Gateway Gamers August 1850 ITC event at Fantasy Shop in
St. Charles Missouri.
In a bid to get myself a good 4th and final ITC score, we drove about 6 hours from fort smith AR for a 3 round event in Missouri.
Some of the armies present:
So my battle company had served me pretty well, and it is largely unchanged, although I did make the most minor of adjustments. Here's the list this time:
Primary detachment: Blood Angels
CAD
Sanguinary priest as warlord with veritas vitae
2x melee scouts
Empty drop pod
Secondary detachments:
Assassins
Culexus assassin
White Scars gladius strike force
Full battle company
Captain with combi-melta (he's literally a 100 point melta shot. -_-)
Chaplain
4x tactical squads with bolters in free Razorbacks
2x Devastator squads with bolters in free Razorbacks
2x tactical squad with melta/combi-melta in free pods
2x assault squad with 2x flamers each in free pods
2x command squad with 3x meltaguns each in free pods
Dreadnought with assault cannon/heavy flamer in free pod
10h company auxiliary
Sniper/cloak scouts
2x shotgun scouts
(I cheated and mostly copy/pasted this from the iron halo
GT report.)
All the squads are min sized. This is my "minmax" unit spam version of the battle company, which boasts tons of s4 shooting with doctrines and hit and run all over, and most importantly, 28 obsec units as well as 2 obsec independent characters, with a total of 33 units and 3 independent characters in 104 models. With so many targets, most lists find it impossible to table mine even in a 7 turn game. Flyers and most hard targets like wraithknights simply get ignored, and are allowed to keep killing units as they wish. The Blood Angels provide an empty pod for the culexus, some obsec outflanking, and two strategic traits with their relic on the priest. My preferred traits are generally reroll reserves and...pretty much anything else except the pin tests one or -1 enemy reserves, which are pretty situational, and generally bad. Getting infiltrate on 3 more units allows for outflanking Razorbacks to come in, which can be awesome. The priest usually hangs out in walk on reserve alone, and when he does walk on, he hops in a razorback that I leave back to stay safe. (Similar to the previous event, my warlord was never touched.)
It is most powerful when going 2nd, but if pressured into taking first turn, can put out a shocking amount of offense if the opponent deploys anything slightly vulnerable. It can afford to throw wave after wave of men away in order to hold the enemies in their own deployment zone, crippling their maelstrom and other location based objective grabbing potential.
So without further ado, onto the report!
Game 1: Emperor's will vs Alex's Imperial Knights and Astra militarum.
Alex had a household detachment of 3 obsec Knights: A crusader w/battle cannon as the warlord, a warden with Icarus autocannon on top, and a paladin who also had an autocannon. Supporting them were a guardsman
CAD of a stock company command squad, a platoon of 3 infantry squads with a hidden melta bomb, a platoon command squad, a squad of veterans with forward sentries, a ministorum priest, and a single wyvern. The last points were spent to bring Cypher along for the ride.
So I've done the Knights matchup in practice. It really comes down to: do I get 2nd turn, and do I manage to melt a knight in the early turns? And if I can't off a knight, does the game stretch on to t6/7 or does it end at 5? If I get 2nd turn, I'm pretty set. If I kill a knight quickly, I'm also pretty set. Even if neither of those happen, the game ending on 5 may still save me.
I get the infiltrate and -1 to his reserves traits, while his crusader gets a master crafted Gatling cannon.
He wins the rolloff for turn choice, and makes me deploy first (uh oh.)
I throw down 3 Razorbacks close enough to maelstrom objectives to quickly roll over to them if needed, but hiding behind some terrain. Everyone else reserves, outflanking the scouts and priest, except the other 3 Razorbacks that go into infiltrate. He deploys the 3 Knights in a line off center to the west: Paladin near the corner, crusader in the middle, and warden on the east side. He blobs the infantry squads of guard and bubble wraps the Knights, with cypher and a priest hiding in the unit to make them reasonably survivable and fearless. The
pcs and
ccs squads are near the Knights behind the blob squad. The vets go into outflank reserve.
