Monday, May 23, 2011

Battle for Salvation 2000 point RTT

So the world didn’t end on 5/21/11 and I got in a great day of tournament play to boot.  Not a bad weekend if I say so myself.  I traveled to White Plains with 2 of my good friends to attend Battle for Salvations spring RTT event.  BFS is a pretty well known gaming club (home to such “internet celebs” as Jawaballs, Fritz, Danny Internets, and Black Matt.), and they always do a great job putting on an event (this is the third event of theirs that I have attended).  All the tables looked great, the terrain was beautiful and well balanced from table to table, the tourney was well organized, and everyone was extremely friendly.  It was a decent sized tourney (28 players after some no shows.) with some very competitive players, and “hard” lists.  Going from memory I would put the army breakdown as follows.

5 Deathwing Players(Including Black Matt, and Alex Fennel)
At least 5 Guard Players (maybe more)
3 or 4 each of Wolves and Blood Angels
1 Tyranid Player (Fritz)
An Ork Kan wall list
4 Grey Knight armies
2 or 3 Dark Eldar Lists
1-2 Codex Marines (Including myself)
3 Chaos Marine lists

I could be off here or there but that is as best as I can remember.  The missions were “NOVA Style” missions, but used battle points due to the length of the tournament. The main objective in each mission was worth 10 points for a major victory, 7 for a minor victory or 5 for a draw (minor loss was 3), then the 3 other objectives in each mission were worth 1 bonus point each, so there was a maximum of 13 points for each round.  The top spot went to a Grey Knight player (who I think go max points in all 3 missions) Playing a Cotaez list (though only 2 henchman squads).  Anyway onto my list…

Codex Space Marines 2000 points

HQ
Space Marine Captain 195
(Bike, Storm Shield, Relic Blade, Artificer Armor)

Elites
3 x Dreadnought with TL Auto Cannons 375

Troops
8 bikes + Multimelta Attack Bike (2 Plasmaguns, Powerfist 320

4 x 4 Bikes + Multimelta Attack bike (2 melta guns) 740

1 x 5 Scouts (Cammo Cloaks, Missile launcher) 100

Fast Attack

3 x Land Speeder (Typhoon Missile Launcher + Heavy Bolter) 270

The idea behind this list was to try to stay away from the opponent and shoot, then move in and strike with bike squads against weakened units.  I felt that this list had a good mix of mid range fire power, long range firepower, as well as low AP weaponry.  After the tourney I can see a few tweaks I might make, but overall the list performed well as I ended up with 2 wins and 1 loss despite some of the worst dice I have had in a long while.

Game 1: Mission: Annihilation, Deployment: Dawn of War.

My first game was against Fritz, and his Tyranid list, which was kind of scary as it was not a list my army was really built to fight, but I figured I could hold my own.

His list

3 x Tervigon (1HQ, 2 Troops) with Catalyst, Adrenal Glands, and Toxin Sacs
2 x 10 Termaguants
3 x Hive Guard
3 x Venomthropes
3 x Trygon with Adreanal Glands
10x Genestealers
10 x Ymgarl Stealers

I’m not sure about the #s on the stealers but otherwise that was his list.

He won the roll off and elected to take turn 1.  He deployed his 3 Tervigons spread out along the centerline of the table, decided to Outflank his stealers, and deep strike with his Trygons (This could/should have been a costly mistake for him), everything else would walk on turn 1.  I held all my stuff off the board, and decided to outflank my scouts (a mistake given his outflanking stealers, but I was hoping they would stay off the board and deny kill points).

Turn 1:
During Fritz’s first turn He advanced (and ran) his Tervigons up the board toward my table edge, but forgot to cast feel no pain during his movement phase, while the rest of his army entered from his board edge.  This was a huge mistake by him and likely should have cost him the game.  On my turn All of my bikes, speeders and dreads rolled on right near (within 6-7 inches) of 2 of his tervigons, and unloaded on them with shooting killing both on turn 1, leaving him with only one synapse creature, I also killed one of his venomthropes with a missile shot.

