With that out of the way, let's take a look at my Team OP experience!
Here's a link to my army list.
Game 1: Cityfighting against the Cadian Airbourne Division
As luck would have it, I started this tournament on the same board that I started last years tournament with. Wes was a very strong opponent to play my first game against. His army had:
3 vendettas and a thunderbolt
Leman Russ Eradicator + devildog + plasmavets in chimera that deep struck due to scenario rules
melta platoon command with a 20 man blob+commissar lord on Aigis autocannon
Master Of Ordnance plus astropath company command
Hydra flak platform (very cheap point cost forgeworld stuff) and 2 squads of two autocannon sabre batteries
a Colossus
This had me fairly worried, as all I had for anti air was my vendetta and a couple of twin linked autocannons. In addition, my land raider full of marines was forced to outflank and didn't come in until turn three due to the scenario rules again.
My land raider did it's job and rushed up the flank. He poured a lot of firepower into it, but in the end it just wasn't enough. On turn two my Chaos Lord hopped out and charged the only scout that was left, netting me an easy bonus objective by killing a unit on the turn he charged it. The rest of the chaos marines were less lucky, dying to a unit of 5 fire warriors in a horrifically botched assault.
Here you can see the result of a major mistake I made on my first turn. I backed up Straken's ride in a confusing attempt to keep him safe which really only harmed me. I majorly blocked off a whole platoon and exposed the Chimera's side armour to the enemy. Straken ended up being destroyed after his transport was blown up, giving Danny an early advantage.
On the right hand side of this picture you can see the damage I'm doing to Darkstrider's squad. He eventually left them and just cowered behind this bastion. On the last turn I finally managed to hit him with my manticore before promptly rolling a one to wound. If I had worked harder at getting my land raider over there I might have been able to get him with the Chaos Lord, but in the end Danny pulled out the victory. I ended up with something like 7 BP for losing but getting my bonus objective. This was a fantastic game as Danny was a great guy to play 40k with, and he got my vote for best sportsman. He finished sixth overall.
My Land Raider soaked up a ton of fire from Stephen's psycannons, and on the second turn my chaos lord routed the guardians by himself.
I wasn't having much luck killing the purifiers though, as my russ couldn't do anything because of the Aegis Line and my manticore couldn't beat their armour.
One of the dreadknights ended up grabbing the objective and moving it firmly beyond my reach before I could take it out. Oddly enough, my vendetta survived the whole game as Stephen never really shot it.
Here's a shot of the board and my deployment. Wes had first turn. I basically just spread out and prepared to advance on his lines. I knew I couldn't out shoot Wes, and I had to be in the open for the objective you can see beside my leman russ. We also had night fight on turn one, which I later realized we shouldn't have rolled for as the rules pack did not include the night fight special rule. Interestingly, there was also none of the regular secondary objectives in play. Instead we had mission specific primary and secondary objectives, plus bonus objectives. We got to pick one bonus objective out of about 8 given out individually at the start of the tournament, and for this game I decided to try to kill all of his heavy support.
Then this happens with my scout move. This building was booby trapped, so I lost a hullpoint on each of my sentinels and also lost a major piece of cover!
Here we are at the top of turn two, and all of Wes's fliers have arrived along with his deepstriking allied division. He had done some major damage to one of my combined squads, and I had just advanced up and prepared to weather the incoming fire.
I took some damage, but I on my turn two I was able to fly my Vendetta into cover and pass all my saves against his interceptor anti air platforms. At this point I knew that this game was not going to go well, so I just focused on trying to get my bonus objective. I managed to stun his Colossal, but I couldn't really hurt the thunderbolt or the hydra platform.
As usual, Straken is the last man left from his command squad.
I managed to get one of the two hull points off this thing, but it's cover was just too good for me to finish it off. You can also see his blob unit moving towards a midfield objective through the ruins past the Aegis Line.
My Land raider has finally arrived to try for the objectives in his deployment zone, but I don't really have much of an army left at this point.
