Tournament: Feast of Blades Qualifier 8/10/13

I played in the Dragon's Lair FOB qualifier yesterday with my Saim Hann Eldar, and ended up withfirst place out of a total of 8 players. I picked up a bunch of old pathfinders and dark reapers from my buddy Hart and got them 75% painted so I could incorporate them into a new 1850 list:

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear
6 Fire Dragons - Wave Serpent with twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
3 Jetbikes
3 Jetbikes
9 Dire Avengers - Wave Serpent with twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
8 Rangers
9 Warp Spiders - exarch with spinneret rifle
3 Vypers - scatter lasers and shuriken cannons
Fire Prism - holofields
3 War Walkers - 2 scatter lasers each
5 Dark Reapers - starshot missiles, exarch with fast shot, night vision, and starshot missiles

The Reapers can go down to heavy dakka, but until then are a big time menace to society. The pathfinders are less powerful but can put wounds on high-toughness creeps and camp out on objectives in the second or third floors of ruins. I basically traded them for a fire prism and 2 squads of jetbikes, and while I missed the resilience that comes from duplication, I liked the tactical diversity.

GAME 1 - Space Marines
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire (5 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War

Matt (I think?) had a pretty classic vanilla marines list, with a chapter master, melta/flamer dreadnought in a drop pod, 10 terminators with 2 cyclone missile launchers, three tactical squads with plasma and rocket launchers or a lascannon in rhinos, a missile launcher/heavy bolter land speeder, a vindicator, and a whirlwind. I hadn't played with the new eldar against vanilla marines yet, so that was a thrill. He inflicted some good early damage that put me on my heels, but I also made some crucial cover saves that let enough of my sharp pointy things survive to whittle him down and keep him off objectives. I ended up winning 13-2.

GAME 2 - Eldar
Mission: The Scouring
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

I had a very close second game matched up against Carlisle's eldar. He had an Iyanden list with a wraithknight warlord, a shadowseer, three squads of 5 wraithguard (1 with D-scythes) in scatter laser/holofields wave serpents, 9 or 10 dire avengers, and a second wraithknight, and 3 scatter laser war walkers. First turn was critical, and I rolled to win it. I managed to only drop one of his wave serpents the first turn, but he probably would have done much worse to me. Things went his way for almost the entire game, and I was hanging on by the skin of my warlord trait (master of cities!), when I had an epic 5th turn and killed his warlord wraithknight (all 6 wounds), 2 wave serpents, and 6 or 7 wraithguard that were threatening my deployment zone. A single fire dragon survived being charged by a few last wraithguard and held morale just in time for the game to end on the bottom of the 5th and keep them away from my warp spiders, who were holding the 4-point objective. Tough game and luck definitely helped me survive against a badass army and excellent general.

GAME 3 - Eldar
Mission: Crusade
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

My third game sent me up against Noah's foot eldar list, which consisted of a bike farseer with mantle of the laughing god, an avatar, 10 or so striking scorpions, 10 or so rangers, a big squad of 20 or so guardians with 2 star cannons and a warlock, 2 squads of 10 dire avengers with shimmershield exarchs, 2 double-bright lance and sword wraithlords, and 3 double-bright lance war walkers. He deployed his foot troops right in front of all my dakka, and I wiped them out fairly quickly. He had placed one of his objectives in his opposite corner, and was planning on infiltrating his rangers there - but I won the roll to infiltrate first and put my rangers there instead. The scorpions ended up murdering them, but it kept his troops off the objective. I ended up wiping nearly everything of his besides a few pathfinders and striking scorpions by the fourth or so turn, and we called it.

I haven't decided whether I want to spend the scratch on going to Denver to play in the invitational. I'm sure it will be pretty hard core and that's a lot of money to spend on a long weekend of having to deal with spam style douchebag armies and their handlers.

Here's the new guys after a few more finishing touches:

 

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 8/4/13

Played in a 2000 point tournament Sunday with my newly improved Saim Hann. Here was the army:

Farseer - singing spear, eldar jetbike
6 Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
4 x 3 Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon each
10 Dire Avengers - exarch with twin-linked shuriken catapult
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields (new addition!)
8 Warp Spiders - exarch with spinneret rifle and fast shot
Crimson Hunter Exarch (new addition!)
3 Vypers - scatter lasers and shuriken cannons
3 War Walkers - 6 scatter lasers (new addition!)
2 Fire Prisms - holofields

GAME 1 - Eldar
Missions: The Scouring and Purge the Alien
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

JR was playing his awesome Iyanden army, with Baharroth, a shadowseer, 2 squads of 10 swooping hawks 2 squads of 10 wraithguard, a wraithlord, a wraithknight, 6 or 7 rangers, and 5 or 6 dark reapers. Getting first turn was a big deal with this game - otherwise I have no doubt that the reapers would have had their pick at wrecking much of my stuff. As it turned out, I got to fire the initial volley and wipe them out right away. After that, I suffered fairly minimal losses (2 of the war walkers, a couple of jetbike squads, maybe one of the fire prisms) and managed to wipe out all he had. The wraithknight and wraithguard suffered particularly from bad save rolls, but with hammer and anvil, I also had the advantage of range, firepower, and speed. I got full points.

