Last weekend I attended the Team OP (octopus party) Tournament, a 1600 point 40k affair with the craziest scenarios I have ever seen. It was run by a new group on the tournament scene, but I would say that they really did a good job. The tables and terrain were all quite nice, and they also provided lunch on both days. My army list can be found
here. The final twist was that each player was given eight secret mission cards, which were chosen after deployment and gave +5 to the battle score.
Winning a game fully gave 13 points, for a maximum of 18 per game.
My first game was supposed to be against one of two Tyranid players that attended the event. Unfortunately, he slept in. Instead I got to play against one of the organizers, who was using his friend's Ravenwing army. I believe his name was Ryan, but this was early on a Saturday so my memory might not be entirely accurate. His army consisted of three squads of bikers, two squads of landspeeders, the master of the ravenwing in his fancy landspeeder, and a squad of terminators.
The table/scenario was cityfight. This meant that there were buildings EVERYWHERE, most of which had a mystery effect that you got when you entered. Also, difficult terrain got vehicles on a 1 or a 2! We each placed two objectives, one in the opponent's zone and one wherever. The objective in the opponent's deplyment zone was more important. Deployment was standard pitched battle. My deployment can be seen below, with the Russ and Manticore being a bit further to the right. My opponent deployed fairly evenly across his zone. I chose killing all of his elites and heavy support as my secret objective, as that was only the terminators.
My basic plan was to push hard with my squad on the right to get the objective in his zone while keeping my other large unit as a midfield deterrent. This was going well until the advancing unit entered a trapped building. Each model took a strength 10 hit, so that basically ended my chances of getting the win. I destroyed a large portion of his army, and in the end he only had his terminators and a mostly destroyed land speeder. Unfortunately, my veterans failed to climb high enough to get to the third floor of the building you see on the right of the picture below. This meant that my only objective was contested by the terminators at the end of the game, so it was a tie. I now have seven battle points.
All in all it was a fun first game to start off the day. Ryan was a good opponent, although you could tell that he didn't really know how to use his friend's list. Playing on a table that was so densely packed with terrain was a really fun experience. It was surprisingly good for my army, as my most important ranged units have the barrage option and my infantry squads actually are better up close.
Game two was against Mike's Dark Angel army, which leaned towards the Deathwing side of things. He had a squad of fighty terminators with Belial, another squad of fighty terminators with a Chaplain, an apothecary, and a banner in a land raider crusader, one squad of shooty terminators, a techmarine, and three anti tank landspeeders. The deployment for this battle was spearhead. The scenario was called Rhino Roulette. Basically, there were six wrecked Rhino terrain pieces on the table. Any squad that moved over one investigated it by rolling a die. On a 1 the Rhino exploded! The entire game was night fight rules, but you were allowed to use the searchlight of any Rhino you controlled. I took the secret objective of keeping an objective for five player turns in a row.
This game was an exercise in whittling down his terminator units. Unfortunately, I made a critical mistake and did not realize that his techmarine was allowed to hold objectives. Also, I was way too aggresive with my melta vets, throwing them out first turn and essentially trading them and the valkyrie for a single land speeder. The game ended on turn five with him winning two objectives to one. Since we only explored 5 of the 6 Rhinos we got lucky and none of them exploded. I easily obtained my bonus objective, as my secondary platoon was untouched throughout the entire game.
This was another good game and a fun scenario. Having searchlights on so many different sources meant that I really didn't care too much about the night fight. Also, I got lucky and immobilized the land raider on the first turn so I was able to deal with the terminator squads one at a time. If this game had gone on a little longer I might have been able to pull off a win. I ended up getting 2+5 battle points for this game, putting me at a total of 14 so far.
Game three was on the table you see below. There were three objective, all on the centre of the table. This is not good for my slow moving army, and it was made even worse by the fact that only troops without transports were allowed to deploy, and they only got 6" from the edge. The rest of the army came in with reserve rolls, starting on a 3+. We also were allowed to each hide one unit in a terrain piece somewhere on the board. These hidden units also were objective. I put mine in the grey building past the bastion in the centre, and he put his in the brown building that is closer to the camera.
I was playing against Jon and his Slannesh list. He had two units of noise marines, a unit of havoks, and two units of chosen all in rhinos. He also had two anti tank dreadnoughts and a lash sorcerer. This added up to an obscene amount of anti infantry fire, which was quite potent in this matchup against me. I was running out of easy secret objectives, so I chose one where I had to wipe out a squad on the turn I charged it. I figured his smaller unit sized might let me get away with this.
