11th Company GT Recap - Battle Reports & Pics

Hey all!

Havn't posted in forever, but today's a snow day so I guess I no longer have an excuse!

So this will be recapping the 2013 11th Company GT! First, it was good to see all of the people I havn't seen since Adepticon. I wish I had been more conversational, but I spent most of Saturday super hung over, and Sunday stressed about trying to win until the end of round 6. As usual, I think the 11th company is the best GT I attend, the atmosphere is solid, very friendly, and lots of fun! Maybe its the common bond of everyone feeling like they know our hosts, being all friends in a friends house?

I took essentially what is becoming my go-to list, and the same one I've been posting for months.

So my list:

HQ's
Juggy lord w/ Axe, sigil, boon, meltabomb (190ish pts)
Nurgle bike lord w/ Mace, sigil, boon, meltabomb, blight grenades (also is my warlord)
Abaddon (BL)

Troops
2x Cultists
1x Cultists (BL)

Fast
1x Nurgle Spawn
1x Nurgle Spawn (BL)
1x Regular spawn
1x Helldrake

Heavy
1x 4 Lascannon havocs
2x Maulerfiend w/ Magma Cutters

Fortification
Bastion w/ Quad Gun.

 
 

 Started the night before off correctly! We went to Margarettaville with Owen, Bridgett, Matt and Charlie. Drank a ton, got to drunk to drive, and woke up the next day with a killer hangover and a queasy stomach.

GOOD SHOW OLD CHAP!









Round 1- Vs. Gunline Tau -  Kill points, dawn of war
Broadsides, riptides, kroots, skyrays, marker light bro's, and a FARSIGHT BOMB

My opponent rolled first go, and we deployed as shown left. He set up his kroot screen as infiltrators. Then I seized, which basically skewed the entire game from his win to my win. As I was able to assault into most of his kroot, dodging some shooting for some units, or at least, clearing the screen earlier than he would have liked.

I think his farsight bomb almost ended me when it came in. I don't remember how/why though. He killed a bunch of stuff / blew up my bastion with it though.

 

 End of the game. The skyray is a wreck for clarification. Full 20 win.












Round 2 vs. Necron Air. - Objectives, Hammer and Anvil, Night fight, Heavy Metal.




I looked across the table and was like... you've got to be kidding me. The one guy who brings a solid necron airforce, and I get matched against him round 2. I figured this was karma for something, I just had to figure out what and go make amends.

So I won the roll to see who goes first, and gave it to him. Which apparently he didn't understand why I did that.
So pictured left is the bottom of top of turn 2. Thanks to the comm's relay, all but two fliers came in. I lucked out, the Doomscythe failed to destroy the bastion, and the shooting killed a few spawn and a single maulerfiend.
My strategy was essentially to rush past him and take out the units controlling his side of the board, then return to board middle, and move out for turn 5 contesting / assaulting. This is more or less what happened, and it worked out.


He flew around and shot at me, and I hid as best I could.

On turn 5, thanks to some plucky cultists and a maulerfiend, I was able to win on objectives, otherwise it would have been a tie for objectives, and then winning on quarters / kill points.











Round 3 - Daemon Flying Circus w/ Chaos SM allies (aka, black mace / helldrake)
Vanguard -

I waited to long to write this game up, but the summary is kinda like this. I went at him, he went at me. Bridget also started bringing me booze again at this point, so I was nice and drunk again by the time game 4 rolled around.



After failing some grounding tests, he needed to rescue fateweaver (pic #2), so landed his other daemons. We got in a big scrum, which saw him winning  the right side (from my perspective), and me the left side.

 His helldrake came in turn 3 and caused all sorts of problems. Then died to lascannon snap fire, wooo. I don't remember what happened to mine, it ended up in picture 4 somehow though. I think it was killing troops.

Turn 3 combats! Fateweaver down















After cleaning up the left side, I moved my models to the right side, locking that down and letting me have the win.



















Round 4 - Vs. Tau Ovesa' Star, Vanguard, objectives.


 I took first go, ran at him as pictured to the left.

His shooting was fairly devastating, but not enough so stop the inevitable charges.

Also if you were there, and heard a huge slam. That was me, no it wasn't rage quitting, I was overly excited and threw down my dice/fist hard "accidently" as in BAM, headshot! YOU DIE!

er.. =0 Yeah I was being immature, if my opponent hates me now, its fair.

 


Combats and stuff. I ended up winning them and cleaned him off the board. Not that it wasn't difficult, he played it well, I just don't remember all the details.









Games 5 - 7 I forgot to take photos of, so quick recap.

Game 5 vs. Tau Ovesa Star

I played Jessie Newton again, and this time our game was very close but I managed to pull off a win. Hammer and Anvil Deployment, objectives.

Jessie kept hitting and running out of our combats, was doing fairly well, but unfortunately for him I passed a ton of pivotal saves / leaderships which he needed me to fail. Dice Gods ftw.?


Game 6 vs. Daemon FMC w/ CSM allies (Helldrake / black mace). This list was almost a mirror of my game 3 list. Unfortunately I was unable to ground Alex's FMC's, and a few combats that I needed to go my way (killing the portalglyph with several pens that were blocked by invulns for example), and it didn't happen. Despite the fact I was holding 3 objectives Alex was able to contest my objectives with his in-air FMC's, and hold one objective for the win.

I'll note, Alex went on from here to win game 7, taking the whole event and winning Best General. So, I lost to the bro who won, so I guess I can't feel super bad about it. =0

Game 7, vs. Eldar Wave serpent spam w/ broadside allies.

This game was vs. Kurt. We had a lot of fun and ended up going until turn.. 13 or 14? There was some close combat between havocs and swooping hawks that just needed to happen. Also a personal vendetta vs. some broadsides needed to be fulfilled.

