Tournament Batrep

[Doomaflatchi]

I just got back from an all-day tournament at my local store, and wanted to let everyone here know how it went. We played three games of varying preset types against different opponents, and our scores for each game were tallied to form a total. 12 points were awarded for winning the mission, 5 points for a secondary objective that changed with each mission, and 3 points for destroying all of an opponent's HQ choices. Painting points were awarded for tiebreakers.

 

I came with my Grey Knights, as they're the only army I can field at that size. My list ran like this:

 

Grandmaster w/ Incinerator & Hammerhand

Retinue of 4x Terminators w/ Incinerator

Land Raider Crusader

 

Justicar & 5 Grey Knights w/ 2x Incinerators

Land Raider w/ Extra Armor & Smoke Launchers

 

Justicar & 5 Grey Knights w/ 2x Incinerators

Land Raider w/ Extra Armor & Smoke Launchers

 

5x Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2x Meltaguns

Rhino Transport (IA version)

 

5x Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2x Meltaguns

Rhino Transport (IA version)

 

About half of the people there played Imperial Armies (which I ended up facing), but there were also Necrons, Tau, Orcs, and Chaos Marines represented.

 

Game 1:

 

Type: Annihilation

Deployment: Pitched Battle

Secondary Objective: Destroy all opposing Troops choices

 

I was faced off against a Sisters of Battle army for this one, which was a blast for me, as I've never played them before. He ran something like (I may make mistakes here, so bear with me) 2 Exorcists, 3 Immolaters with Stormtroopers and Meltaguns in two and Celestians (I think?) with Meltaguns in the third, a large squad of sisters with a Cannoness, and a decently large squad of Seraphim with Saint Celestine. I won the roll to go first, and chose to deploy second. NOTE: Due to the time constraints of the tournament and the fun we were both having, we ran out of time at the end of turn three, which overinflated the effect of my deployment. We both knew this, but there was nothing we could really do about it.

 

He deployed rather spread out, since his deployment zone was somewhat restrictive, and placed (moving from his right to his left) one Immolator, the big Sisters squad, the two Exorcists, the other two Immolaters, and the Seraphim. In response, I stacked all five of my tanks on the flank with the Seraphim, negating their fast movement and forcing his big Troops squad to footslog all the way across the battlefield (they ended up doing nothing). I hid the Rhinos behind the Land Raiders so the Exorcists couldn't draw line of sight to them.

 

The first turn saw some shots thrown back and forth, with the Exorcists failing to get any 6's to glance the LRs and the Lascannons pinning the two close Immolators in place, preventing them from repositioning to meet my assault. Once the second turn rolled around, the pace picked up significantly - the Crusader shot and unloaded Terminators at the Seraphim, who then used Hit And Run to disengage and assault back. After those two assault phases, the Terminators wiped them out (Celestine was, through sheer luck and no clever tricks, unable to participate in either of these assaults). The first Immolator on that side got wrecked by a Lascannon blast which pinned the squad inside, and the other disembarked its troops to fire their Meltaguns at the nearby Crusader. They both whiffed, and the Crusader shot them and made them flee (they regrouped later, but the Meltagunners were dead, so they did little of consequence).

 

One of the Exorcists rammed a missile straight up a Godhammer Land Raider's tailpipe, Immobilizing it about halfway up the board. The squad got out and started hoofing it, while the Raider became a 48" turret, and proceeded to chain stun the third Immolater off on my left side of the board, where it failed to get into combat range. Celestine used her hit and run to try to harry the Terminators, but ended up getting caught between the Terminators and the walking Grey Knight squad in an attempt to avoid the fire from the Crusader. The Sisters player paled somewhat when he realized that everything in my army inflicted Instant Death against her T3, but used faith points to turn her 2+ Armor into a 2++ Invulnerable, and then proceeded to save eleven wounds. She lost the taste for combat after that lucky scrape, and instead jumped behind one of my Rhinos and charged it, only managing to rip off the Stormbolter and Stun it a few times. Meanwhile, the now free Terminators rounded on the squad from the second nearby Immolator, which had fired their Meltaguns at the Crusader but has been to far away to do any serious damage (they shook/stunned it, I think), and proceeded to whittle them down to two while my last Land Raider wrecked the other Immolater.

 

Time was called with a score of 4-0 Kill Points, and no secondary or tertiary objectives met. The luck for this game was all over the board, on both sides - there were simply prodigious amounts of ones and sixes all around. It was wild, but a lot of fun. Having never played them before, I can definitely see why the Sisters have such a rabid following. Very neat.

