My first tourney

Hi guys. I participated in my first tournament with my dark kin yesterday. It was a doubles tournament run by a neighboring club. A force org was shared between each pair, with some extra restrictions to keep things interesting such as if one player took 1 or 2 elites, the other player had to take one as well. Likewise for FA, and HS.

The points limit was 1850, with 875 per army (no giving the other player any leftover points).

I teamed up with Rich, a CSM player in my club. Our list was as follows.

HQ - 125 pts
Sorcerer - Lvl 1, Force Stave, Mark of Nurgle (Warlord)
Haemonculus

Troops - 824 pts
5 Chaos Space Marines - Mark of Nurgle, Veterens of Long War, Melta Bombs, Rhino, Havoc Launcher
5 Chaos Space Marines - Mark of Nurgle, Veterens of Long War, Melta Bombs, Rhino, Havoc Launcher
5 Wyches - Haywire Grenades, Venom, 2 Splinter Cannons
5 Wyches - Haywire Grenades, Venom, 2 Splinter Cannons
5 Wyches - Haywire Grenades, Venom, 2 Splinter Cannons
5 Wyches - Haywire Grenades, Venom, 2 Splinter Cannons

Fast - 496 pts
Heldrake - Baleflamer
Heldrake - Baleflamer
5 Reaver Jetbikes

Heavy - 432 pts
Vindicator - Havoc Launcher
Ravager
Ravager

The haemie started each game with the reavers, giving them fnp. I would have liked to have taken a bigger squad with more toys but it would have meant dropping one of the venoms and the wyches therein.

Sadly we did not take notes or pictures during the day, but we've posted batreps and general thoughts as best we can on our club's forum. You can read them should you choose here...

http://w11.zetaboards.com/HaverhillWargaming/topic/8754721/1/

Would appreciate any thoughts from my fellow Archons.

The link gives the following error: You do not have permission to access this topic.

Doh. Thanks for letting me know Mush. The forum is supposed to be accessible to all, but since the creation of a sub-forum it's been misbehaving somewhat. Will just copy and paste it here then.

First post was Rich's thoughts:

Hey Guys,

So me and Alex attended the BWG doubles tournament yesterday, and it was a great day. A lot of awesome players there, friendly as well as knowledgeable of the game.

I didn't get any pics through the day as you may know my phone is busted, so im on the work blackberry. Although there were a ton of pics tok by the guys over at BWG so im sure they will go up on their forum shortly.

So a short run down of our games;

GAME 1

Here we played against Chaos Space Marines and Necrons. These were being fielded by Neil and James.

It was a good game to get us into the tournament, however the dice god wasn't with us this early in the morning, as she must have been helping the opponents with their saves!

The game ended up that we lost by 1 victory point, with a final results of 4 points to their 5. Me and alex both agreed we done everything right, it was just a combination of the ravagers failing to decently destroy enemy mech, and the marines failing to kill some wraiths due to the insane number of saves made. Also the lucky destruction of my vindicator turn 1 meant no heavy support against infantry.

It was a shame because Alex had to roll to see if we go to turn 6, and unfortunately with a roll of a 2 we didn't. Had we gone to turn 6 they was only left with a unit of warriors, which would have simply been evaporated and resulted in us tabling them, but there is no use in what if's! We simply lucked out here I think.

Game 2

This game we played against Grey Knights and Orks, fielded by Toby and Alex.

We obviously wanted to get back at the next poor unfortunate souls we faced, and that's exactly what we did. Here we just had too many templates and splinter fire for them to contend with the hordes of orcs were simply mowed down. Toby and Alex went on to win the wooden spoons (last place). So obviously due to our first loss we ended up in a lower tier game, which worked in our favour as we won with 9 VP's to their 1.

Here we literally had statistical rolls, and I feel here we just had stuff they couldn't really deal with. The foot slogging slugga boys just were getting close!

