NOVA Open narrative campaign

[march10k]

So...just finished.  It was absolutely a blast.  Six games over four days with a daily planning session for the leadership of the two factions (who played all six games; people doing other events played three games and had no input into drafting matchups and stuff).  Strangely, even with just two games a day  (no day game on Thursday and no night game Sunday), it was incredibly exhausting...the night games ended as late as 3AM, with the morning games dropping dice at 9:30.  Of course, that was because there was no rush because there was no time limit...some games went over seven hours including setup, preliminaries, score sheets, and cleanup.  There was of course copious consumption, which may have slowed things...Not sure I can do it again next year, 3 1/2 days of marathon 40k, food truck food, and drinking is brutal.  

 

Anyway, it was a huge change from the GT scene, although there were a few WAAC GT gamers who brought broken un-fun lists, mainly among the nightfighers.  We threw them into matches against each other whenever possible, and always in a game that would have little impact on the campaign.  3-4 of the six games were team matches, the first one being three on three, played with 1k lists, but everyone got a couple games  with 2k lists, sometimes against a pair of 1k teammates and sometimes 2k on 2k.  Lots of cool lists.  One was DKOK with lots of towed artillery and at least 20 death riders.  There was an orky walker list, as well as an orky mad max list.  Two sets of sisters, neither of which was dominion spam (one even had an avenger!).  One guy's 1k list was ten models consisting of the four assassins, a BA character in TDA, and 5 thundernators (man, each failed save must have hurt!).  I was one of two DA players, the other guy had termies and dreads (auto-lose for having no models on the table was suspended, and the frequent scenario requirement to start with 1k on the table and 1k in reserves overrode formation deployment rules anyway).  My 1k was a demi company with the scout tax to make it a lion's blade, plus a bike libby.  My 2k added an RWAS to the LB and added a DWSF.

 

I don't remember the details of all of my games, but I know I was 3-2 going into the final today...the funny thing is, that wasn't really important.  If you won your game in a given round, you contributed towards your faction's progress towards victory...if you lost, you earned your faction some dirty tricks to play in the next round (things like one-use "this unit's weapons are salvo for a turn" -that one blew my assault squad off the table in a single shooting phase-ouch!), increasing your side's chances of victory going forward.

 

Today, I played against sally drop pod alpha strike cheese.  It was pretty brutal.  In spite of my "no drop pods"  deployment, I lost 37 marines in the first two turns while killing 4-5.  And that was before my termies had any chance to come in.  He really didn't have an answer for terminators, but I was down to four bikes (including the libby) and 12 tactical marines after 1.5 turns, with the termies and jumpers still in reserves.  I brought in the knights and second libby on turn 2, and he immediately played a -3 movement card on them!  The jumpers also came in, and ran towards the two stormtalons that had been harassing my bikes (thank you ravenwing rule!!!) to no effect.  He went into hover and turned to face them, but, squatting on top of a 3" building right in front of them, he couldn't depress his guns enough to shoot at them, so he turboed over their heads (he had no idea he couldn't shoot straight down?!?)...but he was in hover, so I played a card of my own, giving my company master (who better, he has BS5) a heavy 1 D shot at his rear armor, blowing chunks of that dumpster chicken all over the place.  The other one flew off the table!  

 

Meanwhile, my 12 tactical marines charged one of his two podding tactical squads that had reduced one of them to 3 (they started at 9) models, and were promptly counter-charged by his own assault squad....that combat lasted five rounds before my men died...taking 8/10 tacticals and one jumper with them, in spite of a power sword and a thunderhammer on the other side, and nothing but combat knives for us!  THAT is how Dark Angels do it! My bikes hit his other tactical squad in the area, killing six and driving them off.  His command squad (with vulcan and a TDA libby attached) couldn't get in on the slaughter of my tacticals, as they were completely encircled...thus, his leadership did nothing the rest of the game...they had done enough, killing my lascannon devs on turns 1-2.  His sternguard camped the objective that they had taken from my other tactical squad.

 

His dreddy and the survivors from the squad my bikes had beaten charged my bikes, killing everyone but the libby.  On my turn, the DWK charged in and the libby challenged his sergeant, who accepted.  My TDA libby had put mind wipe on the dreddy (much whining about that working on non-infantry...sorry, isn't there a marine in the sarcophagus?), so he killed one termie before the smashed him for 4 pens.  Two more, identical dirty tricks cards (he had banked them all weekend long).  First the dreddy explodes in a S8AP3 pieplate, killing his surviving marines and wounding the libby...then he plays the same card on one of his own men he's just killed, finishing off the libby!

