Tournament reports Part II

Second tournament I went to this year was the german Throne of Skulls. Missed the ticket deadline first, but a friend of mine ordered 4 tickets and they send him 5, so  I was back in the game. I will keep the tourament reports short again, because I got no pictures and I didn't play my beloved eldar. You ask why? Last year they used 1750 points and this year it was cut down to 1500. I had some major problems building a competitive eldar force for that size, esp. one which favored my gaming style. So instead of borrowing the Sam Hain Eldar I used 2009, I went for a boring IG build.



HQ

CCS with 3xPlasma Gun, Officer of the Fleet + Chimera with Laser&heavy flamer

Platoon Command Squad with Melta bombs, 2xPlasma guns (Vendetta 1)
+ Infantry Squad with PW-Sergeant and PW-Commi
+ Infantry Squad with a PW/Melta bombs Sergeant
+SWS with 3xflamer (Vendetta 2)

Veteran Squad with 2xPlasma + Chimera with Mlaser&heavy flamer
Veteran Squad with 2xPlasma + Chimera with Mlaser&heavy flamer
Veteran Squad with 3xMelta guns + Chimera with Mlaser&heavy flamer

Vendetta
Vendetta


Manticore
Hydra
Hydra

I borrowed the army from the same guy who lend me SH eldar (TOS 2009&ratisbona 2010), and since he was rather short on melta guns (3) and had not a single grenade launcher, I ended up with those 9 plasma guns.

Game 1

3 objectives with pitched battle deployment against a tau army which looked like this:

commander with MP+Plasma and position relay (?)attached to a squad of pathfinders
Tau etheral attached to a squad of broadsides

2x3 crisis suits with drones and mixed weapons (mainly tl. MP, flamers and Plasma) for maximum amount of wound groups

Squad of Firewarriors (minimal size)
20 Kroot

Squad of pathfinders + transport tank

2x3 broadsides + shieldrones and maxed out woundgroups.

He won the roll off and went first, so in return I placed everything in reserve. You don't want to give that list an alpha-strike against a Av12 army. I made a couple of fault, which I blame on not being familiar with the IG dex that much (never played against them) and a serious lack of sleep. I only arrived home with the dawn on friday and rised up early to clean the house. The fact that one of the guys who slept at my house snored like a bunch of woodcutters didn't help much either. So I was kind of sleeps on that saturday morning and that would cost me in game 2. We ended turn 4 just ~15 minutes before the end of the timelimit, so instead of trying to start a 5th turn (or even doing only half of it) we ended the game at this point. If we had played turn 5 a single dice roll could have been the difference between a draw or a win for me. Since GW used a stupid 30/10/1/0 scoring system, we called it a draw. If he had botched his print roll for his warriors (or I manage to shoot them) I would have won an scored 30 points, with him getting only one. That wouldn't have been fair because the game was really tight, so we both got 10 points for a draw and a small difference in VP.


Game 2

Capture & Control against a local GW redshirt. He played a very fluffy Ultramarine list with:

Scriptor
5 Assault Terminators (2xClaw/3xHammer)
Dread with tl. LC and ML

Scouts with cloaks and sniper rifles + a ML
10 guys strong Tac squad with a rhino, LC and melta gun
10 guys strong Tac squad in a pod
5 naked SM in a LC-Razorback

MM/MM Speeder
AssCan/HB Speeder

Thunderfire-Cannon

Should be doable with my IG list, if I had not fumbled the deployment. I won the roll off, decided to go first and decided not to change side. Don't ask me why, but instead of moving my two army cases on the other side of the table, I picked the side I stood at the moment of the roll off. Why was that wrong? Well, if I had switched side he would have ended up with a DZ void of any decent terrain piece. At least no piece of area terrain. Remember that the TFC comes with a full fledged Techmarine? He used that one to fortify a temple ruin in his DZ, where he placed a combat squad with a LC, the TFC itself and the dread. He then placed his scouts on the upper floors of a very high tower, which also held his objective. That way both the scouts and the objective itself was out of reach for any non-jump or jetbike mounted flamer. With my two vendettas coming down early and the rest of my army taking too long to get rid of his terminators, I didn't had any mobile elements to unload and move up into the tower and he managed to get a single surviving SM on my marker. 0-1, resulting in a loss and 1 point for me and 30 for him.


Game 3

Killpoints with DoW Deployment against a SW player.

2xRunic Priests
3 Wolfguard with PF/CMelter attached to Hunter squads
8 Grey Hunter in a Rhino
8 Grey Hunter in a Rhino
9 Hunter in a Pod
TW-Cavalry ~5 guys
2x6 Longfangs with 5 ML each

Dawn of War and KP vs SW? Why me? I won the roll off and deployed first. Fused the 2 squads together into a single one and used it to screen of a safe zone for my army. He didn't deploy anything. In my first turn I drove everything on the table, creating a wall for my HS choices and moved back the 20 infantry blokes  to create some distance. He then moved everything on the table and grabbed his pod. Oh shit, I move some of my tanks too far unto the table, creating some free fields. He went for the risk, rolled badly the the pod+9 hunters scattered of the table. He grumbled something like "you will table me in turn 4 or 5" and with that prediction we set the counter at turn 2. In my second turn I started my barrage with the manticore dropping 3 blast templates on his TWC. He lost 2 guys, passed the moral check and I either forgot the whole pinning test or the fact that the manticore get -1 for being a barrage weapon. Anyway, neither got they pinned down, nor did they run of the board. That would have saved me the game, because after that it turned into a "fun with dice" contest. I poured everything I had into his fangs, and after sucking up everything I had except for the manticore, he still had most of them alive and kicking. I thing in the whole shooting phase I managed to immobilize a single rhino, kill 2 TWC and ~2-3 Longfangs. The game ended in a painful defeat, with me being unable to pass armor or cover saves, while his fangs seemed to wear terminator armor and after rolling 18 hits on my 20 guys squad, wounding 12 and me failing ~10-11 saves, his TWC smashed into my army, soaking up everything I fired at them. Meh! If I remember it correctly, his TWC didn't suffer a single wound after loosing the first 2 guys and the leader from one of his Fang squads passed ~12+ armor saves, before he finaly died. I only managed to kill one squad of fangs, ironically the one hiding in a wood and not the one sitting right in the open, and a single rhino. A 4:9 loss, with 2 KP being the pod+squad he DS off the table in turn 1.