The only downside here is we had 1 turn left to go when we had wiped them, and had we known that a tabling doesn't auto reward all remaining VP's we may not have done it so early and held off a turn while we moved to objectives.

Game 3

We went into this game somewhere around 5th place, and so we felt here we should just do as well as possible and have a good game. The mission ended up being THE RELIC for this final game.

We ended up against Space Marines and Imperial Guard, fielded by "fuzzman" (forgot name sorry, brain was fried by this point) and Andy.

This game was, at the end of deployment, a mech on mech battle. We are pretty much all in transports, as are the opponents. We started off well getting into good positions and prioritising fire on the Lascannon guard units. The Reavers performed very well distracting behind enemy lines.

They made a move for the relic first, but once the heldrakes came on they were simply put under too much splinter fire as well as a couple of vector strikes and removed from the relic.

The CSM then made a play for the relic, using Rhinos to block LOS against the CSM unit carrying the relic. Then the Dark Eldar simply mopped up while the marines held the objective.

In this final game one of my heldrakes actually got destroyed! Was something id always seen coming since the start of the tournament, as there was a lot of impassible terrain. The Drake simply got its velocity locked and ended up moving to stop ontop of impassible rendering it wrecked!

So to finish up here we ended up winning our final game, again by tabling the opponent with a final score of (I think) 6 VP's to their 0.


Final Summary

So all in all a great tourney. 2 Tablings and a loss. There wasn't really a lot to learn from the games as we both felt we did what we needed to do, where we needed to. The first game probably could have purely boiled down to dice luck, although obviously we can only surmise.

And me and Alex both agree we was incredibly surprised when we actually ended up taking SECOND as we both thought we was out of the running going into the last game!

We ended up with total VP's of 19. The winners on the day had 3 wins and a total of 28VP's. So having worked out where we was and had we won the first game how that would have changed VP's I think in the end anyway we may not have took first due to not getting enough VP's anyway.

But we was both pleased and surprised at SECOND place.







Also BWG are looking to run a singles comp later this year and so given that watch this space if anyone else is likely to be interested.



Rich


Then my two pain tokens

Nice write up Rich. Some additional thoughts...

Game 1
To elaborate somewhat on the aforementioned bad dice on our part and positively blessed dice on James and Neil's part...James would not fail 3+ and 3++ saves whatsoever!

Their entire list had a 1/9 chance of taking out the vindicator first turn (ignoring the necron gauss which was out of range and would have been snapshooting the following turn having gone to ground) and its absence was definitely felt.

One of my ravagers completely whiffed its rolls to hit (twice I believe). The chance of this happening once is a mere 1/27!

The following games were far more statistical, though in the final game I did have a venom deal 0 wounds. The chance of that happening is 0.0077 (2 s.f.) or a staggering 1/130!

After this game there were 4 teams with a win and 4 with a loss. One of the losers, our 3rd round opponents (Don [Fuzzman] and Andy), had 7 VP, Rob (DA) and Chris (IG) and Rich and I each had 4 VP and Toby and another Alex had 0. So had we not played Toby and Alex in the 2nd round we would have played Don and Andy, as the did a 7-4 and a 4-0 match up.

Game 2
Templates and splinter fire laid waste to the orcs and the ravagers had a field day with the paladins. The underlying idea of the list (turn 1 take out stuff that can hurt the 'drakes, turn 2 onwards BBQ/poison etc) worked perfectly in this game.

The reavers bladevaned a loota squad to devastating effect, venoms took out the quad gun and the other squad of lootas were more concerned with the bikes that had just murdered their friends than the incoming dragons (the latest FAQ on their wound resolution makes them an excellent counter to all those pesky aegis users).

The grey knight deployment was puzzling as with 24" weapons across the board they shot at next to nothing having been placed flush against one of the short table edges. Central deployment would have made them a threat throughout the game. As it was, the strike squads ate vector strikes, baleflames and splinter fire and the paladins were primarily ID'd by the ravagers with the venoms also inflicting a few wounds.

