League Night: We're Talkin' 'bout Playoffs

Iron Warriors

Abstract:  Summarizing the last five weeks of time I've been too lazy to post about the league and using it as an excuse to run pictures of the "Best Painted" entries, finished off by my thoughts of the last nine weeks.

An absence from the game store became prolonged due to a hurricane.  I came back to find that the league had kind of taken care of itself.  Mostly. 

...and Champion

I knew I had a vacation coming up, so I made arrangements to have scores posted on the store's forums.  That turned out to be a great move, because the scoresheet gnomes wandered off with them in the meantime.  Between those results and what I pieced together from the few recorded games I found for the extra third week, I deduced that the final standings for the top two tables looked something like this:

Group A
*Necrons
*Blood Angels

Kustom Dakkajet

Eldar
Chaos Space Marines

Group B
*Tau
*Imperial Guard
Tyranids
Grey Knights

The lower two tables did not exactly keep up with their games, which doesn't really surprise me as it was pretty common knowledge that they were out of the running for the league title (which is something I think I'll talk about in the next league post).  Moving on from that point, in an effort to keep folks interested and coming until the next start up, we began running increasingly narrative driven games for anyone not in the playoffs.  These were a big hit and led to cries for more.

My Word Bearers

The initial random draw produced groups that saw a few surprise contenders advance.  In particular, the 'Nids player sought me out and mentioned that after three straight games of getting roflstomped, he was ready to return to the kiddy table for a while.  The real contenders really separated themselves at this stage, and while some folks came up with surprise L's, they were mostly after the dust had settled and the cream of the crop had secured advancement to the next stage.  That stage, being the single elimination playoffs type of deal, had fixtures that looked a little something like this:

Necrons vs. Imperial Guard
Tau vs. Blood Angels

Red Orks Biker

At this point, scenarios became random again, and ended up having a hand in who would eventually advance.  The heavily static Guard played Crusade against the hyper resilient Necrons.  In a game with three objectives, the 'Crons got two of them, and made no mistakes.  He refused a flank, got into the lines fast enough, and swept away his competition.  Meanwhile, the Blood Angels and Tau played Purge the Alien.  All those rail rifles led to easy light vehicle punches and the BA player got held off just long enough to secure an 13-7 victory for the Tau.  Between the Drop Pods and the Razorbacks there were just too many easy targets for that much strength 10.

Interestingly, this set up the first rematch of the league, as the Tau and Necron player both came out of the same initial group.  I think that speaks to how strong the group was, as even the bottom two players were pretty solid.  After way too many jokes about how nervous they were about playing for all the hyperbolic marbles, they rolled up the straightforward "Emperor's Will" scenario.  The Tau successfully shot everything to death except the Wraiths.  The Wraiths then ate all the Tau.    Thus ended the first league.

Frankly, I'm kind of glad.  I know I initially wrote about how excited I was.  In retrospect, I really think I got the format wrong.  Like, REALLY, wrong.  As much as it appeals to me, as much as it works cleanly and efficiently, as much as it is a strong system, it is just plain wrong for this store.  Other stores may have the culture to do it and enjoy it, but the guys here want the freedom to play whomever they darn well please.  If there is a structured way to determine who won the whole thing, that's great, as long as it is very simple and doesn't get in the way of pitching the dice.  So that creates the challenge.  Can I get creative and be versatile in creating a whole new format that appeals to this kind of player?  I've got two weeks to figure that out. 

   

League Night: Herding Cats

We have (mostly) completed Round One of the current league.  Things have not been boring.

Red Fish, Blue Group.

Current Standings (W-T-L Pts VP Diff)
Blue Group
Guard         3-0-0 6pts +14
Eldar           1-0-2 3pts +1
Tau              1-0-2 3pts -7
Guard          1-0-2 3pts -8

Black Group
Necrons            3-0-0 9pts +10
Tau                   1-0-1 3pts -1
Space Marines  0-0-2 0pts -4 
Orks                 0-0-2 0pts -5

Mano a mano, gunline a gunline.