A good summary of the game is, I ran at Kurt, I had enough models going into the charge time to pull off a win; then I failed 2/3 charges. Next round, I still was doing decently, until Abaddon + his spawn squads decided It should take 4-5 rounds of combat to kill a single wraithknight.  which let Kurt hilariously finish off the other assault bits, then circle abbaddon and shoot him in the face when he finally broke free.

Also we swapped rolling for each other. It was a good goofy game. Bonus,  the points from it gave Kurt the points he needed to win Battlemaster!

Though negative, if I had taken a few points from the game, I would have gotten Best Overall, /sad.

Oh well, that's ok though, because I ended up winning, much to my surprise, Best Appearance!

The judges were very considerate and really liked my theme and overall presentation, giving me a few crucial points to beat out some stiff competition! Thank you to the Judges!

 

 

Worth noting, that despite the community dice, this is the first 40k event I've been to in years where I didn't end up sick afterwards, so yay that! Probably because of all the booze =0

Battle for Salvation GT - RECAP - Experiences from a player not using Tau / Eldar / Vanilla SM at all!

First a quick reminder, our monthly RTT at Huzzah hobbies is this sunday(10-20). SHOW UP! Same time/cost/place as always.

So I attended the Battle for Salvation GT run by the crew of the same name last weekend. Its a good time, and despite my doubts prior to the event, had good terrain coverage. This would be important in all my games.

Ed and Bob from BFS put out a very smooth well run show. It's a pleasure to go and play. Though I had to be "that guy" and go complain about my paint score slightly to Ed (who was a good sport and put up with my QQ), after they scored me lower than NOVA (sadface), with basically the same army. Blah.

So I took to this event, my previously posted list, which had only one goal in mind - bring as many beatface lords as possible to the party. I took CSM w/ Black legion allies.

HQ's
Juggy lord w/ Axe, sigil, boon, meltabomb (190ish pts)
Nurgle bike lord w/ Mace, sigil, boon, meltabomb, blight grenades (also is my warlord)
Abaddon (BL)

Troops
2x Cultists
1x Cultists (BL)

Fast
1x Nurgle Spawn
1x Nurgle Spawn (BL)
1x Regular spawn
1x Helldrake

Heavy
1x 4 Lascannon havocs
2x Maulerfiend w/ Magma Cutters

Fortification
Bastion w/ Quad Gun.

O.k. So what did I see at this event?

Craptons of Tau and Eldar, like seriously truckloads.

Sadface.

Only armies with Tau / Eldar were undefeated (3-0) at the end of day 1, except for me! /brag/ BRAG MORE/ woo. All of the rest of the more "normal" armies, were down in mid-table obscurity. So, anyone planning for some east-coast meta. Figure out ways to kill wave serpents, or broadsides and you'll be good to go. Hint: Lascannons are good, as are huge LOS blockers.

So that was cool.

I'm going to say straight up front, Day 2, I lost all my games. I had my first game of day 2 vs. Defranza (who won the whole thing), and he knocked me out. (Recaps for all of them further on down).

After that I played Brad who was a lot of fun, and I did a "Come at me bro" to see if I could charge straight into a Tau gunline and live (aka not play cagey). Hint: No. Though Brad did win a beer from me, I bet him he couldn't kill an entire nurgle squad + nurgle lord + abaddon in a single round of shooting. I was wrong (though not by much).

Last game was vs. Jack, who jumped up from the 2-1's into our bracket with his CSM/ Daemons flying circus w/ 2 helldrakes.

Somewhere/somehow as a wargaming community, we need to establish when/where/how/if fast fliers score. Jack and I spent a decent portion of our game dicking around with our helldrakes. We had some sexy helldrake on helldrake action, in which helldrake won! (Visualize two birds fighting in the sky).

DAY 1 - Game 1
Mission - Dawn of War - Night Fight (YES) - Kill Points

I played a fellow Nova-ite, though I didn't realize it until after the game was well under-way. John was playing Vanilla Marines, horde style.
He has a t-fire, two storm talons w/ goodies, a beefy captain, scouts w/ tellion, some Tac squads with heavy weapons, and devastators w/ heavy bolters, plasma and such. He was geared out to put out some serious anti-infantry hurt. He also had some rhino's ect. Which, he wisely deployed separately from his tac squads and then used to searchlight me on turn 1 to shoot me up a little bit. Deploying them separately was a good call, forced me to decide if I wanted to chase down empty rhinos, or kill his actual killy stuff.

 I deployed heavy left side. Jack deployed heavily also on the same side.
He search-lighted me, and used his t-fire and other shooting to good affect to kill a couple spawn. The maulerfiend had a couple of rockets go his way, but Johns dice decided they were not fans of his.

Turn 1 I rushed forward and got some long charges off.

The quad gun got its first kill ever in this game, intercepting a storm talon and blowing it out of the sky before it could shoot.

This second picture is around the bottom of turn 4. Once I got into the tac squads ect, spawn + lords  do what they do best, and that was pretty much it. The maulerfiend on the right is immobilized.. like a boss!

John had some funny cinematic moments in this game, like a lone marine surviving vs. a maulerfiend, throwing a krak grenade it and (through the magic of mental cinema), timed it as the same time as meltagun and boom! Dead maulerfiend.

So fun was had by all. (I hope!).

















DAY 1 - Game 2
Mission - Hammer and Anvil - Night Fight (no) - Objectives

This game I played Jessie Newton, who was my final opponent at the 11th company last year. Jessie did very well at the NOVA Open this year, and to be honest his list makes me pretty nervous.

His list was the Ovesa-star, with lots and lots and lots of scoring kroot with kroot hounds, plus a crisis suit team, an extra riptide, Two Sky-rays, and also an Ethereal.

