Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi guys, figured I would copy and paste this report over here, as in the past I have gotten a lot out of reading some of the reports on here (especially those by Shep and 40kentheusiasticwhateverhisnameactuallyis). Whilst I don't have pics, hopefully I'm descriptive enough to paint a picture for you so to speak, though if you still can't imagine it; try a few drops of LSD and read again, you're bound to see [/i]something[/i] then :O!

This weekend was the 2nd annual New Zealand Masters, an invite only event for the top 12 players in the country, based on the rankings.
In addition to this, there were 4 autoberths to the event, 1 for winning it last year (Dave Lewy), 1 for winning the Nationals (Dave Lewy), one for winning Call to Arms (myself), and one for winning the GT (myself).

With only a couple of invitee's not being able to make it, the field was looking strong. This tournament is unique for us, as there generally, are no easy games. They are all like those last 2 games in a tournament when you're doing well, hard, and the event is normally tight all the way through.

The breakdown was 60% battle, 30% comp, 10% sports. With a field being tight, comp was going to be extremely important, meaning that whilst you are seeing a field of the people who have done the best over the last year in the country, you wouldn't be seeing (too many) filthy lists.

The event effectively started the night before for me, as I went and picked up Dave Lewy and Dave Foster from the airport. For those that don't know them, both a great guys - Lewy is a little over enthusiastic at times, making it clearly evident that he used to be a GW staff member, whilst Foster is suffering from a severe condition called "terminally positive". He can't help being positive about everything, and exceptionally nice. It sounds like a good thing at first, but I swear he's not far away from telling some gang members they look very pretty, and receiving a knife to the ribs for challenging their masculinity. It did however make for a great environment in the house, as another player - Jason Isaac stopped by, and the third player staying with me, Mark Buttle showed up (driven by a 5th player at the event, Hayden Korach).
So already in my lounge we had nearly half the playing field. We kicked off with some ribbing of Hayden (as the token Police Officer), and reminded Mark that he once told us he let someone jerk their gherkin next to him in bed once, whilst we watched various sport on TV and had a bit to drink.

The tournament itself would consist of 6 games (meaning there would only be 5 other people you wouldn't get to play), and ran with the following points format.

10 points for a win, 5 for a draw, 0 for a loss.

There were then 5 bonus points up for grabs,
1 - Your general is still alive at the end of the game.
1 - The enemy general is dead at the end of the game.
1 - You killed their most expensive unit.
1 - You still have a scoring unit alive.
1 - There are no enemy scoring units in your deployment zone.

After a late night, we got up early in the morning. As a group we had to convince mark that none of us were going to let him shower at the same time as one of us, and then we started on breakfast. My wife then came in and said that if we finished the crumpets, she would get up early and make pancakes for everyone. This meant that everyone ate more crumpets than they would have liked, to ensure this would happen, and felt a bit bloated, but off we went to the event!

To generate the first round draw, the TO, Pete Dunn, took the 6 bottom ranked players and placed their names into a hat, or his crotch or something. We then had to delve our hands in and pull out a name.
Dave Lewy and Jason Isaac had never played before, and Jason was talking it up hard about how he was going to dodge him - insert dodge ball references to dodging a wrench here. As Jason was the 6th ranked player, he would be the last one to pick a name.
The other 5 of us proceeded to pick our names out, leaving only one name in the cup for Jason to pull... Dave Lewy. Never ask a 265 pound man to do something agile like dodge, it's just not going to happen.

With that, we went into round 1!

I ran pretty much the same list that I ran for FoB;

HQ Warboss - Klaw, Bosspole, Eavy Armour, Cybork body, Kombi Skorcha, attack squig
HQ Big Mek - KFF, Bosspole

Troops 30 shoota boyz - nob, pk, bosspole, 3 big shootas
Troops 12 trukk boyz - nob, pk, bosspole, trukk, reinforced ram, boarding plank
Troops 11 gretchin - 1 runtherd
Troops 8 meganobs, kombi rokkit, kombi skorcha, battlewagon, big shoota, armour plates, boarding plank, reinforced ram
Troops 30 shoota boyz - nob, pk, bosspole, 3 big shootas

Fast Attack 4 Deffkoptas - TL Big Shootas, Buzzsaw

Heavy Support 3 Killer Kans, 3 Big Shootas
Heavy Support 3 Killer Kans, 3 Grotzookas


Game 1:
Mission: Annihilation Variant (HQ = 1kp, Troops =3kp, elites heavy and fast = 2kp).
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Opponent: Peter Rundlett, Space Marines

Peter Had:

Chaplain
Librarian (Nullzone + gate of infinity I think)

5 Termies - 1 cyclone
dreadnaught with multimelta

tactical squad in rhino
tactical squad in rhino
tactical squad in landraider redeemer with the 2 HQ's

3 multimelta attack bikes
Landspeeder with 2 heavy bolters

Peter may have had a little more, but game 1 and 2 were very similar armies, and both set up very similar, whilst playing in the same quarter of the table, so the 2 games are blurring in my mind into 1, making it hard to discern just what was going on! Plus I fear Mark may have drugged me the night before, he said I had a pretty mouth, I worry he had something sinister planned for me.

I won the roll for first turn, and promptly set up in the middle of the table, so that I could hit either side incase Peter wanted to set up to one side and deny a flank.
Peter did exactly this, but made a very good job of protecting vulnerable targets from deffkoptas doing a T1 assault.

T1 - Orks: I pushed the battle wagon and trukk full steam ahead, both kans moved and ran forward, as did the units of boys. The deffkoptas bounced totally off the landspeeder, and my T1 finished.

