There was finally a tourney near me that didn't require burning what little budget I have going on a cross-country trip, only a mere 2 hours away from my home in Fort Smith AR, at Mizewell games in Conway AR.
First I'd like to say that the Mizewell games staff guys are super. Definitely a good
FLGS with a lot of space to play. Only ran into one...less-than-stellar person the entire weekend.
The list I ran was a pure
BA double detachment list that was pretty unusual, and gave a lot of people double-takes:
Baal strike force with Mephiston and a sanguinary priest with pistol and valour's edge in a land raider redeemer with 10
ccw/
bp scouts, 2 suicide asm squads in drop pods with 2x melta/2x inferno pistol each, another redeemer with 10
ccw/
bp scouts, and a 5 man jump pack
ccw/
bp death company with 1 power fist, joined by a
CAD of two suicide obsec tactical squads in drop pods with heavy flamer/2x hand flamer each, with Corbulo and a nameless warlord chaplain riding in the redeemer with the scouts from the
BSF. Mephy goes full divination, and the warlord chaplain rolls on strategic. My anti-air strategy was to spend 0 points on anti-air and go for objectives.
My reasons behind the list were threefold:
A: A lot of competitive lists seem to have a lot of s6-7 with flyrants and serpents, so I figured maybe some
AV 14 might surprise some people.
B: I liked running land raider mini-deathstar assault squads in 5th, but now they can't get a discounted land raider. Tacticals certainly aren't worth it either. Scouts though...pretty much 'ard boys with +1 strength and
atsknf? I figure with a priest in each squad and some psychic/hatred backup, they could be pretty good on the cheap.
C: I really just wanted to go to a tourney, goodness of army be damned. I was well aware that any unfortunate matchups would quickly make me remember how outclassed I was by some of the top tier armies. (spoiler alert: this happens once.)
Welp, onto pics and some 1 pic battle reports.
My fellow first-time tourney buddies waiting for round 1 matchups to start.
My 1850 submission into this chaotic battlefield:
Game 1 against Ben's Dark Eldar/Eldar. Several venoms of dark eldar warriors, a webway portal raider with archon and several blasters on board, a ravager, a wave serpent with dire avengers and an autarch, a wraithknight with the two s10 shots, and an air force of 2 dark eldar flyers and an eldar flyer.
BAO mission 1. (Emperor's will primary, dawn of war deployment)
I won the rolloff and made him go first. He sped a venom up to the maelstrom objective in the center. I null-deployed and just had the two flamer obsec pods come in. Incredibly, I failed to get first blood by shooting 3 templates each into 2 different venoms. He swiftly got it instead. Redeemers came on, and one had just enough range to flamestorm the front end of a venom, burninating the guys inside. Both redeemers got handled pretty easily by the flyers, but the squads started using the castle wall as a
LOS blocker to stay alive. Death company came in at a pretty fabulous time to both claim the linebreaker maelstrom point and deny him a hold the line point. They then came over and made a long (8 or 9ish) inch charge against dire avengers, slaughtering them. The enemy shooting phase dropped all but the power fist thanks to some awesome cover saves and
FNP rolls, and mister fister walked over to the wave serpent and strangled it before getting gunned down himself the next turn.
Corbulo's unit got charged by a wraithknight, and Corby himself began rending wounds off the wraith while he squashed a scout or two each round. Eventually Mephy joined in and they felled the wraithknight in the opponent's turn, letting me split the squads running towards the two emperor's will objectives immediately. The game went all the way to turn 7, where he had all his flyers, the archon's packed raider, and an empty obsec venom holding his empy's will objective, while I had the priest and a scout on my empy's will, and corbulo with 2 scouts trying to kill his venom holding his. Literally less than 300 points of army left.
We tied primary, I won maelstrom by a pretty massive lead, he got first blood and warlord, I got linebreaker, so I won 4-2, and the skin of my teeth brings me to a 1-0 record. MVP: Death company for not only killing more than their point value, but making quite an impact on the maelstrom points for me as well.
As a side note, Ben was one of the two opponents that I had an absolute blast "10/10 would play a million times again" playing against.
Game 2 against Devon's orks. He had a trukk of Mega armored lucky stikk warboss as his warlord with some nobs and a painboss, a couple deff dreads, a couple traktor guns, a battle wagon with a kannon, 2 nob biker squads with painboy bikers, and lots of units of 10 boys. We play
BAO mission 2 (purge the alien primary, vanguard deployment) which I was scared of going in, since I had 17 units, but I got a lucky matchup here and got Devon's orks who were swinging around over 20 units.