I knew this was going to be quite possibly the hardest matchup I could face, excluding Seer-Council deathstars, which always give my list a run for its money. Jessie has a lot of ignore cover, high S shooting, and can hit multiple targets. He out-scores me, is more mobile (outflanking + 4d6 movement), and has a ton of anti-infantry firepower. I know most people are probably thinking, I should just charge into combat with the Ovesa-star, run it down and win....

Well..... Its not actually that simple. A lot can go wrong. If I don't hit the Ovesa-star with a critical mass of T6 or Eternal Warrior wounds, I actually just get curb-stomped hard by it, giving him extra movement to go kill my other stuff, plus my damage dealers die. I need to get an AP2 attacker into the squad, because even though the black mace is great, I can't rely on it to get through a 2+, or him to fail a toughness test to remove models. The Ovesa-star actually has quite a few AP2 attacks, and doesn't need to smash me, it just needs to hit me forcing wounds on spawn, to hang out for a while. Eventually wounds will end up on the lords and I'm going to fail enough 4+'s eventually. Not only that, the juggy lord + his spawn are bad in that matchup, that's giving him opportunities to smash. Even if only one or two attacks of his go through onto the juggy lord, do I really want to risk instant death on a 4+? No, its not wise. In order to pull off an assault on that squad, I would need to get either Abaddon + his T6 spawn, or the nurgle lord + his t6 spawn, into combat, and be able to follow it up immediately the next round with even more spawn + another lord, just to hold my own in that combat. Committing so much assault into that combat, means the kroot, sky-rays, and crisis suits are free to hop around the board as much as Jessie desires, killing my troops, almost auto-winning the game for him. Even if I do win the ovesa-combat, It would take me a lot of time to run back across the board to kill Jessies troops, and then the question is, at what cost? Do I have the models I need to carry the day.Not to mention that beyond all that, the squad has hit and run.

All of this was going through my head as I set up. In addition, his list is intimidating, it did amazing at the Nova Open after all. That's nothing to sneeze at, and where did I end up? Mid-table obscurity.

Jessie gave me first go, so I deployed as much as possible out of LOS behind my bastion.

The aim for this deployment was to give the bastion as much LOS blockage as possible, be nearish to an objective so my guys could get out and claim it on the top/bottom of 5, and  also control the portion of the board least likely to give a good cover save.

Jessie obligingly set up in the ruins as shown, except for the two skyrays which set up directly behind the hill in the bottom right.

Jessie than seized the initiative on me.

He shot up the bottom maulerfiend closest to me with his sky-rays, blowing it up and wounding a spawn or two. He also wounded a few of abaddons spawn + glanced the top maulerfiend. His kroot hid themselves behind the barrier as pictured. Turn 1 I ran all my guys forward, but hid out of LOS behind the big middle blocker. I ran the wounded maulerfiend straight at Jessie in attempt to menace him right away. Though in hindsight perhaps I should have hidden him. My havocs blew up one sky-ray (the one which had blown its missiles).



End of turn 2

Pictured to the left is the end of turn 2.
I've advanced forward to menace the Ovesa-Star. One thing I did not want happening is for them to break out of that corner and go board middle. Once that happens, it's GG. You'll note on the left side, helldrake has come in, and in conjunction with a cultist squad, has widdled down a kroot squad to 3 guys (who passed morale! boo). I also kept forgetting soul-blaze, but that's normal unfortunately.

Abaddon + his spawn have failed their charge into the two kroot squads pictured board middle. So they are sitting pretty much in the open. The cultists + havocs this turn have failed to do anything to the two sky-rays. The one success of this turn, was to charge the Nurgle lord + company into the kroot Jessie had set up on the left flank. I opted not to swing my black mace, allowing me to not blow up the entire squad in combat. Even so, it was dicey with only 3-4 kroot left alive at the end of the combat. I was lucky in this particular combat, as Jessie had placed his ethereal in such a way that they were stubborn until his next turn (which we looked up to verify). 




end of turn 3

Turn 3 - Jessie made good use of Abaddon & company being stuck in the open, plus the juggy lord. He proceeded to shoot and kill all of the juggy lords spawn. He also killed a spawn or two from Abaddons squad with combined firepower from kroot + his target locked bro. His last reserve kroot squad came in on my backfield bottom left. In his turn my Nurgle lord cleared the combat. So, now this turn I had to decide, do I commit to assault Ovesa with the nurgle lord + abaddon and hope for the best? Or do I assault / kill kroots and hope for the best. I opted for kroots. So I moved helldrake up vector striking + flaming the far kroot squad (and blocking movement). Abaddon and his spawn moved to assault the remaining kroot there. Nurgle lord + his spawn assaulted the crisis suit Troop squad Jessie had tucked behind the Ovesa-star. Juggy lord turned tail and ran back to my base to go assault the backfielding kroot. The las-cannons ect shot and glanced 2 HP off of the sky-ray but failed to do anything else. My two cultist squads are now behind the hill in the top left of the photo.

Turn 4 - Jessie shoots all his guys at the Nurgle lord (who destroyed the crisis suits on the charge), and attempts to assault it with the Ovesa-star, and fails his charge roll =/. The kroot in my back field shoot at the juggy lord and give him a wound I think. The sky-ray I believe was stunned from the previous turn and tried to marker light the nurgle lord unsuccessfully. In the bottom of my turn, i flew the helldrake off the board. The nurgle lord went to / assaulted the sky-ray destroying it. The juggy lord assaulted the kroot, and actually took two wounds! Jessie passed his leadership so they stay locked up.  Abaddon and his spawn stay board middle to try and keep Jessie honest (so he wouldn't go out that direction turn 5 with his 4d6 movement).



End of turn 5

Turn 5 -

Jessie advances, but cautiously, to avoid having the nurgle lord and/or Abaddon try to catch him in combat. Playing for turn 6 at this point, Jessie tries to nuke my squads that are behind the hill cover in the top left of the photo. However his dice go south, and they pass their morale checks.

I start moving Abaddon towards the cultists in the top left objective, this is so Abaddon can join them to make them fearless / tank for them. + Make it likely he'll claw up / force to run away anyone who comes near to contest that objective. The Juggy lord breaks free and goes to hide behind of the bastion. The nurgle lord hangs out behind LOS of the hill to get line-breaker / avoid giving up slay the warlord. My helldrake comes back on, and I place him to block as much movement as possible for the Ovesa-Star.
We roll to see if it ends with me holding 1 objective for the win.
It continues!

Turn 6 -
Jessie moves up further, shooting again primarily at my cultists on the hill, but also this time at my bro's on top of the bastion. He clears away almost all of one cultist squad on the hill, but they live tenaciously with only 3 guys left and pass their leadership. This turn I join abaddon to them, I hop my havocs out of the bastion to form a congo line to the objective to attempt to keep Jessie from moving to contest it if there is a turn 7. I also drop my cultists down, and join them to the juggy lord to also hold the objective, so there won't be any running away troops!



Jessie being awesome! Look at that pile up board-middle.
I was afraid of that all game.

So with me winning again on turn 6, we roll for Turn 7, there is!

Turn 7, Jessie is now in a good place to possible contest objectives. His riptides mince my havocs to a pulp. Luckily Abaddon stands strong in the the face of torrential firepower and only takes 2 wounds.  At the end of his turn, I'm holding 2 objectives, only 1 of which is possibly contestable. My reserve squad of cultists hidden behind the hill doesn't need to run forward anymore it seems!







DAY 1 - Game 3
Mission - Vanguard - Night Fight (no) - Objectives, Relic, Warlord, Linebreaker

This game was vs. Luke, who was playing a list very similar to one he played at NOVA open. We played round 1 at the Nova open, and so both had some experience playing against our types of lists.

Luke uses - A large beastpack with I think 15 of the 4+ invuln guys, and 5 razerswing swarms. The Baron, 2 Ravagers with dark lances, 3 venoms, 1 with witches, 2 with warriors/blasters, the artillery thing that elder get, a farseer, aegis line w/ quad gun, 2 jetbike squads, 2 dark elder flyers, 1 elder flyer. Lukes farseer managed to roll Fortune, which was going to be critical in this game, as well as prescience, and doom.

Middle of turn 1, Start of Lukes turn.

I had to go first. So I deployed with an aggressive stance. With so many mobile scoring units, I needed to destroy his scoring units as quickly as possible, or at least keep him locked up in the corner to try and keep him from taking my objectives.

Luke deployed behind a large ruin in his corner with his entire army. As seen pictured to the left.

To keep him trapped in, I advanced in a large C shape, trying to keep behind LOS blocking to avoid venoms from having a field day with me. I also tried to stay at about ~19 inches from the beast pack to avoid getting charged turn 1.

Turn 3 or 4

Luke shot me up a bit turn 1, and killed two spawn + glanced a maulerfiend. I had a glorious charge in turn 2, and proceeded to roll like crap. Spawns rolled 1's and 2's for number of swings. Lords did little to nothing, that kinda thing. Luke then hit and run out, and assaulted only the khorne /regular spawn squad in his turn, eliminating them but keeping the lord alive with only wound taken. He also blew up a maulerfiend with one of his fliers. He then hit and run out again.

Turn 3, my reserves moved on as pictured, and I started advancing towards my objective + the relic. My surviving maulerfiend went chasing down his venoms, killing one of the ones with witches. I think re-assaulted the beast-pack again, rolling like poo. The khorne lord assaulted the artillery squad, killing all but 1, who managed to pass his morale. My spawn again rolled like poo, but my guys were taking their toll over time. Crucially, my nurgle lord killed some of the models he was in base contact with, allowing him to move into base to base with two razerswarms when we consolidated. Luke failed his hit and run I think, or chose not to. I don't remember which. In any case, the remainder of his reserves came on, and shot at my free mauler fiend + guys a lot. His venoms shot at my cultists who chose not to go to ground, and passed a good chunk of their saves due to some handy cover. In the bottom of this turn, my spawn finally stopped rolling like poo, and I had a devastating / decisive round of combat. Largely thanks to the Nurgle lord instant deathing razor swarms with the black mace (failing toughness tests), I won combat and ran down the beast pack! Though if they had run, they were most likely off the board, with only a few inches to move and 3d6 running.
So I consolidated towards his venoms and jetbikes. The Top of turn 4 I was fortunately in range to grab the relic and hold an objective. My spawn + nurgle lord ran to contest the objective his venom troops were able to capture. I shot all of my guns at 3 jetbikes, but only killed 2, leaving him with 1 guy floating around near the relic. My maulerfiend attempted to assault a venom but died to an overwatching blaster. Abaddon + his spawn assaulted / killed the other jetbike squad. Then +Massacred to take linebreaker.

So at this point, Luke needed to kill my guys holding the relic, plus take an objective while contesting mine. To do this, he had two venoms near an objective with troops inside, a single jetbike, and 3 fliers. His dice then decided they'd had enough, and though he was able to take the objective from the nurgle lord + his spawn, he was not able to get me to drop the relic. Allowing me to win with linebreaker, slay the warlord, and the relic. (tied on objectives).

The game ended on the bottom of 4, by agreement ahead of time. We had simply taken to long in complicated 40 + model assaults.


DAY 2 - Game 4
Mission - Vanguard - Night Fight (no) - Objectives

Matt is playing, Jetseer council, 2 farseers, 2 wraithknights, several guardian jetbike squads and a skyshield landing pad.

I played Matt Defranza in this round, our deployment as pictured left.