T1 - Marines: Peter pushed ahead, blowing up the trukk, but only destroying the big shoota on the battle wagon. his troops started moving to my left, whilst his landraider only moved 6 inches, sitting next to the dreadnaught both on my right, further to their right, the attack bikes that had me so scared.

T2 - Orks: The trukk boyz pulled themselves out of the wreckage with a big move, a big waagh fleet, and a clear line for assault, so could reach the attack bikes and give them a very bad day.
The meganobs couldn't resist eliminating both the landraider and the dread in one move, so pushed ahead, exploding the dread and wrecking the landraider.
A unit of boyz pushed ahead, wrecking a rhino full of marines.
Other shooting hit up the termies, to no effect.

T2 - Marines: The marines who had fallen out of the land raider backed off ready to assault the unit of orks that had just killed a rhino. They tag teamed with the squad who had fallen out of their rhino, whilst the third squad moved ahead to deliver some plas love to a kan unit. The termies advanced to take out what was left of this same unit, but had to come through the landraider wreckage to do so - naturally this meant 2 died running through it.
In the shooting, several of the ork unit were killed, making it difficult for the marines to assault, so that only the chaplain, and one of the 2 tactical squads were actually engaged, whilst the termies killed a kan.
The termies assaulted through the wreckage, losing yet another one to the flaming debris, but killing one of the kans, who killed a termie back.
The big combat between the ork squad and the marines was pretty close to a draw, with just a few casualties on each side.

T3 - Orks: The meganobs advanced in much the same path the squad out of the landraider had taken, linking both that tactical squad, and the one that had just shot the kans, into the same assault.
The ork squad hit the remaining rhino, and the kans shot at the landspeeder, stunning and shaking it.
The assault phase saw the last termie finished, the 3 tactical squads wiped out, and the rhino shaken.

T3 - Marines: the stunned shaken speeder sat where it was, and the rhino drove forward.

T4 - Orks: The rhino was finished by orks shooting from behind, and kans shot the speeder down, for the game to finish with all units wiped out.

As a bit of a rap up, Peter really seemed to misjudge distances, meaning that his landraider went basically for free (not moving over 6 and in charge range of the meganobs) whilst the attack bikes never got to do anything. Meanwhile, the 3 tactical squads and 2 hq's made up for about 800-900 points, and were able to be linked up and dealt with swiftly. That's just too much to lose and stay competitive, so it really was over at that point. On the flip side, as Peter did not concentrate on the trukk boyz after popping their trukk, given they had already reached their destination, the entire efforts (shooting 4 multimeltas at the trukk) was wasted, as it had no effect on the game.

I was able to get the maximum 15 points, to Peters 0, and we rolled into round 2.

Game 2:

Mission: The Stelek mission (Pick 5 killpoints, plus 5 objectives for a total of 10).
Deployment: Spearhead
Opponent: Bryn Jones, Space Marines

Bryn Had:
Librarian (Nullzone + something that never got cast)

5 Thunder Hammer Termies
Irconclad in Drop pod

10 tactical marines, missile launcher, melta gun, rhino
10 tactical marines, missile launcher, flamer, rhino

2 Speeders, Melta/Flamer
2 Speeders, Heavy Bolter/Typhoon Launcher
1 Attack Bike, Multimelta

Vindicator
Land raider
Predator with HB sponsons and autocannon

Bryn won the roll for first turn, and took it. I set up across from him ready for a heavy push, and put my grots + koptas(outflank) in reserve.
Bryn set up virtually pushed into the back corner, with a few things up front ready to get into melta ranges where required.

Of Bryns Killpoints, I chose the Ironclad, its Drop pod, the Attack Bike, and both combat squads of one tactical squad.
Bryn chose my Trukk, Trukkboyz, both 30man squads, and the meganobs which he knew he would have to deal with.

T1 - Marines:
Bryns ironclad came down next to the battle wagon, to give it a jolly good melta'ing. His landraider pushed across to get a side shot on the wagon, whilst the multi melta speeders advanced to also get some shots.
The rest of his army sat at the back, bunkered up ready to shoot anything that ran in.
The trukk was blown up, and the trukk boys decimated to below half, promptly failing their moral and skedaddling. The battle wagon survived the first mild onslaught, between cover saves and weapons missing. Phew!

T1 - Orks: The battle wagon pushed directly forward 12, as I knew I wasn't going to survive another turn.
Ork boys on my right pushed forward as much as they could, whilst ready to help out with the ironclad, and the squad on my left advanced to try silence those MM speeders. The kans marched up, doing nothing of consequence with their shooting. One of the kan squads assaulted the ironclad, killing it losing only 1 in return, whilst the boarding plank of the battle wagon finished off the drop pod.

T2 - Marines: The landraider pushed closer again to me, though not directly, moving more to my left. The melta speeder that could still shoot got into melta range, as did the attack bike, and the combat squad in reserve showed up, hiding in a building a fair way off his objective to my far right, away from the entire rest of his army (it was one of the killpoints I had chosen).
It was here I felt Bryn made the first of a few key mistakes. He started his shooting at the battle wagon with the vindicator. Whilst it has a decent shot at getting the battle wagon, when you factor in cover the chances aren't great (roughly 11-12% once you factor everything in, not as great as it could be) - I felt it would have been much better for him to fire the meltas first, and if they blew it up, shoot the vindicator at the meganobs that had fallen out, instant deathing on 2's with just a cover save to protect. Bryn got the hit, and the pen he needed, but I passed my KFF cover save.
Next came the meltas, which I initially survived, but the second one got the wagon, exploding it. The rest of Bryns firepower whittled the 30man ork squad on my left a little, whilst a few other shots bounced off kans.

