Adepticon Team Tourney Recap - BEER FOR THE BEER GOD!

Hey all!

So having returned from Adepticon last week, I can safely start looking other directions for armys and playtesting. The new Tau book seems to hold a lot of promise, I've been thinking of ways to combo them with my orks to shore up my long range fire support, most likely removing my lootas. Also been thinking of ways to combo them with Chaos SM. But we'll save that conversation for another post. Lets recap Adepticon! This post, the Team Tourney, next post will be the GT.

For those who don't want to read through, our team got 22nd out of I think 125 or 130 teams. We were in a very close points gap, and easily could have gotten into the top ten with a few better games. We were aiming for Best Heretical (a runner up award for best Chaos army closest to first) and unfortunately I flubbed our last two games big time costing us that victory. I'm pointing out now that I personally cost us this, my team-mates all played excellent games to the best of their abilities and won lots of points. In the last two rounds I flubbed things like flying in a helldrake, and promptly forgetting to use its vector strike, and then its flame thrower, which definitely tipped the balance of the game. Shame on me (seriously I feel awful about it).

Each game in the event was worth up to 25 primary points, earned for completing primary objectives, and up to 6 secondary points, earned for completing each of the three secondary objectives, as well as 8 alternative points, earned for not using twists of fate. Twists of fate had random effects every round, for example, in round 1, it granted units holding it skyfire, in different round, it gave adamantium will.

The Team!

Eric, James, Tim, Owen
Tim made the badass Beer God Sign

more of us

The armies, Eric made the display board and painted "The Purge", I painted
the other half, "Black Brethern of Ayreas"



The Overal Results
Beer for the Beer God

ROUND 1 - FIGHT
Round 1 was vs. what I would consider our worst match up possible. Necron Airforce. The issue being, our armies are designed to assault the bloody hell out of things. Luckily, round 1 the twists allowed us to use skyfire, which we gave to melta/plasma toting plague marines (and was quite effective).
Primary Missions, Objectives, Kill points
Hammer and Anvil
Pairings for this round were Eric / James, Owen / Tim.

Table 1, Eric and James

I forgot to take deployment pics, so this is about halfway through the game. We've shot down a night scythe or two, and otherwise have moved forward outside of their shooty arcs of fire. At this stage, we were very close to eliminating almost all of their active ground elements, which were just hiding in the bastion at this point. In the late game, we consolidated onto objectives and managed to hold / contest as needed giving us the win on both Objectives and Killpoints.

Table 2, Owen and Tim

Tim and Owen got pummeled really badly. I'll leave it there.


ROUND 2

Table Quarters, Kill Points (this is going to be a re-occurring theme)
Vanguard
Eric / Owen
Tim / James
Twists in this game allowed capturing of a quarter without your allied troop also being present, or contesting similarly.

Our opposition - Blood Angels and Vanilla S/M with forgeworld units.

We get first turn, deploy in this arc to use the hill for LOS blockage. The important take away from our opponents army is that they have a Contemptor dread. One of those assholes with two 6 shot assault cannons, a missile launcher, skyfire and interceptor. Not to mention is armor 13, and has an invuln save. Our entire policy of getting across the board is to avoid getting shot to pieces by him.

 

 

 We move up as shown. Top of 1. Some random melta shots manage to kill a few bikers and importantly, a melta guy from their assault squad.

This was turn 3 I think. My helldrake has come on, killed a few guys, and departed as quickly. We attempted a valiant charge across the board, tying up our opponent in their own quarter while keeping our scoring units back to hold our three quarters. They sent an assault squad w/ a libby + sang priest across the board, and in this photo you can see them tied up with some plague marines in the bottom right.

Towards the end of the game, note the Stormraven has ceased to be, much like my helldrake. It was assaulted by a hellbrute after hovering to try and wipe out my plague marine squad (thus denying us a quarter). It was a long shot, but they needed to take it. Note our huge blob of cultists occupying backfield. Thank goodness for LOS blockage. The plague marines eventually lost out to the assault libby / priest deathstar, but were shot in the face by my plague marines upon getting free and died. I have a hellbrute in their backfield terrorizing their Twist holding squad, as well as a juggy lord who has now won several challenges and is a T6, Instant Death, Shredding, Re-roll failed saves boss. Tim's lord became a spawn, side note, and ran away for all it was worth (and managed to live)

Net result - Total win for us, and for Eric / Owen.

