Apocalypse At 'Em

This afternoon's (and morning's) gaming was all about Apocalypse.  My local gaming group is putting together an event for November (Fallpocalypse in Japan on the off chance that's local to you as well).  We figured it might be a good thing to have at least one game under our belts in the new system, so we queued up around 7,500 points a side and braved the weather to chuck some dice.

Get in there.  Mix it up.

As a prelude to talking about the game itself, let me say that in the past, most of my experiences with Apocalypse have been poor.  I have sat around a lot, games have moved unbearably slow, and a variety of poor attitudes from the players have all been contributing factors.  However, this game was a complete 180 degree turnaround.  I spent quite a bit of time just after the game thinking about why that was, and I believe I've been able to suss out a few of the reasons we were successful.

Just Rolling With It
Each of our players were willing to be flexible.  When one of our guys had to decommit on Thursday due to a morning commitment, we adjusted.  I suggested we play the Meat Grinder scenario, and allow his team to take between half and all of their units in their initial wave.  This allowed them to spend the first phase of the game on equal footing.  We loaned a few units across both sides of the board.  We even had two Mephistons on one side, due to a lack of communication, but whatever.  It's Apocalypse.  We just wanted to see this thing happen.

Small Victories
In a game this size, with plenty of ridiculous things happening, "winning" can only matter so much.  The objectives really seem to be there more to provide a reason to go to various points on the board.  Go to those points, forget the larger picture for a second, and wait to see something cool.  One side went Super-heavy hunting with their Assault Terminators, and let me tell you, they found them.  And the Apocalyptic Explosion that went with it.

You can just see Kharn(right), sans-unit, charging alone upfield.

I used a special power to attempt to bring down three flyers in one move.  The environmental condition were "all ranged weapons have 'Gets Hot'", so I possessed a Storm Raven, fired its Lascannon at another Storm Raven, and its Multimelta at a Storm Talon.  To cap off the move, I fired off all the Hurricane Bolters.  My buddy kept saying, "But they're strength four, so you can't do anything," until he finally figured out the joke.  And then his flyers went down.  It was worth a pretty good laugh even if you were on the wrong side of the exchange.

Proper Perspective
All your stuff is going to die.  Accept that fact.  And it is going to go down quickly.  I lost my Keeper of Secrets to bolter fire and angry Fenrisian Wolves.  What the heck?  Oh right, it's too many dice.  This stuff is just gonna happen.  Now, time to move the two Daemon Princes and the Bloodthirster.

Ticking Timebomb
The clock had a major effect and was a huge upgrade.  The 'just plan to shoot your whole day and play until you get to the end' way of doing things was terrible by comparison.  We put a thirty minute cap on player turns.  It might seem like a short time, but of the 12 player turns, I think we got close to the cap twice.  The first turn was something of a leisurely stroll.  Once we realized, "Oh hey, we need to have a bit of a plan and move quickly through movement to get shooting and assault in," our turns were moving quick.  This had the effect of keeping everyone far more engaged as conversations and combats did not drag on like they are wont to.

Keep the Joke Going
Really, there isn't much better to this whole thing than enjoying time spent with friends truly enjoying yourself.  If you're laughing, it's all good.  Even if you're crying.  Nothing is better than rolling a one and a two on a three inch charge, commenting on how it's a good thing that you just made it, then needing a three and coming up double one on the the very next charge.  When the snake eyes are staring back at you, you gotta laugh.

So that is my time of musing.  To sum up for the TLDR crowd:  40K is a game, Apocalypse is an event.  Get out there and blow stuff up.

See Me Rollin

What I'm playing on.  Not too shabby.

Despite a few ups and downs (and I mean that sorta literally. Lots of earthquakes here, but little ones and it's apparently just business as usual after), I've managed to get my first few games in in Japan.  It's been a very good experience.  The local folks seem to be extremely flexible about what they're playing.  That seems to be the case for everything, so it may mean a pretty transient metagame, which makes sense with so many people rotating in and out.  Honestly, I'm kind of excited about that.  It means lots of new challenges and no must haves in my list.  Obviously, we're looking at mostly power armor, which is just about the norm everywhere, but there seems to be plenty of variety in the flavor available.

But, when hammers hammer, they totally hammer.

I've also made a drop from the typical 1850 point games I played for most of last year to 1500 points.  This is for a couple reasons.  Number one, again, runs back to new challenges.  Going in with blind lists and only having 1500 points means trying to have solutions for problems with resources that are even dearer.  Every troop unit that goes down makes the road to scoring even tougher.  Each time a hammer fails to break its target, the opponent's is free to wreak havoc.  It makes the game tougher and the board seem a little more open.  I like the challenge, though certain mismatches yield uphill battles.

Second, I don't know if you've heard, but there is a new Daemons codex out.  I don't have it.  While that really wouldn't stop me from playing at a higher points level, it feels weird to have a big Word Bearers army and not have any daemons in it.  It's kind of a shame, as I've heard some things that sound pretty cool about the book, but time and opportunity haven't met for my acquisition of the aforementioned book.

To these larger thoughts, I'd like to add three micro-level observations from each of my three games.  From my most recent game is this little nugget.  Grey Knights suck.  It's not exactly a new sentiment, but holy cow, do they try to take my fun and stomp all over it.  I'm sure they're good normally, but against an army with as many things with the "Daemon" rule as mine, it becomes a real uphill struggle.    I threw my Daemon Prince into a Paladins squad knowing he'd die, but hoping he'd take out the enemy warlord in the process.  Terminator troops make Possessed hammer units sad.  Land Raiders are tough to crack (as always).  Thankfully, everyone did there job.  While I didn't have much left, I squeaked it out, though that doesn't do anything to lessen my Grey Knight hate.

Picture preceded by: "It can't possibly happen again..."

From game two, I learned that bad luck on key rolls can only produce a shake of the head and a little laugh, cuz there's nothing else you can really do.  I played kill points against a Blood Angels army that had two serious hammer units consisting of Assault Terminators plus a Captain in a Storm Raven and Death Company with a Chaplain in a Drop Pod.  I planned on letting the Daemon Prince (with multiple boons!) go to work on the Terminators, but it was not to be.  I rolled FOUR ones on Daemon Weapon rolls.  That guy took all game trying to take out a five man assault squad and a ten man tactical squad.  It was ridiculous.  On the other hand, my Possessed popped up with AP3 weapons on the charge and totally wiped the Death Company in one go (minus the Chaplain in a challenge), so Lady Luck really does swing both ways.

