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Okay, so through luck, providence, and what skills I have I am one point off max score for rounds one and two. On the three tables above me one player is perfect with 48 and one is right behind me with 45 or 46. I'm in the running for some awsome prizes! I'm not gonna count my chickens yet though.

After game two one fellow walks up to me and asks how I did. I tell him and he figures we'll be playing one another final round. He's running heavily mechanised Space Marines with:

3 assault cannon dreadnought

9 tornado speeders

3 autocannon predators with hvy bolter sponsons

2 razorbacks with twin linked lascannons

2 razorbacks with twin linked hvy bolter

1 scout squad with missile launcher

4 marine squads, 2 with hvy bolter and 2 with lascannon

Termy librarian with four buddies and fear of darkness/ fury of ancients

The mission is table quarters with credit for a fifth quarter to the highest point scoring unit within 6" of the table center. Deployment zones are ten inches deep around your quarter, so we'll start off with a little distance. To make things interesting, a vortex grenade template starts in the middle of the table and every players turn scatters d6. If the scatter dice rolls a hit the grenade still moves in the direction of the small arrow. Anything this template touches is sucked into the warp and gone with no saves of any sort. You also may not shoot or skim over the template, so great is the power of this rift. Deep strike and Infiltrate is allowed.

I shake hands with my opponent and trade lists. We agree that we are both in the running and that a draw would suck. So since our strategies are similiar (i.e. shoot the other guy to death) we alternate placing the terrain on the edges of the field and leaving a nice big kill zone in the center. That done we roll for sides and deploy. Its a tight squeeze for me but I manage to get my whole army in the ten inch deep zone just to the left of the center line. Portions of my army are in craters molded into the board. I stick with the plan and front to back are monoliths, immortals, lord and warriors and finally destroyers. I see he has a librarian but I leave him a very small area to risk teleporting into beside me. There is an area of level three rocky terrain just on the right side of my line that provides some cover.

He deploys three dreads across from me, 1 predator next to them, then debarked lascannon squads and razorbacks around the corner. Two more razorbacks with twin linked lascannon and debarked hvy bolter squads in a ruined building on the short edge, ready to claim either quarter. Two more predators anchor the line on the short edge. His three speeder squadrons are on the table edge behind his tanks, ready to zoom over. FInally he places his scout squad in ruins centered on the opposite short board edge.

The stage is set...

He wins the roll for first turn, which bothers me less than it might due to weapon ranges and the victory conditions. First off, the warp rift scatters 4" towards his corner, a good omen for me. He rolls out with pretty much the whole army except the razorbacks and attached squads. He cuts loose with four lascannons, two of them twin linked, on my monoliths and fails to damage them. Heavy bolter fire and some assault cannons hose three or so immortals. The scout squad try to hit a monolith I believe, with no luck. I'm gonna have to root them out...Overall not bad at all, but I don't want eat everything they can throw under 24", so I better start whittling.

My turn one I bring back 2 immortals I think. The rift keeps bouncing around his quarter, but he does a good job of avoiding it. I march out 6", or slightly slower when I'm in a crater. I hose the scout squad to make it easier to focus on the bulk of his army. All of my particle whips are either out of range or scatter completely off target. Destroyer fire starts damaging the dreads and destroys one. very few targets are in range yet, but I know that's gonna change. We both need a close in firefight to decide this.

Turn two the rift moves a little. The librarian teleports perfectly on my left flank. Crap! The fear of darkness washes over my army and I have to take 8 tests at leadership 8. I fail with one destroyer squad and an immortal squad. Destroyers are gone but I roll a 4 for the immortals. That could have been game right then...librarian must die! In addition, his army is now closer with a lot more weapons in range. He shoots me up pretty good, concentrating on the destroyers now. Lascannons have little or no effect again.

My turn two the rift moves a little. My WBB rolls are very good and stay good for the rest of the game. I turn practically every weapon in my army on the librarian and his retinue and finally get him with my last squad. Unfrortunately this leaves the rest of his army practically unscathed. Here it comes...

His turn three the rift moves a little. In fact the rift only got one razorback in the whole game and served to force my opponent to horseshoe around it. 'Nuff said about that. Now he hammers me hard but still can't seem to get the monoliths. He reduces my 2 remaining destroyer squads to one model, but can't quite get him. I have chance.

My turn three I manage to WBB and teleport most of the destroyers back, so he'll have to try again. Now I'm finally able to direct more fire at the vehicles and I start to damage his line, but not as much as I would like. I begin moving my monoliths further as well, looking to claim quarters. I still have both warrior squads and the three immortal squads, though most have taken one or two casualties. He has two moblie dreads that can contest the quarters on my side, and I haven't even reached his side or the center.

Turn four and he's not moving his tanks much. The two remaining speeder squads still scoring are looking for position and to kill the destroyers. The dreads march further into my zone. He concentrates most all of his fire on the destroyers and kills them all. Not good. The only good thing is the rest of my army is in pretty good shape. Monoliths still ok.

My turn four. The monoliths advance and now I see a possibility to hurt him. I am able to move one monolith towards the center and hit no less than ten units with the gauss flux arc projectors. 2 dreads, 2 razorbacks, 3 predators and 3 speeder squads all feel the sting. Out of ten rolls for shots I get maybe 6 sixes, a couple of fives and maybe a two and a four. In a circle around me vehicles are all busted up. One dread is immobilized, one has both arms blown off. A predator is destroyed and most of the other tanks are shaken or weapon destroyed. One speeder squad loses it's last speeder and another drops to non scoring. It was insane. My opponent groans "I HATE MONOLITHS!". I don't blame him.

In turn five he finally shoots down one monolith, closest to him. Not good, but it does serve to block line of sight to some stuff. The rest of my army is largely untouched. He doesn't move many of his remaining tanks though and it's way too late to mount the squads and race for table quarters. I'm thinking I may be able to pull this game out.

My turn five I push one monolith closer to center and one towards the back left corner, teleporting a squad of immortals to try and kill armless dread. No luck. Another immortal squad takes a priority check and fails, preventing me shooting at the last scoring speeder squadron of two. Instead I blast the immobilized dread, which helps me not at all.

His final turn he moves his tanks and speeder squadron into the center or very close to it. He now controls three quarters to my one, with one contested. Incoming fire is sparse and my two monoliths are ok.

My final turn I take my monolith closest to the center and declare a tank shock against his tanks. He says I can't shock vehicles so we have to get a judge to confirm I can. I push him out but fail to get one speeder completely out of 6" range of center. My monolith is 235 points, his squadron is 240. I teleport a unit of immortals through, march them into the difficult terrain of the destroyed monolith, contesting a quarter on his side of the board. The immortals shoot at the speeders and get five glancing hits, kill one and now I have center claimed. Armless dread is shot by many, many gauss weapons and finally gives up the ghost.

Final result: one quarter to marines, one quarter contested, and three quarters to necrons. Major victory with three bonus points for 20 total.

My final total for the whole tournament was 67 points out of 72. I felt pretty confident I had placed, but I was still nervous. One other player asked how I did and told me he thought another guy had gone at least 70 out of 72. That was a real downer but I decided to wait and see how it came out.

Like all tournaments they went runners up to champion. The first thing they said was that 4 players had tied for fourth place and I thought I would be in that foursome. They announced third, it was a nice guy from Colorado with Eldar. The second place guy was from Ohio with Nids I think. At least midwest was represented. When they called my name I was really exhausted and stunned, but of course it was super cool! I got a smoking army and a super cool demon hammer trophy. It was so much stuff in fact, that the trade sales guys are going to ship it to me.

I really hope they run this event every year. I like the escalating nature of it. It gives local guys the chance to see if they make the cut without having to jump straight to GT level. I met a lot of real nice folks, and a few jerks, but overall it was a really great experience.

 

What do you feel at those points values with no requirements is your worst match up.  I tried to think of what my orks could possibly do against 3 monoliths and that many chances for wbb, but the only thing I can think of is throw up my slugga shooting into the air and yelling waagh!  That is not much strategy...

I didn't want to see Nids or broadside Tau primarily. A good speed freeks player could also give me fits if he could screen his transports.

Strength 10 weapons are real bad news and my primary target, if one or two monoliths go down early it's pretty crippling.

If you can swarm my units in assault thats also bad, but if I have all three liths I can recover.

In my first regional battle my opponent was Tau with two railheads and three broadsides with six shield drones. I got a look at his list and was pretty nervous. Thankfully that mission had deep strike. Then my opponent made a big mistake and placed his broadside suits and one shield drone just behind the deployment line and his remaining five drones 2" behind the suits. I placed all three destoyer squads on my table edge directly across from him.

I got turn one, moved my destroyers up an inch or so and shot the suits and one drone. Problem solved.

Two Questions;

1. Was it true that Necrons don't have to phase out in armies of over 1900 points, or was that just an uniformed rumor?

2. Not having played against a Monolith, might someone 'run the numbers' of what it takes to hit the Monolith. Is it basically a Skimmer 14 all around armor-so 14 to glance? Are there other special rules which apply to make the Monolith even harder to wound.

Usual tactical advice against Necrons is to avoid shooting at the Monoliths. I wonder in this case if they shouldn't have been a higher priority...

I was surprised that the 9 Tornado Space Marine player didn't max out his Las/Plas squads (its 2500 points after all) , or bring along a Multi-Melta or two on his Tornados, or a tank with Las Cannon Sponsons. Perhaps someone in his list had Tank Hunters as a doctrine. But it seemed to me he was geared to fighting lighter armor and troops.

Nah, that whole "no phase out over 1900 points" was my roomate being a smart-alek.

My last opponent had 4 lascannons, 2 twin linked, in his army. He had two squads with heavy bolters instead of lascannons, and I suppose he could have used lascannons instead of autocannons on his predators. But his army was perfect through the first two rounds of play, and under normal circumstances rending hits from 12 assault cannons would certainly have made up for the smaller number of lascannons.

The problem against monoliths is that no extra penetration dice are ever scored against them. Assault cannons, melta guns, tankbusta bombs, fire pikes etc. only get one dice ever plus weapon strength. You can't get a tank buster +1 bonus either.

That said, even with the four lascannons my opponents rolls kinda crapped out on him. He destroyed one monolith the whole game despite needing a 5 to glance or 6 to penetrate. He should have been hitting at least three times a turn, but he rolled a lot of 1's and 2's for his squad lascannons.

In hindsight, I should have made the razorbacks a primary target. The lascannon squads were well back into his DZ and would have taken a lot of effort to beat down.

 

Good report, thanks! And congratulations!

As you've noticed, the biggest luck factor in a big tournament is what armies and opponents you wind up against, in what scenarios. This is much more of a factor than dice, generally.