Masters 2012 Report Pt 4 (the finale!)

Right, better get on into it then!

In the build up to the final round, Daniel Hayden looked to be pulling a big upset and was in the process of destroying Pascal in Kill points. This was setting things up nicely for an epic finale, as this would have put me 16-17 points ahead of him, meaning if he could produce a big win against me he would slap me down and walk away with the whole thing. 

Clearly Dan's Flyrants were about to gift him the tournament...

Alas Daniel did what Daniel does best, and threw it all away at the most crucial moment, drawing to Pascal 6-7. This meant that mathematically, I could have spent the next 2 hours punching Daniel in the balls for a max sports hit, then gotten tabled, and would still be winning the event. However, that did not make the event a dead rubber, and we both went into the round hungry for a win; Daniel aiming to secure second place and prove a point, while I'm a colossal jerk and wasn't going to let anyone get a win against me if I could help it.

Onto round 7 then... Battle of the pregnant flying dinosaurs in space!

Any caption at this point would be redundant really.

 Round 7: Daniel Hayden
Mission: Purge The Alien
Deployment: Dawn of War

This was set up to be the round of the event. Dan had what I felt was
the most competitive list, and the best chance of winning going into
the tournament. Right up until the final dice roll of his round 6
game, it looked like this round would decide the event. Unfortunately
for Dave, an earlier draw against Haydn and now a draw against Pascal
meant he would be scrapping it out for 2nd.

Dan had 2 flyrants with 2 powers, 3 tervigons with 3 powers and all
the usual upgrades, 3 squads of gaunts to make them scoring and 4 hive
guard.

It's a dance party with psychic powers for music!

Dan won the roll for first turn, and gave it to me. Having looked at
how his army worked, it seemed like he would be hinging his gameplan
on enfeebling wraiths, and shooting them with the flyrants. Giving me
first turn was an effort to bring me inside enfeebles 24inch range at
the start of the game. Especially as every single MC in his army
rolled enfeeble, and 2 of them rolled Iron Arm as well!

I deployed as if I intended to push everything right down his throat,
and Dan deployed to match it, with gaunts and tervigons up front to
punish any t3 wraiths foolish enough to assault them. His flyrants
deployed at the rear to be outside of any t1 nastyness.


Turn 1 - me: I immediately moved my wraiths backwards and to one side,
turning my central deployment into a refused flank, and forcing him to
now come to me wading through 4+ turns of shooting before he would
reach me in piecemeal. My annihilation barges moved into range of the
iron arm tervigon, and once the whole army had shot, it was dead.

Turn 1 – Dan: Dan was now forced to come in, or risk continuously
bleeding killpoints. 2 tervigons spawned, with one having a wee
accident and clamming up. One flyrant iron-armed to t9, but did not
fully commit in pushing forward. The other had endurance cast on it
and pushed centrally.

Hive guard pen’d an annihilation barge, so the flyrant then blew up
its now AV11.

That jerk Flyrant did this to my poor vehicle.

Turn 2 – Me: Both flyers came in. Meanwhile the wraiths continued to
move backwards and sideways to be out of range of any enfeebling
rather than the 1 flyrant who was now target alpha. The first flyer
shot at him, doing 2 wounds, and grounding him, which did a 3rd wound.
Everything else then shot him, and did nothing, until the cheeky gun
on the bottom of the command barge took his final wound.

The warrior squads from reserve shot up a depleted termagant squad
that had suffered from the first ones death, and wiped it out.

Turn 2 – Dan: Dan pushed the second flyrant up into the same spot, and
a tervigon assaulted the command barge. Gaunts advanced up my right
flank, which was totally empty now, so were making the hard hike over
to me. Hive guard managed to pen the command barge, so the flyrant
again blew it up with his devourers. The tervigon charged him, but
promptly failed his mindshackle scarab test and was reduced to 4
wounds. A horde of gaunts were also in this assault, but a challenge
was protecting the lord from their attacks.

Turn 3 – Me: I pushed a wraith squad into these gaunts, while
everything else shot the other flyrant to death. As this turn I would
now have too big a lead, I pushed both other wraith units forward to
keep pressure on, knowning I would lose 1 but mop up the rest of the
game in the process. In the combat, the wraiths wiped the gaunts out,
but after passing his mindshackle test the tervigon hulk-smashed my
lord to death for only 2 more wounds in return.

Lest we forget....

Turn 3 - Dan: The last free tervigon enfeebles the nearest wraith
squad, spits out its last unit of gaunts with the last getting trapped
until an emergency C-Section can be performed, shoots the wraiths with
2 units of gaunts helping, before 1 unit and the tervigon make it into
assault. A couple of gaunts are killed, and a wound is pulled off the
tervigon, but the wraiths are reduced to just 1 wound.
In the other combat, the wraiths finished the tervigon that had killed
the lord, who got a big consolidate.

Turn 4 - Me: One unit of hiveguard are shot to death, and 9/10 gaunts
are killed in another unit, while the wraith unit that had killed a
tervigon multi assault another gaunt unit's remnants and the last of
the hive guard, wiping both out.
The fresh wraith squad assaults the gaunts who are locked with a
single wounded wraith and tervigon, wiping out the gaunts while the
tervigon suffers another wound dropping to 4.

