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Played at the preliminary today at Crossroads. First off, I want to say that it was a great venue. Brenden the TO and owner is a great guy and ran a good tournament. We had 24 players so the field was pretty varied. I'd say that the army break down was as follows:

4 Tau players (2 mech, and 2 broadsides/suit spam - myself included)
2 Nid Players (1 Zilla Nids with lots of stealers, 1 Mixed nids with lots of warriors)
4 Ork Players (1 Horde, 1 Kan Wall with Ghaz and lots o boyz, 1 Speed Freaks, 1 Mixed)
1 Imperial Guard Player (not really optimized for new rules - 4th edition IG)
2 Eldar (both mech)
3 Chaos (double Lash/ 3 vindicators, Raider spam, and "balanced" )
9 Marine Players (1 Kantor/mech, 1 Vulkan raider spam, 1 Vulkan/Lysander, the others were non-factors).

I'll post more detailed battle reports later but in the end I came in 2nd with 54 battle points. The Ghaz/Kan Wall horde took 70 points for 1st place - but I think he was fairly lucky with his second round draw. I tabled a mech tau player in 4 turns for 24 points in round one. I took a minor loss (due to a stupid mistake on my part- which resulted in a 8 point KP swing) in round 2 versus the Kantor/Mech list. Finally, I tabled the other broadside suit spam list in round 3 for 23 points. I believe the Double Lash Chaos player took 3rd, but I'm not sure. It was interesting that the guys who got massacres in the first round were all paired against each other and with the exception of the one Ork army could not get anything better than a minor win (And I believe there were 8-10 massacres in the first round).

By the way. this is the list I took
Shas'el- pr, fb, pos relay, hwmt, bk 2SD
Shas'el- pr, fb, mt, bk 2SD
2 Crisis Guards- pr, fb, mt - 1 with 2 SD
3 Crisis- pr, fb, mt
3 Crisis- tlmp, flamer. Team leader w/ afp, tlfl, hwmt, bk
5 Stealth Suits
4x6 Fire Warriors
10 Kroot
2x8 Pathfinders
2x Devilfish- mt, dp, fd, sms
2x3 Broadsides- ASS, SMS, Team Leader with 2 SD, HWTL, HWBSF, BK
3 Sniper Drone Teams

I think I'll drop the Sniper Teams and the Stealth Suits for the next round and pick up a railhead and some piranhas. Maybe fool around with the crisis load outs as well.

I think that you should go 3x3 broadsides.

Oh, I'm thinking about it. I have a pick up game on thursday against the 1st place winner - I'm gonna try the hammerhead out along with more crisis suits. Depending on how that works out, I may splurge for the broadsides...

Ah...if you don't already have them, take two suits and convert them temporarily to broadsides.

Cut a ruler in half, prime it black; voila railguns.

Cut a hammerhead railgun in half, voila, railguns.

Get plasticard and cut it into the shape of railguns, attach two halves of it with cardboard in the middle. Voila, railgun.

Put grease pencils on each shoulder. They're rectangular along the length and about the right length you need too. Freakin' Railguns. =p

Okay, I dug out the army lists from the other guys and figured I'd go ahead and post a brief synopsis of each battle. My notes are... sketchy to say the least since I was so pressed for time.

First Game vs Brian Franklin (Mech Tau)

Scenario 1: 5 objectives, table edge deployment. KPs.

My list: as above

His list
Shas'0- afp, iridium armor, stimms, shield gen, retro thrusters
Shas'el- bk, hwmt, mp, pr, ta
1 Crisis Bodyguard- tlpr, ta
1 Crisis Bodyguard- tlmp, ta
3 Crisis- 1x tlpr, 1x tlmp, 1 fireknife, targetting arrays all around and 2 SD
6 stealth suits
20 Kroot
12 FCW in a Devilfishx3
3 Broadsides
2 Railheads

I'll keep this one brief since this guy was fairly new to the game. He set up his tanks on my left flank with most of his suits and broadsides in the center. Kroot and about 24 firewarriors on my right flank. I set up with a castle of 18 Firewarriors and 8 pathfinders protecting my broadsides in the center. My Crisis suits and devilfish in cover/out of sight on my left with sniper drones and stealth team on my right. I outflanked with kroot.

