Redcap’s 2000pt Tournament

Posted on 2014/06/22 by tjkopena

Redcap’s June tournament was the first for 7th edition. Unfortunately it was very lightly attended, probably mostly due to the start of summer. In particular the two adjacent colleges, Drexel and UPenn, just went on summer break. Pat and John volunteered to team up to make an even four contestants and enable a round robin tournament. We bumped the points up from the planned 1850 to 2000 to make list rebuilding easier for them.

Otherwise this was a straight 7th edition tournament. Benn and Jake made up some new bonus battle point conditions and elaborated new details on the more exotic terrain pieces (Radiation! Tesla Towers!) but the missions followed Redcap’s existing format based on the 5e/6e/7e core missions. Notably, this already includes a simple alternate scoring scheme. For objective control missions you can optionally score one victory point each cumulatively at the start of your turn rather than three VPs each at game end. In annihilation you can opt to score a victory point for every 200pts killed rather than one per unit. No limitation was placed on detachments, unbound armies, allies, or anything else. Unfortunately no one showed up with anything super crazy, despite our hopes.

More photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

Stay on target!

Army

The least traditional army composition actually wound up being mine, which featured a big stack of five source books: Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Inquisition, Stronghold Assault, Imperial Knights:

Combined Arms Detachment: Space Marines (Salamanders)
- Captain Angholan—Vulkan
- Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
- Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multi-Melta, Drop Pod
- Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
- Scouts x5 w/ 5x Camo Cloaks, 5x Sniper Rifles
- Squad Harbinger—Devastators x5 w/ Chainsword+Bolt Pistol+Signum, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
- Akil—Predator w/ Autocannon
- Justus—Predator w/ Autocannon
- Imperial Bunker w/ 2x Void Shields
Combined Arms Detachment: Astra Militarum
- Commander Higgenbotham—Company Command Squad w/ Plasmapistol, Flamer
- Veterans w/ Flamer
- Veterans w/ Flamer
- Armoured Sentinel w/ Plasmacannon
Inquisitorial Detachment
- Inquisitor Coteaz
Imperial Knight Detachment
- Knight Errant

The Predators were last second additions to bump to 2000 pts. Given more time to prep I would probably have kitted up another Drop Pod of Tacticals for more deep striking objective grabbing and camping.

One reason for that particular Guard structure is to have two Combined Arms detachments and together with Coteaz have three options for my warlord:

Vulkan if a bonus point condition warranted it;
Coteaz if I faced daemons;
The Company Commander otherwise.

I wound up using the Company Commander each time to get access to the BRB traits but they did not matter.

In each battle I took all of Coteaz’s powers from Divination as I really only cared about Prescience. Despite this list being a bit all over the place, I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, particularly new elements. I wasn’t planning on spending brain cycles debating between multiple powers. In addition, with two mastery levels I generally wouldn’t have enough warp charge to cast multiple powers.

This was the first time in quite some while that my army wasn’t pretty much entirely painted. That was a bummer, but I decided it was worth it in the spirit of trying new stuff for 7th edition. Unfortunately much of that army I had essentially no experience with. Coteaz I’ve used once before. Guardsmen I used in our January Apocalypse battle but they just sat around in a bunker. The Knight I just assembled this week; I actually had to buy the codex while signing up for the tournament yesterday.

All that said, despite its many parts and source books, for a 2000pt battle that doesn’t seem like an obnoxious list to me and is actually pretty balanced and fluffy. Unfortunately it seems like it would be banned under the restrictions some of the major tournaments are gravitating toward. More on that in a future post.

Let’s do this thing!

Round 1

First up: Carl and his Tau, featuring a Commander, some Broadsides and Marker Drones, a Skyray, 2 Riptides and 18 Crisis Suits. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives), long axis deployment. We both picked alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

On the drop I wasn’t able to land my Sternguard out of line of sight and they got hammered by Riptides on the intercept, yielding First Blood, a 2 VP swing as it also denied me First Blood on the Skyray. Tacticals though came down to contest Carl’s home objective. With all his Crisis Suits reserved and the army preferring not to move out aggressively, that left Carl scoring little in the early going. In contrast the Kingbreakers spread out all over the board and ran up an early lead.

As usual with the alpha strike though and particularly against Tau shooting, the momentum slowly turned and the thinly spread Kingbreakers got rolled back across all quadrants. Exacerbating the issue, the Knight was taken down right in the locus of the army, generating a catastrophic titanic explosion that crippled a number of units. Eventually the bunker’s void shields were broken through and the battlements started taking casualties, notably yielding Slay the Warlord when Commander Higgenbotham and his veterans got fragged by a cover-ignoring blast.

Look at me, I’m so awesome!

Outcome

Kingbreakers hold out for the win, 9 objective points versus the Tau’s 3 objective points, Slay, and Blood. Tragically the endgame death of my warlord deprived me of a crushing victory by putting Carl just above half my points.

Analysis

I think Carl’s big issue here was that he incorrectly decided very early on that he would have to table me to reclaim victory from my initial points lead, and he focused entirely on that. Among other things, that’s a risky strategy if you’re not totally sure of the clock; between my infantry movement and his extensive shooting + movement—the many assault jumps in his army take quite a bit of time, effectively adding an entire second movement phase to his turn—this game only went 4 turns. Particularly with those assault jumps giving so much mobility, if he hadn’t lost sight of the objectives he would have been easily able to start cranking out objectives points very soon after his Crisis Suits arrived from reserve.

Random meetings in a dark alley in the 41st millenium.

Round 2

Next up: John and Pat with their Clan Raukaan and Imperial Fists team-up, both using their respective codex supplements. Core elements included 3 lascannon Devastator Centurions, 3 grav-amp/hurricane bolter Devastator Centurions, two Librarians with various relics, a Stormtalon flyer, a Thunderfire Cannon, a collection of Drop Pod Tacticals and Sternguard, and of course meltaguns and lascannons everywhere. The mission was Purge the Alien (annihilation), very much a rarity at Redcap’s. Deployment was 12″ long edges. I chose alternate scoring, they went for normal. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

Ghosts on the drop managed to wound the Raukaan Librarian despite his Centurion bodyguards soaking up wounds. This paved the way for the Librarian to die from Perils of the Warp and yield First Blood and Slay the Warlord. Tactical 1 had little impact on the drop and took heavy casualties but Angholan eliminated the Thunderfire Cannon before expiring to overwatch fire. Most of the Imperial Fists spent the game engaging the Knight Errant en route to their encampment, eventually taking it down as it thrashed through ruins. The Stormtalon buzzed about strafing the bunker’s void shields to hopefully expose it for random lascannon potshots. Everybody else spent the match in a drop pod furball mirror match, with Raukaan and Kingbreakers going blow for blow throughout the trench works and ruins across the board.

