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Hi all, on the 13th of March we had the club championships 2011 . Here's my report!

First off, my list:

The Grot Revolution
HQ
Warboss: mega armour, cybork body, bosspole
Big Mek: KFF, power klaw

ELITES
10 burnaboyz
5 lootas
5 lootas

TROOPS

29 gretchin, 2 runtherd
18 gretchin, 1 runtherd
18 gretchin 1 runtherd

5 Meganobz, 2x rokkit 1x skorcha
Battlewagon, deffrolla, 2x big shoota, boarding plank

FAST ATTACK:
Deffkopta, twin linked rokkits, buzzsaw
Deffkopta, big shoota, buzzsaw
3 buggies (1x track), twin-linked rokkits

HEAVY SUPPORT:
3kans, grotzookas
3 kans, rokkits
Battlewagon, deffrolla, 2x big shoota, boarding plank

Battle 1: It's raining Tyranids

My opponent played a podding/dropping/outflanking Tyranid list:

Flyrant
Doom, pod
2*2 zoanthropes,pods
Tervigon (outflank)
3* termagants, pod
Trygon
Mawloc

Here's a pic of his army:


I forgot to take more piccies of this battle, so you'll have to wait for the second batrep for more piccies!

Objectives:
- kill troops choices
- capture the enemy objectives.
- kill HQs

Deployment was 9” from a diagonal going from one corner to another, giving a strange battlefield setup.

T1

My opponent deployed nothing (surprise surprise with a drop list), I fan out a bit to block DS shenanigans, buggies race to corner opposite my ‘castle’, away from all objectives to draw away fire. This also meant that the Tyranids needed cover from two sides to protect them from shooting.

T2
On turn two, his Doom of Malantai, one unit of termagants and the flyrant drop in. The Tervigon scout sin from the side as well. The doom manages to land in the worst possible place (my opponent rolled lots of hits on the scatter die, so his units were in nice positions). Before he even started shooting, he had killed a bunch of lootas gretchin, bringing the Doom up to 10 wounds. Further shooting from the tervigon, termagants and zoanthropes then destroyed my buggies and one killa kan unit.

When it was my turn, I was considering tank shocking the doom to get rid of it and to go straight for the Hive Tyrants’ throat with my meganobz, figuring they should be able to take him down. My, opponent then stated that the Doom was a MC, giving him 2d6 + 10 for armour penetration. Scratch that option. Due to the layout of the field and the limited movement possibilities of my BW, I decided to retreat a bit to try and pick of any stragglers that didn’t deepstrike in a right position. My buggies drove away from my force, hoping to keep drawing some fire. My shooting wasn’t very effective because of the zoanthrope’s and the Doom’s 3++ save. My opponent managed to save every single wound from the S8+. My other shooting plinked the doom down to 6 wounds or something .


Turns 3 and 4 Were a cat and mouse game with the both of us manoeuvring to get the edge. I plinged a few wounds of the doom, but that was about it. One of his termangant units misshaped by dropping of the table, and were destroyed. His Trygon mishapped as well, and I placed him somewhere isolated, hoping to kill him later on.

Turn 5
In his turn, my opponent advanced in a salient, trying to get to my objectives while keeping his’ safe. Her also dropped in his zoanthropes behind my burna BW, but managed absolutely nothing thanks to the KFF and a Perils of the Warp.

Since one of the missions was to kill all the opposing HQs and that I needed to stop them, I figured I’d charge my meganobz + warboss into his flyrant, despite the boneswords he was sporting. The lashwip is less of a concern to I1 Pl-wielding loonies. The ploy worked as I killed his Tyrant for the loss of two MANZ and then consolidated back in my wagon (turns out it’s not allowed – my bad). My burnaboyz flamed down his zoanthropes, and my two deffkoptas who arrived this turn (yep, lovely reserve rolls,..) zoomed after his objectives.