T2 - Orks: My Deffkoptas showed up, but promptly rolled the wrong side of the table for outflanking, so I turbo boosted them to be of some use in the next couple of turns.
My meganobs moved forward, spread wide as that vindicator was still out of my grasp and scaring me, and I managed to keep half in cover.
The whittled unit of boyz on my left pushed to get both the speeders and the attack bike, and the right squad advanced to get some side shots on that pesky vindicator, which I needed to stop from shooting.
I decided to waagh, as a decent roll would see the meganobs contacting the landraider, but failed big time, getting only a 2, and then not rolling the 6 they would need to assault it. It did mean though that I got to get the boyz into the speeders and attack bike. I managed to set this assault up so that almost everyone was hitting the speeders, as I wanted to kill them and not touch the bike, keeping me in contact until next turn. This worked perfectly, wrecking both speeders, and at the time, looked like a fantabulous idea.
The vindicator was shaken, luckily, so things weren't a total bust, and some kans failed to make it to the landraider, falling just short with their assault roll.

T3 - Marines: It was at this point I realised just how badly I had screwed up. If Bryn was seeing exactly what I had just started mapping out, working out the very favourable odds for him, the game would be over for me. In one foul swoop he would be able to wipe out the boyz squad with the attack bike, the meganobs, the warboss, and the KFF. I had left the 2 units too close to each other, and the meganobs too far spread. In my mind, Bryn was already assaulting the orks with the thunder hammer termies, and tagging the warboss, only having to fight 1-2 meganobs at most, drilling up easy wounds against both units, and forcing them to run as they would both be under 10 and testing on close to double 1's. I mustered everything I could remember from watching bad poker shows on ESPN, wishing I had a popped collar, sunglasses and a hat - I stared at the centre of the table, so as to not give anything away.
Bryn then disembarked the termies in the perfect spot to do the joined assault, I nearly opened my mouth to mention how he had done a good job to screw me here (Bryn and I play regularly, and have done this dance a few times now), but kept my trap shut.
The vindicator drove away, and the alive speeders shot at the deffkoptas - which bounced off their 3+ cover save. Missile launchers and the raider bounced off kans, and then it was the assault phase. I hadn't breathed for close to a minute now, and if Bryn didn't hurry, I was actually going to die at the table. I don't swim you see, so I don't have very good lungs.
Bryn then proceeded to assault just the meganobs themselves, meaning I was able to get all 8 meganobs + warboss attacking them; 29 powerklaw attacks do nasty things even to a 3+ invulnerable save, so instead of me losing 780 points, I wiped out the only real threat on the table to my meganobs, and consolidated big, straight towards his lines, some lovely free movement. The attackbike was finished, and that squad moved up. I only had 5 meganobs left, and the warboss on 1 wound, but it was going to be more than enough.

T3 Orks: Bryn and I had a little chat about what had just happened, and what I had seen, he kicked himself a little, as we've often talked about how important multi assaults are in 5th, and then we got back on with things.
The grots came on, hiding away from the bulk of his army, and hunkering down near an objective. The kans closed in on the battle wagon, as it was now fairly cornered and this was his most expensive unit (bonus point, plus the librarian sitting inside for another point). The meganobs moved a good distance towards the vindicator, and other units killed the remaining 2 land speeders.
The vindicator was killed. The unit of boyz on my right spread to be able to claim 3 objectives, and the warboss joined them for protection, him dying would lose me a tournament point.
Whilst I only managed to shake the landraider, I had managed to get a kan behind it, infront of it, and one to each side, it was perfectly boxed in, no moving to be had.

T4 Marines: Bryn and I discuss the predicament the landraider is in, if it doesnt move, its getting 8 autohitting s10 attacks (2 kans have died earlier, but I can't remember specifically when). If it does move, it will be a s5 Ram (no distance moved, 4 for av14, 1 for being a tank), meaning he will need a 6, followed by a 6. Bryn decides to go for it, to which I death or glory - and instead I roll the 2 6's, blowing it up and trapping the librarian in the middle. One of the tactical squads in their rhino drive up to flame some orks, collecting a couple.

T4 Orks: The librarian is finished off, the rhino is wrecked, and the meganobs are dancing around in the backline. I currently have 3/5 objectives, while Bryn has none (though he is close to one), and I have 3 selected killpoints to Bryns 2, so I am winning 6-2.

T5 Marines: The squad that fell out of the rhino move forward and flame/shoot pistols, but fail with their assault roll. The remaining firepower also shoots these boys, but not much is achieved.

T5 Orks: The whittled squad now down to about 4 orks kill the 5 tactical marines in front of them (who were a killpoint), the meganobs move to where they are scoring and can kill the pred/rhino this turn. We call it there, and the game finishes up as 15-1, as there is no way I can get those 5 marines hiding in an av14 building across the table.

In conclusion, I should have lost this game, but between a spot of good luck, and a couple of key mistakes from Bryn saw me home luckily. I was glad to have the battlewagon go down early, as it doesn't happen very often, so I am very inexperienced in managing this. I love to learn new things with the army, and this happens most in tight games or losses, so was glad at how close this game had been at times. Bryn is a very skilled player and a lovely guy to boot, so I was very glad I got to play him during the tournament.

This just goes to show how a good player turns a sure loss into a win by capitalizing on an opponent's mistake. Looking forward to the epic conclusion

Game 3:
This game report should be a fair bit shorter, as their was much less to the game. My opponent did something I really can't understand, and it meant there really wasn't much at all to the game.

