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So I don't have much time right now but wanted to give a quick update as many had asked me to tell how my Mech Vets did today.

I took first place, with a Massacre, 21 points against Green Tide Orks, a Massacre 25 points against a Mech Tau with 3 rail heads and 12 crisis suits, and a Massacre 21 points against Deep Striking Marines with 4 dreads, 4 lascannon razorbacks and 20 deep striking terminators.

The first and last games were very close until then end when it just turned bad at turn 5 and 6 but the middle game was very one sided such that my opponent conceded after turn three with only one railhead and two devilfish left out of his army.

I have a few pics but it was pretty intense all the way through so I did not take too many and completly forgot any pics of the final game.

I want to congratulate all my opponents for awesome and well played games with wonderful sportsmanship, and especially Mike Clark of Showcase Comics Granite Run for presiding over a fantastic event.

More detailed reports [ NOW ADDED TO END OF THE POST, 7-12-09 ]

My army was

Melta CCS with Astropath, MOTF
Melta CCS with Astropath
2x Melta, HF, Demo Vets riding vendetta
2x Melta HF, Demo Vets riding vendetta
3x Plasma Vets, chimera
3x Plasma Vets, chimera
2x FL, 1x HF vets Chimera
2x Vendetta squadron
1x Valkyrie with Inquisitor and two mystics riding
2x banewolves with multimeltas
2x Vanquishers, with LC and Pask
1x Exterminator with plasma sponsons.

Just FYI the top 5 were

First Place : My, Mech Vet IG
Second Place: Salamanders with three landraider mounted assault squads
Third Place: Vulcan Drop Pod Marines
Fourth Place: Vulcan Mech
Fifth Place: Mech Vet IG (almost identical to my army but with Hydras instead of the Exterminator and Melta Flamer Vets in the chims instead of Plasma Vets)

Cant wait to hear how it went for everyone else.

See you in the Second Round :-)


BATREPS:

ROUND 1 , OPPONENT ORKS RESULT, MASSACRE 21-0

HER LIST:
Warboss with klaw, twin liked shoota, eavy armor, cybork body
Nobz retinue x6 with eavy armor and cybork bodies, painboy
In Truk with red, plates, plank, wrekin ball, ram, big shoota

Big Mek with KFF
Nobz x6 with cybork bodies and eavy armor
Pain Boy with doks tools, urty syring and grot orderly
In Truk with red, plates, plank, wrekin ball, ram, big shoota

Tank Bustas x8 with rokitts and busta bombs

Slugga boys x 20
Slugga boys x20
Ard boyz x 10
Shoota boyz x 20
Shoota boyz x 16

Storm Boyz x 10

5 Def Koptzs with rockits

3 Kanz

1 Deff Dread

1 Battlewagon

Her list was not an optimized tournament build but it proved diffi ult for me due to the battlefield terrain. The table was a very cluttered city scape with numerous three story ruins that blocked LOS totally across most of the board and severly restricted the ability of my heavy tanks to take part in the fight.

Here is a view of the deployment: ( My valkyries are being held in reserve and are sitting just off the board edge)



As you can see all my heavy tanks are on my left flank while the chimera phalanx is set up surrounding the objectives at table center. I placed my objectives in a perfect triangle with the apex formed by the board center objective. I think this won me the game more than anything as it allowed me to castle all of my forces inside the chimeras and block the limited avenues of approach with wrecked chimera hulls. This forced her to funnel her attack force through a small choke point and get pummelled picemeil by my entire army.

At the same time I was able to outflank with my Vendetta squadron, deploy the melta flamer demo vets who easily annihilated an entire ork boyz mob and capture the objective they were holding before mounting back up to strike her assault forces from the rear at board center catching her nobz between my plasma vets, and a demo charge, heavy flamer wielding squad of air mobile vets.

I will say that on turn 5 I was getting nervous as my vets were thinning down and the brutally cluttered terrain had taken my tanks out of the fight since they had killed everything the could see and had no way to re deploy to gain los on her remaining army due to the giant tower piece at board center.


My Valkyrie with the combi flamer wielding inquisitor helped save me here by attacking the boyz mob holding her other objective. One lone inquisitor with a combi flamer, assisted by the valkyries rocket pods killed all but 4 of the orks forcing them to run gaining me a kill point and guaranteeing the objective win.

My opponent, Jen, was very pleasant and fun to play against but was not very experienced at tournament play. Had it not been for the terrain blocking LOS and providing cover saves for every single ork all game long, It would have been over early.

