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This year we planned well ahead of time for the Team Tournament. We made an army themed after the defenders of Vraks, and used all Vraks related models. We had a big display base, and put some effort into getting our forces painted. Here's our coalition:

Player A's Chaos Space Marines:

Sorcerer w/wings, Lash of Submission
9 Berserkers w/fist champ, rhino w/combi melta
7 Plague Marines w/fist champ, 2 meltaguns, rhino w/combi melta
6 Lesser Daemons
3 Obliterators

Also, I believe each squad had an icon, and the sorcerer may have had one

Player D's Renegade Guardsmen
Company Command Squad w/4 meltaguns
Platoon Command squad w/4 meltaguns, chimera
infantry squad w/autocannon, chimera
infantry squad w/autocannon, chimera
2 Hydras
Leman Russ Demolisher w/hull mounted lascannon
Vendetta w/heavy bolters

FullBlade's Renegade Guardsmen
Company Command Squad w/4 meltaguns
Platoon Command squad w/4 meltaguns
infantry squad w/lascannon, chimera
infantry squad w/lascannon, chimera
Psyker Battle Squad, chimera
Leman Russ Demolisher
Vendetta w/heavy bolters
Vendetta w/heavy bolters

FKE's Daemons of Vraks
Mamon
5 Plaguebearers
5 Plaguebearers
5 Bloodletters
4 Bloodcrushers w/musician, render
2 Blight Drones of Nurgle
1 Soulgrinder w/tongue

Game #1:

Deployment Zone: Pitched Battle
Command Counters: Established Defenses [enemy's moving into your DZ from reserves takes wounds]
Primary Objective: Hold the center [have a scoring unit from your coalition within 3" of center and no enemy units within 3"]
Secondary Objective: Deliver Vital Equipment [have a chosen scoring unit within the enemy's dz at game's end, you get to choose one unit from each player in your coalition, they must be scoring]
Tertiary Objective: Victory Points: Win by 200 or more VP's

Enemy: Red Headed stepchildren of Russ

Member #1:
Bjorn the Fellhanded
10 Grey Hunters w/2 plasma guns, MotW, Rhino
10 Grey Hunters w/2 plasma guns, MotW, Rhino
6 Long Fangs w/2 lascannons, 3 heavy bolters
6 Long Fangs w/2 lascannons, 3 heavy bolters

Member #2: [paraphrased, lost his list]
5 man Wolf Guard terminator unit w/Land Raider Crusader
5 man Wolf Guard terminator unit w/drop pod
Njal the Stormcaller

Ally: Player D's IG

Game #2:

Deployment Zone: Opposing Triangles [old cleanse II]
Command Counters: Units with Command Counters assigned count as scoring
Vengeful Spirits: May return infantry to game as lesser daemons once you've lost some
Primary Objective: Allied table quarters [have a scoring unit from both members of your coalitionin a table quarter that does not have an enemy unit from both members of their coalition]
Secondary Objective: KP from non-Troop units
Tertiary Objective: Destroy the opposing Coalition's most expensive unit, points-wise
Tactical Bonuses: Score a number based on the # of unsaved wounds inflicted by your vengeful spirits [basically wounds mod 5, with 3 as max]
+2 for controlling a table quarter with a unit bearing a command counter at the end of the game.

Enemy: lizard looking Eldar eldar [They were the native savage types, come from a lava world. All converted]

Team Member I:
Eldrad
3 Guardian Jetbikes w/embolden lock
3 Guardian Jetbikes
3 War Walkers w/twin scatter lasers
7 Harlequins + troop master and Shadowseer
1 Wraithlord w/twin flamers, bright lance, missile launcher

Team Member II:
Farseer w/jetbike
4 man jetseer council
5 Shining Speers
5 rangers
5 rangers
3 War Walkers w/twin scatter lasers
Partner: Fullblade's Guard

Game #3:

Deployment Zone: Dawn of War
Command counters: Units become scoring
Primary: Control Objective Markers [the 2 placed by the enemy are worth 8 points, the two you place are worth 2]
Secondary: Kill Points
Tactical Bonus Points:
+2 for controlling both of your own objective markers at game's end
+2 for having a commander within range of an enemy objective marker
+1 for having a unit with a command counter controlling an objective marker

Enemy: Space Wolves [Team Arrogant Bastards]

Team Member I
Wolf Lord w/frost blade
Wolf Priest
7 Grey Hunters w/Pfist, Melta gun, in Rhino w/extra armor
7 Grey Hunters w/Pfist, Melta gun, in Rhino w/extra armor
5 Long Fangs w/2 heavy bolters, 2 missile launchers
5 Wolf Scouts w/5 melta bombs, 2 power swords
3 Wolf Guard w/Pfists, join the scouts and hunters

Team Member II
Logan Grimnar
5 Wolf guard in Terminator armor w/drop pod, various wargear
6 Wolf Guard in Terminator armor w/drop pod, various wargear
8 Grey hunters in Drop pod w/meltagun
Deathstorm Drop Pod


Partner Player A's Chaos Space Marine's

Game #4:

Deployment: Spearhead
Marked for death: Only units belonging to your chosen member of the enemy coalition count as KP for primary
Command Counter: Can only be given to units not marked for death. Makes them scoring
Primary Objective: KP, only Marked for Death units count
Secondary Objective: Have more scoring units in the enemy DZ than they have in yours
Tertiary Objective: Control more objectives than the enemy [2 objectives are placed in the center of the 2 non-DZ quarters]
Tactical Bonus:
Outflanked, +3 if you control both objective markers
Outnumbered, +2 if you control enemy's DZ at the end of the game

Enemy: IG [Curse your Sudden]

Enemy Member I:
Company Command squad w/ 2 plasma guns, 1 lascannon team in Chimera
Vet Squad w/ 3 flamers in Chimera
Vet Squad w/1 flamer 2 meltaguns in Chimera w/heavy flamer
Vet Squad w/ 2 meltguns in Chimera w/heavy flamer
Hellhound
Devil Dog
Manticore

Enemy Member II: [Paraphrased, warp ate his list]
Company Command squad in Chimera
Lord Inquisitor w/mystics + Emperor's Tarot
Vendetta
2 Vet squads w/meltaguns in Chimeras
PBS in Chimera
Leman Russ w/5 plasma cannon shots

Partner: Player D's Guard

Game 4:

Team ATL stole the imitative in 1 game and the other went first. To put in summary: Team ATL beat our team pretty badly in both accounts.

Clearly your team was to excel that day and I salute your team on your win and awards and hope to play you guys again and maybe with Tau seeing how it gave one of your team members a scary chill ^_^.

In our first game I was paired up with Player D, who used to be part of our regular tournament hitting crowd, but then moved away. He's got a strong Guard list, my only worry is that this is one of the first times he's played it. Then again, how much practice do you really need with a gunline, anyway?

Each other year we've had easy double massacre's in the first round. I'm not expecting anything different this year, and thus I'm a bit concerned, as our foe's lists are decent and well painted, and they have a clear grasp on rules and strategy. Definitely a harder turn one draw than I was expecting.

Essentially they are divided into a hitting list and a scoring list. Their game plan seems to be that their Terminators will come forward and attack as their long fangs disembark us, while their grey hunters sit around and score. It's a counter-mech doctrine, appropriate to this meta. My hope is that my daemons will foil it by simply being too hard for it them to beat us, even when they get the charge.

They win the roll to go first, which leaves Player D's guys exposed to their volley.

Top 1: The Drop Pod with the Terminators slams down on our side, as they send the land Raider forward. Njal disembarks to use his storm, but rolls the lowest possible, so it has yet to rage. The long fangs shoot, and Njal uses his powers. I believe that they disembark our equipment carrying (for the secondary objective) guard squad and shoot the main gun off of our demolisher.