Barbarians at the gates!

Outcome

Kingbreakers prevail again by a slim margin, 5 kill points plus First Blood, Slay, and Linebreaker versus 6 kill points plus Linebreaker. This was a really great game, with tons of different activity going on all over the board. Not only was it extremely close but it was super hard to quickly gauge the score throughout. Nobody had any real idea who was up or down until the final tally, though I think they thought they were much farther behind than they were.

Thoughts

One notable local meta thing is that Redcap’s reworked their cathedral/dockyard ruins set up quite a bit. It’s now visibly more open, though there’s still a ton of ruins for cover and straight out line of sight blocking. I liked the board a lot before even though its very limited firing lanes hampered me, but the new version is much smoother for 40k play, particularly at the larger end of the points spectrum, and more fair to more armies.

No doubt important in this game was the Sternguard more or less successfully going after the Raukaan Librarian. Him taking a Perils wound was huge, but it was a big deal that the Sternguard got at least one wound on him beforehand. The guy’s tough to kill: Can’t be insta-gibbed by double strength, has a 3+/3++ save, Feel No Pain, and typically hangs around with some 2+ save Centurion bodyguards. Even without the Libby going down though, taking out two grav-amp Centurions in that first turn was a big mental boost. John did come in with Invisibility known to his Librarian, but with two of them down I was much less worried about him being able to shield that unit even before he expired prematurely.

Skeletor says: Protect me, you fools! With your lives if necessary! And maybe even if not!

Alternate Scoring

This was the first I’ve seen Redcap’s alternate annihilation scoring, and it might actually have been its first appearance. It was pretty obvious for Pat and John that they should take normal scoring as my list featured a whopping 21 possible kill points, even before any combat squadding. Much of that was also fairly squishy.

On my end, choosing alternate scoring was a mistake that very nearly cost me the round. Glancing at John & Pat’s army they didn’t seem to have a ton of units, certainly an underestimate. None of it seemed super squishy either—not many Rhinos or such, and a bunch of hard targets like Centurions and a flyer. My logic was that alternate scoring would defeat a core strength of Marines: Having a bunch of single dudes or pairs hanging around doing nothing but not yielding up a kill point for wiping their entire unit. This is precisely a big part of how I snuck in the win: By the end I had four near-dead but persistent Space Marine infantry units—3 Tacticals, 2 Tacticals, 1 Sternguard, 1 Scout. Thinking about it more clearly though, 200 pts per Victory Point in alternate versus a straight-up unit per point in normal scoring is too high a tradeoff. For example, you’d have to kill an entire 10 man Tactical (140 pts + upgrades) as well as their transport (35 pts) for that point, versus two under normal scoring, three if they combat squad.

So, under the current Redcap’s rules, my new heuristic is I should all but always choose alternate objective scoring and almost always choose normal annihilation. Alternate annihilation only possibly makes sense if facing an extremely dense Terminator army or such, and even then only if they have large blobs (not the standard 5 man squads) or very expensive kit-outs. I think that logic holds for most armies, so both sets of alternate scoring conditions probably warrant some tweaking, one for being universally better and the other universally worse.

All these void shields and no one brought a fly swatter?! Damnit!

Round 3

Final match: Colin and his Blood Angels/Dark Angels deep striking bonanza. He brought close to what he announced he would: Belial, 15 Terminators, a Reclusiarch, 2 Furioso Dreadnoughts, a Death Company Dreadnought, Assault Marines, Death Company Tacticals, and Scouts. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives) and table corners deployment. We both went for alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

This was probably the most thought I’ve seen put into objective placement under the new 7th edition rules. I placed mine as hard as possible into diagonally opposed corners, hoping to curtail adjacent deep striking surface area. Colin placed both of his near the center, in opposite directions along the long axis.

Deployment.

Fight!

The Inquisition detects a group of Blood Angels Scouts skulking about outside a continental capital and decides to bring them in for questioning about suspected mutations within their geneseed. Captain Angholan takes this charge a bit too zealously and accidentally flames the initiates to a crisp for First Blood. Hearing their dieing calls for help, equally suspicion-clouded Dark Angels in the sector drop in alongside more Blood Angels to avenge their barbecuing. Kingbreakers call in reinforcements, and before long nobody can back down from the fighting throughout the shanty town surrounding the city.

Far from the Kingbreakers outpost, Belial precision deep strikes in tight quarters and wipes out Squad Titus. The Kingbreakers’ Knight ally is mobbed by Furiosos and assault cannon Terminators, with Angholan nearby but unable to break through copious slum detritus in time to assist before it is detonated. Ghosts make a desperate landing into a massive vat of highly corrosive industrial waste, taking heavy casualties as the veterans struggle to not sink under the weight of their power armor. Their sacrifices are awarded however by perfect positioning and the outright kill of a fearsome Death Company Dreadnought before joining the ongoing firefight echoing down the main avenues.

Up and down the alleyways, Devastators and Predators trade fire with Terminators, screaming balls of plasma charges and pounding autocannon thumps rebutted by the continual chittering of assault cannon hits across the scrap metal structures. Heads tucked low, the Forest Guard charge forward in all directions to reclaim ground for their fallen battle brothers but are repulsed by the raging Blood Angels Reclusiarch and caught short working their way through ruined Drop Pods.

Stick ’em up! — I can’t! This is as much flexibility as I have!

Outcome

Dark-Blood Angels win convincingly, 8 objective points and Linebreaker to 1 objective point and First Blood.

Through turn 3 we were tied, neither of us scoring much on objectives as nearly all were contested. After that though Colin had swept my Troops off and gotten more of his on, quickly racking up the points with three objectives scored on each of turns 3 and 4. Nearly all his army consists of troops, including the Dreadnoughts and Drop Pods, and in several cases trumped my Predators and other units to claim objectives out from under them.

Both of us screwed up and forgot to take a moment to punch a building when we had nothing else to do, and thus gave up a cheap bonus battle point. Always stay on top of your bonus points!

Thoughts

Everybody else chose to go second against Colin so the Deathwing and Pods would come down and they’d have a chance to shoot at him on their first turn. I went first so I could claim First Blood against the Scouts and setup my guys on objectives to hopefully claim points on turn 2. I think that was a reasonable decision, though I have to think more about whether it was best. Among the downsides were letting Colin basically optimally target all my dudes rather than forcing him to go after some objectives blind. It put a lot of pressure on me to instantly build up effective defenses around those objectives to score at least once or twice before probably getting wiped. Compounding the basic challenge there is basically everything in his army having Objective Secured. It’d be a lot easier to do when looking at opposing Sternguard or regular Terminators coming down. All in all, not a ridiculously poor strategy, but a tough road.

