Weekend Gaming: Warhammer 40k

This Saturday I played in a local Warhammer 40k tournament with my Space Wolves.  For 1850 points I brought seven Thunderwolves – including a Wolf Lord, two Drop Pods with Grey Hunters, a Drop Pod with Melta Wolf Guard, two Lascannon/Plasma Gun Razorbacks with Grey Hunters, and two squads of Missile Launcher Longs Fangs.  There were only five attendees, so the tournament organizer played against the bye. The other five armies represented were Tau, Death Wing, two Blood Angels, and an Imperial Guard.

My first game was against the Tau with three Riptides, a bunch of Suits, and some Kroot.  The Riptides all had interceptor, so my Drop Pods didn’t last long after arriving and my meltaguns weren’t able to do much against his army.  Then I didn’t rush my Thunderwolves straight into the Tau, so he was able to weaken them up quite a bit before they reached assault.  They were able to kill a Riptide, but that was it.  In the end, I wasn’t completely destroyed, but I wasn’t able to hold enough objectives to prevent him from getting full points.

After that I ended up with the bye.  I played against the tournament organizer’s Blood Angels consisting of three Drop Pods, a Land Raider full of five Terminators, two Dreadnoughts, a Vindicator, and a fancy Landspeeder.  The mission was a modified Kill Points thing, so I just needed to destroy everything.  I was able to destroy the Land Speeder with my Long Fangs on turn one.  My melta squads lasted longer this game, but were still ineffectual.  The Wolf Guard scattered off target and then completely failed to take out the Land Raider.  The Grey Hunters were more effective, with one squad dealing the final blows to the Raider and the other taking out a tactical squad.  The Thunderwolves were the MVP, though.  They chewed through his command squad and the terminators in assault and took out the Vindicator as well.  I manage to all but table him and walked away with full points.

At this point, no one was completely out of competition for first place and there were four of us within 15 points.  I was matched up against the Imperial Guard with six big tanks, a large blob of infantry, a Chimera with veterans, and three Ogryns with grenade launchers.  My drop pod meltas actually did their job this game and while I didn’t get the best shooting results, they were able to take out a few tanks on the turns they arrived.  The problem was keeping them around.  Once they landed, he would focus fire on them and pretty much wipe them out.  Thankfully, this allowed my Thunderwolves to advance up the left side mostly intact.  Once they hit his lines, things started to get chewed up.  The overall objective was to take and hold a relic in the center of the table.  I was able to sneak in with one of my Razorback squads and take the relic into cover on the fifth turn.  I was worried when the game continued to turn six, but they held their ground and even after a seventh turn controlled the objective and there wasn’t much my opponent could do.  I won the game with a majority of the points available.

Overall I ended up in second place, while the Tau player took first.  I walked away with a new box Thunderwolves to increase my pack.

Later that evening we celebrated Nick’s birthday with his family.  We played 7 Wonders with the whole group and Firefly after his parents had left.  I managed to win 7 Wonders with a strong science collection.  Nick won the game of Firefly without hiring a single crew member after picking up a job to transport passengers across the galaxy.  He filled his cargo hold and dropped them off for a 3,000 credit payout.  After that it was a quick pick-up and delivery to satisfy Harken and he was off to pay his debt.  The rest of us had barely begun to get going.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: New Games and Warhammer 40k

This weekend, we were out of town for a Warhammer 40k tournament.  We were staying at Nick’s house, so we spent Thursday night learning one of his new games, Tzolk’in.  It was an interesting game with plenty to track and plan for.  The main part of the game is an ingenious gear mechanism that moves the players’ workers around each turn.  You need to plan ahead to make sure that your workers were in the right place to get their actions done.  The game was close as we all tried to figure out the best way to go.  Nick ended up winning, thanks to a strong monument purchased on the last turn.

Then on Saturday, Nick and I played in a Warhammer 40k charity event.  It was a fun tournament setup using a 500 point list for one game and a 2000 point list for the other two games.  There were six other there playing Chaos, Tyranids (two of them), Tau and Imperial Knights, Dark Angels, and Imperial Guard.  I was playing Eldar and Nick had his Orks.

My first game was 500 points against Chase and his Tyranids.  My Warp Spiders were the MVPs, destroying his Zoathorpes and generally being a nuisance as he failed to kill them in assault and then watched them jump out of combat just to shoot more into the bugs.  I had two units of jetbikes that didn’t do much.  They were protecting some objectives, but one group, including my Farseer got tied up by his Mawloc and perished.  The other squad survived the game, but I ended up losing by a couple points.

I played against Nick next, which is always fun.  I was doing well early, destroying the majority of his vehicles within the first couple turns.  The highlight was my Wraithlord destroying a Battlewagon with a single well placed bright lance shot. After four turns, the game ended in a draw.  I just couldn’t kill off enough of his orks since they were actually armored, and he wasn’t able to get close enough to get into assault.  Things would have been really interesting on turn five, but we were out of time.