MVP UNIT OF THE GAME: MELTA/FLAMER/DEMO VETS. ( Killed 20 boyz, 6 Nobz, 1 Big Mek, claimed one objective, cleared a second. ), Honorable Mention, Inquisitor with combi flamer for attacking an entire ork mob and winning ;-) even if he did have a big valkyries rockets backing him up.

Worst Unit of the Game: Bane Wolf Squadron. ( Killed one ork, but it was not so much their fault because I sent them up against a nobz mob with a painboy who simply ignored all the wounds they delt and then assaulted them into oblivion. )

GAME 2 OPPONENT: MECH TAU
RESULT, Massacre (concession at bottom of turn 3) 25-0

His List
Shas O with shield drone, body guard all with plasma, missle pod and multi trackers

3x Crisis Suits with MP, PR, MT
3x Crisis Suits with MP,PR,MT
3x Crisis Suits with FB,PR,MT

12 Firewarriors in warfish
12 firewarriors in warfish
12 firewarriors in warfish
12 firewarriors in warfish

RailHead
RailHead
RailHead

This game was simply not pretty and Im sure not very fun for my opponent . Due to the dawn of war deployment, and my choosing to go second I was able to control the battlefield very early.



My first two turns were mostly spent using terrain and smoke to get into position while Pask picked off one tau vehicle per turn. My master of the fleet kept the tau deepstriking suits off the board just long enough for me to get everything into position. My turn 2 shooting also managed to wipe out his enire left flank and my vendettas, melta vets and valkyrie combined to destroy one rail head, two devil fish, 3 fusion crisis suits that had mishap scattered , leaving nothing but 11 terrified firewarrors. On his turn three he brought all his remaining suits into battle and sent them directly at my two hq squads hoping to even up the kill point total ( I already had 14 KP after turn 2!) Unfortunately one mishapped itself to death, and the other two managed to do everything BUT kill my two CCS chimeras. Leaving his suits staring down the guns of two plasma vet squads, two melta CCS squads, Pasks squadron, and an executioner all at point blank range.



By the end of my turn three he had two devilfish and One railhead left out of his entire army and I had a 24-0 Kill Point lead. My opponent conceded the game at that point, he was pretty badly shaken as I dont think he had ever had a game go that bad that fast. He was a very good sport about it and said he woud play it out if I insisted but really did not want to spend three turns watching me hunt down his last three units with my entire virtually undamaged army. I did not want to make him feel any worst than he already did and accepted.

MVP OF THE GAME: You guessed it - Melta Flamer Demo Vets baby!!! Killed two devil fish, one Firewarror squad and a Hammer Head!!!

Worst Unit of the Game: Flamer Vets, simply because the never got to fire a shot at anything and immobilized their chimera on a hill early in turn 3 ( amazingly enough by the end of turn 3 i had only one mobile chimera remaining despite not losing a single one to enemy fire.

GAME 3 : OPPONENT VANILLA MARINES
RESULT MASSACRE 21-0

His Army:
Master of the Forge w/ conversion beamer

Terminator Assault Squad, TH/SS x 10
Terminator Squad, x 10 with 2x Cyclone Missle Launcher
MM/HF Dread with Pod

Tac Squad x5 in Twin Lascannon razorback
Tac Squad x5 in Twin Lascannon razorback
Tac Squad x5 in Twin Lascannon razorback
Tac Squad x5 in Twin Lascannon razorback

Land Speeder, MM/HF
Land Speeder, MM/HF
Land Speeder, MM/HF

MM/HF Dread with Pod
MM/HF Dread with Pod
MM/HF Dread with Pod

I chose to hold my entire army in reserves and he chose to deep strike his land speeders resulting in the following deployment on the sw objective at the end of his turn 2.




That was the last pic I took as the game was very intense and my opponent asked for several rulings from the judges. I don't blame him as they were mostly resulting from the valkyrie and how I had clarified it with the TO prior to the event, but since that had not been explained to the other players before the event it led to him being surprised by how the valkyries were being played ( all measurements from the base, model used for LOS ) resulting in the vendettas overlapping each other, and his models during their deployment on turn two. It should be noted that there was a pretty senior GW rep at the store since Showcase is one of the Top performing GW retailers in the country and he told me they will put some kind of ruling in the rule pack before the regionals so everyone will know exactly what is expected for them for round two. Honestly I plan to change my list so I just don't have to bother with squadroned vendettas as the models are just too much of a pain in the ass to run as a squadron.