He won the roll off and took first turn willingly, and I decided to go ahead and have the redeemers on the field. He flat out'ed his warboss trukk straight to a maelstrom objective on my table side, daring me to deal with it. In hindsight I should've just let him be, but I charged Mephy's unit over to him hoping that I would get lucky and land a s10 hit on the boss and that he'd fail a lucky stikk reroll and die. (especially since the reroll would be 4+ thanks to ITC custom rules.) I got first blood off the trukk, and charged with full psychic buffage up, but the boss tanked EVERYTHING without a wound. He failed 6 of his saves and passed all 6 on the 4+ lucky stikk reroll. The ap2 sword priest did manage to cut down the pain boss for another purge point in a challenge, but my unit was quickly lost, followed by the land raider that brought them. Not the best trade ever.
I decided to abandon the idea of getting near that
MA warboss that was now stuck on foot, and podded/drove/deep struck to the other corner of the field, killing the deff dreads and several ork squads with flames aplenty. Devon kept getting maelstroms that he was standing on or heading past anyway, so he had that on lock from like turn 3 on, so I just kept killing units as he tried to slowly bring his army down on me. After about turn 4 or 5, we called the game as no units were close enough to do anything important any more. I was way ahead on the purge primary thanks to all his separate units, and I had gotten first blood and linebreaker easily, while he had a massive maelstrom lead and linebreaker held down, ending the game with me winning 6-4. That brings my boys to a shocking 2-0 record. I'm getting kind of scared now, seeing as how I'm gonna start getting matched up against the high tier lists that are also winning. MVP this game has to go to the heavy flamer tacticals for the sheer number of orks dead at their feet.
Game 3 against Brian's necrons. He was running a
CAD with a couple nightscythes of 15 warriors each, an overlord in a pack of warriors, a spyder, a couple scarab swarms, a monolith, an obelisk, and a tomb stalker forgeworld centipede thingy that I really liked the model for.
BAO mission 3 was up, (relic primary, hammer and anvil deployment,) and my space hulk dead terminator model got to act as the relic!
I lost the roll off and he made me go first. :( He started with his obelisk powered down on the field along with the monolith, while the stalker was outflanking. Given his lack of long range anti-tank and my general tactic being to grab the relic and get back inside a land raider, I had both redeemers on the field. Corbulo's immobilized itself on the very first movement phase though, so Mephy went for the relic instead.
I had trouble deciding whether to go for an easy first blood with flamers on scarabs, or to go big and try melting the monolith. I deciding to go big, and the two melta squads succeeded in blowing it sky high. The obelisk had some choice words and tesla to throw at them afterwards, but one of the squads miraculously survived the onslaught with only the loss of a single man who was not one of the melta gunners. The other squad was wiped out though. The following turn saw the beginnings of melta man, the legendary melta marine. I decided to go after the newly powered up obelisk with 4 melta shots. 3 hits, glance and 2 pens, 2 explode results, 2 and 3 on the d3 extra hull points. Kaboom goes the super heavy! My melta squad goes to ground to avoid the blast, but all but melta man die.
Scarabs start roving around the battlefield clearing out drop pods, while Mephy retreats into the redeemer with the relic. The night scythes scream over the battlefield to drop 30 warriors while the tomb stalker shows up in the rear. A spyder is also making its way to the relic when MELTA MAN stands back up, shoots the wounded spyder in the back and drops it. He then blows steam off his melta barrel and lights a cigar. The warriors glance Mephy's squad out of the redeemer, and both his and Corby's squad engage and easily sweep the two different 15 warrior units simultaneously. The ever-useful death company surround the tomb stalker, having lost the power fist to his exile...thing...they simply stand in his way to stop him from charging mephy's group. The game ends with Meph having held the dead terminator all game. I won primary, I don't actually remember who won maelstrom or if we drew, I got first blood, he got linebreaker since all the action was back there, and neither of us killed warlords, for a total of either 5-1, 5-4, or 8-1. It's a little hazy. But I leave day 1 with Blood Angels sporting a 3-0 record, and retire to the super 8 down the block for much needed sleep.
MVP: this one should be obvious. Melta man wasn't just an MVP. He was a hero. He is now on my work table ready for some high detail painting befitting a man of his awesomeness.
Start of day 2. Game 4 against -name withheld-'s necrons.
This is the unpleasant experience I mentioned earlier. I was warned by several of the regulars about this guy when they heard I was matched against him, saying he gets mad at rolls and etc etc. So I went into the match kind of worried. He did seem pretty angry just to be there before we even started anything.
