I actually attended this tournament a
couple of weekends ago, but between one thing and another it's taken
me this long to actually get everything down in text. It was a
really fun weekend, and marks my new personal best in terms of
overall placement. Which, of course, only means I need to try even
harder next time, in order to surpass myself. That bar's not going
to get any lower, at least if I have anything to say about it!
Round 1: Mitch Breton (Black Templars)
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary Objective: Capture and Control
Secondary Objective: Marked Man
(nominate one model in your army; the enemy gets the Secondary if
they kill that model)
Castellan w/Lightning Claw, Storm
Shield, Artificier Armour
Emperor's Champion w/Accept Any
Challenge, No Matter the Odds
Grimaldus
5 x Assault Terminators
5 x Assault Terminators
6 x Sword Brethren w/Terminator
Honours, Lightning Claws, Power Weapon, Frag Grenades
9 x Crusaders w/Power Weapon, Meltagun,
Drop Pod
10 x Crusaders w/Power Weapon,
Meltagun, Drop Pod
Land Raider Crusader
Land Raider Crusader
So, on the one hand, it's a list full
of Land Raiders and drop-pod melta; on the other hand, it's a
predominantly close-range list with very little ranged firepower.
Pros and cons.
Mitch won the roll-off, and elected to
go first, which was fine by me; no Tau player worth his salts wants
to go first in Dawn of War. He reserved his two Crusader squads,
loaded the Assault Terminators into the Land Raiders and drove them
onto the board on my right flank, and had the Emperor's Champion,
Castellan and Grimaldus join up with the Sword Brethren, hanging out
behind the two tanks on the right. In response, I went for a
moderately refused flank. I sent my AFP commander, a squad of
Fireknives, two XV88s and a Devilfish up on the right, while
everything else walked or cruised onto the left hand side of the
board. I hoped to use the longer range of my guns to soften him up,
while forcing him to deal with a bit of serious firepower close in,
so he couldn't just charge off blindly across the board.
And brother, did it work.
For once, the Land Raiders did not
prove the invulnerable railgun-magnets they so usually are; the first
one went down first turn, thanks to the low Night Fight rolls needed
by the XV88 squad on the right flank (another reason they were
there), and the second one followed after the very next turn. Both
Land Raiders gone, and both Terminator squads stuck slogging across
the board. In response, Mitch's drop pods deployed the nine-strong
Crusader squad right smack-dab into my lines, but thankfully his
melta gunner was having an off day, as he failed to draw a bead on
the Hammerhead sitting right in front of him. He held the second
Crusader drop pod bad, landing it on his own objective, while the
first squad rampaged through my lines; by the time they were finally
brought down, they'd slaughtered the Firewarriors on the objective,
the Pathfinders, and torn the railgun from my Hammerhead. Their
rampage almost ended up costing me dearly, as my other Firewarriors
were so thoroughly out of position that it took me clear until Turn
4, and a bit of fancy manoeuvring with a couple of Devilfish, to put
a squad back on the objective. Close, but not close enough!
But since both of us had thoroughly
protected our 'Marked Men' (he by nominating Grimaldus and hiding him
in that squad, me by nominating one of the three Deathrains and just
having them hang well back of anything that could threaten them), if
I wanted a win, I'd have to do something about his own objective.
Sadly, attempts to charge up on it met with failure, as some very
favourable rolls let him shoot down my Piranha and, contrary to what
I'd thought, it turned out the Terminators were close enough to
charge a Devilfish I'd sent in there to try and tank shock onto the
objective. With no way to get close enough to contest, it all came
down to shooting, and the shooting all came down to the wire. Man by
man I whittled away at his Crusaders until, with literally the last
gunshot in the last turn we'd have time for, the very last Marine
died. Victory for the Tau Empire!
Result: Major Victory
Round 2: Kyle Beveridge (Dark Eldar)
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Annihilation
Secondary Objective: Forward March (+1
point for each of your Troops in the enemy's deployment zone, -1
point for each of your Troops in your deployment zone)
Asdrubael Vect
3 x Ravagers w/3 x Dark Lances, Night
Field, Flickerfield
Venom w/2 x Splinter Cannon, Night
Field, Flickerfield
2 x Raiders w/Dark Lance, Night Field,
Flickerfield
2 x Haemonculus w/Hexrifle
4 x Trueborn w/4 x Blaster
20 x Warriors w/2 x Splinter Cannon
20 x Warriors w/2 x Splinter Cannon
10 x Warriors w/Sergeant, Splinter
Cannon
9 x Wytches w/Hekatrix, Shard Net &
Impaler, Haywire Grenades, Phantasm Grenades, Agonizer
9 x Jetbikes w/3 x Blasters
This was my first fight with Dark
Eldar, and man was it fun! Unlike entirely too many brick-like
Marine builds, the Dark Eldar were so shooty, and so fragile, that
the fight was always completely up for grabs. That's the kind of
uncertainty that makes for a great game!
