Comics Mart Midvalley WH40k Mini-Mayhem Tournament!

I've just come back from a teeny tiny tourney. Really teeny tiny. 12 players, each with 750pt armies, playing on 3' x 4' boards. Each player plays 3 games against 3 other randomly determined players, with randomly determined missions drawn from the warped imagination of the organizer.

Here's the list I took:

HQ
Librarian with Shield of Sanguinius and Fear of the Darkness

Troops
5 man Assault Squad in a Razorback
- 1 meltagun
- Sgt has a powerfist
- Razorback has Lascannon and Twin-linked Plasmagun

5 man Assault Squad in a Razorback
- 1 meltagun
- Razorback has Lascannon and Twin-linked Plasmagun

5 man Assault Squad in a Razorback
- 1 flamer
- Razorback has Lascannon and Twin-linked Plasmagun

Heavy Support
Predator with Lascannon sponsons

And that's a total of 750pts on the nose.

How'd I do, well...

Game 1 - Vs Tau (CK)
Enemy list:
HQ
Shas'o with 2 shield drones, plasma rifle, missile pod and shield generator

Elites
3 Crisis suits, 3 with missle pods, then 1 fusion blaster, 1 plasma rifle and 1 with another missile pod, 2 shield drones, and something else I don't remember.

Troops
2 squads of 12 Firewarriors with photon grenades

Heavy Support
Broadside with multi-tracker

Mission - Wipe out the opposing player's Troops choices.

I moved first.

This game was a bit silly. I clumped my armour together, keeping my Librarian in a Razorback behind the other 2 Razorback. The terrain was pretty open, so I planned to slowly advance, using my lascannon to blast away the Shas'O and the Broadside he had attached himself to, then shred the Firewarriors at my leisure. My opponent opted to keep his Firewarriors back and close to his board edge, one squad on each flank, then intended to pounce when I got close. Things went pretty differently for both of us...

Turn one, I killed nothing but a blasted shield drone. He blew up a Razorback. 2 marines died in the explosion.

Turn two, I killed sodall. He blew up a Razorback. The Librarian's Razorback is still unscathed.

Turn three, I killed buggerall (I hate shield drones!!!). The Crisis Suits deep strike, and scatter right next to the now-footslogging and fairly angry Assault marines plodding behind my Librarian's Razorback. They blast away, but the cover afforded by the craters that used to be my Razorbacks meant only 1 marine got killed.

Turn four, the squad with the Librarian detaches, disembarks and all 3 Assault squads proceed to brutally maul the Crisis Suits. One survives and jetpacks away. Meanwhile, the Librarian darts forward in his Razorback, hops out (keeping out of sight of that wretched Broadside) and casts Fear of the Darkness on one squad of Firewarriors on my left. They run off the board. My some miracle, the Razorback survives the shooting from the retreating Crisis Suit, the Shas'O, the Broadside, and the remaining Firewarriors.

Turn five, the Librarian steps out from behind the Razorback, then casts Fear of the Darkness on the other squad of Firewarriors. They run off the board. The game is mine!


Game 2 - Vs Chaos Marines (Mark)
The enemy:
HQ
Daemon Prince with wings

Elites
Chaos Dreadnought with 2 close combat weapons

Troops
10 Plague Marines with 2 meltaguns and a champion with combimelta and power fist.

Heavy Support
1 Chaos Land Raider

Mission - a King of the Hill style game with a point awarded each turn to the player with a Troops choice within 3" of an objective in the center of the board. Also, if any player has lost all his Troops choices, on a die roll of 4+ at the beginning of his turn, he automatically loses.

Chaos moved first.

With a game like this, his plan was obvious: move the Land Raider up, then park his plague ridden hide on the objective, which happened to be sitting in the middle of a crater, commonly considered area terrain in this particular FLGS. He deployed his Raider in the open, right in the middle, with the Prince and Dreadnought hiding behind it.

