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.

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.

Warhammer 40k RTT Missions for October 22nd

Due to some personal conflicts of time, the guy who had been running the local Warhammer tournaments had to step down.  In doing so, he has passed the torch to a new group of players.  As one  of those players, I have volunteered to assist in running the 40k side of things.  I’m not fully in charge, but I will be helping with writing missions and running the tournaments.

My first objective was to write up some new missions for the RTT coming up this weekend.  I’ve attempted to use some of the ideas I’ve seen around the internet for good, fair, and competitive missions.  I’ve tried to be very clear in the wording, so that there isn’t any confusion over the objectives and rules.  I’ve also tried to keep things interesting by varying the deployment and objectives for each game, and by providing bonus objectives that complement the primary objectives.

First up, here are the general rules for the tournament:

Now the missions:

There you have it.  I would love to hear from anyone with comments or criticism of the missions.  I won’t be making any drastic changes for this tournament, but any criticism will be considered for future events.  Also, if there are any typos or rules that are confusing, I’d love to hear about them now.