In practice though I poorly bubble wrapped the far objective with disembarked Tacticals. In my head I was trying to get a couple shots on the opposing Scouts just in case, and to bubble wrap the Drop Pod a bit. The first of course was completely unnecessary, and the second a lesser priority. That line of thought wound up skewing my deployment around the objective and Belial’s squad was able to contest it, preventing me from scoring it on turn 2. In reality with how my Pod came down I should have been able to deploy those guys to force Belial far enough away from the objective to score that critical point at least once.

Mid-game.

Somewhat similarly, despite me placing my objectives in the corners, I opted to not build my castle there. That left my control over that objective much much more tenuous, and in fact Colin got a lucky break when my combat squad holding it broke from shooting casualties and ran out of place, costing me another point. Otherwise though my whole castle group would have had extremely limited firing options.

Instead I placed the fortification where the Devastators would have somewhat reasonable firing lanes on both the central objectives, and they did wind up doing a lot. The fort was also then positioned for the Guardsmen to run at either my corner objective or the closer of the central markers.

Unfortunately I wound up not actually executing that well and used my Guardsmen poorly. Timing is everything and I misgauged a bit. I also didn’t utilize my orders well, just through inexperience. Moving toward the corner objective, if my Guardsmen had charged Colin’s Assault Marines a turn earlier instead of rapid firing I might have been able to stall the Blood Angels just long enough for my Predator to score it once. Similarly, I started moving my other squad of Guardsmen toward the central objective late, partly out of neglect and partly fear they’d get shot up too early. I then compounded that by not using my orders to have them shoot + run, or even better to run faster, and potentially get onto that objective to score once.

Stop kicking me! Stop kicking me!

Outcome

Despite the crushing loss at the end, I still wound up apparently winning the tournament, though I confess I don’t fully understand the rankings. Carl actually wound up with more battle points than me, with John and then Colin in 3rd and 4th. I’m assuming that whatever scoring was used in Torrent of Fire to run the round-robin—not the way most 40k tournaments are usually done—bracketed me ahead for beating Carl and John, Carl beating both John and Colin, and John beating Colin. Carl also won the painting raffle so I think he came out ahead on loot regardless.

Either way and despite the low attendance, I was pleased to continue my streak of not finishing worse than 2nd this year. The loss to Colin was a blow as I had tried to kit out my army specifically to fight his, but I think with just a bit better play I might be able to swing at least a close game.

Army Thoughts

Scouts continue to be particularly useful in 7th to infiltrate onto objectives way out in no-man’s land. That’s going to be increasingly important through the combination of the new objective placement rules with increasing focus on cumulative and other scoring mechanisms not simply applied at game-end.

Even with my inexperience and some misplay, the Guard contingent did a good job. The bubble wrapping was useful and they actually did some damage in shooting. That core of Company Command + a Veteran Squad or two is basically the cheapest setup for an Allied or Combined Arms detachment, respectively. Taking an Infantry Platoon would incur another ~40 points, trading off the Vet Squad surcharge for a required Platoon Command Squad. This scheme also basically matched the models I had on hand, though I still had to build four plain Guardsmen the morning of the tournament as my others all had obvious special weapons and such. I would definitely consider bringing more Guardsmen just to sacrifice for bubble wrapping both the bunker and the Knight.

Two Combined Arms detachments would also enable both a bunker and a Void Shield Generator. That’s definitely something I’m thinking about, caveat that I think castling up is going to be less and less viable with the newly developing objective placement rules and scoring mechanisms.

No castles, only attack! Attack!

The Knight was somewhat disappointing, though not a blowout. It didn’t actually manage to kill hardly anything, but everybody saw it as a huge threat and devoted significant focus toward bringing it down, in and itself a useful thing. I was torn beforehand but currently think the Errant with its melta blast is indeed the better option, compared to the 2x large blast of the Paladin variant. It’s a tough call, but the second blast is probably overkill and the melta bonuses more useful.

With Drop Pods and such increasingly back in vogue the Knight can really stand solid bubble wrapping to stand off melta weapons. It also needs to be kept away from terrain to have maximal impact. Somewhat oddly it moves a very fast 12″ over open ground but apparently—the intent is unclear—moves in terrain like a typical model with Move Through Cover, at most 6″. Note that this is a big debuff for super-heavy walkers versus other super-heavy vehicles, which move 12″ regardless of terrain and can’t immobilize. Given the fire that will concentrate on the Knight, I think you really want it running forward as fast as possible to smash some enemies in assault before it goes down. Just as importantly, that will help ensure the catastrophic super-heavy explosion happens in their lines and not yours.

Seventh

Although a small tournament, this was a great day with a bunch of good players and tight games. It was unfortunate there wasn’t a wider variety of armies to see more of what’s possible under raw 7th edition rules. We also did uncover a whole bunch of things that are either ambiguous or deceptively substantial changes in the rules. But I remain really optimistic about the core of this edition, and am currently as excited about 40k as I was at the start of 5th, which is quite a bit.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

You gonna die, boy! — Aw, leave me alone, you guys don’t even score! Seriously, you’re like the only thing in the game that doesn’t anymore! Just let me have this, it’s all I do! Aauuguguh!

40k: Redcap’s 1000pt Tournament

Posted on 2014/05/18 by tjkopena

Ten people showed up for Redcap’s May tournament, once again an excellent production. For whatever reason the theme was definitely strife within the Imperium, with Orks and Tyranids making an appearance but everybody else loyalists battling amongst themselves to determine who the Emperor loves most. Even the Sisters came to fight for the title of most blindly dedicated to the empire. Also notably, the overwhelming majority of armies were painted, and most of those pretty well. Full results and armies in play are up on the tournament page on Torrent of Fire. I will say, ToF’s interface remains amazingly terrible, specifically the non-intuitive navigation among pages, but it’s super cool to be able to see details of who played who and so on.

More photos, including other games/armies, are in the Flickr gallery.

It almost killed him, his dad, and even Tom M to get in done in time for Adepticon, but Colin's Blood Angels came out impressively well and superbly retro-40k styled.

It almost killed him, his dad, and even Tom M to get them done in time for Adepticon, but Colin’s Blood Angels came out impressively well and superbly retro-40k styled.

