2000 pnt tournament 7/9

[Black Memories]

I'll be a bit more brief with these reports.

 

Thanks everyone who helped with the ideas for my 2000 pnt list on the army list section. I ended up taking the 3rd list (posted below) to the tournament. It was small but there were some pretty competitive opponents this time. At least half the players there had tournament-quality lists and I believe two placed reasonably at ATC. It was fun going against some good competition and different opponents (fought 3 all new opponents this time). I finished a disappointing 2-1 and didn't get a chance to play for the championship in round 3 due to what was an extremely whacky, albeit fun round 2. A major issue with this tournament was some of these boards were as much as 50-60% terrain. My heavily mechanized army could barely move at all on round 2 at risk of immobilizing my land raiders in the middle of no where.

 

My List:

 

Mephiston

Librarian, shield, unleashed

Chaplain

Sang priest, pw

Assault Terms, 3 lc, 2 th

LRC, extr armor multi melta

8 Assault Squad, melta, pf

LR, extra armor

5 Assault squad

Razorback, tllc

5 Assault squad

Razorback, tllc

Predator, lascannons

Predator, lascannons

 

Game 1- Deathwing.

Scenario: Dawn of War

Main ob.- Seize ground

Sec ob- Kill enemy HQ holding "intel"

Tert. ob- Collect intel either by killing them in assault or collecting it off the body after shooting them.

 

This guy is a pretty good tournament player fielding an all-troop deathwing army. Each squad was something like 3 th/ss and a cyclone with a chainfist or lightning claws in it. Belial and an interrogator chaplain were his HQ's.

 

I won the roll off and elected to let him deploy first. I placed a razorback mid table. He blew up my razorback after seeing it. I played a bit of movement/counter punch with the guy the first few turns, except that after 18 lascannon shots none of his terminators had failed a stormshield save so I got over anxious. I charged in my assault terminators into a very very bad spot and was unable to wipe a single terminator unit on the charge (3 Lightning claw terminators made 3 pw saves). Two more terminator squads ran in to smash my terminators so I charged in mephiston and my assault squad in desperation, that was a flop as they achieved a total of 0 terminator kills and all 3 units were horribly routed. Eventually his saves started to give to shooting and I killed off 3 terminator squads (of the 7) and was able to snag a very far away objective and move my landraiders and remaining predator that was movable over to contest his objectives.

 

I won 13-7 in battle points in a close game that I was fortunate to still be in. It's hard to gauge exactly how effective my list was against his give that he had already made more invulnerable saves by turn 3 than I had ever seen an army make in an entire game by a large margin. That said it was a fun game and he was an excellent sport and general with a great layered advance idea to thwart my assaults. I got over anxious and forced an unwise assault and it cost me dearly.

 

Game 2- Spacewolves

Deployment: Cleanse (dumb)

Main ob- Victory points (dumb)

Sec- most troops within 12 inches of the middle objective

tert- keep more than 50% of your troops alive.

 

My opponent was actually the guy that runs the league at another store that I just won. He played a very competitive razorwolf/longfang list that was very similar to the one that won the nova open (though slightly different). 6 Gray hunter squads with melta/fist in a plas/las razorback. 3 longfangs, 5 missles, 5 missles and 4 missles. 2 runepriests. 5 scouts with melta bombs, and 4 wolf guard with combi meltas and power weapons.

 

I went first, he deployed along his back edge mostly. This board was absolutely COVERED in terrain. I had extremely narrow avenues with which to manuever my landraiders around in. Fear of difficult terrain tests cost me dearly in this game.

 

After my shooting in turn 1 I effectively neutralized his vehicle threats. Only one razorback was able to fire with 2 of them destroyed entirely. his long fangs stunned my LRC and one of my preds. Turn two I pummelled his vehicles more but destroyed nothing this time, despite glancing/penning every vehicle except one again. His longfangs destroyed one of my predators. In the third turn I was getting anxious again but given that he mission was victory points I didnt want to sacrifice my land raiders to a 90 point grayhunter squad since I could not multiple assault due to being boxed in badly by terrain. Mephiston was slow as I was being double runeweapon'd when he psychic powered (didn't realize it had been FAQ'd, he doesn't normally play wolves). This forced me into some unorthodox tactics.