Mission: 'Dying in the Light'. The game starts with 6 fake objectives on the table. In turns 2,3,5 you roll a dice to see which is a real objective.
Deployment: Dawn of War
Opponent: Alan Borthwick, Tau

Alan Had:

Shas'o with airbursting frag thingo, feel no pain, and a few other toys

2 deathrain suits (tl missile pods)
3 fireknife suits (missile pods and plasma)
5 stealthsuits with 5 drones

4 or 5 squads of 12 firewarriors with champ (think the champ had a markerlight)

6 pathfinders with devilfish (missile pods, targeting array, etc)

2 broadsides with 2 shield drones
hammerhead - blacksun filter amongst other things


I won the roll for first turn, and set up 60 orks across the half way mark.
Alan elected not to bring anything on.

T1 - Orks:
I brought everything on centrally, moving and running it. I moved my squads of orks forward so that they would be out of range from fire warrior rapid fire.

T1 - Tau:
My opponent brought all his tau on, sitting on the board edge, almost all in base contact with each other, cramped into one half of the table to try refuse a flank.
Instead of bringing on his railguns on extremes of the table edges, so they could get side shots on the battle wagon (blacksun filter etc meaning it wouldn't be much of a problem to see it), he kept it bunched with everything else. He then shot EVERYTHING at the unit of orks in cover, killing 23 of them.

T2 - Orks:
I can't believe the battlewagon is ignored, I push it forward 12 so its now in the half way mark, closer than I ever expected to get. I can now use the trukk to provide immediate pressure, if he doesn't both blow it up and wipe the trukk boyz out, it will be the game. Everything else advances a bit, not much else happens.

T2 - Tau:
Again, the railguns ignore the battle wagon. Instead the markerlights are wasted on the papertrukk, railguns blow it up (instead of letting missile pods and plasma do it), and units shoot all they have at the trukk boyz, which are killed down to the nob (who has gone to ground). The 7 remaining orks are also killed down to just the nob, who has also now gone to ground, and some negligible casualties are suffered by the other 30man squad from the railhead.

T3 - Orks:
My opponent has now ignored the battle wagon with 6 possible railgun shots. He has bunched almost a thousand points of models across the table from it.
This means the wagon gets to move 3 times directly at them (12+12+12=36), they get to hop out 2 inches, plus their base (36+2+1.5=39.5), then they get to waagh and assault (meaning a total movement of between 41.5 and 51.5 inches). From where I am, average rolls will wipe out almost all his army, and a bad roll will still catch enough points worth to make me happy, so naturally I roll a 6 for the waagh and a 6 for the assault.
The remaining boyz squad cleans up the stealth suits and a firewarrior squad and at this point there is so little left that the remaining turns are just the tau doing nothing of consequence, and the orks mopping up - to finish the game wiping out every model somewhere in turn 5 or 6.

The game finishes with another 15-0, but I'm left wondering how an army with a potential for s10 ap1 shots firing at av12 open topped doesn't take that opportunity back to back. I guess that can be one of the pitfalls of the masters, a long day of tough games against tough opponents leaves you wide open to a brain-fart, and the results can be devastating when its one of that magnitude.


So that ended day 1, unbelievably I had found myself on 45/45 points, and had only conceded one bonus point.

Being a very small hall, and a reasonably hot day, it smelt like Nurgle's personal privy in there, so we quickly went home to shower and get changed, before the group dinner.
Dinner was a great turnout, as between the 3 game systems there were ~30 players, and 27 people at the dinner. Much merriment was to be had as we watched our provincial rugby team get into the finals, and my wife was most amused by the sign on the outdoor umbrella that stated "Please ask for help with erection".

As it was fairly chilly in the outdoor area, a few of us headed back to my place to watch the All Blacks SMASH Australia in the Rugby. A few others followed us back there, and a few others followed them back, and before you know it, we had 10 people sitting around discovering that I am truly awful at Texas hold'em, and will go all in on virtually nothing. Before going to bed I queued up the Chelsea Bolton game that was due to play at Stupid O'Clock and we got ready for day 2....

You may suck at Texas hold 'em, but you must have a great poker face to just stand there and watch the railguns shoot other junk.

Nice Batreps so far.

Awesome reps, seems to be a good friendly dynamic amongst your group and some of your comments are hilarious.
Cant wait to read the rest.

Was the tau player drunk? Let's shoot everything at those footslogging boyz, they will surely get here before those things with wheels on them... Even his pulse rifles will rip apart the trukk, so it is amazing that he didn't take out all your transports on turn 2 at the latest.

Very good reports this far, keep them comming

I second, great reports. Looking forward to reading the rest. It's too bad those mistakes cost the game for the first 3 opponents.

- Blackbone

Well, day 2 started awesomely... My lovely wife held true to her promise, so I awoke to the delicious smell of bacon, banana and maple syrup on pancakes. Om nom nom nom nom! After we had gorged ourselves on that, we trundled off to the event where I was set to play last years winner, Dave Lewy and his filthy Tau.
At this stage, no one else had won 3 games, but there were 5 people sitting on 2 wins and a loss, so things were going to be tight.

Game 4:

Mission: Quarters, with 1 objective in the centre
Deployment: Spearhead
Opponent: Dave Lewy, Filthy Tau of Filthiness

Dave Had:
Shas'el - Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Missile Pod, Flamer, HW Multi Tracker, Stimulant Injector, HW Drone Controller + 2 Shield Drones

2 Crisis Suits - Plas/MPod/Multi Trackers
2 Crisis Suits - Plas/MPod/Multi Trackers
2 Crisis Suits - Twin Flamer/Fusion Blaster

10 Fire Warriors
10 Fire Warriors
10 Kroot
10 Kroot & 10 Hounds

5 Pathfinders
Devilfish - Dpod + Flechettes
5 Pathfinders
Devilfish - Dpod + Flechettes

2 Broadsides - Advanced Stabilisation System, Team Leader w. HW Target Lock, HW Drone Controller + 2 Shield Drones
2 Broadsides - Twin Plasma Rifles, Multi Trackers, Team Leader w. HW Target Lock, HW Drone Controller + 2 Shield Drones
Hammerhead - Railgun, 2 Burstcannons, Dpod, Multi Tracker


I knew the roll for first turn was going to be crucial, this time I was up against 5 railguns, plenty of pathfinders, and there was no chance that the railguns were going to ignore the battlewagon again.
As I rolled the dice for first turn and it came up a 5, I was quietly confident, Dave's never been known for his great rolling. He promptly rolled, and got a 1. I did a sneaky self high five behind my back and began deploying in what should now be a fairly familiar set up, the battle wagon centrally, kans on each side, and the trukk also up front, all under the KFF, with the 30 man squads behind the kans for cover.