In his turn, he killed my BW with the zoanthropes, causing a wound on the MANZ, and then charged in with the doom, the zoantrhropes, and the Tervigon. That’s were things went a bit wrong for me: my opponent claimed the zoanthropes were MCs as well. Since I’ve never played the new Tyranids (and the fact that he was using the old warrior-type zoans – and that I wasn’t very awake due to a very fun night before), I went along with it, costing me my MANZ and warboss for no losses to him. Morale of the story: be awake and check your opponent’s codex, not his summary.

In the 6th turn, he killed my BW and his Mawloc surfaced under some grots, but he couldn’t stop me contesting my own objectives and capturing his. I also killed his HQ’s completely, but he got the primary mission: killing troops, since my MANZ were troops thanks to my warboss… I got a winning draw, but with the correct rules it would probably’ve been a minor or solid victory to me.

Conclusion: it was my first time playing a drop list, so I made a few errors there- hell I was a first time playing the new Tyranids, period. I should also keep my kans more back, since they make easy prey for any kind of AT shooting, despite the KFF and there being three of them. Also, I should play more so I learn all the codexes. Not knowing my opponent’s army cost me a decent score.

Battle two: mechanized Blood Angels

The list:
Librarian with jump pack
Chaplain
Sanguinary priest w/ jump pack
8 Death Companty in a land raider, with PF
Rhino with 10marines, melatgun , MM
Razorback (las/plas) with six marines, meltagun
Land raider for the DC
10 Assault marines, flamer, meltagun
3 preds with autocannon turrets, sponson lascannons

Objectives

- capture objectives
- score more VPS
- capture terrain (all units allowed to do so)


I won the roll off, and elected to go second. My opponent deployed his preds in a corner, together with the land raider filled with death company. I deployed everything except the deffkoptas who outflanked, and two units of grots. I put the two BWq in the middle, the kans on the side he would be coming in with his reserves, and one unit of grots and my lootas behind that:



T1
My opponent barely moved, just shuffling is tanks a bit. I advanced slowly, running up my kans with the BW to present a united front. All the lootas shots are saved by cover S7 vs AV13 is a bit lacking anyway, so I’m not really hoping for much.

T2
My opponent failed all his reserve rolls, and did the same as T1, destroying a buggy.
On my turn, both my deffkoptas arrived, which forced my hand a bit. I decided to charge in with the MANZ and their BW to go in support with the kans, hoping to take out a lot of tanks. I called the Waagh! for the extra d6 movement. As well. In the end, I only wrecked one pred: one got weapon destroyed and immobilised, one just got shaken, and the landraider came out unscathed. Oops. To add isnult to injury, both my kans rolled poorly on their difficult terrain rolls AND their run moves, leaving them stranded. I kept my burna BW back a bit to be able to counterattack and suddenly arriving



Note: the battlewagon is where the dice near the middle forest are, we just couldn't place it there.

T3
In his turn 3, my opponent’s rhino and predator arrived. His rhino tried to move towards an objective but got immobilised. Also, the death company came out of the land raider, who backed you a bit to get better LOS. His shooting took care of the deffkoptas (meltaguns + las/plas), and his death company killed my whole MANZ unit + the warboss for no loss to themselves… That was a painful demonstration of the effectiveness of the DC, paired with some good luck on my opponent’s behalf. It also cost me a good 300 points and my strongest cc unit…



In my turn, I took a few shots at the death company, killing 3, and tried to defrolla my BW at his land raider and pred. Difficult terrain comes up a 1, and the reroll from the deffrolla … is a …1. Bugger.

T4
Here, we made a mistake – again showing I need to play more- My opponent decided to move his DC away from me (which he isn’t allowed because of rage), running them into cover instead of having them rush at my kans and burnaboyz as he should have. His assault marines with libby and sanguinary priest dropped in as well, rolling a nice hit on the scatter dice (I’m glad none of my opponents played with the ordnance – all scatter dice showed a ridiculous amount of hits.). His psychic power (Fear of the Dark or something) then made my big grot unit rush off, and the unit then flamed my lootas, burning four and having the last run off.

On my turn, I advanced my kans a bit to shoot some more at the death company and the preds to little effect, killing two more DC. I also parked my BW next to his dropping assault marines who were nicely clumped together. One shooting phase and 100 hits from the burnas later, my opponent had one marine and one wounded librarian left. The lootas and the grots then finished him off, netting me a bunch of points and removing his only unit capable of threatening two objectives held by me.

