Special mission with special deployment rules. Let me explain it: Both player own 3 objectives worth 1,2 and 3 points. All of them must be placed inside terrain, you can't place them in the open field, and you can't stack more than one of yours in a single piece of terrain. So you can have one objective of yours and one from your opponent in the same piece of terrain, but never two of yours. Deployment zones were opposing triangles with a ~25" neutral zone.
I played against Tyranid Player again, this time with a more competitive list.
Flying Tyrant
3 Hive Guards
2x5 Ymgarl Stealers
2 units of Stealers incl. broodlords
1 unit of termagants
1 tervigon
1 unit of gargoyles
2 units of myotic spores from Forgeworld
1 trygon
1 mawloc
Okay, let sum it up: In most cases I would say that eldar have the advantage against tryanids. This time I had a serious mismatch. The table was filled with terrain,lots of it declared as area terrain (say hello to ymgarl stealers), making moving around 8 skimmer bodies not an easy task. Esp. if you want get that "hit on 6+" in cc and stay away from the short table edges. I lost the roll off, he went first and choose the triangle with the fence in it (upper right corner). I ended up with two alternatives:Starting a crappy DZ dominates by that ork fortress, or go for the reserve road. I placed everything in reserve and he deepstriked all the ariving mines with their funky FW rules right into my only good entry point. The game ended in a minor loss, mainly because I was a bit too soft in the "declare terrain" phase and failed to contest all objectives for a draw. Secondary Mission was to kill the enemies most expensive single HQ model. I had only one, which he didn't manage to kill and he kept his flying tyrant out of melta range and I was fully occupied with the rest of his army.
So at the end of day one 1 had 2 draws and a minor loss in my book.Ugh! We packed our stuff, closed down the hall and went to a greek restaurant for some rounds of beer and ouzo. Now talk about a trend: My opponent for the next day was someone who slept at my home during a TOS at least once and owns an eldar army too. But we never played against each others before and this time he brought a BT army. We had a lot of fun at the restaurant, but we were not hyped for game itself? Why because I either wipe him fast, or play tactical and win through objective dominance with tankshocks. With no CC units in my list and a lot of CC power in his (BT after all) there wouldn't be a big fight over the objectives.
Day 2 Game 4
5 Objectives and Dawn of War deployment with a small twist. You only have a 18" zone, so a unit with bike or cavalry rules can't get a first turn charge. Secondary objective was to wipe out the whole enemy support choices, while at least keeping one of yours alive.
He went first (or I won the toss and handed turn one to him) and marched the following units on the table turn one:
Chaplain+20 guys BT squad
Emperors Champ + 5 Terminators with T-hunter and 2xAssCannons
5 Assault Terminators with a Drop Pod
Dread with AssCan and Pod
5 SM with a LC
5 SM hiding in a LC-Razorback
Speeder
2x Pred Anni
+Things I've forgotten...maybe a pod squad, don't know anymore^^
To keep things short and mainly because I can't remember much anyway. What I can remember is that it ended after turn 5 with a roll of a one and a draw. I made to large errors in that game. First one: I did realized/remembered that BT pods don't arrive like SM/BA/SW pods do and I didn't ask. So I put everything in reserve and hoped that half of them came down turn, which of course they did not. Failure number two was to put everything in reserve, instead of boosting my dragons right in into his face turn one, aiming for taking his 2 preds and the terminator squad out in turn 2. So I had some good reserve rolls, but it took me to long to reach them and then I had to fight his reserves who arrived quite early.
Game 5
Bring your scoring units into your opponents DZ with pitched battle deployment and suicide unit as secondary objective. Name one non-HQ unit as a suicider. If they are killed at the end of the game, while your opponents suicide squad still alive, you get +2 extra points.
My opponent fielded DA and because we both didn't had a chance for the high places, we decided on playing for fun and just write down a draw on the result sheet. Which was okay for me, because the table was horrible again. Why? Take a look at his army:
Chaplain with T-armor (house rules made DW troops if your HQ wears T-armor)
Ven. Dread with tl. LC and ML
10 scouts, 5 with sniper guns
Veterans with 1xmelter, 3xcombi melter in a pod
5 DW Terminators (attached chaplain)
5 DW Terminators with a H-Flamer
2x10 Tac Squads with a Flamer,PCannon and a Rhino
Ravenwing squad with 6 bikes, incl. 2 melters and a PF serg and a MM assault bike
Dev-Squad with 5 guys and 2 ML
Now he outmatched me in the troop department (3 vs 6) and with those outflanking units I didn't want to loiter around near the short table edges. So that only left me the central corridor, which lead right through that huge trench system. Basically he had a more or less guaranteed 4+ cover save every time, which cut down my FD efficiency and with all that terrain I couldn't play out my speed advantage. He even seized the initiative, so that game was horrible. Not that horrible like game 3, but the amount of terrain on that table just was too much and that huge trench destroyed any kind of balance you can achieve with a well build 40k table.
Conclusion:
Despite my bad placement I really like the tournament. The location was great, they hosted it in the hall of a old building near a small river. The hall was sunny, you could step out on terrace for a smoke or fresh air and they offered some traditional food on Saturday and grilled meat+salads on Sunday. I liked the scoring systems and missions. The tables where in terms of quality as good as the rumors I heard.
My only gripes with the tournament were:
1. the lack of spec chars. I can somehow understand where that rule comes from, but basically it hurts older codices far more than it does hurt the ed5 codices. Not being able to field Yriel really took some power out if my list, because autarch vs yriel is like comparing a VW beetle to a Porsche. One example: I failed kill the large fex squad in game two, so he smashed a single wound Carnifex into my large FD squad with the autarch attached. Imagine having Yriel instead of the autarch. 4 attacks, hitting on 3+ I7, wounding on 2+ and negating armor saves= dead fex & not locked up dragon squad.
2. Some of the tables. I don't like to play on desert style tables (german TOS 2009) either and I don't mind having a total of terrain bordering towards 33% instead of the 25% from the rulebook. But what I can't stand are extreme tables. A good table in my point of view has a good mixture of different terrain pieces, with the most of them being small to medium sized. Some LOS blocking pieces, so that a game against extreme shooty armies like IG don't stand or fall with the roll off. A good compromise between area and non-area terrain. Basically a good mixture of all those different terrain pieces GW mentions in the core rules. A table in a single player tournament should not be the game breaker, you don't want to play nids with stealers and end up with a table, which doesn't have any piece of area terrain on it. Same goes for extremely large/huge/spacey terrain pieces. At the german TOS 2010 (which was a real improvement compared to 2009) the staff put a huge (make it ~15-20%) cathedral piece from a diorama right on the middle of a table. Imagine playing a spearhead deployment mission on that. I would rate table 2+4 as good, table one was okay even with the large piece in the middle, but both the table from game 3 and 5 were just bad. Way beyond 33% if you eyeball it and most if that in some few large and unwieldy terrain pieces. Yes, that FW trench system looked neat. But you don't want to play on it, thanks to the "wobble" effect. You can't place metal models outside of the trench, good look figuring out how many models you really have under a flamer template.
So I will play there again, but not with a mech-eldar force, unless we get a new codex in the meantime.
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