Turn 4 - Dan: Dan now has a wounded tervigon in combat, a single gaunt
who has gone to ground, and a 9 man unit of gaunts pushing for my
deployment zone for linebreaker, successfully passing their
instinctive behavior roll in the process, so the turn is fairly quick.
The wraiths strip another 2 wounds for no loss.

Turn 5 - Me: The wraiths who beat up the hive guard breakdance in Dans
deployment zone, the 2 flyers force a moral check on the gaunts
closing in on my deployment zone, causing them to run, and the
tervigon is finished off along with the solo gaunt.

Turn 5 - Dan: Dan passes the rally check and heads back into my
deployment zone for line breaker, and the game finishes at 12-4 kill
points.

Win - 15
First Blood - 1, Tervigon
Line Breaker - 1, A Wraith unit
Slay The Warlord - 1-1, Flyrant, Necron Overlord

Dan had played fantastically to get to this point, and had 2nd place
locked in very tightly. In another mission where pulling back like I
did would mean giving the entire board control over to him, the game I
felt would have been a lot closer. Unfortunately as it stood, the game
was able to play out extremely one sided due to my significantly
better mobility, range, and decision to not just shovel units into
hungry open tyranid mouths.

I must say it was fantastic to see his tyranid list do so well all
weekend long, both in terms of further game development and variety,
and in terms of Dans development as a player. Dan has always had a
wealth of potential, just lacking enough polish to pull through some
of the higher pressure situations. With every event he seems to get
better and better, and seems to have improved greatly since the ATC
experience, which was the main aim in bringing him in the first place.
I look forward to seeing him stomp sucka's over the next tournament
season.

So, that was it! The masters for another year. When the dust had settled, the 2 people I brought with me to the ATC rounded out 2nd and 3rd places - which felt vindicating, and after a year of being separated from my precious I was able to reclaim the trophy and take out first place.

Awww yeahh!

I must admit going into the game I had had basically zero time to prepare, so felt pretty down on my chances, hoping on a few theories and a basic understanding from reading the book a few times without getting to put any of it into practice. As such, I had already resigned myself to finishing a little lower in the pecking order; staying competitive throughout the weekend actually came as quite a surprise for me!

Over the weekend I'll see if I can get some pics of my army up, as it's changed a fair bit since the last time I posted.
Until then!

Masters 2012 Report, Pt 2

Right, so, the continuation of yesterdays post then.

Well, at least Jack got the reference...

Rounds 3, 4 and 5 shall be known as "The Flyer Power Hour" with an average of 4.3 flyers each between my next 3 opponents. Thankfully I'm playing an army that gets handed anti-flyer tools hand over fist.

Round 3: Ivan Soo

Mission: The Emperors Will

Deployment: Dawn of War

Ivans list was Nemesor Zandrek, 2 lance crypteks with a pulse, 1 chronomotron cryptek, 4 5man warrior squads, 4 night scythes, 3 doom scythes. Effectively CronAir or Croissant Airways, depending on how you look at it.

I knew this game would be fairly difficult, given my wraiths and command barge would be useless all game, but with Tesla and 2 effective flyers of my own I knew I had a better shot than most at countering it. The plan would be to put my wraiths to work as getting in the way and blocking places to put flyers, to minimize the amount they could shoot my tesla.

Ivan won the roll for going first and elected for me to take it, thus giving him the chance to respond to my flyers. He set his objective up fairly centrally, and I was able to place mine next to a great little building that completely blocked LoS from all but 2 very narrow angles.

T1 - Me: With just Zandrek and his buddies hiding towards the back of the board, out of my threat range, I shoveled everything forward.

T1 – Ivan: Zandrek gave himself nightvision, had his little buddy peer through the fog and fired 2 lances at a barge. 1 hit. 1 pen. 1 failed 4+ cover save (where the nightfight would have made it a 3+, which is what I rolled, curse you nightvision!), and a 6 on the damage table. Hmm, ok then!

T2 – Me: Everything else continued to shovel towards his board edge. Neither flyer showed up, yay! The wraith squad hungry for some vengeance pounced on Zandrek and his crypteks, wiping them out, and spreading out on the spot so that there were no eligible places for him to get back up.

T2 – Ivan: Ivan had 2 doomscythes and 3 nightscythes show up. Between the LOS shenanigans, forcing him to come on in less favorable positions, boosting one clear across the table to make an early play for my objective, and my coversaves – the only losses this turn for me were a wraith. One of the death rays failed to pen, and the other got coversaved.

Con Air would have been oh so much better with robots...

T3 – Me: Both flyers show up, and gun for his in such a way as to minimize return fire. The 2 annihilation barges get into significantly safer positions while lining up snapfire shots at Ivans flyers, while 1 wraith squad starts to head back to help out near my objective. Now that the bulk of blocking is done, my strategy is to wind up cramming so many wraiths/vehicles around each objective that come the final turn Ivan can’t sneak anyone close enough to them. Both Doomscythes are destroyed, and a nightscythe has its velocity locked.

