This weekend I popped my tournament cherry with a really fun, low-key Combat Patrol tourney held at Krystal Keep in Dayton OH and run by the wonderful
TO Jim Williams. This was a very special tournament for me because besides being my first tournament, it was the last tournament held by Krystal Keep before they go out of business at the end of the year. They might continue under new management, but no one is sure of anything yet. So this is both my first and last hurrah at my
FLGS.
The tournament format is a pretty typical Combat Patrol.
-500 points
-Mandatory 3 units minimum, one must be a troop type
-Maximum 1
HQ
-No 2+ save, 3+ wounds, 33 armor max
-5 tournament rounds, different scenarios.
I brought the following Ork list:
HQ Big Mek
KFF 85
Troops 30 Shootas, 3 BShootas, Nob
PK BP (has a BShoota) 235
Fast Attack Deffkopta
TL Rokkits 45
Heavy Killa Kan, BShoota 40
Heavy Killa Kan, Grotzooka 45
Heavy Killa Kan, Rokkits, 50
TOTAL 500
GAME 1: ORKS vs TYRANIDS
For my first game I am playing against Greg, aka “Mouse.” Greg owns a ridiculously huge Tyranids army (something like 30,000 points?) that has lived in the display case at Krystal Keep for years and has always made me drool. When I say “owns” I mean “doesn’t own,” as apparently the actual ownership of the big red biomass has changed hands.
Greg’s list is all genestealers. He has 5 units of 5 all (I think) with toxin sacs. I didn’t get anyone list and I went totally honor system with the tourney, so I’m going off of memory and will be missing lots of upgrades and such. I love it because it’s one of the few lists that’s both spammy and fluffy.
Game 1 is Pitched Battle with Victory Points for having units in the enemy’s deployment zone. In this scenario the youngest player goes first, and at 28 I win! All skill, baby. Incidentally I may be one of the youngest players at the tournament… plenty of old timers. I saw a few young kids wandering around asking questions, though. One kid was maybe 12 and had a
WHFB Dwarf army on a nearby table and he was holding his own quite well against a local. I also saw two young girls (8-10?) painting up some hormagaunts when I left. It’s a good crowd. But I digress again!
I deploy for a head-on assault. Greg infiltrates all his ‘stealers, placing two units behind a building on the left flank and the remaining three units behind small cover 18” away. I scout my kopta up onto the building with perfect line of sight to everything. I congratulate myself on the kunnin’ move. Greg doesn’t steal initiative.
I can’t remember what happened each turn, so I’ll give the basic recap. Because the ‘stealers all infiltrated 18” away, I move up and immediately within firing range, so I unload. I pick off a few on the right flank and pick off 2 in one unit and 3 in another; they make morale.
One group of stealers behind the left flank runs right up the stairs I had failed to notice and eat the deffkopta in short order. The other one runs out from behind the building. The remaining three units at the front line scramble up and engage the kans. The kan on the left blows up 6” but only takes out a couple boys, one kan on the right is wrecked, and the center one dreadlocks the unit of two stealers who immobilize is and then can do nothing else.
The boys open fire and then countercharge the stealers that blew up the kan and I think kill them all with relatively minimum losses. Last kan stays locked.
The 3 stealers on the right that wrecked the can decide to come around the flank, through the wreckage. Greg rolls 3 1’s on move through difficult terrain. Then the rolls to run during shooting and rolls two 1s for dangerous terrain, leaving just one genestealer left in that unit.
The kopta-killaz make it down the building and join combat. They take out a handful of boys and then fall to a bazillion attacks. The boys consolidate towards the dreadlocked stealers and Greg concedes.
ORKS WIN! My record is now 1-0.
GAME 2: ORKS vs TAU
Second game was against Eric running 3 units of 2 crisis suits with missile pods and flamers, 6 Fire Warriors, and 2 units of 10 kroot.
The shortest player (Eric) gets to deploy first. It’s spearhead, and Eric picks the only quadrant on the table with cover that blocks
LOS with a tall building with stairs like we had the previous game. This game is Capture & Control.
