Tourney Highlights.

[Grey Mage]

Well I went to a 1500 point tournament this saturday... it was interesting.

 

I took my list from the army list forum, but to overveiw:

 

WGBL-FB,AC

VenDread-AC

 

10GH- PP, PR, PF

10GH- PP, PR, PW

15 BC- 3PF

 

LS- MM

 

Landraider Crusader

Predator Annihilatr-Hvy Bolters

 

WGPL-termi/PF/SB.

 

Round 1: TAU. Lots of tau.

 

He brought three units of firewarriors, one all with carbines, none with drones. 2 Broadsides acting solo, a hammerhead, a commander, a unit of two suits, and two HUGE units of kroot with hounds. That last was a mistake I think... but I always laught when I see kroot.

 

I won deployment, and let him go first. He deployed with carbines in the middle, FW's on both sides, with a broadside to support. Hammerhead was hull down, and the commander and both suits were mixed in to support. He infiltrated both units of kroot in forward positions but not in cover. There wasnt alot of cover... mostly rocks.

 

I put my predator opposite one of his broadsides and hull down. Supported by a unit of GH w/PW and WGPL. That was to my right. Center was the LRC with bloodclaws inside. This was also facing the center hill with an objective. To the left I put the landspeeder and my WGBL with GH. I decided to gamble a little and put my dreadnaught next to my landraider and to the right.

 

The objective was to get a trio of civilians from the top of the hill and the dead center of the board off the map. They could be targeted, but not harmed... it counted as targetting the squad. I stole the iniative and promply advanced everything, with the LRC going strait up the hill succeeding on its dangerous terrain test. Shoot was minimal really... I failed to pass the cover save against the broadside with my Predator, the right side grey hunters and dreadnaught hit a squad of kroot hard, and on the left side I zoomed my LS its full move dead towards that hammerhead. The left side GH with WGBL took shots at the kroot on the objective hill, for good effect. As the LRC disgorged its cargo they deployed in base to base contact with the objective, seising it... or so I thought.

 

At this point the tau player started complaining loudly that the game was over. I was very confused.... they werent the only objective on this map... merely 250 Victory points, if I got them to my deployment edge... I wasnt even allowed to use a transport to do it. But whatever right... Well the tournament director rules that I had to move into them, and that deployment didnt count as movement... but I could run into them if I wanted... but not run back towards my edge in the shooting phase.

 

I declined that dubious honor. It simply wasnt worht it in a 4 turn game to try and run it back. My Bloodclaws were better served slaying the enemy. The TD gave me a weird smile and moved back to his watchful post.

 

The rest of the game went with my LS staying stunned the whole time, my bloodclaws being put below half strength but wiping out a kroot squad and ready to charge the full squad of carbines. I wiped out his commander, all of his kroot, and half strengthed a unit of firewarriors.... A solid victory. It only went two turns.... the tau player was really slow.

 

It ended up being that the tourney director was trying to point out to some of the players that it was sometimes better to ignore the directive and do what you could then fight a fruitless fight. Were having a 1500 per player team tournament next month, and itll have some weird stuff on those 8x4 boards apparently. I was the only player out of the 14 of us who wasnt trying their hardest to get that stupid trio of civilians apparently. That got me some dirty looks. *sigh*.

 

Round 2: Demonic Assault.

 

Second game was on open terrain against an old friend of mine, playing Khorne/slaanesh demons. I deployed similarly to my previous game, as Id gotten first turn and had no idea what else to do. It worked with the terrain atleast. I advanced everything, trying to spread out and get a good bead on as many spots of the table as I could... using an eldar tactic that had worked to my advantage against demons many times. SW arent as good with it and the results showed. I lost by around 200 VP. My bloodclaws took out his Soulgrinder, wich had immobilized my landraider. My landspeeder ran after being shaken two turns in a row, and my WGBL and his GH squad died to a khorne demon prince... wich promptly assaulted my vendread. All in all it was a hard fight, and strangely enough every single table corner was held by a troop, and contested by a non troop. It was very odd. Wonderful game, but I feel I would have lost had it gone the final turn.

 

Round 3: Kill the librarian.

 

The third round I ended up fighting a vanilla marine player, the objective being mainly victory points but with a single HQ of each players army being worth 750 victory points. I chose my WGBL as the dread is to easy to get half points for. His was a Librarian who stayed with a combat squad far to the back.

 

The game went fast, with to many moves and countermoves to go with. To sum up he had two tac squads, combat squaded, 3 dreadnaughts, two predators- 1 destructor, 1 Annihilator, and a Landraider with terminators w/ Lightning claws. I got half points for each of his dreads and one of his predators. He got half for my vendread, my predator, and one GH pack. He blew my speeder too mores the pitty, and got half for my BCs with his terminators. It was a dreadful pain getting those terminators to half, but dispite horrible roles on both our parts, thats how it was at the last turn. I won by about 300 VP, thanks to his dreads.

