Following Mahu and 40kEnthusiast’s excellent lead, here’s a summary of our event last month. Not detailed reports, alas, but a quick overview at least. This was
CSM’s fourth year in the Team Tourney, and our second year fielding two teams. The other half fielded
IG infantry horde,
CSM: Enlisted Men.
Army/coalition/team notes
The Crusaders team wasn’t as unified, being assembled a bit later in part based on players available. We went with a Space Marine Crusade-themed force, using two Space Marine and two Space Wolves armies. Kind of amusingly, this is what our top-ten placing Crusaders team did last year as well, though they were using the old
SW codex. As our team was a bit spread-out geographically, we built the armies separately but collaborated on design via email, discussing paint schemes, unit markings, and the matching bases in detail to make sure the forces would work together tactically and be visually coherent.
Augustus provided the Space Wolf models from his army and built the excellent display boards, three of which we shipped from Colorado to New England so we could pack them in carry-on luggage. He also provided snow basing material to match his own bases so Gilgamesh and Flavius could exactly match it. He also painted matching Crusade banners with all four army’s heraldry, for our commanders to sport. Gilgamesh and Flavius painted their own forces. I mooched.
Team members, and Dakka handles
Ragnar A AKA Mannahnin- 4th team tourney with the Mercs, team captain
Jamie H AKA Gilgamesh101, 4th team tourney with the Mercs, harried at work
Damian G AKA Augustus, 1st time with the Mercs, but former multiple-time Best Imperial team winner with the Rocky Mountain Cavaliers- our Hit Brush modeling, painting, and display board guru
Tom G AKA Flavius Infernus, 1st time with the Mercs though previously played with the Warmongers
Army lists
We focused on scoring and mobility for most of the forces, with a good mix of assault and shooting. Gilgamesh’s list was the one exception, designed to bring multiple hammer units to force enemies off objectives, kill or cripple hard targets, and draw enemy shooting. In previous years we’ve benefited from a
CSM team member making awesome army lists/custom codices using InDesign, but he was on the other team this year, so I knocked up something quickly in Word the week before the event.
Augustus
Ragnar’s Great Company (Space Wolves)
Runepriest
JOTWW, Living Lightning
Runepriest
JOTWW, Murderous Hurricane, Wolf Tail Talisman
Dreadnought, multimelta,
DCCW, storm bolter
Grey Hunters 5, Melta Powerfist Rhino
GreyHunters 5, Melta Powerfist Rhino
Greyhunters 5, plasma rifle, plasma pistol, powerweapon, razorback
6 Longfangs with 5ML and 1
LC
1
LS Typhoon with Melta
Gilgamesh101
Iron Hands (Codex:
SM)
Chaplain w/meltabombs
5 Assault Termies w/2
LC, 3x
TH &
SS in Redeemer
Ironclad in pod
10 Tacs w/Las, melta, fist, stock razorback
Flavius Infernus
Ravenguard (Codex:
SM)
Librarian w/ null zone, gate of infinity
Dreadnought, multimelta,
DCCW, storm bolter
5
tac marines, sergeant with combi flamer, Razorback w/ las/plasma and dozer blade
5
tac marines, sergeant with combi flamer, Razorback w/ las/plasma
5
tac marines, sergeant with combi flamer, Razorback w/ las/plasma
2 Landspeeder typhoons in a squadron
1 predator with
AC turret and
HB sponsons
Mannahnin
Ragnar’s Great Company (Space Wolves)
Runepriest w/
JotWW, living lightning, meltabombs
2x
WG w/Fist, combi-melta 1x
WG w/power weapon
9
GH in Rhino w/fist, melta, wolf standard
8
GH in Rhino w/fist, melta, wolf standard
5
GH in Razor w/fist, flamer
LS Typhoon (w/TML,
HB)
6
LF w/5x
ML, flamer on pack leader
Adepticon Pre-Team Tourney
Flavius could only arrive Friday night, but the rest of us flew in Thursday evening. We met up and installed the Crusade banners on the
HQ models, and inspected the damage done to the display boards by the baggage handlers. Luckily Augustus runs Mini Medic on Friday rather than playing, so he had time to do a fantastic job erasing the damage, and also to paint up a couple more objectives for the team, as I had goofed and only brought two instead of the team’s required four.