Beginning the bottom of turn 2 my read is that they've pushed into us, but I retained confidence in superior guard firepower and daemon fighting. They had the shooting and fighting elements of a codex that was good at both, we had the fighting elements of a codex that was great at fighting, and the shooting elements of a codex that was great at shooting. I was still sure of our victory.

I made a successful daemonic assault roll, which was clutch, and landed all my non-troop units. We counter-volleyed. Basically we destroyed their equipment carrying grey hunter unit's rhino (which was still on the starting line, they wanted to wait to advance with it until the board was clearer) and killed 4 out of the 5 pod terminators with guard shooting. Bloodcrushers landed from and center, everyone else scattered back. The Grinder got a lucky shot when it hit Njal with a tongue and ID'd him. Hard to choose between the LR and him, but I figured the LR would be coming close anyway.

Top 2: They were a bit dismayed at their HQ's assassination, but moved forward anyway, with everyone but the grey hunters and long fangs, who continued to lurk back.

Their big push came with the Land Raider, which opened up and dumped out 5 Terminators to sit next to the one survivor from last round, preparing to charge the Bloodcrushers. They made a big mistake by firing the Crusader's weapons at Mammon, however, instead of softening up the Bloodcrushers for the charge. Mammon was unimpressed by the shooting, and the unweakened crushers killed every terminator for one loss.

I'm feeling very good about this game, and the Daemons move up. Another mistake that the enemy made last round was not sending in the last Terminator to swing alongside his brethren, so he's killed by the Crushers this round, even as the Land Raider is popped by the fleeting Soul Grinder. I get a troop unit in (the equipment pbs), and dump them in enemy territory to give them something to shoot at. Guard shooting is fairly good this turn, killing most of a long fang unit and breaking them, though they were to rally next turn.

Top 3: They have to pull out all the stops to try and save primary, and bring up a unit of Grey Hunters in their rhino to hop out and shoot at the Crushers. They do a lot of damage, but are in a nice template formation for Mammon. The last big question of the game is what Bjorn will do, and he relieves me (I have a superstitious dread of Bjorn, never killed him, no matter who was playing him) by backing down from Mammon and going after the Blight Drones.

I make sure not to move them too far from him, continueing to fire on their sprinting scoring unit, the tide of daemons and guard, meanwhile, overruns the center.

The rest of the game doesn't have any surprises, save for Bjorn doubling back and me having to feed him the Soul Grinder to keep him away from the primary. We deliver our secondary via Vendetta on bottom 5, and gun down their secondary somewhere in the middle of the table. We get tertiary almost automatically, indeed the only thing that stands between us and tabling the foe is 2 long fangs and Bjorn.

We get primary, secondary, tertiary and all tactical bonus points. I'm ready for the typical Adepticon round 1 double massacre, when I glance over at the other table and see that we are getting shellacked. The exact opposite result occurs over there. We lose every point (at first we think primary is a draw, but it turns out there was a misunderstanding and they get it), so ultimately the battle between our two coalitions is a perfect draw.

I actually think that this played to our advantage in the tourney as a whole, giving us slightly weaker foes than we would otherwise have faced.

Great job!!! Very impressive win & I like your team's theme a lot.

G

In our second game I was paired with Fullblade's Guard. Very similar to Player D's guard, but with an extra Vendetta and a PBS, and no Hydras. Guard + daemons was still something I had great faith in, so I was unscared when we say the enemy's dual Eldar coalition.

I did have some worries when I saw how hard they shot + fought. Non-Mech Eldar is always tricky, and with all the Doom and War Walkers they could soften up the Daemons enough for the Seer Council/Harlequins to just run over. I'd have to be careful, but with Guard shooting and the PBS I thought we could likely pull it off.

We won the roll to go first, and Fullblade deployed closer to the center of the table than the corner. Their stuff is mostly melee anyway, so we weren't so castled as a Guard list might usually be. In addition the Eldar occasionally do outflank fu, and in a table quarters mission the priority has to be getting your troops roughly to the center.