Dave set up mostly along his half of the long table edge with the flamer suits deepstriking, putting him a bit closer to me than he needed to be. With one kroot squad, he infiltrated so that it would protect the hammerhead and a firewarrior squad from being linked into a t1 kopta alpha strike. Instead of protecting the rest of the army with the other squad though, he put it deep at the back of the table, away from harm, to keep them alive and scoring. I turbo boosted up plotting a juicy alpha strike, and Dave rolled to seize the initiative, another 1, so off I went!

T1 - Orks: The battlewagon drove forward 12, the trukk 18, the kans moved forward, doing a little shooting but not actually killing much. the 30man squad on my right whittled the 10man kroot squad a little, whilst the other one moved and ran.
The deffkoptas managed to link an assault to pull in both firewarrior squads, and a devilfish. The result of this combat saw one devilfish blown up, one fire warrior squad running, and the other hanging around. With my pile in move, I was able to sit a kopta so that it was still within 6 of the running fire warrior squad.

T1 - Tau: The firewarrior squad is off the table. The pathfinders light up the battle wagon, to which the railhead then blew it sky high. One of the fireknife squads opened up on the trukk, killing it, whilst the rest of the army killed the trukk boyz (whittled them down, then they ran).
The 7 or so kroot left alive counter charged the koptas, but only rolled a 3 for there distance, so only a couple of kroot were able to make it in as they had been spread for max coherency earlier. The other fireknife squad also leapt into the fray, making contact with the buzzsaw model.
In the combat, the kroot did nothing, the suits did nothing, and the firewarriors did a wound. In response, 2 kroot were killed, and 2 wounds done on the suit squad, causing the remaining suit to run, sitting close to the table edge, and the kroot to run off the table, but the firewarriors sticking around again.

T2 - Orks: The meganobs got their full 6 move, and got reasonably close to the few remaining fire warriors in that combat. They wouldn't be needed, but assaulting there would be like a free move. Other ork shooting eliminated a path finder squad, whilst the boyz squad on my right moved to where it could threaten the hammerhead next turn, pretty much where ever it went. 4 or 5 kroot from the other squad were killed just from the ork boyz shooting. The meganobs got into assault, clearing out the firewarriors, and got a 5 for their consolidate, putting them deep in the tau lines, surrounded by targets that couldn't escape fast enough, but in cover for protection. The remaining kopta consolidated to be within 6 of the running suit.

T2 - Tau: The running suit is off the table, the other 2 are stuck in reserve. Without really being able to get anywhere, Dave decides to go for the tourney bonus point for killing my warboss, and assaults a bunch of models into the warboss himself with the meganobs, after some mostly ineffectual shooting at the squad. The warboss is unscathed, and the tau commander is killed.
We call the game at this point, as with my waagh still up my sleeve, next turn there is nothing to stop the broadside squad getting shot, the hammerhead from meeting a bunch of ork boyz, and the rest of the army shooting the kroot into ineffectiveness, whilst the remaining devilfish gets kan'd.

In the washup it was another 15-0, though Dave had managed to pop the battlewagon in turn 1, not committing enough kroot to the screen had cost him in that turn 1 assault too heavily. The deffkoptas had wound up accounting for about 500 points, and taking out 3 of his 4 scoring units in the first turn. Dave never once complained throughout the game though, and took it like a champ. As we finished rather early, it gave us some good time to walk around and watch how other people were getting on, and I could see from fairly early on that I would be playing the dreaded guard horde next.

Sitting on 4 wins so far, I had hit my target for the weekend. In the tougher field, most people go through with at best 4 wins, so my goal from here on out would just be to harvest bonus points and hope my comp hit wasn't too strong!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Illumini wrote:Was the tau player drunk? Let's shoot everything at those footslogging boyz, they will surely get here before those things with wheels on them... Even his pulse rifles will rip apart the trukk, so it is amazing that he didn't take out all your transports on turn 2 at the latest.

Very good reports this far, keep them comming

Haha, well - given the footsloggers started at the half way mark, they should both be arriving around turn 3 (as I had kept myself 18 inches back in T2), but I certainly would have done things differently myself - I would have sacrificed the few orks killed by the railheads template, and the SMS of the broadsides, for stopping that wagon, and would have shot the deathrains at the trukk in T1. In T2 the firewarriors would be able to make up the defecit there, and if the battlewagon survived, I would be shooting that again.
Meanwhile you can push one squad far forward if you have to, to sacrifice in order to save other squads from a multicharge, halts its movement, and kills a few with rapidfire in the process.

I actually really like Piranahs in a Tau army, if you're worried about not being able to kill that battlewagon, zoom 2 piranahas right up an inch away from it and block its movement for a turn whilst you manage more important tasks at hand ;D

Game 5 saw me up against the guard blob of blobbyness. It was like I had just fallen down some stairs, was seeing 3 of everything, and switched on Noels House Party to be confronted by 3 angry pink Mr Blobby's, that's how blobby it was!
Going into this game things felt a little tense, my opponent had just had his last game concede against him, after a heated debate and an argument that snapped heads from all around the hall to their direction a number of times. It's not easy to play a calm, fast relaxed game when you're a bit stressed out from the game before still, but with almost 300 models on the table between us, we didn't have too much time to talk it through and move past it.
So into a very rushed Game 5 we go!