Army

I dropped the Predator and downgraded a Razorback from Thursday’s games to add some bodies and a quadgun:

Capt Angholan—Vulkan
Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multimelta, Drop Pod
Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino
Scouts x5 w/ Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles
Imperial Bunker w/ Quadgun

Of course, having made that quadgun swap, nobody brought any flyers and only the Tyranids brought a flying monstrous creature…

Sniper Scouts fresh from the training yards infiltrate into position.

Round 1

First up was John L and his Clan Raukaan Iron Hands Space Marines, fielding something like:

Librarian
Sternguard x10 w/ 5x Combi-Meltas in Drop Pod
Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino
Scouts 5x
Centurions x3 w/ Grav-Amps
Stalker

The mission was 12″ table edge deployment, Scouring objectives. I went second by choice, both of us picked normal scoring.

Fight

Raukaan Sternguard dropped directly in front of the Kingbreakers’ bunker with massed combi-meltas, an ironic twist for the latter. Those Sternguard had some back and forth about which targets to prioritize—the bunker or the nearby troops—but eventually cracked the bunker open. They were in turn obliterated when Squad Scolirus dropped onto the Kingbreakers’ own base in a dramatic reinforcing action.

Meanwhile, Capt Angholan and the Ghosts claimed first blood by taking out the opposing Stalker on the drop, but were immediately knocked down by the Raukaan Centurions. The Centurions then began a slow march across the bridge dividing the table, a wall of hurricane bolter & grav-amp fire sheltering their advance and withering Kingbreakers all across the board. Kingbreakers Tacticals played a tight game of desperate and decreasing chances to pull off a win by hiding around their now-burning bunker to hold and contest their two home objectives in the endgame, but ultimately the margins grew too thin.

Whoah buddy, watch where you’re pointing those things!

Outcome & Analysis

A crushing loss for the Kingbreakers, finally swept off the table in Turn 7, one bonus point earned for John having no elites left.

The huge mistake I made here was underestimating the Centurions. I played John and basically this list plus some flyers and dreadnoughts in the January tournament. In that game the Centurions were very hard to eliminate, but didn’t actually achieve much either. However, that was on the dockyard cathedral board were they had almost no sightlines and I was able to drop all my guys into protective cover right near them before running in Angholan and Scolirus to tie them up (2+/3+ save on the captain) and slowly take them down (powerfist on the sergeant). On this bridge board however, once they got on the bridge they literally had sightlines to every part of the board except the tiny space behind my bunker.

So, in the drop I went for the assured First Blood kill with the Sternguard tagging the Stalker because that secondary is frequently critical, five Sternguard weren’t going to be able to wipe out the Centurions, and from that previous game I wasn’t super worried about them anyway. That was wrong. The Sternguard should have attacked the Centurions. Even if they’d only killed one that would have been a dramatic reduction in their firepower throughout the remainder of the game.

Alternatively, I could have gone for the Rhino with his Tac Squads. I saw that as a much less probable drop to get melta bonuses, but even without that I still would have had a good chance to pop it. Potentially I could even have separated the Sternguard and Angholan to crack it with the Sternguard and then heavy flame the guys inside. It would have been really helpful later to have his troops advancing slower, as well as to prevent him from using that Rhino to block in my own Rhino.

Raukaan and Kingbreakers apparently do not agree on Imperial philosophy.

Round 2

Next was David H and his Sisters of Battle. I can’t recall when I last played against the Sororitas, so that was pretty cool. He fielded something like:

Celestine
Inquisitor
Battle Sisters x10 w/ Rhino
Battle Sisters x5
Seraphim x7
Dominion Squad x5 w/ Immolator
Exorcists x2

The mission was table corners deployment, four Big Guns Never Tire objectives. I went second by David’s choice, both of us picked alternate scoring.

Fight

Kingbreakers Scouts camped out on top of an objective while Tacticals did double duty manning the quadgun and covering another objective by their bunker. In the opposite corner, Exorcists (a scoring unit under Big Guns) attempted to hold down objectives alongside a small squad of Battle Sisters protecting an Inquisitor.

Angholan and the Ghosts tried to drop on the Exorcists but scattered badly, well out of direct contact. Squad Titus advanced quickly along the flank to support them, but was hung up by immobilizing missile fire. Hoofing it on foot, the squad was then raked and decimated by an outflanking Immolator and melta toting Dominions outflanking onto their side. Angholan and Harmon returned the favor, pivoting to wipe out Immolator and Dominions both in assault before switching back to march on and crush the nearest Exorcist.

Situation: Not good.

Directly in the midst of all this, Squad Scolirus dropped onto an objective in the middle of the firefight. One combat squad took up defensive positions on that objective with their multi-melta while Scolirus lead a running gun battle through and under the dockyard ruins against the Sisters and Inquisitor on the other objective. Eventually clearing them off, the remains of Tactical 1 then hunkered down in dense ruins in hopes of outlasting sniping fire from the remaining Exorcist.

On the opposite table edge, the Kingbreakers quadgun immobilized an oncoming Rhino and forced a contingent of Battle Sisters to advance slowly toward their target objectives. Scout Snipers killed Saint Celestine but she resurrected to lead her Seraphim in overwhelming the Kingbreakers’ bunker and cruelly turning the quadgun against the snipers in retribution. Battle Sisters eventually took the bunker objective, but the Sororitas’ advance on the other was halted by a precision multi-melta shot from across the battlefield that put Celestine out for good.

Come down here and fight us! No thanks!

Outcome & Analysis

Max points for the Kingbreakers, a crushing victory and two bonus points for more secondary objectives (all three) and opponent having no HQs on the table.

One small trouble I had here was that I should have picked the laterally opposite corner with a nice ruin, and placed my fortification better. As-was, the impassable building in my corner was a touch too high to claim the objective from on top of it so some of my Scouts had to hang out on the ground floor. Similarly, by putting an objective next to that my fortification wound up too close, so my second objective had to go a bit off and some Tacticals similarly had to hang out on the ground floor. When I selected that corner and set the bunker I was thinking in terms of running to claim on Turn 5 as for normal scoring, but I’d opted to go with alternate, per-turn scoring, for this round, so my defensive position was a little more brittle than it should have been.

I thoroughly enjoyed the one point where I had a choice between sniping at the oncoming Battle Sisters to try and pin them, or sniping my own now-vacant quadgun in hopes to sabotage it before the Seraphim could take it over…

Well, that used to be a nice quadgun. *sigh*

Round 3

Finally up was Rob W and his Imperial Guard, forcefully debating which army had the true heroes of the February doubles tournament. He fielded something like:

Company Command w/ Officer of the Fleet, Artillery Spotter, Voxcaster, Autocannons
Inquisitor w/ 3x Servo Skulls, Liber Hereticus, Powerfist
Primaris Psyker
Ministorum Priest
Platoon Command Squad w/ 4x Flamers
Infantry Blob x20 w/ Lascannons
Conscripts x30
Veterans x10 w/ 3x Plasmaguns
Basilisk
Aegis Defense Line w/ Quadgun

Mission was 12″ table edges, four Crusade objectives. I went second by Rob’s choice, both of us picked alternate scoring.

