Well I played in my first tournament yesterday, 1850 pts. Only 6 people, and we did 3 games.
I was sporting Vanilla Marines, a pretty versatile list, that matches closely to what I placed in the Army list section. My opponents where Deathwing Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and Eldar.
I played the first battle against the Dark Angels on a take and hold mission. First time I played against a nothing but terminator army, and I've got to admit they suck. Of 6 five man squads I only managed to destroy one, and knock two others to half points. Lost the battle giving him a solid victory, but would have been a draw had my deepstriking terminators not teleported into the center of one of his squads, instantly killing them.
The next one against the Space Wolves just went from bad to worse... A secure and control mission with 5 loot counters. One of his scout squads chased a tactical squad, and my command squad off the table, then destroyed a predator annihilator all within 2 turns. Not to mention the first two turns I managed to roll more 1's then everything else combined (except when I was making leadership tests) In the end, I had my terminator squad, my scout squad, and 1 devestator marine left on the table, and had secured one loot counter while he had secured 3. The only thing that really went my way was that when his command squad destroyed my other predator, the resulting explosions killed 3 of the 4 marines, and wounded his commander.
Luckily the next battle went much better. Table Quarters, against the Eldar. He had 3 Wave Serpants, a Wraithlord, a Falcon, 3 Shadow Weavers, 2 Farseers on jet bikes, a gaurdian squad with a starcannon and a warlock, and 2 dire avenger squads and a howling banshee squad in his Wave Serpants. I got first turn, and my snipers and a crack missile managed to take out his Wraithlord, and a Predator took out a Shadow Weaver. In retaliation, he took out my dreadnaught and killed a devestator marine. From then on it was just a slaughter on my part. Turn two, my Terminators, Captain, and Assualt Squad deepstriked in. His guardians, and shadow weavers where effectively wiped out, with the assualt squad tying up one of the farseers (took 3 turns to take him out, with his toughness 5 and fortune). I then managed to destroy the wave serpant with the howling banshees, killing all but 1, as well as destroying the other that had a squad of dire avengers, killing 6 of the 10. The other wave serpant, and falcon I managed to destroy all of their weapons, making them pretty much useless. In the end, I had 1 table quarter, contested two others, and was 1 inch from a 2nd quarter, but we had to call the game a round early. Had we had that last round I probably could have pulled a Victorius Slaughter.
In the end I came in last by 1 point. Which kind of pisses me off. Because the nid player there has lost two games (his opponents getting victorius slaughters both times) and got a draw the 3rd time, while I actually managed to get a crushing victory. The space wolf player rated me really badly though (I did lose some big points on generalship there, cause I made some real bonehead decisions, but should have gotten more then 9 pts that game...).
All in all I'm pretty pleased with the way I played. The list held it's own, even though I lost two of the games. Both of those losses can easily be attributed to really bad luck (the dead termies, and crapload of ones). I learned the value of sniper squads, since all 3 games, they more then made up for double their points, even single handedly wiping out a terminator squad in the first game (while being targeted by 2 cyclone missile launchers, 3 storm bolters, and 2 assualt cannons the entire game).