My final game was against John’s Tyranids.  He had a lot more big bugs than Chase, but there were plenty of smaller things too.  I was able to destroy a squad of gaunts and his warlord on the first turn with some nice shooting.  On the second turn, he had a huge squad of guants outflank to my left and a Mawloc appear near my Avengers.  The guants killed all but one of my Warp Spiders, and that Spider managed to survive the rest of the game in some ruins.  The Mawloc missed on his entrance and couldn’t do anything on his turn, so I was able to put a ton of fire into it and then assaulted it with a Wraithlord, killing it.  The Guants were shot up by Dire Avengers  and jetbikes, and then wiped out in assault.  At this point it was mostly clean up for the Eldar.  I just had to avoid the worst of the big bugs and finish out the last two turns for the victory.

The Tau ended up with the tournament victory.  I did end up winning a gift certificate, which I used on a new game, and ultimately the 8 of us raised over $120 for Sanford Children’s Hospital.

That evening, Nick, Gina, and I learned my new game, Lords of Xidit.  It was another game with lots of planning.  This time the planning involved deciding on your next six actions before each round.  Then the actions were carried out in order to move around recruiting warriors and defeating monsters.  The pre-planning aspect made things somewhat relaxing as we weren’t working out every move with excruciating detail.  You had to plan ahead and try to guess what the others were doing, but once those moves were set, it was just a matter of executing.  Nick won again, just barely beating me with the tie-breaker.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Rogue Trader

I didn’t play any board games this weekend.  Instead I spent most of the day Saturday playing in a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Tournament.  It was 1850 points and I brought my Space Wolves with an Astra Militarum allied detachment.  The exact list is below:

Primary Detachment – Space Wolves

HQ
Rune Priest

Troops
10x Grey Hunters
2x Plasmagun
Rhino

5x Grey Hunters
Meltagun
Razorback, Lascannon, TL-Plasmagun

5x Grey Hunters
Meltagun
Razorback, Lascannon, TL-Plasmagun 

Heavy Support
5x Long Fangs
4x Lascannon

5x Long Fangs
4x Missile Launchers

5x Long Fangs
4x Missile Launchers

Elite
10x Wolf Guard
2x Terminator Armor, Cyclone Missile Launcher
6x Storm Bolters
2x Combi-melta

Secondary Detachment – Astra Militarum Allies 

HQ
Company Command Squad
Company Commander with Shotgun
4x Veterans with Flamers

Troops
Veteran Squad
Chimera

Fast Attack
Vendetta Squadron
2x Vendetta

There were quite a few people at the tournament.  I think the total attendance was 12.  The armies were nicely diverse with a couple Necrons, Chaos Marines, Daemons, Tau, Space Wolves, Space Marines, and Tyranids all getting representation.

My first game was against a Space Marines player using the Ravenwing rules.  He had four Rhinos and a Razorback full of Marines that scouted halfway across the board.  Going first, I had setup to pound them with my missiles early, but he ended up stealing the initiative and going first.  That swung the entire game.  He was able to destroy or neutralize all of my tanks in the first turn.

With all of these marines sitting right in my face, there wasn’t much I could do.  I took down a few of his tanks and started into the squads, but there were just too many to deal with.  My Vendettas didn’t come in until turn three, and by then there wasn’t much left.  I conceded the loss on turn four when all but my Vendettas were dead.

My second game was against Tyranids with four units of Genestealers, six Carnifexes, a flying thing, and a Tyranid Prime.  The game was a modified version of kill points where the unit that got the kill received the kill point and each unit could only score a single point.

I deployed first and we had short table edges.  I was able to get into some ruins and had a nice setup.  I wasn’t able to kill anything completely first turn, but I did weaken one of the Carnifex units.  He then couldn’t assault with his Genestealers in the first, so they were left fairly exposed.  My Vendettas actually made it on second turn and shot up his flyer, while my marines shot up the Genestealers, but failed to kill them all.

He got a couple of easy points from my tanks, and then the Genestealers got into combat with the marines and killed them off after a few turns.  I was able to finish off three of the Genestealer squads after the combat ended and one unit of Carnifexes.  The game ended turn 5, denying me the opportunity to shoot more and resulted in use getting a draw.

My final game was against Necrons with two Monoliths, a Nightscythe, Deathscythe, Anarath in a Command Barge, some Warriors, Immortals and a Ghost Ark.  The mission was to secure five objectives, one in each quarter and one in the center.

Again I decided to go first and setup with my Long Fangs on a hill with good firing lanes to wherever he deployed.  Sadly he stole the initiative and again I was left in the open.  His monoliths were able to use their large blasts to decimate my Long Fangs and Wolf Guard.  Then on my turn, I rolled up to one his Monoliths with my melta-guns, and promptly failed to hit with all of them.  Those Grey Hunters promptly died on the next turn.