Rob placed his two objectives surprisingly far apart, one in his corner artillery encampment as expected, the other near the opposite corner across from my base camp. I chose to deploy my Scouts as normal so that he couldn’t block their infiltration with his servo skulls. They then made a scout move up onto an objective in ruins just outside my deployment zone. This wound up being important as it upped the velocity toward combat on that flank, as well as eventually getting me a critical bonus point for having a troop mid-field.

Come get some.

The blob advances.

Fight

Supporting the planetary governor to investigate rumors of imminent rebellion, Kingbreakers Scouts had just moved into reconnaissance positions to surveil a huge gathering of Conscripts suspiciously milling about a shadowy Inquisitor, Primaris Psyker, and a Ministorum Priest when they were shocked to see the blob suddenly leap to life and charge at their position under the trio’s raging exhortations! Facing a substantive threat to the Marines’ base camp as well as their own lives, all possible reinforcements were coolly called in as the tremendous volume of lasgun shots forced the Scouts to ground. Captain Angholan and Scolirus’ First Tactical themselves immediately dropped from orbit, bringing the flaming heart of the chapter to burn away the heretics before the psyker theology insurrection could continue. Gouts of flame halved the Conscripts’ numbers and rebuffed their countering assault, while the Kingbreakers’ fire-tempered armor shrugged off the blistering heat of the Platoon Command flamers come to reinforce the felons.

With fire & flame in the Emperor’s name.

Right back at ya!

The forecasted rebellion suddenly under way, the Kingbreakers’ camp found itself under barrage from the local Guard artillery corps. Marines dove for cover in their bunker and surrounding ruins, spooling up their quadgun and krak missiles to take out the Guard’s own anti-air defenses. The skies cleared, Harmon’s Ghosts dropped square into the heart of the traitors’ encampment, taking out the primary artillery before being forced out of the fight by crippling mass shooting surrounding their position.

Meanwhile, Angholan and Squad Scolirus hurled themselves into the Conscripts amid the whirling flames, Angholan bellowing forth challenges to any who would stand against the Emperor. Driven mad by his false visions, the Primaris rallied first but was cut through as quick as air. Stepping into his place, the Priest was similarly slain but not before driving in a near-fatal power blade. Leaping over the bleeding body of his crippled captain, Scolirus met the rogue Inquisitor in mid-strike, powerfist hammering powerfist and blasting both down in the titanic energies unleashed. Their heroes down but the rotten core of the rebellion excised, Tactical 1 redoubled their efforts and eliminated the stragglers before following Sergeant Titus, overdriving his Rhino through the thick of the combat, to take up defensive positions preventing the rebels from claiming their leaders’ bodies for martyrdom.

The Psyker’s powers do nothing to stop Angholan’s relic blade.

Titus leaps from his Rhino to halt oncoming traitors.

Outcome

Victory for the Kingbreakers, with a bonus point for having a troop in no-man’s land.

When the blob first started coming at me I was really worried about being swamped through sheer numbers, and it got really close to my forward line very quickly! With all the orders and special dudes going on it also caught me off guard (!) with a bunch of tricks—Scout move, 4+ Invulnerables, Fearless, debuffs on my guys, etc., in addition to then having a couple multi-wound power weapons buried in the blob. Fortunately in deployment I’d put Angholan with Tactical 1 specifically to go flame that blob, and that’s what they did. Flamer overwatch did me a huge service when it took out the whole front rank of the Conscripts, causing them to fail a charge by about half an inch. The Salamanders’ anti-flame buff also negated the Platoon Command flamers. Together that meant the whole squad got to charge rather than be charged in Turn 2, at full strength, and got in two rounds of flaming the blob beforehand. Following that, neither of us remembered Rob’s maledictions forcing re-rolls on Invulnerable saves for a turn or so, which certainly helped Angholan survive longer.

That said, I’m not sure how much all those specifics mattered. All I really needed to do was tie up the Conscript blob for a while so that objective wasn’t being claimed, with Titus coming forward to claim or contest against the Platoon Command that came in. With that blob blunted Rob didn’t have much that’d be able to cross the board to claim or contest my objectives. The limited sightlines, Scout camo cloaks, and my bunker then basically ensured the large blasts coming down from his Basilisk and artillery officer wouldn’t be able to blast away all three of the troop units I had in my backfield to claim two objectives, particularly with the Sternguard available to most likely take out one or the other of those (the Basilisk in the end). So, this was a tight game of quarter inches and critical rolls, but once that blob wound up in combat back by its own objective I felt I was playing for the victory, and I don’t really see how he could have avoided that combat. Caveat some supremely bad scatter on Angholan and poor luck on run or charge rolls (very short for me and/or very long for him), I don’t think the blob could have kept pressing forward to change that basic calculus of two objectives for me, one for him, and his other contested or unclaimed.

Thwarted again!

Tournament Results

All of that was enough to take 2nd place, as I have in each of the three Redcap’s tournaments I’ve played in 2014 (one the doubles tournament teamed with Rob). John L’s Raukaan took top honors, beating my points by exactly that crushing victory in our first round battle. Tom M picked up a nice result, taking third with his Custodes (Grey Knights). Tom also drew the random award for painted armies, so he actually took home the biggest slice of the pot.

General Thoughts

Just a couple general tournament thoughts follow.

Painting

Obviously it’s a comparatively easy target at the 1000 point level, but my impression was that the random painted army award has already motivated quite a bit of activity. There was noticeably significantly more painted dudes around. Lots more players than previously were talking about last ditch efforts to finish up new units, or putting more emphasis in army selection on what they have painted.

You just made my list of things to do today…

The Scouring

Probably the Scouring mission should be tweaked for tournament play. I still got swept by John—after a grueling seven turns!—but it worked out that I had both the 4 point and a 3 point objective in my corner, versus the 8 points available across all four other objectives. An easy fix to this mission would be for players to alternate placing an objective along the centerline of the table, otherwise following the usual rules (6″ from table edges, 12″ from each other). These could also just be fixed at the 1st & 3rd quartiles on the centerline. Then the players alternate placing two objectives each in their deployment zones. A small tweak would be to place one in their own deployment and the second in their opponent’s, Apocalypse style. Then each player makes the obvious roll to determine which objective in their zone is a 3 point, the other being a 2 point. Another random roll is then made to determine which of the centerline objectives is the 4 point, the other being the 1 point.