In any case I brought in everything except pask and my flamer vets on turn two. Between my meltas and plasma I was able to kill or disable all three dreads and wreck two of the drop pods, and my vendettas, and melta flamer demo vets killed one razorback and the tac squad inside of it. however after the thirty minutes or so of heated discussion between the TO and my opponent about the valkyries I totally spaced out and forgot to even shoot at his land speeders which nearly cost me the game. He was able to use them to kill most of my melta flamer demo vets and one of my vendettas on his following turn while shaking my remaining vendetta. This left his razorbacks free to re deploy. Fortunately he got stuck in the trap that I see many players using lascannon razorbacks get caught by, he stayed put and shot with them keeping his troops well away from the objectives. My Bane wolves again proved to be more effective as fire magnets than anything else and were left with one destroyed and one with only the chem cannon.

On my turn 3 Pask and the flamer vets came on the board, my flamer vets making a run at the NE objective since there was nothing anywere near it while pask started taking care of the remaining Razorbacks. My melta Vets finished off the last of the dreads and drop pods while my Chimera Multilasers finished off the troublesome landspeeders.

On his turn 3 nothing came in but due to the stuipid hill in the SW corner that blocked the LOS for my executioner and most of my chimeras I could only shoot with my vendetta and Pask. leaving him with one fully functional razorback and one with no weapons neither of which could move or shoot on turn 4

Turn 4 saw him bring in both terminator squads, a landspeeder and his final dread. He droped the dread right on the NE objective and directly in the path of my Chimera racing to claim it. The Terminators dropped en masse using the one living drop pods locator beacon directly on the other side of the hill from my exterminator. He managed to bring everything in outside the range of my inquisitor who spend the entire game watching from afar after his Valkyrie was shot out of the sky by razorback fire. He blasted my Chimera to bits leaving the flamer squad facing a dread between them and the objective they want to claim. On my turn 4 I managed to imobilized the last dread with pask, but the real star, again was the surviing 5 melta flamer demo vets who managed to kill 4 TH/SS Terminators with a demo charge, a heavy flamer and two meltagun shots. ( due to poor saves from my opponent) The Melta CCS squads and two plasma vet Squads combined to kill another 6 regular terminators and one TH SS terminator. My surviving Bane Wolf killed a few marines with its chem cannon.

Turn 5 was very stressful for me as his remaining terminators tore into my lines. He killed the last of the airmobile vets, and wrecked the melta ccs chimera but with nothing else available to kill or strike they rolled over the hill under cover of the wreckage of a drop pod hoping to multi charge my two plasma vet squad chimeras and the executioner next turn. Up in the NW corner he killed my last vendetta with lascannon fire, stunned pasks squadron mate with conversion beamer fire while the marines from one of the wrecked razorbacks assualted the last banewolf and blew off its chem cannon leaving it weaponless and basically useless. A critical bit of luck on my part was the fact that his final landspeeder deep struck perfectly in point blank range of my executioner, but missed its shot. Had it not missed it is very possible he would have won the game.

On my Turn 5 I won the game with a combination of good shooting from my veterans and executioner and poor save rolls from him. I killed all of the terminators left from both squads due mainly to the executioner killing 4 of the TH/SS termies leaving my melta and plasma squads to only have to kill two. The regular terminators fell quickly to the other melta ccs and plasma squad. Pask managed to miss completely and the dread continued to live. The troublesome last landspeeder fell to multilaser fire ( god I love those multilasers for taking out speeders!!!)

Turn 6 was mostly academic with his terminators dead and his tac squads too far away to threaten either objective I had the win. I managed to kill a drop pod but his tac squads were too far out of range, and pask failed again to kill the last dread.

The game ended with me winning 1-0 on objectives and 18-7 on Kill points. We both made a few mistakes during the game but My opponent was very skilled and played his army well. His only real error was in not running hard for the open NE objective with one or two of those Razorbacks. He could have made an objective draw out of it and then would not have had to press so hard to take the objective by running his terminators right into my meltas and plasmaguns.

MVP: This game it would have to be a tie between the Executioner even though it only had one good turn of shooting, that turn saved the game. And as always my melta flamer demo vets. They combined for a dread, a land speeder, a razorback, a tac squad and 4 TH/SS terminators. Not as impressive as the other games on a point return basis, but far more critical to the games result.

Worst Unit: Flamer Vets again. They did not come in until late and their lack of ability to deal with the dread could have cost me the game if his terminators had rolled better for their invulnerable saves.