Turn 2
Only Fritz Ymgarls arrived from reserve (which was very bad for him). He spawned some gaunts from his remaining tervigon, and put feel no pain on the tervigon as well.  His Ymgarls however managed to assault 3 of my bike squads (which could have been very bad for me.), but he rolled very poorly in the assault and I managed to tie combat (we each did 4 wounds).  On my turn my scouts failed to come in, I sent my large bike squad after the Hive guard (managing to do 1 wound to them in shooting) and I put 4 wounds on the remaining tervigon.  However,  in the assault Fritz rolled well getting 4 rends, and I managed only to kill 2 stealers (he upped his toughness to 5), I lost combat failed leadership on 2 squads (one of which ran off the table the other of which did not but was still within 6” of his stealers, so if he did not move them, that squad would also be gone.

Turn 3
Fritz rolls in only 1 Trygon, and things continue to look pretty good for me. He spawns some more gaunts (and his tervigon goes sterile) and give the trygon feel no pain. He shoots one of my speeders with gaunts enough to blow the missiles off.  Then he uses poisoned gaunts to kill one of my bike squads, and finishes off the squad that is locked in with his stealers, but makes a critical error, and consolidates away from my fleeing bike squad.  At this point I am feeling pretty good  I have Killed 2 tervigons, and I should easily take down a 3rd this turn, as well as hurting a bunch of the gaunts (possibly killing them) and I should be able to shoot and kill his remaining Ymgarls which will put me up 6 Kps to 3.  I also might have a chance to take down the Hive guard, and Venoms, which would put me up 8-3 going into the final 2 turns.  But my dice decided to disagree this turn.  I regroup my falling back bikes and put them into position to shoot either his tervigon or Ymgarls, I move my big bike squad to attack the hive guard and possibly multi-charge his venoms., my scouts come in and outflank on my right and run into cover.   I position to fire my remaining to missile speeders into the tervigon figuring that will take it down then the dreads, can focus on the trygons/ymgarls/or remaining gaunts for kps.  I fire the first speeder at the Tervigon and miss twice, I fire the second, hit once, and roll a 1 to wound, I shoot 3 meltaguns off of my bike squad, and do one wound, I shoot 2 dreads into it and do nothing (the remaining dread fires at the trygon and does a wound), finally I fire the heavy bolter off of my last speeder, which finally brings it down, so nearly my whole army just to cause 2 wounds, it dies and takes out one gaunt squad and reduces the other squad to 1 model (which passes LD).  My large bike squad shoots at the hive guard, but causes no wounds.  I charge the hive guard and venoms with my large squad (my captain goes against the venoms), on the way in my fist dies to dangerous terrain.  My other bikes fail to wound the 3 Hive guard, who strike back causing 2 wounds, the venoms cause 3 wounds to my captain, he fails 2 of his 2+ saves.  He swings back but misses all 3 attacks.  So I lose combat by 4, then fail morale, and turn and run.

Turn 4
Frtiz finally gets the rest of his reserves in 2 Trygons, and the stealers.  His Venoms and Hive guard move forward, the hive guard shoot my large bike squad, and kill 2 members, who then turn and run again, and flee off the table.  His Trygon assaults one of my dreads, and kills it.  His stealers eat my scouts, his trygons, shoot and kill one of my speeders, and the other one + his Ymgarls attack by last bike squad….from here things continue down hill and end up with me tabled by the end of turn 6.

This game showed me just how much dice can change a game, it was the closest “tabling” I have ever played, I felt like I was in control of the game up until turn 3, I cannot think of much I would have done differently, but not being able to finish off that tervigon, and the Ymgarls, and all the gaunts, in addition to losing combat to venomthropes and hive guard so miserably, really turned the tables.

So game one goes down as a loss with 0 battle points for me, but it was a great game none the less.  Games 2 and 3 to come.

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