The only things I managed to kill the entire game, was a unit of Deathmarks and a unit of Immortals that I was able to get into close combat with.  The only positive was that after my Vendettas arrived on turn four, they survived and due to some misplacement on his part I was able to switch them to hover mode and claim the center objective.  I had the objective in my quarter claimed as well, and contested another.  So we each held two objectives, but the center was worth an additional point.  Had the game ended then, I actually would have managed a win even after getting destroyed.  Sadly the game went on to a sixth turn, and he was able to mop up the little that was left. and took the win.

The Tau player ended up taking first with a Farsight Enclave army.  For being the first games I’ve played with 7th edition and the first games in over two years, I played pretty poorly.  That said, my opponents were great and the games were fun.  I am really glad that Paradox has started hosting them again, and I am looking forward to the next one in November.

Until next time, happy gaming.

Warhammer 40k Report

I played in a Warhammer 40k tournament on Saturday with my Wolves.  Sadly only five other people showed up, but we still played and had a good time.  There were two Codex Space Marines armies, Orks and Nids.

 

 

In the first game, I was matched up against my friend Nick and his Orks.  We were playing the Kill the Alien mission with Hammer and Anvil deployment.

 

I had managed to kill off a wagon, two trukks, his Warboss, the Mek and two squads of boys.  He had scared a squad of Wolf Guard away with a tank shock and they didn’t get a chance to regroup.  My Thunderwolves died to the nobs and both of my Lone Wolves survived.  I ended up winning by a couple points.

Next up, I was playing against the Tyranids going for 5 objectives with Dawn of War deployment.

 

He had two Trygons, genestealers and some Zoathorpes in reserves.  I made the mistake of moving my Thunderwolves too close to his Swarmlord, and they got assaulted on the first turn and slaughtered.  His Tervigon only managed to make 8 gaunts before tiring, and the rest of the game pretty much went my way with all of my missiles.  I was able to take down all of his big creatures except the Swarmlord.  Logan’s squad did their best against it in assault, but didn’t last long.  Logan had a valiant last stand, but failed the his last save on a reroll and perished.  By that point, though, the bugs didn’t have any troops left and I was able to secure three objectives to win.

Things were a little weird at this point.  Because of my victory points, I ended up with the bye for the last round.  I probably should have questioned it at that point, but I didn’t.  I did end up playing the tournament director and his Necrons in a smaller game.

 

 

It was my first attempt at playing Necrons and it was a wake-up call.  I was having a tough time keeping anything down, while my Thunderwolves just caved to the Tesla fire.  I also had an impossible time assaulting.  He had two squads of Deathmarks drop into my backfield and kill my Long Fangs.  I managed to assault one squad and kill most and get it running.  I couldn’t sweep because of my Terminator, so they ran and then regroup.

On the next turn, I tried to assault both squads, and only managed to roll 2’s or 3’s for my charges and came up short with three different squads.  It was pathetic.

At the end, I hadn’t finished off and Necron squads and he had killed 5 of mine.  It was an ugly game for me and my dice came up very short when I needed them most.

The tournament games finished up and the winners were announced.  After a little bit of confusion due to the way scores were tallied, I ended up in first with an undefeated record.  It was a little weird, but it was the director’s first tournament and some kinks needed to be worked out.  The games were a lot of fun, and everyone had a good time.  Nick’s Orks ended up winning Best Painted and the Tyranids took second.

Now here are the rest of the pictures from the day.  Until next time, happy gaming!

 

 

Weekend Gaming: RTT Report

On Saturday I played in a 40k RTT.  It was kind of an odd setup, where each person brought a 1500 point army and then in each round we were paired up with another player.  So in each game there were two 1500 point armies facing off against each other.  I was playing the first list from this post.

In my first game, I was playing with a Grey Knights player against Orks and Tyranids.  The game was Kill Points and the Orks and Nids had first turn.  They setup with a big squad of Nob Bikers on one side and some normal bikes on the other.  The Nids had Hive Guard in a building, a Tervigon and Tyrant behind the Nobs and a Trygon, Genestealers and Zoathorpes in a pod in reserve.  We setup with the Grey Knights with their Terminators across from the Nobs.  I setup on the opposite side to get the most shooting as possible.

The Nobs zipped forward and the Grey Knights Terminators met them head on.  That assault went on for the first few turns.  While that happened, my Rune Priest lost his ride, but managed to get forward and use Jaws on two of the Hive Guard.  His squad got shot and assaulted by the Ork Bikers and while his squad was wiped out, he survived and actually managed to sweep the Orks off the table.  The Dreadknight tried to flame some hormagaunts, but didn’t do much.  The Gaunts then managed to swarm the Knight and take him down.

We only made it to turn four, but the assault and Jaws were definitely strong points.  The low point for me was the Genestealers popping out in the building where my Long Fangs were holed up and eating them.  The game ended with us barely winning on kill points 11 to 10, but that was only good enough for a draw based on mission points.

