Boston Brawl

[Lord_Caldera]

This weekend I went to the first ever Boston Brawl in Cambridge, MA. It was 5 games over 2 days with about 16 competitors in the 40k tournament. I had a great time and some great games, saw some cool armies and met good people. Since organizing this first-time tournament was tough the TO used the Adepticon scenarios and only counted the primary objective in most cases. I brought my pre-Heresy Word Bearers with this list, which did worse in comp than I expected:

Master of the Forge, (jet)bike, conversion beamer

2 Dreadnoughts in pods with heavy flamers, 1 multimelta, 1 assault cannon

5 Terminators with a chainfist and Cyclone in a Land Raider

Tactical Squad, fist, flamer, multimelta, Rhino

Tactical Squad, plasma gun, heavy bolter, Rhino

Tactical Squad, plasma gun, plasma cannon

Thunderfire Cannon

2 Devastator Squads, 4 missiles in each

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0342.jpg

My first game Saturday was Capture and Control with 4 objectives and spearhead deployment against Todd B., ShinyRhino on here. He had a really nicely done Ultramarines army with a captain on bike with 2 full bike squads, jump librarian with an assault squad, a pair of tactical squads in Rhinos and 2 venerable dreadnoughts. This game was a great way to start the day after getting no sleep the night before. Todd was a great opponent in the hard-fought battle and we ended up with a draw on objectives.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0343.jpg

My second game was against Terry S. who had a bright orange mech Ork army led by Ghazghkull. The scenario was Annihilation with standard deployment and I was confident to win this one. Unfortunately my hopes were trashed after he weathered ALL of my shooting thanks to his big mek’s force field. Only the Thunderfire Cannon managed to take something down, mutilating a buggy squadron by ignoring their cover save. I managed to pull out around 7 kill points, but he got 11 or 12. It was still an interesting game with one devastator sergeant surviving 3 rounds alone against 20 orks.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0347.jpg

The last game on Saturday was the random objective mission which ended up being table quarters. I wound up playing my friend Bobby and his absurd IG army which I have plenty of experience against, but no matter what I field it’s damn hard to kill 170 guardsmen in cover. We were on a crazy trench system board but with night fight on the first turn all we could do was move onto the edge and see what happened. The fighting was very fierce and the trenches made for a cool game. I would have won this one but for a few passed morale tests and we drew. The board at first turn: http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0353.jpg

The trench detail and what I had to deal with along that 6ft edge:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0354.jpghttp://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0355.jpg

My first game Sunday morning was against Leland S. and his Deathwing. This guy had terrible luck throughout the tournament but took it all in stride and won Best Sportsman, and he really deserved it. This was easily the most fun game I had all weekend and it wasn’t just because I won. We played the objectives again with bonus points, and after stealing the initiative I killed his land raider, killed one dreadnought and immobilized the other in his deployment zone, and 5ish Terminators. After that I just dismantled his army with 16 small blasts a turn, took all 4 objectives and would have tabled him but for the immobilized and weaponless dreadnought behind a ruin. We ended up just going for ridiculous feats and Leland was awesome about everything. (I forgot to turn the flash off, his army was very sharp irl.)

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0345.jpg

My last game was against Paul G.’s wolves and was kill points. There was a giant hill in the middle of the table and I deployed spread out instead of castling, taking most of my shooting out of the game trying to reposition. I lost badly and even though there were some interesting moments, like blowing up 6 vehicles and having my dreadnought hold his dread and 2 squads of grey hunters with fists in combat for 3 turns, the game was really not a lot of fun.

These are a couple cool armies there, a pirate Ork army and the only Raven Guard I’ve ever seen:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0348.jpghttp://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj254/lord_caldera/DSCN0349.jpg

I took 14th in the tournament but it was still a weekend well spent. Everyone I talked to was enthusiastic, helpful and laid back. Few of the lists were overly competitive and people really seemed to be there for fun and not necessarily to win, although if they wanted to play hard I suppose they would have been at ‘Ard Boyz at their LGS instead.

[ShinyRhino]

Twas definitely a hard-fought battle!

I'm glad I didn't have to fight on that trench board. Ugh!

[Roland Durendal]

This just makes me miss Boston and wish I was back there now playing. One day I suppose...

[Lord_Caldera]

Ha, yeah with your bikes those trenches would have been hell. I thought it was pretty fun to play on, even if my Land Raider managed to immobilize itself AGAIN on the first turn crossing the trench.

[Roland Durendal]

Where in Cambridge is the place you game at? I remember there use to be a GW store in Harvard, but that was years ago (when I was still at BU) and last I heard it was gone.