As our team was fully registered online, I was able to check in for the tournament Friday night instead of standing in line Saturday morning. Key! This way we got our packet and were able to hold a tactical session in my and Gligamesh’s hotel room over beer after Flavius got in late Friday night. We went over each scenario to make sure everyone understood it and the objectives, and to identify tentative strategies. Obviously final strategies were impossible, not knowing our pairings, tables, or what we’d be facing in each round, but we had the chance to discuss anything that seemed unclear to one person or another, and this saved us valuable time and reduced possible errors the next day. It also allowed us to double-check for any discrepancies between the mission sheet and the scoring sheet, and to have a couple of rules questions about the scenarios ready before the event actually started. Again, saving time and potential confusion.
Team Tourney Itself
Saturday morning dawned bright and early, and we brought the armies down. Unfortunately we had been misadvised that the time the hall would open was the time by which the armies had to be set up, but hey, better to be early than late! We got the armies arranged on their boards on a table outside the hall, and one or two anonymous team members got to catch a few more winks while the rest of us got a leisurely bite to eat/savored our coffee.
Once the doors opened we quickly got set up on our assigned table for judging. One awesome logistical point Adepticon refined this year was that the first game table assignments were the same or very near to the judging table assignments, so less movement was necessary before round 1. The judges asked some questions, but I also played salesman a bit, talking up our theme and pointing out the painting elements of which we were most proud. We scored a respectable 42 in Theme, 33 in Painting, and 8 in Spirit with our matching t-shirts and dice.
Round 1: I am sad to report that I am completely blanking on the name of the team we faced. It was all Orks, and I suspect it may have been Mork Protects.
For round one Augustus and my
SW forces were paired against two mechanized Ork forces, using a battlewagon, multiple Trukk squads, a squad of grots for objective-holding, a squad of kans, a mega-armored Warboss in a squad of Meganobs, a Biker Warboss, and a good-sized Snikrot squad. The table had a pretty average mix of ruins. Our opponents were great guys, one a strip-club owner with a terrific attitude though not a ton of experience, and the other an engineer and solid tactician who played with precision and good judgment.
I’m yoinking 40kEnthusiast’s excellent mission rule summaries:
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
Augustus and I focused a bit centrally, with the two Vital Equipment squads loaded up ready to make a run up the left table edge, and a couple of shooty elements on the far right aimed to stop the battlewagon and a truck or two which were making an end run for our DZ. Our Long Fangs stayed central, maximizing fields of fire. We had some good luck popping transports on turns 1 and 2, followed by some good Jaws action zapping meganobs and a warboss, but some poor rolling prevented our getting the Biker boss before he got into our Vital Equipment squads. We eventually killed him, and Snikrot’s unit which had also piled into the left flank, but at the cost of a great deal of time. Some good Ork shooting on the right flank also started dropping our speeders and dread, though not before we stopped a truck and the battlewagon, forcing the large ard boyz squad within to hoof it from near the right table edge to get our stuff. The Kans were stubborn in the middle for a while, but eventually our multiple Rhino-mounted squads cleaned up the middle. At the end we held the primary, I think we eked out the secondary as well
IIRC, and easily took the tertiary. The other table faced a bit of a tougher fight if I remember right, Drawing on the primary I believe.
Round 2: Robot Ninjas. Three
SM and an
IG.
Flavius and I were paired against two Salamanders forces. Crusader packing Vulkan &
TH/
SS termies, a regular land raider packed with no-pack assault marines led by a chaplain, multiple rhino squads, and a big scout sniper squad are what I mostly remember. The table was a very open desert affair with a river running its entire length, multiple rocky hills, and a single tall tower ruin which the scouts promptly camped in. Two more good opponents, one of whom was one of those perfect mixes of good sportsmanship & play you see occasionally. The other was a bit more intense, but I get the same way sometimes, and we had an excellent tactical game.