If both players pick Redcap’s alternate scoring none of that matters as those points are irrelevant. But that’s also unfortunate as it makes the Scouring just a 6-objective mission rather than the actually different structure the variable value objectives give it compared to Crusade and such. In terms of increasing the number of interesting strategic decisions being made, having different missions, and eliminating random advantages (“I picked normal & the 4 pt objective is in my base, excellent!”), for the Scouring you should know which objectives are worth what before selecting normal or alternate scoring. But then scoring selection needs to be moved to just before any deployment, which sounds reasonable to me off the cuff as a general change. Then, of course, the previous about fair Scouring objective placement applies.

Custodes investigate a Chaos shrine.

Alternate Scoring

This was my first tournament under Redcap’s new alternate scoring. It actually totally caught me off guard as I forgot about that entirely. In the first mission I picked normal scoring just because I didn’t have time to process what was going on and make an actual decision so I just went with my usual type strategy. With my half-castle and half-alpha strike contest army it would have gone better for me to pick alternate, though that’s not clear given I had the imbalance of valuable objectives.

In general though I think that’s probably true. I have trouble envisioning many armies or strategies that shouldn’t pick alternate scoring as it is currently. This is particularly true without any cap on how many times the objectives can be continually scored, offering a strong potential for that scheme to simply offer more points than the normal scheme. Neither of those is a problem if you’re actually effectively changing the game but leaving in the normal scoring just in case that does work better for someone, which isn’t an unreasonable position. But if the intent is to offer different victory paths than the rules should perhaps be tweaked, though I have to think about it more.

Closing

All in all, once again another excellent tournament at Redcap’s. More photos, including other games/armies, are in the Flickr gallery.

Pop!

40k: Redcap’s Doubles Tournament

Posted on 2014/02/23 by tjkopena

Redcap’s February tournament yesterday was a doubles event, 1000 pts per player/2k per team, no allies other than your partner, and no Escalation or Mega-Bulwarks. Doubles is, quite rightly, a particularly popular format so a good bit more players came out than usual. There was a pretty good mix of factions across 10 teams/20 players: Eldar, Grey Knights, Chaos, Guard, Necrons, Tau, Tyranid, and Space Marines from all of their codexes.

With this tournament, Redcap’s has started using Torrent of Fire. ToF’s signup process doesn’t make a ton of sense and their web interface is awkward—nothing seems to be where or flow how I would expect—but it’s kind of neat to have a detailed leaderboard. Previously I usually had to scramble to steal or take a picture of the final printout to get any final record. It was also cool to be out at dinner and people be able to look up post-2nd round rankings as soon as Jake posted them.

Tyranids finally learn how to work with others…

Rob W and I teamed up for this campaign, the Kingbreakers joining his Fyrehaus Battalion to try and enforce some order in a sector apparently full of Necron and some very confused Grey Knights and Dark Angels. Ultimately we finished 2nd after one team was disqualified in the final round for not having a Forge World book for one of their units. All three of our games were super tight and really really good, claiming a draw-win-win and just enough bonus points to edge out 3rd place with an identical record, the guys we tied against in Round 1.

Photos are up in the Flickr gallery, this time including a fair number of the other armies around the store.

Army

Rob and I immediately settled on an alpha strike+castle strategy, splitting focus by offense/defense rather than left/right or a truly integrated combined army. He loves his IG Colossus and I love my Drop Pods, so it seemed reasonable. After playing a scrimmage against each others’ halves last weekend, he brought:

Company Command w/ 2x Snipers, Missile Launcher
Platoon Command w/ 4x Snipers
Veterans w/ Lascannon, 3x Snipers
Infantry Squad x10
Infantry Squad x10
Conscripts x30
Vendetta Gunship
Vendetta Gunship
Colossus w/ Heavy Flamer
Imperial Bunker w/ Quadgun, Comms Relay, Void Shield

Kingbreakers fielded:

Capt Angholan—Vulkan
Librarian Rorschach—Generic Librarian (ML 1, Power Armor)
Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ Poweraxe (Mastercrafted) and 3x Combi-Meltas in Drop Pod
Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x9 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist(Mastercrafted)+Boltgun, Flamer, Drop Pod
Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Chainsword (Mastercrafted)+Bolt Pistol, Meltabombs, Meltagun, Multi-Melta, Drop Pod
Landspeeders x2 in squadron w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer

One of Rob’s heavily converted snipers.

And an amazing Colossus barrel scratchbuild.

One change I would consider to Rob’s list—though admittedly without having a super tight handle on how it played out—would be more heavy weapons, probably swapping out snipers to do so. On my end I’d drop the Landspeeders. Originally I was going to play 10x Sternguard with no Speeders, but swapped in the latter at the last minute because I was worried about not having hardly any special weapons once the alpha strike fizzled out. In practice though, with Rob camped out in our rear and all my army forward, the Landspeeders were alone in the midfield and got wiped out before they could have much impact.

A Landspeeder demonstrating the Kingbreakers’ new “Explosion” camouflage…

The Librarian’s primary role was to be a cheap buff to the Conscript blob, hanging out with his IG buddies in the backfield all day and giving that unit And They Shall Know No Fear. My impression was that this was generally pretty useful, keeping those guys from being swept or running off the table at several key points. With that defensive positioning, Rorschach again assumed the role of Warlord so Angholan could strike forward and throw his life down for the Emperor without giving up a victory point. Obviously this would of course then be the one day were Vulkan’s Warlord Trait, +1 to combat resolution, would have been hugely helpful in tipping the balance of several interminable assaults… Damn it!

Round 1

First up were Harrison and Joel with their Necron and Tau in Crusade (4 objectives) and Hammer+Anvil (long table). They chose sides and went first, but via the Emperor’s grace we seized the initiative.

Kingbreakers prepare for a real bad day.

Castle Fyrehaus detects an intruder!

With a number of ruins on the table, Kingbreakers were able to drop on important targets without being intercepted by the disappointed Riptide. Angholan and Squad Scolirus flamed an entire unit of Firewarriors off an objective, while Harmon’s Sternguard popped Imotekh’s Ghost Ark, claiming First Blood. The Tacticals got decimated by Broadsides and Wraiths. Eventually Angholan took care of the latter and wound up in an interminable, boring close combat challenge with the Tau Commander in an Iridium Suit (2+ save). On the upside, that kept him from being shot at and tied up the Broadsides from doing anything. The remaining single Tactical ran and hid nearby in hopes that Vulkan would win out and clear the objective to be claimed. Meanwhile Squad Titus dropped, again sneaking in without being Intercepted, and wiped out another unit of Firewarriors on an objective.

