Grokking 40k

Connecticon Info is up

2012-04-30T08:24:00.001-07:00

Connecticon Open 1750 points
5 Rounds
All models Must be painted to a 3 color minimum, and must be what you see is what you get (wysiwyg) compliant.
All games will be played using the 5th edition 40k rule set and the Games Workshop FAQs.
Missions will be using the NOVA format. ( For examples please see the Mission Primer located here http://www.novaopen.com/?page_id=906)
Check in Starts at 12:30 on Saturday with first Dice at 2:00.
Rounds will last 2 hours.
Awards will be given for Best Overall (Combined Painting, Sports and Generalship) Best General, Best Sportsman, Best Painted.
Schedule
Saturday
Check In: 12:30 – 1:30
Paint judging: 12:30-1:45
Round 1: 2:00 – 4:00
Round 2: 4:30-6:30
Dinner 6:30- 7:30
Round 3 7:30 – 9:30
Sunday
Round 1: 10:00 -12:00
Round 2: 12:30 – 2:30 Awards: 3:00 -3:30

Reservations are not open yet, but if you are interested I suggest booking your Convention Pass soon (its $50 until May 20th, and goes up to $60 after that)

Any questions Feel free to Email me breng77@yahoo.com

Connecticon 2012 Warhammer 40k events

2012-04-24T12:11:00.001-07:00

So due to some circumstances, I have been tasked with running the Wargamming events at Connecticon; a large Anime/Sci-fi convention here in Connecticut on July 13-15. Given the resources I have available and the price of the con. I am looking at running a 32 man 5 round tournament.

Having played at a number of larger tournaments, and given that I have enough rounds to produce a single undefeated player. I am leaning toward running missions using the NOVA format. Given the time constraints the con presents as well as some personal preferences I am leaning toward running the tournament at 1750 points with rounds being 2-2.25 hours.

I will also be running a 1500 point Team tourney on Friday night for anyone who wants to show up 1 night early.

So that said check back here for more information. In addition entry for the event and general info can be found here Connecticon Tabletop mini events. Nothing is posted up yet, but I have submitted the events. More to come.

Why Grey Knight players love IG players (or should).

2012-01-30T06:11:00.000-08:00

I wonder if other players out there agree with me on this thought: I love Imperial Guard players. As a current Grey Knight player I love playing against well played imperial guard armies. Many of the games I have played against such players have been my most enjoyable games since the new GK book came out, and win or loss(most have been losses) all of them have been great close games. The biggest issue I have being a Grey Knight player in the current 40k tournament scene is the amount of whining you have to deal with. "Grey Knights are so Cheesey/over powered/broken." "Your army is point and click." "X unit is so broken, GK players should be penalized for taking it." I'll be the first to admit that Grey Knights are powerful (even over powered compared to many books), I'm just sick of hearing about it. Which is why I love IG players. I never hear these guys complain about how broken GKs are, or how they cannot win. Perhaps this is because they can beat GKs or at least play a competitve game against them, or maybe because before GKs IG were the 400 pound gorilla in the room that everyone hated. I really don't know.

What I do know is that the games I've played against IG with GKs are some of my most memorable 40k games. They are what all 40k games should be, close, competitive, slugfests that come down to who makes the least mistakes/or best moves during the game. I wish all codices were more balanced against each other. Perhaps my biggest qualm with 40k as it stands now is that some codices stand very little chance against others simply due to a player's list. For example Dark Eldar, pound pretty much any foot list (I'm looking at you Tyranids and Daemons) so badly that the game is not really even fun for the winner, let alone the loser. I think matchup issues like this are bad for the game and are something GW needs to consider more when they create codices. Ideal like all poinsoned weapons or force weapons are cool when it comes down to fluff, but in the game they end up being far too powerful against certain army builds.

Would 40k be better with less Space Marines? Would Marines?

2012-01-25T03:45:00.000-08:00

I was thinking as I drove home from work yesterday (commutes are good for that type of thing), and a thought occurred to me. Would the game of 40k be better if their were fewer Space Marine armies? Lets face it, at most events, at least the ones I go to, I see maybe 70%+ of the field running some sort of Marine army: Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Black Templars, Chaos Space Marines, or Codex Space Marines. Power armored armies are undeniably popular, I mean who doesn't want to play super humans in the 41st millennium. Now I don't want anyone to think that this is just me hating on Marines/Marine players, I have 3 marine armies, and they are the armies I play most frequently. My thought was simply this do we need to have nearly half (7/16 or 43.75%) of all Codices to be Marine Books? What this means is that even if we assumed all the codices were equally popular (they're not) that you would still play against power armor in 4-5 out of every 10 games, or about 2 times in a 5 game GT.

Now what many people will argue (and they are not entirely wrong) is that many of those books are for "unique" chapters. I mean Grey Knights are the super elite, Wolves have their own Norse flavor (theoretically), and the list goes on. To these people I would argue the following, if Marines themselves were unique, would we really need separate books for so many chapters. In other words if there were not so many Marine books would we need marines to differentiate themselves so much. I know the fluff says x-chapter acts like this, and y-chapter specializes in that, but what if there was some way to add a little flavor to your own marine army (though modeling, painting, upgrades, and unit choices.) that would set your own force apart. Would this be enough? Or do we really need 7 Marine books.

What I think further amplifies this problem is the "counts as movement". I'm not against this movement in general as I believe that it provides players the opportunity to be creative with their models to design a force that is unique looking. I've seen Skaven count as Guard, and Dark Eldar for instance, and both armies were cool and different. Where I think this runs into a problem is with marines (and this is a GW created problem), if you own a Marine army, and paint it up in your own paint scheme (i.e. not Wolves, or Angels, or Ultras.) you now just bought not 1 but 5 armies. On top of that if you keep with that paint scheme, with a little extra purchasing you can move into the other 2 marine armies (chaos and Grey Knights) as the vehicles essentially all overlap. Heck if you designed a renegade Marine chapter you could probably pull off using the Chaos Dex with no further purchases to speak of. For me this is where I think a major part of the popularity of Marine dexes comes from. Why buy models for one Xenos race (Necrons Counting as Orks or Nids is proxying in most circles unless you did some major converting, and any such army would probably not be a functional necron army. I mean I could see a Flayed one horde being used for say a Genestealer army, but no one is running tons of Flayed Ones in the Necron book) when I can buy marines and get 5-7 armies in one. Whats more is that because I now own 5 armies it is far more likely I will get a set of updated rules. Dark Eldar went what 10 years, Crons about the same, in that time how many updates did marines get 10? More than 10? Why chance my army becoming obsolete(competitively) when I can play marines a basically guarantee I will always be able to compete on some level.

SO all that said let us consider what the land scape of 40k would look like if Marines had say only 2 codices Loyalists and Chaos (I don't really see these books working well as one army book). This would drop the army count from 16 to 11 and Marine books would make up 2 out of 11 or 18%. I'm not going to go into what I think each dex should contain (at least not in this post) so lets assume for the moment that we are looking at the current books. Would the game be overall more balanced if you took Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Wolves, Templars and GKs out of the game. Well IG would still be on top, probably followed by Dark Eldar, but I think the rest of the books would be incredibly well balanced. With a few tweaks to these dexes I think you would end up with a larger variety of armies (less marine players because fewer books, and as such more xenos armies), and a more balanced game. If GW did not need to update 7 Marine armies then other armies would hopefully get updated more quickly. Just look at releases for 5th edition, there have been 4 marine armies released (Codex Marines, Wolves, Blood Angels, Grey Knights.) and 4.5 Non Marine (IG, Nids, Dark Eldar, Crons, and Sisters). Dark Angels and Chaos Marines were released just prior to 5th ed as were Daemons. SO if we assume those as 5th ed updates we have 6 Marine Books and 5.5 Non Marine Books. What this means is that we have had 11 full updates (and one White Dwarf article) or the same number of updates as the total number of books I have proposed, which means that every book would have been updated in the 5th ed cycle. Which would mean no terribly outdated books, which in an ideal world would be more game balance.

My last thought on the subject is this: would having fewer marine armies make marines better. Space Marines are supposed to be the best of the best, super strong, super tough, and highly skilled. Does the game make it feel that way? Now I know we will never have space marines as they are in the fluff where 5 guys kill whole armies, but at the moment the Space Marine Stat line (4s across the board) really just feels average. Part of this issue is that a D6 system only allows for so much variation (BS 5 is twice as good as BS 4, so it would be a huge upgrade), but part of them feeling average is that they kind of are when half the armies in the game boast the same stat line. Would that stat line not feel a bit more elite if only 2 (plus some necrons) armies boasted those kind of stats? Would marines (with a few tweaks) not feel a whole lot stronger in shooting and hand to hand, if they were not always fighting against other marines. Bolters are a whole lot scarier for a bunch of Guants, Orks, or Guardsman, then they are for other marines. Marines might actually be ok in combat, if not for the fact that they don't get enough attacks to kill other marines with a 3+ save (they actually do pretty well against guardsman or eldar guardians.)

Just some food for thought. I know it will never happen, because GW wants to sell models, but what do you think? Would 40k and Marines be better if there weren't so many of them?

Internet Strike

2012-01-18T09:04:00.001-08:00

Support
http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Conflict GT day 2

2012-01-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

SO going into the final Day I was sitting in around 5th place as far as battle points. Both of my games today were against great players and both were great and very tactical games.

Game 5: Mission was 3 objectives (one deepstruck at the end of 3 and scattered 3d6, then at the end of turn 4 scattered 2d6, then if the game went on to 6 it scattered 1d6) Deployment was pitched battle.

My opponent was playing IG
3 Vendettas
2 Matacores
1 x 2 Hydras
1 squad of vets
2 Special weapon squads
a PCS
2 Infantry squads (autocannons)
and a CCs
a Pskyer squad

lots of melta , and chimeras for pretty much everything.

