Redcap’s December 40k tournament went off well yesterday, ten people attending.  The majority of armies were loyalist Marines, with a sprinkling of Chaos, Eldar, Tau, and Orks.  Colin’s Noise Marines wound up second, Brett’s Orks somewhere in the middle.  I only finished seventh, getting annihilated in the first game by Owen’s Blood Angels, which went on to win, and a closely fought but ultimately crushing loss to Jeremy’s Daemons in the third.

Benn and Adam have Redcap’s 40k tournaments super dialed at this point.  All the small but critical stuff a bunch of us have asked for over time, like posted  terrain specifications and tournament standings formulas, are all getting done, and notably lacking at other similar venues.  As always the missions are straight forward and well balanced, with a number of critical details from the book missions adjusted, like setting a fixed and even numbers of objectives where appropriate.  This diversity of nice looking, well playing tables also really demonstrated their excellent terrain collection, especially with a lot of very thematic setups.  I myself played in a French village, in a lush greenland canyon, and a parched, corrupted desert.  Other tables featured a snowy border checkpoint, ruined mega cathedral, and Imperial loading dock.  Pretty sweet!

More photos are in the Flickr gallery; I was able to get at least a few of most of the armies.

Army

In dropping my usual list(s) down to 1250 points I wound up with one that was built of my standard elements but felt very different overall:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Sternguard x5 w/ w/ 3x Combi-Meltas
• Tacticals x10 w/ Razorback, Vet Sgt, Powerfist, Plasmagun, Missile Launcher
• Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Vet Sgt, Melta Bombs, Meltagun, Missile Laucher
• Devastators x5 w/ Vet Sgt, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Predators x2 w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons
• Aegis Defense Line w/ Quad-gun

Notably missing are the Librarian, the Sternguard’s Drop Pod, my numerous Landspeeders, and fewer Troops than I usually run even at this point level.  From these changes it was much less alpha/early-strike oriented, and much less able to spam camp objectives.

It’s worth noting that all the games were played on 4×4 boards.

Round 1

First up was Purge the Alien against Owen’s Black Templars-disguised Blood Angels.  This was brutal.  To a large extent I think I was just rusty, not having played at all since last month’s Alternate Universes tournament and still being hesitant enough with 6th edition for that to have a big impact.  I could definitely tell the difference in my play between the 1st and 3rd rounds.

There were really two problems.  One was that my table side was dominated by two large impassable buildings, situated such that I only had two small pockets with clear firing lanes on opposite table edges to deploy into.  With my new gunline oriented army vibe this is a big problem.  I debated castling up behind the buildings almost entirely, but then I would have gotten only at best one round of shooting off before getting assaulted.  In the end my army wound up divided in half with two components relatively unable to support each other due to the terrain.  Owen was thus able to specifically pit his dudes against their best match in my army, e.g., keeping his Land Raider away from my Sternguard melta-bubble and crushing Tacticals on the other table edge.

The other issue was his army, essentially a tight, hard brick with only seven units.  Through the first couple turns the only things facing me were that Land Raider Redeemer, a Mortis Pattern Contemptor Dreadnought, a well hidden TL Lascannon Razorback, and some Scouts tucked away in his backfield.  That basically meant I was staring down AV 14, AV 13, and a serious cover save.  With just a few (combi-) meltas on hand, and none particularly mobile at that, the Land Raider was basically unstoppable.  The Contemptor similarly shrugged off what limited Str 7+ shooting I could apply to it, while it in turn rained down tons of high strength shots.

In fairly narrative fashion, the Contemptor climbed up into the top of a ruined steeple and began raining down high strength shots while the Land Raider drove itself like a wedge forward into one of my encampments under its baleful gaze.  A Reclusiarch and Death Company then piled out and annihilated what few Kingbreakers were left standing, turning this into a complete rout.

Somewhat ironically, my traditional lists that I’ve been moving away from and left behind almost entirely this tournament would have been much better suited to this opponent.  Owen would be tough no matter what, and I could do better with this weekend’s list in a rematch when I’m less fuzzy, but this is basically exactly the opponent for which my Melta-Pod Sternguard/Landspeeder Multi-melta fleet/Vulkan re-roll army and aggresive, mobile play-style was designed.  Damn it!

Round 2

Next up was John, a new player, and his Dark Angels, in the Scouring.  To a large extent I had a number of significant lucky breaks go my way this game.  First, tragically for his entirely Deep Striking army, we wound up on a table with tons of rock columns.  I then won table edge selection and used that to fill up the single clear area on the entire board with all of my dudes.  No stranger to aggressive Drop Pod tactics myself, I was careful to leave almost no space for him to come down within my lines, and to have a lot of overlapping fire fields on anything that did land nearby.  The highest value objective also came up right in my ideal location.

The terrain, my deployment, and bad scatter all worked to put his Drop Pods down in unfortunate locations.  His warlord Librarian and a Command Squad with Banner of Devastation were wiped out immediately after landing, having only managed to take out a Predator.  In the final substantial lucky break for me, one of his two teleporting Terminator squads mishapped itself out of the game.

Supported by my firebase and with a large portion of his army out unduly early, I was able to spread pretty thinly, with a Combat Squad on one objective, a Tactical Rhino advancing to another, Sternguard eventually running to and clearing one of the Dark Angels’, and Capt Angholan + Squad Scolirus wiping out another DA squad to claim a third objective and a crushing victory.

Though they didn’t last long enough to have a ton of impact, I did like John’s Command Squad fielding multiple meltaguns and a Banner of Devastation.  At some point I expect to start fielding a Kingbreakers Command, it’s almost definitely become a worthwhile & efficient unit this edition.

One very interesting thing that happened in this game was that I actually wound up boxed out in deploying my three objectives.  Between me placing two in my quarter (Vanguard Strike deployment) and John running his across the center diagonal, the geometry worked out that I could not put my third anywhere near my dudes and had to put it in his table half.  Granted, by necessity that means one of his was not too far from my corner, but I was a bit flummoxed for a moment.  I don’t think I’ve ever had that really happen before, an unanticipated consequence of the small 4×4 tables and large number of objectives (6) that I should have anticipated better.

Round 3

Finally I faced Jeremy and his Chaos Daemons in Big Guns Never Tire.  His army is hilarious, in a positive way, because it consists entirely of 6 units: 4 big daemons, and 2 groups of 10 little daemons.  It’s just funny to look around at the various hordes and fleets of flyers and big vehicles… and then see his force very neatly arranged onto an 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

Deployment

I put one objective deep in a corner and he did the same across the table, probably meaning that I would have had to go straight through his heavy hitters to get to it, rather than flanking around like I would hope.  My second also went along my back edge reasonably close to the first, and he put his second at table center, conveniently enough in the middle of a Chaos Shrine offering improved invulnerable and cover saves to the Daemons.

I gave him first turn, thinking otherwise he’d just deploy entirely into reserve and leave me nothing to shoot at.  Some plaguebearers camped out in a ruin around the Chaos backfield objective and basically removed themselves entirely from the game at that point.  Certainly the Kingbreakers never got over there to ask what they were doing or if we could have the objective instead.  The Khorne Prince and two generic Princes then set up a flying vanguard phalanx at table center in front of a Keeper of Secrets.

Kingbreakers took a few risks in deployment.  Unusually for me, I broke both Tacticals into Combat Squads, on the theory that:

• Daemons would eat them in assault no matter how big the squads were;
• One each could then be used as a speed bump, sacrificing itself to keep bad guys away from its partner on an objective for another turn;
• One would then be able to fire at a daemon and force a grounding check, hopefully enabling the other with a heavy weapon to fire at full effect.

Contrary to the lessons of the first round and my usual preferences for large self-supporting groups, I also broke the army into three groups.  Sternguard, Tacticals, and a Predator camped out in an Aegis encirclement around one objective.  Devastators and the second Predator camped out on the opposite table edge.  Angholan and Tacticals prepared to move toward the center objective, leaving behind a Combat Squad on another.  The main rational was that on a 4×4 table and very clear board with broad sightlines, my relatively large number of 36″ weapons would still be able to support each other all across the back edge, which turned out to be largely true.

