Here’s another in my series of tournament lists I’ve used. This one was used at The Battle Standard June 2, 2012. An 1850 singles tournament using
ETC-style missions. General mission structure and results are below.
Here’s the list:
HQ
Mephiston, Lord of Death = 250
Elite
Sanguinary Priest (), Lightning Claw () = 65
Furioso Dreadnought (), 2x Blood Talons (0), with built-in Storm Bolter & Meltagun (0) = 125
Troops
9 Death Company () w/ 1x Thunder Hammer (), 1x Power Fist () = 235
10 Assault Marines () w/ 2x Meltagun (), Power Fist () = 235
5 Assault Marines () w/ 1x Meltagun () = 110
in Razorback Alpha (), Dozer Blade (), Searchlight (), Lascannon & T-L Plasmagun () Assault Squad (-) = 61
5 Assault Marines () w/ 1x Meltagun () = 110
in Razorback Beta (), Dozer Blade (), Searchlight (), Lascannon & T-L Plasmagun () Assault Squad (-) = 61
Fast Attack
2 Attack Bikes (), 2 Multimeltas () = 100
Heavy Support
Predator with Autocannon (), Lascannon Sponsons (), Dozer Blade (), Searchlight () = 141
Predator with Autocannon (), Lascannon Sponsons (), Dozer Blade (), Searchlight () = 141
Stormraven () w/Extra Armor (), Searchlight () Twin-Linked Multimelta (), T-L Assault Cannon () = 216
Total: 1850
This tournament, as I mentioned, was using the European Team Championship missions, in part because they're a cool change of pace, and in part because local player Alex Fennell is an
ETC regular, having been on the English team in past years, and this year traveling to Poland to fight for Team USA!
Each mission has a primary (worth up to 8 tournament points), a secondary (worth up to 4), and up to 8 additional points available based on
VP differential. 0-300pts difference, each player gets 4. 301-600pts difference, 5/3. 601-900, 6/2, 901-1200, 7/1, 1200+
vp difference, 8/0.
Missions and results were as follows:
Round 1: Dawn of War, Primary Capture & Control, Secondary Seize Ground. Before deployment roll off and each player places one objective which is JUST a Seize Ground objective, within the normal restrictions. Then roll deployment, and each player places a second objective in their DZ, which is their Capture & Control objective AND counts as a Seize Ground objective. So there are a total of four in play for
SG.
I played against Mike, fielding Blood Angels with roughly the following:
Librarian with Shield & Lance
Who attaches to 5 assault marines, power weapon, in Land Raider with multimelta
5 Assault Marines, power weapon, in Land Raider with multimelta
6 Assault Marines with jump packs, melta,
PW
Riding in Stormraven equipped like mine but without extra armor.
2 Vindicators with Dozers, one with Extra Armor
2 Baals with Flamestorm, no sponsons.
Some of the vehicles had searchlights too.
I got first turn and won the shooting war, then won the assaulting war. I popped the
LRs on turns 1 and 2, and also immobilized the SR on turn 2. He dropped my SR after the first move 24" onto the table, and also immobilized the Furioso, but couldn't do much else, and my Death Company still were able to hoof it and make trouble. His Baals both outflanked to the side of his choice, but spent their time toasting Death Company with
FNP, who had a few survive and whack vehicles with their fist and hammer. The Vindicators had some bad luck, killing a few guys but only getting a weapon destroyed and stunned on a razorback for vehicle damage. My meltas were spot on, which was I think why the game wound up rather one-sided. Overall my dice were pretty average, except that my meltas probably missed two or three shots all game, so I was blowing up vehicles almost with impunity. I wound up tabling him and sitting on 3 of the objectives (including both C&C) by the end, for the loss of my SR, most of my
DC, a Razor, half of my big assault squad, my attack bikes, and the immobilized Furioso. Max 20 of 20 pts.
Round 2, Spearhead, primary Kill Points, secondary table quadrants, then
VP. The way
KP worked was pretty neat- it was a sliding scale. You both started with 4 battle points, and every
KP difference at the end slid one guy down one and the other up one. So if you only won it by 1 it’d by 5/3, and you had to win by 4KP to get the full 8/0 on the primary. Table quarters was also a new variation I hadn’t see before- you held a quad if you had more control points completely in it at the end. A scoring unit was worth 2 control points, a dedicated transport 0, and any other unit 1.
I played against Dan, fielding Grey Knights for the first time, with roughly:
Draigo
Coteaz
800-odd points of tooled up Paladins in a big squad, four
MC psycannons and other nastiness.
3 psyfleman dreadnoughts
5 min-cost henchmen squads in razorbacks with psybolts.
Challenging for quadrants, as he has a crapload of scoring units and will dominate the center of the table, but potentially not bad on
KP, depending on how much he hides those units.
I got first, gave him the quadrant with a bit less cover,
DS’d my jump squad, set up Meph and the SR in the middle to threaten a run at (or leapfrog of) the paladins &
ICs, and everything else well back to maximize 48” range and spread out and outflank. Thanks to Coteaz’ re-roll he seized on me and shot down the SR, damaged my predators, but bounced off a razorback and attack bikes on my left flank (with which I was planning to run down the long side and outflank him around a big ruin which would shield me from a bunch of shots if I got a move). I managed to pop one of his dreads with my few shots left, and zoomed my razor and attack bikes into hiding on the flank. He moved up the middle with pallies, put three wounds on Meph in cover shooting with them, and punished my predators some more with his two psyflemen, blowing both lascannons off one and immobilizing it. On T2 my jumpers split and landed in the two neutral quadrants, the half with the meltas and fist landing on the left flank to support the push of my razorback squad with priest + my attack bikes. The jumpers popped the second dread, and the attack bikes killed the third. Awesome. No more long-range antitank for him.
Over the course of the game he gradually advanced his deathstar up the middle, and I just avoided it (except with the
DC) while outflanking him on both sides. The deathstar wound up accounting for my SR, my
DC, both predators, and three wounds on mephiston. The other turn they tried shooting my dismounted priest squad, but because they had been moving forward and I was as deep as possible, most of his squad (including the psycannons at the front) didn’t have range/
LOS so didn’t do anything between my armor and
FNP. I successfully worked up both flanks and killed most of his henchmen, leaving him with (IRC) one razor, one full 3 model hench squad, and 1 guy left from another. At the end I had three quadrants to one, and had a 10/4
KP advantage
IIRC. He did have
VPs, roughly 1026 to just under 700,
IIRC, so he got the edge on that 5/3, so I wound up with 15/20 points.
Round 3, Pitched Battle, primary Seize Ground with 5 objectives, secondary
KPs.
KPs were the same sliding scale as before, but starting at 2 each, and maxing at 4/0.
My friend Alex Fennell had gotten a total of 36pts so was leading me by one and we were paired in the final round. His Necrons were roughly:
Nemesor Zandrekh on foot
Leading 10 immortals with two crypteks, both with lightning fields + the haywire guns.
CCB overlord with scythe, mindshackle, 2+/3++ saves.
5 immortals led by despair cryptek (veil + gun that forces a morale test).
5 immortals (or warriors? Can’t recall) led by two crypteks with lances and solar pulses.
4-5 scarabs.
6 Wraiths with 2/coils, 1x pistol.
Monolith.
2x3 Spyders, each with a Gloom Prism.