I won the roll to go first and turn 1 killed his psykers (blew the chimera, they lost 4 guys and ran off the table.), killed a vendetta, and weapon destroyed another vendetta. My opponent fired back, killing one dread with a mantacore, and one of my Razorbacks. The game continued in this fashion with us trading blows in the middle of the table. ON turn 5 I had most of my stuff out of vehicles, my opponent had His Infantry platoons hiding on one objective, I had 1 Acolyte left on mine, and we had the middle contested. But I forgot that he had a heavy bolter on his mantacore which was able to see my acolyte and he died. The game went on but I was too far away from my objective, and he was able to contest the middle with a chimera that I was unable to kill. My mistake this game was not reinfocing my objective with my second acolyte squad, but as I said I did not see him having any guns that could hurt the remaining model. I should have been more cautious and played to ensure a draw, but I played for the win and made mistakes in the process. My opponent outplayed me turns 5 and 6 and he won the game because of it.

Game 6: Mission was 3 objectives, Deployment was quarters.

My opponent was Dark eldar
3 Ravagers
5 venoms
3 x 6 jetbikes with 2 heat lances each
the barron with a big squad of hellions
a bunch of warrior squad
3 wraks
1 haemonculous

This was a very close game, where my shooting failed me, when it came to killing DE vehicles. My opponents Flicker fields were very hot as well. SO between his saves, and my bad damage results on the hits that went through, this game was very close. The hellions did very little as my opponent charged my vehicles with them Wiffed then got charged by 2 squads of DCA and cotaez. The bikes were very annoying to deal with as the provide a threat to your vehicles, were fairly durable through the use of cover, they get 9" melta range, and then can jump back out of assault range. I actually think these are a very good unit for DE (at least as a GK player I prefer to see venoms to these guys). I barely got out of my quarter after dealing with all the forward elements (bikes, Hellions), but was able to control one objective, and contest a second (after a 6" Difficult terrain roll, followed by a 6" run by a purifier squad). We ended on 5 but agreed to play on to see if one of us (likely him) could win. We ended on 6, still with a draw after a number of rolls going my way.

Conflict GT Day 1 Games

2012-01-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

SO my games from day 1.

First my list

Grey Knights

Cotaez

2 x 3 Acolytes in Chimeras
2 x 10 Purifiers (4 Halberds, 2 Hammers, 4 Psycannons) with Psybolt Razorbacks (Psybacks)
5 Strikes with Psycannon in a Rhino
5 Death Cultists in a Psyback
5 Death Cultists 1 Crusader, in Psyback

3 TL Autocannnon, Psybolt Dreads.

Game 1: Spearhead Deployment (quarters), Mission was 3 objectives, that were placed prior to deployment and then scattered 3d6 inches(always scatter). Terrain was also placed and similarly scattered prior to the game(though the terrain did not always scatter.)

My opponent was running Blood Angels
Libby with Fear and Shield
Death Company with a chaplain and a Talon Death company dread in a Storm Raven
3 Minimum assault squads in land raiders.

So not a great match-up for me unless my psycannons can pop his raiders.

This game really came down 2 my vehicles getting immobilized (1 by him, 1 by terrain) and bottlenecking my Psycannons so I could not get to his land raiders. Which resulted in him contesting one objective while we each held one (I would have contested 2 and held 1 on turns 5 and 6 we went 7). So we ended with a Draw. Not an exceedingly fun game as it was a lot of my ineffective shooting at land raiders, and killing anything that got out of them.

Game 2: Pitched battle (12" in), mission was to get troop units into your opponents deployment zone.

My opponent was playing Dark Eldar (Venom heavy)
His list was
3 Haemunculi
a wych squad in a Raider
Grotesques in a Raider
a bunch of warriors in venoms
a squad of trueborn in venom
2 Ravagers
1 Void Raven Bomber

My opponent won the roll for first turn and really agonized about going first, or reserving and letting me go first. He chose to go first, his shooting really failed him (he shook or stunned maybe 2 vehicles), and that was pretty much game as I shot down both Ravagers, stunned his Bomber, shot down 2 Venoms, and killed nearly all the warriors inside those venoms turn 1. Turn 2 was more of the same. He ended up with I think a couple of models left turn 5, and conceded when we rolled to go on to turn 6.)

Game 3: Spearhead, Killpoints

My opponent was running Space wolves
Thunderwolf lord with Bear, Storm Shield and Frost blade
3 x 3 Thunder Cav (allocated 2 Shields, one fist, one naked)
Rune Priest with Jaws and Livign Lighting
2 x 4 Long Fangs with 3 missiles each
3 Grey hunter squads (2 Plasma backs, 1 Rhino with 9 guys)
or close enough.

I won first turn, and shot up his Cav a bit.

HE came forward and charged my Vehicles and 2 Dreads with 2 units of Cav (not the lord.). The ended up getting stuck in with the dreads, and got counter charged by Purifiers and Death Cultists with Cotaez, and got wiped out. His other non lord squad got killed by my other DCA. My shooting then took out most of his vehicles, as his lords squad killed some purifiers before losing to another DCA + purifier charge. THen I spent the rest of the game throwing shots at his long fangs and remaining hunters, and tabled him turn 5.

Game 4: Mission was Dawn of war (night fighting for 2 turns), and Table quarters (scoring units control anything contests.

My opponent was Orks
3 Battle wagons
3 squads of boyz (1 slugga, 2 Shoota)
30 Lootas
A big NOb squad(allocated out)
and a Big mek.

HE came forward during night fighting and managed to charge my lines turn 2. He killed a few vehciles, but then got his nobs charged by Cotaez and Death Cultists, and his boyz by purifiers. My purifiers failed to cleansing flame (which happened 3 times this game), and ended up tying combat with the boyz. My DCA all died but won combat against the Nobz since Cotaez lived, the nobs broke and ran, and then got shot below half before they could rally. I eventually killed off the squad of boyz with a second squad of purifiers, took out all the battle wagons, and ended up using my mobility to contest 2 quarters while controling the other 2. to win.

Conflict GT tournament Report.

2012-01-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

First off sorry I have been away for so long, life has been kicking by butt recently.

Anyway I attended the Conflict GT this past weekend and figured I would put down my thoughts on my games and the event as a whole.

I'll start off by saying that I had a great time, met and hung out with a bunch of great guys, and played 6 fun games (2 of which were really great games, that were super close right up until the end.). The venue at the Palisades mall (home of this event and the Battle for Salvation GT) is always great, with easy highway access, lots of food options, and a decently large room.

All that said I think this event took a step backward from last year in pretty much every regard. Last year despite the fact that the TO really had little help, he did a good job of having the event organized ahead of time, updating the website, emailing requestes for lists, posting the missions, having packets ready at the event. Last year I had very few complaints (there was not enough terrain, the missions needed some work, and I think everyone thought that the TO needed a little more staff.). This year there was really no improvement on those concerns, and overall other things got worse.

So starting at the beginning, prior to the event I had to email the TO to find out when to turn my list in as the turn in date was not posted anywhere. Upon arriving to the tournament there were no tournament packets describing the rules of the event, providing sportsmanship rubrics, scoring for missions etc., these were available last year. Looking at the terrain, while it was a slight improvement, there was still very little terrain on most boards, especially terrain that blocked line of sight. I found that the mission for the first game had been placed on the table, and looked at the mission. It was the same first mission as last year, objectives, that scattered randomly, and were placed after deployment (2 by one player 1 by the other.), and that terrain was not set on boards but instead scattered randomly and could not come within 6" of the table center or another terrain piece (this was true for all missions, and I heard multiple accounts of players being unable to place all the terrain due to these rules). One player went to the TO, and described the issue with placing objectives after deployment, and it was fixed, but not every player heard the announcement of the change.

The first game was scheduled to start at 9:00, but as the start time rolled around we were told that 6 people had not yet shown up (to a 50ish person GT, ende up at 42 players) and that we would wait for them to show up, and start in 15min. While I don't agree with waiting for players at large events (especially when we are playing 4 games in 1 day), I figured 15 mins was not too bad, but 15 min became 30 and 30 became about an hour.... Finally, the match-ups were posted...and my name was not on the list. Well another player was not on the list, so ok we were paired together...until 2 members of the same club came up to tell the TO they were paired together, so I switched pairing again. Again no big deal, but just one more thing. As the round started we found out that because the Fantasy GT had spilled over onto the tables reserved for 40k that the table numbers were now wrong and we had to take time to figure out where we were supposed to be. THis all became a larger issue because the TO was pretty much running the whole event by himself (he had a couple of guys who helped hand out missions and put numbers on tables, but no judges, not paint judges, no main administrator, etc), this would be problem enough if it was just a 42 man 40k GT, but when you have a 70ish guy fantasy GT, a Flames of war tourney, a 40k doubles tourney (and a failed, i.e. no one showed, warmahordes event.)., it is just too much for one person.

As the tourney went on we all found that the TO just reprinted the missions from last year, and was using them again. All of these missions are far too easy to tie. Missions went 3 objectives, Get troops into your opponents deployment zone, Kill points, Table quarters (scoring to control, anything to contest), 3 Objectives, 3 objectives. NO tie breakers on any mission, so except the KP mission all of these were very easy to draw (hence I finished 3-1-2), and I know plenty of people who finished with 2+ draw results. This really hurts when you are on the top tables and the players all end up drawing, and get jumped by people playing easier games who win. (I think I have mentioned before I am not a big fan of kill points.

At the end of day 1 after many people had already packed up their armies, we were told to leave our armies out so they could be paint scored overnight....only to then get paint scored during our games the next day.

Other issues I heard from people were: NO time remaining announcements (people never seemed to know when the round was ending and it caused issues), lectures from the TO about painting (he told at least 1 person that if he had seen their army prior to the event he would have not allowed the player to play...if you are not going to check the armies prior to the tourney, don't bother with the lecture.), the tables were placed very close to one another, leaving little room to move around, and no room for display boards, but there was still empty space at the front of the room on both sides of the room, this resulted in delayed games due to peoples armies being on tables people were trying to play on (at one point another player and myself moved 2 tables to the center of the room so people could put armies their so games could get started). Lots of the 40k players did not feel the need to play 6 games (for a battle point tourney) especially 4 games the first day (5 if you played doubles which had 2 rounds friday night and 1 round at 10 pm on saturday.), then 2 on sunday which meant we got out pretty early sunday which was nice...but why not just 5 games 3 and 2.