Four valiant guardsmen defend my objective while Straken goes for a charge against the enemy platoon. He fails his charge but overwatch can not scratch his adamantium body.
Wes rushed all his aircraft towards my raider, but it held together. The Chaos lord couldn't make it to the sabre platforms, but his unit did succeed in grabbing the objective they were on. With that, our fourth turn was over and we were out of time. I don't think I could have got any more points though so it was probably good for my score that we ended when we did. In the end, I got 4 Battle Points. (3 from losing and 1 from having my marines on the objective I placed in his lines)
This was a surprisingly good game. I did feel that my list was a lot less powerful than Wes's, but I did manage to hold on and actually grab an objective by the end of the game. Wes's guardsmen were very nicely painted and I was excited to be able to play against some Forgeworld units. He ended up getting best general and placing fifth overall.
After this game we had a nice break for lunch and the 40k players voted for the best Fantasy paint jobs.
Game 2: Cargo Transporting vs the Unholy Alliance
In this game I was matched up against the bye army on another repeat table from last year. Deplyment was hammer and anvil and I got first turn. Jeff was using Dark Angels with Necron allies, and his army contained:
2 close combat terminator squads with belial,
20 tactical marines with plasma stuff
5 devistators with skyfire missiles
3 anti tank land speeders
10 immortals with mindshackle Necron lord and the Doom Scythe
The board had four(?) objectives, each of which could explode if a hit was allocated to them. We each got one in our deployment area and the rest were midfield. I rushed my land raider into difficult terrain first turn, so of course it was immobilized. After that, we basically just stood around and shot eachother for the first two turns.
I chose to try two destroy two vehicles in one turn as my bonus objective, and my manticore and sentinels quickly got the job done against his land speeders.
Jeff's terminators arrived behind my lines early on, so I had to redirect a bit of attention to them.
I also learned quite quickly that shooting immortals with the resurrection orb was an exercise in futility, as they simply refused to stay dead.
His terminators were not very lucky against me, as I was able to take out Belial relatively quickly and he actually rolled double ones for one attempt at charging my unit on the right.
My vendetta tried to take out the doom scythe but failed and died horribly to its alien weaponry.
Here we see the terminators embroiled in a combat against my big squad that they would eventually lose.
On the last turn of the game I managed to blow up one of Jeff's objectives. I also kept his necrons from reaching the objective you can see behind my chimera with the chaos marines. Although they ultimately lost to the mindshackle lord, their heroic sacrifice secured the win for me. I ended up with 15 Battle Points (10 for winning and 5 for objectives)
Game 3: Specializing against the Tau
Danny brought out a Tau and Dark Angel force as my opponent for the third game. We had to chose an HQ choice to kill as the primary objective and got to kit out a free assassin type character to get the job done. Deployment was Dawn of War. Danny's army contained:
30 fire warriors + Darkstrider
10 pathfinders for the disco lights and a skyray missile tank
a kitted out crisis leader with about 8 markerlight drones
a squad of 2 broadsides with railguns, missile pods, seeker missiles, and shield drones.
a squad of 3 plasma gunning crisis suits and a squad of 4 burst cannon stealth suits
2 units of 3 ravenwing bikers with 2 melta and a power fist each
a unit of sniper scouts
I chose Darkstrider as my target and made up a sniper assassin, and Danny chose to go for Straken with a close combat specialist. I got first turn and begun my bombardment of the Darkstrider. This game has less pictures because I was tired...
Game 4: VIP vs the Grey Knight's and their heretical pets
Day two started off with my final battle against the old Eldar book. This game was basically The Relic with diagonal deployment and only allies starting on the table. The main force walked on turn one, and Stephen rolled first turn. His army consisted of:
3*10 Purifiers with max
psycannons, half halbards, half hammers
Paladin Crowe
2 dreadknights with swords and flamers
6 pathfinders (or rangers?)