Then the enemy announce that they were real reserving everything. They didn't have an Autarch or anything, so they'd trickle in. Phew! Now I knew we wouldn't be overrun. It would make the primary far more challenging, but I was pretty sure that guard shooting vs. trickle in would hand us the secondary and tertiary.

I got the right half of my Daemons in again, and faced a bit of a dilemma. I decided to split them up big time, and put Mammon in the UR, Soul Grinder in the UL, Crushers in the LL, and Blight Drones in the back center (they are the tertiary target, so I have to be careful with them).

Their first round obviously had nothing doing. On our second round we moved into the center and smoked the Guard's vehicles. 2 Daemon Troop units came down, and I somewhat riskily put them deep in our Guard cluster, trying to hide them.

On their turn the council came in, as did their jetbike troop squad and a Warwalker squadron. They also got some rangers in. Their shooting was focused on a Plaguebearer unit, and he was alright. Unfortunately the Soul Grinder had drifted within assault range, and they were able to assault him with their Seer Council. Weirdly, they didn't kill him. He swung back, wounded the unfortuned Farseer twice, but the enemy made both invul saves. An odd draw.

Our turn of shooting was ferocious. We blew up their war walkers, destroyed one of the troop squads, broke the rangers (PBS). Note that this was the top of 3. The game is grinding down though, both parties are having to think and ponder a lot. Once again the combat is a draw. Which verges on the surreal.

They get most of the rest of their stuff in, basically just Eldrad and the Harlequins are out. They focus fire on the bloodletters, wiping them out, and they rally their rangers. The combat draws yet again.

Top 4. This game is absurd. More shooting destroys the half of the other squad of war walkers. We take down the scoring units from one coalition with a combination of shooting and a bloodcrusher assault. In combat, however, the Soul Grinder finally goes down, freeing up their seer council.

On the bottom of 4 they continue after the primary, their seer council flies over and crunches a PB squad. They also use their harlequins w/Eldrad and their shining spears (who both finally show up this round) to destroy the bloodcrusher squad. They try and massacre backwards.

Our 5 is going to be the last round, because play has been so preposterously slow as to deny belief. If this hadn't been an all reserve game we'd be on bottom 3. I swear. Anyway, there's just one thing to do, we bring up our vendettas and chimeras, dump out the troops and rapid fire down the harlequin squad w/eldrad. PBS insures that they break, though they actually roll boxcars.

We try a last ditch plan to save primary by sending in the vengeful spirits to hold up their seer council for a round, but they roll a bit above average and defeat them without effort.

On their lats turn they destroy my last troop unit with their seer council. Dangit!

So, Primary is a draw, as neither myself nor the guy w/out Eldrad on their team have any troops left. We get secondary (2 war walker squadrons, the shining spears, Eldrad to their killing of our bloodcrushers and our soul grinder.) We get tertiary, as our blight drones are still alive while their harlequins ran off the table.

A fun game, but hard with the time pressure.

The other table was much the same as ours. I believe that they ended up with a tie on primary, but all the secondary and tertiary objectives as well.

40kenthusiast wrote:The other table was much the same as ours. I believe that they ended up with a tie on primary, but all the secondary and tertiary objectives as well.

Nah, our side of the second round wasn't even close. We got max points all around except no bonus vengeful spirit points because we never lost an infantry squad.

Our third match was, once again, against Space Wolves.

I was paired with Player A, which is probably the pairing of our two strongest, or at least most active, players. That said, it is the only pairing that doesn't give us a Guard player. That's worrisome, but I believe that Lash is sufficient compensation.

Another worthwhile note is that our track record for round 3 is absolutely wretched. We've been dominated in this round in both of prior team efforts. So I was on my guard more than usual.