The next game had me paired with another Space Wolves player against the same Orks as game one and an Imperial Guard player.  The mission was 5 objectives, with a Spearhead deployment.  The odd thing with the deployment was that the teammates were in opposite corners and the opponents were in the other two corners.  We won first turn, so we took the corners that held two nice buildings.  We then agreed to basically stay away from the Orks and converge on the IG.  The thing was, both of us had Rune Priests with Jaws, so on the first turn our Priests headed toward the Orks and just hammered them with Jaws and Missiles.  By the end of the first turn there were 4 Nob Bikers left and my Thunderwolves were dug into a pile of Guard.

After the Orks were pretty well wiped out, the Guard didn’t last much longer.  They did have a nice shot with a melta blast that took out two Rhinos, but that was the limit.  My wolves spent all game eating Guardsmen and we were able to gather up all the objectives.

Going into game three I was four points behind the leader (the other Space Wolves player).  I was playing with another Grey Knights player against a mech Imperial Guard and a horde of Orks.  The mission was Capture and Control, but where each team selected an HQ to be the objective.  If the HQ died, then the objective would fall on the ground.  We put our objective with Draigo and he just holed up in a building all game.  The Ork Warboss held their objective.

Being Dawn of War, the first turn was rather uneventful.  We did pop one Chimera, but that’s it.  They managed to down our Stormraven carrying a load of Paladins.  On the second turn, my Rune Priest managed to peak through a window and snipe the Warboss with Jaws, but that’s the closest we’d get.  My Thunderwolves slugged it out with a squad of Boyz, but eventually fell to the power fist.  We just could kill enough Orks in the three turns we had, and we weren’t quite able to get to the opponents’ objective.

The Paladins did quite will eating up Orks, and our dice were hot blowing up tanks left and right, but it just wasn’t enough.

In the end, I finished with a win and two draws.  The other Space Wolves play managed to win Best General, while the Ork player I played in the first two rounds took Best Sportsman and an Eldar player won Best Painted.

The tournament was a lot of fun, but 3000 points per side was a bit much.  Things ran a bit slow and very few people managed to finish their games.  I’d love to play another team tournament in the future with slightly smaller armies.

Now for pictures!

Warhammer 40k RTT Report

I played in a 1250 point RTT on Saturday using my Space Wolves.  It was a lot of fun.  There were 8 players there to start, and a 9th showed up at the start of round 2.  The armies present were two Imperial Guards, two Orks, Dark Eldar, Blood Angels, Necrons, Grey Knights and Space Wolves.  The organizer had his Daemons available.

Game 1:

My first game was against Fred who was playing Imperial Guard.  His list included a Valkyrie full of Vets, a big blob of troops with Lascannons, a small squad of troops, a Hydra, an Earthshaker cannon and a Leman Russ.  The game was annihilation and there was basically no terrain on the table at the beginning.  Then each turn a large blast sized “crystal forest” would randomly pop up on the field.

I ended up going second, and I didn’t think I’d have much luck against all the big guns.  Luckily Fred rolled pretty badly all game, and nothing was touched on the first turn.  I then returned by blasting his smaller Guard squad with my heavy bolters causing them to flee.  My Long Fangs knocked the Valkyrie out of the sky, and then a squad of my Wolves finished it off.  Those Wolves did last long, though, as they took a wound from the Leman Russ and then got shot by the Vets’ plasma pistols.  The one wolf failed his shield save against the plasma pistol, and then they failed their leadedship test and ran off the board.

That was the last that I’d really lose, though.  My Wolf Lord and the other squad of Wolves made it across the board and ate basically all of his army.  By the end of turn 4, I had basically tabled him, and finished it up turn 5 scoring 47 of the 48 points available.

Game 2:

The second game was against my good friend Nick’s Orkz.  He was running with two Battlewagons, one with a few Burnas and Mekz with a big gun.  The other was full of Boyz.  He also had a small squad of Nob Bikers, a large blob of Boyz and some Lootas.  I was playing on the same table, but this time we had terrain and the objective was to capture terrain pieces.

Things started off badly with us forgetting about the Night Fight portion of Dawn of War, so his big gun was able to immobilize one of my Razorbacks.  My Wolves all made it around the side of a building and hit his big squad of Boyz all at once.  They proceeded to get chomped by the wolves quite quickly.  Later in the game the Wolf Lord made it’;s way over to eat the Lootas, while a single Thunderwolf tried to take the Bikers, but came up short.  One of the more entertaining battles, though, was a squad of my Grey Wolves taking on a squad of his Boys from the Battlewagon.  The Wolves managed to win combat, and then swept them up.

On the last turn, one of my Grey Hunter squads was able to regroup and just barely run back to the trees in the center of the table.  The final results had the Nobs holding one hill, and my Grey Hunters holding some ruins and the central trees.  Neither of us managed to get the second or third objectives.  I ended up with 22 points, bringing my total to 69.