T3 – Ivan: The remaining nightscythe shows up, but the doomscythe does not. One of my flyers dies, but this is the only loss I suffer. The nightscythe that had jumped across the table unloads its troop unit, and flies way away from any action. The squad rapidfires at my squad cowering in the building, killing 3 but one gets back up.

T4  - Me: The wraiths go and pounce on the squad that disembarked. The other wraiths surround his board edge, ready to eat scoring units that are forced on. I drop a 5man squad off on his objective, a turn earlier than I would have liked but at this stage I want to keep my flyer on the table to try bait firepower away from the troops. My other squad in reserves from the nightscythe dying show up and hunker down near the objective giving me 2 squads on it with difficult line of sight.

and I only manage to kill a single nightscythe.

T4 – Ivan: Ivan makes a play for trying to shove me off my objective, but can only draw LOS to a few models with his flyers. The doomscythe comes in and tries to kill a barge, but instead kills a wraith and 3 of my warriors on his objective. That flyer that was zooming around not part of the game before? It sneaks in to finish the last 2 warriors in that squad on his objective and stops them from being able to get back up. Another squad tries to kill the warriors inside my own los blocking ruin, but only kills 1.

T5 – me: potentially the last turn of the game. I kill his troops in such a way that he cannot possibly get his objective. The wraiths I pulled back wipe out a troop unit, leaving him just 1 scoring unit inside a nightscythe. I block off the objective so that he cannot contest it with the unit, and shoot everything at that nightscythe, but it all bounces off a fortunate string of evasion rolls.

T5 – Ivan: Ivan has his last ploy to kill the troops on my objective, but can only kill 3 out of 4 members of one of the squads, and 1 of the 2 in the other, relying on 2 failed moral checks for the game – which I pass both of. To rub salt in the wound most of them get back up with reanimation protocols. With the position Ivans flyers are in, he only has an outside chance if the game goes to turn 7. We play it out and there is a turn 6, but it stops there.

We play the game out from there and the last of his scoring units are all dead, the game stops before turn 7 leaving me with 2 on my own objective, and a fairly emphatic win despite some fairly average shooting results at flyers after my first(turn 3) turn of it.

Win – 15.

First Blood – 0, Ivan got my Annihilation Barge first.

Warlord – 1, Zandrek

Line Breaker – 1, a squad of wraiths.

Final result, 17-1.

Cronair was always going to be a fairly annoying game to fight. The death rays were always only really going to get one shot however, and despite my troops being quite fragile, they are quite well protected. Being able to really limit Ivan’s flyers to only shoot good targets every other turn, and in cover situations etc. really meant I was able to minimize my losses and control the flow of the game quite nicely. I also feel though that as Necrons, I have an abundance of anti flyer strategies and tools I can employ that other codices simply can’t field currently. I can certainly understand peoples immense frustration when playing against this list, as for some army books it is just a couple of hours of rolling armor saves and putting models back into their figure case with increasing velocity.

All make way for the Amazing Mephiston and his 3 flying short-busses

Round 4: Pascal Roggen

Mission: Crusade

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Pascal had Mephiston, 3 Storm Ravens dripping upgrades, 2 furioso dreads, a 5 man squad, and 10 assault marines.

We had an objective in each corner pretty much (though I had mine a fair bit closer together so 1 wraith squad could defend both), and after winning the roll for first turn, Pascal elected that I set up and go first.

I set up centrally, in such a way that all my units could respond to a threat wherever required.

Pascal set up the 5 man squad hiding behind a large LOS building, and Meph cowering behind it also.

T1 - Me: I push everything up slightly more centrally, but make a huge push with my command barge lord, trying to bait out meph into wraith assault range.

T1 – Pascal: Turns out Pascal isn’t that dumb, and doesn’t take the bait, boo! Instead they shuffle about to make sure they’re not gonna get shot by annihilation barges.

T2 – Me: My vehicles jump around a bit here and there so they will have 4 + cover saves. I want him to come in the full 36 inches towards me, so I put one of my barges inside the 12 inch range for the melta, hoping he will go for it.

The lord sweep attacks the small 5 man squad, killing 2, and in the resulting assault they are gone. Both my flyers behave and don’t show up. That’s 2 games in a row. Good boys!

T2 – Pascal: only 1 storm raven shows up, and pushes deep to try kill the barge. The assault marines deepstrike in on top of one of my objectives, combat squadding, with the other squad scattering to be next to it. Meph assaults the command barge, fails his s10 roll, but passes his mindshackle scarab test, boo. Thanks to my 2+ save though, I only take 1 wound, and do 1 in return to meph.

T3 – Me: Both my flyers show up. I bring them on so that both squads can get out and rapid fire one of the combat squads of assault marines, in conjunction with the third troop squad already on the table. A wraith squad heads back to the other squad. The wraith squad I had been pushing towards meph is close enough for a charge with a big enough roll, so I sweep attack him causing 1 wound, bringing him to 3, and set him up so I can charge him if the wraiths don’t make it.

In the shooting phase I manage to destroy the storm raven, which in turn immobilizes the dread it was carrying. In hindsight, I wonder if this would have actually destroyed the dread like it did in 5^th? Either way it did not matter. The rapid fire reduced that 5man squad to 1 model left.

