Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:Two things- you have a wicked cool army concept that looks great, and you've gained a lot of experience with deployment and composition.
Here's one of my favorite quotes:
"The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom."
George S. Patton
Deployment and list writing I have found is a very large part of your game. Do it wrong and you wont recover, do it right and you just might win.
As for the Patton quote, I think I did bounce back sort of, I could have done better, had a better list, but these are now big mistakes I hopefully wont make again.
Had an amazing weekend at a tournament on the other side of the city down here in Melbourne.
Ended up 7th out of 28, not a big turn out, but surely it will grow from here on in. I grabbed as many photos as I could remember too, my game that was
before the set-up for army judging was neck and neck so we ran another turn and I didn't get photos of many of the other armies so unfortunately all the
photos are of my army. But I'm okay with this
First game I wound up somehow against a double stormraven, double dreadknight list, and I got completely stomped, by the end of it I was barely hanging on
and killed nothing of value besides the ravens, which took an entire army to drown out. Managed two wounds on the knights in the entire game despite a
million shots, he picked his targets well though, knew what posed a threat and nullified it. But that's the ease you get given when you play an army like
that ey?
Another view.
2nd.
Storm ravens make it in and unleash a very literal hell. Penning the manticore about 5 times over.
Second game was interesting, played against a dark angel with guard allies, I was confident with this one and lost it in the end because of last turn
stupid moves. So disappointed in myself, ha.
Is that a Vendetta guys?
... Oh crap it is!
Deploy counter-vendetta!
The enemy vendetta took about 6 autocannons worth of firepower (that just happened to hit 9/12 on 6's anyway) and pushed on, so I had to use the vendetta
instead of on other targets.
At this point I was feeling pretty down on myself, losing the first game was a given, but this one I had in the bag, had him down to 6 models, 4 of which
were marines and 1 terminator and a predator that I had ignored all game.
2 of my close mates that went up with me were having bad luck (our lists weren't even a tiny bit hardness) so I ended up having the joy of playing one of
them in the third round. He plays a horde chaos marines army... made of chaos marines.
Roughly 65 marines!
Running Huron as he does, he infiltrated 2 squads of marines closer to me than I wished he could, and also a squad of obliterators walked up with the army
(but proved themselves less than useful).
I panicked, as any death-fearing guardsman commander would, and opened fire on Hurons large squad, downing them to 5 marines from 15 which was good, but
assault wasn't far away...
HOLD THE LINE! LOVE ISN'T ALWAYS ON TIME
These two shots I just had to take, find it fun sometimes when a squad of ratlings gets passed by an entire chaos marine army and they don't take the time
to even shoot them.
PEWPEW
Did he see us?
Eventually he hit my lines... HARD. And all at once. I was actually really worried at this stage. Seriously worried.
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"This was it." I thought as I watched him slay through the squads he charged. Usually I let the guardsmen take the hits and fall under the chainaxes then
during my next phase open fire. But I was not feeling I had the firepower to drown him out at this point.
Another shot.
And one more.
Last one. I promise.
The smoke cleared, and I found myself with renewed hope once the lasguns fell silent briefly.
The guardsmen had done it! Smashing down the chaos marines! But they weren't finished...
Another turn resulted in only a handful of chaos marines left inside my deployment, on the verge of breaking but the game ended that same turn.
We drew in victory points, as I stupidly forgot to run my guardsmen towards the only objective in range (like 1 inch from claiming) and we scored the same
secondary and other points.
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Imperial fists was next!
Being that they are my actual favourite imperial chapter, I took a lot of photos. I needed this win because I had imperial fist heads for trophies on my bases/vehicles/objectives.
After my first turn, I managed to knock out the thunderfire cannon, which I desperately needed. I honestly thought that the worst was over when it died...
Then this happened...
WE CAME HERE
TO PARTY!
So this big yellow space jerk hops out and tries to ruin my day.
Another shot of the arrival.
A sniper tries to take aim at the heavy weapon teams and fails. Going to ground is the greatest thing since the heresy.
The terminators fly out of the land raider and proceed to turn a heavy weapon team inside out, then cop the most ridiculous amount of fire power ever. (literally 9/10ths of my army in their face) but this guy knows how to pass a 2+ and 3+ like a legend and shrugs off a lot more of them than he should have.
Illysander (sp?) and his squad cops lasguns, flamers, heavy flamers, laspistols, a meltagun and plasma guns and he still stands strong with his right-hand sargeant by his side.
Illysander at this point becomes annoying, not for his offensive power, but the fact he is denying me two kills points by being alive on his last wound, and when I thought things couldn't be more inconvenient...
A land speeder drops into a crowded platoon of guardsmen
I moved my guardsmen as far as I could from the speeder, while still being in rapid fire for the yellow jerk, and fired almost everything AGAIN at him. He passed everything, every 3++ and every 2+ I could muster. When I had enough I shot the hydras at him in a desperately pathetic attempt to claim the points...
And he finally rolls a 1 and loses the last wound!
The missile launcher team clean up the land speeder (which destroyed my manticore, and subsequently exploded, killing 8 or so guardsmen from varying squads.)
The last terminator from the shield/hammer squad again takes the brunt of a full turns shooting and survives, he clobbers the last command squad I have then consolidates onto my objective, blocking me from having it. Imperial fists win! But a close and amazing game.
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We had to set up our armies next for veiwing for best painted. Had a lot of people come over and comment on the army which is good, and also shocked at the number of heavy weapons and guardsmen I managed to scrounge up ha.
The last game was an interesting one, against a list I didn't feel even remotely threatened by but it proved to be one of the most hilariously fail games on both sides I have had in a while, and doubled up with the fact we were in a tournament, it was almost too silly.
Basic gunline style again (didn't get any real photos, sorry). He hit me hard front on and the first few turns were rough on my numbers, then as always I started to thin him out and thats when stuff gets better. Eventually it came down to him having only two obliterators left holding his objective, and I held my two so my first tournament victory!
The flying stand represents his sorceror on a tzeetnch disk or whatever the wargear is. He was a beast in combat, as was his khorne lord (but I dealt with him fairly quick), but rushed up into a squad of guard, missed all his hits, I failed to hit him back, and this exact same style continued on for 3 turns of combat, when he did hit me on the 4th turn he failed to wound while my guardsmen frantically tried to bayonet him off his high disk-horse.
He also rammed his rhino full 12" into my scout sentinel that was left, not touching the sentinel but in return the sentinel took a hull point off in a hilarious turn around.
While all this ridiculousness was happening however, his heldrake was DECIMATING every heavy weapon team I had (360 degree torrent st6 flamer is.. just wow.) so in the end I had a handful of scraggly guard but did end up winning which is what really counts.
I think that's enough on my tournament experience for this year though, but a few things I think I really learned hard are...
1. Hydras are kind sucky, I will/would much rather extra heavy weapons with re-rolls or even a quad gun.
2. Vendetta with a squad of veterans did jack every single game, except where it finished off an enemy vendetta.
3. Play for the objectives, not for kills!
Too much overcommitment to capturing an objective cost me one game. Forgetting the objective cost me another.
For anyone that bothered to read any of this, thanks. I'll be trying to get back to hobbying after a much needed break and relaxation period.
The Black Hand
The Dark Gods of Modeling deem you worthy and accept your sacrifice. 
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