 

Game 2:

 

Type: Seize Ground

Deployment: Spearhead

Secondary Objective: Control all four objectives at the end of the game

 

My opponent was playing Space Wolves, with two Rhinos, a Razorback, a Vindicator, a double-Autocannon Dreadnought, a Devastator Squad (or whatever the Wolf version is called), Scouts with Outflank and Meltabombs, and several infantry squads. He got first and set up aggressively, with his vehicles pressed close to the deployment line. I deployed about 33" away to stay out of range of the really big guns and set myself up for a second turn retaliatory salvo.

 

He advanced, fired with the few things that had range, and failed to penetrate my armor. I then launched a counter-offensive, and in one spectacularly lucky turn of shooting wrecked or exploded the Vindicator and the Dreadnought, and tore the Lascannon off the Razorback. I moved my Rhinos up to objective grab, moved one Land Raider south to head off the rest of his armor, and pushed my other Raider and Crusader towards his deployment zone to try to press him off the objectives back there.

 

He disembarked troops from his Rhinos and fired Meltaguns at my southern Raider, so I retaliated by sending the Knights inside to go teach those arrogant whelps a lesson! This was, in hindsight, a gross overextension of my forces, as I completely underestimated the close combat abilities of those Wolves. Oh, and his two HQs and their squad disembarking from the Razorback and joining the fray didn't help, either. The Knights get wiped in one turn, and so my Raider is left to run 12" back and forth taking potshots at the armor it can hit, which ended up ripping the other gun off of the Razorback.

 

Meanwhile, he moved one of his Rhinos out of that mess and towards the center objective. I had my central Raider drop its Knights off there to move into the forest and hold it before running off to give support to the Crusader, and then moved my second Rhino up from the south to try and take out their transport. By eyeballing it, I could see that my Rhino was just out of range to fire, so I had to spin it around and disembark the Stormtroopers out towards it. Their Meltaguns wrecked it, but the Space Wolf counter-charge by the occupants neatly wiped them out before they could land a single blow. Now on foot, those Wolves moved into the Forest and began to fight it out with the Knights there. Between one turn of shooting and two turns of close combat, the three remaining Grey Knights managed to force the Wolves to flee off of the objective, and held it.

 

The Space Wolf Scouts outflanked out on the rear end of nowhere, and spent the remaining two turns trying to run into position, and failing. So much for his tank-hunters. :)

 

As all this was going on, my Crusader pressed into his deployment zone, guns blazing. His Devastators missed habitually, and the Crusader neatly picked them off of the wall they were standing on. The Terminators, meanwhile, played a dance with the Wolf squad on his objective. My Termies moved close and shot them in preparation for an assault, but the cowardly Wolves insisted on running away! This flight took them out of assault range, so the Terminators were left standing around looking stupid. The Wolves auto-rallied next turn, moved back, shot at the Terminators, and stood on the objective. The Terminators, happy to see their prey return, gleefully return fire -- but the Wolves ran again! It seemed my Terminators were not destined to meet this foe hand-to-hand.

 

Down south, he had one Troop squad with Meltabombs playing chicken with my lone southern Raider (which was contesting that objective), while his HQs and Squad moved north to assist in the battle against the Terminators. The game rolled to end at the tail of turn five (with about thirty minutes to spare), leaving me controlling two and contesting two. Had it gone on another turn, however, the Terminators would have been in for the fight of their life, and the squad near the woods would have re-grouped and come back for more. I was pretty solidly in control when the game ended, but had it gone all the way to seven it might have been a very different story.

 

Game 3:

 

Type: Capture and Control

Deployment: Dawn of War

Secondary Objective: Hold both objectives at the end of the game

 

The final game was against Blood Angels, and this was the player currently in first (he'd won both of his other games and snagged some extra objectives, placing him eleven points ahead of me. Ouch). He ran a Land Raider with Assault Squad, a Deep Striking Assault Squad, a Lascannon Vindicator, and a Stormraven carrying a Blood Talon Dreadnought and Death Company with Reclusiarch. I won the roll-off, and chose to go second again. With Dawn of War as the type, he elected for a blank deployment, which pretty much forced me to do the same.