FINAL ANALYSIS:

I was very happy with how my army performed even though I had to run the basically useless flamer vet squad due to my inability to get ahold of enough meltaguns. The flamer vets did nothing of major impor in any of my games and would have been much better replaced by another melta flamer demo vet squad to assist the chimera phalanx or another plasma vet squad for extra terminator killing goodness. I used my winnings to buy two more command squad boxes so I can add more plasma, heavy flamers and meltas to my collection which will finally allow me to run my army the way I want to for the next round.

I will also pull the Rocket Pod Valkyrie. It did a great job against the orks and killed some fire warriors against the tau, but the pain in the ass of having to use my vendettas in a squadron was a major problem. Forcing me to use severe overkill in transport hunting. I found the bane wolves too useful to pull them out so I will be replacing the valkyrie with a Devil Dog to give a bit more versatility to the Bane Wolf Squadron and working hard to find a way to fit Creed into the list so they can outflank with the vendettas.

I am looking forward to round two next month. I know it will be a very tough three games but look forward to meeting some more new people and seeing new play styles.

Good job man yea my mech vets won first round then second my horrible rolling just lost me the game and a whole lot of zerkers ate my lunch wasn't my fault but o well. I then had to drop out second round because of a killer headache (had had a siesure earlier in the week dont ask) so I dropped out wish I could have kept on but alas no. O well next year I will be back with the guard and hopefully be better off but man you need to represent for all us guard out there 501st Valhallan Mechanised has your back!

In our area, Dark Eldar took 1st (easily) and I and another guy took 2 and 3 with 'nids. In this tournament, speed killed everything, and scuttler-stealers, Raiders and the like, just were awesome. It seems the more the game scales up, the less sit/shooty seems to work.

Believe or not, we saw NO imperial guard (go figure). Marines fared very poorly (wolves and generics) because they were shoot or move types. If they DID move and sit on an objective, then they were targets for anything that could charge in. Even so, they kept killing unholy amounts of heretics, xenos, etc., but without being able to negotiate terrain and objectives, just could not convert kills to victory.

The dark eldar clearly need a new codex. I'm totally on this bandwagon now, having seen just how ridiculously powerful they were (LOL). They were awe-inspiring as well as awesome. It was amazing to see how movement flexability was so much more important at this scale. I mean, the DE could really pick a target, throw EVERYTHING at it, then go and pick the next one. Because of the mobility, this was very easy to do.

Well, I look forward to other battle reports! Later!

Okay, one question;

How important were those regimental advisors?

Congratulations, Go guard! Let's show them!

And dark eldar are really a good list in 5th ed..have seen them in action, fast and furious!

Razerous wrote:Okay, one question;

How important were those regimental advisors?

Huge, they allowed my valks and dettas to outflank reliably every game and let me deploy 100% in reserves for the final game which was a big part of my win against all those drop podding dreads.

I got first with guard. Bit of everything. Got 24pts vs 3 monolith crons, 23pts vs shooty nid zilla, and 22 points vs shooty nidzilla swarm. All my opponents got massacres for their other games and placed 4th 5th and 6th place. Guess I screwed them from advancing. All opponents were very cool guys. Like playing in a friendly match with friends but with strangers. Go guard!!!

Congrats on the win Bigtmac. I was hoping to see mechvet guard at my place but I think the IG players have been slow to transition. What was the army break down like at your place?

IIRC the overall was

2 mech vet IG,
1 ork green tide with 90 boyz, tank bustas, a wagon, two truck mounted nob mobs, big stormboyz a dread and 3 cans
2 mech vulcan
1 drop pod vulcan
3 other various marine flavors including two vanilla and two blood angels
one mech tau
one mech eldar
one nidzilla
one DH raider spam
one WH raider spam

Sounds very well rounded tounies I'm not surprised to see DE do very well they definatly were not hurt by 5th edition. Nice to see IG repin it though how did you handle the drop poding dreds?

CajunMan550 wrote:Sounds very well rounded tounies I'm not surprised to see DE do very well they definatly were not hurt by 5th edition. Nice to see IG repin it though how did you handle the drop poding dreds?

I handled the drop podding dreads by holding everythign in reserve then driving on the board and melta gunning them an close range. The dreads wtere not an issue but his 20 terminators very nearly turned it. If he had not rolled below average for his terminator armor saves he could have very easilly turned it into a massacre for him. It was very close

Great work Troy! All your hard work and practice certainly paid off!

yeah 44-4-2...is a LOT of games...