White Group
Grey Knights     1-1-0 4pt +5
Space Wolves   1-0-1 3pts -3
Orks                 0-1-0 1pt +0
Chaos Marines  0-0-1 0pts -3


Red Group
Blood Angels  3-0-0 6pts +9
Tyranids         2-0-1 6pts +1
Orks               0-0-2 0pts -2
Orks               0-0-2 0pts -7


Blue Group had a runaway winner, but the final game saw the winless Eldar player win big over the Tau.  This forced a three-way tie, which had to be broken by VP differential.  The size of the win swung things, and the Eldar squeak through.  Black Group also had a runaway winner.  One game is supposed to get played this Monday, between the Tau and Marines.  I'm expecting the Tau to win, but you know how dice games go.  Red Group was an easy one.  The Orks lost both opening games, so the Blood Angels and Tyranids played to essentially see who would win the group.  Finally we have White Group.  White Group embodies a problem I'm going to talk about in a minute, but it is easily filled with the most intrigue.  I've been told that all the games have or will be played, but pretty much everyone is eligible to win this thing.  The deadline is Tuesday, so we'll see what happens.

IG+Fortress=Win.  Who knew?

I do have my doubts about White Group completing the course.  They are a microcosm for one of the problems with the league as a whole, and, perhaps, for gamers in general.  Thursday is league night.  How the heck do you pin people down for this thing?  Life does happen, and gaming doesn't exist that high on the priority list, but the commitment level seems to be very lacking.  I've had to be pretty quick on my feet as far as setting up games against ringers (which is why the game totals don't add up).  With a league of 16 people, we should filling up tables, no problem, but we only had five playing league games, and not all of them were complete league pairs.

I need to find a way to incentivize attendance, rather than disincentivizing forfeitures.  Perhaps I'll award points for attendance in future leagues.  I don't feel comfortable changing the rules now.  I've always been taught you finish with the same ruleset that you started with.

Having seen the dedication of other groups in the area, it's disappointing not to be able to match it.  I worry that some of that is on me being too rigid, but on the other hand, maybe I thought the group was ready for something it wasn't.  I don't know that this sort of league is the right ruleset for the group.  It may be elegant if you're sure you can pull it off, but a loose group of casual gamers are never going to make it work.  I am pretty sure that's what I have on my hands, which means I have to abandon some of my preconceived notions about what makes for a "good" league, in terms of competition, balance, and functionality, and sacrifice it for a "good" league, in terms of generating enthusiasm and providing a background for people to gather.  I'm pretty sure I've got an idea for how to pull that off too.

In the meantime, how to make what we have now work?

League Night, Opening Moves

One week down, seven to go.

Kick off for the new league happened Thursday night.

We had a pretty good turnout.  I was expecting something in the mid-teens and ended up having fifteen.  I gotta say, that's pretty solid.  We've got pretty much everyone from the previous league returning minus a few stragglers.  There is a pretty solid mainstay that we can rely on on that front.  We also have a couple new faces.  I've gotten to play against some of them, and they're at least decent dudes and good sports which is all you can really ask for.

The selection process seemed to go pretty smoothly.  I had everybody draw poker chips from a bag and grouped them according to colors.  "Random" doesn't always mean "fair", of course, but you have to be the last guy standing at the end anyway, so no loss in crawling over the toughest competitors in the opening stage anyway.  If anything, getting one of the tougher players in your opening group means you can avoid them in round two if you advance.

That said, match-ups are always a thing.  Here's what we came up with:  Blue group has two Imperial Guard players, plus Tau and Eldar.  Black Group has Necrons, Orks, Tau and Marines.  Red Group has Tyranids, Blood Angels, and a pair of Orks.  Finally, White group has Chaos Space Marines, Grey Knights, and Orks, and fields the ringer or wild card.  Interesting, only four power armored forces take the field, which is equalled by Orks, as well as the extremely shooty pairs of Imperial Guard and Tau.

Black group appears to be one of the toughest.  Necrons are a heck of an army, while the Tau and Orks are played by two of the better players in the league.  Blue group will likely have the most games fought at range, with Tau and both Guard players.  Red group is the one I am least sure about who will come out on top.  Finally, White group will have the easiest time through, since only three of the people there are eligible to advance.  I'm hoping one more person shows up to fill in the gap.  Meanwhile, it's not the worst thing to know that I have a chance to get in a weekly game.

Though I didn't stay for the entire night, it was interesting to see the way some of the games were going.  Two of the apparent favorites looked to both be on their way to posting losses, while the third was slogging his way through Guardsmen in a Fortress of Redemption.  If the first week is any indication, the league is wide open, which makes for an entertaining few weeks.

Beginning a New League plus Putting on the Pants

The bad news:  Thursday's regular 40K night was lackluster, with a grand total of two games being played.

The good news:  That's because it's the off week before the next league starts.