Finally, from my very first game, I've begun "Playing to a Story" as I like to call it.  A few other members of the gang have made up a setting in which there games take place.  I have written up a little something to be an episode that will become a part of my army's history.  This means a little extra bookkeeping, but with the way things are in the codex, what's a little more?  I'm tracking specific events and deeds performed by various units and trying to produce certain things.  This doesn't always mean making the most tactical decision, but it adds a fun RPG element to my games.  As a general overview of what I'm talking about, my warlord is trying to secure the patronage of a minor deity, and to do that I am attempting to do things like force morale checks, headhunt HQ's, and force enemies to flee off the board (which is tough to do against all these marines).  It's actually a decent sized list, and I'm trying to come up with additional objectives, but it adds some spice to the decision making process which has been really enjoyable.

The Big Game

Maybe a challenge you wanna think twice about making?

Sunday was the final day of the most recent incarnation of our 40K League at At Ease Games.  We decided, again, that the best way to cap things off would be a massive multiplayer game.  I was a little nervous after the previous Apocalypse attempt, but we thought to give it one more shot.  So eleven of us showed up with no idea what to expect, built lists of 1500 points, then were all told to prepare to vie for possession of the Fortress of Redemption...  And, oh by the way, one of the guy's Reaver Titans would be on the board, firing at the behest of the league organizer.  Let the shenanigans ensue!

Once things actually got put on the board, and we figured out the turn order, things actually moved at a really fast clip.  One of the things that tends to suck the fun right out of a big game is turns that drag on and on with a lot of passive players.  By a somewhat serendipitous set of rolls, most of the players were not next to each other either physically or in the turn order, so when a player wasn't engaging the next guy in the order, we were able to get two and three people to take their turns almost simultaneously.  Because of this, we got in a full four turns in just under four hours.  That may not seem that great, but when you consider that we had essentially eleven different turns to get through for full armies plus a new edition, and that's actually really good.  As a result, no one had to sit around for an hour and not do anything.

I enjoyed the way the Titan interacted with the game.  Essentially it took the twelfth player turn and started firing at things not getting stuck in to the middle of the board.  Meanwhile, we gave it a dozen hull points and raced to see who could blow it up first.  It took a bit more doing than we initially anticipated.  I dropped in a Bloodthirster and threw him directly into the Titan, knocking off half a dozen of the hull points with a bunch of patented ankle bite attacks.  Unfortunately, my treacherous Dark Eldar buddy decided he wanted the glory for himself and shot down ol' BT.  I was more surprised than I should have been.  One of our Blood Angels players jumped in at the top of the last turn and did the last of the dirty work...  And then the reactor went supernova.  A lucky string of sixes cleared a whole swathe of the board, including three squads of Sanguinary Guard, effectively tabling one of our players.  He offered a wry smile and a chuckle at his misfortune.

The game wound down on turn 4.  There wasn't much left on the board, and what was left made a mad dash for the middle.  I had the good fortune to have started most of my stuff close to the fortress, plus I failed to bring in my Plaguebearers until that turn.  They deep struck onto the fortress, while the last of my Possessed mobs staggered into it.  The lone remaining Daemon Prince that had survived the supernova jumped up onto the tower and claimed it for Chaos.  A few Orks also made the run, while a pair of Wave Serpents dropped a batch of Banshees and Seer Council just onto the edge of scoring.  Of all people, the Dark Eldar just didn't have the speed to get where they needed to be.  At that point, we counted up total points on the objective.  I came up with 655, while the Eldar tallied up 697 with all those IC's.  So close.  Regardless, it was an awesome game and everyone seemed to walk away happy.  

A Few 6th Edition Initial Thoughts

Have you read a thousand of these posts yet?

We had a sort of informal tournament on Saturday at At Ease Games.  There wasn't a prize pool or an entry fee or scoring, but we had a time and a points value and a very large turnout.  By the end of the day, we had improvise extra tables, and there were still people standing, watching, and waiting for their turn.  The excitement was palpable and great to see.

I went 2-0-1 on the day, playing my Chaos Space Marines, with games against Daemons, Tau, and vanilla Marines.  I played the new versions of Seize Ground and Capture and Control, plus one of the new missions called "The Relic."  Overall, I really like the changes, while it also feels like I'm still just playing 40K.

I don't know that this edition will be kind to the tournament-centric mindset.  The random elements seem to be pretty prevalent.  By way of example, I'd pick Warlord traits.  A single D6 can have a pretty significant effect on the game.  In the Relic mission, I turned my Daemon Prince into a scoring unit, while my Tau opponent got the ability to score victory points by slaying enemies in challenges.  To me, that seems like a pretty big disparity.  On the other hand, the game is really fun, seems to play quickly, and does a good job of making things cinematic.  For those kinds of games, I think it's going to be a tremendous rule set.  Woodchuck and Hanover's please.

I'm not too worried about Allies.  It seems like it was written similarly to how it was in the 8th edition Fantasy book, which never seemed to see a profound emergence of allies.  And while there may be some crazy combos, everyone can play them.  It also gives me the opportunity to field a detachment of daemons in my Chaos army while I'm building them up.  Now I don't have to buy a whole army to start playing with it.  I can have an all painted force, even while building one up.

A few other brief thoughts.  First, overwatching Plasma Guns are TERRIFYING.  Second, I like the way vehicles work.  They're more reliable and easier to kill at the same time.  I don't think we'll see a lot of light mech in assault armies because you need to be out of them a full turn to charge, but shooty armies might still spam light chassis.  Hopefully this means we'll see the addition of lizard and Spock to the rock, paper scissors mix.  Finally, I really hope flying things don't become the level 4 wizards of 40K.  They seem to be difficult to handle and able to dish out the punishment.  Most armies aren't ready to handle them beyond praying for sixes.  That may change as each book comes out, but that will take a while.

In the meantime, game on!

A Small World After All

Another week.  Another good league game.  This week I was paired up with one of my usual playing partners to stand against a couple of Ultramarine players.  One of my opponents was new to the club, and as we were rolling off for sides and turn, he lost one of his dice which had some sentimental value to him.  He asked me to check my dice, since they were the same shade, but all my dice are Iron Fist League logo dice, and they all turned up with the same logo.  But there were too many of them.  It turns out the club I used to be a part of on the East Coast ran an event he attended, and he still had the die he received.  This small coincidence kicked things off in a very positive direction and led to a great game.

The mission we rolled up was called Return to the Eye.  The primary was Seize Ground with five objectives, while secondary was kill enemy psykers, and tertiary was killpoints.  It also contained a special rule allowing each player to remove something from the table and redeploy it via deepstrike every turn.  Our opponents took first turn and threw Rhinos and Space Marine Tactical squads all over their half.  In response, we decided to have everything walk on in our first turn.  We rolled on almost entirely on the left side of the board and began a big sweeping right hook.  Most of our first turn fire was ineffective, while our Daemon Princes took a few return wounds in the top of the second turn.  Unfortunately for them, it wasn't enough to dissuade us from throwing them forward again.  In our turn, we smashed up a couple of tactical squads and a dreadnought, while the Defiler started lobbing battle cannon rounds down range.  Our force brought so much force to bear that the left half of the board was completely uncontested.  Meanwhile, by turn three, our transports were free to floor it for the far side of the board. 