This game was a bloodbath, but not in a good way. My plan was to take and hold the building my hidden unit was in. Unfortunately, my army got their piece meal and was simply destroyed one unit at a time. In the end I barely avoided being tabled. I also failed to get my bonus objective, mostly due to terrible difficult terrain rolls. My Basilisk and Russ didn't get on the table until turn 5, and my Basilisk even ended up scatting a shot onto itself and exploding! Moral of the story: my army is really more of a counter attack force and not good for all out assaults.
At the end of day one this put me at 16 battle points with a draw and two losses. It was time to go back to the house and figure out what to do differently.
Day two started out with me almost having to play against the Ravenwing army again. Luckily, Scott made it and I got to play against his Crimson Fist drop pod army. He had three tactical squads, two ironclads, and a unit of sternguard with lots of combi weapons and Kantor all in drop pods. The table had six objective organized centrally and the deployment was spearhead. The twist was that units could pick up these objectives and carry them around, and they could be allocated wounds and explode!
I got first turn and deployed in such a way that he couldn't get too many drop pods in the middle of my army. My secret objective was to make him take 5 morale checks from shooting. The above picture is after my first turn, where I have two objectives secure. The squad on my right ended up moving out to get another objective, which may have put them a little too far out of position. His initial drop was not too bad, as the dreadnoughts didn't do too much and a tactical squad only killed a couple of guardsmen. I slowly fought them off, but on turn three his sternguard came down and killed my artillery pieces.
They were far enough away from the objectives that I was able to just ignore the sternguard after that. I just kept fighting his marines, and my veterans were locked in combat with the surviving ironclad. Straken was instrumental in allowing me to charge and beat the tactical squads. The picture below shows my units after taking out a drop pod full of marines on my turn 5. Unfortunately, they were able to shoot up that infantry squad and Straken couldn't deal with the power fist in the marine squad.
My veterans did end up killing that dreadnought with their melta bombs, but by the end of the game Scott had obtained four objectives and I was left with none. I also was only able to get up two three morale checks so I failed my bonus objective. This was a really close game that could have went either way. My Leman Russ failed to do anything this game, and if he had managed to do some damage to that last tactical squad I might have got the win. Instead I got two more battle points, putting me at 18.
My final game was against Larry, who was using yet another Dark Angels list. This one was built with Codex: Space marines though, so it was still different from the other two. He had two tactical squads in rhinos, two small squads of assault marines with chaplains, two lascannon predators, and two assault cannon dreadnoughts.
The scenario for this battle was the only bad one of the tournament. One person's entire force was set up in a 12" radius circle in the centre of the board. They started out controlling 'The Hostage'. The attacking player got two 6" deployment zones on either of the short table edges. They had to break through the opponents entire army to get the hostage out of the centre. This basically meant that whichever of us was the defender was going to win. I won the roll, and set my army up like so:
Larry deployed one tactical squad and one assault squad on the left, and everything else on the right. For my final bonus objective I chose to have all of my HQ choices alive at the end of the game. I then proceeded to what the Imperial Guard does best. I sat there and shot at him for the entire game. My ordnance was unerringly accurate. My Basilisk killed an assault squad a turn! I also got to do some solid hand to hand combat against tactical squads.
Once again having Straken was key. I simply swamped him with my attacks and until his marines couldn't take it any more. We also had a fun tank duel going, as my Leman Russ traded fire with his predators for the entire game. At the end we had lost a turret each! This just goes to show how durable 14 front armour can be.
This one ended with me getting maximum points. I got 10 for winning, 1 for controlling more table quarters, and 2 for having the hostage in my deployment zone. This gave me 13+5 total, increasing my battle point score to 34. Larry fought valiantly, but he just couldn't get through my army. I think that if our positions were reversed I also wouldn't have been able to win this one. Our armies were just too slow to move to the centre of the table and remove an entire army.
In the end it was a great tournament and a fun way to say goodbye to 5th edition 40k. The scenarios were generally quite fun and all of my opponents were fantastic. I learned that I can't really be that aggressive with my guardsmen even with Straken's help. I'm looking forward to attending the next tournament that Team OP decides to run.
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