Tournament reports Part III A

Some weeks after playing at the TOS in my home town, I went to the W.E:T tournament, which is annually hosted by the Wertheimer Exterminatus Club (short WEC). Those guys have friendly relationship with our gaming club, some of them showing up at our club-honchos birthday parties on a regular basis, killing all the tasty booze. I played against some of them before and they are all real nice fellas, but I hadn't found the time so far to visit their tournament. Which is a sad thing, because it really is a premium tournament  in terms of location, size and tables. They really own a lot of beautiful and well build tables, which are on par with those the german GW HQ uses for the german TOS, and with a size of 60 players I would call it a major tournament. The german TOS only allows up to 50 players, thanks to size of the playrooms of the flagstore.

This time I decided to bring my eldar army on the table again. No borrowed IG or Eldar army for extra softscore/paining points.

The point limit was 2k again, but this time you were not allowed to field any named character including troop upgrade characters like Snikrot or Straken. Also everybody talked about the missions and that you would need 4 troop choices if you want to score high on a regular basis.

With the BA dex being and and lots of the applicants fielding IG, SW, SM and BA, I skipped the jetlock council and tried a new approach:

Autarch with a fusion gun
10 FD incl. a DBF/CS Exarch with a Serpent (Cannon, Chin-Cannon)
10 FD incl. a DBF/CS Exarch with a Serpent (Cannon, Chin-Cannon)
9 FD incl. a tankhunter Exarch with a Serpent (Cannon, Chin-Cannon)
5 DA with a Serpent (S-Laser, Chin-Cannon)
5 DA with a Serpent (S-Laser, Chin-Cannon)
5 DA with a Serpent (S-Laser, Chin-Cannon)
5 DA (riding the Falcon)
Falcon with BL, Field, Stones and Chin-Cannon
Prism Tank with Chin-Cannon
Prism Tank with Chin-Cannon
 
I dropped the seer because with the spam of cheap lib/priests and being a reserve army you don't cast that much over the course of a game. Either you arrive from reserve, or your too close to those 24" zones from hood or runic weapons. And only fielding a ~100 points seer for the RoW upgrade is a bit pricey, as long as I don't run things like SL-walkers, who like getting guided and 30-36" away from any runic priest. So with not doom available and the 4x5 DA being a DAVU upgrade anyway, I armed the rest of my force with  weapons, who wound most of their primary target on 2+ roll, and a heavy emphasis on them being multi shot ones. The chance for rerolling stays the same, but the law of large numbers says that the more dice you roll, the closer you get to the expected value.

For example imagine a BL serpent vs a SL Serpent. With 6 Turns per game and 5 games in a tournament I may end up rolling something between 0 (it don't roll at all) and  60 times (I shot every turn in every game and miss every first attempt to hit). Let's say I really miss half of my shots in the first try, I end up rolling 45 dice. A SL-Serpent rolls 0-240 dice, assuming that I miss half of my first attempts again I end up with 180 rolls. Sure, I may end up with a better hit ratio on a BL serpent, but is that likely? Chances are high that my BL Serpent will do okay in one game, shine in the next one and fail utterly in the last one. So I rather take SL+SC and reliably stun/shake razorbacks, than killing them outright after 2-3 turns of frustration.

Game 1:

Killpoints with Spearhead Deployment against a SW army

Table Game 1

My opponent fielded something like that:

Wolflord on a Thunderwolf with a frostblade and 2+/3++ save (runic armor+shield)

Wolflord on a Thunderwolf with a Claw and 2+/3++ save (runic armor+shield)

Wolflord on a Thunderwolf with a Fist (or Hammer?) and 2+/3++ save (runic armor+shield)

Runic Priest with JotWW and Lightning

5 Wolfscouts with a Melta

3 Wolfguard with Combi-Melta+Fist each, attached to Scouts & Grey Hunters

2 Squads of GH with a Rhino

another squad of GH (not sure anymore)?

3 TWC with one fist and a shield

2 squads of longfangs with ML

I won the roll of, went first and choose the south-east quarter (the one with the hill and the water tower). Deployed all my tanks and he didn't manage to steal the initiative. Huzzah!

On my first turn I moved my tanks to keep a distance to his TWC and reducing firing lines for his 2 squads of fangs. I managed to put some wounds on them, which he saved like crazy (remember my luck with facing SW in terms of saves?) so in the end the only thing worth mentioning is me wrecking a rhino and he loosing a single wound on a wolf thanks to the dangerous terrain test. Maybe I also killed some of the GH, who stumpled out of the rhino. The wreck also slowed down his approach. My plan was to destroy his mobility, use the LOS-blocking terrain to reduce his fangs efficiency and then bait his death star unit (6 guys, 15 wounds, 6 wound groups and 4 storm shield) into a charge..then melta them into oblivion.

That plan worked quit well, with the fangs doing nothing except for shaking a tank or two and me taking out the GH squad. Then he moved the TWC in range. I unloaded everything I had except for the DA and after a full salvo from my whole army he lost:

....*drum roll & fanfare sounds* one TWC, after passing 18 out of 21 3+ saves. Huzzah! And my friendly opponent was joking that I will wipe him in 4-5 turns after seeing my army list.

He then split of the death star into 3xIC and the 2 remaining TWC guys and got rid of all my dragons. His scouts also arrived and annoyed the hell out of me. In the end I manage to kill all the TWC guys and the lords in turn 6 (with the last shot from a SCannon) turning the game into a draw, with getting the extra points for the secondary mission (holding more quarters than your opponent does). 10:10(+2 for the quarter). VP where also real close, so the result stayed 10:10.

Dice can be so cruel, but it was an entertaining game and my opponent was a nice fella!

Game 2 :

Capture & Control with pitched battle deployment . 2 Extra general points for wiping out your enemies whole elite section, while keeping at least one of yours alive.

My opponent played Tyranids. I won the roll off and decided to go second. Why? First of all it was a objective based mission and take a look at his army:

Tryant with 2 Guards

Alpha Warrior with a unit of 8 warriors

3 Hiveguards

16 gaunts

1 Hydra

1 Trygon

1 Mawloc

3 Fexes with CC-weapons

Not much shooty power and no flanking action. I keep the game short: He choose the lower part of the table and placed his objective inside the temple on the left. His mawloc hide behind the ruin (and the stupid me, who didn't look on the backside of his army list didn't even realise that he had a mawloc+trygon and not 2 trygon), the gaunts created a screen, the 3 fexes, hydra and hive guards all went for a center position, while the warriors, trygon and tyrant played a round or two of "stone, paper, scissor" on the objective.

My plan was to get rid of his low firepower early, esp. since taking out those 3 hive guards would get me +2 points, then trying to kill his 2 troop choices, giving me an easy small win (you needed both objectives for a large one). The plan did work quit well, except for the fact that he passed most of his cover saves, using the going to ground rule. In the end he had a single warrior still standing, who soaked up the firepower from both my prism tanks and the falcon for 2 full turns and survived. one single 1 or two on the 3+ cover save would have got me a 13(+2) vs 7 win. So the game ended with a 10:10 draw, with the 2 extra points for me.

The Nid player was a good sportsmen, and since I'm too nice sometimes when it comes to playing a mismatch in my favour, I didn't draw back after killing his hydra+guards, hoping for a tankshock to work out in the last turn, which would have shifted the VP difference in my favor. For example a decent lead and a successful tankshock would have changed the game into a 14:6 (13:7 minor win &+1/-1 for the VP spread).

So after 2 games both ending in a draw I had scored 22 out of 44 possible tournament points, which put me into the middle of the field. 

... to be continued