On the top of turn four, our opponents Thunder Hammer Terminators arrived.  One of our Daemon Princes had worked his way across the board, so we offered him up as bait back towards their own board edge.  This pulled the Assault Terminators away from the central objective, which should have contributed to icing the game for us.  It turned out that a Daemon Prince, a Greater Daemon, a squad of Possessed with Furious Charge, and a full turn of shooting couldn't kill off four regular Terminators.  After the number of 2+ saves I've made in the last year with my terminators, I now got to experience the other side.  It happens, but man it can be frustrating.  With a little late scrambling, we contested both objectives on the far right, including the back corner after a big time deep strike with the Defiler.  The game went one more turn, and the Defiler didn't make it, but it was a moment of great levity.  We did manage the other contest, so we pulled off the primary and tertiary objectives, 2-1 and 8-5 respectively.  It's another positive result for the league, but more than that, I'm stoked about the pace of play and the quality of the games. 

Playing Well With Others, Part Deux

Crow can be delicious when it has the right spices.  It seems I should have given the team league a little more time before making a judgement.  Since my previous post, I've gotten another pair of games in.  Something has been different these past two weeks.  Game lengths have shortened.  Pairings seemed to fall into place.  Game play has gotten quicker.  Overall, everything seems to be running a lot smoother. 

At the risk of jumping to conclusions once again, I can only assume that this has something to do with a learning curve.  Four thousand point slug fests are still present but have mostly given way to 2000 or 2500 point games with two players to a side, or one player taking on two.  This takes things one big step towards being more manageable.  I also have to give the players credit.  After just a couple weeks of experience, they seem to be showing up with multiple lists for whatever they might end up having to play, rather than building a list on the fly and obsessing over points for an extra half-hour.    During games, phases seem to flow a lot more smoothly.  There's more communication between players in the dead spaces of the game, so when the action starts to get thick, both players are active when they can be.  There's a lot less of the, "Well, let me see what you do there, and then I'll make a decision on where to shoot."  Total game time is still a little longer, but not noticeably so.  It's going to be interesting to see if there's more to the curve, or if we begin to plateau.

Another bonus is adding to the list of armies that I've gotten to play alongside.  Orks aren't exactly the most tactically complex army, and pairing them with Chaos Marines isn't a force multiplier.  In contrast, Eldar and Dark Eldar are quite a bit squishier.  Add to that the speed and guns my teammates brought to bear, and suddenly it felt like teamwork.  Things started to click.  I had a role to fulfill.  Be resilient.  Push forward.  Apply pressure.  Get stuck in.  I can do that.  Games were less about simply pushing towards combat because my team's assault forces didn't cover the whole front of the board.  Planning became a thing.  Tactical options opened up.  My teammates and I worked together to achieve a mission.  It felt good.  It felt really good.  Hopefully there is more of the same on the way. 

Playing Well With Others

The Defiler is secretly a Triarch Stalker...

A new league has started up and it's got a little wrinkle.  Team games.  It's an interesting dynamic.  I think of myself as a very sociable person, but playing with people is not the same as playing against them.  I've had two games of this and am expecting several more weeks of it.  Thus far, I'd have to say it hasn't panned out quite how I had hoped.

There are a number of things that could be contributing to this.  I'm playing a new army.  Or rather, returning to one.  I thought I'd give the Word Bearers and there current book one last hurrah before sixth edition and a new Chaos book.  It's been an adjustment.  Game night is also under a little bit of a time crunch for the first time in a while.  But the overall deciding factor feels like the trouble of having four or five or six people involved in a game.

Simply finding a game becomes more stressful.  Because the league is set up as something akin to a campaign, there are restrictions on who can pair with whom.  Suddenly, navigating the pool of players becomes a lot more complicated.  Additionally, no one comes with a prepared list because no one know who or with how many players they'll be paired, and everyone still wants to take all of their toys, so points levels get pretty bloated.  This, plus plenty of waiting around during shooting and assault phases, leads to extremely long games with what feels like even longer periods of inactivity.  This past week saw four and a half hours of game finish just through turn five.  I like 40K, but that just doesn't work for me.

I am also struggling with "Are you sure you want to do that?"-itis.  I make mistakes as part of my human condition, but it's easy to live with your own mistakes.  Playing with a partner, particularly one who makes a series of decisions that make you grit your teeth and look to see how other games are going, has the effect of pulling my focus away from enjoying the table top and focusing on other things.  At the same time, I don't want my teammate to feel like I'm pushing him out of the way to play both his army and mine.  With an opponent, it feels natural to give advice to a player who isn't as good, and just as natural to shut up when playing someone more skilled. 

I'm not throwing in the towel yet.  We'll see what happens this week.  Hopefully, I'll have a game that reverses the trend.  

Apocalyptic Sunday

What $1800 of Realm of Battle boards looks like.

This past Sunday, the league I've been playing in for the past couple of months came to an end.  The league organizer is still tabulating the results, but to celebrate making it to the end, he gave us the choice of running a tournament or putting together a big Apocalypse game.  After discussing it with the rest of the guys, I voted for an Apocalypse game.  I was the "new guy" at the start of the season, and I felt like I had really managed to plug in over the course of the dozen or so games I had played in the last months, so I reasoned that blowing up a few things with some new friends would be a fitting way to end the league.

It didn't quite go the way I thought it would.  This was my first game of Apocalypse, and my expectations were for a fluffy, amicable game in which all kinds of random things happened and cool ruled all.  It's always interesting to play in multi-player games because of the way it stretches the social contract.  With two players, a game is fairly straightforward.  Their are basic cues that usually dictate what is what, and the chances of those being misread are slimmer, assuming a few basic social skills.  Adding players adds to the complexity and it's interesting to see that the tension builds not only between opponents, but between teammates as well.  When one person wants to play with their toys and another wants to wipe out the enemy, the latter ends up somewhere between Lord-High General and tyrant or an oppressive attitude and "That Guy" depending on which side you're on.  And when it happens in the ridiculous venue that is Apocalypse, the chances for that become more pronounced.

I think it's fair to say that I didn't have the best time.  Honestly, I'd describe it as the worst 40K experience I've had in quite some time.  I attribute this to the fact that not everyone was on the same page, but also the unbalanced nature of big games.  That said there were still a few really cool moments.

Hugs!

