Hey all, just got back from having a great time at the Sprue Posse
GT http://www.chaoswins.com/
I accounted for myself pretty well, and got to see many friends from the tourney circuit. Smack was talked and chuckles were had....
One note before I run through the quick batreps... This tourney circuit, both the
RTTs and now this
GT are attracting NASTY power levels of armies. It was like competitive
40k heaven. I was overhearing plenty of people saying that the reason they were drawn to the event was because of the lack of subjective comp judgments being handed down from on high. I am in full agreement. I like to play a REALLY competitive game of
40k when I'm at a tournament that I paid money for, and boy, none of my opponents let me off easy at ALL.
My list looked like this...
Company Command squad officer of the fleet 4x meltaguns, chimera with heavy flamer
Psyker battle squad (6 total psykers), chimera with heavy flamer
Psyker battle squad (6 total psykers), chimera with heavy flamer
veterans 3x meltaguns 1x autocannon, chimera with heavy flamer
veterans 3x meltaguns 1x autocannon, chimera with heavy flamer
veterans 3x meltaguns 1x autocannon, chimera with heavy flamer
veterans 3x plasmaguns 1x lascannon, chimera with heavy flamer
vendetta with heavy bolters
vendetta with heavy bolters
vendetta with heavy bolters
2x hydras 1x heavy flamer
2x hydras 1x heavy flamer
2x hydras 1x heavy flamer
Right out of the gate we get a dawn of war annihilation, but its game one, so I have a pretty good chance of getting someone who isn't any good right? Wrong.
I'm facing down 15 thss termies, a land raider (that my current list iteration struggles against)an ironclad and a myriad of other anti-vehicle ranged weapons. (I'll link the full list here when KevinNash puts up all the lists on the blog).
He was able to close the gap FAST with gate and the land raider before i was even able to set up/see past nightfight. Instantaneously I was fighting off 15 termies and an ironclad who were grabbing kill points in droves. Our game ended up going 7 turns, and if it hadn't I would have lost. But as other players games ended, they came over to start rooting for my opponent (in a friendly way of course). I was able to stage one of the most amazing comebacks I've ever had in the final three turns of the game. I managed to weasel one psyker battle squad out of the psychic hoods range, and lobbed a weaken resolve at his unit, then just throw ungodly numbers of hydra shots at the unit until it was forced to take a test, the rest of my special weapon armed troops moved quickly to kill the land raider and the 5 man termie squad, and then later, the ironclad finally fell. I used one vendetta to escort his librarian and huge termie unit off the table, and as I was doing so, I had to fly right through short range multi-melta and a full spread of combi-melta shots as well. It turned out I needed to completely table my opponent to win, and I "technically" did table him, although he had two tactical squads running that would have automatically regrouped had their been a turn 8. Great tough opponent, fun game (although a suspect a bit more fun for me when the dice were down)
So game two, I get paired up against the mighty Reecius. To which we both get a good laugh out of. He was playing a very shooty, Bjorn led, space wolves list and we were playing a pitched battle cap and control. He had an awesome looking army by the way. I recommend heading to the blog to see some pics of it. Since we were both very much a shoot first and talk later army, we were talking about how important he roll to go first was, and he had Bjorn to sway the numbers his way. As we rolled I screamed out 'SIX!' before my dice even stopped tumbling, and lo and behold, I ended up getting a 6. Bjorn could only manage a 4 and a 5. and so I told Reece I'd be playing first, I gave him the side with very few places to hide his vehicles, and so he elected to full reserve.
The way his army is configured, there isn't a great way to contest his objective, with him having the bottom of the turn. And he's got Bjorn now too, who is basically unkillable in a cap and control game.
IG can't afford to introduce a third objective in the middle of the table. Well, if I haven't mentioned it before, I knew space wolves were going to be well represented in both quantity and quality at this tourney, and my previous iteration struggled HARD against wolves, so my list was tuned very heavily towards not being outshot by wolves. I made sure i didn't weaken myself TOO much against armies like orks, although I did, which almost came to haunt me later. So anyway, I'm digressing. I jumped on his shootiest units as violently as I possibly could, and managed to really slow down his ability to open vehicles. I also began sending two chimeras and two vendettas towards his objective tucked in the corner. He had this train of dreadnoughts, all hiding behind the unkillable bjorn, running right for my own objective.
Ultimately, his choice to full reserve and my fleet officer mixed with the game ending on turn 5 made the game so short, that I was given an opportunity to win. Just to give you an idea of how shooty he was, even with just three rounds of shooting, both of my chimeras that rushed his objective were obliterated, as were two screening chimeras that were going to be attempting to slow down the dreads, and 2 of 3 of my vendettas. he even managed to shoot two twin linked lascannons into my single contesting vendetta. but somehow managed to miss with both of them. So I stole one from Reecius and was now 2-0.
I'm going to misspell the handle of my next opponent, but the next guy i played was Mortetvie. He had a mech eldar army and it had about the maximum number of hulls you could have, and it was a seize ground. I know you're all looking at my hydras and thinking I should be fine. But i play against mech eldar too much to disrespect their ability to stay alive till end-game and then zoom objective block. He won the roll to go first, and then unsurprisingly handed it to me. I knew right then that he knew EXACTLY what his gameplan was going to be, and I was going to try and stop it.