Blood Angels drop in:



Blood angels get roasted :


T5 and 6

Nothing interesting happened here, some pots shots went back and forth and my BW got killed; I managed to kill the remobilized rhino and the squad inside with firepower.

In the end it was a winning draw, with both having two objectives (you needed troops to hold them), and me having more terrain. VPs were almost even.

Conclusion: I really should learn my opponent’s army, and grot riggers are something I need to find the points for. If I had been able to tackle the DC, I would’ve been able to move up very aggressively, killing more points and taking his objectives. Now, I dithered and it cost me a lot of points.

Also, I feel like I’m leaving my MANZ a bit unsupported; something to consider when building my list next time. They have a huge charge range with the open topped BW, but that means I tend to be a bit over-enthusiastic with them.


Battle 3: IG chimera spam

His army list:

Two CCS with 4 meltas in chimerae
6 vet quads in chimerae, 3 with demolitions
3 Banewolves, MM
2 hydras, separate units.

26 meltaguns… lol. My opponent had come with a practice list for the ETC, not minding if his score got docked for brining a tough list. He was a nice guy btw, probably my friendliest opponent, I had just been told it would be a friendly tourney with easy-going lists – let’s say his list didn’t meet my expectations.

Objectives:
- Get units in the enemy deployment zone
- Score more KPS
- Get your HQ within 3” of the centre of the board

Deployment:

Technically we played dawn of war, but my opponent deployed nothing and I deployed a single unit of grots to draw attention, so I’ll move straight on to T1 and 2.

T1 and 2
My opponent drove on as one big AV 12 blob, with the banewolves up front.
I put he big grot unit on my left flank as a sacrificial unit, with the kans and lootas in the middle to pounce on anyone careless enough to stroll nearby. Due to the big sphinx in the middle, I put both my BW and buggies on the right flank, using it as cover and planning to rush past in the next turns.

My wartrakk got wrecked on terrain rolling a one twice, but my buggies and BW got in position Safely. In T2 a single deffkopta appeared, taking out a hydra. I lost a few kans on my left flank that I had moved out too far to the left.



My loota units’ shooting was ineffectual on the chimera due my opponent’s good cover saves. I did mange to kill the banewolf on my right flank however.

T3
Now the battle was really beginning. One chimera turn around to blast the deffkopta from the sky but was immobilized ( a recurring theme of the day), while his two banewolves on my left moved up together with some chimerae to take out my kans and the grots there. My deffkopta died to the meltaguns, and my kans were all destroyed by a ridiculous amount of melta.


In my Turn, my second deffkopta arrived on my right flank, and I figured that, since my MANZ were probably in charge range of 3 chimerae, that this turn was my best shot if I wanted to stand a chance in this battle. I called the waagh, my battlewagon defrolla-ed the immobilized chimera into oblivion on the way in, and my MANZ charged in destroying two of the three chimera, one being saved by fluffed rolls. Only one unit ran off, unfortunately. My deffkopta also killed a chimera on the charge, exploding it and having the remains of the unit retreating.



T4
My opponent took revenge, killing my deffkopta and most of the MANZ. I took a bunch of S8 hits on the warboss, reducing him to one wound, but leaving one MANZ as well. His banewolves chem.-flamed my big grot unit on my left flank. My empty battlewagon get simmobilized.

I charged a chimera with my warboss, and a bunch of guardsmen who had stumbled from their wreck with the lone MANZ. My grots charged a banewolf, but failed to do anything. The MANZ killed his unit and ran them off the bable, but my Warboss fluffed vs a bloody chimera. My buggies and burna BW moved up in support. On the left flank, my lootas and buggies shot at the banewolves and the chimerae there, but without effect.