I was given first turn, and proceeded to try to make a C shape as in the game vs. Luke. Unfortunately this didn't go super well. Though I was able to use the middle to block LOS decently for my spawn, my poor maulerfiends both boomed turn 1 from wraithknights / singing spears. Boo.
Turn 2 I ran Abaddons nurgle squad towards his troops and wraithknights, while Matt shuffled around.

Turn 3 we shuffled some more. I put the nurgle lord out to see If Matt would obligingly charge him. He did, wiping out the nurgle spawn and the lord on the charge.


Turn 4 -  As pictured left. In this turn, I have one chance to try and nock out the seer council. I move abaddon + the khorne lord to join the khorne lords spawns, then roll to assault. The trick being, I need to roll either far enough to let Abaddon challenge, and absorb the instant death from the Shard the Farseer has. Or, roll low, so I don't have to challenge, but can still move up to be engaged at my iniative step, allowing me to throw a ton of S6 / S5 Ap2 attacks into the seer squad, most likely dealing a death-blow to it. I needed to roll either a 7 - 10, or a 12(to get Abaddon in). I rolled an 11, and that was game.

Matt humored me by graciously allowing Abaddon the honor of living with a single wound left to his name. So he could survey the battlefield, knowing all of his minions had died, but had lived yet again.

DAY 2 - Game 5
Mission - Hammer and Anvil- Night Fight (no) - Objectives

Woo, I played Brad Nichols. He has several kroot and fire warrior squads, some marker drones, a skyray, a hammerhead with longstrike, a broadside missile team with all the fixings, a buff commander, some sort of alternative buff commander, an ethereal I think?, an earth caste riptide, and a regular riptide.

I ran at him all wiggly. Tau saved the imperium, ending the 13th black Crusade right then and there. Humanity will never realize that its true defenders, and saviors are the tau.

When the Imperium eventually goes back to finish off the Tau for good.. They will truly be the monsters.












DAY 2 - Game 6
Mission - dawn of war- Night Fight (no) - Objectives, scouring

I played a CSM / Daemon player named Jack. Jack was running 2 helldrakes, I think a daemon weapon daemon prince, a daemon prince of some sort with the shooty nova thing from the black legion book, Daemon allies with fateweaver, a DP with the grimoire, another daemon guy of some sort, three squads of cultists, and one squad of plaguebearers.

He took shriek on all of his casters. And this game went exactly how I expected. I knocked down the grimoire guy turn 1, killed him with maulers doubling him out. Then he having learned his lesson from this, flew around and basically did nothing until the last turn with his daemon princes; when he used them to contest all my objectives. His helldrakes were the MVP's of the show for him, killing my helldrake, then killing the guys inside and on top of my Bastion.

It was a situation for him where if he landed at all, my spawn + associated lord was clearly going to wipe out the daemon. I killed all his troops except the plaguebears. Then my spawn sat on objectives. Oh I forgot, eventually he did use one DP to kill a floating cultist squad + assault my bastion. At that point I was spread onto every objective so didn't really have the umph to go back and take care of one guy on the ground.

So thus ended the Battle for Salvation GT.

Assault is not dead - it's just very difficult.

Battle Report: Fall League 2013, First Game for Week 2

For my week 2 game I played against Chip, of Torrent of Fire fame.


Chips list was interesting.

Hq's
Chapter Master - Bike - Shield Eternal - Power Sword - Artificer Armor
Khan!!!!!
Rune Priest - Bike
Bear Wolf Lord - T-hammer, Storm Shield ect

Troops
5x 10 scouts
2x 5 bikers w/ 2 grav guns
1x 10 grey hunters w/ meltaguns in a drop pod

Fast
Thunder-wolf squad


Chip opted to get diviniation powers for his rune priest, and got Prescience and the 4+ invuln for the group powers.


Mission: The Scouring, Dawn of War

We rolled for objectives / sides, Chip won
When rolling for go first I won the roll and gave first go to Chip.


Chip deployed in an even distribution across the board. He put a bike squad on each side, with his big block deathstar in the middleish. I deployed defensively around my bastion (as pictured below), and left my havocs outside the bastion so it couldn't get targeted and nuked by the drop podding wolves turn 1.

So to the left is the bottom of turn 1. Chip moved all his guys up and shot at my maulerfiends with the drop podding melta. He did get a pen through but i managed to block it with a 5+. I moved all three of my spawn squads into combat with his Thunderwolf calvary. Abaddon is in a challenge with the beefy chapter master-  like a boss.

More of turn 1 as pictured. We both knew at this point the game would largely come down to whomever won this combat in the middle. Chip has more troops than me,  but if i can break from it early enough, i can go run and kill them. If not, I don't have the firepower to deal with all of them in a timely fashion which would give him the win.

Helldrake comes on, roasts a biker squad and sets up position to annihilate some backfield scouts (which then i forgot to fire! boo). Maulerfiend finally kills his space marine squad, but then dies to krak grenades from scouts! Go scouts!
Our middle combat has turned into a lot of dead spawn, and some slowly dying thundercalvs.

Eventually thanks to the timely intervention of a maulerfiend, and the juggy lord, all of the thundercalv squad go down, leaving the chapter master by his lonesome, vs. abaddon. I guess oblivious to the ruin around him? Focused on the chance to end the Horus Heresy for good.

Oh we forgot to do it until after the chapter master broke free with hit and run, but my khorne lord turned into a daemon prince for the privilege of killing the rune priest, and my nurgle lord turned into a spawn, for killing khan. The spawn died to scouts in CC a turn later =/, giving chip slay the warlord. The Daemon prince bossed it up and hung out but basically just stood there looking cool the rest of the game.

My havocs were forced to leave the bastion to go run to an objective to contest it, and my cultists had to drop down to claim the one in front of them. This left my bastion wide open, which Chip saw as an advantage straight away.

Bottom of turn 5. The helldrake has made a full table circuit, having annihilated most of Chips troops single handed. Which is lucky for me, or else chip has the game. His chapter master has hit and run out of combat to go contest my 4 point objective with cultists. His scouts manned my quad gun in the bastion to try and kill some stuff before the helldrake got them. My spawn which were freed from combat went down to the destroyed maulerfiend scouts to contest / kill the scouts. But the scouts held out like champs and didn't die until the very last turn / last combat of the game.

Chips chapter master also charged into a squad of cultists. I challenged him with the cultist champion, who was promptly obliterated. The following round, the poor chapter master was dragged down by a living wall of cultist bodies.

Poor guy.


So, it was a fun game, chip served up some good brews. I had fun, and despite helldrake going around obliterating things, chip held on like a champ and gave a toss-up game until the end.



So my thoughts on this game:

Chip over-extended turn 1. Ground rules of assault armies is always be the assaulter, not the one taking it on the chin. UNLESS, you have defensive grenades. We (chip and I) discussed this so I feel comfortable putting it out there.

The chapter master on a bike is a beast well worth his points. I'd probably go further than chip did myself and give him a beast meele sword, but i understand why he didn't. I also like super-star lords more.

Grav guns are always meh against my type of army, so unfortunately that's just how it is.

Scouts combat squadding out of outflanking or reserves really is a neat trick that helped multiply his board/scoring presence. Chip did a good job with this and really forced me to chase down his stuff the hard way.

Havocs in a bastion w/ are actually pretty good. Same firepower as a land raider. 4 Lascannons + a heavy bolter shooting a turn = CSM land raider, except with more durability, without the movement. So I'm pretty happy with that squad.

It's actually kind of nice to have a few guns in my army again.

Chips pairing of vanilla w/ space wolves was a good call. I really liked this setup. I probably would have found some points for a t-fire though. They are just super good.

IFL Finals - three battle reports, CSM vs. different TAU armies

Greets,

This is the a recap of my final three games for the IFL league. These final three games were played in an RTT format with the other top 8 players from the league. Of the top 8 players, they consisted  of tau or eldar, with an exception for myself  and two others. (myself CSM, A Daemon Player, and a Necron).

Game 1. Vs Pure Tau

General of his list -
2x fire warrior squads
2x pathfinder
2x kroot
2x missile broadsides w/ SMS / high yield, with all missile drones possible
2x riptides
1x skyray
1x super beefy commander
1x ethereal
1x crisis suits w/ super beefy sarg

Hammer and Anvil
Night fight - irrelevant, its tau, they basically ignore it
mission - 4 corner objectives, whoever holds more wins that goal, 1 center objective, holding is a separate goal, slay the warlord, linebreaker

Turn 1 - Deployment like such. I deployed like this having first turn, essentially counting on not being seized on. My opponent infiltrated his kroot as an assault screen.

Then I got seized on.

Booo

He shoots me a bunch, knocking a few hullpoints off here and there, kills one nurgle spawn and wounds a plague drone. I run at him full speed.

 Top of turn 2

He kills one of my maulerfiends, a few spawn from each squad, and a few plague drones. A hull point is lost from the other mauler fiend, and my soul grinder goes boom!

 Bottom of turn 2

I run forward with my remaining forces. Hellrake comes on and nukes a kroot screen. Cultists come on and run towards corner objectives, but maintain LOS blocking terrain. My plaguebearers deep strike near the middle objective behind the LOS terrain.

Assaults - my plague drones make it into some kroot. My juggy lord + a few spawn make it into one broadside squad. My nurgle lord + his spawn fail his 5 inch charge into the other broadside squad + commander. Not because of shooting, just straight out dice roll fail.
Plague drones brutalize the kroot, forcing them to run, but can't sweep them. Juggy lord ravages the broadside squad and eliminates them.

Turn 3. My opponent shifts his models around to bring maximum firepower to bear on the juggy lord and the plague drones. Ethereal moves to give aura to the fleeting kroot. Commander joins the crisis suit squad. Brutal shooting removes the nurgle lords spawn, and leaves him with a single wound left.
Juggy lord and company die.
Bottom of my turn, move the nurgle lord out of LOS to the hill to remove over watch damage potential, he then dies on the charge vs. some kroot.  Herald of nurgle splits from his last remaining plague drone to assault fire warriors who do not break. The remaining plague drone goes after the fleeing kroot, only to die to over watch. Plaguebearers run to the wall to hug it outside of LOS to move onto the center objective last turn. Cultists are now holding both corner objectives, but out of LOS from the bulk of the tau army.

Turn 4 -

 The kroot rally thanks to the ethereals aura, moving 3 inches but not quite close enough to the objective to take it. His commander and riptide assault the Herald of Nurgle. The rest of his army moves forward to try and take the middle objective and shoot down my cultists. You can see in the pic on the left his kroot 3 inches away from the center objective to attempt to hold it. In the top of 4,his commander assaults my herald of nurgle to try and save the fire warriors, my herald of Nurgle decides to go to town and completely destroys the commander, then survives the remaining saves required of him.  Bottom of turn 4, my plaguebearers move onto the center objective, as close as possible to the kroot. They then assault the kroot and wipe them out. The herald of nurgle bites it to a riptide smash.

End result - I win by holding the center objective. We both have slay the warlord and 2 corner objectives.

Game 2 vs. Tau with Eldar allies

 



Opponents list

Commander with all the fixings
Riptide
4 or 5x fire warriors
Crisis suit team
2x pathfinders
Huge broadside squad with tons of missiles
Hammerhead with longstride
Riptide
Aegis line with quad gun

Farseer on jetbike
Guardian jetbike squad

So super important note about this game, my opponent rolled forewarning on his psyker powers. Which allows the psyker and his unit to fire over-watch at full BS. That basically means no assault army can ever easily make it into combat.

So, my opponent opted to go first. After seeing his deployment, I set up everything outside of the range of all his guns. I attempted to seize, and failed. His first turn of shooting was ineffectual beyond killing a maulerfiend and that's about it.  My first turn, I ran forward keeping the large LOS center blocker between me and the bulk of his armys shooting. It wouldn't help me versus smart missile systems, but it was better than nothing. The soul grinder shot and killed two crisis suits

The photo to the left is in the middle of turn 2, right after the tau finish shooting. You can see a large portion of the army is still available and ready for action. Sooo at this point, I forgot that my opponent had forewarning (and what it did). Its a stupid mistake and one I will try not to make again, because I essentially lost my entire army when I charged into combat

Because afterwards, my army looked like this. This is the top of turn 3. After this, it was clear I could not win, so I made it my personal goal to simply kill the hammerhead with longstride, which I was successful in.

So I lost.

 

Game 3 vs. Pure Tau

My opponents list here was...
2x Ethereal
3x Broadside
3x riptide
5 or 6 kroot squads
2x pathfinders

Turn 1, my opponent has first go.

A maulerfiend goes boom, the other maulerfiend is immobilized, and one nurgle spawn bites it.

 
 Bottom of turn 1,  ran everything I could into LOS blocking terrain. My nurgle spawn managed a 10 inch charge against one kroot squad, almost wiping them out, but thanks to a kroot hound they managed to get away.

 

Turn 2 - Kroot wall shoots the snot out of the nurgle spawn killing all of them, and almost killing the lord. Juggy lord squad loses some spawn, and the soul grinder loses a hull point. Bottom of turn 2, I assault the plague drones/nurgle herald into a kroot squad, the juggy lord hits a different kroot squad. Nurgle Chaos Lord assaults the kroot who were running finishing the job. Juggy lord hits himself in the face, and spawn whiff epic hard, so we hang out in combat. Plague drones put some serious hurt on the kroot squad, causing them to run, but not off the board.

 Top of turn 3, running kroot rally and move back to screen. Nurgle lord bites it to shooting from kroot outflanking. Kroot also outflank into my back left board edge and pin a cultist squad. Kroot + riptide shooting mucks up the plague drones real hard. In the bottom of three, the juggy lord finally finishes chopping up the squad he was assaulting, leaving him standing in the open by himself. Plague drones re-assault the kroot. Helldrake comes in and nukes / kills all the kroot which just outflanked on the right side.

Turn 4 - All the plague drones die. Herald of nurgle ends up locked in combat with a kroot squad and riptide, but passes all his saves like a boss.  Helldrake dies to a Fusion gun. Juggy lord kills .. stuff. The soul grinder shoots at the kroot causing them to flee or something.

 

So, for this round, I won on secondary missions because the Herald of nurgle refused to die (he should have died), contesting the only objective held by anyone.

 

 

http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/IFL-Summer-Playoffs/leaderboard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 - IFL 40k Rematch, nurgling additions!.

So

Happy Belated Independence Day to my American readers. Todays post recaps an 1850 40k game I played vs. Tyranid, and some painting for my army. I have not posted for a while due to extreme work hours and general updating / painting my army some more. I had someone who will remain anonymous, but a paint judge for a "large" event (not adepticon), tell me that my army lacked a cohesive theme, and that it make no sense that I had red guys, and green guys, mixed with some black guys. Needless to say it was blatantly obvious this individual had no idea what the fluff is for Chaos Daemons, or Chaos Space marines. Explaining it too this individual didn't help either. (EDIT here based on Tim's feedback, original comment cut).

That said, I decided if said paint judge was unable to figure out a theme in my army, then I'd spruce it up some as no doubt there will be future paint judges who are also unable to find a theme, for any number of reasons, or probably shouldn't be paint judges in the first place. See my post about Adepticon's 2013 lack-luster paint judges.

So that out of the way, I've decided my love for Papa Nurgle only grows deeper day by day. After all, out of all of the Chaos Gods, only he truly cares for his children. He actually turns his followers into Plague Bearers when they die, rather than oh say, devouring their souls, or just being really uncaring, or a douche who uses everyone for his own ends which maybe he doesn't even know. Fuck those guys, seriously. Come join me in my worship of Nurgle.

He's throwing the little guy

He's taunting you because he's better than you
and you know it.

Riding him around like he's his daddy

I love the tongue pulling action

 
 
 
Week 5 - IFL Match Vs. Benjammin'

Night fight - Yes
First Turn, rolled by me, given to Ben
Seize - No

Mission - The mission consisted of several primary objectives each worth a number of points. Slay the Warlord - 1, LineBreaker - 1, Center Objective - 1, having more corner objectives than opponent - 2.

Whoever had the most points at game end wins.
I took two Close combat weapon rewards (instant death, plague flail) on my Herald. The Plague Drone Sarg took the instant death sword. My warlord trait was to infiltrate d3 units.. (yay uselesssss...). Ben rolled Iron Arm for all of his Tervigons, and  a few Endurance's here and there. The Flyrant got Endurance I believe.

Turn 1 - FIGHT!

This is Deployment. Ben ran his models forward, and fired with the biovores inflicting a wound or two I think. His flyrant flew along the far board edge to take some pot shots at the plague drones causing a wound. He spawns gaunts on two of his Tervigons - also exhausting them. My turn 1, I ran forward at Ben while staying in Cover so Gaunts would have to attack me at a lower Initiative if they assaulted. Plague drones moved next to the flyrant in a half-hearted effort to  shoot at him on the off-chance he was grounded. Surprise! He was grounded. Then assaulted by plague drones. I made a mistake here that nearly cost me the game. I had a maulerfiend I could have easily moved to support the plaguedrones in assaulting the flyrant and would have guaranteed it dying had it been grounded. I didn't though, shame on me. Also, Ben forgot to challenge, and I set it up so I couldn't have my herald challenged (in case he remembered to), and then Ben proceeded to boss about 2-3 armor saves, and 4 or so Instant Death wounds. I was sad to say the least.