I knew Dark Eldar were fast, but I
admit, I wasn't prepared for how good their shooting can be! On the
first turn I lost a Devilfish and my Hammerhead to all those Lances,
the latter a serious blow indeed given how tailor-made the S6 AP4
large blast submunition is for dealing with the T3 Dark Eldar's
FNP-boasting troops. Ah well; nothing for it but to soldier on. And
despite the viciousness of that particular loss, I was far from out
of the game. At the start of his turn one, Kyle had 3 Ravagers, 2
Raiders, a Venom, 9 jetbikes and 9 Wytches; by the end of my turn
one, he had no Ravagers, a Raider, a Venom, no jetbikes, and 4
Wytches, thanks to a hilariously bloody-minded scatter roll on my AFP
(though, I have since been informed that blast weapons can't scatter
past their maximum range, which this did; it wouldn't have changed
much, but it would've been less hilarious). Glass cannons, those
Dark Eldar.
Unfortunately, I pretty much suicided
my entire right flank, with some terrible movement. Forgetting the
Dark Eldar are Fleet I left my AFP commander close to the Wytches and
Vect, with the intention of catching them once more with the Dark
Eldar-killing large blast; unfortunately, he was too close, and never
got the chance. With him dead, I then let a Fireknife squad fall
back too close to an XV88 pair, allowing Kyle to multi-assault the
pair of them into the ground. Three kill points off those Wytches
and Vect, alone! Things went better on the left, with my other XV88s
dealing with the last Raider and then using their SMS on the
survivors, while my Piranha got clear up into the Venom's personal
space to use its fusion blaster through that most annoying '+6"
to shoot at them' field. Of course, the Piranha then went down in a
hail of blaster fire from the surviving Trueborns, so possibly it
wasn't the best tradeoff. Still, I'd managed to shoot down every
vehicle Kyle had, while retaining two of my own Devilfish full of
troops, which made me pretty confident.
Which is probably why I lost my dang
mind. On Turn 4, with both Devilfish safely on Kyle's side of the
line, I opted to disembark one of my squads and fire into the
Warriors advancing onto my side. The Firewarriors were within rapid
fire range, I rationalized, with nice clear cover-free sightlines and
their AP5 guns meant no armour saves. And if I could break the
Warriors, Kyle would only have one squad on my side and one on his,
giving me the minor. Of course, those of you more experienced at
fighting these particular xenos than I will notice I forgot two key
things; pain tokens give FNP, and pain tokens give Fearless. I
actually managed to kill a good six Warriors with my Firewarriors,
but their return fire cost me the squad when it broke, and was too
close to the surviving Warriors to rally in Turn 5. What's worse, it
turned out the other Warrior squad wasn't even halfway over the line,
meaning it counted as being on Kyle's side; I could've had the minor
with no effort on my part. All my actions had served to do was cost
me those easy points, which I needed since despite slaughtering much
of Kyle's army he was still two kill points up on me when it ended.
Well, live and learn.
Result: Major Loss
Round 3: Dalton Nash (Eldar)
Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Seize Ground
Primary Objective: Seize Ground
Secondary Objective: Kill Points
Avatar
Farseer
20 x Dire Avengers
17 Guardians w/Warlock
Falcon
10 x Howling Banshees w/Wave Serpent
6 x Fire Dragons w/Wave Serpent
4 x Dark Reapers
Wraithlord
The terrain on this last table was a
little unbalanced, which Dalton took full advantage of when he won
the roll-off. While I got a bit of ruin, he got a lot of ruin,
spread out on either side of a forest section. There was so much
cover there that he had room for the Guardians, the Dire Avengers,
the Farseer, the Wraithlord, the Dark Reapers and the Wraithlord, all
of them nicely protected by cover from my return fire. I, meanwhile,
used the tried and true Tau tactic of hiding my suits behind my
Devilfish, and hoped for the best.
Unfortunately, the best was not what
the dice had in mind. Hampered by the Eldar's ability to reduce my
railguns to S8, while at the same time reducing my Hammerhead's front
armour to AV12 for their own shooting, I struggled to put down those
three tanks, while they blasted my Hammerhead to smithereens first
turn and claimed one of my Devilfish. When I eventually did remove
the transports all that happened was that the Fire Dragons and
Howling Banshees inside started charging and shooting through my
lines, costing my a Fireknife squad, an XV88 squad and my
Pathfinders. In response I opened up on those units with most of my
short-range firepower, but the Banshees had cover from their exploded
Wave Serpent's crater the first round of shooting, while the Fire
Dragons were on the other side of my own cover, instant death-ing my
battlesuits and passing their own cover saves with relative impunity.
Things only got worse when his Avatar came on from reserves and
crashed into my rear lines, though in my defence Dalton had been
remarkably unclear about leaving that thing in reserves; he hadn't
even had an army list, so I could know it was coming! He'd made some
sort of weird joke, but he was constantly making weird jokes about
things that weren't true. Well, just goes to show how important it
is to ask for a rundown of the opponents army!
Anyway. The Avatar actually caused
relatively little damage, taking out my plasma-armed 'el and his
bodyguard, and nearly dying to mass pulse rifle fire. The real
problem, though, was that he was able to walk up and onto my
objective, contesting it from the Firewarriors hanging on for dear
life against the stubbornly-surviving Fire Dragons, while I had
nothing that could do the same to Dalton's objective. And of course,
the Minor Objective was always going to be a disaster, since Tau
really couldn't be worse suited for Kill Points missions if they'd
been specifically designed for them. Ultimately, Dalton had most of
his army sitting in cover around his objective, while just a few of
his units had torn through my own lines, costing me vehicles,
battlesuits, and worst of all, the objective. The game was a
consummate disaster, from start to finish.
Result: Major Loss
Overall Result: 13th of 18
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