He places the 6 crisis suits behind the building, the fire warriors and his objective on top of the building, and outflanks his 2 kroot units. I place my blob as far forward as possible and place my objective in area terrain just behind them. I don’t seize.
Again, fudging the turns a bit. His suits continually pop out from behind the building, shoot off a bunch of missile pods, and then hop back from whence they came. Eric was rolling quite a few dice… I think more than two missile pods should have, but I didn’t find out how many shots a missile pod got until afterwards, so I didn’t call shenanigans. I can’t honestly say if he was doing it incorrectly or not, but I make a mental note to ask more about the guns of armies I am unfamiliar with.
I made very few
KFF saves, and within two turns I had one kan explode, one get immobilized, and one get immobilized and lose both weapons, rendering him quite useless.
At the bottom of turn 1 I made a huge blunder. I wanted to use Mek’s Tools to repair an immobilized kan, so I discussed for 5 minutes or so whether he had to detach or not and whether he could use the tools if he stayed attached if the boys ran. Finally I think I have the story straight and say “Okay, then I think I can detach him and repair and the boys can run.” I think I whiff the repair roll and the boys run.
Top of 2 both kroot come in on the side closest to the objective (in the below pic it’s a pile of oil drums on the southern end of the forest there). My mistake comes back to bite me when a few missile pods blow up my now-detached Mek. I feel real stoo-pud. The remaining missile pods finish off the kans, who now have no
KFF save. Now all I have are my boys. The kroot unload into them and take out some ungodly lucky amount of rolls. I think 13 boys go down to kroot shooting.
Bottom of 2 my kopta outflanks, come in on the left, and blows up a crisis suit (moral victory). I realize how squishy they are… when I can actually see them. The kopta assault and I think he finishes off the second suit, but can’t consolidate anywhere useful and is now a sitting duck. My boys shoot up the kroot and then assault. I can’t remember what happens exactly. I think I take out the kroot and then have very few models left, and they are mopped up completely at some point.
Top of 3 Eric takes out my kopta and all I have left is a kan with no arms or legs and I gg.
ORK LOSS! My record is now 1-1.
Obviously detaching my Mek was a massive blunder. The novel lure of Mek’s Tools and the rules lawyering required made me stop thinking strategically there. Even if I hadn’t made that mistake I would be hard-pressed to win. Eric’s deployment was perfect, his Kroot’s outflanking made me have to decide whether I wanted to defend my home base or try to get up to his. Not to mention his dice were loaded and mine were cold as ice.
Well, two games down, three to go.
GAME 3: ORKS vs TAU (diff-runt wuns!)
This game I played against Jim, the
TO, on his “Table of Pain,” which was set up quite nicely with terrain.
Jim brought 4 crisis suits in 2 squadrons of two, each with 1 missile pod, 2 auto cannon-y things, and a plasma thing. He also had two units of 10 fire warriors.
Game 3 is classic spearhead/annihiliation. Because Jim is the
TO he executive-orders me to let him have the side that has a view of the tournament; in exchange he concedes first turn, and I am down with it (all the other players roll off for deployment).
Unfortunately I only took one picture this game, but this will give an idea of the table. I try to take the corner opposite the one with worse cover, but the whole table has a good number of ruins and hills. As usual, I deploy as far forward as I can.
Jim sticks his two units of crisis suits behind the large hill in his quarter. The fire warriors hunker down in the two ruins. I turbo boost my kopta up the left flank.
The above picture is something like turn 3, but this was a fairly one-sided game, so I will give a quick recap. Turn 1 the kopta frags a crisis suit; Jim wisely pulls the nearest one and the kopta is left unable to assault and it destroyed the next turn.
The orks slowly push through the middle terrain, laying down dakka, with the boys mostly running. They whittle down the fire warriors in the large ruins, then start working on the fire warriors in the small ruins. The rokkit kan pops a suit in the full unit and I think the boys take out the last one, or he fails morale, or something like that. On the way, only one kan explodes and doesn’t do much damage to the boys. The fire warriors do their best against the boys but only take out a handful each turn and the mob is still 20+ strong at the end of the game.