Game 3:

The last game was against Jerad’s Orkz.  He had two Looted Wagons, three big squads of Boyz, a squad of Gretchin and a Big Mek.  We were playing for three objectives; Jerad placed one in each corner and then one in the center.  I decided to make the one in the far corner the primary.  Jerad then proceeded to win the roll-off, which hurt my chances from the beginning.

I deployed my Wolves as far forward as possible, and then launched them on the first turn towards the Orks.  I was able to destroy both Wagons on the first turn, but other than that things went poorly.  One squad of Wolves along with the Lord charged into one of his Boyz squads and I immediately regretted it.  Obviously my last game had made me overconfident.  I only managed to kill 7 orks and all three of my Wolves had taken wounds.   On the next turn, my other squad of Wolves got shot up my his Boyz and each took a wound.  The wolves tried to charge those same boyz, and ended up doing very little damage before dying.  The original assault also ended up badly for my wolves, and the Wolf Lord perished on the following turn.

At that point, I had really no chance of killing all those Orks.  I ended up driving my Razorbacks around trying to avoid the Orks.  At the bottom of turn 5, I had managed to contest  the central objective, control the objective in my deployment zone with a single marine, and I had units in all four quarters for the secondary.  Sadly, the game went on to turn 6.  The lone marine died, and I was unable to contest the center.  I did still get the secondary objective, though for a total of 14 points.

I learned after the game, though, that I would have needed to get the full primary in order to win, as the Grey Knights player had massacred his opponent, scoring nearly full points and edging Jerad out of first place by a single point.  I ended up in third place, but I did pick up the Best Painted award, which I used for a box of Necron Warriors.

It was a well run tournament, and while the first mission was a bit goofy, it worked out alright.  The store has decided to stop hosting 40k and Fantasy tournaments on the same day, so there should be a lot more participants in the future, which should be great.

And now for all the pictures:

Tournament Recap

On Saturday, I helped to run an 1850 point 40k tournament.  Since there was only 5 other players and the other guys were okay with it, I played my Space Wolves.  The other 5 were Ravenwing, two Space Marine armies, Dark Eldar and Eldar.

My first game was against Robert’s Dark Eldar.  The mission was 6 objectives and Dawn of War.  I took the second turn, and the game was pretty uneventful early on.  Robert was deep striking most everything, so the first two turns left little to shoot at.  Eventually, my Lone Wolves and a Thunderwolf Battle Leader engaged Lilith and some Wyches.  That battle lasted for a couple turns, but eventually my wolves were finished off.  That left Lillith in the open, though, and she got blown up by some missiles.  On the other side of the board, a Wolf Guard squad was blasted down to a single man by some Warriors.  He was then assaulted by some Hellions, miraculously survived, killing one and chased them off.  I was able to control two objective, two others were contested, and Robert controlled one.  This gave me the minor win.

My second game was against Jeremy and his Ravenwing.  It was Annihilation with pitched battle deployment.  I was going second again, and deployed the majority of my army to the left hand side of the board.  I was able to fire away with my missiles for most of the game and made it quite difficult for Jeremy to get close unscathed.  The Lone Wolves got into combat with his Speeders and some of the bikes and did incredibly well surviving.  In fact they contributed most of my kill points.  All that was left of the Ravenwing was Samael, and I ended up with a narrow win on kill points.

My last game was against Ryan, who was playing Space Marines.  The objective was table quarters with spearhead deployment.  My Thunderwolves and Lone Wolves dueled Ryan’s Terminators in the center for a few turns, leaving a single Terminator alive.  The rest of my army spread out into the other quarters.  My Wolf Guard (including a Chainfist terminator) shot and then assaulted a 5 man Tactical squad in one quarter, but failed to finish them off.  Another 5 Marines joined the fight, and managed to drag that fight out for the rest of the game.  Even with the Chainfist, I was only killing 1 marine a turn, and it just wasn’t enough.  At the end, Ryan and I controlled our deployment quarters, but the other two were contested, so we finished with a draw.

Overall, I ended up with two wins and a draw, which was enough for 1st place.  Jeremy took second and Dana with his Space Marines took third.  It was a nice tournament, and everyone appeared to have fun.

Now some pictures from the day.

Weekend Gaming: ‘Ard Boyz and More

This weekend I visited my parents for a weekend packed full of activities.

Friday night, we all went to the final night of the Pyrotechnic Guild International (PGI) convention.  Things were a bit delayed due to some rain, but once the show got rolling it was all fireworks all night.  There were three shows and each one of them out-performed most 4th of July celebrations.  They were absolutely amazing.

On Saturday I played in the preliminary round of the Games Workshop ‘Ard Boyz tournament.  I was playing Space Wolves and I was working with only a couple hours sleep, so things got off to a rough start.  There were 11 people in attendance with two Space Marines (Vulkan and bikers), one Blood Angels, one Imperial Guard, one Tau, one Tyranids, one Eldar, two Orks, one Grey Knights and one Space Wolves (me).

