So, yesterday my
FLGS had a 1500 point tournament to cap off this big 1850 point league that we've been playing. I found out that I scored somewhere in the middle of the pack for the league (in part because I had one fewer game than everybody). Also, I got my new dice, but the mailman didn't bring them by early enough to be used.
In any case, I threw together a 1500 point list based off of my experiences over these past few games. Basically, it was my second 1850 point list except minus a couple of melta SWSs, a priest, and the basilisk. As this was the end of the league, the missions were ones that we'd been playing over the last couple of weeks.
As these were 90 minute games, I naturally didn't have the time to take pictures after every player turn, so this is more of a set of battle reports in story form:
GAME 1
This game was against the dark elder player I had played against in
game 3, using the "soul shards" mission (a modified form of kill points), from
game 2.
His list was basically 2 wyches in raiders, 3 ravagers, and the rest raider squads.
I won the roll to go first, but I didn't know what to do. I knew my opponent would be playing a wych-heavy army, and I didn't like the idea of deploying at the front of my deployment zone, moving forward 6-12", and then having my opponent fly up and table my army with shuriken fire and wych assaults. As such, I chose to give my opponent first turn and leave everything in reserve.
My opponent basically does what I want. He deploys, and spends two turns moving over towards my deployment zone. Unfortunately, despite the astropath, only half of my army shows up on the bottom of turn 2, and Rhamael shows up on the wrong side of the board. This means that my forces are tragically split in half.
As well, everything had night shields, which meant my meltaguns had only a 6" range. All of his stuff was roughly 13" away from my board edge, meaning I killed almost nothing when I arrived.
Then, on the top of 3, my opponent unloads his wyches and flies his skimmers around...
ravager fire, squads firing shurikens out of their skimmers, and wyches charging into my forces makes a horrible mess out of everything.
The next turn, the rest of my reinforcements are up. I'm torn between helping my right side blob, and consolidating what soul shards I have left. In the end, it didn't look like I'd be able to get the charge in against his wyches the turn they came in, and there was no way that the squad was going to survive through his turn (there was just like the commissar and a couple dudes left after a single turn of shooting/charging), which meant that I'd show up with a second blob squad who would just meet the fate of the first.
In the end, he cleaned out my right side forces. I could possibly have made it with a tie if my manticores would have really shined the last turn, but unfortunately they really, really didn't, leaving me with a near loss as the time ran out.
GAME 2
Game 2 was against the eldar player I had played against in
game 5. The mission was the ammo dump mission (variation on seize ground), from
game 6.
His list was basically 3 serpents with avengers, 2 serpents with dragons, 2 sets of 2 walkers with
EML's and an autarch.
Just like last time I played against him, he won the roll to go first, and then promptly conceeded it to me, and then left everything in reserve, just like I did in the last game.
I start by moving forward a little, and then having an objective fall near me. Turn 2 sees Rhamael fail to show, and a objective falling square onto my dudes. My opponent does what he did last time - he turned off his autarch and let me officer of the fleet take effect. Which would have been a good strategy, unless he had phenominal luck with his reserves rolls (he needed a 5 or better, and rolled like 3 6's), which meant that, rather than keeping most of his army off the board, he got in a little under half.
And then, of course, Rhamael showed up. I decided to use him as the game's largest distraction:
Twin-linked meltaguns into rear armor made short work of a dragon serpent, while plasma guns rattled around one of the avengers. In his turn, he turns on his autarch, but rolls poorly for his forces, meaning that only a quarter of his total list arrives.
However, due to the nature of his army, the bottom of 3 plays out like I hoped it wouldn't, but secretly knew it would...
BLAAAAAAAAAAADE-STORM!
I even went to ground with the blob, but no such luck. The squad was absolutely blown off the board. Meanwhile, he popped in with another serpent and bladestormed another blob.
Which lost the commissar, and the remaining two sergeants and a lasgunner fled.
You can also see from the above picture that there were now 3 objectives near me. That building did a good job of "catching" objectives that would otherwise have spread out over a larger area.
With his troops out of his transports, my manticores go to town. One flies off into nothing, but the other hits a avenger squad square on, utterly obliterating them. Meanwhile, a well-placed flamer and other assorted fire basically wipes out the avenger squad near the rest of my stuff.
With his infantry running dangerously thin, he starts to desperately ram his way onto the objectives in an attempt to contest my objectives. One skimmer just makes it on, contesting 2, the other tank shocks into my huge pile of guys. One dude death or glorys with a meltabomb and pens, but only rolls a 1... The next guy from the next squad (one of my retreating blob sergeants) also death or glorys and also pens, and wrecks the vehicle.
On turn 5, his autarch finally makes it onto the board. As everything else had already deployed, he just sort of walks onto the board and points at stuff...
His
EML's open up on my very widely dispersed infantry and only makes like 5 kills, but it's 5 kills on 5 different squads. EVERY ONE OF THEM failed their pinning check. Thankfully, to account for this nonsense, he manages to wreck a skimmer on the difficult terrain of his previously wrecked skimmer with a difficult terrain roll, and my eviscerator priest was able to make confetti out of his wave serpent contesting the other ones.
We rolled to continue, but the die came up low. Just then, the timer went off. A game finished before time out!