The one thing he was missing from his list was a farseer, and i think maybe after our game he'd consider switching one of his autarchs to one. Because my highlights were weakening the resolve of both his big bike units on the turn they arrived and having them instantly run back off the table, I wrecked one wave serpent, killed the 6 strong unit down to 2 and then weakened their resolve, effectively removing them from the table. But heartbreakingly for me, when I managed to wreck the other wave serpent and shoot his dire avengers, I only managed to kill 3 of 6 of them before weakening their resolve. They fell back out of
LOS, managed to regroup, slipped in to another nearby wave serpent and later scored an objective that I placed. Meanwhile while I was doing all of this, my opponent was wisely using his lighter shooting to cut out my mobility of my troops rather than go after my more dangerous stuff. he did manage to gut 4 of 6 hydras by a flanking pair of fire dragon units, there wasn't really anything I could do to counter that moved due to terrain.
Gotta talk about the terrain on this table for a minute. It was the perfect amount for a great game. Had their been too little of it, or had it all been too low to the ground, I think my opponent would have probably been in a lot more trouble. But while it didn't block
LOS completely to many of his vehicles, there were plenty of places near table center where he could claim a 4+ cover against my hydras, as it should be, and his fire dragons were able to avoid just getting blasted off table, because of a big rock formation that they worked from behind. This game also ended on turn 5, a single vyper threaded the needle between two of my blocking vehicles to contest the only objective I had. When Reecius heard from across the room that I had lost a game on turn 5 because a single enemy vehicle was contesting one of my objectives, he made sure to give a hearty laugh. That got me laughing too.
Ok, on sunday morning i got paired up against orks in a pitched kill point game. You have to remember that I am used to running three manticores, and so orks have always been pretty easy to handle, but now with NO long range battlewagon kill, and a much more limited amount of nob instant-death, I was going to have to earn it. His list was a hybrid kan wall/deff rolla rush with two nob units, ghaz and of course a
kff mek. he won the roll and decided he didn't want me shooting at him before he had even moved, and so he took first turn and deployed. That gave me the ability to deploy as far away from his kans and dread, who had to do a cross-table run, and never made it to my vehicles. That was fine by me, because I had my hands full with ghaz and his best mates. Both of his wagons came screaming around the center terrain piece, they debarked and waaaghed on turn 2 and wrecked two chimeras, pinning either one or both of the units inside. Thanks to Ghaz's special waaagh, my hands were completely tied, and I had no response to that, and so I did what any good imperial guard general would do, I hightailed it. Everything except my rearmost hydras and my vendettas went 12", my vendettas and hydras were just turkey shooting for kill points, a truck here, a kill kan squad there, and then the orks got their turn again. The untouched nobs and ghaz were on a roll now and charged and killed two vendettas and another chimera. One of his wagons managed to roll right over a hydra battery with no problem. At this point I was down by 6 kill points again, and again, I had an ace in the hole. Those damn psyker battle squads. As soon as I got my turn I went into action, I jumped on those meganobs and nobs with special weapons and whittled them down to below half, then I successfully landed a weaken resolve on each of them. The rest of my shooting went full bore into ghaz. To his credit, ghaz did NOT want to die, making a mixture of 5++ and 2+s nearly ad infinitum, he finally went down to the last two lascannons I had on my vendetta. That round of shooting and the following turn managed to get me up by two kill points, in his next turn he had the ability to charge a chimera or possibly the insides of the chimera should he kill it with shooting. He failed to wreck the chimera with shooting and to add insult to injury he didn't even manage to wreck it in the following close combat. At this point the game ended (turn 6 I believe).
Last game was against Somnicide's bike list, and before changing my list around, he had been on a really good streak of kicking my butt in tourney play. The changes to my list included adding a second
PBS and -3 manticores +6 hydras. So I was feeling more confident than before. Dawn of war seize ground was the game, and i won the roll and elected to go first. My rolls were with me early and his wasn't. None of his typhoons could spot my vendettas on the top of turn one, and one bike unit was even baited into trying to land a multi-melta shot on my furthest forward vendetta. Of course Som couldn't roll a single 8+ for his night fight, and I got off scot-free. Even worse, that bike unit became my first weaken resolve victim, and they ran right back off the table during turn two. I don't have any long range anti-land raider anymore, so i decided i'd prioritize the bikes and the typhoons and just clean up whatever mess the land raider and its assault marine contents made later, which is always scary. I quickly got two weapon destroyed on two speeders, and in the next three turns, wiped out every bike he had. yet i managed to still be in trouble, as the terminators did a great job of charging chimeras that had troops in them and shutting down my ability to move. The land raider moved AWAY from all of my meltas, and went and picked up Som's scout unit, and prepared to go score one of the three objectives. I comfortably had one, but getting to the third with an actual scoring unit, or getting a meltagun safely to that land raider wasn't going to be happening. i dumped mass firepower into his terminators, including an AP1 soulstorm that slipped past his hood and eventually wiped them out. the hydras knocked down all three speeders. He was left with a land raider full of 5 scouts, but the way the game had played out, that could have easily been enough to force a tie. I flung every spare model i had at the objective the land raider was sitting on. First it was just a lone empty chimera, which the land raider spun and blasted away, that was on bottom of 5, if the game ends here its a tie. The game continuded and i ran an infantry squad to contesting range and a vendetta managed to move flat out and contest also. The land raider had the ability to shoot at two targets and could possibly get rid of both, but wasn't able to get enough hurricane bolter into
LOS to wipe out my skulking infantry and the multi-melta couldn't get the vendetta either. the game ended there on turn 6 with me winning 1-0.
So 4-1 on the weekend, a second place award, getting to see lots of friends and play some very competitive games of
40k. I was in heaven. There was a hot dog cart permanently set up out behind the venue, and the guy sold hamburgers with glazed donut buns, hot links with pulled pork cheese and jalepenos in a corn tortilla and hot dogs with pulled pork in a maple bar donut. I'm pretty sure we all just put his kids through college, and lost a couple years off of our lives.
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
.....LVO GT 2014 Team Tournament - Best Generals