3 Dark reapers with exarch
5ish fire dragons
with exarch manning quad gun defence line
20ish guardians with shuriken cannon
After he deployed his eldar I popped my Land Raider as close to his guys as I could and then seized the initiative! His quad gun popped my melta vet chimera, but I was able to get rid of his fire dragons easily with all my shooting. I unfortunately made the mistake of not grabbing the objective and running with it on turn one with my chaos marines. I didn't read the rules carefully enough and missed the fact that you could run with the objective, and I was afraid he would have just killed all my marines.
Since the game was basically over, Stephen agreed to a duel between Straken and Crowe (killing him with with my warlord was my bonus objective). We fought over the objective in the center and Straken managed to prevail! Crow missed with his single attack and then failed to wound with his funky deathblow rule. Because of this I once again ended with about seven battle points.
After this we had pizza and cake for lunch. Having food provided as part of the tournament is great as it lets you hang out and visit instead of having to run around and hurry back before the next game.
Game 5: Shooting Tau in the Dark
For the final game of the weekend I played Rob and his Tau. His list had:
about 46 fire warriors with some marker drones in the squads
3 individual broadsides with railguns and missile pods
3 squads of 3 stealth suits with split fire melta guns
1 squad of pathfinders with 3 rail rifles, 2 pulse
carbines and another the same but with ion rifles
a large unit of kroot
riptide
with the ion cannon thing and 2 drones
Farsight with 3 melta+plasma crisis suits
Rob got first turn, and he was nice enough to let the massive sky
shield landing pad in his deployment zone be counted as ruins so as not to
unbalance the game too much. Unfortunately, permanent nightfight meant that this was going
to be an uphill battle for me regardless.
My saving grace was the massive fortress of redemption terrain piece in
the center of the board. We each drew
random objectives from an envelope, and our allies were allowed to deepstrike,
outflank, or come in from reserves on a turn of our choice (no turn 1
deepstrike allowed). I chose to drop my land raider full of chaos marines on turn two, and he just walked his kroot, a broadside, and
the crisis suit in on turn one. My
objective was to be holding two of the four objectives at the end of the game
and to kill his HQ stuff. His was to
accumulate points by controlling objectives for full game turns. We both got bonus points for choosing to
reveal our objectives after deployment.
Our first turn was put off by a bizarre rules discussion in the movement phase. I had to call over one of the tournament organizers to convince Rob that his jet pack units did not also benefit from all of the jump pack rules (mainly the 12 inch move). This soured things a bit at the start of the game, but I think we both ended up having fun by the end of it. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to get any pictures after that. To make a long story short, he shot me a lot I barely did anything to
his back line of fire warriors. I did
manage to kill his HQ squad after they foolishly charged Straken’s squad in his
turn three, and my chaos marines charged all of his stealth suits at once on
turn three to kill them. On my last turn
I had my Manticore and one combined guard squad left, and with some good
terrain rolls I could the unit on two objectives and got a tie. It was not meant to be though, as I rolled
low and then the game ended. My bonus objective was to go to ground three times in a row with one unit, which I easily did with one of my combined squads. This meant that once again I got around 7 battle points.
Results:
1 win, 4 losses, about 41 out of a possible 90 battle points.
I was also happy to see that I got 39 out of 45 on the painting rubric, only losing points due to a lack of highlighting. I'm going to make sure I work on that as I go forward. With all of this I ended up placing 15th of the 24 players in the event. I did manage to get my goal of winning at least one game and I really enjoyed the wacky scenarios and generally laid back and fun atmosphere. There were tons of very nicely painted armies.
Speaking of the armies at this event, I was shocked at the lack of space marines present. Tau and Imperial Guard definitely had the strongest showing, totalling to 11 of the 24 armies and 5 of the top ten winners. The winner of best overall was Stephen (not the one I played) with his Dark Eldar.
Expect more updates in July as I get started on painting up more Knights of the Broken Sword. I'm thinking that a Chaos Marine list with three land raiders and a helldrake could do a lot of damage in the current tournament environment!
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