I throw the infiltrating Razorbacks behind terrain in no man's land. And we're set to start.
And then he seizes the initiative! :O Okay it's not as good as it is when I'm null deployed, but going 2nd is still awesome for me, so I couldn't help but grin when he rolled that 6.
Turn 1: he takes some shots from the Knights into Razorbacks. I was rolling fairly hot on the cover saves, but lost one in the midfield. The wyvern killed a couple guys out of the disembarked squad.
Since his Knights have remained bubble wrapped, I decide to bring in my 4 other pods. The dread, pair of flamer asm squads, and culexus all drop in right in front of the bubble wrap. I make sure the flamer marines have clear line of fire, but the pistol/sword marines are closer to the Knights. Turns out to be unnecessary, as even though the interceptor snapfire has amazing accuracy, my armor shrugs it off. Several flame templates later, the guard blob is significantly reduced. I use the pod storm bolters and some razorback heavy bolters to off his company command squad and claim a "kill a unit" maelstrom point alongside snagging another from an objective in the east.
Turn 2, the veterans arrive from the east edge. He was hoping not to roll them in that early, and especially not on that side where nothing is really valuable, so he just tosses them in my deployment zone. The guardsmen move out of the way to at least let the warden out of the bubble, and the two asm squads are easily removed by knight firepower. The ever-lucky culexus has two battle cannon shots scatter off him. The wyvern tags the same guys who fell out of the razor in turn one, killing one and making them fall back (they just come right back and hide behind the wreckage again next turn.) The dreadnought loses his assault cannon arm, and then gets charged by the warden.
HoW fails to hurt him, and of course the D sword tears him apart, but not before the valiant dread sticks the warden with 2 bruises of his own at the same
init step.
I get the rest of the pods in, as well as the warlord, one
BA scout squad, one sniper squad, and one shotgun squad. All the outflankers come from the east, so I have the snipers and shotguns ambush the guard veterans, while the
BA sneak into his deployment zone, and the warlord hope in a razorback in the far east. With the warden already damaged and out of the guard bubble, I toss all 4 pods right around him, and get at least 2 shots from every facing. It does take most of the melta shots, and the captain manages to miss even with a doctrine going (100 point single use melta shot!) but the knight goes down. The explosion scatters back near the guard and kills a few, along with a couple marines. Bolters and pod storm bolters wipe out the platoon command squad for an easy maelstrom, and manage to take out the priest from the guard blob, leaving only cypher and a few guardsmen, which the culexus charges into. He
KO's a few guard, bringing it to 2 guys and cypher that fail to do anything in return. He fails to hit and run.
Turn 3:
His deployment zone is overrun, but the two remaining Knights perform admirably. The shooting from them and the wyvern takes out almost every melta, and the paladin charges the last of them to make sure I have no practical way of hurting anymore knights. Cypher and a guardsman keep fighting the culexus but gain no ground.
My other reserves come in, the
BA scouts right by the wyvern, and the other shotgunners come into the east where they're hardly relevant, other than the fact that they're linebreaking. I fail to hurt the wyvern, which is pretty much the only vulnerable target this turn after killing the last couple veterans trying to line break me. Cypher hit and runs to the corner near the
BA scouts, and the culexus follows him with a good consolidate roll.
Turn 4, the wyvern moves a little so cypher and his one guard buddy can get into the corner away from the assassin so the paladin can blast him. One hit gets saved, the other scatters onto the
BA scouts killing a few. The paladin follows up by slashing away a drop pod in a bid to start heading for my empy's will objective. (He was going to go around the pod line, but he only rolled 6" for some terrain in the way.) The crusader heads over to his empy's will objective and bashes a pod off it, while his shooting wrecks a couple Razorbacks. The
BA scouts near the wyvern and cypher get reduced to one man, who flees a ways back.