The first game I played against Eldar.  He had a bit of everything, with two Wave Serpents with Fire Dragons, Guardian bikes, Dire Avengers, Warp Spiders, Dark Reapers, the Avatar, Yriel, a Wraithlord, a Vyper and a War Walker.  After winning first turn, I completely messed up my deployment.  I completely forgot about the Night Fighting and the fact that he had Dark Reapers, so my Long Fangs were deployed in the open on a hill.  His side had better area terrain and he made the most of it.  I was able to kill the Avatar first turn with missiles, but that was it.  From then it was pretty back and forth.  His Reapers, Fire Dragons and Yriel killed off my Long Fangs, while I whittled away his stuff.  Neither of us were able to kill the traitor, though.  I tried to get the Eldar traitor across the board, but his Rhino got hung up on some ruins.  As for his, I completely failed to kill either of his Wave Serpents, even though I filled them full of missiles, lascannon, and melta fire.  They spent the game ramming and tank shocking things, and cause one of my units to run off the board.  My scouts also managed to do nothing of real note.  They attacked the Eldar from the rear and hit a Dire Avenger squad, but then proceeded to take 3 rounds to kill them and ended up getting blasted away by the Dark Reapers.  At the end we had only managed 4 turns and he ended up with the minor win, with 11 KP to my 9.

Second game, on the same table against Imperial Guard.  He had 6 Leman Russ tanks, a Medusa, three Scout walkers, two squads of vets in Chimeras, Marbo, and a couple big blobs of infantry.  This game went a bit better.  My Long Fangs kept to the trees and were able to survive the brunt of the cannon fire, while the rest of my army moved up.  I was able to kill or stall his more mobile stuff, so I was able to get onto the objective early.  The highlight was a single Vet with a demolition charge blowing up a Razorback in the middle of the table, and then wrecking another when I tried to tank shock him.  He finally died to plasma gun fire from another Razorback.  I was able to claim three objectives (center, mine, and non-deployment) and contest the other two, which gave me a massacre.

The third game was against the Blood Angels, who had the Sanguinor, 2 Death Company Dreads, a Death Company in a Land Raider, a Tac squad in Land Raider, an Assault Squad in a land Raider, 3 Heavy Support Dreads and a Librarian Dread in Drop Pod.  We had a discussion with the judge beforehand, and he ruled the Night Fighting was not in effect because it wasn’t listed in the rules packet.  My opponent gave me second turn for whatever reason, and started with his DC Dreads at the center line.  He then moved them up and dropped his Librarian right in front of my edge.  On my turn, everything rolled in and two of my Speeders went to work on the DC Dreads, killing one and immobilizing the other.  My Wolf Guard blasted the Librarian and killed it.  After that, though, things didn’t go as smoothly.  The Sanguinor ate up two of my Long Fangs, and his Land Raiders were blasting apart my Razorbacks.  I just could not get a damage result to fall my way on the Dreads or the Land Raiders.  I fired every melta I had into the Raiders and either missed, couldn’t penetrate or just didn’t do any real damage.  In the end, I had finally wrecked one Land Raider and half of his Dreads were dead and the other half were damaged.  I had failed to finish the Sanguinor or any of his infantry.  I had managed to get 1300-ish VP and he got 1000-ish.  So that was only good enough for a draw.

My finally tally for the day was 44 points after a minor loss, a massacre and a draw.  That was good enough for third place and a new Finecast Njal Stormcaller.  First place went to the biker Space Marines and second went to the Eldar (if I remember correctly).  I did find out during the second game that they were only doing 2 hour games, instead of the 2 and a half that we were supposed to, so that was a bit annoying, considering the first game would have changed dramatically in a few turns.  Other than that, it was a well run tournament with some fun guys.  Now I get to plan a trip to the semifinals.

Finally, Sunday I spent all day at the airshow.  We watch the Blue Angels fly, along with a bunch of stunt pilots.  My son and daughter loved it, and it was a nice way to finish off the weekend.

Anyways, I leave you with some pictures from Saturday.  Happy gaming!

1850 RTT Recap

I played in a Warhammer 40k tournament this last Saturday.  It was a standard 3 game setup with battlepoints deciding the winner.  Apparently a bunch of the guys who had normally played Fantasy decided to play 40k again, so we had 10 players total.  As for armies, there were Space Marines, 2 Dark Angels (1 Ravenwing & 1 Deathwing), Black Templars, Blood Angels, Chaos Marines, Grey Knights, Space Wolves (me), Tyranids and Orks.

I was playing the list I posted last Friday.