Announcements, were made as to expanding the flames of war event to 30+ for next year....which gave me the thought that if the TO did not get extra help I would no longer want to go to this event. 3-4 tourneys are too much for one person to run/ref/paint judge, the room does not have enough space to comfortably fit 150+ players and tables. The TO of this event really needs to let go of some of the control and ask other people for help. I know that many of the players had a good enough time because the group of players in attendance was a great group of guys, but I also know many of them mentioned to me that they probably won't go next year. Which leaves me in a quandry, the event is local to me and an easy trip to make, I have had fun enough games both years, but I wonder if my money would be better spent at other, better organized events that the same group of players are attending....

Game reports will be upcoming....

NOVA Open Games 5-8

2011-10-04T12:15:00.001-07:00

SO we are a month out now and at this rate I’m never getting through these things so here we go.

Game 5: Vs Nids

Mission was Table quarters I think.

My opponents list was a bit of a mishmash of tyranid stuff.

Swarm Lord

Hive Tyrant (Heavy Venom cannon, LW/BS, Hive Commander, Armored Shell)

Troops

10 Termagaunts

Tervigon (With Catalyst and maybe some other stuff)

2 squads of Stealers

Elites

2 x 2 Hive Guard

Heavy

Trygon Prime

So lots of points in HQ. I think he won first turn, Deployed The Tyrant, Swarm Lord and Hive Guard, and Reserved everything else (he was going to outflank the Tervigon. Right away I thought that this was a mistake given his list and mine. I seized, blew away the swarm lord and 1 of 2 hive guard units turn 1. Turn 2 his trygon and stealers came in (the stealers hid) The Trygon then died on my turn. Then turn 3 his tervigon came in and hid. I killed the Tyrant, and hive guard, and the game was pretty much all over. Major win for me I think I won all 3 objectives. I felt my opponent should have started with everything on the board to overload my target priority, if I have few targets they tend to die.

Gave 6 Vs Space Marines

Mission was Kill points I think

My opponent was running

A thunder fire cannon,

Vindicator

Libby (null zone)

Land Raider with TH/SS termies

2 Iron Clad Dreads

Some tactical squads.

This was a close game that came down to objectives (which was the 3^rd tie breaker) I held 3-2. It was very back and forth with me killing some of his stuff, then he would hit me hard and kill my stuff.

Game 7 VS Mech IG

Mission was Objectives I believe

This was a very close game my I won the roll off to go first and go seized. This got a bunch of my stuff get hurt by his 2 Mantacores. We tied all 3 objectives and I lost by 15 VPs. Great game, though thinking back on it I think he may have gotten one extra turn (we went 7) because I have the feeling that he went last, and I know I got seized. But the game was so good it did not even matter.

Game 8 Vs Wolves

Mission was Quarters.

His list was pretty standard SW fare with a Wolf Lord and 2 Cav. I won first turn and my opponents dice were terrible. Turn 1 I killed 5of 6 long fangs in 1 unit (they fail morale), entirely killed another unit of Long Fangs and killed 2 Rhinos. On his turn he kills nothing, I then I kill the one of his speeders, his other long fangs, his cav down to the lord. This pattern pretty much continues as he cannot make a 3+ save.

SO overall I end up 4-4, not too bad given that all my losses were close.

NOVA open Game 4:

2011-09-16T12:15:00.001-07:00

Now standing at 1-2 I was really feeling the pressure to finish out day 1 as 2-2 (as my goal going in was to try to finish with more wins than losses). I lined up across the table from a Codex Space Marine Player, and looking at his list I felt pretty good about my chances. His list consisted of Vulkan, 3 Tactical squads, a Thunderfire Cannon, A typhoon speeder, a Land Raider, A Libby with Null Zone and Gate, 2 MM attack bikes, and some TH/SS termies.

Mission was Objectives, Quarters, and KPs, my opponent won the roll off and gave me first turn. I deployed in one quarter and he deployed opposite me. He reserved 2 of his tactical squads.

At this point I honestly don’t remember much of what happened turn by turn. This game was my one contentious game of the tourney, and unfortunately I think both me and my opponent handled it badly. He was very concerned that I was moving things too far early on so I took it back and moved them again. Then it seemed to me that he did not know many of the rules for his particular army (or base rules as well.) So the game took a while as I let him take back a few moves because he did not realize that they would cause things like dangerous terrain. The game came down to turn 5 being the last turn due to time, and my opponent was able to control 2 objectives and contest 2 of mine. One with his terminators killing a purifier squad, and the other with a librarian Gating himself to the objective from inside the land raider. This was a contentious point which ate up some time, as I was not sure that gate would work from inside of a vehicle, but the judges ruling said it could so he was allowed to do so. Honestly though I had forgotten that he had the power, so that was my fault as I could have deployed to block him out of 3” from the objective, and cast warp quake to attempt to prevent the move had I thought about it. We rolled to see if the game would go on and it did. However, since we were up against time the judges had ruled that the game would only continue if both players wanted to go on (which is not a very good ruling, either allow it, or call a hard cap, leaving it to the players can lead to bad blood as in a close game the winning player will never want to go on), my opponent said since he was winning he did not wish to continue. This attitude upset me (not because he was in the wrong simply because I am just not that competitive as to want to win by a time out), and the game ended on somewhat bad terms. Reflecting on it later I realized that what I should have offered was to give him the tournament win, score the points as they stood, and finish out the game just to see what would have happened (as that is what I wanted to see). I think this was made worse because we were both tired.

I’m better when I am losing??!!!

2011-09-06T13:15:00.001-07:00

So after then NOVA open (when I had time to reflect on my games) I noticed a trend in all but one of my losses. The trend I noticed was that I felt that I was winning the game. Now you may ask why that is a trend that matters but the more I thought about it the more it kind of bothered me. How had I lost 3 games that I felt confident that I had the upper hand? Why did I not notice the plays that gave the wins to my opponents? Why did I make silly, unnecessary mistakes? Think about this I came up with 3 things.

1.) I play too fast. This is not really a problem when I am losing or when I am crushing my opponent (tabling them effectively). I had 2 games in during the NOVA which required no thought at all on my point after about turn 2 as I was so thoroughly beating my opponent anything shy of a miracle would have been needed for my opponents to pull out a win.(One I seized and crippled my opponent turn 1, the second my opponents dice were the worst dice I had ever seen, for the entire game, and he could not offset his poor dice). Also when I am losing I tend to take more care as any bad play can cost me. I feel that I really need to slow down and take a breath at the beginning of the latter turns (4+) and try to work out why my opponent is making the moves that he is, and is there any thing that I am missing.

2.) I make mistakes. Following up my fast play, when I am confident I have the advantage I make more mistakes. I aim to press my advantage, and I carry out “my plan” with little regard to what moves my opponent is making. After all, “my plan” is working, I’m winning and I don’t see anyway for my opponent to comeback from this. This has often been a bad habit of mine, even from back in my Chess playing days, when I am dominating my opponent I seem far more likely to let them make checkmate moves, simply because I fail to see them as I press my advantage. When I am losing I tend to be fine playing fast as I often have only one choice, and it is to be aggressive to try to get back to even. I also know that I absolutely cannot make mistakes so I do a better job with my moves and my target priority. Not that I am bad at these things in games I am winning, but when I am losing I don’t fail to notice slight changes in my opponents plans. Maybe this is because I need everything to go right for me to even have a chance.

3.) I get greedy. My last bad habit when I am winning a game is that I get greedy. I have a solid win locked up on the tertiary objective, but that is not good enough I push for the win on Primary and it costs me. Or I am winning on Kill points so I press to get more instead of protecting my lead. I multi-assault to kill 2 units when 1 would be just fine. This results in me being out of position to achieve objectives, leaves me vulnerable to counter attacks, and generally does me in. When I’m losing I’m more likely to be stingy and do just what I need to in order to win, no more no less.

Does anyone else have bad habits like this? Acknowledging this going forward I am going to attempt to work on it as I don’t feel like I was outplayed in any game at the NOVA, and yet in most of my close games (all save 1) I lost, and in 3 of those 4 games I felt that I had the advantage.

NOVA game 3:

2011-09-06T09:55:00.001-07:00

Game 3 I draw another IG player Mech this time. Standard fare pretty much Vets in Chimeras, 3 Vendettas, 3 Hydras, a mantacore, and a Leman Russ executioner( plasma tank). And Alraheem.

Mission is Kill points (win by 3), Quarters, Objectives. Deployment is Dawn of war.

My opponent wins the roll to go first, and deploys a command squad in a chimera. I deploy 2 empty razors (with Search Lights).

Turn 1: My opponent moves everything on (except the Alrahim platoon), he boosts his vendettas, 1 on the left, one in the center, 1 on the right. He moves his Mantacore, Hydras, and Leman Russ on my left, then brings his Chimeras in on the right. On my turn I roll everything on to my right to deny him shooting with this Leman Russ, and Hydras. I light up 1 Vendetta shoot it, he fails cover, and I wreck it. I fail to light the other one up, but my purifiers roll to see it (moved 12” on, and disembarked) see it, and blow it up. So things are going pretty well.

Turn 2: My opponent kills one Dread with his Mantacore, moves his Hydras up the left side of the table. Kills one of my Razorbacks with his vendetta, and really not much else. I move up the right side killing another chimera and the squad inside.

Turn 3: Alraheem comes in kills a razorback, a Dread and tries to kill my paladins, he ends up getting stomped, and losing my opponent 3 KPs. I continue to move up and pop a few more another Chimeras, Crowe assaults a vet squad, and wipes them out.

Turn 4: My opponent has killed a few marines, and immobilized a Rhino and takes out another dread with his, I kill another Chimera and Crowe assaults another vet squad, and wipes them out.

