Lead-Footed Trukkboy Driver
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Rednekgunner & I took part in the preliminary tourney held at Rivals Fantasy Games in Hillsboro, OR. The original 18 players dropped down to 10 (another local venue was running things on Sunday, so I'm guessing quite a few ended up over there). The ten armies were 2 Blood Angels, 2 Space wolves, 2 Chaos Space Marines, 1 Vulcan list, 1 Mechdar, 1 Necron, and 1 Chaos Daemons. As you can see, the 3rd mission had a huge impact on participation [/sarcasm].
I was running terminator-heavy Blood Angels this time. I'd originally planned on bringing my Deathwing, but when the BA codex came out and I realised that--for the price of a few scouts--I could essentially run Deathwing + 5 fast AV13 tanks... I just couldn't say no. This had a couple of downsides: I had a mad scramble to assemble 25 scouts, a couple of priests in terminator armor, and 2 Baal Predators... and I only managed to get three games in with the new codex before the date of the tournament. While I've been playing a looooooooooooong time overall, this had me a little anxious. What psychic powers to take also left me scratching my head. I saw a lot of potential in Fear of the Darkness, but I was torn between Unleash Rage & Sword of Sanguinius. I discovered that the TO was allowing Shield to work on vehicles, however, so I just went with that.
My list:
Librarian, TDA, Storm Shield, Fear of the Darkness & Shield of Sanguinius.
2 Sanguinary priests w/TDA
5 Assault Terminators, 2 THSS, LRC w/EA & MM
7 Assault Terminators, 3 THSS, LRC w/EA & MM
10 Scouts, 9 sniper rifles, 1 ML, camo, meltabombs
10 Scouts, 5 shotguns, 4 ccw/pw, combiflamer & powerfist
5 Scouts, ccw/pw, melta bombs
2 Baal Predators, flamestorm, dozer blade
3 Vindicators, dozer blade
MISSION ONE
For the first round, I drew one of the CSM players. He was running:
Abbadon
Sorcerer w/Lash
5 Chaos Terminator Champions w/Marks of Tzeentch in a LR
Thousand sons in a Rhino
Berzerkers in a Rhino
Plague marines in a Rhino
Plague marines on foot.
2 Obliterators
2 Defiliers
The Game: I won the roll for objectives, he won the roll for first turn & took it (a mistake, IMO). He deployed everything in the usual spearhead-ish deployment and I went all reserves. He had 4 of the objectives by the time I started rolling in. His major mistake was sending Abaddon & co after the vindicator that I set up in the corner (far away from the objectives). They eventually hacked it up, of course, but it meant that a huge chunk of his army spent the game destroying one tank. At the start of turn six, I had two LRC's full of scouts parked on two of the objectives. A vindi & a baal zoomed to contest an objective each (from 18" away), and three ccw scouts managed to pull the full squad of thousand sons off his third--and won the assault, no less! Major victory for me, but no bonus points for either of us. 17 BP
MISSION TWO
For the second game, I was paired against the other Blood Angel player, who also scored 17 points in the first round.
Librarian, Fear of the Darkness, Might of Heroes
3 Sanguinary Priests w/power weapons
Chaplain
10 Assault Marines w/2 flamers in a LRC
2x 5 Assault Marines w/flamer in an AssCannon Razorback
2x 6 Assault Marines w/meltagun in an AssCannon Razorback
3x Baal Predators w/Asscannons & Bolter Sponsons
3x Baal Predators w/Lascannons & Bolter Sponsons
The Game: He won 1st turn & took it. Except for the snipers in a ruined tower in my corner of the table, I put everything in reserve. Snipers went to ground and only lost two men over two rounds of fire from 80% of his army. On my turn two, I received everything but one vindicator. The rest of the game became a matter of his predators shooting my tanks to little or no effect while my vindicators crippled or destroyed everything they shot at. His deathstar LRC unit faced off against my large terminator unit. By the end of the game, three scouts (reinforcements) and the sanuginary priest were still locked with the chaplain. Epic. On the final turns of the game, my vindicators' shooting all went in the toilet. 6 pie plates (three of them centered on the LRC!) either scattered completely off target or only garnered a stun. Had any of them done anything, I would have received a Major victory. MVP's of the match were the sniper squad in the tower. Not only did they hold the quarter, their missile launcher accounted for two razorbacks and a predator. We each controlled two quarters. 15 BP
MISSION THREE
With 32 BP, I was at the top table against the Vulkan list, with one of the Space Wolves in third with 31 points.
Vulkan
2x Rifleman Dreadnoughts
10 Sternguard, 2 meltaguns, 8 combimeltas, drop pod
4x 10 tactical marines w/flamer & MM in rhinos
3x Attack Bikes w/MM
2 Typhoons w/MM
5 Vanguard w/3 PW, 2 SS, TH in a Razorback.
3x DakkaPredators
The Game: Going in, I had a 12 KP advantage over this list, so I felt pretty confident. I won the roll and took first turn. He deployed with the Riflemen, DakkaPreds, Assault Bikes, and Typhoons in the corners and the rhinos & razorback in the center (all along his board edge). He tried to seize, but failed. Between the Baal's & the Vindi's, I had 12kp at the end of the first turn. On his 1st turn, he managed to pop both LRC's w/the sternguard and typhoons, and blew both flamestorm turrets off the Baal's. On my second turn, I tankshocked Vulkan & the vanguard off the table with a shaken vindicator (from 18" away-w00t!) and the assault bikes off the table with one of the weaponless predators. Earning 6 kp in a movement phase was a first, that's for sure. In the shooting phase, Fear of the Darkness claimed a full tac squad. By games end, the Libby had scared two more tac squads off the board. For those with any doubt, Fear of the Darkness freakin' rocks. With such a huge lead in KP at the end of the second turn (22 to 6), I relaxed and threw all caution to the wind. If I had played a bit more defensively (or at all) I could have scored the bonus for double KP, but as it was I managed to win with 36 kp to 21. Result: 22 BP
On the second table, the Space wolf player (razorback & longfang missile spam) tabled the other Blood Angel player for full BP, giving him a total of 55 points--beating me by one! If I'd scored any bonus points in the first round or had managed to kill anything with my vindi's at the end of the second, I would have taken first. All things considered, though, I'm very pleased with taking 2nd. As an added bonus, that tabling of the other Blood Angel player made it possible for rednekgunner to slide into 3rd place (also by one point!) with a 24 point massacre of his own in the final round. Overall, it was a great preliminary round. Every one of my opponents were exceedingly cool, with no asshattery to contend with. I had been a little concerned going in about being able to complete 6 turns each round (in the two practice games for scenario one, we'd only finished 9 turns in total), but none of my games went more than an hour and forty-five minutes. All armies fully mechanized and going full reserves in the first two rounds certainly helped out, though.
With only five games under my belt with the BA, I don't really see anything that I want to change. I'll probably ditch Shield of Sanguinius in favor of something else. Truth be told, it wasn't all that impressive. It only mattered twice in all three games, as I usually had a garden-variety cover save anyway, so I think I'd be better served with Sword or Lance or Unleash Rage. After all was said and done, several things about the BA stood out:
1) Fast tanks with dozer blades are rediculously good. Awesome firepower in their own right, with the option for turbocharged battering rams if things go sour.
2) Fear the Darkness is frighteningly effective against anything with leadership 9 or less. Enough so that I'm tempted to try and fit a second Libby into the list.
3) BA Scouts are vastly underrated. It wasn't at all difficult to keep the bp/ccw squads within 6" of one of the LRC's. Furious charging scouts are essentially Berzerker Lite. In the 2nd & 3rd rounds, the scouts easily made double or triple their points back.
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