Game 1 was kill points with Table Quarters for bonus points and Spearhead deployment.  I played against Jeremy and his Ravenwing army.  It consisted of a ton of Bikes, Attack Bikes, Land Speeders and Samael.  I won first turn and deployed planning to take advantage of some ruins.  He started off on the wrong foot and forgot to make his scout move, leaving his bike open to my missiles.  In response I took out a full squad of bikes, an attack bike and a speeder on the first turn.  The game pretty much consisted of me staying put and shooting his bikes while he tried to get close enough to assault.  He finally made it into assault with Logan, and forced Logan’s squad to run.  He decided to finish Logan off personally, though and re-assaulted on the next turn.  Logan and his Captain killed each other, but my one Long Fang survived the battle.  In the end I won with full battle points and two table quarters for a total of 23.

Game 2 was an odd objective game with each player controlling 4 objectives.  You could only control your own objectives for points, but if you spent a turn in control of your opponent’s objective, it would be destroyed.  It also had a goofy diagonal deployment.  My opponent was Steve with his Grey Knights.  He had a Dreadnought, a Dreadknight, a Strike Squad, a Pugation Squad, two Interceptor Squads and a big squad of Terminators with his Grand Master.  He won the roll off and took first turn.  He then decided to Deep Strike most of his army, with only his Purgation Squad, a Strike Squad and the Dreadnought in play.  This worked out well for me, as I lined everything up on my deployment edge.  He couldn’t hit me with anything on the first turn, while I opened fire and took out the Dread and the Strike Squad.  Turn two, he lost a Strike Squad to the warp.  The rest of his stuff came in turn 3.  A Lone Wolf took on the Dreadknight for a few turns, but took it down.  The Terminators took on Logan, but Logan and his squad were finally able to finish them off with the help of a Thunderwolf.  In the end I was able to claim all four of my objectives, and destroyed three of his, giving me 26 points for a total so far of 59.

The last game was straight up kill points with Spearhead deployment.  I was playing against JJ’s Black Templars with three Land Raiders, one with a squad of Terminators, one with a small squad of Templars and another with a large squad of Templars and the Emperor’s Champion.  He also had a Land Speeder and a Rhino with some Templars and Lascannon.  I deployed a bit back from the center with my Thunderwolves and Lone Wolves at the very front.  One Wolf and Thunderwolf died first turn to the Terminators.  The other Lone Wolf got stuck in with the small squad of Templars, and the other Thunderwolf was able to get up and wreck one of the Land Raiders.  I wasn’t able to destroy another Land Raider until turn 3, but then my Lascannons lit up and I took down the other two Land Raiders in turns 3 and 4.  My Scouts took out the squad from the Rhino after it was destroyed by Rocket, but then died to the Emperor’s Champ.  The EC’s squad was able to hole up behind a hill out of site, so all that was left was his Terminators, who chewed through a couple of my units before the game ended.  At the end, I was able to eek out a 7 to 6 killpoint difference for 12 points.

At the end of the day, I was the only player to win all three games and with the most battle points I was able to place first.  The tournament was a lot of fun, and it was a great change to have all the 40k players back.  Now to wrap things up with the pictures from the event.

 

2200 Point Tournament Report

This last weekend I played in a local 2200 point tournament.  There were 5 players for 40k (Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Black Templars, Codex: Space Marines, and Eldar) and 7 for Fantasy (Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos, Beast of Chaos, Skaven, Wood Elves, High Elves, and another that I forget).  I was running my Herohammer Space Wolves list, seen below.

HQ:
Logan Grimnar
Njal Stormcaller – Runic Terminator Armor
Torrand the Bear – Wolf Lord, Thunderwolf, Thunderhammer, Storm Shield, Runic Armor, Wolftooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman, Saga of the Bear
Gunnarr Orcsbane – Wolf Lord, Thunderwolf, Frost Blade, Belt of Russ, Runic Armor, Wolftooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman, Saga of the Warrior Born

Troops:
10 Grey Hunters – 2 Melta Guns, Wolf Standard, Drop Pod
5 Wolf Guard – 1 in Terminator Armor with Power Fist and Cyclone Missile Launcher, 4 in Power Armor with 1 Combi-melta and 1 Melta Bombs
5 Wolf Guard – 1 in Terminator Armor with Power Fist and Cyclone Missile Launcher, 3 in Power Armor with 1 Combi-melta and 1 Melta Bombs, and Arjac Rockfist

Elites:
Einarr Ulfson – Lone Wolf with Terminator Armor, Chainfist and Storm Shield
Vali Homgeirr – Lone Wolf with Terminator Armor, Chainfist and Storm Shield

Heavy Support:
5 Long Fangs with 4 Missile Launchers and Drop Pod
5 Long Fangs with 4 Missile Launchers

First up, here are some pictures of the various armies.  Excuse me is I get the fantasy armies wrong.  I’m not as familiar with them and I didn’t take notes.

High Elves vs. Beasts of Chaos

Warriors of Chaos vs. Wood Elves (I think)

Skaven vs Beastmen

Giant Rat Thing

Another Giant Rat Thing

Space Marine Bikers vs. Dark Angels

Now for my games.  I will just be doing highlights rather than full reports.

