Monday, January 23, 2012

Battle Reports: Tournament


With the list I posted up earlier, I figured I would do a quick battle report (brief) on the games played. First and foremost, the three players I played were fun to play with. The list of course is what I posted earlier.


The missions were all very balanced, and mostly just standard missions with variable bonus points (ard boyz style). For Knightfalls tournament rules, I suggest heading over there to read them for how they are scored. http://knightfallgames.com/events/warhammer-40k-tournaments/

Round 1 (When Hell Freezes Over)
Ice terrain was great for this one, because it was against daemons. It was a 5 objective game. End results were I controlled 4, he contested 1. The pic above was after 2 rounds of play, with no daemons on the board. His luck was atrocious.

First off, his luck of the random player draw, he got Grey Knights, his armies counter. Not too bad though in reality, however he also heavily weighted his preferred wave. With Fateweaver, 3 daemon princes, a blood thirster, all in it. He did not get it.

First round I took out most of what came down, he did some damage to Mordrak and some purifiers. Here was the kicker though..... Of all the things that came in, two mishapped. One went back into reserves and the other I got to place. His cavalry I placed right into the middle of all my heavy shooting.

Second Round, only one daemon prince arrived. Third round, two units came in, but one scattered a ridiculous distance and went back into reserves. Fourth Round, two daemon princes and a blood thirster came in. (i think there was another mishap back into reserves here as well)

Finally bottom of round 5, everything came in. The game was set for 6 rounds. Fateweaver made a charge, as did whatever else he had available. In the end, 5 purifiers with halberds assaulted fateweaver and killed him in melee from damage. 3+ invul saves with re-rolls. He had 5 wounds to save, and failed 4 of them even with the re-rolls.

Some of the worst luck I've seen.

Game 2
75 Blood Angel Assault Marines with a ton of feel no pain. Annihilation.

Round 2 and 3, he was deepstriking his whole list, so there was no round 1. I lost Mordrak and two full squads of purifiers (-1 purifier who ended up killing a librarian at the end of the round and then died), and his losses were able to be counted model wise on one hand. 25 dead with no real response, and I was pinned into a corner.

Bottom of round 3, At this point I was looking at being tabled, it looked bad. My shooting was so ineffective when he just could not miss a feel no pain roll. Over half my guys dead, I needed a desperate round. I charge out from the buildings I was holed up in, and counter assaulted in all different directions.

Things that made a difference are my assaults went off well, and besides his librarians with S10 force weapons, all he had was krak grenades, besides 1 melta I think. So two full units were stopped dead in their tracks  by Dreadoughts assaulting into them. Two other units were assaulted with my last two purifier squads, and I quickly down two other units.

Of the two librarians, a single purifier was able swing twice at him with a halberd, and deliver the two wounds needed to kill the librarian (lucky), and the other my venerable hit him pretty hard. He missed his attacks back.

Next thing I know after those battles cleared, there were not many Blood angels around and we were moving into round 5 and 6. It was just clean up after that.

I ended up losing all my purifiers in this game, but had his only full squad stuck in combat vs a dreadnought they were not able to kill. I really cannot remember if his single man squad, or his two man squad survived the game I think they did not, but it didnt matter. I had lost 4 units of purifiers, Mordrak and ghost knights. So only lost 5 kill points, but had managed to score at least 10 in return.

Game 3
Played against a Vulkan list with 2 full bike squads, two Land Raiders (crusader and a redeemer), two terminator assault squads, and some razorbacks. Capture and Control in Dawn of War deployment.

Mordrak fought like a champion in this game. He ripped hard into two bike squads that had tried to melta them to death. Vulkan finished them off, but a lot of damage was done.

Land Raiders were stopped dead in their tracks by psycannon fire. The crusader (smoked) went down in bottom of round 1 to a single squad of purifier shots. The redeemer hung back after that, but the first time it came forward into range, another single squad of purifiers took it out.  A little lucky as I was thinking these were going to be a pain.

It took me until round 4 or 5 to fully realize he had a captain on a bike with his flanking bike squads. I was taking a beating and lost a full unit of purifiers and most of a second squad to focused bike shooting and some assault. Crowe assaulted 5 of the combat squadded bikes, and using cleansing flame and blade shield every turn, was able take them down, and chase them off of the board.

There was not much left at the end of this one, and I had both his and my objectives.

Overall, I was clinging to cover, so his meltas never really had a chance to maximize their effectiveness. Great Opponent, his army really just played into mine on the tabletop. It was his first game vs Grey Knights.

Tournament
All three players were good opponents. My biggest failures, which I need to improve on, was not recognizing independent characters attached to units during the game. The 3 Sang Priests vs Blood Angels, and the captain on the bike against the Vulkan list. That cost me some unneeded purifier losses in both games.