Lets see where to start.
Last week was crap.. Dylan ill all night sunday, lily bad dreams throughout monday night, dylan bad dreams through tuesday night..Wednesday night good sleep (despite Lily’s school failing its ofsted getting 4s everywhere, and me having to find a private tutor).. thursday night mrs is on nights and so I have to go to bed midnightish and wake up around 5ish.. friday night Lily poorly all night. (Saturday night yellow jackets pulling up the railway behind my house.. sunday no sleep because pattern established.. so monday night I went to sleep with a nice cocktail of hoegaarden + diazepam and came round 12 hours later feeling a bit more human.
Any views expressed, any opinions developed over the course of the weekend or in this thread.. are basically on the back of that.
I still hadn't decided which army to take, you guys said bikes for the challenge.. facebook said flying vampire space popes, stunty said anything but bloodangels because everyone was taking blood angels.
So I took a bike list (as of about 4 minutes before the start of game 1)
I’d sent Stunty a document about how to create a gaming tourney scenery setup that didn't favour any particular build and allowed for most tactics (by stelek)..Which it appeared he’s ignored, every table I was on had at least 2 giant fortress castles and 8x 20” high cathedrals thrown up in the middle.. he said on the Sunday I’d probably got the worst 3 tables going (which I took as an apology).
Game 1 was against Matt an admin/council member bloke of ROI (who Nige et al spoke to a fair bit when he was events guy at
GW)
Shiny really clean grey knight army.. not epic tier painting.. but a revelation to everyone who saw it that basically us normal plebs should try harder because with (what appeared to be not much effort (faffing around with gradiated shading etc) he had a really stunning army.
Saw the the table with its multiple castles and (with opponent permission) just picked them up and shoved them on another table.(STUNTY!!!
)
2 landraiders draigo 2 psyflemen dreads scoring because of grandstrategy. 10 man regular termies with some bling split into each landraider. 1 paladin.1 librarian chocked full of goodness. Everything is scoring pretty much thanks to draigo.
Wanted to set up on, but I reminded him that Landraiders as heavys couldn't start up on the table, so he just planted a paladin on the midpoint of the table out of line of sight..and said it was impassable. (I asked stunty, who just repeated "its impassable".. 50 minutes later he changed his mind..but meh) Reading up the codex now.. saying counting as troops for claiming objectives (draigo) doesn't get around dawn of war rules but meh..
I set up kantor behind a hill (so turn 1, I wouldn't have to move him on..he could orbital strike (and if he decided to zoom forwards I’d have the bubble of extra attacks.)
Turn 1.. All our stuff walks/drives on.
I have a sternguard unit start hoofing it along the far right flank for his territory.. I create a 24" orbit perimeter around his landraiders with my bikes (bloody 21.5" assualt thingy) lone attack bike takes the left flank to get behind him.
He casts a spell that gives his stuff a 6+ cover save.
Orbital bombardment takes out draigo’s ride (WTF?? Bonus!!.)
His psyflemen open up on my missile fire support. My missiles open up on his dreads, not much.
He has moved his remaining landraider forwards and popped smoke..
Cat and mouse fail I think (having played ad nausem against dual raider dual termie lists for the last two years)
All bikes move in within 6”s to take out the raider and contents (15 melta ,a few missiles firing frags and a follow up charge should do it).
Start my of shooting phase.. he has a 3+ cover save.. (my face on floor, and not just because korrosso is scraping the backs of my ankles constantly..drew blood) So its not shield of sanginus/kustom force field..its a stacking modifer.. (He apologises for not having walked me through the codex before game.. but its my fault I guess) FFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffff.
All my guns ping off.
His turn he disembarks. (I help him disembark from different doors to obey rules on leaving squads). And 4 seconds later I’, 1000 points down. FFFFFfffffffffffffffffffff.. (photos below actually belong above.. yes in 2 phases he killed all 4 bike squads).
I think woo, he’s come out killed my
IC just gone all the way back in. Bad roll squad can’t get in,opponent puts squads attacks through the
IC (only one to make
B2B)..I tell him he can’t, doesn’t matter he gets 6 or so super duper attacks against 3 things that fold instantly.Meh
Scrap in middle of table continues, squad on right continues its march.
He’s running low of termies so holds the centre secondary..
