Ok, finally closing out the Adepticon 2023 catch-up

Game 1. Win v. Wolves

I thought they had us in the early turns. It was clear they cross a lot of table quickly.

• Should we leave the sentinels forward and give the enemy the extra move, or just pull them out? I think it'd be helpful to pause on decisions and go through outcomes in practice games. here my thinking was that I wanted early pressure on the objectives. I also wanted to divert them to get some shooting in where possible before they reach me. I also set the bullgryns up to stall their advance, knowing they'd break through the sentinels quickly. 
• The thunderwolves were very tough, but our shooting was able to overcome them. Maybe with a smaller squad size they'd have been able to hide better.
• We did effectively screen out their terminator reserves. They then held the back lines instead of causing more immediate problems in our lines.
• Once the thunderwolves were effectively nullified, we were able to shift our focus to launching out on to the midground objectives.
• Again terrain placement and type plays a crucial role. If we couldn't get 5+ tanks in LOS of thunderwolves, I don't know how we kill them. This could have been a big loss going the other way. There's an intellectual fog around where and when to deploy out of sight for me. I need to learn more here. This is one of those points of misunderstanding where I win a fair amount of games, but not reliably. Understanding line of sight, enemy movement speed, really knowing the terrain rules and reserve rules... it all comes together. 
• Kasrkins also did outrageous damage. Yes, play the meta units... I've of mixed opinion on the rule change. On one hand it was a 'feel bad' or 'gotcha' type of unit. On the other hand, I'm not the receiving end of such units all the time. It's nice to have one of my own for once. 

Good game to start the day. 

Game 2 Win v. BA

Tensions high in this one. It's important to remember it's just a game. So, the big question was who launches out to the midground first? I think our list was a bad match up for them. They didn't have a whole lot of long range firepower. Early charges failed creating some lopsided results. Even with a number of command rerolls they failed like 7 charges in the game. Being left in the open the results were as you might expect. Felt bad on this one. I don't know that they win outright if they make their charges, but it sure would have been a much different game. If they could have bounced from unit to unit in consolidation and pile-ins, it's really rough on guard. Anyway, we were able to move up and get some firing lines on them while they weren't really able to move out. Reserves coming in failed their charges too. Great team, great paint job. Winning two to start is unusual for us, we're in trouble now. 

Game 3 Loss v. Tau

Completely annihilated. Not an ugly agonizing loss though. These guys were great fun to play. They won best tacticians overall (best battlescore). I like the magenta paint scheme too, really eye-catching. The player measuring in the photo below had just won singles the day before (I don't know how you play 7-8 games and then come to the team tourney... I'm getting old but my mind would be mush). The other player is a coach on vanguard tactics, and he's really great too. So, any lessons here? Hard to learn when outclassed to such a degree. 

• Issue: In the back right top of the photo is a giant terrain piece. It's obscuring. His army can move shoot move. Effectively I have nothing that can shoot them. In their turn they jump up, shoot me, and jump back behind cover. We're dead in the water. 
  • I don't think a token manticore or field artillery does much. They might have helped some though. 
  • I might have reserved some tanks to come in from the sides. Adepticon team tourney does have some special rules so CP was very limited. A regiment trait or tank ace to get a trait might have helped the reserves issue too. Still, assuming I come in like it's T3 and get a good shooting angle - I get one round of shooting and I'm toast. Not necessarily a good trade. If used reserves in conjunction with indirect fire, perhaps I'd have been able to limit some critical mass of enemy shooting. Though as orders are in the command phase, I should think that my shooting from reserves would not have really been that effective anyway. I'm not killing a riptide with 1-2 lemans. Vanquishers would normally be a solution, but they have shield drones - all high impact shots would be wasted. 
  • I also could have went full steam across the table with mechanized orders - possibly taking cover at other terrain pieces. But, this highlights a multi-part failure. I needed to understand what terrain would do. I needed to understand what their army could do with terrain. I needed to plan my own terrain defensively, and offensively as to how I might get across the table.
  • Perhaps with precise terrain placement and selecting small forward deploy units, I might have put some objective pressure on them. 
  • Army list construction - the banesword can't maneuver or get line of sight. 
  • maybe the answer would have been to just stay off the table till T3. They didn't move out anyway. Let them fill the board and just come on in to a shooting gallery. Again the CP limits might have caused this to not really work, but that might be the best option. 