One of the players on the opposition brought a half-dozen Ork Warbosses that he ran as a single mob.  Meanwhile, I had a pair of Wolf Lords with either a Power Fist or a Thunder Hammer.  Seeing this, we both went all, "Come at me, bro!" on each other.  I had the chance to assault and took it.  Both my guys died horribly, as the Lord with Saga of the Bear was already carrying two wounds, while the other was doubled out, but before they got taken off, they each got to swing, netting at least two wounds on each Warboss.  Each was doubled out, except for one, who managed to make both of his 5+ cybork body saves.  So close...  That bosses power field must have been on point, because he later saved two of two wounds from my Librarian's force weapon.  Sometimes the dice just don't cooperate.

On the other hand...

Yes, I flank marched my Wolf Lords...

Logan and company rolled on and popped their shots at a nearby Stompa.  Arjac knocked him down to his last structure point, but I couldn't quite finish him off.  In response, a ton of fire gathered around them for retribution.  The chances of survival from all the lances and rail guns were reasonably close to nil.  As everyone around the table began firing, the Ork player stepped up and said, "OK, I'm gonna fire my Shokk Attack gun at you.  Here's my roll for the strength."  Much to my chagrin, he rolled up a ten.  But it was double five's and we knew that did something.  We checked the book, and sure enough, the Mek had shot himself into close combat with Logan.  There would be no more shooting at them this turn.  It was absolutely priceless to see the reaction of the guy who was so dead set on winning when he found out all his careful planning had gone awry for the quirks of the dice.


Anyway, the game trickled to a half after three and a half turns.  The victors were obvious at this point and I was more than happy to go home.  I may return to Apocalypse at some point, but hopefully under more clear circumstances.  For now, my votes will be for tournaments when the option arises.

Fantasy 40K, Round 2

In passing, I mentioned a fun exercise some friends and I had conducted previously that we called "Fantasy 40K."  The concept emerged as an amalgamation of other favorite pasttimes.  Namely, 40K (obviously) and fantasy football, with some other odds and ends likely contributing.  Essentially, we held a draft in which we pooled all the units in 40K, with the intention of filling out exactly one slot for each space on the force org, plus two more troops and two dedicated transports.  Each player would have to fit everything they picked into a 1500 point army, and we invoked the "Rule of Cool" to govern it all. 

 

I walked into the draft with a plan and walked away from the draft very pleased with the following list:  Ork Boyz, Tau Crisis Suits, Tyranid Mycetic Spore Pod, Grey Knight Interceptors, Blood Angels Death Company, Dark Eldar Haemonculus, Eldar Jetbikes, Grey Knight Dreadknight, Blood Angels Rhino.

 

The vision of the list is to use the Crisis Suits and their Orbital Relay to bring in the Haemonculus in the Spore Pod on turn two.  The Haemonculus drops a webway portal, then dies horribly as he's really the only thing on the board at this point.  From there, everything emerges from the portal and the fun begins.  That's the plan anyway, and we all know how plans go.

 

I managed to get in a game of this shenaniganery (shenaniganry?) on Tuesday and thought I'd spare a moment to talk about it.  My opponents list included Nemesor Zandrekh with the Stormlord, plus Bloodcrushers, Grey Knight Terminators, Blood Angel Assault Marines in an IG Vendetta, Eldar Rangers, a Chaos Marine Obliterator, a Chimera, and a Drop Pod.  We rolled Capture and Control with Pitched Battle, and I took the first turn.

It's a little bit of a proxy-fest.

I hid my Crisis Suit as far back and out of sight as I could.  It's always fun to spend three seconds to deploy a single model and it makes for a quick first few turns.  Unfortunately, nothing could stop his Vendetta from picking off my lone guy after a long scout move.  With that, I had to adapt my plan and hope some things broke my way.  I failed my initial reserve roll for the spore pod, but also failed for everything else except my Rhino and my Jetbikes. My opponent responded by committing his Terminators forward and wiping out my Jetbikes.  This was bad news since they accounted for one of my only two scoring options.  

Turn three opened more productively, as my Death Company, Orks, and Dreadknight all walked on, while the Haemonculus dropped in next to my opponent's objective.  Between the jump packs and the Waaagh, I managed to get three units into the Terminators, which more than did the trick.  The Orks jumped into the building containing my objective, while the Death Company and Dreadknight received a counter-charge from the Bloodcrushers.  It wasn't until after the first round of combat that I actually took the time to look up what Dark Excommunication did, and at that point, I realized the valuable lesson of always knowing your rules.  

In turn four, I hopped the Interceptors out of the webway portal, with the intention of assaulting the Rangers controlling my opponent's objective.  I thought I'd pour a few shots into them just for the heck of it and ended up killing two of the Eldar.  My opponent promptly spoke the magic words:  "It's leadership ten."  He promptly rolled box cars, and fell off the board in the following turn.  With no scoring units left near that objective, all focus shifted to mine.  I shunted the Interceptors back to try and take down the Vendetta, but just couldn't manage it.  My Dreadknight held off the Assault Marines to protect the Orks, but with the Vendetta contesting on the bottom of the turn, the game ended in a draw.

I was a little disappointed not to come away with the win, but we both had a really great time.  This goofy method of getting in games has proved to be extremely enjoyable.  Hit me up if you're interested and I'll point you towards our ruleset.

The League Gets... Bloody

There always seems to be something a little perverse about playing my army against an actual Blood Angel's force.  We make plenty of jokes about training exercises and dum-dum bullets, but it still looks weird to have all the red on red crime.

This happened on a Thursday, when the league organizer finally gave up and said, "Fine, Imperials can play Imperials because they outnumber the Axis this week."  This led to my match-up with a heavily meched up Blood Angels army.  It consisted of three different Predator tanks, a bunch of Razorback and Rhino transports with Assault Squads inside, some Sanguinary Guard, and a squad of scouts.  I had just finished building the Vargheist's bases, so I decided to run a full squad of Thunderwolves.  I also wanted to run the Land Raider once again, and decided to use the extra random points to make the squad inside seven strong, including Logan.  That should strike fear into most units in the game.

Enough red to make your eyes bloody.  Get it?

The mission we rolled was called "The Listening Post."  The primary objective would be one piece of terrain, based on making a 5+ die roll attempted each time we initially entered a wood or hill.  The secondary objective was a marker that was placed in the middle of the field, while the third was who could pop the most tanks.  With only one tank, I was pretty sure I could pick up the tertiary easily enough.  It was Dawn of War and I took first turn.  My plan was pretty simple.  I wanted to move into as many pieces of terrain as possible, as quickly as possible.  If I could find the main objective, I could castle up and I'd be hard to shift. 

I managed to make a mockery of this fairly simple tactic by failing roll after roll over the course of the first two turns.  I countered this by rolling well to pop his tanks and was stoked to have four points in the bag from turn one.  My opponent found the listening post deep in his back right corner, which would present a problem for me as I had already committed the Thunderwolves on the left flank, and the rest of the army was going to struggle to make it across the field fast enough.  The only thing close by was Logan's squad, safely delivered by their transport just before a string of 6's from the lascannon Predator blew it up.  They'd have to do the dirty work alone and quickly set to it.  Even with poor rolling, they just put out so much damage that they quickly carved out all the resistance in that corner.  To compound this, my opponent deepstruck his Sanguinary Guard in my end, and victory was preserved when the Thunderwolf Lord made it 24" to finish them off.  Unfortunately, they wiped out the remainder of my Terminators, so I could only secure the points for the primary and tertiary objectives. 