Game 5:

Mission: Thuderhawk Down (basically, a crater comes in from a randomised table edge based on the outflanking table, moving on ~10d6, anything in the path takes d6 wounds, and anything under the crater where it lands is hit by s10 ap1.
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Opponent: Dave Eagles, Imperial Guard

Dave Had something like:

Company command squad in a Chimera, with a lascannon and a standard bearer.

a 50 man squad, with a commisar, 6 power weapons, 3 meltas, 2 flamers, 5 meltabombs
mortar command squad
a 50 man squad, with a commisar, 6 power weapons, 3 meltas, 2 flamers, 5 meltabombs
mortar command squad
lascannon / plasma gun vet squad
lascannon / plasma gun vet squad
a 20man squad, with 2 missile launchers
mortar command squad

1 vendetta

1 griffon
1 standard leman russ

Dave won the roll for turn 1, and set up from one end of the table to the other, with the 2 50 blobs shielding everything.
I set up centrally across from him, and as there were no juicy outflank targets, I pushed the deffkoptas up to attract fire and block the scout move of the vendetta from getting to my side armour, hoping he would waste anti tank shots on trying to instakill them.

Guard T1: Dave moved one 50man squad forward, and used move move move to get it forward a bit further. Everything either shot at and subsequently bounced off Kans (love that forcefield!), destroyed the weapon on the trukk (yay the one non poo result!), or shook the battlewagon (vendetta in the side). A single wound was done to one of the normal koptas, and another to the buzzsaw, but no models lost.
Half a dozen ork boyz were killed to templates, but other than that, I had gotten away with a very mild T1 shooting phase.

Ork T1: Well, I now had a juicy target sitting in front of me. Battlewagon nob charge on T1 is about 21.5 inches, and Dave had moved well inside this. Also, there was a portion on the table where a few models were not in cover, right in front of the trukk.
I proceeded to hatch my plan, the meganobs went full speed ahead, hopping out, most likely needing a 4 or so for their assault. The trukk barrelled up, kicked out the boyz, and I pushed these far enough back that only 4 would be within 6 inches of his models... the 4 not in cover, the rest would not be able to make B2B, so the unit would not have to test for difficult terrain, but all would get to fight once he counter charged.
As I didn't want the other squad counter charging my meganobs and power weapon 'SHIKADING'ing them in the face, I used the deffkoptas to link this into a multi charge, shooting 7 dead then assaulting. Little other shooting went on, but these combined assaults resulted in ~35 guardsmen being killed, in return for roughly 6 orks, 2 meganob wounds, and 2 deffkoptas.
The pile in saw a heap of the large guard squad having to fight the 3 wounds left in the deffkopta unit, so it was again looking good.
Importantly I still had my Waagh up my sleeve, so had run my boyz up to get them ready for a second wave next turn.

Guard T2:
Well, a large chunk of Daves army was now tied up in combat, and the juiciest targets were locked in assault. some shooting at kans took place, killing one, and another 10 or so boyz were shot dead. The trukk is finally blown up.
In the combat, more guard are killed, starting to hoe into each squad. The deffkoptas are finished, and the pile in brings the remaining 50man guard squad closer to the centre of the table, and into charge range of both squads of boyz.

Ork T2:
The Boyz sqauds, and a kan squad come flying into the combat, whilst the other kan squad shoots at some vets but does nothing of interest.
In the assault, on the mostly intact squad, the charging boyz do 54 wounds, killing the commisar, whoo-haa! First time I ever saw myself forcing a wound on a commisar in a 50man squad. Once the I1 klaws struk however, the unit was wiped out, the remaining 4 trukkboyz consolidate backtowards the battlewagon, the meganobs hurtling forward, the boyz squad on my mid-right moving low, and chilling in the centre of the table, whilst the other squad surged forward towards Daves backlines.

Guard T3:
The objective shows up, landing in the middle of the table, and killing half a dozen orks.
The battlewagon is rammed by the leman russ, to no effect. A heap of shooting is done at the ork squad now in his backlines, whilst some attention is paid to the boyz squad in his backline, but not enough are killed. The boyz squad in the middle gets pinned however, as they're now under 11 strong.
One of the 4 remaining trukkboyz are shot by the command HQ from their chimera, but they pass their moral check.
A veteran squad on my right starts running away from the action, to be alive at the end of the game.

Ork T3: The boyz squad goes and eats the 20man squad, and a veteran squad. The meganobs charge the chimera with the command HQ for a tourney bonus point, but only do a single hit, stunning it, but luckily Dave does not have extra armour, and I am blocking the doors.
Kans charge the leman russ, and the trukk boyz hop into the battlewagon, boarding planking the russ, but no damage is done.

Guard T4: At this point my opponent wants to finish the game, we are very tight for time, and the TO explains that we have 20 minutes until the next round starts. I explain that I can do my next turn in less than 60 seconds, and the TO asks us to play it out, my opponent seems a bit flustered by this, but I think a lot of that is more attributable to the game he's just had previously.
Some minor shooting happens to the squad in his deployment zone, the troop squad runs away, and little else happens as virtually nothing is left. The vendetta bounces off the battle wagon.
In his combat phase, the meganobs still in contact with the chimera explode it.

Ork T4: As promised, I finish my turn inside 60 seconds, I don't bother to have a movement phase, I don't bother to have a shooting phase, and just assault the command HQ squad with my meganobs, forcing 10 invulnerable saves on his commander for the game... he makes 8 of them, so close!