My attack bike and hoofing it squad are trying to get a bead on the hidden paladin that I can’t assault..I get some shots that ping off. (you can see him waving from the fortifications in this pic)
He’s back in his landraider..he might send draigo into my lines?? No he’s going to bunker down in the middle holding the objective.. I’ve immobilised one dread and done a substantial amount of damage to the other..
Last turn I get lucky and missile from sternguard who spent the game running up the flank get a missile shot off on the paladin, his 2+ fails and it instadeaths him.
(took me about 5 minutes to work out that meant I’d won. I held my base, I held the one he’d put down in rough crags I couldn’t go near with bikes by spending the whole game running 5 meq.. his landraider was sat on the one I put in open ground and no one was near the impassable terrain one).
Shouldn’t have come down to such a fluke..I demand James brings out his
GK more than once a decade. (or I’d really quite enjoy a rematch against Matt, it was a fun game with an unexpectedly steep learning curve and he’s a nice fellow)
(If he'd not shot my sternguard with his dread and had moved and run, he'd have contested that objective,making it a draw..I think)
Game2 Against Tom, (now listed as RWIs darkhorse ninja)
Marneus Calgar, Chaplin ,honour guard in a landraider.. 10 walking thundernaters, a tactical squad a scout squad with rifles and missile, a scout squad with bolters a dev squad.
Sets up thundernators beside
LR full of HG
Tactical squad virtually off board out of line of sight(look to the furthest corner of this shot and you can see them milling about).. Scout snipers in building with good
LOS on my left, dev squad in good terrain second floor of large building on right(its like someone took a nuke to a block of flats.. I’m not getting near or in that..oh dear another pew pew game) .. Scout bolter and typhoon in reserve.
I spread out to not give him an easy multi charge.
I turbo up the right flank.. he moves his honour guard to intercept.
He starts running his thundernators at my left hand (missiles and bikes holding their nerve). My orbital bombardment hits the
LR.. but scores 3/3, nothing..meh.
I’m trying to get my right hand bikes to get some good shots on the dev squad, with back up of distraction MM attack bike.. His typhoon lands perfectly.. shoots perfectly and my turbocover save doesn’t save lone attack bike.
He gets marneus out and eats a a squad. (footslog termies advance under hail of bullets I do a withering fire retreat firing my bikes luring him into my sweet spot).
He puts marneus in
LR, moves it and gets honours guard out to eat other squad (sad face).Also I’d totally forgotten that basically the only reason to take a redeemer is because of bike elite armies (shouldn’t listen to LHs opinions on things being good based on what they do to guard and
DW)
Termies are in my sweet spot having carried on chasing (is the internet parlance “beatsticking”) I turn around with 2 full bike squads, 2 dev squads and a sternguard squad and devour them.. But my right flank has been dissolved by the honour guard..i’ve pew pewed the scouts and the dev squad into submission.. but marneus means no need to test and at the latter stages of the game where one kill forces a test..I’d forgotten how reliant I’d grown on it.
He puts
IC guy back in drives
LR and gets other guys out (I realise I’m playing someone naturally ninja..and I’m going to have to be an arse.. so I point out that what he’s doing isn’t allowed, if you’ve gone into a transport with people already in it you must have become A singular squad (to be in the same place at same time) therefore sections of singular squad cannot disembark. We ask RWI matt to make the call he agrees with me ( and opponent willingly accepts it from that phase on-no hotswap swamping into combats keeping the 21”. ).
Thinking about it 2 days later..he could have got squad or
IC out FIRST, leaving it empty and then embarked whatever he wanted. But game was going so fast I didn’t have time to take pictures let alone postulate the finer workings of the universe.
Termies gone my bikes on left are free. Honour guard chaplin and marneus have cleared his quarter (he’s left scouts and dev squad there.. and he comes for my front right) I can’t stop it (he’s eaten sneaky sternguard with the chaplin whilst the others go straight up the middle.
On the left I make a concerted effort to finish off the devs (fail)and therefore can’t move onto the scouts.And my bikes are shooting his sniper scouts, yeah I’ve killed them.. Oh tactical squad moves up.
He devours my front right eating through anything that can’t run away fast enough (
really epic pincer grip around a terrain piece, that made me actually scared!!).. I’ve taken him down to ½ honour guard. Marneus and chaplin.
LR is gone. But they are still multiple demon princes in my lines. But…I’ve lured him in running deep into my front right, he can kill them but he can’t get to the front left before game end.
