Its all very well playing individual practice games but I don't really learn where my head is at with the game until I play something properly competitive. So I signed up for the spring tournament at my FLGS

This is 2:40 minute rounds at 1500 points so its maybe slightly less time pressure than I will be facing in Birmingham. Adjusted list for the reduced points will be posted at the bottom. Even so I decided to play fixed missions every game to see how well that stands up under pressure, it certainly does speed up my game. I can vary these depending on opponent but in practice I went with Cleanse and Engage on All Fronts in all 3 games

Short version - I won all 3 games but came 2nd because the first game was a struggle.

Where the lessons are going to be learned are in game 1. 

Game 1, Purge the Foe vs Blood Angels

Turn 1 went pretty normally, cleansing and engaging on all fronts with Kroot Hounds while I moved up behind them. We traded blows as expected

Turn 2 I had a shot at Kill More because top of the turn he shot some Carnivores and my reactive fire from Krootox got a kill on his Intercessors. I focused down his big Sanguinary Guard unit with the Sanguinary Priest for 2 more kills, picked up some assault intercessors and took out his scouts in melee with a unit of Krootox. All very good but I had a total brain-failure and pushed a unit of kroot out as forward screen instead of combining them with another unit to bubble wrap my big gun lone ops in the middle. Big oops. I have played this game long enough to know what BA do so why I messed this up is purely lack of match practice

Turn 3 his second big unit of Sanguinary Guard duly fly over my kroot and make it into combat with Shadowsun and the Twin Lance and delete them. Ouch. I am now playing on the back foot with a lack of weapons that will easily hurt some of his units and its entirely my own fault. Fortunately this unit of Sanguinary has a Captain instead of the Priest so I am just about able to pick it off with pretty much everything I have left in the middle - having used Rejoin the Hunt I drop a big unit of Kroot and my Vespid in his backfield so at least I'm still scoring half-decent secondary

Turn 4 he sends his last unit of sanguinary guard back to defend his home objective but they fail their long range charge on the vespid and that's the game really. I clear out the sanginary guard and take his home objective.

We rapid-move turn 5 as all he can really do is move his tanks to try to hold objectives and leave a fair portion of the table to the scraps of units I have left. Its still enough to win but with a low score because 

a. I only got kill more once (not really a surprise)

b. I messed up badly and had to regroup rather than expand onto objectives in the mid-game.

This was a pretty good wake up call for my screening / bubble wrap game and to pay attention to it earlier in the game than I was. BA are very fast and covered a lot of table. Going into 11th edition this is likely to be even more critical with the new overrun fight rule so I really need to dust off those cobwebs in my head and have a tight screening game. I managed to pull through this with a win because Vespid are that good. Really they are. Their ability to drop into the backfield and score points - and force an enemy to either concede me the VP or turn around and send a unit back - wins games.

58-50 win for the kroot

Game 2 was hidden supplies vs Emperor's children with just 1 of the new defilers

Hidden Supplies is a strong mission for me as I will usually flood the objectives. Emperor's Children has never been a very difficult match for me and this game was not really different. I camped the objectives and forced him to trade into my kroot for a couple of turns, he is of course trading down into cheap kroot. On turn 3 I finished off the defiler with my first activation of the shooting phase when Shadowsun actually rolled well for the first time in 3 years. With my vespid cleaning out his backfield and the rest of my shooting clearing out his right flank the game was effectively over and he was playing for pride and to avoid being tabled. Hence a very big win to me

Other than that the defiler is very good but will die if you shoot it there was not much to learn here - forward screening (kroot jail) works great against EC and he could not touch my lone ops which were doing the damage. The Vespid did their thing again, they love killing marines and stealing their objectives.

100-38 win for the kroot

Game 3 was terraform vs Tyranids - an unusual list with a bio-titan

Terraform is another strong mission for me and he did not have enough assault to punch through to my lone ops vs my multiple lines of kroot. By turn 3 I held 2 of the mid-table objectives and we kept swapping control of the central one so he never scored a single point of primary. By turn 4 I had his home objective too - he turned his bio-titan around to reclaim it but he knew the game was gone as by turn 5 the titan was the only model he had left.

Those big blocks of genestealers with brood lord are really punchy but when all they punch out is a unit of kroot its a losing game for the tyranid player - I have a load of D2 weapons to delete them once they are exposed. The bio-titan constantly killed models all game but if you leave me with  units of 1-3 surviving kroot then enough of them will make their battle shock test often enough for me to just cruise to the win - and 5++ means you really have to commit to overkill to avoid leaving a survivor. I fell short of my target on scoring mostly because I forgot the reactive move on his gribblies - moved a lone spear off an objective to shoot gribblies but they hid behind a wall and unable to shoot I was also unable to make my post-shooting move back onto the objective. Small oops. 

86-41 win for the kroot 

At no point in the day did I regret dropping the brick of Rampagers to have the Twin Lance instead. They are more mobile and do work in two phases of the game instead of one. On the fairly packed terrain of the tournament Rampagers are actually quite awkward to make great use of while the Twin Lance thrived with their Lone Op especially frustrating the Tyranid player who just could never attack them.

Did I win? No. Did I have a really fun time and learn a huge amount about where my game needs polishing up ahead of Birmingham? Absolutely yes. 

Modified list 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - T'au Empire
+ DETACHMENT: Kroot Hunting Pack (Hunter's Instincts)
+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1495pts
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Commander Shadowsun (100 pts): Warlord
Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin
Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin
Kroot Lone-spear (90 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin Enhancement: Kroothawk Flock (+10 pts)
Kroot War Shaper (60 pts): Dart-bow and tri-blade Enhancement: Root-carved Weapons (+10 pts)
The Twin Lance (185 pts)

20x Kroot Carnivores (140 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)

12x Kroot Farstalkers (85 pts) Londaxi tribalest
5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts):
5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts)
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): Repeater cannon
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): Repeater cannon
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): Repeater cannon
5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts)

List lessons learned:

More Vespid. I'm going to take more vespid and see how that does

Less characters. I really didn't miss either the Flesh Shaper or the Trail Shaper. More points for Vespid then...