At game end (tabling) we held 2 objectives and had first blood, slay the warlord and linebreaker (REAVERS!) with 2 objectives that the ravagers could have taken the following turn with their 30" and the scenario being big guns never tire. Alas, our assumption that a tabling would result in the awarding of all objectives proved to be wrong, but it made no difference to the final outcome. Lesson learned, ask the TO about such things beforehand.

At this point we were in 4th (unbeknownst to us), with two teams having won both games and of the 4 teams with 3 TPs we had the second highest VP total at 13, with Don and Andy having 16. Even if we had got the potential extra 6 VP in the previous game that would not have changed the following match up.

Game 3
Not that we realised at the time but this was the 3rd and 4th placed teams fighting it out going into this game.

Our opponents had the choice as to whether night fighting was in effect or not (2 on strategic table). The chose yes, meaning that a moving skimmer outside of 24" had a 2+ cover save (5+ jink, stealth and shrouded). Consequently the ravagers could hit their tanks with little fear of reprisal. An abundance of LOS blocking cover and good use there of plus night fighting meant there were virtually no losses on our side turn 1.

The reavers took out a lascannon (and much of the unit itself) and then proceeded to eat an enormous amount of fire, but between T4, 3+ cover saves and fnp (5+), only one died. A dreadnought failed a charge against them, letting them bladevane the other lascannon unit.

The destruction of the drake did raise a question that is worth looking into. Does a helldrake that is removed due to not being able to make a legal move still vector strike? Will have to check the FAQs.

Nothing further to add here beyond what Rich has said.

Closing Thoughts
We were actually doing better than we realised going in to the final game. In the end though, even with the 6 VPs we lost out on we would have still been behind the winners by 3 VPs. Of course to have the VPs even matter we would have had to won the first game which would have resulted in different matches following this. Impossible to know how things would have played out in that scenario. Much respect to the winners, Nick (IG) and Matt (Sisters! And beautifully converted Sisters at that).

After the final game, with such strong showings in our last two games I thought we might have eked out 3rd place. When a local, The Rem (tm) took third, we assumed we had placed 4th. As it was, our last two games were good enough that we took 2nd by 2 VPs and any more wouldn't have made a difference to the standings.

A great day, a great crop of wargamers and a great result.



Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.

exsquared wrote:

The only downside here is we had 1 turn left to go when we had wiped them, and had we known that a tabling doesn't auto reward all remaining VP's we may not have done it so early and held off a turn while we moved to objectives.

That's an odd one. Lucky it didn't affect your ranking.

exsquared wrote:

In this final game one of my heldrakes actually got destroyed! Was something id always seen coming since the start of the tournament, as there was a lot of impassible terrain. The Drake simply got its velocity locked and ended up moving to stop ontop of impassible rendering it wrecked!

*cackles manically* I have no sympathy for Hell turkey users. May your tournaments be plagued with Tau and Skyfire!

exsquared wrote:

One of my ravagers completely whiffed its rolls to hit (twice I believe). The chance of this happening once is a mere 1/27!

That sounds about right once you take into account the Dark Lance curse.

exsquared wrote:

Our opponents had the choice as to whether night fighting was in effect or not (2 on strategic table). The chose yes, meaning that a moving skimmer outside of 24" had a 2+ cover save (5+ jink, stealth and shrouded). Consequently the ravagers could hit their tanks with little fear of reprisal.

They shot themselves in the foot there!

Also wouldn't it be a 3+ cover save and not a 2+ cover save?

Quote :

Units between 24" and 36" away are treated as having the shrouded special rule. Units between 12" and up to 24" are instead treated as having the stealth special rule. - BBR 124

So you don't get stealth past 24", you get shrouded instead. It's one or the other, not both. So you only get +2 to your cover save.

Congratulations on placing second, and thanks for sharing the pain.