Turn 5: Looking at the table I am leading in KPS but just by 4, I think I am tying table quarters, and figure I will win 2 – 0 on objectives, if KPs get tied. My opponent kills Crowe and a purifier squad, to bring us to me leading by2 . I figure, ok I can probably get 2 Kps, but if not I’m winning on objectives and I figure quarters were tied. SO I shoot My 2 Psycannons, and 2 storm bolters at a vet squad, but they pass LD. I shoot his vendetta with 12 Psycannon Shots and gain nothing. I end up killing one Chimera to get up by 3 Kps. So we tie KPs. The game ends, he actually ends up holding 3 quarters for the win as he had just snuck his Leman Russ into a table quarter to out point me by 60 VPs (Crowe and the purifiers dying ended up being key). On my turn 5 I should have just accepted tying Kps, and made sure that I was tying quarters, but I was confident that I had enough points and got greedy for KPs.

NOVA Game 2:

2011-09-06T08:24:00.001-07:00

So after dropping my first game (in part due to my own stupidity), I went into the second round feeling like I needed to get a win. Upon arriving at the table I saw that my next opponent was a player I have played before (a great guy) and he was playing a nicely painted Blob (skaven) IG. The mission was Table Quarters, Kill points, Objectives. Seeing my list my opponent had the same idea that I did, if my Purifiers hit this IG blob this game was over. Unfortunately for my opponent…the game was effectively over even before that. The issue for my opponent was that deployment was table quarters and there was a large LOS blocking piece of terrain in the center of the table.

He won the roll to go first, and set up in the quarter to my right. He deployed his blob in front, with his Heavy weapons and Vets behind it to get cover. I was able to hide my entire army from half of his shooting (most of his Heavy weapons) and get cover from the units that could see. On his turn he shot a bit but mostly moved to try to get LOS. On my turn 1 I shot and killed 3 out of 4 of his heavy weapons squads as he failed to make just about every cover save he was called to make.

Turn 2 My AlRahim outflanked on my right and moved onto an objective. My opponent shot a bit more but still failed to do much damage. My Paladins Deepstruck in near my opponent and shot and killed one of his vet squads. The rest of my army moved up, shot and killed his remaining heavy weapons.

Turn 3 He killed maybe 1 paladin, then my paladins assaulted his blob to pull them closer to my advancing purifiers. He killed 2 more paladins, but I won combat and we got stuck in.

Turn 4 one of my Purifier squads and Crowe assaulted his Blob, and killed the whole blob except the Commissar.

Turn 5 The game ended with my holding 4 table quarters for the win.

NOVA tournament Report and Game 1

2011-08-31T08:14:00.001-07:00

So I’m back from the NOVA, and I must say that it is the best tournament I have attended to date. The atmosphere was great and I played 7 good games (one was a little contentious). I ended up going 4-4 (1-3 the first day and 3-1 the second day) all my losses were extremely close and mostly due to mistakes on my part, and well timed plays by my opponent.

My list

2k Grey Knights

Crowe

OM Inquisitor in terminator armor w/ Psycannon and 1 servo skull.

Elites

5 Paladins (3 Halberds, Hammer, Sword, 1 Psycannon,, 1 MC Psycannon)

Troops

2 x 10 Purifiers (5 Halberds, Hammer, 4 Psycannons) in Rhino (one squad had psybolts)

2 x 5 Strikes (Psycannon, Hammer) in Razorback with Psybolts and search lights.

Heavy

3 x Dread with 2 TL auto-cannons and psybolts.

The list functioned well all tournament and the shooting power was quite devastating at times. Most games I worked around trying to take center table and pushing my opponent back. I also made use of the terrain to keep my opponent from being able to shoot with large portions of their army.

Game 1: Vs Space Wolves (Hulksmash)

Mission was Objectives, Quarters, Killpoints. Deployment was Pitched Battle.

My opponents list was foot Logan wing and was sporting 24 missiles per turn.

He won the roll to go first and deployed his army across his table edge with a large Squad of 10 Wolf Guard (8 termies) and Logan in the Center of the table. I deployed in the left corner of the board using the terrain to hide my army from view. At this point I joked that now that I went through all the trouble to hide my army that I would probably seize….and then I did.

Turn 1: I moved up which exposed my army to some shooting, and shot one Wolf guard squad down to 1 PA wolf guard, and did a wound or 2 to another. On his turn he weapon destroyed and immobilized my 2 Razorbacks, which rendered them useless.

Turns 2 -4 We Traded shots but really not much damage was done (I killed a second wolf guard squad and a few of logans squad) His scouts came in and killed a couple of Paladins.

ON Turn 5 I was moving up the left side with my Purifiers trying to kill a couple more of his units and getting set up to take objectives on turn 6 (and here was my first mistake of the tournament, I though all games were at least 6 turns, because that was the case in the NOVA primers). His turn 5 he contests one of my 2 objectives and Moves on to a second objective and then we roll and the game ends in my loss. Really not much had been killed I think I was up maybe 2 Killpoints, and we had each killed about 600 points of the others army. But not realizing it was the last turn cost me the chance to win. I say chance, because there was no Guarantee that I would have been able to win with another turn, but I certainly had none when I did not grab for objectives on turn 5 ( I could have tried to contest the center objective turn 5 and I certainly would have moved more quickly toward the center if I had know I had fewer turns.

Connecticon Tourney Report II

2011-07-19T08:47:00.001-07:00

So after winning the first Tournament of the weekend (and taking home a sweet golden bolt pistol.), I Took what I had learned and build my 1850 point list. Which was essentially my 2k list with the following changes: No henchmen squad, Paladins Dropped down to 6 Standard Termies (with 3 Halberds, 2 Hammers, and 1 sword + 1 psycannon.), and combined the 2 strike squads into 1 big squad of 10 (1 hammer psybolts, and 2 Psycannons, I kept them with a psyback and made the other a dedicated transport for the Purifiers, but usually kept them empty.)

Game 1: Mission was a little strange one person was the attacker the other the defender, defender chose one model to be his “champion” this could be any “sergeant” or character model (or monstrous creature I think). When the “champion was killed the attack nominated one of his eligible models (closest to the champion), as the new champion. This went back and forth until either the game ended, or there were no eligible models left (which would result in a draw). If the game ended who ever had the champion won. It is important to note that the champion (and his unit or any transport he was in) were subject to the rage special rule, he could not be reserved, he gained Feel no pain (and some other stuff I don’t remember).

So it was a wonky mission, made more difficult by the fact that rounds were fairly short (1:45). My opponent was the same Chaos player I played in the first round of the first tourney (which I felt bad about I had played this guy twice already, once in pick-up, and I don’t think he was looking forward to a third game, next year I am bringing more than just my tourney army as in pick up no one likes to get stomped). I had suggested some improvements to his list which he made (he added oblits, and some other long range elements), but he was still writing up his list when the round began. I won the role and decided to be the attacker (who got first turn). After 5 turns I had tabled him, but he at least had managed to kill my storm raven, a razorback, and most of my purifiers so it was a better game for him overall. My highlights were getting my purifiers charged by his Daemon prince, rolling my pskotrokes to drop him to LD 2, him taking a nemesis wound, failing LD and dying, my convincing him to charge his one armed dread into my Purifiers and Grand Master, so he could punk my GM with his DCCW, which gave him the champion on turn 4 (to his squad of chaos termies which was all he had left.). At least it seemed that he had more fun this game than the previous 2 I had played with him (although I was pretty sure he was going to break something when I popped his Predator, and Vindicator on turn 1.) I was happy for him that he ended up winning a game in this tourney later on as he had just been getting pounded all weekend (he had upgraded from Necrons to Chaos Space Marines this year…unfortunately not the largest jump in power.).

Game 2: Deployment was table quarters; mission was to have as many scoring units within 3” of the center of the table. (This was a hill, so I guess we can call it king of the hill.)

My opponent fittingly was another Grey Knight player. He was running:

Crowe

4 x 8 Purifiers (2 psycannons, and some other stuff.) in Rhinos

2 x Psyfleman Dreads

2 x Venerable Dreads with MM and DCCW

And I think that is about it.

My opponent won first turn and slowly advanced toward the center. The game quickly became a shoot out and my ability to pop his transports was huge. On his first turn he managed to immobilize one of my dreads and not much else. On my return fire I popped on of his Rhinos and killed all 8 purifiers inside. My storm raven also moved up toward him. On his second turn he dropped the storm raven, and tried to hit me with some more shooting, killing one of my dreads as well. On my turn I popped another of his transports, the one closest to my purifiers. My termies blew the close combat arm off his closest venerable dread, I took out one of his Autocannon Dreads, and then in the assault killed the most purifiers that had gotten out, and his Venerable dread (with my terminators and inquisitor).

On turn 3-4 Crow Assaulted my Grand Master (and used Hammer hand), my Grand master ended up killing crowe, and my purifiers finished his off, to get me out of that combat. On my turn I popped his 2 remaining Rhinos, took down another purifier squad, and his other Venerable Dread. Turn 5, he shot my purifiers some more trying to stop them from eating their way through the rest of his army. I killed his remaining Autocannon dread and on turn 6 ended up tabling him for my second win.

Game 3: Mission was Dawn of War, Kill points.

My opponent was the same player I had played in the finals of the other tourney with basically the same list (his Libby was an epistolary I think in this one). He got first turn and pulled his gate move again to throw his termies into my face, this time it did not go nearly so well for him, as I turned and shot at him with my termies, my strike squad, and my Purifiers killing 7 terminators in 1 round of shooting. It was still a tight game as his kill points were all hid in land raiders for most of the game, and we traded kills back and forth with his redeemer killing my stikes as well as most of my purifiers as I tried to hammer it to death. In the end though my grandmaster was able to single handedly kill a 10 man marine squad (between his incinerator, grenades, and 4 S 5 Attacks) I took down both his speeders, his termies and both his HQs for 6 KPs, he killed my Strike squad, one of my Razorbacks, my Purifiers and two dreads for 5 KPS. So I pulled out the win by 1 KP.

All in all the tournament was great fun, and I ended up taking home a Baneblade for my win.