My first game was against JJ’s Black Templar.  I knew this would be a tough game, since both of our armies are strong in assault and JJ is a good player.  I just didn’t realize that I would be fighting Lady Luck as well.  JJ’s army consisted of 3 Land Raiders; 1 full of Terminators, 1 with the Emperor’s Champion and a full Marine squad, and 1 with 5 Marines.  He also had 2 Rhinos with 5 Marines, each with a Lascannon and Plasmagun, and a drop pod with a Dreadnought.

The mission was 5 objectives with Pitched Battle deployment.  I won the roll to go first, took it, but then JJ stole the initiative.  Things went downhill from there.  On the first turn Logan and his squad took a lot of fire, and ended up taking wounds on Njal, Logan, Arjac and losing a standard Marine.  All of that was to Bolter fire.  None of the Lascannons did anything, but a puny bolter did all the damage.  Then on the second turn, Torrand destroyed the Terminator’s Land Raider, but that was about it.  Logan, Njal and Arjac all died to the Emperor’s Champion and his squad.  Gunnarr tried to help, but whiffed at the Champion and died to the return attacks.  The final nail was when my Grey Hunters dropped onto an objective, killed 4 of the 5 Templars holding it, but then got shot up by a Plasma Gun the next turn and ran from the one remaining Templar.  At the end, JJ held 4 objectives and I was wiped off the board.  Loss with 0 points for me.

I wasn’t shooty enough to deal with the Templars.  Their Preferred Enemy rule along with Furious Charge really negated a lot of the strengths of the Wolves.  I did a lot of damage, but forgetting some of the particulars of the Templars, plus getting unlucky really did me in.  JJ played well, and deserved the win.

Game 1 - Deployment

Game 1 - Turn 2

Incoming Dreadnought

Torrand's Assault of the Terminators

Game 1 - Turn 3

Game 1 - Turn 4

End of Game 1

After the first round, Ryan (Dark Angels) dropped out so that we wouldn’t have to deal with a bye.  He had lost his first round and had some other obligations that weekend.

My second game was against Robert’s Eldar.  Robert is fairly new to the game and his Eldar had 2 Wraithlords, Wraithguard in a Wave Serpent, Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent, Swooping Hawks, Dire Avengers, Dark Reapers, 2 squads of Rangers, Harlequins and a Farseer.  The mission was a goofy one where we needed to rescue/capture a colonist from the center of the board and bring him back to our deployment zone.  My plan was to drop my Grey Hunters right next to the colonist, and then Run on the first turn.  This plan was foiled, though, when I learned that once you grabbed the colonist you couldn’t move any further until the next turn.  This meant that my Grey Hunters were exposed, and they were shot to pieces by the Eldar.  We only managed to make it to turn 3, and neither of us managed to get the colonist.  I was able to get 2 bonus points, though, by killing his Harlequins (most expensive unit).  One of my Lone Wolves battled the Harlequins and the Swooping Hawks for three assault phases before my Wolf Guard could come and clean up.  The game ended in a draw, gaining me 11 points.

Game 2 - Space Wolf Deployment

Game 2 - Eldar Deployment

Game 2 - Turn 1

Game 2 - Turn 2

At this point, JJ and Patrick had drawn Game 2 as well, so first place wasn’t out of reach for anyone.

My final game was against Patrick and his biker marines.  He had two Biker Captains with command squads, three 9-man biker squads, and three squads of two Land Speeders with Missile Launchers.  The mission was Annihilation with Dawn of War.  Patrick won the roll and game me first turn.  I deployed Njal with Arjac’s squad in the center of the table, and the other Wolf Guard squad back in some trees.  Patrick, of course deployed nothing.  This game turned out to be exactly the opposite of game 1.  I was actually making armor saves like crazy.  My Missile Launchers did well against the Speeders, and my Wolf Lords tore up the bikes in assault.  Torrand hit one bike squad, killed a few and then chased them off the table when they ran.  Gunnarr hit another bike squad, slaughtered all of them and then proceeded to kill one of the command squads, tallying at least 15 kills that game.  Arjac and Njal took on the other command squad and battled them for a few round before send them on their way.  The only disappointment was that the Lone Wolves couldn’t have a valiant death.  One took on an entire Bike Squad alone, but weathered the storm and came out alive after being joined by Torrand, Arjac and the other Lone Wolf.  In the end, the bikers were destroyed and I was able to get 19 points for the game (would have been 20 if either of my Lone Wolves had died).

Game 3 - Turn 1

Game 3 - Turn 2

Turn 3 - Gunnarr vs. Bikers

Arjac vs. Captain

Gunnarr vs. Captain

Lone Wolf vs. Bikers

At the end of the day after adding in sportsmanship scores, first place went to JJ, I took second, and Patrick took third.  The top three were very close with only a couple points separating all of us.

Overall it was a fun tournament.  I learned, as I expected to, that my army can be quite finicky.  It is strong against a more shooty army, but against an assault army it can struggle if I’m not careful.