 

After that, it was a mad dash for objectives.  He held two on one short edge of the board, I held two on the other short edge.  The fifth one was on his side...after his tactical squad there played that "our weapons are salvo" card (salvo melta!!!), wiping the master's retinue of ten jumpers, he stepped around a corner to claim the fifth objective...where he was pounced upon by the enemy's 9 remaining jumpers...in two rounds, he killed five and took but one wound himself (not bad, considering they charged him, getting five hammer of wrath attacks!)...the look on his face when he learned that his non-OBSEC jumpers lost to my OBSEC captain was priceless.  Because he could have had that tactical squad come over and contest the objective if he'd known (their drop pod would have held the objective they were camping), I conceded him a draw.  Hey, it wasn't a GT, and it was the last game...a gloriously hard-fought one, although my thundernators came in so late (another stupid card of his) that they couldn't do anything but grab an objective that nobody else was in range of (yeah, thank you 12" telehomer!!!)

 

Some other memorable moments: In my first game (a loss...my mad max ork teammate insisted on eating 870 of the 1000 points that the three of us were allowed to deploy before turn one...then promptly lost half of them in turn one!), three bloodcrushers dropped 4" from my assault squad (naked, with company master on board).  Five players at my table were sure that eleven marines were going to die...after all, bloodcrushers eat marines for breakfast, right?  Wrong.  Even though my eleven pistol shots failed to sink a wound, I crushed the crushers.  I charged, having not used my jump packs, and hammer of wrath killed one.  I challenged with my master, and he and the champion had a tickle fight...but  the 30 attacks from the squad put 8 wounds on the remaining model, sending the champion back into the warp, as well!  I lost two jumpers, and five jaws hit the floor.  RESPECT ASSAULT MARINES!!!  Actually, they did well all weekend, except for the aforementioned salvo ambush.

 

Another time, I had a covert mission in a team game.  For this mission, my whole army (1k lists) had power armor (unless TDA, not a factor here, and it helped my scouts), which I had to announce at the top of turn one.  Then, whenever my first unit got into melee, I had to announce that my whole army had A0 and hit and run...the objective was to keep my warlord alive, which was secret until the end of the game.  Well, my team won 10-9, and got a 10 point bonus for achieving the covert mission...the fun part was our opponents' speculation about why my scouts got 3+ armor (they died turn one anyway), then confusion when my jumpers arrived and promptly ran away. I explained that with two wraith spam players (one on each side) and the aforementioned ten model army (6 TDA, 4 assassins) on the table, assault marines were outmatched, and I wasn't about to give them a free KP.  Then, they finally got locked with my tactical squads (two of them...the stupid 2++ rerolling ones or whatever licheguard squad teleported across the table) and learned the 0A hit and run thing, they shrugged and ignored my ineffective pistoliers for the rest of the game.  The scrum in the center was amazing...two 1k lists worth of max wraiths, plus the termies and praetorians...it lasted four game turns, with two friendly wraiths emerging from the scrum in the end, one of them wounded.  The only thing I had left alive was 4 devs and the jumpers with their precious cargo-worth an entire game of max points (max score in a game's primary was 10 points, but you could get 6 more on discretionary objectives).  Glorious slaughter.  We also killed 3/4 assassins, although the vindicare, who survived, killed 5 of my 7 heavy weapons himself!

 

In an inglorious game, I got put against (damn you, commander, when you sacrifice me for the greater good, at least tell me the truth) white scars with 17 grav guns (my commander said "a couple") in a match that put a premium on mobility.  He got 5 points for killing at least 1k of my 2k list and 5 points for removing at least 5 obstacles that my units could deploy by giving up their movement and shooting phases (he had to give up shooting).  I put up a good fight and dropped about 18 tokens, but he picked up 16 in the end for a 10-4 victory.  He was really pissed off at the effectiveness of my delaying tactics as guys I buried in the corner spammed the obstacle tokens, but with that much grav, his mood soon improved.  The worst moment was when my knights had to tank four grav wounds, and rolled four twos!  Second-worst was when I mind-wormed the enemy libby.  He rolled a 5, and I sucked myself into the warp on mishap!

 

I did misjudge my sisters opponent, taking him lightly on the top of turn one (after my devs cratered his lone exorcist on the top of turn one and my bikes graved a rhino, I didn't  charge the passengers)...that cost me big, and it was a really tough fight to eke out a close win after that...only made possible by my termies...they of course had four of five die very quickly, but the last man held out in each case  for 4-5 melee phases before rolling a 1 to save a wound.  My scouts held up his outflanking rhinoed melta dominions the entire game, the last man going down on turn six of six.  On turn five, one last-man-standing termie rescued my company master (who had foolishly lost his retinue to celestine) from the clutches of a battle sister squad (the boss was on his last wound!), and they consolidated in opposite directions to protect the captain from the next battle sister squad.  The captain ended up capping the deciding objective when the termie held out long enough that the sisters only had one movement/run phase to contest...they rolled snake eyes on move through cover, handing me the victory.  That game wasn't glorious, it was the one where I made mistakes, should have lost, was rescued by my termies' tenacity, and then finally won when it should have been a draw, on the luck of one enemy move through cover roll.