So we trade army lists and go over them, when I notice, thanks to my recent research of the cron codex, that he isn't running a legal decurion. He has it all on his list as one decurion, and when he went over it, said they were all in a decurion, but there were destroyers and an ark not in any detachment, and that didn't fit the requirements for their little sub-decurion formations, and no
CAD for them to hop into. I ended up having to bring it up to one of the staff, who lamented how hard it was to keep track of legality these days with the million formations possible (I totally agree with that) and they had to reverse -name withheld-'s win streak into losses for bringing an unbound list and slipping it under the radar. Since the round had already started, that included me, so I get a dirty free win that leaves me kind of uncomfortable, but I have a couple hours to go around watching other games to get my mind off it. And I'm technically 4-0 at this point.
Game 5 against Kevin's Eldar/tau/Inquisition. He had jetbike farseer with laughing god mantle summoning daemons, some eldar jetbikes for late game obsec, 2 dire avenger wave serpents, 2 fire dragon wave serpents, the tau firebase formation with tons of interceptor, and an inquisitor for 3 servo skulls, and a void shield generator for his whole initial deployment to fit inside.
BAO mission 5 (Big guns primary, vanguard deployment.)
This is exactly what I've been expecting to come up against as soon as I started getting some wins, and I was surprised I was lucky enough to avoid it until now. I knew there were some lists like this and draigostar floating around, but I had been really lucky in matchups. But that ends here. His massive interceptor barrage ensured that he would get first blood off a drop pod or its contents before my first shooting phase. His void shields made sure that even if my melta guys survived interception, their first few shots would be taken with a smile, and there was nothing for the flamer guys to do.
So yeah, the natural thing happened here. A complete steamroll by some of the famous high tier units of the game. His dice were even hating on him quite a bit, and I still had no chance in hell.
MVP: Even though I was getting destroyed, one scout stood up to a turn of firepower and made over 20 saves/
FNP's in a row, single-handedly tanking 3 wave serpents by himself, plus a few cover saves from the ion accelerator riptide.
Game 6 against Sam's airforce Eldar with
BA ally. I forgot to ever take a picture of this one, but he was running illic nightspear with dark reapers, some warp spiders, a wave serpent, a couple jetbike squads, some rangers I think, and then ALL THE FLYERS. As for the
BA detachment, he had 5 sniper scouts and a techmarine with servitors inside a stormraven for EVEN MORE flyer. Game was
BAO 6 (Crusade with dawn of war deployment.)
I once again immobilized a land raider on the first terrain test of the game, but I kept a massive lead in maelstrom this game thanks to the maelstrom table wanting me to hold the same easy objective over and over and linebreak with a drop pod that he couldn't get a flyer to angle around and kill. Mephiston's squad eventually braved the ruins near the middle of the table to charge the warp spiders, and then illic's group on the upper level. I had the 4+ invuln power this game, and put it to use heavily there. During the charge against the warp spiders, I took 3 wounds on overwatch, and losing a scout would drop my charge range from 7 to 9". I made two saves, and decided to corbulo reroll the third, making it, and then rolled exactly 7 for the charge. After slaying both of those squads including sweeping Illic, Mephy and pals got picked off by the flyers. I desperately needed the game to end on turn 5 before he had a chance to get jetbikes up on top of those ruins to reclaim that objective...and it did!
We tied 1 each on the crusade objectives, while I had maelstrom locked down for turns to come. (something like 8-3ish) I also had first blood for flaming some rangers, and offed his warlord Illic, and was linebreaking with a lonely drop pod in a back corner. He had no bonuses, so It was a 6-0 win for me, although another turn would've probably seen me tabled, or at least with him winning primary and having linebreaker.
MVP: the return of super scout! with honorable mention to the corbulo reroll. In the turn after the warp spiders were slaughtered, but before Mephy's unit could charge the dark reapers and Illic, a scout tanked some dozen wounds with 4+ invuln and
FNP from the many flyers around. There was also the issue that the charge would have failed if the front scout had gone down during overwatch, and corbulo's reroll saved the day.
Like Ben from round 1, Sam is another player I wish I could play against commonly.
Some random pics I took during round 4:
The chaos list in this one won best painted army, and I'm pretty sure the opponent is Sam, my round 6 opponent that I didn't get to take a pic of.
As for rankings, my round 5 opponent (tau-dar-
inq) came in 1st, and necrons right behind him in 2nd. A ravenwing guy was in 4th, while Devon's orks from my 2nd round was in 5th.
And lastly, my prize for winning 3rd place overall!
20000+ points
Personal Gallery Links 
Eldar ~ 25,000 pts
Necrons ~ 7,000 pts
Tau 2,500 pts
Shadowkeepers (4000 points)
3rd Company (3000 points) 
~15000 Astra Militarum: 
~1200 | Adeptus Custodes: 
~2000 | Sisters of Battle: 
~3500 | Leagues of Votann: 
~1200 | Tyranids: 
~2600 | Stormcast Eternals: 