Best in Show!

I have to hand it to the boys at Kingdom Wargames in Palmer, AK: they know how to put on a fun show. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending their first organized tournament- a 1000 point Killpoints tournament. I learned a lot about my chosen army, and about the game in general. I didn't bring a camera, but my first opponent had his and promised me pics. Of course, I forgot to give him an email to send them to so I will have to track him down later... but I'll give you a quick synopsis on the three games I played:

All the games took place on small tables, only 30"x60" inches. Definitely not regulation size, and it hurt me a bit because of it. It definitely made me re-think tactics and my deployment strategies.

Game 1: Annihilation (Vs. Tau with lots of Kroot)

We agreed on using spearhead deployment due to the small tables, and set about deploying. I had my sniper PC Squad in a tower overlooking half the board, the infantry platoon lined up against a bit of blastscape terrain, and most of my chimeras and the russ strong-siding the other side. Deployment space was tight.

We both didn't do so hot on our rolling. It was kind of funny: the two 'shootiest' armies in 5th ed. couldn't hit the broad side of a Land Raider. I knew I was going to be hurting, as this was a kill points game, so I tried to focus-fire on units I thought I could kill quickly. I killed two of his battle-suits, and a team of stealth suits, as well as totally massacring a squad of assaulty-kroot (forgive my less-than-canon names, it was my first time playing tau) with a well-placed battle-cannon template.

He had high ground with his fire warriors, and he used his suits to quickly move around to flank the side armor of my Chimeras to pop them easily. Also, a battle suit deepstriking behind my lines spelled disaster for the Russ, who got popped with a fusion gun from the rear. He massacred my standard platoon with lots of shooting, and destroyed the mortar team I had behind my lines with a deepstriking stealth suit squad. His total killpoints came out to 5 to my 4, a very close game.

Game 2: Capture and Control (Vs. Grey Knights)

This is the only guy I remember the majority of his list- He had Captain Stern with two power armor Grey Knight squads in two land raiders. What's the word I am looking for? Pillbox? No.... Castle! Yes that's it. Drawbridge, moat, the whole 9 yards. He was a great guy though, and knew his stuff (despite taking a long hiatus from the game after 3rd edition and only recently getting back into 5th).

So he placed his objective as close to the one I placed as he possibly could on the board. We agreed that pitched battle deployment would work if we kept it to 3" from the table edge (or touching the table edge, in the case of his obnoxiously-large Land Raiders). I deployed my regular infantry squads over to my left, and strong-sided all my chimeras onto the right. I also threw my russ over on the left for good measure, because I knew that its battlecannon would be pretty pointless anyway until those GK got pried from their cans.

Fate was not with me this day, however. Even though I hit with nearly every lascannon I fired at those behemoths, not a single one was able to produce any satisfactory results. I managed to shoot off a TL Lascannon sponson, but that was it for the entire game. He had better luck. His machine spirit made them very handy at shooting both my tanks and my infantry... heavy bolter rounds ripped my ground-pounders apart and TL lascannon shots were simply brutal against my chimeras and my russ. My melta-vets got close enough to shoot off a volley, and out of 3 shots only 1 hit, and that was the shot that destroyed his TL Lacannon sponson, but failed to destroy the beast. The resulting fusillade of fire wiped out the entirety of that squad, leaving my Lord Commissar out by himself in the open. Shots splanged off his refractor field though, allowing him to scurry back to friendly lines to lend his command aura elsewhere. In fact, if it hadn't been for that aura, the last squad of vets I had holding my home objective would have fled, but they held their ground.

In the end, it was a tie, but I had definitely been over-matched in this confrontation. If it had been an annihilation game, there would be no question who won... he knocked out multiple chimeras, broke my standard infantry platoon and sent them fleeing, and popped my Russ like a ripe cherry. I managed to kill maybe 4 or 5 standard Grey Knights. Not exactly an even trade!

Game 3: Seize Ground (Vs. Orks)

I got slaughtered this game. We deployed up to 6" from the table edges, and his hordes darn near stretched across the board. This game was just fouled beyond all recognition from the start. At this point, it was late in the night, and being the two largest armies at the event, we knew it would take a while for us to complete a game. Thus, we hurried through steps we shouldn't have and forgot stuff. We didn't have enough objectives: we realized this after the game started. Wanting to be fair I put down another in a spot that neither of our troops were contesting. He already had two objectives on his table edge, held by his troops, and he stretched out a horde to the max of its coherency to take the other objective I had placed roughly in the middle of the board. He used a mad doc to get Feel No Pain on a horde, and coupled with fearless and the smaller table size, he charged into my lines pretty brutally. We had to end the game at turn 4 due to time restraints, but I only contested one objective in his back field. I must say, out of all the players I played last night, he was the least fun. Less forgiving, more exploitative of the rules... He just was not a fun opponent at all. For example, I was trying to flank one of his looted vehicles with my melta-vet squad. I measured from the back hatch, and lo, I was mere millimeters short of the 12" range of the meltas. If it were me, and I were already winning as much as he was, I would have given the other player the shot. There were other targets closer, but he proceeded to remind me that once you declare a target and measure, if you are out of range you miss automatically. I didn't argue, and so I couldn't do anything else. All in all, though, it was still a good night of gaming.