Towards the end of the game the boys finally assault the three or 4 fire warriors that are still left on the board (Jim graciously pulls them instead of me rolling 70+ attacks) and then consolidate towards that crisis suit that has been hopping in and out the whole game. At the end of 5 I lead 3 kill points to 2, if I can’t manage to table him he could conceivably kill a can on turn 6 and get a draw.
We go to turn 6 and I finally call the first WAAAGH! of my tournament day, but after a lousy run/difficult terrain rolls I still can’t make it around the ruins to get him in my sights. Bottom of turn 6 comes, the suit pops out, takes aim at a kan aaaand… whiffs hard. Where’s
BS 4 when you really need it?
There’s no turn 7. I’ve killed one unit of suits and both fire warriors for 3
KP, he’s killed a kan and the kopta for 2
KP.
ORKS WIN! This brings me to 2-1, after a one-sided loss and then a one-sided with against Tau armies. My one takeaway: Crisis Suits are really damn cool.
GAME 4: ORKS vs NECRONS
At first Jim puts me up against Eric from game 2 again. That’s a bit too much Tau for one day (I’m trying to cut back, I’m sure we can all relate), so I bring it up and he shuffles things around, and I am up against (I think) Jim’s roommate, Eric “Kronk” Kronk. I refrain from making any Emperor’s New Groove references, although it is really hard.
He’s got a unit of 10 warriors, a unit of 8 immortals, and a unit of 5 destroyers, 1 of which is a lord and 1 of which is a heavy.
Game 4’s rules are a little different, which I find out when I turn the tournament sheet over to discover that the rules for Games 4 and 5 have been hiding on the back of the sheet this whole time. And here I was, wondering why there were only 3 game scenarios listed in a 5 round tournament. It’s that dastardly Jim, deceiving me WITH THE POWER OF DUPLEX TECHNOLOGY!
Anyway, this scenario is called Hold At All Costs and is a special attacker-defender scenario. One objective is placed dead-center (in this game it’s a base of Necron scarabs), and the defender places half his forces (rounding down) within 6” of it. The attacker deploys within 6” of any and all table sides. On turn 1, the defender’s remaining forces automatically walk on the defender’s table edge, which is apparently the edge that the defending player is standing at. This conceivably means that I could place my units on his side and have him walk up right behind me, which is a little wacky. The attacker wins if he controls the objective at the end of the game; otherwise, the defender wins.
I win deployment by virtue of having more pocket change than my opponent. Kronk places his Immortals around the objective. I briefly discuss the possibility of putting my army so close to his table edge but I decide to KISS and deploy at the far edge like a normal person. I scout up my kopta onto the building on the left and make my dangerous terrain roll.
Top of turn 1 the boys move up 6 inches and are close enough due to the deployment rules to unload immediately on the only eligible target. They do so and manage to infict exactly 8 unsaved wounds, which means no reanimation protocols. Glad I brought shootas instead of sluggas.
Bottom of 1 the Warriors and Destroyers walk on. The destroyers destroy the kopta, justifying their existence. The warriors run.
Top of 2 the boys and kans run to get out of the woods.
Bottom of 2 the destroyers hop up on the building and are fine. A bit of shooting later, I’ve lost the
DCCW on the zooka kan on the right and a few boys.
Top of 3 the boys continue up towards the objective and make dakka at the necrons. All the shooting only takes out 2 or 3, and after reanimation protocols the unit is back up to 9 warriors. The kans take out one destroyer.
Bottom of 3 the destroyers immobilize the center kan. The warriors rapid fire and take out a couple boys.
Top of 4 (I may jumble up some of the last turns a bit) the ork army is within striking distance. The kans just sort of move up in a generic advance, and the boys are fanned out fairly wide but cut towards the right to advance on the warriors around those craters. After I make the move, declaring my intent to eventually assault, Kronk says that he think I should have just castled up, as he’d never be able to get that many fearless models off the objective. He’s not wrong, but I tell him that castling seems a rather un-orky thing to do. Kronk says, “Ah, but you want to win, don’t you? Winning!” However, I think I can probably take out the warriors with SWIFT AND MIGHTY BLOWS in close combat and am ok with my decision.