Thirty Guardians vs. five Death Company = Not Fair

My second was something of a surprise bonus game.  All my models have been pulled off of their bases while the master copies of the scenic versions are being molded and cast, so I had anticipated being out of commission.  However, the army that won best overall was offered to me while the owner went to lunch so his friend could get in another game, which meant I was playing real, actual Blood Angels for once.  Speed, light armor, and a Storm Raven makes for a very different army, but similar employment.  I was playing against a foot Eldar list with an old school, 3rd edition Rescue mission that would see us looking for two hidden objectives.

I elected to go first again and chose the side with more markers to search.  It turns out my decision was a good one, with my troops jumping out and quickly finding both markers.  The two units carrying the markers used their transports to quickly relocate to the opposite corner of the board from his firebase, while the Death Company and Assault Marines applied pressure, killing off Guardians and forcing a reaction.  My opponent was so busy dealing with them that he never had a chance to go after the objectives.  That said, he pretty much annihilated the rest of my force, leaving a grand total of thirteen marines alive by the end of turn five. 

That adds 28 points to my league tally.  We'll see how quickly I can get the rest of the boys back in action.  Hopefully the bases will be done by tomorrow, but if they're done by the weekend, it'll work. 

Tournament! Part Deux

The Tau, who won best painted.

Round two, thankfully, did not begin with a bang.  I was playing a Tau list with two Shas'o, alongside some Crisis Suits, Broadsides, a Skyray, and a few other things.  I won the roll for first turn and immediately painted a big, fat target on the Broadsides.  It was always going to be a matter of whether or not I could get into his lines fast enough, and their railguns were the biggest threat to knocking out my Land Raider at any kind of range.  My meltas only managed to get one because of the cover they were sheltering in, but that turned out to be enough, as my Raider survived to turn two and delivered Logan into the Crisis suits. 

From that point, it was mostly academic.  There were a few highlights though, mostly involving the apparently ultra-resilient Skyray.  By turn four, it was the only thing left on the board.  We ended up going to turn seven because I couldn't kill it.  My Land Raider shot at it from turn three onwards and failed to even score the paint.  Despite roughly 15 hits from the assault cannon, I failed to roll a six to get a penetrating hit.  The multimelta fired at it four times and when it did hit, I rolled a three each time.  In the final turn, I even charged my Wolf Lord in on the final turn.  Did he have flechette discharges?  Yes.  Did they wound?  Yup.  Did I fail my 2+ save on my final wound?  Darn right I did.  For some reason, I don't think that will be written on his saga.

The game ended and scored me all three points.  That put me on the second table, matched up against Eldar.  This list was interesting because it included a squadron of Hornets, a Forge World unit.  Apparently, they're toting two pulse lasers apiece, meaning 12 strength 8, AP 2 shots per turn.  Just as in the game before, they got a big target painted right on them.  It turned out pretty well, as I got the first turn again, dropping in the Terminator pod and immediately blowing up two of them.  The assault cannons also found their range, knocking out two of three War Walkers.  This was a pretty devastating blow, as it knocked out almost the entirety of his weapons that would deny me saves or could seriously threaten my Land Raider.

Bridge over the river Sludge?

My turn two was equally productive.  He tried to block my path across one of the board's bridges with a Wave Serpent, but the Raider's firepower downed it and exposed the Dire Avengers inside to the Thunderwolves charge.   Over the next two turn's the Wolves ate that squad and another Dire Avenger squad, while the drop Terminators punched the last Hornet to death, and the back line Terminators shot down the last War Walker.  With all that damage, my opponent decided to concede.  While he might have been able to deny me an objective or two, I don't really blame him for his decision, as getting any result other than 3-0 was improbable. 


With eight of a possible nine points, I was in the running for Best General.  The top table was a Dark Eldar vs. Grey Knights match-up.  On turns five and six, it was 1-0, but unfortunately, on turn seven, the Knights finished off the last of the Dark Eldar, putting the Knights player on nine points and bumping me to second.  That was disappointing, but I felt a lot better when I found out that I had won Best Sportsman.  It's important to me that my opponent's enjoy their games, and if they can do so even in a competitive environment with me going as hard as I can, then mission accomplished.  Going into the tourney, my goal was to finish in the top three in every category.  Once I find out my paint score, I'll know if it's mission accomplished. 

As a bonus, here are a few shots of some of the other armies on the field.

The aforementioned top table Dark Eldar.

The eventual overall winner.  Gorgeous army.

The Best General Grey Knights.

Tournament!

Saturday, At Ease Games held a 2000 point tournament.  Obviously, I mention this because I was in attendance. 

After playing so many games at 1850 points, the extra 150 felt a little weird when I was trying to come up with a list.  I had just finished the Land Raider, so that had to be part of the list.  That meant Logan wouldn't be coming out of a pod, so I dropped two of them, plus a Lone Wolf and Dreadnought.  That meant I had points for a Thunderwolf to provide a running mate for the Thunderwolf Lord, providing him with just a little more protection and squeezing a strength ten Power Fist into a very fast unit. 

It really doesn't look like much at first.  And then it punches you in the face.

Going into the tournament, the thing I was most worried about was my general lack of experience with the list.  I've been playing my castling drop pods list for quite a while, and this was a pretty big departure.  I thought the theory was sound.  I wanted to alpha strike something significant with the drop pod, while the Thunderwolves and Land Raider raced forward to provide support.  It's always nice to have a theory, but putting it into practice can be interesting.

The missions were Bay Area Open style, meaning we'd be playing Seize Ground, Capture and Control, and Killpoints every game, with whoever fulfilled the most of these claiming the win.  After giving these a run, I have to say it's not incredible, but definitely plays pretty simply.  I guess my biggest gripe would be that it's not the most interesting way to play over the course of three games.  At the same time, not having to read the mission pack intently before every game to determine exactly what I need to do, then think through how to accomplish it while trying to deploy, is a big positive.

Evil St. Celestine

For my first game, I drew my favorite opponent, Chaos Daemons.  It was the same opponent as my first league game, though he was running a pretty different list.  Essentially, he tried to squeeze a bunch of Pavane's of Slaanesh on a Keeper of Secrets and three Daemon Princes into a list with a couple units of Flamers, plus some Horrors and Bloodletters.