After this victory, it was on to the next game.
GAME 3
This game was using a mission I hadn't played in the league. Basically, it was a variation of seize ground. You had 5 objectives evenly spaced in your deployment zone. The caveat was that a squad could pick up the objectives and move with them. The game was against a chaos player who I had never played against.
His list was basically a
LR with Berserkers, a squad of Tzeench marines with a sorcerer, 2 oblits, and a squad of termies with typhus, and a demon prince with wings.
Needless to say, I outnumbered him a little bit... Also, note that I included a picture of my opponent. You must be at least this goateed in order to play chaos. All other chaos players such lacking are just full of fail.
Anyways, the game starts out with his demon prince charging the blob. A particular member of the peanut gallery notes how screwed that squad is. He also shoots up another blob squad with bolters and does an unfortunate amount of damage. Meanwhile, his berserkers sneak over to my side far away from the action to pick up some of my objectives. Hands off my pennies!
Turn 2 sees all hell break loose. Rhamael shows up on the proper side. The center blob gets into charging position. After my manticores throw a single hit on the land raider (which results in a penetrating stun, which is thrown away by demonic posession), Rhamael brings it down on the land raider. 3 meltagun pens later, and the vehicle explodes... 6" This carves out a big swatch of my power blob (almost all of whom were in range) to only a single beserker. Of course, by this point it was too late, I'd already committed. A well-placed flamer hit and a lot of pistols kills another couple. Then comes the charge:
Said peanut gallery member comes by again and sees how the entire guard force is locked up in close combat, and predicts the total ruin of my army.
In the center, I charge in with my 12 power weapon attacks and hit... 2, neither of which wounded. Then he strikes back, forcing 5 armor saves. I make 4 of them. This insanity of me not being able to hit him and him not being able to get through my armor would continue for the rest of the game.
Meanwhile, the demon (who had a wound knocked off thanks to Bring it Down and the commissar's bolt pistol) fails to do anything. My huge pile of dudes is able to get a single wound through his saves. Having lost the combat, he takes a wound due to fearless, which he fails to save against.
On the left, his berserkers put something like 21 hits on my poor power blob, cutting many of them down. My power weapons roll to hit and hit 3... but thanks to the priest that 3 magically becomes like 9. Many berserkers fall.
In his turn not a lot happens but then in my turn, the huge pile o' combats starts resolving. His demon prince makes some attacks on the priest which are stopped with the rosarius. Meanwhile, the crushing weight of the nearly uninjured blob against his demon prince drags it down.
His berserkers, now decidedly fewer in number continue to put a fair number of attacks on my blob and kill off exactly everything down to the commissar, priest, and two power weapons sergeants. Rhamael shows up to save the day and 4 power weapons and an eviscerator finish off the khorne marines. You can see Raust (the commissar) going "who da man? YOU da man!"
Needless to say, beating a land raider full of berserkes with a handful of guardsmen was highly satisfying, and really shows the proof of concept for how powerful these power blobs can be.
For the rest of the game, his oblits and termies came in and killed some stuff, but I threw enough proverbial cholersterol into his stuff to block him from reaching my objectives. Meanwhile, the plasma squad from Rhamael and one of my officer squads had secretly infiltrated into his backfield well behind the main action. The only way he could have handled them would have been to forsake any chance of winning by throwing his obliterators and his termies against my little 6-man guard squads taking his objectives. That or the center close combat.
When the game was ended due to time, the combat in the middle was his tzeench squad, which 42 power weapon attacks had managed to kill ONE of was left facing down just the commissar, who held on to the bitter end.
At the end, I got a healthy victory over him 4-0, but, more importantly, I also gained a bonus point for preventing him from touching any one of my obejctives.
GAME 4
Game 4 I got a bye. This was fine with me as time was seriously running short, and I would have had to pack up my entire army, move it, and unpack it before the timer would have been able to start.
This set had only two games. In one of them, the space marine player who I played against in
game 1 and
game 7 tabled an eldar player turn 3 (due to absolutely fantastic luck. Notice a pattern with this guy?). Meanwhile, the other table had the two best players duking it out for first place.
It was the dark eldar player from game 1 of the tournament against the guy against whom I played
game 4 against. This time, he had an OLD imperial guard army with him.
Due to the way the points were, I was seriously rooting for the dark eldar player (no offence, pchappel) as if the guard player would have lost, I would have gotten in a 2-way tie for second. As it was, there was no way for the guard player to achieve the objective (
rescue from game 7) and the dark eldar guy got distracted by killing guardsmen so he didn't actually complete his objective either (which would have been easy with skimmers).
In the end, they tied, which meant that they tied, which meant that they tied for first, and I snagged third place. Two wins, a draw (bye), and a loss. Not too shabby.
Most importantly, the victory gave me nearly enough store credit to buy another box of infantry. With a light dose of the magic of credit, I now have dudes again!
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this overview. Next week is going to be a free gaming week, and after that, there will be some sort of new league starting up.
7K Points of Black Legion and Daemons 
5K Points of Grey Knights and Red Hunters 
Sister's of Battle 4000 Points 
Monty Vect's Flying Circus 5000 Points 
Chaos Space Marines 5000 Points