I've never taken the Gladiator terribly seriously. It just doesn't seem balanced to me, what with the superheavies and all. So I decided to take a fairly wimpy army and just mess around. I stuck a superheavy of my own in, though. Figure that the main fun factor of this tourney is stomping around with your biggest models, so I definitely ought to take a try at that.
My list:
Pic:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/94061-.html
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/94062-.html
Ol' Zogwort
Mek w/
KFF
10 Shoota Boys w/Trukk w/reinforced ram
10 Shoota Boys w/Trukk w/reinforced ram
10 Shoota Boys w/Trukk w/reinforced ram
3 Meganobz w/Trukk w/reinforced ram
10 Tankbusta boys w/ 2 tankhammers and 3 bomb squigs
10 Flash Gits, one is pain doc
10 Flash Gits, one is pain doc, one is Badrukk
Game #1:
Vs. Eldar
Eldrad
Yriel
Seer council (not mounted on jetbikes, think there was 2 enchance, 2 embolden, 2 Destructor, and a few had speers, not sure of the exact numbers or mix) in Waveserpent
Dire Avengers in Falcon
Dire Avengers in Waveserpent
6 Guardian Jetbikes
Revenant Titan
Mission:
Deployment: The table was cut into thirds longways (opposite of pitched battle). These 2 x 4 sections were his dz, the no man's land, and my dz respectively.
Special rules: One guy on each team has vortex grenade (I chose Badrukk, he chose the warlock in the guardian jetbike unit). Also, the game was entirely night fight save for shooting the enemy's superheavy, which was unrestricted.
Primary:Each round you control the center of the board uncontested you score a number of points equal to that round's #. So, top of first you score one, same for bottom of first. Top of second you score 2, same for bottom. Etc.
Secondary: Control more terrain elements than your opponent
Tertiary:
VP's. You must have 225 more
VP's than your opponent
+2 bonus points if you detonate the vortex in H2H combat
+1 if your enemy has no surviving troops
Deployment: I set up all my guys ready to rush the center. He sets up his guys in the way back, to be protected by night fight. He puts his titan in reserve.
Top 1: I swarm all over the objective.
Bottom 1: He moves up a bit, fortunes Eldrad+Yriel+seer council, also fortunes guardian jetbikes.
Top 2: I move Big Stompy onto objective, continue to take points. Stompy burns down all members of guardian jetbikes except for grenade guy. Night Fight thwarts efforts to kill him though.
Bottom 2: He moves the council (still fortuned) right up on me in their wave serpent. His titan comes on the board and with the aid of the vortex grenade kills Big Stompy. His skimmers move around.
Top 3: Still on the objective, I sent my tankbusters at his skimmer and take it out. I spread out and shoot at his stuff. Mostly just getting out of vehicles (if they get vortexed you lose the squad as well) and spreading out in the face of those 4 D templates per turn. I do kill that warlock though.
Bottom 3: He comes up and really goes to town with his titan. His other two skimmers move up. The Seer council wrecks my tankbusters, a little too hard actually, they shoot them so thoroughly with destructurs that they have nothing left to assault, so they are further back than they'd like.
Top 4: Badrukk lets fly with the vortex grenade, surprising him by firing at his skimmers rather than his titan. It lands between the two and deletes them both, along with his last scoring units. The other Flash Gits Waaagh and rush the Seer council, but he makes some amazing saves (passes 17 out of 17 rerollable 4+'s) and we get run down.
Rest of game: My army runs away in all directions, hiding in night fight and trying not to get tabled.
At game's end I have: A squad of shoota boys, a squad of shoota boys under half, and a trukk. He has his Titan, Eldrad, Yriel, and a Seer council. He's up by like 900 points.
I get primary, we tie secondary (he chased me out of terrain pieces), and he gets tertiary (4 times over, heh). I get the bonus for killing all of his scoring units.
It was a fun game, but mostly only because he played badly. His titan had the firepower to obliterate my entire army (4 D templates per round), but he put it in reserve to keep it's save, despite the fact that I had no way to threaten it.
Game #2:
Enemy player: Grey Knights!
Grey Knight Terminator
HQ w/retinue
10 man guard unit in Chimera
10 man guard unit in Chimera
2 Big grey knight units
Land Raider
Inquisitor w/mystics
Titan w/4 D shots per round.
The mission:
Deployment area: Opposing Triangles
Special Rules: Warp flux. Non-vehicle or non guarguantuan units may teleport and assault, rolling doubles gets you removed from play.
Primary: Push back, you lose if you are closer to your table edge than your foe is to his.
Secondary: Disruption, have more force org categories active than the enemy at the end of the game.
Tertiary: Table quarters.