 

Turn two, his Deep Striking reserves came in (which he cursed, as they had no targets!), so he moved everything up to about quarter-field. He had the Vindicator on my left, followed by the Deep Striking Assault squad, then the Land Raider about midfield, and the Stormraven immediately on its flank. I came on, spreading my tanks to maximize my chances of getting around him and engaging as many targets as I could - I judged that his army was just too maneuverable to stack a flank successfully. I parked one Rhino on my objective behind a large tower, had the other Rhino shadow behind my Crusader in the middle, and blazed away with every gun I had... doing nothing. In return, he shook both Godhammer Raiders, and wrecked the Crusader! Then his Death Company (which had moved flat-out inside the Stormraven last turn, and disembarked this turn along with the Dreadnought) charged the emerging Terminators. With Furious Charge, the entire Death Compant went at I5. The Reclusiarch and the Grand Master simul-killed each other, and the Death Company wiped the rest of the Terminators before they could even act. I was not happy. ;)

 

Still, that's Warhammer, and it's all about how you recover. So, I ran both shaken Raiders as deep in-field as a could, and snaked the Rhino hiding behind the Crusader's wreck 12" out to the side. The Stormtroopers, obviously sacrificing themselves in the face of an Assault Squad, Dreadnought, and Death Company, disembarked in a screen to protect the Rhino. They took their two Meltagun shots at the Dreadnought, and managed to Immobilize it! I let out a sigh of relief - that was one more thing I wouldn't have to worry about. In return, the Death Company promptly ate the Stormtroopers. Seriously, munch. The Assault Squad, well, assaulted the Rhino with their Sergeant's Meltabombs, but didn't make the six needed to hit. The Rhino then ran full speed back towards his fellow to protect my objective. A lot of ineffectual shooting took place, too, but failed to do anything meaningful for him. He did, however, start running his Land Raider down towards my objective to ensure that he could force me off of it in time. There was quite a funny moment as our Raiders passed each other within an inch. We imagined the drivers shouting obscenities back and forth.

 

My Raiders, now freed up to fire, Immobilized both the Vindicator and the Stormraven. I had just moved behind the Vindicator at this point, and with the cover on his side of the board it was in no position to shoot at anything useful ever again. The Stormraven actually set down with a great vantage point over his objective, but terrible shooting rolls combined with a pot shot ripping off the only Hurricane Bolter with line of sight left it doing nothing other than cursing dice for the rest of the game. Turn five ended, and the game rolled to continue.

 

His assault squad, realizing that I had two Troop choices in transports within spitting distance of his objective, flew back up there as fast as they could, and with a 4" run ended just inside the 3" control zone. One Land Raider promptly Tank Shocked the back off, however, and the squad inside disembarked and assaulted to hold them there in case the game ran another turn, so they couldn't just jump over the tank. The other Raider raced over towards the objective, ended just outside the 3" zone, and so pivoted and disembarked its troops close enough to hold that objective.

 

Near my objective, however, a Land Raider, Assault Squad, and Death Company were trying to push my two Rhinos and one squad of Stormtroopers off of my objective. However, as the objective was pressed against the wall of a tower and only 6" or so from by board edge, I was able to use some clever maneuvering (and not a little bit of luck) to hedge them around and keep from being pushed off. The Death Company rolled horribly against one Rhino (even lunchboxes only get hit on sixes when they move far enough!), only shaking it, and got tied up in assault with the Stormtroopers. His Land Raider wrecked the other Rhino, but the wreck blocked its line of sight to the other, shaken, Rhino which was close enough to contest.

 

We ran out of time at the end of turn six, with me holding one objective and contesting the second with a damaged Rhino. I pulled this one out by the skin of my teeth, and that only barely. Since we both killed each other's HQ but I won the game, I went up fifteen points while he gained three... giving me enough to win the tournament by one point. I was also the only player to win all three of their games. All in all, it was pretty fun - everyone was pleasant and jovial, and all the armies were well-painted, which just adds to the atmosphere. :) There are definitely worse ways to spend your Saturday.

[Marid]

Sounds like a great Saturday afternoon to me. Nice work! :P

[Oiad]

Bravo chap, well done.

 

Have to say, I felt squeamish reading about how you got slaughtered in assault by both SW and BA troops. When you see it happen and it just doesn't feel right, does it? I'm sure it was a hard lesson in learning to deny DC their charge in future. Or tackling wolf squads in bite-sized portions.

:)

 

Otherwise, top stuff on getting GKs on the top spot. I bet many tournie players were surprised by the results!

[number6]

Well played. Congratulations! :P

[Inquisitor Fox]

A good read, and nice one winning one for the Inquisition! (even if you had to stomp all over a WH player to do it :) )

[archangelCJ]

sweet list bro, and you played it well.

 

great work! :D

[ntgcleaner]

Very nice indeed. The list is almost exactly the same as mine! Great batreps too.