T5
Warboss and last MANZ evaporate due to a torrent of fire, and my opponent meltas my immobilized BW. He also shoves a chimera in front of my mobile BW My opponent moves up the chimera and the banewolves on the left flank., toasting my kanz with good shots. In my turn I roll up my BW to defrolla the chimera, fluffing, and my Big Mek manages to immobilize it, and flame his unit that melted my BW. I also charge my single remaining kan in the vets that killed it’s buddies, but it fluffs.





T6
My opponent moves his vets up to melta my BW, killing it and then charging my burnaboyz. He then get skilled and get run down – serves’em right for charging orks. My kan bites the dust, and a loota unit gets flamed by a banewolf. My opponent also moves his HQ on the centre of the table, and pushes units into my deployment zone.

In my turn, I step in my immobilized BW in the hopes of fixing it, and shoot without much effect. I do run my grots in his deployment zone however, netting me my part of the objective.

T7
My opponent kils my lootas and consolidates. I Move my grots up further and charge the last remaining hydra with my big mek and his burnas, but fail to kill it. The battlewagon in the middle is destroyed:



We both have units in the enemy DZ, my opponent has the centre, and I have a few more KPs, resulting in a losing draw for me.


Conclusion: I got off lightly vs my opponent’s list! I feel I should have moved the kans up faster to saturate his firepower, but I felt initmidated the ridiculous amount of meltaguns.


Rating the revolution:

Warboss, mega armour, bosspole, bionik body: A: He does what he's meant to do, has a lot of staying power, and S10. I should support him more though, but that's my fault, not his

Big Mek, KFF, power klaw: A: the KFF is a bit random but always comes in handy, but his PK means he adds some threat rating to the vehicle

lootas: B- : not very reliably due to the d3 shots and BS2. I'm considering one big unit, but that'll make them even more luck dependent. Since I have a lot of units in my opponent's face, they usually ignore the small units anyway.

10 burnagrots in a battlewagon with two big shootas, boarding plank, defrolla: A+: splendid. They scored 100 hits on a unit of assault marines in my second battle, and can overload anything due to weight of fire.

5 megagrots (two kombi-rokkits, 1 kombi-skorcha), riding a battlewagon with two big shootas, boarding plank, defrolla: B+ reliable, hard to kill,... but not as much options ansd the guys without mega armour. I'd love a Waagh banner in there... Also, the amount of melta spam is staggering and reduces their effectiveness alot.

The battlewagons: A They did what they were meant to do, and are brutally effective vs vehicles, especially with PKs aboard; even skimmers are less happy to stay in place, since a 3+ doesn't mean they're 100% safe.

29 grots + 2 kommissars: C: they did ok, but two smaller units would be just as good. Next time, I'll split them up

18 grots + kommissar: B: cheap and cheerful, and a decent amount of staying power with 19 wounds and a 3+ cover save when going to ground

deffkoptas: B+: always handy, and force the opponent to take them into consideration- makes them pretty good.

rokkit buggies B+ : cheap and cheerful, a recurring them in a grot army. Less mobile then the koptas, but still decent and a bit more survivable.

Killa kans: B+: they shoot more or less OK, and have S10 in close combat. If anything shoots back, they're toast though. I'm thinking of dumping the rokkits on one unit for big shootas or grotzookas, since they should be running more then they did now, and the rokkits only encourage that.


Overall conclusion:

I should play more and support my MANZ better. I’m still a guard player by mentality, and I need to adapt to the orks – well, the grots anyway . Also, I really need to play more to learn about the other armies so I don’t get ripped off again – not saying my opponents did it on purpose, but even if they did I should be able to spot that kind of stuff. More sleep might also help.

I liked the tournament setup and the mission; it was the biggest 40K tourney in Belgium ever (72 participants), and all the tables looked great. There was enough room to move around, and the catering was splendid. Homemade brownies ftw ! If I had to point out something negative, it would be the fact that the very competitive lists only got penalised if they scored a massacre. IMO, if you want to play an easy-going tourney, forbid people to bring them, or remove the restriction altogether. At the end of the day, I felt a a bit like I brought a very blunt, orange knife to a gunfight. Not saying I would necessarily have scored better with a different list, I made too many mistakes for that, but last year I had a better time becasue the tourney itself was more relaxed. Still, I had a fun day, so no complaints, and I'll definitely be going back next year!

Nice read and lovely to see the Grotz in action. I find you can only learn (remember) so much reading another army's Codex - it's only through playing against (or even better - with) them that you learn the subtler, critical details Still - a nice showing despite mistakes, knowledge and some absolutely appalling difficult terrain tests!

Kudos for how you handled the Guard - ideally you want to open those Chimera *before* assaulting, but I always find it a pain/rarity to achieve...

Did you feel outflanking the Deffkoptas was worthwhile? I refuse to do it anymore (then again, I'm playing 1000pts - so they are even more critical...)

You didn't rate the buggies?

Why choose to go second against the Blood Angels?

Effort appreciated!

Nice read and lovely to see the Grotz in action. I find you can only learn (remember) so much reading another army's Codex - it's only through playing against (or even better - with) them that you learn the subtler, critical details Still - a nice showing despite mistakes, knowledge and some absolutely appalling difficult terrain tests!

Thanks! It was good to see the little guysd in anction, and I really like the tabletop presence the army has. I just wish I had more playing time, but that won't be for anywhere soon I'm afraid, rl is tad busy

Kudos for how you handled the Guard - ideally you want to open those Chimera *before* assaulting, but I always find it a pain/rarity to achieve...

Opening chimerae was the plan, but my rokkits failed me so I had to do it the hard way. 10+ AV12 vehicles is pretty rough on my guys.

Did you feel outflanking the Deffkoptas was worthwhile? I refuse to do it anymore (then again, I'm playing 1000pts - so they are even more critical...)

I feel it's worth it because it increases their survivability - not by much, but still . If I go first, I deploy them on the table and scout. With the missions though, I felt going second was always the best option.

You didn't rate the buggies?

fixed!

Why choose to go second against the Blood Angels?

Because two out of three parts of the mission involved objectives, and because I wasn't that afraid of his shooting. This way, I could always go and contest objectives last turn with buggies, deffkoptas or a battlwagon. Also, I was hoping his reserves would come before mine, allowing me to focus on one part of his army at the time if he split them up.

Why would you have chosen to go first?

Where was this tournament

and is it organised every year?

NVM just read the linkey .

Hmm.might come next year

CommissarKhaine wrote:Why would you have chosen to go first?

Given the option, I always go first! I'm obviously too used to armies that want to keep their distance

How bad were the "SEVERLY PENALIZED" comp scores for Kan walls, SW LongFang/TWC, dual StormRaven, etc lists?

With such an undefined criteria ...

Vulkan list = bad?
WTF?

Arakasi: I'll go first when I need to shut down seer councils and the like, in the hopes of killing a few before their fortune kicks in, or when an alpha strike is totally worth it. Otherwise, I find that most armies don't have enough long range firepower to seriously threaten me anyway. Also, I prefer for the reserves to drop in early, before I get too spread out. That way, my opponent can be killed piecemeal if he decides to drop away from his main force, or his mobility advantage is wasted when dropping near his other units.

Brothererekose:In Belgium we don't have comp scores :(. Basically, opponents were warned beforehand if their list was considered OTT; if they decided to play with it anyway, any massacres they scored were turned into minor victories. This means, of course, that they only get penalized if they massacre their opponents...

Good batrep, sounds like a fun tournament.

CommissarKhaine wrote: My, opponent then stated that the Doom was a MC, giving him 2d6 + 10 for armour penetration. Scratch that option.

Just to let you know the Doom is not a MC, Dooms unit type is infantry.

And the only time he would get the +10 for strength would be if he Killed enough of your guys with his Leech ability.

Yep, found that out afterwards. It was one of the reasons I was pretty annoyed with myself; even if my opponent makes an oops, I should be able to spot it. Oh, and he did manage to kill off enough guys; he landed near a grot unit and killed 8 or so :(

Thanks for the write-up, Khaine!