The wraiths made the assault with the other 5man squad, wiping them out. The other wraith squad rolled high enough to reach Meph. He perilsed himself when rolling the s10, taking himself down to 2 wounds, and the wraiths took the i1 whipcoiled mephiston on a trip to rend-city.

T3 – Pascal: The remaining 2 ravens show up, again pushing for annihilation barges. They destroy 1 of them. The last assault marine charges a 5man warrior squad, who gun him down on the way in.

T4 – Me: Both squads hop back in their flyers, which fly off to shoot at Pascals flyers, as does everything else. In a monumental effort of evade saves, Pascal saves over half a dozen penetrating hits alone, and neither raven is downed (obviously I was rolling ridiculously well to generate that number of pens in the first place!). The dread is blown up.

T4 – Pascal: with no hope in site, Pascal now aims for the warlord, and blows up my command barge, but the warlord himself is fine.

T5 – Me: I zoom up and drop a squad on each of his objectives. Both storm ravens are destroyed and the dreadnaught removed, ending the game with a tabling.

Win – 15

First Blood – 1, tactical squad

Warlord – 1, Mephiston

Linebreaker – 1, 2 squads of warriors

This was probably my easiest game of the tournament, only losing an annihilation barge and a command barge. Good rolls whenever I needed them made it a lot more one sided than it needed to be, with Pascals string of good luck in cover saves coming too late. His list tends to live or die on whether or not you can kill storm ravens, and unfortunately for him, if you can, there’s really nothing he can do about it other than roll over and let you scratch his belly.

In saying that, Pascal was pretty upbeat throughout the game, never sulking when things were majorly not going his way, and was on the back of an all-nighter, so some big props there are deserved definitely!

By the beginning of round 4 I was pretty damn tired, and it kinda feels like I may have the turns slightly askew, so I apologise if that's the case. That being said, the order of things is pretty much right so at least there's that.

Update - Masters Armies

Just a heads up on armies for the Masters:

40k

The Chaos codex being released on 8th October will be used at the 5th Annual Masters in December. Participants will have had two months to digest and play the book and that is ample time.

No other books released after 8 October will be used.

Fantasy

The last Fantasy Army Book allowable at the Masters will be the White Dwarf update of the Daemons of Chaos. Although Warriors of Chaos are rumoured for November, one month is insufficient time for everyone to come up to speed.

Hopefully GW will have released FAQs for Vampire Counts and The Empire by that date.

How the west was won...

Well... bit of an update to type out here, hopefully that should make up for the few and far between nature of my posts :)

As most of you are aware, last weekend, Team NZ attended the Australasian Team Challenge (or Australasian Team Championship, depending on who you ask on what day of the week).

I had left this fairly low-key building up to the event, as to both avoid building too much hype and thus further exacerbating the weight of expectation, and also a couple of people had been fairly vocal in their dissatisfaction with not being selected. Quite frankly I have 0 energy available for these people, so decided it wasn't worth the effort.

All that is of course moot now, as we have the hot little trophy in our hands!

So, first up, a summary of the event itself. The ATC was spawned in the wake of the ETC, and is very similar in many respects. Teams of 8 players, with a restriction on using each codex no more than once within a team, compete. Individuals are paired up by the captains in what is essentially an 'I go you go' set up, and their results are combined to achieve the total round score out of 160 (20 per player). 0-74 = a loss, 75-85 = a draw, and 86-160 = a win. A win was worth 2 match points, a draw 1, and a loss 0. 

The teams were as follows:

Victoria - Captained by Josh Diffey

Queensland - Captained by Stacy Dennis

New South Wales - Captained by Dennis Fung

South Australia - Captained by Alun Gallie (who showed up the first night in an all blacks jersey with a kiwi accent!)

ACT - Captained by Jeff Dunster

Tasmania - Captained by Simon Russell

Western Australia - Captained by Matt Aird

and finally New Zealand - Captained by myself.

More detail on who were in the other teams, and what exactly each list was can be found here: http://www.australasianteamchallenge.com/Teams2012.php

As for our own team, I shall go into in detail below, but here are the lads!

Those of you with keen eyes will notice the map of Australia on  Nikola's medal is suspiciously backwards.

Our results were as follows:

Round 1: Tasmania - win 120-40

Round 2: Victoria - Win 96-64

Round 3: New South Wales - Win 101-59

Round 4: Queensland - Win 96-64

Round 5: South Australia - Win 87-73

Round 6: Western Australia - Loss 65-95

The members of the team were:

The youngest on the team; Daniel Hayden brought with him a wealth of enthusiasm, a bunch of jumper blood angels, some longfang wannabe's and Mephiston to hold their hands. The primary reason for including Dan in the team was to saturate him in experience. Dan has a lot of potential but is still fairly new to the pointy end of tournaments. I felt this was a great opportunity to develop him further and inject more skill into the community.

Dan had a bit of a rough time over the weekend, scoring 4 points against Tasmania's Space Wolves, 0 points to Victoria's Dark Eldar (after losing ~1050 points in a single tank shock from a shock prow raider), a 9 point draw against NSW's IG, a 9 point draw against QLD's Blood Angels, a 15 point win against SA's Blood Angels, and a 9 point draw against WA's Deathwing. Overall I was fairly satisfied with Dans efforts over the weekend, and his win against the SA Blood Angels was absolutely critical in securing the round, given the shocker some of the rest had! Ultimately though, I'll be looking to make sure he capitilises on this experience and improves dramatically over the next tournament year.