I respond by killing cypher and his guard buddy with the culexus psychic phase shooting from point blank range, followed by charging the wyvern and glancing it once. My other moves are just squads fresh out of their vehicles spreading out and the few units near my empy's will surrounding it in a decent bubble.
Turn 5. At this point, Alex declines to roll for maelstrom, as I'm ahead something to the tune of 6 points. He just plans to get the primary and at least snag some points for the probable loss at this point. He does try the crusader's shooting at the sanguinary priest's razorback, but my cover saves stone cold refuse him. The wyvern tries to barrage the culexus after rolling 6" away from him, and after rolling the twinlinked shot, lands the initial barrage on itself. He manages to get two of the templates off, but glances one of the ones that hit. The paladin barrels through some drop pod wreckage, but again only rolls 6" of his possible 12" for terrain, putting him still on his side of no man's land.
I start rolling Razorbacks towards his empy's will, although I need another turn to get there. Other razors and squads try to shift west as far as possible to get in the paladin's way. The culexus charges the wyvern again but fails to hurt it.
Random game length: I roll a 2 and the game ends. I had maelstrom, big game hunter, and linebreaker, while tying him on the primary, making a 6-0 victory. Roughly 1/3 of my army is in the dead pile, a pretty small amount compared to the usual.
As I said before, this matchup is heavily dependent on me going 2nd OR quickly killing a knight, both of which happened. The smaller guard units always happened to be around at the perfect time to give me the "kill a unit" maelstrom, so they pushed me way ahead in that regard.
We did have one rules issue that the
TO suggested 4+ ing on. Can you hit and run after failing morale, but getting locked due to
atsknf? I'm pretty sure you can, as you are "locked" at the end of the fight sub-phase, which is before the end of the combat phase, but I didn't see a couple marines having a major impact, so I just went with the 4+ and it got denied.
Game 2: Purge the alien vs. Sam's Chaos/necrons
Sam's list is the one I didn't get, so I'm going off memory. In the chaos
CAD he had 2 sets of cultists, a
ML 2 nurgle flying daemon prince with spell familiar who took "the last memory of yuranthros," a variable warp charge nova that can be 18" at wc3, 3 heldrakes with flamers, and a chaos fire raptor with legacy of ruin: Tzenahk the Occluder. On the cron side, he had a
CAD with a set of 10 warriors in a ghost ark, and a set of 18 warriors on foot with a cryptek with chronometron and veil of darkness who took an empty ghost ark.
I won the turn rolloff and chose to go 2nd.
He sets up the big warrior unit and a set of cultists near a maelstrom objective, while the ghost arks line up to head to the center. The nurgle prince waits on a hill behind to take to the air. All the flyers and a set of cultists wait in reserve.
The chaos fire raptor's legacy of ruin is a random
d6 roll. On a 1, it's worth a maelstrom point to me to kill it. On a 2-6, it's worth d3 maelstrom to him if it lives. He rolls a 1.
His first turn, he tosses the ghost arks into the center and the prince flies there as well. I drop pod with a
dev doctrine, tossing the dread near the cultists, some flamers near the warriors, the captain's melta unit by the empty ghost ark, and the chaplain's in my deployment zone. The chaplain splits off so that between him, his squad, and the pod, I'm achieving a "hold the line" maelstrom. The empty ghost ark gets melted, the full one jinks just fine, and the dread reduces the cultists to a single man. The asm flame into the Warriors and drop one.
Turn 2, his reserves come on except for one heldrake and the cultists. (He hadn't yet placed the fire raptor in pic.) Several flames and gauss shots later, I had lost the two command squads, the captain (who failed 3/4 saves to gauss) and chaplain, the dread to mass gauss, and all but one assault marine with a flamer. The ghost ark moves from one maelstrom to the other to deny it for me.