In our backfield, the IG spent a bunch of turns hanging out. Imotekh effectively suppressed that entire half of our army by keeping the game in Nightfighting. Eventually they got some real action when a Nightscythe arrived and dropped a unit of Warriors off near an objectives. Unfortunately our two Vendettas got slagged by an Annihilation Barge, two whole squads of Guardsmen dying in the flaming wreckage. Combined with the terrain and nightfighting crippling the Quadgun, that dramatic loss enabled the Nightscythe to slip through. Harried for a few turns previously by a deep striking Tau suit popping in and out of cover nearby, the Conscripts and Platoon Command didn’t maneuver in time to physically cordon off our second objective tightly enough, enabling the Warriors to run through and contest it. The Colossus did eventually pound the Necron on their home objective, but didn’t have enough turns without nightfighting to clear them off.

Yep. That’s not helpful.

Also not helpful.

Outcome & Analysis

The game finished a tight draw: 1 objective each, with us claiming First Blood, them Slay the Warlord, and both Linebreaker.

All in all, Alpha striking the Firewarriors definitely worked out. It forced half the Necron troops to stay in their home base to hold it, though they basically would have done so anyway once their Ark transport was popped. More importantly, that eliminated all of the Tau troops, granting us a bonus point. We wound up only beating Harrison+Joel by 2 points in the tournament, so tagging the troops rather than more deadly targets was doubly worthwhile. The Ghost Ark though in hindsight I have mixed feelings about. It would have been good if the Necron troops and HQ moved forward and could have been better shot at by the IG, while leaving nothing behind to claim their home objectives once all the Firewarriors were gone. Taking out the Annihilation Barge instead would have also prevented it from wrecking our Vendettas. On the other hand, with all the terrain and its armor, the Ark would have stood a really good chance of dropping those guys off directly in front of our castled objective, which could have been a huge problem.

The Imperium stands its ground.

Round 2

Next came Byron & Max and their Necron (damn it!) and Grey Knights (WTF?), hugging it out with the Fyrehaus-Kingbreakers in Purge the Alien and Vanguard deployment, bonus points for 1 Troop at full strength and if each player has a unit in the opposing deployment. They chose corners and went first.

Damnit, this guy again?!

Ready for action.

Looking at our alpha strike options, we had a couple dilemmas. Known heretic and huge jerk Coteaz encamped in a Chimera with Psykers and Plasmacannons created a large bubble we couldn’t drop into without being wrecked. Both flanks also presented important targets, with a phalanx of Annihilation Barges on one, and Draigo + Imotekh and troops on the other. Fortunately for us their army spread out too much in its first move, giving us effective places to come down outside the Coteaz bubble. Sternguard attacked the Barges to only partial effect, but took one out in close combat the next turn. Squad Titus though melta dropped a Ghost Ark for First Blood. Enraged at the loss of his pimpmobile, Imotekh lead his new BFF Draigo and some warriors to crush them. That kept them in the backfield and away from Coteaz though, enabling Angholan and Scolirus to drop nearby and wind up in a grueling game-long combat with Draigo.

In the opposite corner, Guardsmen pretty much spent the whole game shooting at 3 Knight Paladins that teleported directly onto our castle. Eventually the Fyrehaus was reduced to throwing shoes at them, but they turned out to be allergic to leather and died just in time. Of particular danger here was how hard our castle was crammed into the corner, meaning that any morale failure stood a good chance in units running off the table. The Librarian’s conditioning and leadership kept the blob alive, though the game did bog down at one point in a healthy debate and TO decision about whether or not a Guardsman’s toe had slipped off the table edge. Despite the bubble wrap working overtime to keep the Colossus alive, Imotekh kept nightfighting going until a whopping turn 5, yet again stymieing the IG artillery. Vendettas arrived just in time to trade kills with the Annihilation Barges as they made their way onto our ground.

Yeah, you go give those Paladins a piece of your mind, Bill. We’ll… cover you from here. Yeah. Go get ’em!

In the closing moments of the battle Angholan won the epic whiff-fest against the xenos-allied heretic Draigo, swinging us by 3 full points (Draigo, Slay, Linebreaker). In retribution for the crippling Nightfighting, Angholan rushed forward to flame some cowering Immortals, dropping one and blocking their full-troop bonus point.

Outcome & Analysis

For several turns the Fyrehaus-Kingbreakers pulled ahead to a substantial lead. The Necron-Knights held tough though, pulling even in midgame. After that the score swung back and forth wildly with big gains on each side as crippled units were finally eliminated, Drop Pods gaussed to death, and so on. Eventually we came out ahead though, 13 to 9, including Slay and Linebreaker. We also claimed a critical bonus point for a full troop by keeping a unit safely ensconced in the bunker.

A couple opposing moves would have dramatically affected the game. Most importantly, their army should have kept tighter to Coteaz. As-was they moved too far from his protective bubble, leaving them prone to the Drop Pod strikes. I’m not sure what benefits Draigo gets as Warlord, but putting him in a very aggressive posture alone on the leading edge as the Warlord risks multiple victory points in Purge missions with Sternguard Pods around. Similarly, the Barges maybe should have ignored the Sternguard and just kept moving forward. They probably would have outpaced the Sternguard, who had no effective ranged attacks on them after the combi-meltas were spent, and better supported the Paladins against our castle. Though the Sternguard only took down one, baiting the others in this way to stay behind a turn was probably worthwhile.

Kingbreakers set a trap for Draigo.

Round 3

Finally we faced Brett and Toby with their IG and Dark Angels in Big Guns (4 objectives) and Dawn of War, bonus points for claiming two secondary objectives and both opposing Warlords eliminated. I was particularly excited about this as Brett and I haven’t played in some time. Toby’s army is also really well done, especially considering he’s only been playing and working on it for a couple months.

Toby’s biker sergeant.

Notably about deployment, Brett dropped two Vengeance Batteries with Battle Cannons on opposite sides of the table, right on the half-line and covering our entire deployment zone. Combined with his Leman Russes and Toby’s Plasmacannons, it was unfortunate for us to draw this match on one of the more open tables. Though it came on anyway, despite our frustrations at prolonged Nightfighting in the earlier games, we were prepared to invoke it via my rolled Warlord trait in order to give some shelter the first turn. Ultimately the Guard’s searchlights though mitigated this.