The lazy-lover himself, Reverend Doug Sainsbury. Doug played Warhammer-on-Training-Wheels all weekend with a fairly typical Coteaz+psyfleman+purifier+razorback spam list, though it is worth noting I felt he made the strongest list out of that codex over the weekend. Doug had easily been the best Grey Knight player over the last year in NZ, and was a blank slate in that he would listen and follow instructions without question. Dougs biggest weakness historically has been giving up mentally early on, and over the weekend where this suddenly was not an option in any way shape or form, he really discovered that battling through this more often than not wound up with a fairly satisfying win! I'll be looking for this shift in attitude to continue, and see this as one of the biggest positive outcomes from this tournament.

Doug scored 16 points against Tasmanias Grey Knights, Snatched 15 points from Vic's Space Wolves, Eeked out a 13 point win against NSW's Necrons, an 11 point draw against QLD's IG, a 20 nil pasting of poor SA's Dark Eldar, but then went down with 1 point against WA's Necrons.

With the exception of South Australia (which was a move that cost them the round ultimately), Doug was always a player put forward early meaning his opponent got to pretty much pick who ever would face him. To do so well under these circumstances is a very impressive achievement.

Haydn "I Got This!" Korach, aka the man that lost the Battle of the Ditch to some Welsh chump! I had initially envisioned a different role for Haydn, but with Jack Dunn declining the offer to play Haydn was immediately the next best choice. Of my traditional "Match" players (which I will go into later), Haydn performed the best, so obviously I am very pleased with his results. With the army compositions Haydn didn't have a lot of strongly favorable match ups, but worked very well with what he had. Over the weekend Haydn scored 16 points against Tasmania's Orks, 17 points over Vic's Lash CSM, went down with 5 points against NSW's Mech BA, scored 16 against QLD's Lash CSM, went down with 5 points against SA's Necrons, and got a 19 point win against WA's Tyranids.

Henare Akari, AKA our token blackman. I had a lot of people challenge me on the inclusion of Hen in the team. In  response, Hen effectively delivered two middle fingers to all those who doubted him, and was absolutely outstanding all weekend. A fairly unorthadox twist on Black Templars, Hen  got a 10 point draw in a bad match up against Tasmanias Deathwing, scored 19 points vs Vic's Blood Angels, Scored 19 points against NSW's Space Wolves, got a 12 point draw against QLD's Tyranids (where if the game had gone to turn 6 it would have been a significant win to him), an unfortunate 2 points against SA's paladin list, and 18 points against WA's Space Wolves. Hen really stood up to the challenge over the weekend, and I am immensely proud of him. Hen is always a quiet, solid achiever who can be relied on to achieve when the going gets tough, which is why he was always an auto-inclusion for me.

Me! Charlie St Clair, or as I was known for the weekend, Le Coq... let's hope that one doesn't stick. Like Doug and Nikola, I was a "Put Forward" player, meaning that in 4-5 games my opponents got to choose the match up, and the remaining 1-2 games I was the secret "champion". Over the weekend I got a 20 point win against Tasmania's Dark Eldar, a 20 point win against Vic's Sisters of Battle, an 18 point win against NSW's Deathwing, a 19 point win against QLD's Spacewolves, 18 points against SA's Orks, and a 5 point loss against WA's Orks. Overall I was reasonably satisfied with how I went at the event, though ultimately am disappointed in myself with that last loss. While it was pretty much the one list at the entire event, I managed to set up a bit of a risk turn 2, so that if Snikrot and Ghazghull had shown up any other turn, it would have been a 20-0 win to me. A defeat is always that much more gutting when you get to taste victory for but the briefest of moments!

Dave Lewy... Hmmm. Dave will be quite disappointed with himself over the weekend, dropping quite a few games that going into the event he would be very confident in. It will be interesting to see how Dave bounces back from it, but he is a quality player and I'm sure he'll be fine. Daves help in the build up to the event, and taking on all the admin work was an absolute godsend. The only 2 flights I booked, I managed to book from the wrong damn city. If left up to me, we would be playing in the Mumbai Team Championship. Over the weekend, Dave was a dedicated "Match" player, and I managed to orchestrate fairly green match ups for him in most of his rounds. He scored an 18 point win against Tasmania's Blood Angels, a 3 point loss to Vic's Mech GK, a 4 point loss to NSW's triple landraider space marines, an 18 point win against QLD's Grey Knights, a 4 point loss against SA's Space Wolves, and a 3 point loss against WA's IG. All ribbing aside, QLD's Grey Knights were a list I had no real answer to, and Dave's win over it was crucial in securing that round. When Dave did lose, he was able to make it not an absolute pasting, and this was enough to carry it through. In fact, at the end of the round against SA, the entire round hinged on Dave being able to minimize his loss, which he did fantastically.

Nikola Jacsic. Oh my god. Going into this event, all the other Aussies thought Nikola was a girl, and were already basically arranging the order in which they would run a train in him(her). I threw him up first basically every single round, and despite logic and popular belief saying otherwise, he kept stomping face and producing mad results. After his display over the weekend, I am thankful that he is in Uni and not in High-school, otherwise I'd probably be on some registered list of offenders due to some of the thoughts I've been having. *awkward silence*. This boss crab-handed baller got an 18 point win vs Tasmania's IG, a 17 point win vs Vic's IG, an 18 point win vs NSW's Dark Eldar, an 11 point draw against QLD's Orks, an 18 point win against SA's IG, before joining me in the losers circle in round 6 going down with a 4 point loss to WA's paladins.

Brendan "Slowplay" Dee. Oh how he came to rue that nickname by the end of the event, despite only having one game called for time, and even that at least got 5 turns in I believe. Brendan was my "4th man" - meaning he would be a put up, but only in rounds I lost the roll off. I only won the roll off ~twice, which meant he wound up being put up a LOT. These days everyone inherently has multiple answers to Guard, which meant that Brendan was being thrown under a bus for almost the whole weekend. Not once did he ever complain about this, but completely understood that was the role he would be playing for the team and aimed to minimize his points bleed all weekend. He started with an 18 point win against Space Marines from Tasmania, played against Victoria's scarab farm and got a respectable 5 points (talk about one sided match up), got a handy 15 point win against NSW that was very important to the round, went down hard with a big 0 against QLD's Necrons, a 5 point loss against SA's Space Marines, and a 6 point loss against WA's Blood Angels.

Overall we also did quite impressively in the individual rankings, with me coming 1st, Nikola coming 6th, Hen coming 12th, Haydn coming 14th and Doug coming 20th. This was rounded off with Dave coming 42nd, Brendan 44th, and Dan 47th, out of the 64 people at the event.

So what did all this get us? These shiny pieces of bling, made lovingly by a very talented New Zealander over at http://lasertouch.com.au/ .

Ohhhh Shiny

You may prefer this view however. I know I certainly do. *fap fap fap fap fap*

All polished off, sterilized after Nikola got a hold of them, and put into a nice comfy home.

I was going to add some content around the match up process itself, and why/how I felt this went significantly in our favor, winning the event for us, but lets be honest, this is already a novel and none of you are still reading! As such, I will slide it in later in the week. 

Until then,

Au revoir!

OTT - Round 4 - BUT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

Round 4

Opponent: Mark Buttle - Eldar

Mission: Take and Hold the table centre. Pitched Battle deployment.

Points: 1500

Mark Had: Autarch with fusion gun, 2 x fire dragons in 2 wave serpents, 2 fire prisms, 3 vypers with shuriken cannons, 2 x dire avengers in wave serpents, 1 x dire avengers in holofield falcon.

I think that was roughly it for 1500, the ole steel trap is getting a little rusty.

I won the roll for first turn, and took it, setting up centrally. Our table was fairly devoid of terrain, except that it had a skyshield landing pad in the centre... handy for take and hold!

In Response, Mark went into reserve entirely.

Turn 1: I moved and ran everything up to have a solid starting position.

Turn 2: I finished my moving up, boosted my lords for coversaves, etc.

In Marks turn 2, he rolled for his reserves, and proceeded to get everything on. He was then extremely silly with this however, and moved each firedragon wave serpent flat out to park directly infront of each command barge, which I had 1 on each side of the skyshield pad (so a good 12-15 inches away from each other), and then brought the entire rest of his army on, mostly only moving 6 inches to fire at the wraiths.

Of course because I had made it nightfight, very little could see, and when the dust had cleared, the only thing I lost was an unlucky command barge - happy with that for a loss tally!

Turn 3: Turn 3 was the biggy. As Mark had brought his holofalcon into the scarabs charge range and only moved 6, they went and ate the crap out of this. The vypers were decimated by Tesla Destructor firepower, while a sweep attack took out one of the firedragon wave serpents. The wraiths then went and killed a Fire Prism, while firepower from crypteks only killed 1 Wave Serpent, leaving him with 2 left - though I had at least pulled the guns off these.

In Marks Turn 3 the firedragons who fell out of their wave serpent but only lost 3 in the ensuing firepower thereafter blew up the remaining command barge (but in the process killed enough of themselves in the blast that they fled unable to rally), while the autarch blew up an annihilation barge. All dire avengers disembarked and fired at wraiths, along with the other intact fire dragon squad I was unable to encourage to leave their sanctuary, but 2 wraiths remained while any remaining firepower had a crack at scarabs but only killed a single base. The firedragon waveserpent meanwhile buggered off, to try contest the secondary objective later in the game.

Turn 4: The scarabs went and killed the remaining fire prism, the autarch was tesla zapped to death, the intact firedragon squad was assaulted by a lord and warrior squad, while wraiths dealt to one dire avenger squad and another tesla'd to death. Lastly the other overlord took out one of the 2 remaining wave serpents.

In Marks turn 4 the remaining Wave Serpent and solitary vyper tried to hide for a turn 5 contest of the secondary objective.

Turn 5: I mop up any remaining models, leaving just the wave serpent and vyper.

In Marks Turn 5, the wave serpent tries to tankshock onto the objective - a death or glory wrecks the vehicle. The vyper tries to instead hide in my deployment zone to rob me of a point.

There is a turn 6, and I blow up the vyper.

A fairly straight forward game, the minute Mark brought all his key units on in charge range of my combat units though, it was just an exercise in mopping up. Not the best matchup for him, though this didn't need to be quite so one sided.

When the dust settled, the round had been scored 20-3 to me, leaving me on 76/80 points for the event so far, with 2 2000 point games coming up the next day.

Stay posted for the anticlimactic finish!

OTT 2012 - Round 3, 1011011010101 (smash the alien)

Round 3

Opponent: Daniel Heyden – Tyranids

Mission: 5 objectives worth 0, each time a unit dies that objective gains 1 point of value. Dawn of War deployment.

Points Value: 1500

Daniel had:

2 Tyranid primes with some random close combat weapons that didn’t really come up so I didn’t pay much attention, 2 x 2 Hive Guard, 10 Ymgarl Genestealers, 2xTervigons, 2x10 Gaunts, and a unit of 2 carnifex with quad devourers.

I had:

2 Lords with Mind Shackle Scarabs and Warscythes on command barges, 2x4 heralds of destruction each unit with a solar pulse, 4x5 Necron Warriors, 5 Wraiths with 1 whipcoil, 5 Scarabs, 3 Annihilation Barges.

The table we got was… interesting to say the least. I won the roll for first turn and set up 2 warrior squads in such a way that I could completely fill the only 2 pieces of area terrain on the table in my first turn. I then announced that the rest of my stuff would walk on turn 1. This forced Daniel to not hibernate his Ymgarls, and walk them on like normal.

At this point, we then had a discussion about how mind numbingly stupid this mission was. If Daniel was to just run across the table to come get me, I could sit there softening units until they got close, then finish them to make the objectives close to me have value, and comfortably win. If he sat on his deployment zone, I could not afford to come to him and claim those objectives, so if I killed ANYTHING, I lose. This meant that the best result Daniel was likely to get would be a draw, by not moving.

At the same time, we worked out that one of my objectives was in terrain. As such, I could turbo boost my 2 lords in their barges in and out of terrain next to that objective all game long. If he sat there holding out for a draw, I would have a minimum of 10, and a maximum of 14 chances to roll a single 1. If I did, that objective would be worth 2 points, and I would win the game.

That’s right… by telling my lord to fly his plane into a building, I would win the game.

WHO WROTE THIS FUCKING MISSION, OSAMA BIN LADEN?!

It was at this point Daniel and I discussed how retarded that sounded, and instead had a good ole bash up in the middle of the table. This was far more entertaining, and nowhere near as douchey.

In my turn 1, everything moved on fairly centrally, and pushed up to a position where I could get ready to leap on targets as they came into the middle, while the warriors I had deployed front and centre moved backwards.

In Dans turn 1, not much happened, he had moved on with a fairly refused flank, keeping things together as a massive blob progressing forward. During this game not many termagants were born before pooping out, but I have no recollection as to when this happened : (

In my turn 2 I pushed both lords up and out to my right, to get ready to try drag a gaunt unit into a far corner objective, hopefully leading to Dan trying to split his army. The wraiths remained with the bulk of the army ready to perform a counter attack role, and the great softening of the super unit that was the 2 primes and carnifex began, killing 1 carnifex and stripping 2 wounds off each prime. A tyrant guard was killed, but the other was left so as to not give a point to one of the objectives down his end yet.

In Dan’s turn 2 I made it nightfight. His army pushed up a little further however, getting ready for an action position, and his shooting actually did okay. The intact unit of hive guard fired at the wraiths, but they passed their invulnerable saves. The lone hive guard shot my command barge out of the sky, while the carnifex shot dead all but the crypteks from a warrior squad, only 1 of which got back up. Both Dan’s tervigons tried to give feel no pain to his supersquad, and both rolled double 6 perils!

In my turn 3 the lord who fell out of the sky partnered up with a warrior squad that had advanced up a flank, and I pulled these back so they could only just reach a gaunt squad in assault, thus the gaunts counter charge move would tractor beam them much closer to the objective I wanted them to die at.

2 annihilation barges fired up big time and elimited 9/10 ymgarl, which was perfect as I didn’t want to wipe the unit out. Meanwhile the wraiths jumped forward to assault what would be left of the super unit, which after the dust cleared was just a carnifex on 2 wounds – they promptly ate him and their positioning put these points on the centre objective. The lightning arcs had also inadvertently taken 2 more wounds off one of the tervigons, meaning one that I had not yet shot at was only on 3 wounds left! My lord had pushed up to start making inroads here, but was still one more turn away.

My scarabs had moved up to form somewhat of a block so that if anything wanted to get past, they had to form a roadblock in the middle of the table and generate more points there.

In Dans turn 3 I made it nightfight again. Everything moved to fight the wraiths, and my last annihilation barge was killed. BOOO! The wraiths did amicably and gave as good as they got, tying combat and forming a tar pit. They were also close enough to contest the objective by Dans deployment zone that was now worth a couple of points with the wraiths killing the last stealer, along with one of the supersquad primes having been closer here previously.