Turn one, I got obscenely lucky, stole the initiave and immobilized his Land Raider in a volley of Lascannon fire! From then onwards, I whittled away at his Plague marines with my tanks, wiping them out. He then lost due to the No Troops Autolose on a 4+ rule, which is just as well, because his Prince was busily chewing up my Troops choices... Still, victory to me!


Game 3 - Vs Vanilla Marines (Marcus)
The enemy:
HQ
Captain on a Bike with lotsa bells and whistles

Troops
2 full Bike Squads with all the melta that could be fit, with Powerfists on the Seargents for good measure

Fast Attack
Land Speeder Typhoon

Mission - Each player has an objective marker with 3 wounds and some other stats to make it fairly durable. The idea is to kill the opponent's objective marker, which could only be done in close combat. Each player could only deploy his marker 6" away or less from his table edge.

Biker horde got the first turn.

This game I got absolutely shredded. I clumped my armour together as usual, on my right, then left the objective about 6" to the left and the plan was to focus all my gunishment on one squad, then the other. What actually happened...

Both squads of bikers turbo boosted forward, one squad down each flank. My army encircled one group, disembarked, and fired every gun I had at my disposal... And caused nothing. 1 wound on a bemused Attack Bike and that was it. That was an obscene number of cover saves to make! That squad tied up my army in assault, the other assaulted my objective and that was that. Ah, well...

Looking back, though, I don't think there was much I could have done against an army like that, especially not on a 3' x 4' board and not with an army like mine. I was mildly vexed by the profound lack of decent carnage this game, but hey, a mission's a mission, eh?

And that's how my day went. On a side note, during the 2nd game of the day, I spotted the biker army not having quite so much fun against some Tyranids (which later went on to win the tourney):

The Emperor can only protect so many times, Brother Captain...

And that's that. Heap big thanks to Comics Mart for organizing this, much fun was had by all... except maybe for this poor devil with this really nice Tau army who apparently got so badly mauled in the first 2 games he didn't stick around for the 3rd...

Anyway, there's work to be done! Until next time...

A New Codex Looms: Necrons!

Saw this thread and I'm now fairly excited! Seriously, this is so awesome! I've been eyeballing the Necrons for ages and always had a soft spot for the fluff, but never got into them, mostly because the 4th Ed codex is rubbish, there're too many metal models (yuck!) and nothing about actually playing them as an army actually appealed to me. Now this!

Lotsa new models (PLASTICS!!! YEEEAAAAHH!!!) lotsa new rules and from the look of the rumours, the new Necrons will be playable as a horde army, which is absolutely up my alley. Looks like I've a lovely new project for 2012...

In other news, I've just sent off an order for some Blood Angel-y goodness. Am looking to complete 1750pts of all-jump goodness, then try out another list using an Assault Terminator death star. As such, my gaming expenditure will be on hold for a couple of months...

Some battle updates

Not quite batreps but just keeping track of some recent scraps my armies have had.

Chaos Space Marines

I've been using this army list quite a bit with, predictably, limited success. The thing is I've thrown this army together with models I just like using, and I generally refuse to touch two of the Ruinous Powers, that is, Slaanesh (because I don't like the daemonette models) and Nurgle (because they're disgustin'). The last 3 games I've had with them can be summarised as follows:

Vs Tau - Capture and Control, Pitched Battle. My Chaos army's first proper (if partially painted) outing. Vindicator and Defiler got blatted in the 2nd turn, but amazingly enough, the bikers picked up the slack, tearing across the board and smashing every Crisis and Broadside suit within reach. Daemon Prince turned up in turn 4, but was shredded my massed pulse rifle fire before he could do anything. The game ended as a draw.