GAME 2 - GREY KNIGHTS
Missions: The Relic and Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

As usual, Matt played his grey knights with great skill. He had an inquisitor, 2 dreadknights, 5 or 6 paladins, 3 10 man strike squads in rhinos, a small deep-striking strike squad, and a psyfleman dread. He rolled to place terrain and objectives first, and since there was only 3 of them, that meant I had one in my deployment zone, and he had 2. I was thankful to have the extra distance to back up in the vanguard deployment. I held my right flank with the wave serpents in ruins. Everything else tried to keep distance and shoot anything that came from behind the big line-of-sight blocking hill he deployed. He rolled for first turn and gave it to me instead. I immediately wrecked the dreadknight with somewhat lucky fire prism shooting, and took out one of his rhinos on my left with wave serpents. He responded with decent counter fire, frying a vyper and one of my fire prisms. I slowly wore down the inquisitor and paladins with the warp spiders and Crimson Hunter. As for the dreadknights, I only put one wound on one of them in the crucial early turns, and they were able to toast a couple things before they got close enough to take down with mass shuriken and laser fire. I killed everything he threw at the relic, and our last turn came just as time was running out. He wouldn't have made the distance with one of his surviving strike squads if I hadn't killed just enough of them to break them, sending them back towards his table edge, allowing them to regroup in his last turn, and take the 9" move towards the center. He also had just enough to take his home objectives, so he won 17 to 8. Good game.

GAME 3 - CHAOS DAEMONS
Missions: Big Guns Never Tire (3 objectives) and Crusade (3 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War

Wouldn't you know it, I was paired up against "Yolandi" Hart in my last game. He had a bloodthirster, lord of change, skulltaker and several khorne heralds on juggernauts, karanak, a big squad of daemonettes, 2 squads of plaguebearers, a daemon prince, and a tzeentch soulgrinder. Again, going first worked out very well for me - though this time I got it through seizing the initiative! Ouch. I destroyed the daemon prince right away, and put the hurt on his nurgling squads. He outflanked the juggernauts and karanak right into my red pointy castle, but unfortunately for them, I had wiped out all other proximal threats. This allowed me to have just enough shooters available to wipe out the khornestar before they could do anything back to me. I won with 22 points, which ended up putting me ahead of Matt for first place.

My opponents were all great and I had a blast blooding my freshly painted wild riders (with many lucky breaks helping me out along the way). Thanks Chris for running the dang thing.

Tournament: Alamo 40k GT San Antonio May 2013

 

 

 

  

 

I forgot to add these pics from the Alamo 40k GT back in May. I took my 1850 Khorne CSM army with some khorne daemon allies. Here was the list:

Chaos Lord - mark of khorne, juggernaut, axe of burning blood, meltabomb, plasma pistol
10 Cultists
10 Cultists
10 Chaos Space Marines - 2 meltaguns, champion with power axe, meltabomb, icon of wrath
7 Chaos Space Marine Bikers - 2 plasma guns, champion with power axe, meltabomb, icon of wrath
10 Chaos Raptors - 2 meltaguns, champion with power axe, meltabomb, icon of wrath
Heldrake - baleflamer
Maulerfiend - ripper tentacles
Maulerfiend
Bloodthirster - 2 greater rewards
10 Bloodletters

The Friday before the tournament started, we hit the riverwalk running...

Courtesy of a buddy we had an amazing room right across from the alamo itself.

We played about 3 turns of a massive 2x2 game using makeshift terrain and stayed up way too late.

I didn't have my "bleary-eyed" photo filter on so this looks way clearer than how I saw it.

GAME 1 - 5 DEMON BAG

Game 1 was against a 5-demon bag army with a thirster and great unclean one leading the group. This was actually my first game against one of these armies, and I found out pretty quickly that you really need your own MCs or a lot more shooting to have any kind of chance against a build like this.

I made the best go of it and ended up scoring a few points but did lose the game.

GAME 2 - TAU

I played against a mixed tau army with Khorne daemon allies. Interesting mix, but I ended up getting a good-sized win.

GAME 3 - NECRONS

I was matched up against Will for my last game and he was rockin a necron army I didn't know he had. There was a minor misunderstanding regarding some rule of mine, and it ended up screwing Will over early in the game. Still, he hung in there and we had a tough match to end the day.

 

Nothing a couple three absurd beergaritas couldn't fix.

I actually crashed at a decent hour Saturday night and arrived at the venue ready for Day 2.

GAME 4 - DAEMONS

My first opponent on the second day had a mixed daemons army with a couple of nurgle soulgrinders, a bloodthirster, a bunch of horrors, maybe some plaguebearers...? I can't recall exactly, and I either won or lost by a small margin. Probably my favorite game, gameplay wise, of the tournament.

Then, off to a nearby mexican restaurant for some whaaaayt cake.

GAME 5 - CHAOS DAEMONS

My last game was against goddamn Mike, my ride home! So to keep things civil, I let him win. And our maulerfiends hugged it out:

And my useless cultists took a free moment to send a signal to their patron god while they waited for imminent soulgrinder death: