'Ard Boyz in Vero Beach, FL

[Dzan]

I played my Black Templars. 75% of the players were playing some kind of marines compared to last year only 2 people showed up with Marines, thanks to the Blood Angels codex.

 

My list was as follows

 

HQ

Emperor's Champ w/ AAC

 

Troops

 

3x 10 Initiates with Meltagun and Power Weapon in Rhino with armor and smoke. Normally I use power fists, but since I knew Marines were going to be more common I metagamed this, and it turned out to be the right move.

 

Elites

 

5x Assault Terminators in LRC (EC goes here)

6x Assault Terminators in LRC

Venerable Dred with TLLC and Missile Launcher with Tank Hunter

 

Heavy Support

3x Predator Annihilator with LC Sponsons

 

Game 1, Played against a Death Company List with Mephiston and Astaroth. He had 0 scoring unit, so unless he tabled me the best he could do is draw. This table was set up as city fight terrain and was rather dense so my lascannons weren't quite as effective. I reserved my troops for late game objective grabs and I played a refused flank set up. Using my ridiculous anti-tank I was able to blow away his transports before they got to me and then when my troops came in from reserve I zoomed them on the other side of the board to grab objectives uncontested.

 

Game 2, Played against Blood Angels again. The mission was victory points with bonus for capturing table quarters. He was playing a 3 Land Raider List with some blood talon dreadnaughts and some nasty close combat units in the raiders. This table was much sparser with terrain so I set up refused flank again on a hill with my Land raiders below and the Predators and dread above them, and troops in reserve. He had to come to me and since we were setting up in opposite table quarter I was going to get at least 2 turns of clear shooting before he could do much of anything. By the end of turn 3 I had destroyed or immobilized all of his vehicles and my terminators ate his now footslogging troops. My troops came in from reserve and took 3/4 table quarters.

 

Game 3, Played against Green Tide Orks. Mission was kill points but with vehicles counting as three. His entire army was 18 kill points and mine was 32. I had my work cut out for me, especially since I was heavy on anti-tank but relying on my CC punch to kill infantry. In the end it was a very close game. By traditional kill points we would have tied or at least came very close, but with the ridiculous mission format he gave me a sound beating. By the end of the game I had a terminator squad and an intact LRC and he had a unit of Burna Boys and pretty beat up remnant of on of his 30 man mobs. It was frustrating knowing that we killed approximately the same amount of each other's army, but due to the wacky mission format he got an easy win. I also made the mistake tactically of splitting my Crusader squads and each having them do their own thing. Traditionally, my tactic is to run 2 of them together and the third to support a terminator unit. Usually 10 initiates is not enough to kill a 30 boy Ork unit even with the charge, but 20 is. Unfortunately the terrain was such that I had to make a thin and long battle line rather than my usual refused flank, and thus my initiates were destroyed piecemeal rather than fighting cohesively. Lesson Learned!

 

Anyway, despite the loss in mission 3, my big wins in game 1 and 2 were enough to get me to 3rd place and a trip to the semis. See ya in Orlando!

 

Lastly, things I would change about my list:

 

I would turn two of Annihilators into Destructors with LC sponsons. I lose a TLLC shot but gain 2 Str 7 shots and 40 more points to play with. I would use the 60 points to add a 6th assault terminator to the first squad. Many occasions I felt like they would have been able to easily kill what they charged if I had another guy in the unit, rather than squeaking by with Thunderhammer kills and letting the opponent hit back. Also I would go down to 1 Thunder hammer per squad. Maybe if I had played Nids or Daemons I would have wanted the TH, but usually what would happen is the Lightning Claws would kill a bunch of dudes, but not all, and they would hit back killing some LC guys, and then the TH would finish off the opponent. If I had used an extra two LC guys I would have wiped them no casualties. Since my list had pretty ridiculous anti-tank I never used the TH for anti-tank in CC so that need is gone.