My bikes shoot the snot out of the tactical squad…and then (DOH!! I break the rule Ljundhammer has been trying to tattoo into my arm) I charge.. I don’t do anything, he does a lot. I could have contested the quarter, and held mine.. but I was repulsed in close combat (yes my opponent used a few too many dice, but he had valid reasons for his mistake and he stopped)..and he’d have slaughtered me either way.
Unfortunately mission 2 we played objectives wrong and what I thought was me contesting for a 1 quarter 1 contest, him 2 quarters.. Actually was weighted as all 8 points to opponent because of majority (which was only picked up after I had to reinput our data onto stunty’s crashed machine for the second time).. (1499
VP to 1010)
That said I don’t think I’d have changed tactics.. I was just trying to hold on. As one of his friends (/cheerleaders) said if he took a fully awesome list I’d have been crying under the table from turn 2.Twas a bit like playing Frog when he used to ‘play to humiliate’, but friendlier.Nice guy, a bit of polishing on rules (including trick shots he could pull off) and I think the guy could be The Awesome of his generation.
Game 3 Baragash/Sami AOS.
Everyone had given up.. Stunty stuck us on a table with 1x 3” firelane.. Moving rhinos was tricky let alone setting up fire support. The prizes were given out before we’d finished.. and nobody could be arsed recording our scores (someone made up that I cam 9th from bottom based on sami handing in our
VPs on the Sunday)
I told Sami I was grumpy+ tired, he said he’d accept my conceding..but hay we can still game and I had to wait for my ride (LH).
We goofed on the mission (AGAIN) I asked Sami to spell it out for me and he was very clear the the things (now in hindsight) which were the objective quarter criteria of transports=0 and hqs =1 for holding bases were in effect.
So he put a dev squad holding his base 14 inchs above the board.. (so game one I couldn’t get near anything because of impassable castles.. game 3 I couldn’t get near anything because he had a *choice* in every table quarter of 18 inch high cathedral ruins he didn’t even need to win a roll to decide “I shall hide my basilisk behind this 20” cubed object”… AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR. (I think I’ve decided I’m not jokingly miffed with Stunty.. if any such thing happens again I’m lobbing all terrain in excess of 25-30% or designation/height at him.).
T1 (I point out his guys are within 12” of centre, he moves them back). I
TB all over the place.. but I’m sloppy 1 plasma guy has shuffled forwards.. and he makes the charge (DAMMIT ..i need a wheel barrow of aphetamines)
I have to send kantor my bike
IC and 2 sternguard squads over (that’s 40 attacks from the sternguard alone)
The rest of my guys
TB up the left (this is my rather narrow left flank
I then spend the game retreating from it, because I can’t see the rhinos for all the walls, to get a shot off at them, even from the bikes right beside them.
Firelanes?what firelanes.. This is the shot that from eagle eye position Sami was taking for the whole game
(of my 1850 you can see one guys shoulder and another guys hip.
Noble mention goes to the sternguard who ran straight across the board to by himself (have been hit repeatedly by jump troops who he was chasing off the board). Tried to take out a vindicator with his combi melta.If it had worked he’d have been so awesome.
A tarpit erupted on the left that I couldn’t prevent, 10 man tacticals plus a few other things vs 2 bikes squads, I managed to get the aura over to them, but it wasn’t enough I should have supported them better but I was overstretched in the war of attrition 10 man tactical fist actually does something ( not quite what guard would do .. but still it does something).
I broke apart his middle line, he tore through my left..i owned the right but with himin the gods balloon height above the table I couldn’t do anything about it. He swarmed in on my left tocontest my objective.. I owned one far right with some static Sternguard.. and I’d finally popped that last dev squad guy in the gods, (who we both thought was holding his objevtive. He managed to scrable enough men (10 men hiding under a building) town the centre.= 1 contested Primary, 1 each secondary..Draw draw.. he beat me by 301 or so killpoints.
And good grief.. if you think I moaned on the day, or here. You should have heard me in the car on the way home
But I really would like to play Matt and Tom again some time, they were nice people.. and I spoke a fair chunk to scoffer during smoking breaks and I wanted to get whupped by his necrons on the sunday..I guess I'll have to make a trip over there again sometime (waiting for admin approval to see RWi's site to arrange a pick up game)
Oh and I helped the casting guy who came last to build a good
DA list, was he one of ours, or theres..because I need to tell him how to use it at some point.
Sunday is Funday..coming up at some point later this week.
Shots of other peoples games on the Saturday can be found here.. feel free to imbed them/ comment on them or whatever.