He won the initial roll for turn order and elected for me to go first.  I dropped my Terminator pod deep in his end to put pressure on his Capture and Control objective.  My intent was to force him to defend that end with some of his heavy hitters, because most of the Seize Ground objectives were in my end.  If he didn't respond with enough resources, he'd be conceding one of the three win conditions and I liked my chances.  He ended up dropping all three units of Horrors nearby to try and shoot the Terminators to death.  Twenty straight saves later, I think he knew he was in trouble. 

I assaulted two of the units and did enough damage over two turns to kill all of them, then wiped out the third in the following turn.  At the same time, his Bloodletters came in on my end.  I put all my shooting into them, then charged in my Thunderwolves.  I cut them down to three, but they put three wounds on my regular Thunderwolf and he failed two saves, which really hurt.  He piled in with his Keeper of Secrets and finished off the Lord.  In the following turn, I had a choice to finish the Bloodletters or shoot the Flamers.  Despite the Flamer's potential damage output, I targeted the Bloodletters so I could pick up another killpoint and wipe out his last troop choice.  This ended up really costing me because the Masque and the Keeper of Secrets funneled two of my terminator units into one cone of death with the Pavane and Flamers put so many wounds on the terminators with Breath of Chaos, that it left just the Rune Priest and one Assault Cannon alive. 

What would turn out to be the deciding objective marker

As the game wound down, Logan and his bodyguard finally got involved killing a Daemon Prince and a unit of Flamers, putting me up by two killpoints.  On the final turn, the Keeper charged Logan's unit, while one of his Daemon Princes charged my immobilized Land Raider.  The Keeper put all his attacks on Logan and just barely managed to kill him, while my unit swung back and couldn't quite finish the job.  Then his Prince swung at my tank with the game on the line and managed to whiff three times out of five and failed to do anything significant on the damage rolls.  

We counted up the killpoints twice, but I had one more, and I also had my drop Terminators on a capture and control objective, netting me the win, 2-0.  I drew a Tau player next, which I'll cover in depth with my next post...

League Night

Cityfight and small points games adds some new wrinkles

Because the league officially started on a Thursday, week number one is running through St. Patrick's Day.  I'm pretty stoked about that as it allowed me an extra opportunity to pick up points for my team...  Okay, who am I kidding, it's all about my numbers.  But seriously (or as seriously as Warhammer gets anyway), I appreciated the chance to not start a game behind some folks.

My opponent this week, Nick, is building a brand new Necron army.  The nice thing about this is watching him progress both at the table and while painting.  The downside is that it's hard for him to get games in while the list is under construction.  I offered to play him at a reduced points level to make sure he got a game in and we settled on 775 points.  He agreed to let me run a Deathwing version of the all-Terminator list, because otherwise I'd have been running Logan and not much else.  While Logan may have been able to run through a whole army himself, it wouldn't have been much fun to play for either side.

I hammered out a quick list that included Belial, two squads of Terminators with an Assault Cannon and a Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield in each squad, plus a Dreadnought.  Nick brought a Necron Lord, a Cryptek, a five man and twenty man squad of Warriors, five immortals, and nine scarabs.  We agreed to play on a 4x4 table and snagged one of the special mission tables which meant we were playing a scenario called "The Prepared Mind."  Essentially, it was a Cityfight game with a primary objective of holding table quarters, each worth a preset number of points, between one and four.  Based on a random table we had to roll on, my side had quarters worth four and two, while his had sections worth three and one.  The secondary objective was to have one unit positioned entirely out of cover on one of the roads.  The tertiary objective was to wipe out your opponents most expensive unit.

Orange: Striking, but makes you stand out in the grimdark

He had first turn and spent most of it trying to get his models into position.  His twenty man squad climbed the large building in the center of the table, while the rest of his army ran forward at street level.  I did mostly the same, hugging cover and trying to stay out of the line of sight of the giant warrior squad.  With few targets, my Assault Cannons opened up on his scarabs.  For worthless little insects, their high attacks were probably the scariest thing for my heavy armor.  Unfortunately, their cover saves and my poor rolling meant I only killed two of them in the first two turns of shooting.  Meanwhile, my Dreadnought acquitted himself well.  Two turns of good shooting at the five man squad meant that the Lord and Cryptek were running across the field together.  Additionally, in turn three, he downed four Immortals in one go, and their remaining squad member failed his morale check and slowly fled off the board.  

Sadly, the Dreadnought's run would not last.  He was charged by the Lord, and though he killed the Lord once, the Lord made his We'll Be Back roll, stood back up, and wrecked the Dreadnought in the following turn.  During the same turn, I assaulted the Scarabs who had gone to ground in my shooting phase.  The Power Fists went to work, causing Instant Death across the board.  I didn't do nearly as much damage as I should have, with lots of ones on rolls to wound, but I did just enough and killed the last of them.  I consolidated into the far table quarter, which meant I controlled quarters worth four and three.  He then charged his Lord into one of my squads.  While he killed one of the Terminators with his War Scythe, the Storm Shield did its job and the Power Fists were just too many high strength hits to handle.  In the following turn, the Cryptek failed to stand up, but the Lord did again.

League Night!

With the game coming close to ending, we both positioned units to try and score objectives.  He moved his Lord to contest my four point square, while his warriors moved into the three point square.  I then moved one unit of Terminators back into the four point square, hid Belial in a corner in the three point square to contest it, and moved the second unit of Terminators onto the road in the two point square.  The Terminators gunned down the Lord so they could score, but he stood up yet again.  Three different units killed the robot, but he refused to stay down.  That turned out to be the last act of the game and I pulled out what was actually a pretty narrow win.


Once the Immortals and Scarabs went down, I think the writing was pretty much on the wall.  He just didn't have enough things to contest and score.  I made a conscious decision to ignore the tertiary objective, his giant squad, reasoning that the only way to lose my Terminators was to march into rapid firing Gauss weapons.  I scored 16 points for the Imperial side, bringing my week one total to 36 of a possible 40, which has to put me somewhere near the top of the league.  As an added bonus, because I won the special mission of the week, one of my squads was to be rewarded for their exploits.  The squad on the road that scored the deciding points gained the Stubborn USR any time they're contesting an objective, which is actually pretty cool.  Now I just have to remember I have it.

Hobby Accomplishments
-All the red on the Land Raider is done!
-Good first week of the league.
-Primed Khorngors and Stormboyz.
-Assembled Death Company.  Pics to follow.

Hobby Goals
-Finish the Vargheists.
-Clean up the banners and the white on the Land Raider.
-Airbrush 10 Possessed with Mechrite Red.

Kicking off a New League

We're skating to my humps.  It's provocative.

On Saturday, I played my first game in the aforementioned league.  It wasn't so much that I set up a game, but rather that I was told, "Oh, you're on the Imperial team?  We're playing after this."  Don't get me wrong.  It wasn't a brusque insistence, but rather, more of a friendly requisitioning.  And who would be my opponent?  But of course, my favorite, Chaos Daemons. 