Congrats on the win!

Some quick questions:

- were two meltlaguns enough in the vet squads? or did you primarily rely on your CCSs and the vanquishers to take out armour?
- was the table bg enough witht he 4 vendettas flying around?
- How bad were the squadron rules?
- Did you feel the PBS wouyld've helped you out?

CommissarKhaine wrote:Congrats on the win!

Some quick questions:

- were two meltlaguns enough in the vet squads? or did you primarily rely on your CCS and the vanquishers to take out armour?
- was the table bg enough with he 4 vendettas flying around?
- How bad were the squadron rules?
- Did you feel the PBS wouyld've helped you out?

1 yeah, but only because of the demolitions. The melta bombs on those vet squads were amazing!!! It was often worth loosing a turn of shooting from the vendetta to get the melta vets into position for a next turn charge. Also running them in pairs worked very well as they were able to have one pop a vehicle while the other fried and demo charges. I should also mention that those vendetta vets won me the first game almost single handed by annihilating a 20 boy ork mob in a single turn of shooting, claiming the objective they were holding, then one of the two jumped back on and killed a nobs mob with its demo charge and heavy flamer to clear the center objective on turn 5. I am now fully sold that 2x melta, 1x HF, demo is the way to run melta vets. You just have to have one or two squads of plasma vets there to back them up against terminators and your golden.

2 I only had three, 2 vendettas and 1 valkyrie the boards were plenty big and I have played against other mech ig with valks having up to 5 on the table with no trouble. the trouble is with squadroning them it is very hard to find room for a squadron of those monsters sometimes.

3 the squadron rules helped me for everything except the vendetta which were pain due to the size of the model. For round two I am going to pull the valkyrie mainly so I can split the vendettas out of a squadron. I will replace it with a devil dog to go in the bane wolf squadron as they were very effective! I want to find the points to put pask in so they can outflank too, but I don't know where to find the points for his expensive ass.

4 The PBS would have helped out a lot in the final game due to the two big death star terminator units. However I don't like depending on it


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Smashotron wrote:Great work Troy! All your hard work and practice certainly paid off!

Hey special thanks to you man, that Tau Test game was huge as my second opponent was running trip rail heads. And you were right, by bringing everything on the board he just got raped when I came in and hammered him.

Congrats. I took second in my area with an only slightly tourny tweeked semi-horde IG army (120 guys). LC vets, a big tar pit, and a little bit of all the good stuff we get. I'd have gotten first, but I had to play my buddy's ridiculous demon army and only got a minor victory when half his army landed on the last turn and contested the objectives. We played it out after the game was over, and on the next turn I killed three units and took an obj. Too bad I guess. We had a great mix, with almost every army represented. And no Vulcan lists at all! The kid who won had an impressive 220+ orks!

Sounds pretty fun! Also sounds like it puts paid to a lot of the chatter on here in the past weeks, like 5th edition games almost always being ties. Did you take any pictures?

No Pics for me, unfortunatly. Too focused. I don't think I've had more than 2-3 ties in 30 or 40 games in 5th. Games are ususally close, but isn't that a good thing?

I do have to say I really enjoyed the missions in the tourny. It was cool to have a variety of goals that you had to build for. Had to move and be killy. Had to defend HQs, but still get use out of them (not too hard for the guard, creed never got out of his chimera in three games, lazy bugger). Of course, its always nice to play new people with different armies and play styles from your ususal group.

I am curious as to what were the rule issues with the skimmer squadrons. Can you tell us more about that?

the ruling i got before the tournament was that valkyries would use the base for all measurement and the hull for LOS only. thus when i deployed my vendettas with the wings hanging over one of his skimmers but over 1" away he asked for a ruling and felt that it should not be allowed.

I understand his point, but I had only chosed to use valkyrie squadrons due to the clarification ruling I had gotten before the event. Unfortunately at the time he had the question neither the TO or the GW rep were in the store as he was running another tournament in his second big game room. So that is what caused the big delay in the game.

4th ed was so much simpler in that respect.. I dont know what GW was thinking

using skimmer bases for anything other than aesthetics = fail .. thanks GW for complicating virtually everything that worked well in 4th lol

Good job tho.. Pittsburgh had 0 guard players and I had seer councils waiting for them :(

Nicely done.

Nice job dude, I look foward to maybe playing you when I move back to philly and start going to franklin mills again.