Vs Mechanized Imperial Guard - Capture and Control, Dawn of War. Vindicator made itself useful, blowing up a Leman Russ Executioner with it's first shot. The bikers, however, were wiped out by the obscene firepower of Knight Commander Pask leading a squadron of 2 heavily kitted-out Leman Russ Exterminators. That squadron proceed to shred anything Pask laid his eyes on with near impunity, including the Daemon Prince, who failed EVERY reserve roll by 1 pip, then turned up on turn 5 to get obliterated by Pask. The game ended on Turn 5 as a draw, though I could quite easily have been wiped off the table during turn 6. I had one squad of Chaos Marines left on the board and nothing else, he had more than half his army.

Vs Blood Angels - Capture and Control, Dawn of War. Played against a list with 2 death star units each riding in a Stormraven, Assault Terminators in one, Death Company and a Furioso Dreadnought in the other. The Furioso Dread stomped around with Blood Talons, wiping out both my units of Chaos Space Marines, the Sanguinor killed all my Khorne Berzerkers. Oh, and for the first time in 4 games, the Chaos Biker Lord stabbed himself with his daemon weapon. He was obviously making up for lost time, because he did so twice. Game ended with the total annihilation of my army on Turn 6.

What have I learnt from this? Not much that I wasn't previously aware of, truth be told. I know my unit of Bikers is the same as throwing 500pts into, at best, a liability, or at worst, a hole. I'd like to keep them, but man, at 33pts each, they are horrifically overcosted. I'll be putting the Chaos aside for a while to work on the Angels, but I'm well aware that if I want to win games, the bikers simply have to go. On the upside, I've now got a perfectly reasonable 1250pt list. Maybe the next time the Chaos Marine codex is updated, eh?

Blood Angels

I tried using a Descent of Angels list for the first time today, albeit a teeny tiny one, at 750pts:

750pts of DoA army really doesn't look like much...

HQ
Librarian with Jump pack, meltabombs, Shield of Sanguinius and Unleash Rage, 130 pts

Elites
2 Sanguinary Priests with jump packs, 150pts

Troops
2 10-man squads of Assault Marines, each with 2 meltaguns and a powerfist for the Sgt, 470pts

750pts on the nose, 100% WYSIWYG and mostly painted. :-)

I played them against Tau, Capture and Control, Dawn of War. Just played today, so I remember taking on a Shas'O with 2 shield drones, a squad of 3 Crisis Suits with twin-linked Missile Pods, 2 squads of 10 Firewarriors and 8 Pathfinders with their Devilfish.

I kept things simple, this being a small engagement on a small (3' x 4') board, with one priest attached to each 10-man squad and the Librarian attached to one of these identical squads. The whole army was in reserve, and I intended to drop in, maul anything on his objective then, if necessary, hop away back to my objective. What actually happened was:

Turn 1 - The Tau started first and shuffled onto the board and that was it.

Turn 2 - The Tau Crisis suits scooched closer to my objective, the Pathfinders, 1 squad of Firewarriors and the Shas'O camped around theirs. The Angels did not arrive.

Turn 3 - More Tau shufflin' about, the Tau not parked on their objective plod closer to mine. The Assault Marines without the Librarian arrive, shoot the Devilfish in the rear and immobilize it.

Turn 4 - The Pathfinders put 5 markerlights on the Assault Marines and the rest of the Tau army proceed to maul it with everything they have. The thing is, without any Railguns, Fusion Blasters or Plasmarifles, 750pts worth of Tau firepower inflicted only 4 casualties on the marines. The Librarian's squad arrived, then the first squad multi-charged the pathfinders and a squad of Firewarriors, wiping out the Pathfinders and grinding away some Firewarriors.

Turn 5 - The Tau shoot the Librarian's squad, killing 1. After my assault phase, in which the Librarian's squad multicharged the Shas'O and the remaining Firewarrior squad, we decided to call it a day, as the only Tau units left were a wounded Shas'O and 2 Firewarriors, both locked in combat, 3 Crisis Suits and the Devilfish.

This was quite an education as to the sheer staying power granted by Feel No Pain. That having been said, the Tau army didn't have a single weapon to negate FNP, so that can't have been fun for my opponent...

Anyway, no really deep thoughts for now. No time, there's work that needs doing. Maybe later...