That said, the match didn't look that difficult. Our enemy's lists were similar to ours, one scoring mech and one fighting nonmech, but I think we had the edge on them in both categories. I believed my list could outfight, provided that I didn't receive bad scatters or the wrong half of the army, the Terminator heavy list, while I put more faith in cult troops and oblits than grey hunters and long fangs.

They won the roll to go first, which is a bit of an issue, but persuaded themselves to let us go first. It's difficult to describe how bad of an idea that was. Thanks to going first we were able to deploy the Plague Marines with their icon up at the 24 inch mark.

On our first turn I succeed at a Daemonic assault roll, for the third consecutive time this tournament. This means that all of my important Daemons are free to land guided in by the Icon. So Bloodcrushers, Mamon, Soulgrinder and Drones are all landed. The Berserkers roll up with their sorcerer, and the Zerkers walk on the board. We've taken our objectives in a grip of steel, and our threatening theirs with the furthest Daemons.

On their turn they roll on their scorers, 2 rhinos with characters). They have 4 pods then, one that has Terminators, another with Terminators and Logan, one with a scoring unit and another that shoots. Basically they have the choice of go hard in our face, or back down to their own objectives and make a longer game of it. They essentially decide to split the difference. They put the Terminators and scorers in our own territory, threatening our objectives.

This is a really bad choice. They basically dumped like 4 or 5 hundred points of their guys in the midst of approximately a 1500 points of our guys and gave us the charge. Now, the other choice (landing far away) wasn't much better, as Lash would control the game, but these guys are totally forfeit.

On our turn the Oblits double tap the terminators, and by good fortune get the only guy with an s8 weapon , a chain fist I think. So we merely send in the Soul Grinder, which jumps up and down on the hapless foe, breaking and killing all but one. The other unit is dogpiled by a zerker unit, a Plague Marine unit, and the lash sorcerer, and summarily slaughtered.

I send Mammon wandering alone towards the other enemy coalition, trying to make things interesting by giving them a challenge. Meanwhile the scoring Daemons drop on various objectives.

On their turn the scoring coalition commits a unit and 2 characters to charging Mammon, which doesn't go so well, they do 1 wound and lose 3 marines. Logan and his Terminators land on the objective which has bloodletters on it. Once again a questionable decision, they are exposed to an extremely dangerous charge.

On our turn I send the Grinder into save Mammon, it crushes the Chaplain while he kills 4 more grey hunters, but Mammon takes 2 more wounds. On the other flank the Bloodcrushers and bloodletters double charge the Logan Terminators, and kill them to the last man. Logan utterly fails his rolls and doesn't even do a wound back as he dies.

On their turn things are pretty much hopeless at this point. They feed the other grey hunter unit into the combat with Mammon and the Grinder, shoot their long fangs at things, and some scouts come on to skirmish with the lesser daemons and the oblits.

The game grinds on for the full 7, and their luck is noticeably miserable throughout. We table them on the very last turn, the dice having denied them even an early end. We take full points, including all bonus, and break the third round curse.

On the other table the double guard pair has annihilated their other wave, though their game only went 5 rounds before time ended it. They got all points as well though, so we are currently sitting at 4 massacres, a big win and a massacre loss, moving into the final round of the team tourney.

In our final round we are up against "Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal", another Atlanta Team. They were talking about winning the whole thing if they win this round, so we must be high up in the rankings. We pull together and set out to bring our A game.

Some quick strategy goes into setting up our pairings. The decision is basically Guard/Guard, or split them? Our opponents are running quad guard, and from a practice game I had with them (yes, we drove to chicago to play a team I'd played in ATL...sigh) very well put together. We thought going in that Quad Guard would be the winning list, so if we mimic them on one table we are fairly sure our other table will lose. We decide to split our Guard up, going Guard/Daemons, Guard/CSM. This puts our two best tourney players on separate tables.

I'm paired with Player D again, so I've got the Hydras on my side. That'll be useful. Time to get down to tactics.