The game finishes, as 15-1. I may have been able to table him with more time, but it's always going to be tight for time when there's almost 300 models on the table! Dave took the loss very well, and we had a bit of a chat afterwards.
Had he not moved that squad forward in the first turn, and instead blown up the trukk, It would be interesting to see how things played out. Likewise, as is a reoccurring theme, taking the battle wagon out earlier would have been quite key. with more time to soften those boyz squads, cracking those 2 50 squads would have been exceedingly difficult.

At this stage I'm not sitting on 75/75 points, with 1 more game to play. I cannot believe the position I've found myself in, but am stoked to be in such a strong position, even if I still can't believe it. On top of that, in a field where every opponent you play could be a contender for the tournament, I had denied a lot of tournament bonus points, only conceding 2 out of a possible 25.

Mentally, and now physically exhausted, I trundle into the final round, but my mind is now such jelly that I don't have high hopes.

Don't keep us hanging here! Great read, keep the battle reports of reportiness coming!

Soo, into the final round we go!

The final round saw me matched up against another of my house guests, Mark Buttle. We had played earlier in the year and it was very one sided, but he had changed his list somewhat since then, and circumstances weren't great then. We were meant to play in the final round of Liber Animus earlier in the year also, but through some shenanigans that were later corrected we dodged each other - so it was good to be getting this game underway.

Mark had some beautiful khorne daemons. I say beautiful, but I guess it's only as beautiful as someone can find a whole lot of blood and spiky stuff... maybe a pre teen girl with a twilight fetish could call them beautiful I guess? Mark also doesn't quite realise how Khorne is pronounced, so referred to them as Khron all game long, despite my constant corrections, but what do you expect from somebody who owns a Blood Angels bedspread? (I DO NOT TELL A FALSE WORD!)We had a quick chat, and soon discovered both our brains were utter mush, neither of us could even talk properly by this stage, and were a bit ready for the event to end.

Game 6:

Mission: The Stelek Mission (again)
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Opponent: Mark Buttle, Khorne Daemons.


Mark Had:

Bloodthirster of KHRON, with a few upgrades
Herald of KHRON, on jugger with some...stuff

7 Juggers, with maximum differential models for wound splitting

8 bloodletters - icon
8 bloodletters - icon
16 bloodletters - icon

16 flesh hounds

daemon prince - wings, 3+ armour, mark of KHRON, etc.

Pretty sure that was it... (like I said... mush brain!)

I won the roll for turn 1, and after some initial indecisiveness, pulled my head on straight and elected to go first.
Why first?
It's true that when you play daemons, letting them go first gives you an extra turn of shooting, but its effectively an extra turn with whatever you have left at the end of the game, not right up front. Furthermore, I get to control where he can go a lot more, and if I need to, can blow my waagh right off the bat.

I set up fairly centrally, with a large spread to limit where Mark can go.
Mark tries to seize the initiative, but fails with a capital PH.

T1 - Orks:
Everything moves and runs ahead, the koptas boost, blocking a large prime spot where he would want to come down. the vehicles push up and block spots too. Anywhere good to deepstrike now has stuff annoyingly close.

T1 - Daemons: Unlike the last time we played, Mark actually gets his preferred wave this time. Because I have filled so much space though, it's hard to go anywhere safe. The giant footprint of the bloodcrushers went down first, but Mark chose to place it where an average scatter towards me would see him misshap. I had been teasing mark for doing this and having them mishap all night long from a game he had the day before, so I just nodded, and he rolled the scatter dice. 8 inches directly towards me, followed by 3 on the mishap table. I chose to place them where both squads of kans would be able to assault him, and take the massive hammer unit out of the game.
The Blood Thirster landed near the back of the table, as did a squad of letters with icon, but the fleshhounds also misshapped, getting a 5 to come back later.
Some ineffectual runs saw a bit of spread, sitting the thirster next to the small letter squad.

T2 - Orks: Boyz shot 2 wounds of the thirster, trukk boyz killed all but 1 of the blood letters, whilst the kans started on the juggers, having shot a few wounds off the unit, killing 2 of the 8.

T2 - Daemons: The daemonprince and 16 man unit come in from the icon on the crushers, behind my army ready to try help the crushers. The crushers miraculously kill 2 kans in a most spectacular fashion, and a few more wounds are done in return. The bloodthirster hides behind a building, and I swear I can hear crying from its corner of the table.

T3 - Orks: A unit of boyz moves and shoots a few of the 16 man squad, before assaulting both them and the prince. I consider using the meganobs to hit the crushers, as I can easily set it up so only 1 crusher gets to hit back, whilst all of me get to attack, but the risk of 1 of them staying alive, and them technically winning the combat is not worth it, as it would see my most expensive unit running from the table, for now they were doing a better job of driving around the middle of the table being a threat, and singing the "I AM A SINGING SHARK" song.
The bloodletters are mostly killed, and the daemon prince is reduced to 1 wound left.
I instead bring the other 30man boy squad into the blood crushers. In this combat, I now lose a lot of boyz, but kill the herald and a couple more crushers.

T3 - Daemons: The flesh hounds show up, and run to be near the thirster of a thousand tears.
The blood letters are finished in the combat, and an epic fail against the last wound of the prince sees him live, killing a few orks with combat res and his attacks.
The crushers, importantly, are finished off.

T4 - Orks: The remaining orks from the crusher assault use their waagh to get into the flesh hounds, with the deffkoptas help. The boyz again fail to touch his princyness, and lose more in the combat res.
The flesh hounds are reduced to ~3 models.