Fight!

Those overlapping fire fields then went to work on the daemons as they flitted about.  One generic Prince went down immediately, though he would later make a brief reappearance via Warp Tether.  The Predators both went down and various Marines got Vector Striked, but the two fire camps did a good job at taking down the Khorne and generic Princes that split up to go after them.

In the midst of and following that, the center field featured extended tight action with the Keeper of Secrets.  Angholan was deceived by its tricksy ways and rolled four 1s on his buffed out 2+/3++ to die immediately in combat with the beast.  Tacticals strove bravely against it but were slowly chewed down.  By the time supporting fire could end its rampage, Kingbreakers were left with a single Troop unit to hold the home objectives.

Simultaneously with the end of those fights, a unit of Daemonettes spawned onto the center objective.  Faced with a tough choice, Sternguard trusted the Tacticals to do their duty to the Emperor and handle the Keeper while they attempted to clear this horde off the shrine.  Their valiant effort was for nought though as the daemons managed to sweep them up in their claws, and carried that momentum onto the remaining Tacticals and the Kingbreakers’ home turf.  The Marines stood their ground staunchly, but could not ultimately claim the field of battle.

Outcome

Like many great battles, in the end this swung from pretty tight to a crushing win for Jeremy.  I could only contest the one objective—with a single Marine, locked in combat—plus Slay the Warlord, while he claimed an objective, Slay, First Blood, and Linebreaker for the victory.

At one point near the end I could have played more strongly for a draw by sending the Sternguard to support the already-stricken Tacticals on my second objective against the oncoming Keeper.  I consciously decided though to risk a loss and play for the win by attempting to clear the center objective, hoping the Tacticals would also wipe the Keeper and remain to hold their objective.

That didn’t work out, but I can’t complain.  It was a tight and fun game, and any number of small changes in rolls could have tipped it either way.  Even just Angholan (Vulkan) not uterrly failing all of his saves and getting in a single wound on the Keeper would have a good chance of leading to at least a draw.

Analysis

I’ll have to think more about Daemons and first turn now that they can actually deploy rather than spawn.  Particularly with a bunch of flying creatures and their relative survivability to shooting making it more feasible for the opponent to start them on the board, there’s probably little reason to give them the first go.

In picking table sides I did choose wrongly.  They were both very clear so I didn’t think too hard about it.  There was though on my side a very small impassable building in the center of my deployment zone, while the other side was totally clear between the edges.  That meager couple inches of blocking though did eliminate just a couple potential shots, particularly approaching the endgame.  Though only a slight change, in such tight action in my home field, having those could have made a huge difference.

One huge standout in this game were the heavy bolters in my Devastators.  The unit got decimated by Vector Strikes, but they continued to hang tough and contributed enormously to the game.  Their ability to target the flying creatures and attempt to force ground checks was a big deal, while the plasma cannons were almost useless in this particular game.  I’ve always maintained that the 2x Plasma, 2x Bolter Dev mix is pretty good, even when it was overpriced last edition, and this is yet another reason why in the new 6th edition rules.

Lastly, one small note is that in general I really dislike such clear boards despite my recent shooting-oriented efforts.  Redcap’s boards and terrain look so good though that I really like the visuals of the empty-ish, desert themed boards they make, and they ensure just enough key terrain on to make it interesting game-wise.

General Thoughts

This was a great day, even after I got crushed in the opening.  The small boards and well thought out, thematic terrain looked particularly good.  I was also pleased to fight three very different armies, from Owen’s mechanized Power Armour, to John’s alpha-strike Drop Pods & Terminators, to Jeremy’s extremely compact Daemon force, with an especially good game to end the day.  I’m not super sure how I feel about the increasingly static shooting nature of my army, but it’s reasonably credible, and has at least been interesting to experiment with.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.