 

 

 ROUND 3
Dawn of War
Relic / Kill points
Night Fight

Eric / Tim
James / Owen

Our opposition was an opposing Chaos SM / Chaos Deamons army. On my board my opponents each had a Juggy Lord w/ axe, two 20ish man blob squads of khorne marked marines, a bunch of cultists, and two helldrakes w/ baleflamers + 3 squads of 3 nurgle marked oblits. A rather rough battle for us to say the least.
I decided to be dickish with the terrain and put this huge los blocking ruin in the middle with the relic.

Owen and I deployed as visible below. Our aim - Scoot up with Owens plague marines first turn grabbing the relic, using our fast spawn and maulerfiends to form a wall to prevent them from being assaulted. Then back away with the relic with his plague marines, protecting them in his rhino while getting on the board edge to reduce the damage our opponents helldrakes could do.

Eric and Tim's deployment. I don't know what was going on so I'm not going to speculate.

This cluster-fuck happened on turn 2. One of our opponents helldrakes came on destroying my rhino giving them first blood, however they failed to remove the relic from our plaguish grasp. There is a massive combat in the middle involving my juggy lord / spawn, my mauler fiend, and their units.

 Combat as described closer up.

I ended up losing all my spawn and the maulerfiend. The purple squad w/ juggy lord were counter-assaulted by Owens nurgle spawn and maulerfiend. My hellbrute and Owens jump pack axe lord jump into the combat with my juggy lord to prevent allowing re-rolls for my opponent (as it was just my juggy lord in a duel vs. his juggy lord at that point), and also to save the day by killing off all the troops while the killing was good.
The end result of this game, we won with the relic and on kill points. We shot down a helldrake with snap fire melta-guns. My helldrake didn't even come on till the game was well over.My juggy lord, after bossing his way through the first juggy lord and a sarge, became a spawn in combat vs. the second juggy lords squad Sergeant. He ran away like a little girl and we considered him "dead" for our opponents slay the warlord objective. Owens warlord saved the day and bosses his way through a bunch of squads to earn us the KP we needed.

ROUND 4
Dawn of war
Objectives, Kill points from "marked for death" side. (meaning only kill points from a particular persons 1k list counted).
Twists gave something stupid.
James / Tim, Eric / Owen

 We gave our opponents first turn and deployed as such, the goal being to avoid the first turn of the flyrants shooting, which we were more or less successful at. This game went steadily down hill for me as I proceeded to fail about 25 4+ and 2 3+ saves in a row, resulting in me losing my entire spawn squad and taking 2 wounds on the juggy lord, in a single round of shooting. It was a close thing though even towards the very end. We tied one of the primary objectives, and lost the other, don't remember which we got though. I think it was objectives we tied, 2-2.


ROUND 5
Dawn of War
Only one primary objective, that is, objectives, each one captured was worth 5 points. Elites count as scoring
James / Owen
Eric / Tim

This game was about as negative in rolling as the my game vs. the tyranids for me. We ended up losing, giving them three of the five objectives and none for ourselves. We were unable to shoot down their helldrakes and they flew around from turn 2 onwards and effectively cleared almost all of our army for them. My own helldrake died the turn after it arrived to meltagun snap fire.

Bad rolling let the combat in the middle drag out when we needed our heavy assault units to go chase down their troops.

 
Turn 3ish.

The real issue with this game, aside from me whining as we all do about dice rolls, is we simply didn't have an answer for two helldrakes actively flaming us from turn two onwards nonstop. It's a list flaw and I'm not going to let it occur again. It felt very helpless, not going to lie.

These guys won it all for the second year running. Essentially blowing everyone else out of the water as far as the points level goes. Congrats to

They Shall Know Fear.

 

Brad, Aaron, Nick and Andrew

 

As a side note, I've had a chance to interact a good bit with Nick and Andrew, and these two are fantastic guys, inside and outside the game. Brad was my first round opponent at Adepticon GT this year, and while I can feel super-ultra proud of myself for destroying his two guard blobs + almost all of his space marines, he still won our game. He has some skillz. Aaron I don't know very well but I hear good things.