All the dakka only manages to take out a handful of warriors. In assault, the spread-out boys can only get 5 into assaulting range. They take out a couple more warriors with their 15 attacks (nob not in range), lose combat by 2, and take fearless losses. Then they pile in for the real fun.
Bottom of 4 the destroyers hop down to take advantage of juicy, juicy rear armor and immobilize the center kan. In combat I punch the warriors down to one model. He fails leadership, wins initiative to avoid the sweep, then runs away a few inches. Since the unit is less than half strength, he can never regroup, and this scenario is all about the objective, so I can ignore him from now on. I consolidate off the stupid crater.
Top of 5 the kans chase down the destroyers and one makes it into base-to-base. Kronk kindly informs me that the destroyers can’t even glance AV11 in the new codex, so the kan is in an uber-tarpit and takes one destroyer down, with no way for the combat to end before the kan slowly destroys the entire unit over the next fifteen or sixteen turns. Kronk and the players at the neighboring tables share their opinions of walkers in 5th ed and it’s very cathartic.
I get ready to move my boys towards the objective but before I do Kronk says that with the destroyers tarpitted and the warrior permanently falling back I have this one wrapped up and concedes.
ORKS WIN! My record is now 3-1.
GAME 5 ORKS vs ORKS!
Spoiler alert: Orks win this one.
In the long lull before Game 5 started I read the rules and the player with the most models in his list gets to deploy and go first. I have 35 models, so I figure I am golden for that important first turn. Then I get paired up with Jason Herald, the self proclaimed “Herald of Nurgle,” and his Ork army with no less than 66 models (69 if you count the decorative squighounds)!
He’s got 30 grots with 3 runtherdas, 30 boys with a
PK nob, and 3 kans with rokkits in a squadron.
The scenario is called Into the Night, which is spearhead/annihilation with the twist that night fighting rules begin in turn 3. He spreads his units out and places his squad of kans in the Charlie’s Angels formation to deny attacks on his rear armor, which is probably a touch of overkill.
I deploy crammed into the left side. I still planned on marching pretty much straight forward, but I wanted to keep distance because I had shoota boys and he had sluggas, so I wanted to get a bit of shooting in before he could close the gap. With three rokkit kans getting the first turn move, I decide to outflank the kopta, but looking at the table now I probably could have scouted him behind the building and gotten an attack off.
Top of 1, he runs the grots and boys and the kans shoot off the grotzooka and I think stuns it. He seems strangely unconcerned with 2-3 S10 power weapon attacks from the kan’s
DCCW. Perhaps it was something to do with the SIXTY SIX MODELS in his army.
Bottom of 1 I walk up and make with the dakka. A rokkit score an immobilized on the enemy kans and he’s blown up for being in a squadron. “I still think the benefits of squadrons outweigh the drawbacks!” Jason triumphantly declares. The big shoota kan whiffs, and the grotzooka-less grotzooka can weeps softly. The boys mull over who to shoot and Jason says in his best grot voice “Shoot the kans! They’re the biggest threat!”
“Alright grots, you asked for it,” I tell them back, and shoot shootas and big shootas into them, taking out 13 or 14. Well, shoot! Not bad.
No one’s in assault range (the kan there is stunned [I think]).
Top of 2 Everyone advances and then Jason declares a WAAAGH! His kans shoot at the wounded kan to try to finish it off for the
KP, but only manage to stun and immobilize it.
The grots weasel their way between the two kans to get the runtherda into base contact with the mek. This exposes two miscalculations on both our parts. For me, leaving my mek exposed means that he can target it directly in close combat (next time I’ll either leave less than a 2” gap so no one can charge in, or bubble-wrap my mek with boys). Jason’s mistake was that, because models must attempt to get into base to base, he’s wedged himself up with both kans, who now join in the combat.
The boys run up with Jason’s intention that they will multi-assault the boys and then draw in the kan with his
PK nob. He eyeballs it and they look like they are 5 or 6 inches away through difficult terrain from the boys. He decides instead to just attack the kan.
Here’s my obligatory over-the-shoulder macro shot of Jason’s boys as they charge my blurry red kan. Silly depth of focus!