My opponents army was about half completed and I'm really looking forward to seeing it in a completed state.  It's themed around fallen Sisters of Battle, so he has battle sisters that he uses as Horrors, Sisters Repentia proxied as Bloodletters, Seraphim as Flamers, and Penitent Engines as Daemon Princes.  The only thing in the army that is a true daemon model is the Forge World Keeper of Secrets.  It's a rad looking model that sounds incredibly labor intensive.  Apparently, each of the hair strands and spikes are individual bits of resin that need to be attached. 

We rolled on the league's special mission chart and came up with one entitled "Alone and Unafraid."  The premise was that four wounded soldiers were wandering the battlefield randomly and needed to be recovered by both sides.  For some reason then, this was the secondary objective.  The primary was an old school, 3rd ed recon, while the tertiary was a standard capture and control.  We used a spearhead deployment.

I lost the roll off and went first, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  I dropped both of the Terminator pods with Logan and the Priests into his deployment zone.  He got his preferred wave which consisted of his Keeper, the Masque, two Daemon Princes, a Chariot of Tzeentch, and a big unit of Flamers.  He came in aggressively and was rewarded with a string of hits on his scatter rolls.  The only mishap was the Keeper which got put way off in the corner by herself.  The Flamers put a scary number of wounds on the Priest squad, but thanks to my storm shield plus wound allocation, most of the armor ignoring saves went away.  He also tried to turn my Rune Priest into a spawn, but failed.  My Rune Priest cast Jaws of the World Wolf killing three Flamers and the Chariot, then charged with the remains of the squad into the Flamers, while Logan and his squad charged on of the Daemon Princes.  The Flamers weren't much of a match for the Terminators, even with their 4+ invulnerable.  Meanwhile, Logan did as Logan does and saw off the Prince. 

Two solid castles in either deployment zone

My opponent's next set of reserves rolled on which included two squads of Screamers and some Fiends.  Without any other real targets, I sent Logan's squad into the Fiends.  I decided to pop Living Legend to make sure and see them off which I did thanks to fearless wounds.  The Masque and the remaining Daemon Prince counterattacked, killing the Wolf Priest but a couple of Power Fists ended up seeing them off.  The Horrors and the Bloodletters finally put some pressure on my deployment zone, dropping deep into my lines.  Unfortunately for him, there weren't any other targets for my two shooty squads which had been guarding the deployment zone and waiting for someone to play with for three whole turns.  They gunned down half of the Bloodletters, then the Wolf Lord piled in and saw off the rest.  Meanwhile, the Lone Wolf held up the Horrors until the Wolf Lord made it over there.  At that point, everything was academic except for one thing.  The Dreadnought and the Rune Priest finished the Screamers.  The Keeper charged Logan's squad, but failed dangerous terrain tests (yes, multiple) on the way in.  He wiped the squad, but Logan went all Power Fist and got several wounds through and killed the Keeper. 

With that, it was a tabling, and I took max points from the mission.  Twenty points to the Imperials!  It was a really fun game against a new opponent and I'm stoked to keep my run for the league going.

Shambling towards the Gates

The campaign continues. 

Game two was designed by Bill.  We had talked about it previously and he decided to stick to the basic plan and center the mission around the Death Guard assaulting a Space Wolves' position.  The idea was that they were at the gates of a laboratory at which the Imperial side was trying to isolate a cure for the zombie virus.

Game setup - Secret lab in the frozen tundra

My Wolves were set up in a defensive position, with two bastions dominating the approach, containers blocking the flanks, and defensive lines giving cover.  Meanwhile, the Death Guard had a Pitched Battle deployment, but were mostly centered up since their objective was right up the gut. 

My force consisted of two Grey Hunter squads, some Long Fangs, five Wolf Guard, five Skyclaws, a Battle Leader with Saga of the Warrior Born, and a Wolf Priest.  The Death Guard had a Lord on a bike with a Daemon Weapon, a Defiler, a Dreadnought, and three squads of Death Guard... oh, and the still apparently impossible to kill Zombies.

The Death Guard took the first turn and rushed forward.  The Dreadnought and Defiler threw some shots downfield, but they mostly scattered and I lost a couple Grey Hunters.  Meanwhile, I threw the Skyclaws forward into the zombies.  The Long Fangs tried to bring down the Defiler, but the most I could manage was a one on the damage chart which was promptly ignored by the daemon engine.  This would be a harbinger of things to come as I rolled terribly throughout the encounter. 

Creating a traffic jam via melta and bodies

The Biker Lord counter-charged the Skyclaws and promptly wiped them out, so the wave of zombies was free to shamble onwards.  Meanwhile, the Death Guard Rhinos pulled up in range of the bastions and started putting rounds into the Hunters and Long Fangs.  I was definitely behind, but I had two lines still manning the defenses.  As the game wore on, the narrowness of my end began to tell and alley began to get congested.  I immobilized a rhino, blocking off half of the approach.  Meanwhile, a reconstituted Skyclaw squad assaulted the other zombie mob to completely close the entrance.  Unfortunately, the Chaos Dreadnought chose this moment to fire frenzy and nuked both his own zombies and my marines.  Ironically, those two shots killed more zombies than I could throughout the whole game. 

So close he can almost taste it

This opened up a lane for an assault by the Lord and the Death Guard.  My Battle Leader murdered a bunch of Death Guard, but he and a bunch of Grey Hunters died, leaving two to fall back.  They regrouped and doubled out the Lord, then a Wolf Guard missile immobilized the Defiler within snapping distance of the walls.  It looked like I had a chance to preserve the victory at this point, but the zombies dragged down the last Wolf Guard in terminator armor and I died a little on the inside (they caused one wound and of course I failed the save).

It was definitely a fun scenario and I think it fit the theme well.  I think poor rolling spoiled it a little, but it was still very close, which I think reflects the nature of defending a narrow access point.  If I could change anything, I'd probably add some points to both sides, give the Wolves a flanking force, and play on a 4'x4' board.  There really isn't a need for a wide board since the vast majority of the action took place in the very center strip.  I also didn't feel like I had a lot of tactical options beyond target priority.  I just sat back and tried to hold the line.  I think a flanking force would add some complexity. Oh, and zombies need to lose their armor save at the very least.  Yes, I'm bitter.

As for the next mission, I was hoping to do a convoy if I had had a better showing defending the gate, but as is, I don't think that would make sense.  I think it's still possible, but I'm more interested to play out what happens inside the lab first.  I'm thinking about a Killzone mission using a few Death Guard, and pitting them against a bunch of Lone Wolves.  That sounds like a good time.  We'll see what happens. 