 

 Top of turn 2. Ben has his Ymaryl genestealers and the Trygon arrive from reserves. The ymaryls pop out in the center ruin and assault my maulerfiend / soul grinder. The Trygon comes onto my backfield and shoots ineffectually at the maulerfiend. Gaunts run forward and pop shots at my T5 spawn squad and kill one with the help of the biovores and tervigon. Hive Guard hit a maulerfiend quite a bit but fail to damage it.  Ben assaults my T5 spawn squad with gaunts to tie them in combat on my turn (which is successful as the khorne lord hits himself in the face, but does not wound). He also tries to charge in the Tervigon in order to challenge and squish the Khorne lord, but he just  barely fails his charge. (Iron arm was up with +3 at turn). Ymaryls fail to damage the two vehicles and lose two for the result. His backfield Tervigon pumps out some gaunts and runs them into combat with the plaguedrones.

Bottom of Turn 2

For my Turn 2,  Helldrake came on with one squad of cultists. Helldrake vector struck the Trygon causing two wounds, and flamed down some gaunts which was somewhat pointless. The maulerfiend in the open ran forward to assault the Tervigon.  Plague Spawn and Plague lord moved up to multi charge the crap out of his squads. However, I over-moved by about two inches some spawn here due to the ruins, so after correctly placing them, we found that my spawn were not in range for the epic charge that I was hoping for. So I just ended up nailing the gaunts real hard. Woooo Gaunts.
So at the end of this turn of combat, the flyrant has passed another 4 instant death armor saves. The gaunts have been beat up by the plague drones. My Plague lord / nurgle spawn are locked in combat with 4-6 gaunts. The khorne lord and his spawn are free hanging out on some terrain. The maulerfiend / soul grinder kill the remaining three Genestealers and consolidate as shown below.

Turn 3 (Top)

 The Doom comes in, he scatters a bit and lands in between the middle terrain and the far scatter piece. He gets out and disembarks towards the plague drones to go cause em trouble. Ben spawns more gaunts, finally exhausting his last Tervigon with a mighty 18! These suckers charge into combat with the plague drones. His Trygon assaults the soul grinder slipping in 1 pen, and blowing it up! The maulerfiend and Tervigon hang out and have a dance party. His middle tervigon and nearby gaunts move next to the Nurgle lord and assaults his squad. The Tervigon in the far region moves into terrain in an attempt to assault the plague drones, but fails his charge. So a bit of a WTF moment here. The Tervigon in the middle has Iron arm up I believe, and ends up in a challenge with the nurgle lord. The nurgle lord gives him an amazing 7 wounds, which he promptly fails 5 on (having lost one previously on a perils), and eliminates himself flat out. If that's not just crazy bad luck I don't know what is. Seriously.

 Bottom of Turn 3 (photo is the end of turn 3). One Maulerfiend is now stuck into each of the remaining Tervigons. They are steadily causing wounds despite Iron Arm and Endurance. (Though the top one passed three FNP saves! Like a boss). My Nurgle lord has assaulted into the Biovore / Tyranid Prime (warlord) squad. Leaving the Tyranid Prime with only a single wound left. My juggy lord + his spawn assault the Trygon. He is left with three wounds, and I lose a spawn. Trapping the back Tervigon outside of the 6 inches needed prevents the large squad from having poisoned attacks which would have otherwise ravaged me real bad has been redeeming.

 

 

This photo is actually game end - So don't let it confuse you
with turn 4!

 Turn - 4/5 ?

So Ben assaulted his Hive guard into my nurgle lord squad to see if he could rescue his warlord and possibly kill my warlord. That did not turn out well as spawn rolled a crazy shit ton awesome number of attacks/wounds and everything died. My maulerfiend in the bottom left finally killed his Tervigon, as did the maulerfiend and his tervigon in the far backfield. The Trygon died to the juggy lord. The doom just barely failed to charge my plague bearers in the middle. (can't really see in the picture well but my cultists have snuck onto the board in the bottom right and taken an objective). The Plague drones at this point have basically evaporated with only 1 with 2 wounds on him left. Ben keeps forgetting to Smash and this has been my saving grave (Sorry Ben!). Also i think my dice have been kinda stupid hot on saving throws for them.

Ect, so basically I throw the now free maulerfiend at the Doom. The other one can't move as its been immobilized. The nurgle spawn go to assault into the gaunt / flyrant combat just to lock him down for the extra turn or two that would buy me. Nurgle lord goes and kills the last two biovores. Regular spawn go sit on an objective just to contest it in case Ben wins free. That's basically it.

Fin -

So I got linebreaker, Slay the Warlod, Middle Objective, and more corner objectives. Earning me a well fought win.

This game had lots and lots of pivots and could have gone either way frequently. His Tervigons has crappy penetration results which let the maulerfiends hang out longer than they should have. I managed to have it will not die rolls actually be semi-useful. The Tervigon blowing up to the nurgle lord instantly was just crazy silly. If those outcomes had gone the other way, I could have seen this game going against me entirely as Ben could have hung back to sit on his objectives, and I would not have been able to prevent the doom, a eventually freed flyrant, or the gaunts from gaining linebreaker or contesting my middle.

Ben did boss through a silly number of instant-death wounds on the flyrant. I think like seriously 9  to 12 of them. So maybe that makes up for the Tervigon implosion. Dunno. The gaunts were out of range of their mommas in clutch moments too, so that could have changed things. Ben's dice let him down on several charges he needed which would have changed the range issue.