Game 4, Loss to Custodes

What I didn't want to happen was to have bikes inside a densely packed backfield. I figured they'd be there turn 2. They instead played very conservatively. I pushed out on the right flank to try and get less bunched up while not opening up too much to a counter charge. Also, they were going to be up on points. Terrain as always is a crucial part here. If we'd agreed that the first floor was line of sight blocking I don't think we kill a custodes. Instead, it was a fairly close game. Once they got some squads on to objectives, it was just nearly impossible to get them off. Late game we did break out and started doing real damage, but it was too little too late. It was a good one. We all talked through multiple ways it could have gone. We also talked for sometime about the state of the game. They'd been in 40k since 4-5th edition. They noted how hard it can be to have a good tight game. I might slaughter a new player. I then get slaughtered by somebody going to weekly tournaments. That player then gets butchered at the top tables. There's levels to players and often there's a complete mismatch. When people talk about balance, this is not discussed. The hyper competitive side of the game isn't necessarily good for the hobby overall, or keeping new players. It's a weirdly time and money intensive hobby that doesn't translate well to sports or other activities.  

Game 5 Win v. Thousand sons and Guard

I wasn't real sure what to do with deployment. I knew they had a lot of reserves, so I didn't want them getting in behind us. Thankfully they didn't have a bunch of indirect fire to wipe out our infantry. First turn they didn't want to over-expose themselves. We were able to move out and cause some real damage. Also, perfectus orders to bullgryns pushed out reserves... a lot. So their terminators and magnus came in, but maybe not in the best position they'd hoped. The terminators have good shooting, but the tanks weren't the optimal target. Their psychic powers are very good. But, Magnus whiffed his rolls to do any real critical harm when he came down. And, he came down immediately in front of our whole army. BBQ time. The banesword fulfilled it's purpose this game. 

Summary

So, with 4x player teams, I think the other half went 3-2 as well. Looking at the overall results then, we're down a bit to 91 teams this year.  

• We came in at 256 battle points, or 16th place in gameplay alone. That's much higher than usual for us. Big win. Some years we're near the bottom. Some we are in the middle. 
• In appearance we got 116/125 points. That puts us tied for 6th with three other teams. Get those decals on there! Work on those blends and glazing!   
• On theme we 100/100.  Tied with 4 others for first on that. I really enjoyed making the army list, operations order, krieg costume, and wax seals. Put in a lot of work there, and we got recognition on it. 
• In display we got rank 5 in which points are awarded, and a team can be invited to the showcase. Tons of work here, and very happy we got the invite.    
• In player theme we got 29/30. This is just other teams ranking us.   
• In total hobby score we got 250 points, putting us at 3rd place in hobby alone. And, actually there was a tie for first place. I thought we were well out of our league, but the judges were really kind. 
• For overall/combined scores then we got 5th place.  Super excited for that. Last year we were wild that we got 29th place. 
• Didn't come home with any awards this year, but we were super close to best display, best appearance, and best imperial. The appearance score of 116/125 made all the difference. I think we were lucky in gameplay - realistically getting to grips with what we know, what we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know... we'd need to do tournaments at least every month. I think we're very far away from reliably winning more games (not to say we shouldn't try).

Epilogue

Afterwards motivation has remained high so far. I haven't sworn off the game, as happens after some lopsided tournaments, or skewed edition rules requiring building a completely new army. For now I like the idea of continuing to work on the display board. I think it'll be fun to take out to other tournaments, though it might be a bit much to show up in costume with a zeppelin to a local tourney. I want to cut the board up a bit, and add some real changes to the layout - do what I my actual vision of the thing was before time ran out. Doing more tournaments might also help me get to know some of the local players. I'm not part of any groups and see familiar players once every 9-12 months. I've got a lot of ideas for the next board, but without seeing the tyranids yet... I'm just not sure what the story is going to be. Well, one teammate has 10,000pts of orks so we could just to orks. But, organizing the team is always difficult. Would hate to start in on building a 15sqft board if it turns out we don't have 4 players. When I was young I had time but no money. Now I have money but no time. In any case, I can probably start sketching out the board now. If it doesn't go, it doesn't go.