Tournament Report Connecticon

2011-07-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

So I went up to Connecticon (a decently large Anime/Sci-fi/Gaming convention) over this past weekend to participate in their various 40k events. In past years the 40k tournaments have been small, but there is a good group of regulars and the organizers are great. They run 2 tournaments each year as well as an ongoing mega-battle (which always draws a crowd at the convention as many players don’t bring their armies, and the common refrain seems to be I wish I knew there was a tournament I would have brought my army (this is the 3^rd year I have played, and it was happening prior to that, so it is a pretty sad excuse for most people.) Anyway on to the tournaments….

The first event of the weekend was supposed to be a 2000 point tourney that was 5 games (2 on Friday and Saturday, 1 on Sunday), however, this year only 4 players turned up (very sad as we have had more in the past), so we shortened it to 3 rounds. My list was

Grey Knight Grand master (Rad + Psykotroke grenades, incinterator)

OM Inquisitor (Terminator armor, Psyker (psychic communion), Psycannon)

5 Paladins (2 psycannons, 1 Hammer, 2 Halberds, 1 sword)

10 Purifiers (7 Halberds, 1 Hammer, 2 Psycannons, Psybolts)

2 x 5 Strikes (Psycannon, Hammer (justicar)) in Psybolt Razorbacks (search lights)

3 x Psyfleman Dreads

1 Storm Raven (teleport homer)

3 henchman (they are unimportant) in a chimera (which usually got stolen by paladins)

This list was trying to test out a few things and I learned A lot that will go toward improving my list.

Round 1:

Really nothing interesting here, my opponent ran a mish-mash of Chaos Marines (expensive sorcerer and lord, 2 squads of termies, 1k sons, Bezerkers, Dread, Predator), my opponent won the roll to go first and gave me first turn (it was an objective mission). A bunch of shooting later my opponent conceded the game on the bottom of turn 3 (when his only remaining models (a reserved 5 man terminator squad) did not come in.).

Round 2:

Mission was Dawn of War, Kill points with a secondary objective of Killing an opponents HQ in close combat, and a tertiary of keeping your opponent out of your deployment zone. My opponent was an Eldar Player who had a close game with the fourth participant in game 1. I have played him before and he is a good player, but his list this time was lacking in a few areas.

He was running

Avatar

Prince Yieriel

2 x 10 Wraith Guard with Spirit seers (with 5+ cover save power)

1 x 10 Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent

1 x 10 Guardians with a missile launcher

1 x 10 Storm Guardians (melta pistols)

Wraithlord with Missile and Scatter laser

Wratihlord with Sword and catapults

Night Spinner (I think that is what it is called, grav tank with large blast causes Diffcult/dangerous terrain.)

I get first turn and deploy both of my Razorbacks empty at the half way line. He deploys one Wraithguard squad 18” away and we go to it. ON my turn all of my stuff comes on, one RB search lights his Wraith guard and I shoot them with everything that has range killing 2 or 3. On his turn he brings everything on, and hits my RB (that was lit up) with his night spinner, but only gets it with the effects as he did no damage.

Turn 2: My Storm Raven moves over to my left toward his storm guardians, as the rest of my force advances and shoots at his closest wraith guard down to about 3 models, as well as destroying his night spinner and Blowing off all the weapons and immobilizing his serpent. On his turn he Advances some more, tries to shoot down my raven with no success, and not much else.

Turn 3: I keep backing up just out of Wraithguard range, and light up both of his squads (one dead the other now at about half strength as well as putting 2 wounds on his shooty Wraithlord.), I disembark my purifiers and grand master from my storm raven and wipe out his Storm Guardians, then consolidate back into terrain. On his turn his shooty wraithlord and Avatar assault my purifiers, get hit with psykotrokes (I rolled auto hit and one attack for him) The wraithlord dies, and the avatar takes 2 wounds, the avatar then kills one purifier, and then dies to fearless saves. I think he might have wrecked one of my Razorbacks.

Turn 4: My Purifiers kill his guardians; I shoot at his Dire avengers some, and Wipe out his other wraith lord. He advances some more and runs his dire avengers away from my purifiers.

Turn 5: I kill the last of his Dire avengers and bring him down to 2 wraith guard, we go on to turn 6 and the game ends with a tabling.

This was a rough game for my opponent, I had too much shooting and he did not take a farseer which really could have messed me up with runes of warding and by buffing the rest of his army.

Game 3:

Mission: Capture and Control, Pitched battle, secondary kill all opposing HQs, tertiary was kill as much armor as possible (each destroyed piece of armor was 1 battle point)

I went into this final game leading by 2 battle points (remember this later it is important)

My opponent was playing Codex marines with the following list (and apparently was playing less than 2k points the whole time, way less like 1750ish, he was a very good player with a strong list, or at least a bad matchup for my list)

His list

SM Librarian (Nullzone, Gate)

Cassius

10 Assault termies (7 TH/SS, 3 LC)

2 Tactical squads (1 with melta, Multimelta, combi-melta. 1 with Las/Plas combi-plas)

Land Raider (extra armor)

Land Raider Redeemer with Multi melta (extra armor)

2 Speeders

He won the roll to go first, we placed our objective directly across from one another on the right side of the table. He combat squaded his tactical squads leaving the Heavy weapons on his objective and putting the assault weapons in the land raiders to move up the field. He then deployed his termies on the 12” line with Cassius and the Libby. I deployed across from him, but reserved my Purifiers and their storm raven, and my Paladins. This was 2 mistakes for me. 1.) I forgot he had Gate, and 2.) Half or more of my army was off the table.

Turn 1:

My opponent gates the terminator squad across right on top of my forces (not literally) and runs them to block me from escaping with most of my army. He then manages to pop one of the razorbacks, and the squad inside gets pinned. I frantically move away, and try to shoot the termies as much as I can, and I think I kill maybe 1.

Turn 2: He assaults my pinned squad and one of my dreads and kills both. I think I killed another termi. He pops my other razorback and things are really looking bleak. On my turn I cast Psychic communion twice (I deployed both my HQs in the Chimera with the henchmen. And Roll a 1 and a 6 getting the paladins in but the storm raven and purifiers are still off the table. The paladins deep strike and try to shoot his redeemer, with no effect. I shoot a little more at his termies and kill maybe 2.

Turn 3: He opens up on my paladins and kills 2 of them, he flamestorms my strike squad and wipes them out (now only my purifiers are scoring thanks to my GM). In combat he takes out another dread, but the dreads kill his librarian in the process. On my turn My purifiers come in, and joined by my grand master go to work on the termies killing all but one and cassius. I also kill one of his speeders.

Turn 4: I finish off cassius, and my paladins with my Inquisitor are trying to walk across the table to his objective (2 of them are left with the inquisitor), 1 dies as does my storm raven. I continue toward his objective, and while my purifiers get stuck with the last terminator as he makes 10-15 3+ saves.

Turn 5: My inquisitor makes it across and starts assaulting his marine squads by himself, he wins combat but they stick, and the game ends in a draw as I finally kill the last remaining terminator. I win the secondary objective and kill both of his speeders, he kills my 6 vehicles, so we draw on primary for 3 points each, I get 3 points for secondary and 2 for tertiary for 8 points, he gets 6 for tertiary for 9 points. We end up separated by 1 battle point for the tournament win (going to me.) It was a very close game, that by all rights I should have lost after my early game mistakes.

The problem with Battle Points

2011-06-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying I recognize that battle points are often a necessary evil. Most tournaments don’t have enough rounds to determine a single undefeated winner, and we need some way to match up players in rounds after round 1. We also need a way of differentiating between players that have the same number of wins after all rounds have been played. However, after reading Mike Brandt’s post about evaluative Vs competitive, several forum discussions, as well as a tournament I played last weekend I got to thinking, do battle points do a good job of determining the best player on the day. I would say the answer to this is often no, and when they do I would say that the winner is determined despite the battle points, not because of them.

I’ll use my local tournament as an example of what I think the problems with battle points are. This was a 3 round tournament, with battle points determining the winner. We had 14 players (fairly small but it was father’s day.). I will also admit I don’t remember all the records of every player, so I will do my best. The first round was Kill points, with a secondary objective of having all your troops above 50%, you also got bonus points for difference in battle points between you and your opponent at the end of the game. I ended up winning 10 -4 in KPs, getting the secondary objective, but not a full massacre (I had 20 out of 22 possible points), which earned me a spot on the second table (top table was a Grey Knight player and an Ork player who had massacred in round 1, lets ignore that Grey Knights are a horrible match up for Orks for the moment) playing against a 3 Land raider blood angel force in capture and control. Again I got the win 1 objective to 0, but I did not massacre. My win was however enough to get me to the top table against the Grey Knight player (I was also running Grey Knights at the tournament). We had a hard fought battle (3 objectives) which ended in a draw on objectives, but my opponent got the secondary objective (table quarters), and more victory points. He finished the day 3-0, and finished second overall (I got third). Effectively we had knocked each other out of the top spot.

So who won you might ask? A guard player (who is a good player) with a much easier road to the top finished first overall. He played another Guard army (run by a weaker player) round 1, and won with around the same amount of battle points as I had. Round 2 he went on to play against a chaos Daemon player, who he beat (in a close game), and then he went on to Massacre a Marine player in the last round, amassing enough points to take the top spot. He won all 3 games, but against lesser opposition. I will admit that some of the problem here is that there were not that many players.

Let’s just look at the roads to the top 2 tables.

Grey Knights Vs Dark Eldar 1 (this player finished either 2-1 or 1-2 I’m not 100% sure)

Grey knights Vs 3 LR BA (this player finished 2-1)

Grey Knights Vs Grey Knights A (this player was 3-0)

SO my opponents were either 6-3 or 7-2 overall

Grey Knights A

Grey Knights A Vs Dark Eldar 2 (this player was either 2-1 or 1-2)

Grey Knights A Vs Orks (finished 2-1)

Grey Knights A Vs Grey Knights (this was me so 2-1)

So his opponents were either 6-3 or 5-4

Guard

Guard Vs Guard (1-2)

Guard Vs Daemons (1-2)

Guard vs Marines (2-1)

So his opponents were 4-5

Marines

Marines Vs Chaos (0-3)

Marines Vs Nids (0-3)

Marines Vs Guard (3-0)

This player’s opponents were 3-6

And here we can see the issue, the marine player only played against one player who won a game, and when he did he lost to that player badly. Now that is not his fault, nor would it have necessarily have been any different under a different format. I’m not saying we should penalize the guard player who won all of his games, all I am saying is that there should be some metric to take strength of schedule into account. I was fine with being 3^rd, I lost a game, I should not have won, however, the player who beat me, who played on the top table all day against winning players should get something for playing against harder competition. When it would have been better to me to have won by less to get onto table 2 we have a problem. The Grey knight player who I played in the last round deserved to win; the fact that I am a strong player should not have cost him the win.

Battle Points ended up something like this

Guard 56

Grey Knights A 52

Me 48

What needs to happen is for each player to gain something for playing stronger competition, maybe add a percent of their opponents total battle points to the final battle point standings. Let us just say for example the full list was something like this

Guard 56

Grey Knights A 52

Me 48

3 LR BA 44

Marines 42

Orks 40

DE 1 35

DE 2 32

Daemons 31

BA 22

Marines 2 20

Nids 18

Guard 2 16

Chaos 6

If you got say 20% of all the battle points for opponents you beat added to your score, and 10% of those you lost to added to your score you would get something like this for your top 6

Grey Knights A 76 points

Guard 73.8

Me 69

3 LR BA 59.4

Orks 52.8

Marines 52.4

As you can see not a whole lot changed at the top, I am still in 3^rd, but 1^st and 2^nd have swapped places because Grey Knights A played a tougher schedule, as did the Ork player who now moves from 6^th to 5^th. I’m not saying that this is perfect, it still needs looking into, and overall I would prefer win\loss tournaments as far as determining the best player. I’m also of the opinion that these numbers should only ever be used to rank people who finished with the same overall record. A 2-1 player should never finish ahead of a 3-0 player, because in theory they should have been playing a similar level of competition, but the 3-0 player who played against the best competition should gain something for playing tough games.

Analysis of Troops: Stage two Close Combat wounds dealt

2011-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Continuing down our exploration of the 40k troop choices, we'll take a look at which units dole out the most wounds point for point. I crunched the numbers for all the basic troops against opponents with WS3 and 4 and Toughness 3 and 4, to see how effective these units are in close combat for the points you spend. I also did not take charging into account. SO cutting to the chase here are the rankings.

No real surprise that Orks rank at the top, with 3 attacks each and WS 4 at 6 points they can really pump out a lot of punishment. I find it interesting the Ripper swarms place so highly and most people completely disregard them as an option (due to their special rules).

Also of note, for those that argue Grey Knights are sub par in the assault...that holds true as Strike squads are point for point the equivalent of eldar guardians, and point for point their terminators are worse than tactical marines and barely better than Tau Fire Warriors. Now GKs have other advantages that are not being looked at here, but from sheer output of wounds, they don't stack up.

Finally the last thing I find interesting, is that for wound output point for point, Summoned Lesser Daemons in the Chaos Space marine codex are better than Bloodletters (when you take other things into account, as we will later this does not hold up on the table.)

Overall rank	Troop type
1	Ork Boyz
2	Shoota Boyz
3	Rippers
4	Hormagaunts
5	Wyches
5	Templars
7	Berzerkers
8	Genestealers
9	Summoned Lesser Daemons
10	Bloodletters
10	Nurglings
12	Kroot
13	CSM
14	Daemonettes
15	Grey Hunters
16	Guard Infantry Platoon
17	Tyranid Warriors
18	Blood Claws
19	Termagants
19	Gretchin
21	BA Assault Squad
22	Penal Legion
23	Death company
24	Veterans
25	Noise marines
26	Plague marines
27	DE Warriors
28	Guardians
28	GK Strike Squad
30	Plague bearers
31	Dire Avengers
32	DA Tacticals
33	Tacticals
34	Inquisitorial Storm Troopers
35	Scouts
36	GK Terminators
37	Fire Warriors
38	Necron Warriors
39	Battle Sisters
40	Thousand Sons
41	Pink Horrors
42	Rangers
43	Guardian Jetbikes

So here are the numbers for those who are interested.

Overall rank	Troop type	# of Models	WS3 T3	WS4 T3	WS3 T4	WS4 T4
1	Ork Boyz	16.6666667	16.66666667	12.5	11.1111111	8.33333334
2	Shoota Boyz	16.6666667	11.11111111	12.5	7.40740741	5.55555556
3	Rippers	10	10	10	6.66666667	6.66666667
4	Hormagaunts	16.6666667	8.583333335	8.58333334	5.72222222	5.72222222
5	Wyches*	10	7.407407407	5.74074074	5.67901235	4.44444444
5	Templars**	6.25	7.407407407	6.25	5.55555556	4.16666667
7	Berzerkers	4.76190476	6.349206349	6.34920635	4.76190476	4.76190476
8	Genestealers	7.14285714	6.349206349	6.34920635	4.76190476	4.76190476
9	Summoned Lesser Daemons	7.69230769	6.837606837	5.12820513	5.12820513	3.84615385
10	Bloodletters	6.25	5.555555556	5.55555556	4.16666667	4.16666667
10	Nurglings	7.69230769	5.769230769	5.76923077	3.84615385	3.84615385
12	Kroot	14.2857143	6.349206351	4.76190476	4.76190476	3.57142857
13	CSM	6.66666667	5.925925926	4.44444444	4.44444444	3.33333333
14	Daemonettes	7.14285714	5.357142857	5.35714286	3.57142857	3.57142857
15	Grey Hunters	6.66666667	5.925925926	4.44444444	4.44444444	3.33333333
16	Guard Infantry Platoon	19.2307692	5.307692308	5.30769231	3.53846154	3.53846154
17	Tyranid Warriors	3.33333333	4.814814814	4.81481481	3.61111111	3.61111111
18	Blood Claws	6.66666667	4.444444445	4.77777778	3.58333333	3.58333333
19	Termagants	20	5	5	3.33333333	3.33333333
19	Gretchin	27.5	5.583333333	5.25	3.01388889	2.79166667
21	BA Assault Squad	5.2631579	5.122807018	3.84210526	3.84210526	2.88157895
22	Penal Legion***	12.5	4.583333333	4.58333333	3.05555556	3.05555556
23	Death company	5	5	3.75	3.33333333	2.5
24	Veterans	14.2857143	4.071428573	4.07142857	2.71428572	2.71428572
25	Noise marines	5	4.444444444	3.33333333	3.33333333	2.5
26	Plague marines	4.34782609	3.8647343	2.89855072	2.89855072	2.17391304
27	DE Warriors	11.1111111	3.703703703	2.77777778	2.4691358	1.85185185
28	Guardians	12.5	3.125	3.125	2.08333333	2.08333333
28	GK Strike Squad	5	3.25308642	2.43981481	2.59259259	1.94444444
30	Plague bearers	6.66666667	2.5	2.5	2.5	2.5
31	Dire Avengers	8.33333333	2.777777778	2.08333333	1.85185185	2.94444444
32	DA Tacticals	6.06060606	3.138047138	2.35353535	2.35353535	1.76515152
33	Tacticals	5.88235294	3.058823529	2.29411765	2.29411765	1.72058824
34	Inquisitorial Storm Troopers	10	2.75	2.75	1.83333333	1.83333333
35	Scouts	7.14285714	2.714285714	2.03571429	2.03571429	2.03571429
36	GK Terminators	2.5	2.731481481	2.04861111	2.17592593	1.63194444
37	Fire Warriors	10	2.5	2.5	1.66666667	1.66666667
38	Necron Warriors	5.55555556	2.469135803	1.85185185	1.85185185	1.38888889
39	Battle Sisters	9.09090909	2.272727273	2.27272727	1.51515152	1.51515152
40	Thousand Sons	3.6101083	2.048937024	1.53670277	1.53670277	1.15252708
41	Pink Horrors	5.88235294	1.470588235	1.47058824	0.98039216	0.98039216
42	Rangers	5.2631579	1.315789474	1.31578947	0.87719298	0.87719298
43	Guardian Jetbikes	4.54545455	1.136363636	1.13636364	0.75757576	0.75757576

* Yes I did take Combat drugs into account for the Wyches

** Templars were calculated using Prefered enemy, due to Accept any chalange because everyone takes this Vow

*** I did calculate the Penal Legion taking the chances of getting Knife Fighters

Analysis of Troops: Stage one Shooting with Standard Weapons against T4 enemies.

2011-06-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

After reading Distaste for Vanilla Space Marine Troops over on the 11th Company forums I got to thinking, how bad are Space Marine Tactical Squads really? How do they stack up against the other codices as far as troop choices go on a point for point basis?

For my first analysis I decided to see how the various troop choices (there are 42 different troop options in the whole of 40k not counting troops unlocked using special characters, troops unlocked through some other means: Tervigons for example, and I also excluded the Death Company Dread for ease of comparison) did in shooting at a T4 opponent with their standard load out (no upgrades taken, except the weapons platform for Eldar Guardians because it is mandatory, I took the Shuriken catapult as it was the least expensive option.)

For this analysis I compared the shooting of 100 points of each type of troop, to make it a fair comparison from a points aspect (of course 200 points of marines shoot better than 50 points of Gretchin for example.). I also broke down shooting into 3 Categories Range Greater than 24 inches, Range from 13-24 inches, and Range of 12 inches or less. This does leave a little grey area at 18" as some units have 18" range guns which are no good at 24", but I decided to not get even more complex so this is obviously a little Skewed.

That said here is what I came up with for the final ranking.

