Not Quite as Planned.

Ever have one of those tournaments where you had all good games and they you look at the final score and you're down at the bottom. That's what the GP South tournament last weekend felt like. 4 good close games, but no wins.

I played the Mech Eldar army I've been building.

Game One:



I played against a vanilla mech marine army. A few tactical squads in rhinos and razorbacks, Auto-Las Predator, Las-HB Predator, 5 man Sterngaurd, Two speeders, and Cassius. The mission was victory points with three objectives counting at 150 vp each. The mission also used diagonal deployment zones w/ a 12 inch no-mans-land in the center.

I lost the roll to go first, and he deployed along his deployment zone. I hid all my skimmers behind a nice ruin in the corner of my deployment zone. I made my first mistake and didn't deploy my Falcon far enough into my corner to avoid his auto-plas predator on my right flank. The Falcon ended up getting stunned for the first two turns and then immobilized as a result. I speed my Wave serpents up my right flank and they ran into his stern guard. I dumped out my Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers to fight him, but it didn't work out so well. 5 man dire avengers squads are capable of doing exactly nothing. My Autaurch completely wiffed in CC; starting a trend that would go on all day. I ended up breaking though his units, but at a cost of all my transported infantry. The game was still pretty close at this point, as I had most of my skimmers left, one squad of Dire Avengers and the Farseer. Unfortunately the game went on for a 6th and 7th turn. My army wasn't standing up to the attrition very well. On the 7th turn he managed to take out two of my Wave Serpents that where contesting objectives. I had to use my Prisms to turbo-boost to contest on the last round. Unfortunately one of my Prisms rolled a 1 entering the terrain the objective was in and blew itself up. This was a 310 point VP swing for my opponent. I think I lost by about a 600 point margin. If It wasn't for that bad 7th turn it would have been a lot closer.

My army suffers in a VP scenario vs Marines. I have to blow his 170 point unit out of a 25 point tank, while he has to blow my 60 point unit out of a 145 point tank. My wave serpents are a little harder to kill than rhinos and razor backs, but I'm going to loose more points getting de-meched than my opponent. I can kind of understand where the KP idea came from, too bad it's a horrible solution to this problem.

If could have deployed a little better in this game, 6 inches to the right would have put my Falcon into the game. I could have also reserved my army, using the side board edges of my deployment zone to my advantage. I need to not get my Dire Avengers out of their Wave Serpents until they are blown out. And when they do get blown out, they need to run away instead of charge the enemy.

Game 2:



I played Evil Ted's Orks. He had 5 units of boys riding in Trucks, 3 Scortchas, 3 Buggies with rokkit launchers, a Battlewagon with some Burnas inside, and a WeirdBoy.

The scenario was interesting. There was one objective that a unit could join like an independent character in the movement phase and then drag it around. The main problem with that scenario is that you could only claim the objective in the movement phase. On the last turn, if you blast your opponent of an objective, you can't claim it, and you can't win. That's what happened to me, and it kind of sucks.

This game was chaos. We both had very mobile armies, and where fighting in literally every corner of the table. This was my slowest game and we only got 5 turns in. On the last turn both our armies where in disarray. I managed to jump a unit of Dire Avengers out of their serpent, and with help blow a unit of boys off of the objective. Unfortunately I couldn't claim it because of the reasons I already listed. This left us tied for primary and secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters, and those where all contested. I realized that he had some boys in melee with my stunned Fire Prisms. I let him roll his attacks, and he got lucky rolling a 5 and 6 for the holo-field damage results. Game lost on a 2D6 die roll.

Game 3:


I played against a Chaos Marine army. It consisted of two units of Thousand Suns in Rhinos, a unit of raptors, a Winged Demon Prince, 2 Oblits, some summoned lesser demons, and a Las-Las Predator.

The scenario was get to the opponents deployment zone. It used the funky diagonal deployment zone from the first mission.

I lost the roll to go first, but he gave me first turn anyway. I used it to blow away his oblits, and proptly suffered Karmic blow back. My dice where A-W-F-U-L after that. I had a huge advantage in the scenario and blew it away by getting up close and failing to kill anything for two turns. I also moved skimmers into terrain twice, and rolled 1's twice. I had three skimmers immobilized in No-Man-Land at the end of the game. I managed to get two of my skimmers in to his deployment zone and reduced his army to two immobile rhinos, an immobile predator, a unit of two TSM, and a unit of one TSM. At the end of the game he had one unit of TSM completely in my deployment zone, and another with his toe in. This left us tied for Primary and Secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters again. We were all contested, but he claimed that one of my immobile tanks shouldn't count because it was half in a table quarter contesting his TSMs. The judge had us dice it, and I won the 4+ roll. Game tied on a 1d6 roll.

I should have hung back and used my speed and range to etter advantage. Though if my dice rolled any where near average, I would have tabled him on turn 5.

Game 4:

Played Evil Ted again. Judge gave the option of playing someone else, but Ted was the best opponent I played all day, so we elected to play again.

Scenario was essentially capture and control.

Our armies did another number on each other. At the end of the game we had completely changed sides and controlled each others objectives. We where tied for Primary and Secondary objectives( AGAIN!). Tertiary this time was how many units you could get into your opponents deployment zone. He had 5 to my 3. Too many Orks to kill for my Eldar without a seer-council.

I would also like to note how ridiculously lucky his buggies where rolling that game. Every turn except one he managed to get a pen and a glance on one of my skimmers.

Final Thoughts:

I need spirit stones on some of my skimmers. Not sure where to get the points from, but I suffered several dead skimmers from getting stunned one round and then auto hit the next. My Autarch doesn't deserve her power weapon any more. She was involved in 6-7 rounds of combat during the tournament and didn't score a single wound. I took her mostly for the reserve bonus. I never went up against any alpha strike armies, and didn't need to reserve my whole force .

The biggest thing I learned during the tournament is that my Dire Avengers are not Tactical Marines, and I should not try to use them as such.

I had fun, I'll defiantly attend their next tournament when they have it. The tournament was a very good rough draft for what is looking to be very interesting and competitive format. They have only one scenario that needs major revision. I don't like how you can win the game by taking only the Tertiary Objective. I would also have liked to see a pure multi-objective game. I'm not a fan of the objectives as VP/KP scenario. All-in-all these are purely minor gripes against a very well run tournament. And for being a no-soft-scores event, it had the most painted armies I've ever seen at a local tournament.