The exciting news:  I've been asked to run the upcoming league.

Previous leagues have been very well run, but the organizer has a lot going on and has decided to take a step back.  I was asked to step in and fill the void by the store owner, and the decision seems to be well received by those in the league.  I am very excited about the opportunity. 

While not being eligible to win the league is a drawback, directly contributing to the community I enjoy so much makes it totally worth it.  I also enjoy the organizational aspects involved in running things, whether that be an event or a sustained competition.  Blending the game into an elegant and competitive string of events that everyone looks forward to and can't wait to attend gives me a lot of the same things I enjoy about the game itself.  Additionally, if I'm being totally honest, I enjoy being "the guy."  I take a certain amount of pride from being the one to ask about rules, the ambassador to new players, and generally being in charge.  It feels good to know that you've got the trust of the whole group.  I might rethink that if we get three sign-ups for the next one.

Of course, running the league means coming up with a set of rules for the league.  Previously, there was not an established form for the league.  Things changed each time we started back up.  That means I'm working with a blank slate, which is bad since I have nothing to go on, but good because I'm free to operate without precedent.

The format I've come up with is drawn from my days playing volleyball in college.  It involves pooling players, then re-pooling those who finish high enough in their group together, and, finally, giving those who finish well in those groups a slot in the single elimination final four.  I'm expecting there to be roughly sixteen participants which would be ideal.  This would allow for four groups of four, though I can support more of each, with two members of each group advancing each round.  Because of this, players aren't eliminated with a single loss or hosed by a single bad game, nor can they win it all with a lucky draw and run against lesser players. Meanwhile, we still get the high stakes of a playoff at the end, so no one can run away with things.


There's no guarantee it will be perfectly, but I have seen it work before, and I think it accomplishes most of the things I want it to.  I guess we'll know in about eight weeks.  In the meantime, it should make for some solid material to post every Friday.

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 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.

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. 

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.

Raiding your Land with Free Hand

My regular Tuesday game was out sick, so I spent Tuesday hanging out at the shop and hobbying.  I brought the Vargheists, but got motivated to work on the Land Raider instead.  It's my first real attempt at large scale freehanding on a flat surface, and I'm quite happy with the results thus far.

Empire State Troop Banners

When I started on the tank, I got a little over excited with visions of the things I wanted to do dancing through my head.  I think I've said it before, but building models, especially complex ones, and seeing what I can create is my favorite part of the hobby.  I ordered Forge World doors and added bitz from the Empire State Troops box, such as the banners and laurels.  I drew a bunch of stuff up in pencil on the hull and banners and immediately started working on it.  Of course, my impatience meant that there wouldn't be a chance to do any airbrushing without a lot of masking, so it's been a long haul of laying down sheets of Blood Red then trying to keep it even as I worked around the edges or the free hand and the details.  Still, things are starting to come together and really coalesce into what I pictured in my mind.  At this point, I need to do some clean up, wash the tracks, and paint the weapons, and once that's all done, I'll be finishing up a pretty big project.  Now to cut 250 points from my list...

Death Mask Freehand

I'll have the chance to do that in the new league I've joined.  My regular haunt just kicked off a league on Thursday.  It's a pretty unique format, or so it seems to me.  At registration, you're required to pick your army, then either the Imperial or non-Imperial team.  Step two is play games and lots of them.  There's a whole list of unique missions, each with primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives that basically score battle points.  At the end of each week, the two games you played that scored the most battle points get credited to your total and your team's total.  At the end of the league, whichever team has more points will be the winner and the highest scoring member of that team will be the overall champion.

Spend $30 to enter? Can do

There are some things I really like about the format, but I have reservations too.  On the one hand, the best player might not win the league.  The competitive side of me hates that.  If someone plays head and shoulders above everyone, it only makes sense to reward that person.  It also enables the best players to duck each other, which is a little more gamesmanship than I prefer.  At the same time, this store is far from hardcore.  Don't get me wrong, we have some very good players, but I would describe most of the people I run into as casual players that want to take interesting lists from the army they like the most.  I guess what I'm thinking is that the league fits the culture well. 


Additionally, I think the format encourages continued participation.  Even if you're way off the pace, you are still part of a collective and should feel like you can contribute to your side.  You can be involved as much or as little as you like.  Things are really flexible as far as when you get games in.  So my initial reaction is largely positive.  I'm sure I'll have more to say when theory becomes practice.