And the resulting combat:
The runtherd has the initiative on the mek due to furious charge and manages to take him down, netting him an easy kill point. The loss of the
KFF isn’t so bad though, since he’s light on shooting. The boys mercilessly slaughter the remaining grots.
Jason’s boys wreck the kan (marked with a token) and consolidate a full 6 towards my boys.
So it’s turn… what turn is it? That assault lasted a brazilian years and we are trying to figure out if it’s night fighting yet. But as it turns out, it’s only the bottom of turn 2. This is just an assaulterific game!
I roll for my kopta, who doesn’t come in.
My last remaining kan that can do anything moves towards his kans, whiffs his big shoota, and is too far to assault.
The boys get ready to knock noggins but are careful to mind their
Ps and Qs in the shotting phase. (If you never knew this before today, the P stands for Shootas and the Q is short for Big Shootas. Spelling was never the Orks’ thing, okay?). I am again glad I brought shootas instead of sluggas, because I cut down a good dozen boys before I get the charge. In assault I take out all but 1 boy, who turns out to have a sane lack of bravery because he runs the hell out of there. I consolidate 2 inches.
Below: I love oooooorks! After I moved all of my boys, Jason pushes his Orks into a big pile, as seen in the below photo. “You just messed up the photo
op, man!” I say. “Oh, sorry!” he says, genuinely, and reaches in to stand up his boys before I tell him I was just joking. He’s such a good sport!
Top of 3 and night fighting kicks in. Jason walks his kans to within 2” of my last kan. “Night fighting,” he deadpans, then rolls two dice, which give him a vision range of a bazillion. His point blank rokkits miss, though, and he charges into combat with his 2 kans to my 1, which seems like a good idea, because 2 is like a bazillion more than 1. (Side note: you may have noticed my complete lack of respect for what actual numbers are. Can you believe I’m an accountant? This is stupid.)
Because the kans are walkers, or are grots, or some third option I hadn’t considered, they don’t have furious charge and so they attack at the same initiative. We roll at the same exact time for drama, and we both penetrate each other’s armor several times, then everything explodes with much awesomeness. After the kans simultaneously explode themselves in what I can only imagine to be the most painful mechanized handshake of all time, Jason looks at his one remaining ork boy running home to his momma and concedes.
ORKS (da good wunz!) WIN! Final record, 4-1.
I was pretty happy with that one, since it was a mirror matchup. If he had managed to get the charge off with his boys first instead of me getting it, the game might have gone much differently. But in orks vs orks getting the charge off is pretty crucial. I’d like to take credit for my genius deployment and movement judgment, but I can’t, cause I just kind of fudged ‘em in and hoped for the best, and it worked out in my favor. At the same time, though, that seems appropriately orky.
FINAL RESULTS
Out of 14 players (13 of whom paid in, since the
TO played), we ended up with a 4-way tie for first, with me and three other players getting a 4-1 record. I believe that the other 4 were Eric, the Tau player from Game 2, Jason from game 5, and another Ork player who brought an absolutely ridiculous list of just 15 grots and NINE KANS. We had 4 ork players and 3 of them cashed… a very dakka day!
The coolest part was that Jim decided that since the money didn’t chop evenly, he had to decide what to do with the spare 5 bucks. “I understand that one of the winners has only been playing for 6 months,” and then announced that as the newbie I would get the extra fiver. Everyone concluded that it was a very Jim answer to the problem. It was such a nice gesture, I was really touched that all these old school dudes would help out the newbie like that, and everyone was really friendly and sportsmanly throughout the whole event.
Although with Krystal Keep closing in just one more week makes it bittersweet, it was awesome to have such a great memory for my first tournament experience.
BONUS DVD EXTRAS
While we were waiting for the final results, Jason showed me his old-school trukk, “Da Towcutta” made from an old GI Joe vehicle. I thought it was awesome. I didn’t get a shot of his ridiculous front ram, but it looks painful to get run over with.
Heres a few pics of some armies that I saw but didn’t get a chance to play:
Uberfluffy White Scars army.
The “Grot Rebellion” kan cheese. Incidentally, the only loss this list experienced was in a draw against a mechanized Dark Eldar list, which went to a random roll-off. The posing on these models is terrific, they’re dead stompy!
WIP