We set up objectives in roughly an even spread- one roughly toward the middle, one basically in each quadrant but not in the center- three were 12” away from their nearest table edges, and the fourth was placed to be ~12” from both the center objective and another. I got first again, put the SR in the middle, a pred, razorback and Meph on the right flank, and everything else on the left flank. He put the lancetek squad on my right flank using a tall ruin for cover, put the spiders and scarabs roughly central, then weighted everything else to my left flank. I started and he popped a pulse to try to negate my long range shooting. I moved my SR only 12” to try to illuminate both the scarabs (which were mostly out of cover from the SR and my right-flank Pred and Razor), and one unit of spyders. I only needed pretty mediocre rolls, but figured better to try both in case I flub a roll. I figured if I had pretty good dice I could wipe the scarabs, and if not I could possibly still get some wounds on a spider unit. I blew the spotting roll on the spiders but got the scarabs. My assault cannon killed all but one, but Alex was careful and that last model was in cover from my pred and razor, and I couldn’t finish it off. Other than that I mostly just moved up a little on the left. His T1 he made five more scarabs (one spyder was out of range) and moved toward my SR. His other stuff shot me a bit, immortals pounding my big jump squad, and I proceeded to flub
FNP rolls AND a morale test for my jumpers, providing a very dramatic moment, when they ran 15” and nearly went off the table! His lance teks got a Stunned (Shaken) on my SR. The scarabs rolled below average on the SR, only getting two hits rather than the expected five, and stripping one point of armor. Turn 2 went very well for me. I disembarked my Dread to wipe the scarabs (which he did), I moved the SR 12” left to illuminate the monolith and
MM it. Mephiston flew up and wiped out the lance teks. Alex had smartly moved them back and positioned so I’d have to take a Difficult roll crossing the ruin template to assault, but had a poor difficult terrain roll and didn’t get that far. I then Ran only 1”, which made some drama- Meph needed a 4+ to get the assault, but did it and wiped the unit. My SR blew up the Monolith. Other than that nothing much of note. But with the loss of his lance scoring unit (Alex’s only unit on the right half of the table), his scarabs, and his monolith I was in great position.
Alex, however, like the international globe-trotting
GT vet he is (
) kept his chin up and played his usual extremely tight and intelligent game, and my dice went south a bit, so despite my great position and points/unit advantage, he started beating me up across the board. His
CCB lord almost single-handedly smashed my left backfield, after my whole army shot at him and bounced. His wraiths killed most of and broke my jumper squad, and only the timely intervention of the
DC killed the wraiths and allowed my last two guys to rally and go for the middle objective. His spiders killed my
DC and my Furioso in combat, his barge lord went through my left razor, the squad and priest from inside it, and my stormraven, while the barge contested my left rear objective. His despair tek squad teleported to my back right corner and contested that objective. On turn 5 I was still trying to do damage but also resorted to moving my Predators Flat Out to contest both objectives on his side. Turns 4 and 5 Mephiston blew two Wings casting rolls, which meant he couldn’t get over to the left flank until T6! He eventually reached Zemesor’s squad holding the left objective on Alex’s side, and ate three wounds from lightning fields! On T5 I believe primary was a draw and
KP was close as well. On T6 or T7 Mephiston on his last wound finally broke and swept Z’s squad. On the far right I could NOT break his Immortals+ Despair tek, so that was contested. My two assault marines in the center were on an objective, except Alex Ran his remaining unit of two spiders and contested it. Both of our little squads stayed locked in deadly melee on my deep right flank, stalemated. Seize Ground was a draw. 4/4. We counted
KPs. I had killed Nemesor, the
CCB (my attack bikes finally came through around T6), two troops squads, one of spiders, the scarabs, the monolith, and the wraiths. He had killed my priest, my furioso, my
DC, their stormraven, 5 assault marines, their razorback, and my Predator which had rushed to contest Zandrekh’s objective on T5. I had
KPs by 1, so 3/1. We counted
VPs, and one of us had it by around 100. So that’s an even split as well, 4/4. Total: 11/9 my favor. A Draw by nearly any standard, but it allowed me to leapfrog him by one battle point and take the tournament. Meanwhile Dan had trounced his third opponent and managed to tie Alex on battle points, so they split/shared 2nd/3rd prizes.
What a great and dramatic end to an event. I could not ask for more, and had three really sporting and pleasant opponents. Mike and Dan were fun and nice despite having very nasty lists. As usual Alex made beating him a near-impossible task, while smiling and being continually cheerful despite having been put on the back foot early then having to tolerate my dice complaints for the rest of the game.
And as usual the Battle Standard provided good organization, a clean and pleasant environment with good light, very good and attractive tables and terrain, and convenient good food. Highly recommended all the way around.