T4 - Daemons: The bloodthirster assaults the koptas, wiping them out, but being stuck with the remenants of the boyz who kill the last hounds. Somewhere in this equation, the thirster takes another wound. The prince again kills 4 orks, and is not touched in return. The orks are now looking at a moral check, which they miraculously make.
Marks last bloodletter squad shows up, away from the action, near some grots.

T5 - Orks: I finally decide to use the meganobs, being big and brave they go for the final wound on the thirster, but the warboss stays in the battlewagon to protect the point. The thirster dies, and kans come into the prince to finish him off, finally. Grots shoot a bloodletter (GO GROTS!).

T5 - Daemons: The blood letters move forward, but fail their assault on the grots.

We roll for the end of the game, if it goes on, Mark will get a scoring unit into my deployment zone, robbing me of a point, booo! Mark rolls the dice, and a 2 comes up,we shake hands and the game finishes as 15-1.

Somehow I've managed to pull off getting the full 90/90 points, which I still can't really believe. I know I will be looking at some sort of comp hit, but I don't know how big, but the rest of the field have at best, 4 wins, so hopefully that's created a safe buffer.

When the results are called out, I've managed to place 1st, by 14%, which simply staggered me. My comp came out as 13/30 - or an average of a little over 2.1/5. Considering the softest army there got the equivalent of a 3.8/5, I'm quite happy with that.
After helping the TO return the tables to another venue, we pile back to my house, and load up on some greasy fat fish and chips. So not only am I now tired and suffering from acute mind-jelly, but my heart believes I am trying to choke it on cholesterol.
I could not be happier with the result though, even if my wife has taken to mockingly calling me "Master" around the house... sigh. If someone chops her up into little pieces, I sware it was not me!

I'd like to thank my opponents again, and think they should all congratulate themselves - even finishing last at the masters is still finishing higher than all the rest of the country !

- Charlie

Congrats!

Some shinies from the event ;D

This one I have to give back next year, but I do get to put my name on it in the world smallest font..


Though I do get to keep something as well : D


And the 'boyz' who brought it home:


There are more/better pictures of the army back in the army blog I did, here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/263814.page

Congrats on the win and thanks for the great little read.

Congrats, never really doubted it after you had 45-1 in round 3, but very good job anyways, you punished your opponent for every mistake they made, and made very few (1?) yourself

Seems a bit weird that there was so much comp in a masters event, would have thought that it should just be the best with the best they could muster against each other, but from what I have heard, you guys in AU/NZ really don't like "cheese", so it may be a cultural thing?

Really enjoyed the parts where you described just what your opponent had done wrong, and exactly what you did to punish him for it, never seen the in-game tactics described so well in a report before, and it actually makes this report into a bit of learning, and not just entertainment, good job sir

I think you have posted the wrong link at the bottom, I only get back to this topic at least

Great reports. That comp. score is a huge percentage--what a load of

Well done! How was comp scored? I wouldn't describe your list as particularly harsh, and was surprised to see it get such a low comp score.

Comp was done by a panel of judges, with the highest and lowest marks being dropped.

The difference in comp between my list, and the highest list there, was 1 maximum win's worth. My list probably was the strongest there, or close to it - so as long as I could get 1 more win than the softest list there, things would balance out.

In a set up like that, you can't take too soft an army, as the players should be good enough to capitilise on that. No point getting max comp, if you go on to lose 6 games, so that brings the highest score drastically down.
Likewise, there's no point taking an army that nobody has a chance against, if some are playing the comp game you might as well all play it, so in the end the lists ranged from 2.16 to 3.83 - which is pretty tight when you think about it.

In the end, I was actually far enough ahead that I could have received a 0 for comp, and still won, so I wouldn't say comp was overpowering in the event. What it did do, was force people to take slightly more balanced lists, that their opponents would have a greater chance of being able to counter (e.g. it made me leave my 30 painted lootas on the shelf at home). There is still a metagame involved, it just slides a bit down the scale artificially.

Whilst I'm not the worlds biggest fan of comp, I can't deny that it means I get to see a lot more variety out there, which I believe is the intent.

Good job man, and this battle report was a good read.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. If you don't mind, a few questions:

How does the national ranking system work in NZ? Who runs it ?

Could you comment on the amount of terrain you played with ?

An Australian site runs the rankings for NZ, they incorporate our events into the Australian rankings, but also separate them.
In short, you basically get points based on where you place at an event, and how many people were at that event. The bigger the event, the more points it's worth. Because our events, bar one or two, do not get anywhere near as large as the Australian events, it's quite handy being able to separate them out.
You then get your top 4 or so events added together to give you a total, and you are ranked based on your total score. Essentially, it rewards consistancy.

As for the amount of terrain, there was a tonne of it, all of it varied and more than adequate. The TO, Pete Dunn, also ran NZ's biggest tournament, Fields of Blood (which is the NZ GT). When preparing for that, he made a rediculous amount of terrain. His personal terrain collection is probably enough to cover 25-30 tables more than adequately, so when he only has to spring enough terrain for 6 tables, it was very easy.

There were quite a few of the ever awesome cities of death buildings about, on decent sized bases too, so not only did we have a great area of terrain, but a respectable volume too.

AWESOME report! I loved reading through it, good stuff man. Great job in the tournament too, well played games and a bit of luck brought it home for you.

I hope you write more reports on her in the future, this is areally good example of how it should be done!

Oh I forgot to mention, in turn 1 my battlewagon drove forward and immobilised itself, but the big mek fixed it, what a good boy!

Caffran9 wrote:AWESOME report! I loved reading through it, good stuff man. Great job in the tournament too, well played games and a bit of luck brought it home for you.

I hope you write more reports on her in the future, this is areally good example of how it should be done!

Cheers mate, I wrote a couple other reports in the last few months with pretty much the same army, if you click my profile you'll easily be able to see the threads there :>