 

In my 2nd and 3rd games the results would have been different if kill points had been used. Im not sure how I feel about that. Apparently the 3rd round was also supposed to teach people a trick or two about not relying on tricked out HQ's. Bollocks I say... the HQ should compliment the army, and sometimes that means tooling it out and using it hard core. The guy who ran the show doesnt like HQ much. The group as a whole doesnt allow special characters... another thing I dislike, as I feel if you drop 20 bucks on a nice model you should be able to use it by gods.

 

In any case, I ended the tourni 3rd out of 14nth.

 

I also got a position as one of a three way tie for best sportsmanship. That was interesting I thought.... *shrugs* I was sure the tau guy wouldnt have voted for me, but ohwell. We diced off for it- and all got fives. We did it again, and I lost by 1 dot on the cube, and came out of the tournament with nothing. First time in six months too. Still, it was a happy day to be gaming, and I was pleased with the results.

 

Now to see how I can increase the CC in my army for the doubles tournament.... perhaps I should go with my eldar as I dont have alot of BP CCW greyhunters. I dont like using lots and lots of bloodclaws. Ill probly post up a list soon.

[Wolf89]

Sounds like you had a good time, nice to see a wolf player placed again.

 

The daemons can be tough, but it sounds like your biggest problem was not having the mobility for your squads... (GH's are just foot slogging?) which can be troublesome especially if you get first turn without mobility. Last time I faced daemons and went first I had rhinos, which I rushed up full throttle, got out, ran and spread out so much, that his deployment (safe deployment) was so small that he had so much movement to do with such slow units that I mowed them down each time something came up.

 

The best unit of that fight went to WGBG retinue which tore up a squad each turn, got assaulted by a thirster who they proceeded to spank (thank god for Storm Shields) causing him 3 wounds, and loosing combat by 2 he died failing an armor save.

 

I think a nice terminator squad would have really helped out in all 3 games and given you first place, you should really look into it.

[OnlyInDeath]

I gotta say I'm a bit confused as to what exactly the civillian objective was? Sounds like it was a little bit silly if no one was able to do it? Also, sheesh, 2 turns in 2 hours? I woulda docked that tau player badly if he went that slowly.

[Wolf89]

I gotta say I'm a bit confused as to what exactly the civillian objective was? Sounds like it was a little bit silly if no one was able to do it? Also, sheesh, 2 turns in 2 hours? I woulda docked that tau player badly if he went that slowly.

 

I had a 350+ ork player play 5 turns in 2 and a half hours... it's not hard... magnatize those bases and use trays!

[WolfLordLars]

IMHO - you had too much armor for a 1500pt game. The LRC or the Predator, but both? That hurt your overall force, I believe. Generally, no Land Raiders under 2000. More troops would of helped.

 

Tournament Directors like that annoy the hell out of me. If you need to do something like not being able to deploy into the civies, then they should say that to begin with. Failing that, I would contest that every action my models have taken up to and including deployment should be allowed to be taken back, as that was the plan.

 

Of course, this is why I seek to avoid tournaments now.

[Grey Mage]

I was upset about it. And yes, the whole objective was boggus.... but I was more interested in getting on with the game. I was their to have fun by the gods, and fun I was going to have.

 

Every table had a center peice of terrain. Round one had that terrain with a group of three primerd marines on it... the "civies". We had to move up to them, capture them, and then get them off the board. He stated we could not use anything but a scoring unit to do this. We could not put them in a transport. They could be targetted as a memeber of the unit that had captured them. Wound could never be allocated to them. We could run while having them in the unit. When we captured them our movement for that phase was done.

 

I was very put out.

 

Round two, though I didnt mention it Im afraid, had that same peice of terrain *about 16"x16"* count as its own table quarter. *shrugs* Never came up.

 

Round three was assasination.

 

Edit: I dont think the tau player is coming back. There were alot of comments about how slow he was. He blamed it on the terrain. I blame it on taking 15 minutes to put away a squad that had been shot to bits, every time. *sighs*

[WolfLordLars]

I like to think before I act, but I generally try to move fast. If its slowness to delay its one thing, if its slowness because *HE* is just a slow person, its something else.

 

Emotions run high in a tournament... yet my play style is a bit too serious for casual play. I think I am screwed...

[Wolf89]

I like to think before I act, but I generally try to move fast. If its slowness to delay its one thing, if its slowness because *HE* is just a slow person, its something else.

 

Emotions run high in a tournament... yet my play style is a bit too serious for casual play. I think I am screwed...

 

You haven't seen me at some tournaments, if you take too long I'll call the judge over no questions asked...

 

The problem that I have been having recently (not sure how it is by some of your LGS's) but one of the places I play at some tournaments is in a mall, so we frequently have people coming by asking about stuff and everything while we have a timed game and such. I generally act nice because it reflects on the store I so dearly love, but especially if it's some punk kids just hassling us I usually have to ignore them.

 

The time thing is to keep things moving to stay on schedule, if things don't at least make turn 5 I'm quite upset (unless there's nothing left on the table) and dock opponents heavily if they are at fault. There are many times that delay of game can benefit others and it's a simple form of cheating. As bad as using loaded dice imho.