Prize Results:

Well its pretty safe to say I didn't win any awards for my generalship. I apparently am a painter first, gamer second! It's okay to me; I like it better that way. For my efforts at keeping my whole army painted to a high standard, I was awarded the Best In Show prize. Best In Show was judged also in part by the army-list, and how balanced the list was. Apparently I just need to learn how to use such a list, because most of the judges agreed that I had a pretty balanced list!

For my prize I was awarded the Warhammer Scenery set, "The Temple of Skulls"! It looks pretty awesome, and is made of very sturdy construction. A great piece to add to my terrain collection! These guys at Kingdom Wargames definitely know how to make 8 dollars go far! Check out the pictures above, and I'll bring you updated pictures of the scenery as I get it painted.

Until next time,
--FP135

Competition Results 8/05

Well, it's almost midnight, and I just came through the door to my home. I would love to give you good pictures, but unfortunately my batteries were dead in my camera... I guess that's Murphy's Law for you. Not everything was glum though... I had a good time and got to test my mettle against another Guard player. Also, a person there was taking photographs, and he promised to give me some of them later of the games I played. We'll see about that...

The event was fun, free, and had some great prizes, and the gaming atmosphere was very casual. This was awesome for me, being new to the competitive circles, as I will be the first to tell you that I am a painter more than a player. The atmosphere was very casual, in fact, as they did not have set rounds or judge on battlepoints. Instead, there were awards for the "Best Overall List", "Most Epic Moment", and 2 door prizes. Much to my surprise, I won the "Most Epic Moment" award! First trophy to my collection! My prize: the basing kit you see pictured above. This is perfect, seeing as my basing for the IG needs work. I'll tell you how I won it:

Imperial Guard on Imperial Guard-
We played on an unusually-sized board, a 5'x5' board with a white tablecloth and some interesting ice terrain made from what looked to be hardened bits of mattress foam (with a really cool blue tinge) and stacked pieces of white cardboard that represented area terrain. Most of our units were infantry. He held a numbers advantage, as he ran 2 fairly-large platoons whereas I ran more points-heavy veteran squads. My opponent had enough points for a squadron of LRBT's, and an additional Punisher, along with a roughrider squad, a sentinel, and commissars sprinkled through-out.. So he moved up his squadron on my right and blasted away at my front armor of the LRBT, the shots bouncing off the hull. I blew the roughrider squad to pieces with a well-placed Battle Cannon shot on my first turn of shooting, ignoring his squadron and decimating a squad I actually could kill. He kept shooting at it until he was able to get at my side armor on a later turn, destroying it. By that time, I had advanced up some of my veteran squads. I inched up my plasmagun vets, hoping to get a shot at his side armor where they would have a chance to penetrate, but a well-placed volley of battle-cannon shots reduced them to a single trooper. That little guy defied all the odds, and passed his leadership test and pressed onward. I jokingly implied to my opponent that because my vets had been equipped with the Demolitions doctrine, this single trooper was going to assault his Russ squadron and do his darndest to take one of them with him. He knew I was joking, but at the same time I kept true to what I said and inched him closer and closer. Finally, the trooper must have been too close for comfort to his Russ's because he declared his squadron was going to shoot him. 2 templates, and 2 lascannon shots later, nothing was left of the brave trooper but his boots. The mental imagery, though, of the lone trooper watching his friends and squadmates turn to pink mist around him but finding the courage to assault a squadron of tanks single-handedly, apparently won me the award.

Things I learned about my force:
*Too top-heavy wargear-wise. Drop the fluffy stuff (I already knew that though).
*Meltagun Vets = Gold. Get more of them, and the Chimeras to take them to battle.
*Stormtroopers: don't rely on them to come in reserve. I deepstruck them, only to have a mishap and have them delayed. They never returned (rolled a lot of ones on reserve rolls.) If I am going to take them in reserve in the future, I need an astropath.
*LRBT's work just fine as single units, but you should always take more than 1 so the 1 tank doesn't get singled out (I already knew that too but had to deal with it)
*Static Gunlines don't do so hot against other Static Gunline IG builds, unless you have the heavy artillery to force them to move.
*Sentinels require squadrons too, or at least multiples, to be effective.
*More tanks, more tanks, more tanks! I need chimeras as well as LRBTs or Ordinance Batteries to make my list more effective. The Carapace is kind of unnecessary for my Mechvets, as the vehicle is supposed to take the brunt of the damage. I would gladly sacrifice the carapace for the 30 points towards a Chimera for the squad.
*Alternatively, if you're going to do a Gunline Guard list, then you have to make use of the cheap infantry available to you. The Gunline's strength is numbers: too many to eliminate, too many bodies to wade through. He had this down better than I did, and he blobbed up giant squads of them with commissars to press them on. It ultimately was a much more effective tactic than my veteran squads were. Vets are almost tailor-made to be Mechanized, rather than trying to plug a hole in the front of a Gunline.
*I was really lacking in the anti-tank weaponry too, with only a sentinel, a mechvet meltagun squad, and a single LRBT being effective against heavy vehicles. I might remedy this in the short-term future by adding Lascannon teams to the regular Infantry Platoon squads that didn't move much anyway. Put them in a position to cover a fire lane and leave them for a while, and they should do fine.