He goes first. We both deploy up on our lines, as far from the edge as we can get. I'm planning a blitz.
Top 1: He immobilizes two trukks. There goes primary. Bleep you, Adepticon mission guys. He also Drive Damages Big Stompy, and takes out it's flamer.
Bottom 1: I rush him, my only goal now is secondary. I try and port the flash gits, but they mishap and he places them in a corner. Very nice of him, if he'd placed them in front of his mystics he could have just killed them with his titan. My shooting is focused on his mystics + inquisitor. I kill them with big shootas and the like. Big stompy attacks his
LR 8 times and totally fails to hit it.
Top 2: He blazes away. Big Stompy loses his drives alltogether, along with a structure point and his big shootas. He sends his Grey Knight Terminators into a mob of Orks and owns them.
Bottom 2: I
DS again and rush his Terminators with Flash Gits and more Orks. We kill them down to one Terminator left. At the same time my Tankbusters attempt to detonate their trukk with bomb squigs, but it just hits the enemy Land Raider.
Top 3: The terminator gets clear of the fight and tries to get back into the
LR, but can't. He hunts me across the board.
Bottom 3: One of the trukks he doesn't dare to shoot at kills his last terminator. Orks devote themselves fulll time to the business of survival.
At the end of game my remaining forces consist of: Ol'Zogwort (one wound left), 2 Shoota Boys, 2 Flash Gits (found a crevace the Titan couldn't see into). I win secondary, as he only has troops and
HS left. He has more
KP left alive than me, so he gets a bonus, and he gets primary. We draw tertiary. We both redeployed with warp flux, all the dang time.
Game #3:
Mined battlefield: If you move more than 6" in the center, you get a dangerous terrain test.
Stasis Missiles: You get 2 stasis missiles. They are twin linked, small blast. Anything you shoot with them is pinned until the start of your next turn. While pinned in this way it can't be interacted with in any way.
His List:
Eldrad
Farseer
10 Wraithguard w/conceal lock
Seer Council
2 Fire Prisms
2 Dire Avenger squads
1 Striking Scorpion squad
1 Wave serpent for Eldrad and co. to tool around in.
Objectives: Primary,
KP
Secondary: Recon
Tertiary: Kill enemy's least expensive unit
Game:
Top 1: he goes first, races across the board with Eldrad and co. in their wave serpent, pins Big Stompy and a Flash Git squad w/ 2 stasis missiles. He also pops the Meganobs unit with his fire prism, then kills one and they run off the table, with one of my vortex missiles.
Bottom 1: I pin Eldrad's falcon w/Badrukk's missile, then start heading across the table.
Top 2: He continues to move towards me, though his
DA's hold the line and bladestorm Badrukk's unit to little effect.
Bottom 2: Big Stompy crushes Eldrad's wave serpent, tossing it over his shoulder. He also nukes half of the fortuned Wraithguard unit with his big flamer.
Top 3: Eldrad and Co. assault Big Stompy, destroying it (crazy lucky rolls). His firebase attacks Badrukk's unit again, not to much effect.
Bottom 3: All of my Orks rush Eldrad's unit, cause over 40 wounds. He saves all of them. Each and every last one, with his rerollable 4+.
Top 4: Counterattack with striking Scorpions, orks break. Meanwhile Eldar firebase is falling apart under Badrukk's attack.
Rest of game: Lots of shooting that accomplishes little.
Eldar win primary. Secondary is draw. Tertiary is draw (both got this one). He get the bonus for having units near center, neither of us get the one for having destroyed all enemy
HS units.
Last game:
Game #4:
Tunnels. There are 4. Units can deploy from them, but not assault on the round they appear.
Disinformation: You can put one enemy unit into the tunnels, you get to choose where they come out.
Enemy:
Super shooty guard. No superheavy, but all the world's chimeras. There had been a mess up with his scores. He'd tabled his last opponent, but they'd somehow given him the 0 and matched me up with the winner instead of the loser. The judge said that since neither of us was any threat to win, it didn't matter.
Game:
I'd describe this in great detail, but there's very little point. I killed 2 of his chimeras and the
PBS squad that I got to redeploy. He took pity on me and left me with a troop squad on an objective. Basically he just shot me off the table. Real mech orks can give real mech guard a game if they go first. Flash gits, not so much. He got 3/4 of primary and he got secondary and he got tertiary. He also got all the bonus points.
Despite the shellacking I received I had fun in the Gladiator. Crazy stuff, and though he never once made his points back it was a lot of fun to drive around big stompy and burninate things and toss vehicles around. Good times. All of my foes except for round 3 were great guys. If I do this again, however, I'll bring an army that can compete. I was ashamed of my guys by the end of the day.