 

Eventually my impatience caught up to me. My terminators failed a charge by 1 inch into difficult terrain on a razorback that had exploded from shooting and ended up getting multiple assaulted and killed off eventually after 2 game turns. Mephiston eventually got a hold of a gray hunter squad but whiffed and it took him two turns to kill it. He then advanced back towards the squads that had defeated my unsupported terminators. The problem here is that he whiffed again on the next grayhunter squad. This caught him 2 powerfist wounds to the face that he should never have had to take. The next combat phase he had 3 wounds remaining and whiffed again on the same gray hunter squad member with a fist. He killed the runepriest from that squad but eventually was powerfisted down by both gray hunter squad members. They consolidated within 12 inches of the center objective.

 

By this time by my razorbacks had been destroyed from longfangs and outflanking scouts. The scouts died but it took two game turns for my assault marines to kill them and they were slow getting towards the middle. They never made it back within 12 inches. My assault marines in my land raider were preparing to multiple assault the 2 gray hunter squads near the middle and wipe them out the next turn and my LRC picked up 5 of the assault marines and survived a melta shot and was going to unleashed hell on another gray hunter squad right next to it.

 

The game ended on a 1 in turn 5. He edged me by about 80 victory points. He had 3 squads within 12 inches counting the 1 man squad that meph double whiffed on. He also kept more than 50% of his troops alive because of that whiff.

 

The game ended with a score of 0-22 listed (thought it was actually 2-22, I forgot that I could score the tertiary victory also). I edged him in kill points but he marginally beat me in victory points. Overall this was both by far the most fun and disappointing game of the tournament. Being blocked in my terrain was a disaster. It was so bad that I picked the most open deployment zone possible and it still didn't matter. Both my opponent and I agreed it felt like the favor of the battle was on my side, but the way it ended up was completely opposite of how the game felt. Mephiston being a total failure and my pre-mature assault attempt with my terminators really cost me the game badly. This is a game I wish I could have a do-over on.

 

Game 3-Orks

Deployment- Spearhead

Main- Kill points

Sec- Table quarters

Tert- Keep half your KPs alive.

 

I won this 22-0. I got first turn and popped his vehicles and took him apart in multiple assaults. I lost two kill points and he conceded on turn 5 with only some outflankers left on the board.

 

The tournament winner went on to beat the SW player that beat me in the final game. He won 22-0 (played DE). I wish I would have had a chance to play against him, I don't get to play DE hardly ever. The tournament overall was extremely fun. The immense amount of terrain was excessively restrictive to certain army types to a detrimental extent. It hindered gameplay and tactical choices by making the risks extremely high to even move some of your guys around.

 

Overall I think the list is probably good. It was just a lot slower paced than what I am personally used to (I frequently use stormravens). My second wave assault levels never got there the entire tournament except the third game and it was a decimation when it occurred. My generalship was too hasty for how this army should play. Initially I didn't like the play style but I do like aspects of the list. Two land raiders were probably weakened by having to move around in that terrain. If I had to do it again I'd bring a stormraven and a LR instead of two LRs (I've had success with that format). The lack of speed in this army bothered me a bit, but it was still fun to try out. The firepower against other vehcile-based lists was impressive. The terminator game was a bit disheartening but I do realize that making about 40 invulnerable saves by turn 4 is probably not going to happen that often again.

 

The real killer again was the SW list. Had it gone to turn 6 it's likely that the game would have scored 22-0 in my favor as he would have lost 2-3 more squads of troops and been forced off the objective and below 50% of his total remaining troops, but that's how the game goes. The random turn length ending on turn 5 beat me far worse than anything else that happening in that game aside from my bunk terminator assault and mephiston whiffing. Really wish I could have brought back a win. Was disgruntled about the list initially but again I think it was plenty competitive I just made some mistakes and had some off rolls.

 

Hope you enjoyed the read, feel free to ask any questions or offer any tactics/critiques/comments.