The Epidemic Begins

I'd feel better with something on the board

My standard Tuesday game turned narrative.  I asked my buddy to bring 1250 points of his Death Guard, plus about 30 of the Guardsmen from his Imperial Guard army.  I brought 1000 points of Space Wolves (in power armor, of all things) plus 24 zombies.  I didn't tell him what we were doing, but I'm pretty sure he had a good idea about what was going down. 

The scenario involved him assaulting my guardsmen's positions with his zombies.  In true Imperial fashion, my Space Wolves were more than ready to sacrifice all of the guardsmen, if it meant wiping out the zombies.  The Death Guard deployed like it was a Pitched Battle, while the Guardsmen were strung out in defensive emplacements between 12 and 18 inches from their board edge.  The Wolves would walk on in turn one. 

Here they come!

The zombies were well screened, so the only target for the guardsmen's flashlights was the Daemon Prince.  They managed to put a wound on him against all odds, but that didn't do much to slow the advance.  Turn two saw the first of the zombies getting stuck in, while the Daemon Prince bypassed the initial line to charge the Grey Hunters and Battle Leader.  The zombies pulled down most of their targets and were well on their way to picking up a kill point.  The Prince didn't fare so well.  One hit out of five left a lot of swings coming back.  The Battle Leader did two wounds and the Power Fist stepped in to finish the job.  Meanwhile, my Lone wolves charged in.  You would think a raging werewolf in power armor would bring down a bunch of zombies, but apparently all my opponents good rolls were in his 5+ armor saves and 4+ feel no pains, because he couldn't kill a single one over several turns of combat.

They're in the building!

On the other end of the battlefield two of his Plague Marine squads tied down my Blood Claws and Wolf Priest while the zombies went to work.  They munched through two squads of guardsmen before charging into the marines.  In the bastion in the middle, another squad bit the dust as the zombies ran amok.  My counter-charge hit pretty hard.  The Battle Leader killed a whole squad by himself, while the Grey Hunters killed the zombies that the Lone Wolf proved incapable of handling.  As the dust cleared, one of my guardsmen squads had made it off the board alive.  The Blood Claws killed the reduced Plague Marines, while the Wolf Priest killed the last zombie (a secondary objective).  For the most part, we were both successful in achieving our aims. 

So what's next?  Well, we've discussed it and we plan on proceeding by taking alternating turns to tell the next part of the story.  We'll see exactly what he comes up with, but he mentioned possibly assaulting the laboratory of the Wolf Priest who took samples of the zombie virus.

Cleaning up

If you're interested in running the scenario yourself, the zombies had guardsmen stats with two close combat weapons, Feel No Pain, a 12" assault, and Slow and Purposeful when outside of 18 inches from an enemy unit.  The Death Guard's main objective was to acquire as many kill points of guardsmen by zombies as possible, while their secondary objectives were to protect the zombies and collect a kill point of a Space Wolf unit by a unit of zombies.  The Space Wolves main objective was to kill all the zombies, while their secondary objectives were to get guardsmen off the board and have the Wolf Priest take a sample of a zombie.  The Death Guard have 4 packs of six zombies, while the Space Wolves have 6 groups of five guardsmen.  The guardsmen weren't allowed to begin falling back until turn 4. 


Some optional rules we talked about included having the dead guardsmen added to the zombie squads, or possibly giving a few of the guardsmen some heavy weapons such as autocannons.  If you do give it a go, let me know what you think.

DUNDRACON!

Road tripping all the way to the bay area and back in less than 48 hours means about 16 hours of total time in the car. 

Totally worth it.

I drove up with some friends who had committed to helping run the 40K tournament.  They were asked to do some of the judging and to help make sure things ran smoothly.  They asked if I wanted to come along, and while I hesitated at first, I'm glad I did.  Geoff, who ran the tournament, did a great job.  Rounds started on time.  The missions and explanations were clear.  Everything just seemed like it came off with zero hitches without too much fuss, which can certainly be a lot harder than it seems.

Nice venue and definitely an interesting Con

In round one, I got paired against Nick who was playing a Daemons army.  The mission had three objectives with one in the middle and one in the center of each deployment zone.  They were weighted so that the objective in your opponents end was worth three, the one in the center was two, and your ends was worth one.  We had a pretty close game, but a few mistakes and few lucky breaks ended up deciding things.  I cast Murderous Hurricane on the wrong unit of Fiends.  He managed to immobilize my Dreadnought, which would have tied up his Bloodletters in the next turn.  I didn't support some of my units enough.  I whiffed a lot with my Thunderwolf Lord and had a few rough turns of saves.  In the end, he held the center and my end, while I was on his end's objective, but it was contested by the second Great Unclean One who had decided to wander over there.  Logan did manage to handle the first one which was pretty awesome.

I hate Daemons so much!

Game two was against Mark and his Eldar army.  The mission was kill points, but added a number of bonus kill points for killing things like tanks and HQ's.  Unfortunately, this meant that my list jumped from thirteen kill points to twenty one.  This weakness came to the fore by the end of his second turn, when two fire prisms and Eldrad's ten man wraithguard unit opened up on the squad with the Rune Priest and Wolf Priest and he picked up a quick seven kill points.  Just like that, I knew I pretty much had to table him to win.  The Thunderwolf Lord went into the Wraithguard by himself.  Logan's unit was just out of range and got counter-charged by Asurmen and a squad of Dire Avengers after eating a full turn of fire.  Logan and the Thunderwolf went to work, while the remaining storm shields tried really hard to just not die.  Eventually, Asurmen would finally make it to Logan, who was on his last wound, but by that time the Lone Wolf had arrived and he doubled out the Phoenix Lord.  Meanwhile, once Eldrad and the warlock went down, the Wraithguard dropped pretty quickly.  I did end up tabling him, but Mark was a lot of fun to play and he had a great attitude whichever way things were going.

The final game of the afternoon was against Jon and his Blood Angels with multiple win conditions.  I lost Logan early, and things were looking pretty grim.  He fulfilled the kill point portion of the win condition early by nuking drop pods and independent characters, then had his scouts show up in my table quarter to further complicate things.  The game turned when the Thunderwolf Lord made a pair of Belt of Russ saves and killed Mephiston.  He then assaulted a pair of assault squads that had teamed up with a Furioso Dreadnought to whittle one squad down to a single Wolf Priest.  The Lord went crazy, killing seven marines.  Both squads failed morale and the still intact squad fell all the way back off the table.  That swung the game.  I still needed until turn six and some good shooting to pull off the win, but I did it.

So 2-1 for my first tournament of the year.  I had a great time.  I played well.  You can't really ask for much more.

Hobby Accomplishments!
-Won tournament games!  Finished in the top half. 
-Finished the menhir and a Daemon Prince.  Did some work on the Land Raider.
-Mocked up Space Hulk bases.

Hobby Goals
-Finish all the red on the Land Raider.
-Varnish the Daemon Prince and the Menhir.
-Do some work on the Vargheists.