Sternguard made a super tight landing inside bubble wrap around the Leman Russes but again whiffed on the meltas despite Vulkan re-rolls. Fortunately they were able to hide from serious retribution, literally in a crevice between a rock (an actual rock) and a hard place (their Drop Pod), and tied up a Dreadnought for the game. Angholan and Scolirus flamed a Company Command Squad for First Blood and Slay. Angholan quickly wound up in single combat with Azrael for literally the entire game with zero wounds scored, tying up the DA leader and a blob of troops well away from an objective. The other Tacticals came down to explode a Russ, finish the Dreadnought, and threaten an objective, tying up a Techmarine and his Servitors’ heavy weapons in the process.

“I can do this all damn day!” “Well so can I!”

Back home, Fyrehaus took out the Vengeance Battery directly in front of their castle before it could have much impact. Afterward they spent the game in a running engagement with Deathwing Terminators teleported onto their flank and supported by bikers sweeping around. This was a close cut thing. The Terminators eventually died but the bikers literally ran circles around our castle. Though not impossible, claiming one of the two home objectives in the endgame would be difficult with this unit around, and two was definitely out of the question. In the end the Emperor again helped out, ensuring the remaining traitorous Dark Angel biker crashed and died trying to jump the flaming wreckage of the Colossus.

Figure 1: Cheap, expendable troops make excellent bubble wrap.

Actually a surprisingly good defense: Setting your own tanks on fire.

Fyrehas Vendettas meanwhile swept in to take out a Leman Russ, then deposited their troops to work toward the two opposing objectives before turning around to assist in home field anti-Terminator defense. One squad died in a valiant headlong rush into Dark Angels plasma Tacticals, while the other was lost to a man in cut-throat ruins combat with an opposing Platoon on the objective near table center. Their sacrifices however bought time for a Vendetta to hover back around and blast the Unforgiven off their objective, securing the victory.

Just in time.

Outcome & Analysis

The false Imperials were vanquished, with each side holding 1 objective, Slay, and a Heavy Support kill, but Fyrehaus-Kingbreakers also taking First Blood, Linebreaker, and an additional Heavy Support kill. We additionally took another Bonus point for claiming two Secondary Objectives. This was another super close game that swung back and forth. For a while we were up, then the game was close, then things looked grim, and finally it pulled out at the last possible moment.

One mistake on the opposing side was they forgot about the remaining Vengeance Battery for most of the game. I chalk this up to simple unfamiliarity with the IG army in use. On our side, one mistake was that after destroying the Dreadnought I could have gone toward either of the opposing objectives. I went toward the more heavily defended one, hoping to break through the Techmarine unit and contest with the Dark Angels. The Techmarine is too survivable though and slowly picked off my Tacs. In contrast, my Marines could have easily assisted our own IG in sweeping the Infantry Squad on the other objective and then easily sat there holding that.

Huddle up, boys, we gotta figure out what we’re doin’ here!

Rules Questions

Not surprisingly, several questions about how doubles work did come up. A minor one is whether or not I could take actions in the shooting phase before Rob issued his orders. Though disadvantageous to us, we strongly assumed not.

More important are the army-wide effects. I didn’t really think about it until Colin pointed it out, and don’t believe it would have affected our game much, but I don’t believe the Necron+Tau combo were rolling Imotekh’s lightening against the Tau. Tthe Necron+Grey Knights combo though was super eager to roll lightning against their own guys for the sheer chaos of it…

A more general question was about Imotekh’s lightning against fortifications, i.e., units embarked in buildings. Clearly though don’t hit the embarked unit, just like a transport. But does lightning strike the building? I believe Imotekh’s Storm is worded as hitting all enemy models, which I would argue does not include fortifications. A different but connected question is whether or not the lightning hits Void Shields when striking units on battlements. We all assumed it would.

Imotekh: Making problems in every possible way since before your god was born.

General Analysis

Rob and I each made a significant tactical error around objectives that would have been a big boost: Fyrehaus not blocking off a home objective against the Necron in Round 1, which would have converted a draw to a win, and Kingbreakers going for the wrong objective at the end of Round 3, which would have converted a win to a crushing victory. Other than that we played well and I’m happy with the result.

One thing we did underplay throughout the tournament was the Librarian. He was definitely useful giving passive buffs (And They Shall Know No Fear, his high leadership) to the Conscripts, but there were a few important times we forgot to use his powers when they would have actually been useful. Rob of course doesn’t usually field Librarians and the model wasn’t really in his army, and on my part I was basically handing him over to Rob for the backfield defense and then forgetting about him, so we blew it a couple times.

Given that I usually play Drop Pods and generally close range shooting, I’ve never really appreciated just how strong is Imotekh’s enforced Nightfighting. In the first two rounds here though it was really crippling for the bulk of each game. The Necron+Tau combo is particularly powerful due to that, with the Tau and their Darksun Filters ignoring the Nightfighting.

Forget this whole thing of “Crash to earth in an exploding pod and then stand around getting shot at.” Next time we’re bringin’ one of these sweet chariots.

As noted up top, this was a rare occasion I didn’t play Angholan as Warlord, and I could have actually really used Vulkan’s Warlord Trait of +1 to combat results. For once he didn’t actually die at any point, and instead spent each game in ridiculous combats featuring characters with 2+ saves swinging AP 3 swords at each other. In some ways that wasn’t bad, each time he tied up entire units and contested or defended objectives all by himself. But it would have been nice to win some combats and force opponents to retreat or be swept. That trait would have made a big difference in Round 1 in particular, greatly boosting his chances to sweep the Tau and allowing a remaining Tactical to claim an objective.

Also as above, 5 more Sternguard with 3 combi-meltas would have been a good swap for the Landspeeders. However, another interesting idea would be to exchange for Scouts in a Landspeeder Storm! I’m dying to get one of those in play, and this would have been a good place for it. With the Comms Relay re-roll and the Storm’s fast movement, we could have potentially kept them back until mid or late game, then flew on to shore up an objective in the endgame.

Wait for it… Wait for it…

That in turn would have addressed a basic problem of ours. As always, the tradeoff with an alpha strike is that once it runs out of steam you’re going to be struggling to hold onto the lead you hopefully built up. A late arriving cheap Troop unit could have helped with that. As-was, you could really see this in each of our games. For the first couple turns it would look like we were way up, but then as my guys got eliminated the games would draw much closer and then it’d be tough & nail. The first two games it was particularly funny: With the Nightfighting from Imotekh, Rob would be really crippled to do anything for a couple turns while I was fighting heavily on the front. Then my guys would all be dead or in combat, leaving me with little to do, while he would be super busy defending our backfield.

The Guard await their turn.

Conclusion

All in all, this was another excellent day of gaming. Rob and I have a similar mindset to the game, and our two armies and play style complemented each other well here. Our opponents were also great, and each game was really close and super fun.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Pew pew pew pew!