'Casual' Tournament Report

I went to a tournament yesterday at my FLGS there were only six of us because most of the players at this store don't often go to a tournament that isn't ITC or competitive. You'll see the humor in this once you see the armies involved...

Starting with my own, a Steel Host that is WYSIWYG...

A Knight and Baneblade. The Baneblade actually has two sets of sponsons.

Some Necron Warriors, Destroyer Lord, some special character...and nine Wraiths held in reserves.

With their closer friend, a Vindicare Assassin

Deceptively, these trucks are carrying Ghazghkull and a Meganobz formation

This Greater Brass Scorpion (you read that right) has twenty cultists and a sorcerer in reserves. The sorcerer will be summoning up some more help once he shows up.

Yeah, none of these are considered remotely competitive enough for the normal monthly tournaments and many of the local players have even commented that such a format is beneath them. But hey, it was a hell of a good time.

Onto the format. Basically, each phase of the game is divided up into five possible ways to earn points. Two of them are for great accomplishments (getting five 6s on a single units shooting roles), two unfortunate events (loosing a psyker to Perils of the Warp), and one that is a choice (not moving in the movement phase at all.) One in each phase is also worth double points. The tertiary objectives are also there except First Blood is replaced with First Strike (killing something on turn one.)

Game 1 versus The Army I Didn't Get A Picture Of (Dooh!)

His list was the weirdest there, honestly. Something like...

BA-

Two Tactical Squads - Plasma Cannons

Assault Squad - Meltagun x2

Rhino x6

Orks-

Five Weirdboyz

Harlequins-

Heroes Path Formation (Each of their special characters with Stealth, Shrouded, and Infiltrate)

He earned a bucket load of points turn one thanks to having so many units and enough psykers to make a serious play at most of the psychic phase points.

I spent the rest of the game playing a serious game of catch up, earning a few points here and there and being glad that he didn't have much that can hurt a Russ. Those things were targeting early and often until I was basically immune to his army. On the last turn he was ahead by one point and I made the suicidal but game winning decision to not shoot a single gun (worth two points), letting him kill another Russ with his Solitaire (which didn't matter.)

Result - Win

NOTE: His army is highly unoptimized for traditional 40k but was built specifically for this tournament. Ultimately, he'd do fairly well but his lack of real hitting power meant that each of his opponents could catch up over the course of the game. This meant that enemies had the whole game to play catch up and would often beat him by just a few points. I guess nothing quite trumps good 'ol fashion killing power.

Game 2 versus The Brass Scorpion

He deployed in one corner (I don't know why) and I went to the other, earning me a few turns to rack up points and get some shots. Not many turns, that thing is fast and had no reason not to run every turn. 

Nice mid-game shot

This game was almost a slam dunk until my dice betrayed me. Normally, I'm one of those people that roles his eyes on dice betrayal but even my opponent told me this. I had five demolisher cannon round smake into the thing, three from side armor, and not a one managed to even glance the beast. I don't mean that me made his save, I mean I failed, multiple times in a row, to role even a three on two dice. It only have two hull points left at the end of the game and killing it would have freed me up to earn another point or two instead of being deeply concerned with not being tabled.

In the end, I have only a Demolisher left but the game was over and we had the same amount of points for a draw. Largely, the rest of his pieces sat away from me, ate a few wounds from the Hydra, and earned points in the psychic and movement phases.

Great player. I teamed up with him for a tournament years ago when he just started playing and boy has he improved.

Result - Draw

Game 3 versus Knight and Baneblade

His Knight went down one side and the Baneblade the other, since it didn't have to worry about melee. My two Demolishers and Vanquisher took out the Baneblade after a protracted duel where it held a nice edge thanks to repeated stunning results. Eventually, with all three tanks damaged but still around, they managed to blow it up.

On the other side, my tanks had failed miserably against the Knight. My warlord had rolled an Escalation warlord trait that have me a once a game bonus when shooting a Lord of War. It made all of my shots AP1 and Rending. It and repeated side shots from the Hydra, managed to do jack all against the knight, who then showed me what a reaper chainsword did to Russ hulls. 

As the knight marched toward the survivors of the Baneblade fight, I pummeled it with everything I had but to no avail. The Hydra stripped two hull points off of it and the tanks another three. Sadly, it had one point left on Turn 7. I was left with only a damaged Hydra (it had eaten battle cannon shots at the knight came after Pask) and a Demolisher on its last hull point. We were severely beaten up and we both had realized that we hadn't been keeping ongoing track of our points (we'll I had been somewhat but I was hoping that would give me some kind of advantage.)

Going over it line by line we realized that it was another draw.

Result - Draw

So a 1/0/2 record was enough to get me 2nd out of 6 players. The Brass Scorpion had gone on to win the whole event.