Mission:
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.
Flavius and I made sure to each have scoring units mounted up on both wings, with his pred and my Long Fangs anchoring the center, leaving us space to shoot & scoot once the termies hit our lines. We put a command counter on my long fangs but did not use Flavius', as
ICs and non-walker vehicles were not eligible, and we knew his Dread would be an easy target. The early parts of the game were mostly cagy maneuvering and shooting, with my Grey Hunters pushing up the left flank to kill the scouts in the tower, and being killed in return by the assault marines + chaplain in
LR, though not before they killed the chaplain, scoring us a non-troop
KP and a commander’s head. On the right flank, as expected, the termies & Vulkan headed for our
HQs, and smashed up my other big Grey Hunter unit, though once they were disembarked we were able to punish and eventually eliminate them using Jaws & rapidfiring razorbacks combined with Null Zone.
At the end Flavius and I managed to hold the two quadrants on our side of the table, and our opponents only had units in position to hold one of their own. We also took the secondary and the tertiary. On the other table again I don’t think they fared quite as well, a mixed draw/loss
IIRC.
Round 3: Again totally blanking on the team name, it was mostly-mech
IG on my table, and Eldar/
SM combo on the other. Gilgamesh and I faced, roughly: one medium-sized infantry platoon glommed up, another small one, a bunch of veterans in chimerae, three hellhounds, a basilisk, a squad of two Russes, and some heavy weapons. The table was a nice mix of hills and woods, so there was some
LOS blocking from the former, with a big ruin into which went one of our opponents’ objectives along with the big glommed infantry platoon. Opponents were good, with one experienced and one inexperienced, the latter of whom got a bit down when luck was against him.
Mission:
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
Gilgamesh and I left our own objectives lightly defended, while driving strongly in transports for the enemy ones. He pushed the left with a squad of mine to help, while both of my other squads pushed the right with my long fangs for support. We ate a few casualties on the way across, but Dawn of War nightfighting meant we had a couple of squads in their lines early. Gilgamesh’s
TH/
SS terminators ate the brunt of the Veteran and Hellhound fire, being ripped down to a model or two in fairly short order, but not before busting a number of AV12 hulls and stalling the
IG advance on our objectives. My Runepriest and
WG squad ate the platoon and took the right-side enemy objective in the ruin fairly early, but ate Russ fire which weakened the squad siginificantly, forcing us to charge after it with fists and meltabomb while my razorback squad took over control of that objective. Gilgamesh’s Ironclad also supported my right-side assault, using the pod to block
LOS for the heavy weapons team, then walking around it to start munching said heavy weapons and then the
HQ.
Overall we sustained quite a few casualties but were able to take all of the objectives, win the
KP battle, and get all the tactical bonuses with the exception of having a commander in range- Gilgamesh’s was eventually killed, and I sadly had sent my Rune Priest chasing Russes with his meltabombs, rather than sitting back on the objective with the razorback squad. On the other table our other half had a really tight game with a couple of bad breaks, including a combi flamer which decided that killing pathfinders on an objective wasn't really its job. They wound up with a win, but a low-scoring one holding their own objectives rather than taking enemy ones.
Round 4: 3 Wolf Lords & a Rune Priest Walk Into a Bar, definitely the tightest list we faced all day and possibly the toughest players. For Captain’s choice we elected to pair up the
SW lists and
SM lists with their like force, as we thought triple Jaws made a good hard-target killer, as did
TH/
SS termies + Null Zone. The lists Augustus and I faced were 2x tooled-up Thunderwolf Lord (one Saga of Bear + fist, the other Saga of Beatstick + frost blade), each leading a unit of 2
TWC w/
SS & fist, then three minimal 5-man units of
WG with melta in twin-
AC razorbacks. The table was another good mix of woods and hills. Our opponents were great, and it was a fantastic and tightly-balanced game.
Mission:
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
Augustus and I selected the non-Bear half of the opposing force to be worth
KPs, and they picked Augustus’ half, as he had more available. We spread our deployment, maximizing spacing from the
SW assault, and put a couple of rhino squads into reserve to give flexibility of reaction and hopefully force the thunderwolves to commit early and not be able to catch too many things. Turn 1 we made a rookie mistake and wasted a bunch of missile launcher shots on the thunderwolves, not taking into account the facts that with their not being able to be Instant-Killed by S8, and the 3+
SS saves and 2+ armor save on the wolf lord, they would be able to shrug all that off with a single wounded wolf. We should have immediately focused on popping razorbacks, despite the ones actually worth
KPs being shielded behind ones which weren’t. The thunderwolves got a good Fleet roll and were almost immediately in our face, eating Augustus’ dreadnought (which in retrospect also should have been Reserved), and forcing some hard choices. After our turn 1 brain freeze, we started in earnest at the shoot & scoot game, popping razorbacks while retreating laterally in two directions from the
TWC. Our Reserve squads came in down the long open quadrant/side to our left, being chased after by the frostblade wolf lord, while one enemy razorback squad took the objective in that quadrant. We took a couple of Jaws potshots at the lord but didn’t get lucky, then ran three rhinos at full speed for the enemy DZ. We also wound up disembarking one of Augustus’ rune priests and leaving him behind to give the wolf lord a hard choice between killing him or going after squads and eating a couple more Jaws. Meanwhile in the middle/our DZ, we lost my runepriest and most of our units, but did a pretty good job popping razorbacks and then beating the squads inside in close combat, as ours were better equipped.
Getting at the right razorbacks and tank-shocking a squad of Thunderwolves to break them, we managed to eke out the primary. Our opponents initially thought they had the secondary in the bag, but with a timely last-turn assault and one of their squads being spread over the DZ line, the count swung by two units, giving us the secondary as well. Our opponents took the tertiary and the Outflanked bonus, and we both got the Outnumbered bonus. On the other table the enemy was more fortunate, and after an extremely tight defensive game the Wolves beat them 1KP to 0 on the primary.
At the end of the day our team came 15th of 109 teams, exactly one place ahead of the other
CSM team, and two places below our 4th round opponents. Another fantastic team tournament down, and as usual, despite the exhaustion it engenders, it also inspires plans for more elaborate display boards, more impressive armies & Spirit displays, and more damn practice games! In this case while Gilgamesh and I have played as a team a bunch of times, we were not able to get any practice games with Flavius or Augustus, which I think is another area which could have significantly improved our performance. Geography is a significant obstacle there, with Augustus in Colorado and the rest of us in New England, but even that is not insurmountable.
Anyway, I know these reports aren’t much, and a bit late, but I hope they’re of interest, and of use to folks considering participating in the Adepticon Team Tournament. As far as I’m concerned it’s the Main Event as far as
40k goes in North America. 440 gamers playing at once in one room, the best and most interesting scenarios, some of the best terrain and pure organizational chops of any
40k event in the world. The first time I played in this thing I was utterly blown away by Adepticon’s ability to run four rounds of such a great and complex event in a single day and run a bare few minutes over the allotted time. Any every year it amazes me again.
Thanks very much to all our opponents for excellent games. I had eight sporting and fun opponents, which is not something you can usually say for any given group of eight tournament players.
Mucho thanks have to go to my team mates as well, particularly Augustus for his masterful modeling and painting efforts and support of the team. And a good player as well, not to be forgotten, as the first time we really hung out and got to know each other was at the ‘Ard Boyz final last year. Flavius was an outstanding addition, a player who brings excellent tactical acumen, always keeps his cool in the game, and so easy to get along with that he hopped onto the team so smoothly you’d think he’d been a Merc for years. Gilgamesh of course is a veteran compatriot, and kept at it despite life and work doing their darnedest to derail him before the event could get started. Thanks also to Everliving for recruiting me for the Mercs four years ago. It’s been great fun.