[WolfLordLars]

I will have to tell you my "delay cost me a game" story sometime.

[OnlyInDeath]

Well, what's stopping you? If its in a tourney, its thread related :)

[WolfLordLars]

Well...

 

Its a few years ago, and I was towards the end of my run with 40k. Getting to the point where I wanted to play and have fun, but no matter how much I played, it wasnt fun.

 

Anyway, in this tournament I took a fairly balanced list, as I was able, but one or two things that were considered cheesely locally (which are now my trademarks - the 3AC in a pod for example). First match was against a long-time DA friend with his Deathwing (this was before the new DA codex, I believe). Humorous moments from that game include when my pack of blood claw bikers charged some terminators in woods and 4 of the 6 failed their dangerous terrain rolls. He still asks me when I am going to model helmets on them ("The Wolf Priest wont let us go out without our helmets" in best retard voice). I still won, wiped him out to a man by turn 4 or 5.

 

Second battle was against Necrons. I remember this one, because he painted them in metallic colors, but painted the green rods a neon orange.. we always called them the "Raver" Necrons. He was a damn good player, but I cut my teeth on Necrons, and won it in the end (barely!).

 

The last battle was against Eldar. To be fair, this player chose to go with a 'composition rules' list, using almost all of his troop choices (first time I had ever seen Guardians that I could remember), and having a fairly balanced list, as far as I could tell. There were a few questionable moments with the rules, but all in all, I wanted to have a good time.

 

Well, the last round call was sounded beween rounds. I made a comment about one last round (I went second) when he started. He tore me up pretty good, but on my turn I made some poor tactical decisions to get the points back, knowing that it was the last round. He dragged his turn out pretty long, so I was worried I wouldnt have time to do my turn before the end of the round. I rushed through (thus alot of the stupid moves) but had the win. He then started to go again. I told him the game was over, as that was the last round. He protested, saying he had time for his round still, and that if I took too long to do mine I could concede. The TO didnt say anything (not being on very good terms with me), so I ended up getting my butt handed to me with the last round of shooting, being able to do next to nothing with what I had left.

 

So, he dragged out his turn, I rushed so we could finish on time, and then he took another turn when it should of been last turn.

 

NEVER again will I play in a tournament where I dont have the rules clearly spelled out for both me and my opponent. No more leaving things to guessing. Never again will I rush either. I got cheated out of a win by someone playing loopholes.. and it isnt the win that got to me, I dont mind loosing if I got beat, but I lost because he cheated. Better to be considered a bad sportsman and have things clear for both of us than to have hard feelings later.

 

 

This one does have a funny ending though... this individual later played in a Warmachine tournament locally. He ended up drawing my buddy who plays DA. The guy who cheated in my last game had a list designed to delay the game, hoping to get ahead early and then drag it out for a win (not sure if that was his intent, but its how it played). My friend, even with the rush to get the game finished, managed to completely rip him a new one, even in only the few rounds they got. The guy went and complained to the TOs about everything my friend did, only to get told to shut up and play. I was new to the game and didnt do well, but it was worth loosing in the tournament to get to see that. :)

[Wolf89]

That is COMPLETELY unfair and no way that should have been allowed to occur.

 

The way you worded it, it sounded like you never got your last turn? Or even worse the game ended (turn 6) and he took another turn?

 

I would have stopped playing and totally up the VP's and such, turned in my sheets and packed up my models, if he says I conceded then I would say the time is up, we both had our rounds and it's done.

 

I wish I had another turn at the ard' boyz... would have been the difference between 1st place and 4th place for sure... but the TO (also my boss) I think wanted me not to place for his own selfish gains to have other people win to help promote the game... he already had me hooked and buying stuff... why let me get the shiny new boxed set... :)

[WolfLordLars]

I got my last turn, but when it came around I didnt have much left to play with. I spent my turn before that like it was my last (and was supposed to be) and so most of my units were out in the open, just asking to be shot by his Eldar. It was supposed to be last turn, so running out from cover to get those last shots in was the plan. When they let another full turn go by, I ended up loosing most of my army.

 

Its ok though, it was a long time ago, and I dont have to worry about that TO anymore (he no longer works there, or even plays there). The player in question I will never allow to do that to me (or anyone) again if I have a say.

 

I am still not sure if I will play in tournaments anymore, but if I do, I will have stuff like that spelled out, very clearly, for everyone.. at the start.

[Wolf89]

If you ever do play again you should come down here to my LGS and I won't let it happen. :)

 

You should have just taken your time with your last turn, if you don't have enough time to finish both full turns then a last turn should NEVER be played no matter if you roll for the other turn or not.

 

That's why when I'm testing out my lists before tournaments I make sure to keep a time (unless bathroom breaks and such interfere then I stop the clock) so I make sure I keep up with the pace and helps my quick tactics to truly shine. :D

[Grey Mage]

Yeah thats another thing that annoys me... I prefer to play games to six turns, if not tell one side is finished off completely *in cleanse anyways*. But we play two hours and the end of the game is 4 turns, even if you have half an hour left... wich has happened with two people who know the rules and play smaller armies.