Well, it was a fun experience, and the event organizer tells me that it is going to be a regular event, once every two weeks. I had a blast, and will definitely be going again. In the shorter-term, we talked of doing a cityfight game in the meantime, so it will be fun to see what that is like with a more competitive opponent as well.

Well, time to hit the hay. Hopefully I'll get some pictures from that guy soon. Thanks Anson for putting on a great event, and having a great game! (He beat me, 3-1 Killpoints, if anybody wanted to know!)

The Bitter Sting of Defeat

I definitely did NOT do well at the tournament, but I did receive a lot of compliments on my paint scheme! That helped ease the sting of defeat.... but I had a lot of fun and met some cool dudes, as well as learned a lot about the game itself. I am addicted now (as if I wasn't before!). I had really overlooked the actual game, focusing mainly on the artistic side of the hobby by modeling and painting, which is all good, but I won't win many awards (cause face it, my painting isn't professional enough yet to win awards) until I start focusing on a competitive list. I don't exactly want to be a power gamer, that isn't my style, but I would like to ensure that I don't lose EVERY game, which means I need to adjust tactics and thus my force lists.

A brief summary of the games:

Game 1 vs. Orks-
The objective of this game was to control as many of the 4 deployment zones as possible while denying the enemy control of the same. The 4x4 board was divided into 4 quadrants, with 6 inch spaces between deployment zones, which were located in each corner. The Ork player had over 105 models total! Boys, some Nobs, Deffcoptas, Meganobs, etc. Mostly boys though, at over 75 models! I tried to hold off the horde as long as possible, but my dice rolls were abysmal, and their assault phase totally overwhelmed my model-short force. I was destroyed by turn 4. Some notable moments of the battle: Terminators arrived on turn 2 and attacked the nobs in power armor like stuff (sorry I don't know much about Orks...), disrupting an assault before it began. Then they promptly died as combined fire from Deffcoptas with TL Rokkits, a Truk rocket, and a Powerclaw assault ripped them to shreds. The Rhino lasted longer than all the rest of the models, despite its storm bolter being blasted off. The Chapter Master turned tail and ran right off board, very unbecoming a character of his position!
Battlepoints: 3 / 23

Game 2 vs. Chaos Demons (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!)-
The objective of this game was to have more scoring units in your opponents deployment zone than he had in yours. The deployment zones were 15" from each table edge. I had begun the game with my first tactical squad mounted in the rhino, and did not hold back any reserves. All of his forces had to be deep-struck in on the first turn, so I didn't really know how I was to deploy, but I lumped most of my forces to my left side for a strong push that way. I had to go second, so I didn't even get a chance to rush my rhino across the small board before his Soul Grinder immobilized it! So much for my rush strategy. I attempted once to get it working, but to no avail, so I had to wait a turn to disembark. The Devastators really did good this battle, helping to take out some troops of my opponents. My Dreadnought did admirably as well, destroying his big Soul Grinder with his multi-melta, but a more assault-capable demon ripped into it and tore it to pieces. My terminators died in the second turn, much to my disappointment. My Tactical Squad that was linked with my Chapter Master also died a horribly violent death, ripped to shreds by very assault-potent pack of Bloodletters. My devastators actually held their own in assault, holding back some dog-named demons of some sort. They unfortunately lost the initiative roll off, despite a tie, due to some special ability (mark of khorne) that allowed the deamons (with their special character) to automatically win tying die rolls for assault result by 1. My Dev's were close to the board edge, so when they fell back they went off board and were eliminated. In the last turn, my immobilized rhino desperately tried to kill the few remaining Bloodletters in my deployment zone while my surviving Tactical squad attempted to dodge through two of the larger demons to get across the board to force a draw, but the demons caught the squad and crushed it between the weight of their onslaught, and the game ended due to me not having any scoring units and the game time ended. I did better than the first game, inflicting more casualties and holding my own better, but those chaos demons are vicious with every unit deepstriking into my formations.

Battlepoints: 6 / 23

Game 3: Forfeit
Had to leave early because of perceived complications with my wife's pregnancy (don't worry, everything turned out to be ok).

Battlepoints: 0 / 23

TOTAL-
9 / 69 Battlepoints

9 / 46 out of games played = 19.5 percent points, equivalent to a F grade. I obviously need some work on my tactics. I probably would have done better if I had been able to stay for the last game, but sadly I could not. Oh well, lessons learned!