I managed to do not much on the first turn due to night fight but I did shake or stun both of his railheads (I love blacksun filters). In response, he advaced and killed a few warriors here and there with his devilfish and suits.

2nd turn I brought the pain by blowing away his broadsides, one of his tanks, one of his devilfish, and his kroot squad. 19 markerlights in the army is just brutal. At this point, he knows it's over but he keeps trucking. He knocks out a crisis squad and whittles some stuff down.

3rd turn- I take out his stealth suits, his commanders and most of the remainder of his fire warriors. He whittles down a couple squads and wipes out one of my pathfinder squads. I'm already in control of 3 the center objective and my two while contesting the other two.

4th turn- he's got devilfish and firewarriors sitting on one objective. I deepstrike in my elite plasma/fusion suits and destroy a devilfish, my hq kills the second fish and my kroot outflank in and rapidfire the last of his firewarriors on the left off the board.

At that point he threw in the towel even though we had about an hour and 15 minutes left. He only had 8 firewarriors left and they were stuck staring down the guns of my castle. I would have claimed all five objectives the next turn anyway. 24-0 massacre for me.

Round 2 - Headhunters
This mission has been a killer for me the entire time I was getting ready for the tournament. To make matters worse, I was playing against Brian Butler, who one of the better players at our store (IMHO).

He was fresh off of a massacre of Land Raides/ Assault Termies Vulkan list. My last game against him resulted in a minor loss for me (it was ironically, a test game of scenario 2 as well)

His List
Kantor
5 Terminators- cyclone launcher
5 Terminators- assault cannon
10 Sternguard- 2 plasma cannons, power fist
Razorback- twin-linked lascannon
10 Tactical Marines- lascannon, plasma, powerfist
Rhino
10 Tactical Marines- lascannon, plasma, powerfist
Rhino
10 Tactical Marines- multi-melta, flamer, power weapon
MM/HF Speeder
MM/HF Speeder
10 Assault Marines- flamer, plasma pistol, powerfist
5 Devastators- 3 missile launchers
Tri-las Predator
Vindicator

he got first turn and brought his stuff on in a rough castle formation. in the center. The board was littered with these big (like 6" across) square obelisk looking things that really messed with LOS and provided tons of cover - not really good news for me.

I deployed like an a*hole which lost me the game. I brought my broadsides, kroot, 1 pathfinder squad, and shas'el w/ bodyguard in on one side while I brought my other shas'el, sniper drone, stealths, missle suits, on the other side. I did blow up his vindicator first round though.

In response, he shot down one of my devilfish and started plinking at squads. The game gets a little hazy but he basically ground down my right flank while I took down his left. he used LOS masterfully and denied my broadsides valuable shots at his vehicles. My fusions blasters, rail rifles, and railguns were singularly unable to damge his vehicles after blowing up the vindicator. The last turn of the game I fired 6 rail rifles, 2 twin-linked missile launchers and 3 railguns at a speeder and only managed to kill it after shooting off all its guns, immobilizing it and then immobilizing it again.

I lost the game on the last turn because I lost both my hqs. They had been working down the left flank and had obliterated the assault squad, a terminator squad and a land speeder in exchange for losing their shield drones and one body guard. After shooting the land speeder down though, I forgot to jump them back behind one of those obelisks... and left them hanging in fron of the devastator squad and the tri las pred... so he got 11 kill points in a single round of firing. Oh yeah, my elite fusion/plasma squad managed to have a terrible accident on its deepstrike roll despite the reroll the marker beacon gave me. ...

In the end though, it wasn't too bad. I'd destroyed his vindicator, 2 terminator squads, 2 speeders, the razorback and an assault squad in exchange for both my hqs, my stealth, my elite fusion/plasma guys, and a pathfinder squad. Result- 16-7 to him. It was a tough game and I believe I would have won had I not forgotten the assault move and the elite suits hadn't mishapped.

I had 31 out of a possible 48 battle points going into round 3. More to come in a little while