
    He was also interrupting his son's games making comments and such, while not being rude or really game changing it was some what annoying. His son was a cool kid, and was running a list similar to mine, but instead of biovores he had a brood lord and more stealers. He did well for himself as well.

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  5. Was this at the GP in Lafayette?

    I wanted to go, but there have been so many events in the last month, I just don't have the time.

    Speaking of, hopefully you'll be feeling better for the tournament this weekend.

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  6. Yes, it was at the lafayette GP, I almost didn't go because I didn't like the restrictions, but then I remembered I needed to pick up a pay check and some stuff from my apartment.

    Doh! I almost forgot about the upcoming tournament. sigh, Fail. I've been home sick and have worked on everything but my army for this weekend. Well I have a few days still I guess.

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