1 DE Warriors
2 Fire Warriors
2 Kroot
4 Dire Avengers/Shoota Boyz
5 IG Veterans
6 Battle Sisters
7 Guard Infantry Platoon
8 Pink Horrors
9 Grey Hunters
10 CSM
11 Inquisitorial Storm Troopers
12 Penal Legion
13 GK Strike Squad
14 Templars
15 DA Tacticals
16 Tacticals
17 Termagants
18 Gretchin
19 Necron Warriors
20 Tyranid Warriors
21 Guardians
22 Scouts
23 Blood Claws
24 Noise marines
25 Thousand Sons
26 Plague marines
27 Rangers
28 Wyches
29 Ork Boyz
30 BA Assault Squad
31 GK Terminators
32 Death company
33 Guardian Jetbikes
34 Berzerkers
35 Bloodletters
35 Daemonettes
35 Genestealers
35 Hormagaunts
35 Nurglings
35 Plague bearers
35 Rippers
35 Summoned Lesser Daemons

Now it is obvious why the units that tied for 35th overall did so as none of those units can shoot at all. What I found interesting was just how high Kroot placed, with only BS 3 and a bolter that is AP 6, they also end up just as good as Fire Warriors (better if you discount the high placement of Fire warriors in the shooting over 24" category, as only 2 squads have standard firepower over 24", Fire Warriors and Eldar Rangers.) Now of course accounting for AP could be important but T4 Could mean Marines, or it could mean orks so I just wanted to look at total number of wounds caused.

Also interesting keep in mind is that if you make the Ork Boyz shoota boyz (a free upgrade) they are equivalent to Dire avengers, so point for point Orks shoot better than any of the marines using standard/free upgrades.

Here is the math for all units

Unit Name		Wounds	VS T4
	Number of models	25"+	13-24"	less than 12"
BA Assault Squad	5.263157895	0	0	1.754385965
Battle Sisters	9.090909091	0	3.030303	6.060606061
Berzerkers	4.761904762	0	0	0
Blood Claws	6.666666667	0	1.666667	3.333333333
Bloodletters	6.25	0	0	0
CSM	6.666666667	0	2.222222	4.444444444
DA Tacticals	6.060606061	0	2.020202	4.04040404
Daemonettes	7.142857143	0	0	0
DE Warriors	11.11111111	0	3.703704	7.407407407
Death company	5	0	0	1.666666667
Dire Avengers	8.333333333	0	5.555556	5.555555556
Fire Warriors	10	3.333333	3.333333	6.666666667
Genestealers	7.142857143	0	0	0
GK Strike Squad	5	0	3.333333	3.333333333
GK Terminators	2.5	0	1.666667	1.666666667
Gretchin	27.5	0	0	4.583333333
Grey Hunters	6.666666667	0	2.222222	4.444444444
Guard Infantry Platoon	19.23076923	0	2.705128	5.965811966
Guardian Jetbikes	4.545454545	0	0	1.291322314
Guardians	12.5	0	1.25	4.375
Hormagaunts	16.66666667	0	0	0
Inquisitorial Storm Troopers	10	0	2.222222	4.444444444
Kroot	14.28571429	0	3.571429	7.142857143
Necron Warriors	5.555555556	0	1.851852	3.703703704
Noise marines	5	0	1.666667	3.333333333
Nurglings	7.692307692	0	0	0
Ork Boyz	16.66666667	0	0	2.777777778
Penal Legion	12.5	0	2.555556	4
Pink Horrors	5.882352941	0	4.411765	4.411764706
Plague bearers	6.666666667	0	0	0
Plague marines	4.347826087	0	1.449275	2.898550725
Rangers	5.263157895	1.754386	1.754386	1.754385965
Rippers	10	0	0	0
Scouts	7.142857143	0	1.785714	3.571428571
Shoota Boyz	16.66666667	0	5.555556	5.555555556
Summoned Lesser Daemons	7.692307692	0	0	0
Tacticals	5.882352941	0	1.960784	3.921568627
Templars	6.25	0	2.083333	4.166666667
Termagants	20	0	0	5
Thousand Sons	3.610108303	0	1.786703	2.656738869
Tyranid Warriors	3.333333333	0	2.5	2.5
Veterans	14.28571429	0	3.174603	6.349206349
Wyches	10	0	0	3.333333333

Reflections on the BFS RTT.

2011-05-26T12:38:00.001-07:00

About my list

1.) The scouts did not really do all that much. I put them in the list to sit on objectives, and maybe fire a couple of missiles. In 3 games the achieved dying twice, holding an objective for a bonus point once, they shot the missile launcher once in 3 games. Part of the issue was that I misplayed them in 2 out of 3 games. In my first game I should have either deployed them, or walked them on with the rest of my army, reserving them for the outflank, when my opponent was outflanking with Genestealers, was a bad idea, I had an idea about denying kill points in my head going into the game and did not think through my opponents list when making my decision. If I had gotten my scouts into the small piece of terrain in the middle of my deployment zone, they would have killed his Ymgarls who would now have no place to deploy from. (Now I had no way to know they would come in there, but I should have gambled on it as it was the best place for them to be. In my last game I should have kept them off the table with the rest of my army rather than eat 2 turns of incoming fire.

2.) I feel like psychic defense might be very necessary going forward, the ability to potentially shut down feel no pain on nids (even though it only got used twice), lash, psyker battle squads, Grey Knights, etc, is going to be more and more important going forward.

About My Play

1.) Against more aggressive opponents reserving my army and coming in piecemeal like I did could have cost me a lot more than it did.

2.) I worry too much about losing my speeders and Dreads early in the game. I think this is the reason I was so likely to reserve. In addition the fact that bikes can turbo boost on to the board greatly improves their durability.

Battle for Salvation RTT round 3

2011-05-25T12:55:00.001-07:00

Feeling a little better about myself after winning round 2 I prepared to face down the might that is the new Grey Knights in Round 3.

Mission: 5 Objective Seize ground with pre-placed objectives, Deployment: Pitched battle

My opponents list

Crowe

4 x 5 Purifiers (2x Psycannons, Hammer (on Knight of the flame)) in PsyBacks

1 x 10 man strike squad (2 Psycannons, maybe some other stuff I never found out) in a Rhino

3 x Psyfleman dreads

6 Paladins (not sure what they had, they played no part in this game.)

I won the roll and took second turn (bike armies love 2^nd turn in an objective mission) my opponent reserved his paladin squad to deep strike, reserved Crowe (to deny kps I guess as Kps was a bonus battle point). He deployed 2 Purifier squads and 2 Dreads on my Left, and 2 Purifier squads, the Strike squad, and a Dread on my right, hiding the strike Rhino behind a building, and setting up his fire lanes. I decided to reserve everything except my scouts, who infiltrated on an objective in terrain on my left. My thinking for reserving was 3 Fold:

1.) Deny my opponent 2 turns of shooting (except at 2+ cover save scouts).

2.) Shorten the game, skipping 2 turns meant that I would have more bikes left to control and contest objectives with come turn 5.

3.) Hope that his paladins would come in before me and I could avoid them, as I really did not want to content with that squad. (Though I guess with all my melta I probably could have killed them, but that would have been focusing most of my army on one squad.)

Turn 1: My opponent moves up with his razorbacks and dreads on my left, as well as the dread on my right. He shoots the scouts with 2 dreads and 2 Psybacks, and kills 1. (The go to ground). My turn the scouts stand back up.

Turn 2: My opponent rolls reserves, Crowe come in but his Paladins hang back (much to my dismay). He moves up his dreads and Razors on my left shoots more at the scouts, and manages to kill the squad (bad rolling on my part) He also managed to immobilize one of his Razors in terrain on my right. My turn comes, I roll reserves, I get in 1 Melta bike squad, and 1 speeder. Both come in on my right and shoot his Dread on that side, blowing off an arm and immobilizing it.

Turn 3: My opponents Paladins still don’t come in so he moves up further on my right to get LOS at my speeder and bikes, on the right he immobilizes another RB in terrain (terrible luck on dangerous terrain for him), shoots my bikes a bit, and kills 2. . On my turn, I get in one dread, another speeder, my large bike squad, and another melta bike squad. I finish off his immobile dread, my melta bikes come in on the right, and wreck one of his Purifiers Razorbacks. This means I will get assaulted on that side but I need those purifiers out of their ride. I also manage to immobilize one of his dreads on the right.

Turn 4 : My opponent finally gets his Paladins in and…..they mishap, and I place them in the left hand corner farthest from any fighting, they won’t be heard from again. He disembarks one of his Purifier squads on the right to try to shoot and assault my bikes that had lost 2 bikers last turn, he kills one, I combat tactic to fail LD and fall out of assault range. On the left his purifiers move shoot and assault my melta bikes, they kill everything but the attack bike (they lose their hammer to perils on double ones for hammer hand). He also moves his Strike rhino up on the left to try to get shots on my speeders. On my turn my last 2 dreads and speeder come on, but 2 bike squads still stay off the board. My big squad moves up shoots the purifiers that had disembarked, killing all but one, who I charge, he rolls for Cleansing flame hoping to put some wounds on my squad, and he rolls box cars, and kills the last guy. My remaining members of the weakened Melta squad on the right move up and pop his immobile Razorback, while getting out of LOS from the guys on the right. On the Right his purifiers finish off my bike squad, and consolidate onto an objective ~12” from my table edge.

Turn 5: My opponent tries to move up his Strike Rhino only to immobilize it in terrain (that is 3 if you’re counting) He disembarks his last purifiers on the left to shoot my big squad, which he shoots with as much as possible and brings it down to the captain and 3 guys, they pass LD. On the Right he immobilizes one of my speeders, and moves up his Last purifier squad, and disembarks into terrain (I think he was going to try to take the center objective if we went 6 turns.). On my turn My last 2 bike squads come in and with the help of the immobile speeder gun down his purifier squad on the left objective near my table edge. My weakened Melta squad that is near table center moves and claims the center objective, the remnants of my big squad split off from my captain and claim another objective while he goes to contest my opponents only objective. In shooting I kill all but 2 of the purifiers on that objective. At which point I decided since I was not in contention for tournament victory I would assault the 2 purifiers with my captain, who wiped them out. The game ends on turn 5 with me holding 3 objectives to 0, and winning 2 of the secondary objectives (VPs and KPs, we tied table quarters) so I get 12 points, finishing with 20 Battle points out of a possible 39, and tying for 10^th overall.

