Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Shock and Awe

First off here's the results from the doubles tournament:
3-0 Players:
Steve(Eldar) and Luke(Eldar)
Stephen(Demons) and Jim(Demons)

2-1 players:
Sean(Chaos Marines) and Justin(Demons) 4290 Victory Points
Sandwyrm(BA) and Farmpunk(WH) 4137 Victory Points
Scott(Marines) and Carl(BA) 3427 Victory Points
Wienas(BT) and Caanaan(WH) 2337 Victory Points
Tim(Marines) and Chad(Marines) 1765 Victory Points

1-2 Players (In no particular order, not all VP's reported)
Mike and Nick
Jamie(Guard) and Eddie(Orks)
Trevor and Nick
Aaron(SW) and Andrew(SW)
Louis and Richard

0-3 Players
Chris and Alexander
Erik and Mike

Hit the jump to see me rant about armies and results :)

I want to say that the two teams who took the top spot where good players who played good games. But in a theoryhammer world, I didn't expect either army to win. I think both armies won the day on account of the WTF factor.

For instance, most of the G2D4 guys don't face Eldar armies regularly. My mechdar army is the exception to that statement, but it's such a different list from Steve and Luke's footdar that it might as well have come from a different codex. Even then, my army wins many games due to my opponent not having the prior experience of trying to take down a Falcon with Holo Fields. That Avatar/Wraithlord footdar list wins through due to bad target priority and over specialization with melta on the part of their opponents. None of their opponents brought any long range, high strength, low AP weapons that where not melta. You need to take down MC's at range. If you rely on melta to do it, you face the chance of wifing and getting counter-charged. On occasion you face an Avatar, and melta is completely useless anyway. Of course, the team format allowed them to take 2 more MC's than a normal 2000 pt army would allow. Facing 4 Wraithlords and 2 Avatars without a cohesive force of you own is a difficult challenge. Still, I was wishing I could throw down one of my own armies. Most of my lists would have out-ranged and out-gunned the Eldar, and reliably downed a Wraithlord every turn.

On the other hand, we had Stephen and Jim's double Fateweaver/Blood Crusher list. Two Fateweavers at 2000 points is another difficult challenge. I don't believe most of their opponents get to face Demons on a regular basis. The G2D4 guys face demons all the time, and know how to deal with them. One of the locals mentioned that he heard Jim and Stephen's third round opponent act surprised to find out that the whole army had invul saves. Demons are pretty easy to figure out how to beat, but if you don't have the experience, you are at a disadvantage.

In a three round tournament format, pairings go along way to determining the winner. Had Aaron and Andrew's Space Wolves drew Steve and Luke's Eldar in the first round we would have seen a drastically different outcome. Aaron's Long Fangs and Thunder Wolves where the right units to take down those Eldar MC's. Unfortunately Aaron and Andrew faced double Fateweaver and the dice where against them that game.

I think it would have been very interesting to see the top two teams face each other for one more round. I think the dual Demon list was the best match up for the Eldar MC's other than the dual Space Wolves.

5 comments:

  1. It was a fun tournament no matter what. I think my intended team would have had a decent shot, If my silly teammate had remembered what day the tourney was. He was to bring terminators and missiles, I had infantry and flamers, and we both had min meltas. Since he didn't make it, I was left with essentially half a list, the one focused on anti-infantry. Mike's eldar provided much needed fire support for me and we had three fun and very close games each time.

    That was my first doubles tournament and it was a lot of fun. I also learned how badly the FOC and be abused by it. haha

    ReplyDelete
  2. If SandWyrm and I had brought our typical 1000pt lists, we would have done much better.

    if we'd conspired to abuse the Heavy Support and Troops force org slots, we'd have kicked booty.

    Facing the Footdar was our nightmare. we'd really hoped to not face them. We laughed with Steve and Luke that they would be our foil. The type of army ours just couldn't handle. I'd have rather faced any of the other top armies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like a good time was had by all. I love that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It was definately a good time and an overall good tournament. Thanks to everyone who had a hand in organizing it. Steve and I have wanted to play in a team tournament for a while now but just never had the chance. I can't wait for another one though we'll bring different armies next time.

    The footdar were designed specifically to combat what we were likely to see at this point range split in two FOC's. Eldar are very strong to about 1250pts. After that the FOC makes you start adding things that are too one dimensional to deal with an increasingly flexible codex lineup and the value of each point spent is reduced. Marines favor melta almost exclusively these days so we knew that MC's, Avatars especially, were likely to do well. Few armies can bring the type of firepower needed to deal with Wraithlords and Avatars at a 1000pts without seriously opening themselves up to a beatdown from fast/hth armies. Keith/Garrett and Scott/Carl's armies would have demolished gunlines without much trouble (Scott and Carl started our game farther from their edge than we did). Most players expected to face mech/mobile forces and preparred against it. We tried to construct a force that would attempt to take advantage of that line of preparation.

    While we expected/hoped to win all our games we certainly did not expect to do quite so much damage. We figured that we would be hard enough to kill to eek out VP tiebreakers or the short bike squads would win the day by claiming one more objective than the opponent. Had we played Fateweavers or Wolves I think that's exactly how it would have gone. Instead the flow of the tournament went our way and we played three armies (Guard/orks,Sanguinary/Sisters,Salamanders/BA's) who were kitted out to combat everyone but us and who had to fight uphill from the first die roll.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think footdar maxes out at 1250, but you can still build 1500-2000 pt armies if you focus on mech or use jet bike Seer Councils. It's true that after Eldar fill up their Heavy Support slots, they aren't getting as much efficiency for points spent.

    ReplyDelete