Plenty of my reserves came in. I tossed melta tacticals near the other ghost ark, the culexus near the Warriors, some
BA scouts outflanked by them as well. The other
BA came in on the empty west side in some ruins. Razorbacks rolled on from my edge. I offed a few cron warriors with shooting, and killed that last cultist. In an attempt to make him fail to hold a maelstrom objective, I had the lone assault flamer marine charge into the 11 remaining necron warriors plus character. 20 some overwatch shots bounce off this glorious red shirt, and he makes it in. He doesn't kill any of the enemy, but he sucks up their attacks with a smile, and the entire unit gets pulled into him, and off a maelstrom objective.
Turn 3, the last drake comes in, the prince flies to where the nova will hit a couple units, including the single marine in combat. He didn't veil, thinking this would get the crons loose. He rolls 3 for the
2d6 shots, and the flamer marine in combat takes two to the armor and keeps on truckin'. The fire raptor drops to hover to keep
los on Razorbacks, and dakkas a couple to death, spilling out marines to get baleflamed. The lone flamer marine, dogpiled under necrons, sees that he accomplished his mission against all odds and smiles as he finally goes down. (Bittersweet music here.) The ghost ark goes back to the center objective since I had that one this turn.
I get the last tactical pod in, and set my sights on the hovering fire raptor, immobilizing it. I thin out the warriors a little bit more, and charge in with
BA scouts alongside the culexus. I unfortunately only tie 1 scout to 1 warrior death, as the assassin fails several wound rolls, and his saves/
RP's against the
BA attacks serve him well. My priest also walked in and hopped inside a razorback.
Turn 4, he has cultists show up near my
BA in his west table edge, landing no kills. The necron unit veils out of combat and also shows up near those scouts. The daemon prince flies near the middle of my units and gets off a bomb this time, throwing the 18" nova for 7 shots each, and then wounding exceptionally well on several units. All told some 15 marines died to that one power, plus a couple more that failed morale and left the table. He did peril, taking a wound and falling, but the ground was soft apparently. The heldrakes drop to hover instead of flying off, and keep flaming as much as they can. Several more Razorbacks get wrecked.
I have my shotgun scout units both come in near the cultists and crons, and between their shots and the
BA charge, the cultists are removed. I attempt to have random marines and the assassin assault hovering heldrakes and the fire raptor, but only manage to glance a couple drakes.
Turn 5: we're low on time, so we do a final timed 6 minute each turn. He makes sure everything lands, gets on the maelstrom objectives, and largely moves into the couple table quarters where I don't have much presence. His cryptek splits from the warriors to count as a separate unit. He does a few shots where he can quickly.
I throw all the scouts near the necrons into the cryptek, both shotgun shooting and manage 3 successful assaults, who tanks everything they can throw. I move some sniper scouts to contest an objective with a heldrake (who also fail to kill it with grenades,) and move over to obsec claim one more objective that I can reach.
With that, the game ends. I have maelstrom by 1 point, he has purge by a million (he actually killed 17 of my 36 kill points.) We both had line breaker. We were both holding one objective and contesting the third, scoring ground control. Because I couldn't kill that cryptek, he had that table quarter 4-3. He had the southwest since I had nothing there, and I still had tons of pods left in the north east and south east (where the flamer marine is lying unconscious so we could easily save him!) So dead tie for table quarters.
Straight up down the middle 6-6 tie, as tied as tied could be.
I did not like my chances in this matchup, and was glad to at least snag a tie. While I'm normally perfectly fine ignoring flyers because they don't do enough damage to me to pay for themselves, the drakes are hyper efficient at burninating my boys, and easily pay for themselves in 2-3 turns in this matchup, just like many other very good units. I got super lucky with the hero assault marine denying him a maelstrom, and also with the legacy of ruin roll failing on his fire raptor. Had he rolled 2+ on it, he would've tied maelstrom at minimum, sending me right out. Sam was a total bro to play and my personal pick for best sport. He said it was his first time playing vs battle co and he found it really fun to have so much happening on the table, and killing so many enemies while still having the enemy army retain a significant force capable of winning.
And here's a fairly good climactic finish to the day:
Game 3: Crusade vs. Jim's white scars battle company (!!!)