Battle for Salvation RTT game 2

2011-05-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

After my first game beating I was of 2 minds, first I new I was out of contention for the overall win, second I knew I wanted to win more games than I lost over the course of the tournament, and theoretically I should have an easier opponent after my first loss.

Game 2 Mission: NOVA table quarters (most victory points hold the quarter), Deployment: Spearhead

My opponent for this game was a guy name Kurt who was playing Chaos Space marines. He was a very nice guy and a great opponent.

His list

Daemon Prince (mark of Slaanesh, lash)

Sorcerer (mark of Slaanesh, lash)

Elites

3 Terminators ( Icon of Slaanesh, combi-meltas) in a Possessed Land Raider.

Dreadnought (Plasma Cannon, Missile) which he smartly kept close to his land raider incase it freaked out

5 Chosen (3 Melta, 2 Plasma) in a Rhino.

Troops

10 Chaos Marines (2 Plasma Guns)

10 Chaos Marines (Plasma gun, missile launcher)

6 or 7 Thousand Sons in a Rhino, Bolt of change Sorcerer (lash sorcerer rode with these guys)

Heavy Support

Possessed Vindicator

2 x 2 Obliterators.

My opponent won the roll to go first and castled up in his corner, placing his vehicles up front giving cover to his Daemon Prince. His 2 Chaos Marine Squads were deployed in a big piece of area terrain in the middle of his quarter, as were one of his Oblit squads. His other oblits were deployed in another piece of area terrain near his board edge close to table center. He held his Chosen in Reserve to outflank. Seeing as he was fairly shooty but not all that mobile I decided to reserve all of my army, except for my scouts who infiltrated in some ruins, in the neutral table quarter on his side of the table.

Turn 1: My opponent moves a little to get better cover for his vehicles, but makes the mistake of popping smoke on his Thousand sons rhino and his Vindicator, because he forgets that I won’t have much to hurt him with turn 1. He shoots his dread and one squad of oblits at my scouts, who go to ground and make saves. He is still entirely within his table quarter as he is afraid of getting spread out and shot up by my bikes as they arrive. On my turn my scouts get up and then it is his turn again.

Turn 2: His chosen don’t arrive (lucky for him.) He uses his land raider to hide his other tanks, then shoots at my scouts again killing one. On my turn I get in one of my speeders, one of my Dreads and 3 of my melta bike squads. I bring my dread and speeder in on my right, while all 3 bikes come in on my left (the same side as most of his stuff) I turbo boost one squad, while the others hide behind a piece of terrain. I shoot and immobilize his dread in his table quarter, but do little else. My thought at this point is to try to fight him in his table quarter and get him to stay there while I keep the remaining 3 for my self.

Turn 3: His Chosen arrive; they come in right next to my speeder and Dread. He does not move much except to line up my turbo boosted bikes to eat a lot of fire. His Chosen kill my dread, while his Oblits immobilize my speeder and knock its missiles off. He lashes my turbo boosted squad then drops the vindicator round and 2 plasma rounds (as well as all his chaos marine shooting into them), then lashes them again so he can assault with his DP, but he rolls poorly and we tie combat with my 2 bikes doing 1 wound and his DP doing 1 wound. ON my turn I get my large bike squad and my last melta bike squad in as well as one more dread and one more speeder. The melta bikers turbo boost up the center of the table to try and engage his land raider, and I manage to blow off a lascannon. My Large bike squad (with captain) moves on and assaults the Chosen and their rhino, killing the Chosen, but only knocking the gun off the rhino. I move up and shoot and assault one Chaos marine squad with one of my bike squads, while the other bike squad moves back toward the center of my table edge. I manage to stun the thousand sons Rhino, put a wound on an obliterator, and my bike squad wins combat against his Chaos marines who then run off the board. His Daemon Prince finishes off the bike squad he is fighting.

Turn 4: He disembarks his sorcerer and thousand sons (splitting them up ) and his termies. He shoots my fully functional speeder and kills it, and takes the heavy bolter off of the other speeder. His chosen rhino runs away from my large squad back toward his edge of the board. He lashes the bikes squad that just killed his marine squad as well as my other bike squad and shoots both with a lot of fire power. I take enough casualties to force leadership, which I choose to fail with combat tactics leaving his daemon prince out of assault range. His terminators assault my melta bike squad that turbo boosted last turn, they win combat, I choose to run away, and get far enough away to regroup.(with all 3 squads. My Turn 4, I get in the last of my reserves, my large bike squad chases his Rhino back toward his board edge. My other bikes shoot at his Daemon prince, and land raider, (taking the prince down to his last wound but doing little to the landraider.) While my dreads, shoot and blow up his rhino and vindicator (which kills 3 Thousand sons, and 1 regular marine in the blast.) Then I assault the land raider with a squad of bikes, but multi charge into his sorcerer, just to tie him up so he does not get to use lash. He kills a bike, and I wound the sorcerer and we stay locked. My scouts have now run out onto an objective (which counts as a bonus point)

Turn 5: His Chosen rhino continues to run, his daemon prince and termies assault one of my bike squad and wipe them out. His Thousand sons shoot and kill most of another bike squad (just the attack bike remains). On my turn I shoot and kill his Daemon Prince, move my dreads into the quarter (as well as the remaining attack bike from my last small bike squad) which has his Thousand sons, and termies. I also move a damaged speeder into this quarter. My Large bike squad moves into the quarter that had my scouts in it (and his rhino and obliterators). My bikes continue to tie up his sorcerer in combat. The game ends turn 5 with me holding 3 quarters to his one quarter. (I hold one quarter with the immobilized speeder with no weapons ;). So after game 2 I had 8 points in the overall standing, which put me somewhere in the lower middle of the pack (getting tabled game one will do that.)

Battle for Salvation 2000 point RTT

2011-05-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

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

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 3^rd 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.

Never forget the mission.

2011-05-03T07:14:00.001-07:00

If I could give one piece of advice to any player, old or new, it would be always remember the mission. So often these days I hear that competitive players always play to table their opponent, build lists to table their opponent, stomp face regardless of the mission. While I agree that if you are beating your opponent into submission, you are likely winning the game, killing the opponent will not win you every game.

A few stories to make my point: The first of these comes from a year or so ago, I was playing a 1k point game with my Ravenwing army against, Imperial Guard. The mission was capture and control, spearhead. My opponent took the first turn and placed his objective in the middle of his deployment zone. I placed mine behind a hill in the opposite corner of the board, and reserved my entire army to outflank. Turn 2 a few of my squads outflank on his side and start battling with Chimeras, and guardsman taking heavy casualties. Turn 3 the rest of my stuff comes on, one bike squad comes in on the opposite table edge, so I drive it in on my objective out of line of site. Meanwhile he is busy dealing with my bikes, near his objective. At the end of the game I win by contesting his objective and controlling mine. At which point my opponent says “Why did you leave that bike squad back in that corner….”, which was on my objective.

The second story happened just a week ago, I lent a friend of mine (a new player) my Deathwing army to play a 1500 point tourney, I was running Grey Knights. So after winning my first game I go over to see how he is doing. He tells me he lost the game, and I see that he only lost about 4 terminators, while his opponent’s army had little left. He had forgotten that the mission was table quarters, and lost 2 quarters to 1. He went on to finish 4^th overall (I ended up 7^th), winning his last 2 games. Maybe he could have won the whole thing if he remembered the point of the mission, we’ll never know.

Lastly, more tournaments these days are only giving full points for accomplishing the mission, even if you table your opponent. One more reason to remember the mission, even if you plan to destroy your opponent.

Transports and Assault.

2011-04-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

One place I see a lot of people make errors in the game is when their transport vehicle gets destroyed in close combat. Sometimes this is because the rules are not incredible clear, sometimes it is just wishful thinking on the part of the player.
There are 2 ways a vehicle can be destroyed, wrecked and explodes. Each of these has its own set of rules and its own set of mistakes.

So let us look at a few examples of each type of destroyed result and see what the rules would suggest should happen.

Wrecked
The rules state(p.67) that passengers must immediately disembark, and take a pinning test. Any models that cannot disembark are destroyed. Then the Vehicle becomes a wreck.

Example 1:

In this picture the Orks have assaulted the front of a Rhino, and wrecked said Rhino. Therefore the passengers must disembark from the Rhino, following the rules for disembarking(p.67), which include staying 1" away from the Orks.

Which would use the space shown here. If any models cannot fit then they are destroyed.

Next let us look at the next common assault situation. A case where all the doors of the vehicle are blocked

In this case the passengers can still disembark, but must do so using the rules for emergency disembarking. Which means that they can exit the vehicle within 2" of any part of the hull, but cannot do anything for the rest of the turn. However, they still must remain 1" away from the orks. Meaning if there are say 10 guys in that Rhino some are likely dead as they will run out of space in which to disembark.

Next, lets look at what happens if you are surrounded when your vehicle gets Wrecked.

I have seen people try to argue that you can still emergency disembark in this case as a wrecked vehicle counts as terrain. This is incorrect however, as if you look in the rulebook on P.67 you will notice that it says that the passengers disembark and then the vehicle becomes a wreck. This is important because when the disembarking is taking place the vehicle is still a vehicle, and therefore cannot be moved through, or on, therefore the unit inside is destroyed.

Finally: what happens when the vehicle explodes? This to me is the most difficult piece, the rulebook (p.67) states that all of the embarked models take a strength 4 hit and the survivors are placed where the vehicle used to be. Easy enough, however, what happens when the vehicle is surrounded? Do you still have to be 1" away from the enemy models? The rulebook is unclear on this, as is the GW FAQ. Looking at other sources the INAT FAQ rules that the models within 1" of enemies are removed as casualties, this seems to be supported by the movement rule that you are not allowed to move within 1" of an enemy unit unless you are assaulting(p.11), however, does placing the unit where the vehicle was count as movement, or does it break this rule? If as I suspect it does not then surrounding a Rhino and exploding it only leaves space for 2 or 3 marines where the vehicle used to be.