 

I had one game against a Ksons/Ctan list (the Ctan shard with two crypteks formation?)...I decided early that the Ctan unit was 530 points that could only do one thing at a time and I couldn't do much to hurt it...so I just killed everything else (all the ksons stuff) for the win.  He wasn't happy that I didn't waste any effort on his deathstar.  Another player had the invisible calgar/tigurius/grav-cent-star in two drop pods.  That was more effective than the Ctan because it had far more offensive output and similar invulnerability.  Nobody wanted to play against that...

 

I think my tau teammate in the first game (two hammerheads, then nothing but drones and crisis teams) had the most amazing luck in spite of probably the worst battle record in the event.  A unit of marker drones took a charge and won combat, breaking  the enemy chargers.  A hammerhead made 7 consecutive jinks against melta over two turns.  Those are just his two best war stories, and I was there for the first one.  

 

Anyway, an awesome experience, easily the best 'con experience ever...just not sure I have the stamina to do it again next year, lol.

[PhilB]

Sounds like a great weekend!

Did you use the same 1k and 2k lists the whole weekend? I'd be interested to see it.

[Gillyfish]

That sounds like a lot of fun, although exhausting, and clearly there were come memorable moments. Were you able to get any pictures at all and who won in the end?

[FerociousBeast]

According to BoLS, a Dark Angel/Space Wolves list won the standard tournament.

[Prot]

According to BoLS, a Dark Angel/Space Wolves list won the standard tournament.

 

There's some irony right there. lol 

 

Hopefully at the end of the tournament the two champions dueled! 

[Gillyfish]

Caveat: The following may not be true...

 

Prot, of course there was! It was declared a draw after the DA threw a stick which distracted the Space Wolf enough for the Dark Angel to land a blow, but not before the Wolf had given the Dark Angel fleas in his hessian undergarments.

[march10k]

Well...there wasn't an individual winner of the narrative, that's at least 50% of the point.  It was a titanic struggle between two factions, and the idea, from the organizer's perspective, is to have each game contribute in a small way to the overall outcome of the weekend, which in turn advances the overall story while leaving room for and setting up next year's campaign.  There is an MVP from each side, but that has more to do with popular input than game outcomes, although game results and paint scores do play a role.  Somewhat separately, there are fame and infamy (your choice which one, if any, you work towards) awards, which are really hard to achieve without losing most of your games in the process (in one match, your whole army except your warlord had to be outside your deployment zone at the end of the game...tough to do when your opponent wins by destroying or controlling three buildings and you win by maintaining them in a status of intact and either contested or controlled by you!), but do get your warlord written into the fluff for next year.

 

Anyway, only 3-4 of the ~30 participants were using WAAC/GT lists, partly because superheavies were banned and if you didn't use any formations (unbound was banned) you got some pretty sweet bonuses.  Frinstance, if I'd gone without the lion's blade and DWSF, I would have had infantry and jump infantry that was relentless and got a 4++ and twinlinked shooting if they didn't move in their movement phase (could still run, charge, pile in, etc).  Also, you could either pick a permanent warlord trait or roll a different one every game, but you couldn't pick one for each game...I went with master of ambush, thinking I'd get to deploy most of my stuff after the other guy even when going first.

 

Here are my two lists:

 

1k:

 

Master with mace, digi, jump pack

 

3x9 tacticals with plasma cannons (should have gone plasma guns for 3+ overwatch)

 

10x assault marines

 

8x devastators with 4 lascannons

 

5x scouts with sniper rifles and cloaks

 

2k:

 

master wth mace, artificer, and jump pack

L2 libby with bike and shroud (remembered FNP exactly once...dammit!)

 

3x9 tacticals with plas/plas

 

10 jumpers

 

9 devastators with 4 lascannons

 

5 scouts with sniper rifles and cloaks

 

RWAS with 6 bikes, dual grav and tornado

 

DWFS with 4 thundernators and HF/CF, 5 knights, and L2 TDA libby

 

The RWAS and DWSF performed magnificently in the 2k games...except when facing 17 white scars grav guns, and the tactical squads did a phenomenal job of dying so slowly that it screwed over my opponents' plans...they think "oh, tactical squad, I'll obliterate that on the charge or on the other team's next turn, and next turn it's on to the next objective," but the tac squads tended to last 4-5 assault phases...oops!