We have to pick from enemy's, and I'd like to pretend it was motivated by strategic concerns, but truthfully I only really know one of our opponents (he's knocked me out of a few local tourneys recently) so I mark him for death. They face a dilemma.

If they mark our Daemons for death we can just land behind our Guard and fight worthless Guard vs. KP guard, and win unless they manage to shoot through. If they mark our Guard they face valueless and suicidal Daemon rushes with their KP guys. Not an enviable decision. They make the opposite choice to what I'd have made, going after the Guard. As the Daemon player, this sets me up for an easy game, just got to hope player D is up for two to one shooting.

They win the roll to go first and deploy, which is a big problem for us, as it means they will have the first shooting round. We set up in the traditional Guard castle (mistake of the tourney here, we did not have any experience with Guard, and had never faced a Manticore. It would make us pay, big time).

Facing defeat, I seized the intiative. Riding that wave I rolled my final Daemonic Assault of the day, and succeeded once again. That's right, 4 for 4 Daemonic Assaults. Per-Emperor Blessed-Fection.

They'd initially set up with excellent Mystic coverage of their army, but Player D correctly pointed out that they'd deployed their inquisitor in a chimera, which was another squad's dedicated transport. As that was illegal they instead shoved the unit behind the chimera, intending to embark on the first round. A trivial difference, until the Seize. Now they were only covered if they rolled really well.

I seized the advantage of the Daemons to their fullest, circumnavigating the valueless Guard and dropping right near the KP guard with my Crushers and Mamon then running them closer. Some anxious rules interpretation till the FAQ ruled that the mystic roll is from the inquisitor, not the mystic saved my crushers from the plasma tank. I also put the blight drones on this flank, cuz why not, right?

I put the Grinder on the other flank, I was going to try and use him to keep them back from the non-Deamon objective, but he immobilized in terrain on the landing. Oh well, if my dice had to bite it somewhere, better there than the Seize or a DA roll.

Round 1 our Hydra killed their vendetta and our vendetta fire immobilized one chimera and stunned another, both worth KP and both near the Crushers. That's all I can think that our shooting accomplished, though as usual it was a Guard snorefest with multilaser fire flickering this way and that and endless arguments about cover saves. I hate that codex.

They responded with their fast vehicles, which we'd discounted, and which moved up to prove their worth. The devil dog scored a KP right off, and the hellhound nearly backed it up with another on a unit, but remnants survived. Their manticore got something, don't recall what it was, but they were leading 2 KP to one when this round ended.

On our round 2 we righted that quick enough though, as more shooting killed another 2 KP vehicles and neutered their thrust (got a tongue hit with the Grinder), then assault killed 2 Chimeras and one of the troop squads broke from explosion casualties.

The big breaking point of the game came on their turn 2. They had to spend basically their entire round shooting at Daemons, mostly the 4 Bloodcrushers, or face catastrophic KP loss, so all of our guard vehicles came unshaken this round. The other routing unit didn't rally and the crushers still had one left at the end.

The rest of the game was just more of the same, we'd taken the advantage in firepower, and the world's most boring law of combat is that the guy who shoots first wins. From the top of 3 onward our shooting would shake/stun/destroy their shooting, then they'd shoot back with reduced effectiveness.

They could never find the entire round it would take to kill Mammon, so he just wandered deeper and deeper into their side, stomping on things.

They never stopped focusing on KP, though they did an end run to take the other objective (curse you immobilized Grinder!), so we got KP, by lots, units in their DZ (by one, Mammon, who had a command counter, in true Guard fashion no other troops had moved), and drew on tertiary. Final result 27-2.

The same result happened on the other table, where our coalition had won the roll to go first, and the enemy had decided to place their entire army in reserve, once again a 27-2.

Thus, we ended the tourney with 6 big wins, 1 little win and one total defeat. We were second to Sons of Shatner in both battle points and overall points. Definitely our best showing yet!

We'll be back next year. Hope to see y'all again.

Outstanding. Great report, great showing!