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Had a blast yesterday at Texas Toy Soldier (great store, great owner, great prices, great atmosphere btw - shameless plug)

Tournament was 1500 points with straightforward scenarios and scoring.
Round 1: capture and control, spearhead without the center circle (but deploy 18" away from enemy).
Round 2: annihilation, dawn of war
Round 3: victory points, pitched battle.

2 points for a win, 1 each for a draw, 0 for a loss. Kill points were tallied in ALL games for a final tiebreaker.

I brought my emperor's children again and scored first with:
Double lash, 2x noisemarine squads in rhinos, 2x marine squads in rhinos, a dreadnought and 2x defilers. 

Game 1 was vs ultramarines. My opponent was a new player, unsure of the rules and tactics. I tried to direct his troops to best counter mine, but he couldn't penetrate a vehicle to save his life and his list was very very stretched to reach 1500, so there weren't enough units and combined abilities to work with. I forgot about combat tactics though, and if I see him again will teach him how to use that ability to keep his squads from getting ground down by defilers.

Game 2 I faced space wolves. 1 priest, 2 long fang packs, vindicator, 2 x2 landspeeder tornadoes, 2x landspeeder typhoons, 2 5 man grey hunter packs in rhinos and 2 5 man grey hunter packs in lasplas razorbacks.

Dawn of war deployment with kill points. He deployed a rhino with grey hunters and his priest as far forward as possible to force me back. I deployed two empty rhinos and my demon prince.

He went first and ran away with his rhino while everything else matched on the board. I moved on everything, loading two squads into the already present rhinos and sending them forward as well. All vehicles popped smoke and everything that could run did to get closer.

Turn 2, he started by firing at all my rhinos. Due to dawn of war I ended up with two in front and two about 8" behind them. He immobilized the front two, but did little else. Then as almost an afterthought he killed one of my daemon princes, who didn't think making a save was that important.
I unloaded the two immobile rhinos of their squad of csm and squad of noisemarines, And advanced on his lead rhino that contained his priest, hoping to pop the rhino and get a doomsiren on them before charging. Defilers and dreadnought advanced. Prince went after vindicator. A squad of csm moved forward in their rhino and tried to look non-threatening while noisemarines moved up into woods on the left to try their doomsiren on a clumped group of speeders. Killed one and shook the other. I successfully popped his priest's rhino, but he cancelled my lash, leaving my noisemarines exposed. I forgot to use their bolters or run them, and also forgot to try to repair my rhinos or shoot with them. Marines charged the priest and his friends, and despite losing combat held on. Prince immobilized and shook vindicator.

He continued trying to kill my mobility. Speeders took a potshot at a defiler while long fangs accounted for a rhino and the stranded squad of noisemarines. Prince took a few wounds but held on. One of his grey hunter squads exited their razorback and charged the other noisemarines in the woods that were harrassing his speeders. Nothing happened in that combat, meanwhile the prince ripped the demolisher cannon off the vindicator and shook it again. A grey hunter fell for two chaos marines in the combat against the priests, but they held on. 

Bottom of turn 3 now, we are totally intermixed and it's a bloody game. Prince decides he's done playing with the vindicator and flies back to deal with long fangs. Defiler moves into the woods to help out the noisemarines. Other defiler moves up to charge grey hunters once their rhino is popped by my other squad of chaos marines that remained inconspicuous. They fail, however, and the defiler has to do it himself. That was about all the shooting that took place this round. Prince sends long fangs running off the board, dreadnought rips the guns off a landspeeder, defiler blows up grey hunter rhino and they are pinned. Other defiler charges grey hunters in the woods and begins chopping them up, but they hold. Rune priest dies in combat but his grey hunters in the center hold on.

His 4th grey hunter squad gets out and kills the daemon prince. He pops a rhino, but misses most of his other shots, apart from ripping the battle cannon off the unengaged defiler. In combat his grey hunters fighting my noisemarines and defiler go down, his central grey hunter squad is taken to one man, and that's all.

Bottom of four, I send a dreadnought into the grey hunters that had been pinned, finishing them off. The remaining noisemarines charge a razorback and stun it. The defiler that had helped them approaches the other two landspeeders that have been flying about. The cannon-less defiler tries to skitter forward far enough to pick on the hunters that killed his prince, but won't make it after the fleet roll and plays handball with the vindicator instead.

He doesn't have much to do now. Hunters kill the cannonless defiler, he pops another rhino. Meanwhile his final grey hunter in the center where the rune priest had been goes down. Noisemarines rip a weapon off the razorback.

Bottom of 5. Remaining defiler eats razorback. Noisemarines and remaining chaos marines from the priest fight take out his last long fang squad. Dread eats other razorback while chaos marines account for his last landspeeder.

Game goes on to turn 6, And turn 7, but it's mop up at this point. A hard-fought battle that ranged all over the middle and left thirds of the board after a quick blitz!

Game 3, versus Jim's wolves.

Victory points mission? Wolf guard death star? I have lash? I thought this one would be in the bag, until I realized what tactics he could use....his list:

Logan grimnar, two priests in terminator armour, 3 wolf guard terminators with arjac rockfist, three long fang squads, and two 5-man grey hunter squads in drop pods.

Seeing only two 5-man squads for troops, I was thinking to myself that this must have been a fun list, not one optimized for tournaments - where we're all his troops? But it was obviously played well to get him here, and in this scenario it was almost ideal. He could have easily beaten me....but I won't say how until the end!

He deployed wide. Fangs on left, right, center. Deathstar minus one priest in center. I deployed off-center with my rhinos, with dread and defilers across from his death star, princes behind them.

He advances with his death star, much to my surprise, and his shooting does little. A rhino loses its weapons and is shaken and a defiler loses a battle cannon. At this point I realize I have the battle won, since his death star won't be able to handle everything I'm about to throw at it. I will punish him for his mistake!

I lash Logan's unit forward and charge it with a prince, both defilers and the dreadnought. I kill the rune priest and a terminator, but he slaps around the prince some and a defiler, killing the prince with fearless wounds.

Long story short, two turns later logan and arjac rockfist walk out of the wreckage of the three walkers, over the bodies of ten chaos marines also sent in, and with grisly bits of my daemon prince tied into their beards, look at the rest of my amassed army and say "what else you got?" I was rather frustrated with the situation. So much that I decided honor was something for the imperials, and gunned both heroes down.

The rest of my army cleaned up his two grey hunter packs and a squad of long fangs, and began the long trek to get to the other long fang packs. I eventually succeeded in doing so, leaving him with a damaged drop pod, an in damaged drop pod, and two survivors of his long fangs to my three above-half squads and two mobile but damaged rhinos. Victory for chaos!!!

My big fear against Jim was that the drop pods with melta grey hunters would appear behind my defilers or rhinos and use their meltaguns to just disrupt. An immobilized walker, a stalled rhino would blunt my advance, not to mention require something, be it a squad of marines, walker or prince, to go back and handle it. Then next turn another would arrive and do the same thing. Meanwhile Logan and his buddies sit in the back and babysit the long fangs, within range to assault whatever comes after them. The long fangs would ignore the rhinos entirely and focus fire on the walkers and princes. With those dead, there's no unit in my army that could even begin to fight that death star, and it would be over. Anything that got within rapid-fire range of the long fangs would get charged, and if I avoided coming close, well, that's twelve rocket launchers a turn. Nigh-on impossible for me to win, I think, though only because it was a victory point scenario.

Had a great time, and can't wait till next one!

Sent from my iPhone