So with 1 draw and 2 defeats in my book I went to the mexican restaurant across the street, for some drink, all you can eat and some nice talk with the other participants. During the meal one of the GW staff members handed out a list with the game results and I got some kind of déjà vu. On par with me in terms of points was a fellow eldar player, who stayed at my house for the tournament. At the 20009 TOS we ended up playing against each other with eldar armies on day 2/game 4 and it looked like we would get that match again. He wasn't too eager to play against IG and any attempt to fuddle me failed. 


I woke up next morning sober and w/o a headache. We then all went to the GW store again w/o having a proper breakfast.


Game 4


Killpoints again with spearhead deployment.

My opponent fielded:

Eldrad+8 Locks  (none of them with destructor) + Serpent
1 Fire Dragon squad in a Serpent with tl. SC
2 x5 DA in a Serpent with a tl. BL
5 Ranger
2x Fire Prism

And yes, my opponent was my buddy. Surprise, surprise!

He won the roll off and decided to go first. He used the cover from the city fight styled table to minimize the damage from a stolen initiative. I formed that 20 guys squad again, spread it out 2" between all models and formed a bubble around my tanks with the chimeras in the front, the vendettas to the sided and the hydra and manticore in the back. He shuffled his dragons around with divination, infiltrated his rangers into a ruin and I scouted my vendetta outside the cover of my infantry screen. I didn't manage to steal the initiative and in his first turn he fortuned both the council and its serpent, guided one prism tank and then moved his whole force. The DA-Serpents left their cover, the FD serpent boosted up my left flank to intercept one of my vendettas and the council serpent right in front of my infantery screen. in his shooting phase he managed to blew of one weapon from a hydra with the tl. prism tank. Anything else either missed or got blocked by cover saves. I moved my vendettas some inches and then went straight for the shooting phase, starting with the damaged hydra. 2 shots against his council serpent, 2 hits, 1 pen and no cover save from turbo boost. The dice for the damage showed a six and after rolling for wounds and inv saves only half of the council stumbled into the crater, thanks to him botching most of them even being fortuned. He then forfeited the game , we stored our armies,  had a look at the other tables and went for breakfast at MacD around the corner. Playing another turn would have been futile, because at 1500 points he only packed power in the council and being down to 4 guys with 1425 points of IG still being free to pour fire into them, the game was decided anyway. So we grabbed some coffee and talked about hydras being the bane of any eldar mech-force.

Game 5

5 objectives and pitched battle against another eldar player with a hybrid list on a crappy table

Eldrad + Avatar
2x6 FD + serpents
2x10 guardians with EML
2x3 naked Guardian jetbikes
2 Lords with lances 
3 Walkers with SL

Crappy table? Hell yes, all the terrain was outside of the 12" deployment zones except for some sandbag barriers. No LOS-blocking terrain and I won the roll off and went first. He placed everything in reserve, I used my first 2 turns to move towards the objectives and in his second one he only passed the reserve rolls for Eldrad and the Avatar. Amazing combination of him rolling poorly and me having a Master of the fleet. I felt rather sorry for the guy being an eldar player myself, esp. after the first salvo from my vendetta took out Eldrad. The only thing that kept the game interesting after that was the fact, that it took me ages to kill the Avatar even w/o him being fortuned and me owning 9 freaking plasma guns. He also played rather well and was a good sportsmen, so the game ended with a narrow win (1 objective) for me and both of us having a entertaining game with him keeping his jetbikes alive regardless of the firepower I poured into them and me dropping the avatar in the last cc phase with a stupid S3 non-PW attack from a ordinary guardsmen.


So after 2 days and 5 games I ended up ranking 20 out of 50 gamers, with the exact same amount of battlepoints I scored last year, and some lessons learned. One of them that IG being an army with a lot of great models, but none I will ever own. Why? Because IG are just boring to play, I may have scored worse bringing eldar to a 1500 points tournament but at least I would have more fun. IG are too slow, I don't like how the commands work and playing castle tactics while mowing down any opposition with supreme firepower, is just plain boring for me. I once played around with the idea of building a Jin Roh styled IG army in my head, but I'm relieved that I never went out and spent some money on IG kits.

I rather prefer fielding my eldar or even the orks. Eldar may suck in cc atm, but that will change with the next codex. Orks on the other hand don't do well with psychic powers, but at least they are fast, allow more than one style and pack some punch both in cc and the shooting phase.

That concludes part 2 of my tournament reports, now I only need to write about how I fared bringing 2k of eldar w/o fielding a seer to a major german tournament. After writing that one (hopefully tomorrow) I will blog about the state of my 2 army projects, and my painting & tournament schedule for the next months.