As you can see, Jim is, like me, another Blood Angels player who is counting his less-than-stellar
BA models as core marines to make a competitive list. Great minds and such...
Jim is running the more "standard" white scars company, with khan for scout, and this weird "wargear" stuff throughout his army. Psh, who needs wargear?
White scars gladius:
Battle company
Khan on bike as warlord
Chaplain on bike w/ melta bombs
Command squad on bikes w/ 4 grav guns and apothecary.
2x 5 man
tac squad, melta combi-melta,
TL heavy bolter razorback
5 man
tac squad, melta combi-melta,
TL lascannon razorback
5 man
tac squad, grav combi-grav,
TL lascannon razorback
2x 5 man
tac squad, grav combi-grav, las-plaz razorback
2 attack bikes with multi meltas in one unit
5 man bikes with 2 grav, combi grav and melta bombs
2x 5 man Devastator squad, 2 grav cannon each both in rhinos.
Auxiliary: anti air defense force
Squadron of 2 stalkers
1 hunter
Oh boy, this is gonna be intense. Our table has a lot going on too. There are houses everywhere. We did impassable for the big middle building, and ruins area terrain almost everywhere else. (The roofs were detachable so that you could place guys inside the houses.)
I don't even know what's going to happen here. He has more killing power, and I have more men, but not significantly more like against most armies. This really will be down to tactics and dice.
I got mtc/stealth ruins (woot!) and 3 pin checks (fail!) traits. He has khan.
He won the rolloff for turn choice, and decided that he would prefer to go first. In a battle of battle companies, I probably would've gone 2nd if I were him.
He does his scout moves and away we go.
Turn1: maelstroms, we both want to kill a unit and linebreak.
He sends bikers flying across the board, and the vehicles take up good positions on both sides of the center building. He leaves the anti air vehicles on his deployment zone objective along with the biker command squad with khan and the chappy. All his vehicles toss their smoke.
I bring on the melta. All 4 pods are the melta command squads and tacticals with the smaller
tac doctrine running. His stalkers fail to score any damage with interceptor. Smoke and night fighting save the Devastator rhinos from damage, but two Razorbacks in the east are blown up, granting first blood. I detach the chappy and captain from their command squads to bring up unit saturation a little. For maelstrom I killed a unit and linebroke with a pod squad, while he linebroke with a biker unit.
Turn 2. I want to hold either obj 1 and linebreak, he wants to kill a unit and linebreak. He spreads out firepower across the several units that came in. A meltagun knocks out the captain straight through 2+ cover, that being ruins, stealth ruins and going to ground, he just throws a nat 1 like a chump and dies. The regular bikers that line broke 1st turn spin around to help against pod arrivals. The rest of the drop melta squads are
KO'd, except for the lone chappy in the west, who shrugs off multiple lascannon shots and several heavy bolters, and the command squad in the east that the captain rode with. The duo of attack bikes attempt to melt a pod near my west deployment zone, fail, and then assault it, doing nothing.
I have 5 Razorbacks, a set of
BA scouts, the dreadnought, the snipers, my priest warlord, and a flamey ASM pod squad come in. The razors line up on my board edge and heavy bolter the attack bikes, bringing them to 1 wounded bike. The dread and ASM come in east side to flame some of the disembarked enemies from the blown up razors, killing a few. The sniper scouts hide by a building in my west d zone, and the set of
BA scouts come in near the chaplain. The chaplain assaults a razorback alone and wrecks it. The melta command squad moves closer to threaten the anti-air formation, but is too far for some good shots. The warlord walks on and hops in the razorback mostly in cover behind the building in my west deployment zone.
For maelstrom, I just get linebreak as he has both objective 1's covered significantly, and he gets linebreak and kill a unit, bringing us to 3-3
Turn 3: I want to hold an objective 2 and kill a unit. He just wants to kill 2 units. He sends the biker command squad down the east side of the table, detaching the chap to attack a pod with melta bombs while the command squad gravs the melta command squad unit to death. The normal bikes head back towards my d zone and attempt to krak a razorback, but fail. The grav
devs continue to destroy whatever they target, usually a squad of marines, and some of the tacticals in the west disembark to open fire. Heavy weapons do very little damage to my Razorbacks, but the chaplain drops to some bolters. The wounded attack bike assaults a razor and fails to hurt it.
I get in both sets of shot gun scouts, the other
BA scouts, and the culexus, leaving just a razorback and the last flamey ASM out. I get some shotgunners from the east that help the local units reduce his biker unit to 1 man. The
BA scouts and other shotgun scouts come in from the west at his line, using buildings as cover. The culexus drops in the east, killing a couple marines. Razorbacks throw out fire against several disembarked marines, whittling them a bit, and take the last wound off the remaining attack bike. The
BA scouts assault a set of marines in the west and start fighting. The sniper scouts also charge into a set of tactical marines and start fighting. We both score 2 maelstrom going to 5-5.
Turn 4: For maelstrom, I need to hold an objective 1 and kill a unit, he needs to hold an objective 1 and hold the line.
Shooting abounds, wrecking a couple Razorbacks and pods. Another set of marines joins in against the sniper scouts, but as is typical for marine v marine combat, jack-all happens. The west grav rhino
dev squad eliminates the ASM that stole objective 1 for a turn. Khan splits from his command squad to melee a few marines in the east, while they and the chaplain go to melta another pod and finally get rid of my obsec on one of the objective 2's. The
BA scouts finish off the marines they were fighting and consolidate towards a Devastator rhino.
I get my last razorback and ASM squad in. The ASM pod near his anti air unit and run out of the pod to 1" away from the hunter, claiming tube objective he's on via obsec. The razorback rolls on and drops out troops, pouring fire along with the others into various ground targets. The lone biker in the east dies, and Khan takes a couple wounds. The culexus caused one of khan's wounds in the psychic phase, then threw a psykout grenade at the command squad, and beans a guy right in the head with a 6 to wound, failed armor, and failed
fnp. (That is some skill right there.) He follows up with an assault that results in 3 ap2 wounds with 2 being instadeath, wiping the rest of the squad. More marines charge into the brawl near the sniper scouts to help them out, and a few deaths happen here and there. He finally succeeds at a hit and run, sending several marines behind the building where my razorback with the warlord has been hiding. Both sets of
BA scouts charge the grav-filled rhino in the west, wrecking it with overkill and pinning the squad after they are out.
I score both my objectives, and deny him both of his this turn, swinging the maelstrom to 7-5.
Turn 5: I want to hold an objective 2 and kill a unit, and he wants to kill a unit and linebreak.
He assaults the warlord's razorback, krak-ing it open and getting the priest and squad to disembark into the ruins. The surviving Razorbacks shoot at mine, wrecking almost all of them finally. Khan fails a charge against some of my marines in the east, but moves a grav rhino over near objective 2 right in the way.
I pour several shots from bolters and the culexus into Khan, and he tanks them all, until he fails a save from one drop pod bolter, giving me warlord. The priest's unit cleans up some of the marines that wrecked his ride, and the scouts jump onto another couple Razorbacks, wrecking one. In the east, marines and shotgun scouts advance up to look at assaulting near the obj 2 in that area next turn, while the shotgun scouts in the west continue to move between buildings and close in on the anti air squadron in the hopes of knocking them off his backfield objective. I only got 1 maelstrom for killing a unit, while he got both of his, bringing it to 8-7 my lead.
Turn 6: We move onto turn 6 in a hurry, roll our maelstrom, and then realize we never rolled to see if the game ended. I roll a 1 to end it.
Looking at the board, he has primary. I was set up to fight him off of two of the primaries and contest a third next turn, but that's that. He also has linebreaker with a unit of marines.
I took maelstrom with a 1 point lead, was linebreaking with shotgun scouts, took first blood from the first turn melta drops, and killed Khan for warlord, bringing the mission points to 7-5 victory for the battle company mirror match.
(I took a pic of the sheet to keep my batrep straight. Ignore the turn 6 maelstrom, as we wrote them before finding out the game was going to end on t5!)
I know the khan version usually wants first turn to scout and open fire, but I think he really should have seen the null deployment coming and gone second instead, since he won the rolloff for choice.
Also, you may have noticed there wasn't much hit and run even though there were plenty of combats. There's a reason for that: We both apparently SUCK at rolling dice for hit and run. We both failed something like 6 or 7 hit and run
init checks, and both only passed 1.
On the flip side, his dice were super obedient on
Ld checks. Only his grav
devs finally failed a pin check near the end. Everyone else in his army passed all their pin and snapfire vehicle damage checks all game. I on the other hand, consistently failed them. It didn't affect the game largely by any means, but it WAS a subtle annoyance.
Regardless of that, the battleco "not Blood Angels" mirror match was absolutely intense, and definitely would've been a worthy live stream feature match. So many units. So many decisions. So many possibilities.
On the downside, writing a text batrep of this battle was insane. The first two rounds I was done with after a day. This one took me until a week and a half later to finish, as I kept going back to the several pics to try and figure out what happened. (I'm glad I took several.)
So I ended up taking 5th place with my 2w 1d 0L record, stuck behind two others with the same record and better mission points. Apparently second round had an alarming amount of draw results, including my own. Eldar dominated first and second place with a pair of undefeated lists. (If memory serves, the 2nd place list was an interesting one with primary eldar for obsec bike spam, and a set of 4 imperial Knights! If that is correct, that's the highest I've seen a largely IK list place like...ever.)
Best painted and 3rd went to dark eldar with this army here:
Some notes on the tournament at large:
The rounds were well run, and the prize support was nice considering that entry was only $10. Terrain was spiffy and the way I like it at a tournament, with all different setups at tables to really test your and your army's ability to use variable terrain correctly every game. I do dislike having less Swiss rounds than necessary for a single undefeated winner, but
40k does not lend itself well to too many rounds. (That number of people would've required 5 rounds.)
Mvp: My usual suspect for this is the culexus, and he did survive all 3 games in addition to killing cypher, sucking up IK firepower, and one-rounding 4
fnp command squad bikers with 1 pebble throw and 3 slaps, but neither of those were super important win conditions, so mvp has to go to the lone flamer assault marine from mission 2, who bravely charged in and fought a 12 to 1 battle for 2 rounds to stop the crons from holding an objective AND make them unable to shoot. With my maelstrom lead of 1, it is no overstatement to say that he kept me from losing that game.
Lvp: combi-melta captain. With a doctrine running each time he landed, he MISSED his rerollable 2+ shot against a knight, and got cover saved against on a ghost ark and rhino. In retaliation, he got instagibbed by a battle cannon, failed 3 out of 4 saves from one volley of gauss from 10 necron warriors, and failed a stealth ruin gone to ground 2+ cover against a single melta shot, getting doubled out again. Failcaptain was fail today.
Best opponent to play: All 3 opponents were great players, and good sports all around, but Sam from round 2 was best sportsman quality easily. He didn't get that title today, but he easily could have. He was also the 4th place finisher, just above me.
That's all for the tournament. This being my 4th ITC event for the season, it put me just shy of breaking into the top 10, down at 14 instead. (Although to be fair, I would've been up there in 6-7ish if
NOVA results hadn't been entered so fast
)
This SHOULD be the last ITC event for me in the season, as I certainly can't afford going to anything super far away like
LVO, unless some event pops up nearby. I'm pretty happy with my performance as is for a rookie tournament player, with my lowest score being a 4-1 result at wargamescon. We'll just have to see how many people manage to pass me by before February.
And in closing, here is one of my cats disrupting a game of magic between my wife and I.
Thanks for reading!
20000+ points