As to your comments about some OTT lists, we tried to compensate for that with the missions, which balanced things out a bit more in our opinion, independent of the lists being used. BrotherErekose has a point when he says that 'very competitive lists' indeed is an 'undefined' criteria, and a subjective one at that. FYI we banned one list altogether because it was just way too nasty. There were 4 out of the 72 lists that we deemed powerhouse builds, but fortunately enough they almost never managed to score a massacre or a wipeout, which means we did a good job on the missions, the armies were handled by not-so-competent or very relaxed playing opponents, or the armies weren't that overly competitive to begin with, or a mix of all the aforementioned. Imposing another penalty than the one we applied seems overly rash in this situation then don't you agree? That being said, for a tournament organiser it is very hard to draw the line, and we don't feel that we want to impose TOO many restrictions on what people can (or should) bring. Everyone should be allowed to play with what he likes, no?, irrespective of what mindset he is bringing his army with. Everyone takes something different out of this hobby of ours. For some it's the joy of the win, regardless of other factors, for some it's a meet-up and dicefest with friends, and yet for others there's probably a plethora of other reasons involved. In the end all that matters is that everyone had a good day, good games, and goes home with a satisfied feeling.

As long as we, as a tournament organiser, can achieve that, then for the most part we must be content. Of course we strive to better our event on a yearly basis, but not at the expense of excluding people because they bring competitive builds to the table. You will always have that, in some sort of another, especially with the current rock/paper/scissor type of matchup across the spectrum of all the codexes. Indeed, we are toying with the idea of removing those 'please constrain yourself from bringing an over the top army build' lines from our tournament pack because it seems no-one agrees on what exactly an OTT list is, so we shall be the sole judge of that. We thought fair warning was due, so that everyone involved knew of the restrictions, but seems that is just opening up a corridor for mixed feelings, so we're going to build that one shut for next editions.

Personally I don't think the tournament was more relaxed last year, but that you just drew opponents of a more similar mindset last time around.

@sillyboy: we hope to see you at one of the other (ranked) events in Belgium this year?

Thanks for the write-up, Khaine!

Thanks for organizing!

Imposing another penalty than the one we applied seems overly rash in this situation then don't you agree?

Yes and no. I agree that all players should be allowed to bring their list, but within certain limitations. Also, your system meant than an OTT list only got docked when it scored a massacre. In your place, I would always have reduced their end score by 1, meaning that a massacre becomes a solid vicory, a solid a minor, etc... I totally agree that it's verhy hard to draw the line thpugh, but the comments above state my personal opinion about it. Now, a bad player has profit from an OTT list, and playing well against those lists didn't really pay off.

In the end all that matters is that everyone had a good day, good games, and goes home with a satisfied feeling.

+1

Personally I don't think the tournament was more relaxed last year, but that you just drew opponents of a more similar mindset last time around.

Quite possible. Last year, special characters weren't allowed either of course. The differnce is that this year I heard quite a few people say: this is my ETC practice list or something similar - may have coloured my view

Two big shootas on the BW work? I dropped my Big Shootas for a Kannon after some games. It's blast is St4 and therefore defensive, can still be fired after moving. That means you can tankshock with Defrolla and blast a different unit...no one else seems to run that though...
Anyways, Awesome batrep man. It's cool to see how they played. You got a good pic of 'em on the field there, frggin awesome army. You did pretty good against the Chimera list, looks like rolls weren't going your way on some almost guaranteed destroy vehicles with the Warboss and the Kan. What can you do? It happens, scary a$$ army to play against, when I saw the pic I was like, "What? Where is the army? What the hell are all those tanks for? Holy sh!t!?" You did a hell of alot better than I thought you were gonna. heh.
Again, friggin awesome army.

@Runna : are defensive weapons not only up to str3?

S4 and below are defensive.

that is correct, the st4 is the defensive weapon criteria. I get rule checked alot during my games because I like to talk up a storm. You know, "What, your shooting my FeelNoPain 'Ardboyz, fine go ahead." Or, "Huh, Battlewagon's rear armor? Psh, assault it if you want, but that Deffrolla is gonna nail you." You know, half my game is distraction. *I don't run the Deffrolla right now because I don't want to kitbash one and it didn't come in the box*
So i'm pretty positive about this one.
St 4