A squad of gaunts went and engaged my scarabs to have a war of tying each other up.

In my turn 4 my lord went and charged the wounded tervigon, who promptly freaked out and scratched her own head off to get the mindshackle scarabs out, dealing 3 wounds to herself. With that the gaunt unit I had tractored earlier was released and they moved forward with their consolidate closer to the wraith tarpit fight.

The wraith tarpit fight itself had little damage on either side, causing 1 or 2 to the tervigon, and killing 1 hiveguard but suffering little back in return. Another squad of warriors went and helped the scarabs out of a jam, whittling the gaunts they were engaged with to just a few, while by now any other gaunt squads had politely been electrocuted to death.

In Dans turn 4 his gaunts were wiped out, and the wraith tarpit continued to grind away.

In my turn 5 one lord went and assaulted the remaining tervigon, while the other assaulted one of the hive guard units. This combat finished up with tabling Dan, but not before my lord helped another tervigon scratch herself to death doing 2 of her remaining 3 wounds…. MINDSHACKLEEEEEEEE!

This game finished up 20-1, but could have been a lot closer without a few ridiculous aspects, such as virtually no area terrain for the Ymgarls to hide in, the double double6 perils (lololol 1 in 1296 chance!) and the stealers being stripped out so efficiently. Either way, I think we can both say we decided to make a game out of it and have a biffo in the middle of the table rather than cowering in our respective corners while he tries to perils 6 times in a row with both MC’s while I try to roll a 1 on any of 14 dice. Dan is always a great guy to play and afterwards I offered him half my footlong.

Game 4 to come later on tonight hopefully!

OTT 2012 - Round 2, Killbots vs Killbots!

Round 2

Opponent: David Foster – Necrons

Mission: 5 objective Seize Ground – Spearhead

Points Value: 1000

David had:

Necron Lord on Command Barge, 3 Heralds of Destruction with 1 solar pulse, 6 Warriors, 6 Immortals with Gauss Blasters, 1 Ghost Ark, 4 Scarabs, 4 Scarabs, 2 Tomb Spiders, 2 Annihilation Barges.

I had: The same as the last 1000 point round… obviously!

Again I won the roll to go first and up I set in a fairly tight block in the middle, scarabs and wraiths out front. I would need to maintain these as a wall between me and Daves Scarabs.

Dave set up across from me with the scarabs and spiders across from my wraiths, while the ghost ark and immortals sat further to his rear with the crypteks nearby.

In my first turn I pushed the wraiths up enough to bait out Daves scarabs. From what I had gathered from him so far I felt like he was over confident in their abilities and may be tempted into a charge that wouldn’t be wise for them, so sat them about 20 inches away from his frontal scarab unit. Due to Dave instigating Night Fight and sitting a little further back, the rest of my shooting did very little, and with that it went to Daves turn.

In Daves first turn, he took said bait hook line and sinker, the spiders buffed the unit to 6 strong and in it went, bouncing completely, getting wiped out, and slingshotting my wraiths forward with a consolidate in the process.

Daves lord tried to whittle the wraiths with a sweep attack, but failed to make it through the invulnerable saves. The rest of Daves shooting also did very little, on account of me making it night fight.

In my second turn, I had a chance to pretty much end the game right there and then, but it was refusing to be quite so simple. My wraiths with their big boost went off and multicharged the other scarab unit, the tomb spiders, and both annihilation barges that had only moved 6. My lord pushed up further on his flank, hopped out and assaulted his Immortals, while my scarabs charged his command barge. The rest of my shooting tried to immobilise his command barge to help my scarabs but alas it all bounced off.

The scarabs then totally failed to scratch the barge, and while the wraiths destroyed the scarabs and spiders, their s6 bounced off the av11 rear of the Annihilation Barges. Meanwhile my lord only killed one immortal and floundered a little.

In Daves second turn he decided his losses were now too great, and moved towards trying to draw the game, by way of eliminating my troops. His lord sweep attacked one squad, killing a couple, before hopping out and assaulting a different squad. Both Annihilation Barges finished the swept squad off, while the rest of his shooting mostly bounced off the wraiths, only killing 1. Both our lords had a shocker though, and only killed 1 cron each.

In my third turn the wraiths ran off and multicharged to help out my lord, and also kill his warrior squad and have a crack at the ghost ark too. The scarabs went for one of Daves Annihilation Barges and blew it up, while the rest of my shooting immobilised his command barge so that after finishing me off, a low run wouldn’t see Dave hopping back in and scurrying away.

In the assault, Dave finished off my warriors, but fortunately only consolidated 1 inch, meaning he would be several inches shy of my last remaining squad. My own lord however was freed up, as although the wraiths bounced off the ghost ark, both Daves troop choices were wiped out.

In Daves third turn, the lord moved as quickly towards my remaining squad as he could, hoping to live another turn. Meanwhile the remaining ghost ark, crypteks and annihilation barge shot everything at my remaining warrior squad, who promptly went to ground and lost no casualties after reanimation protocols.

In my fourth turn, things finally started to mop up. The wraiths went and killed the remaining Annihilation Barge. My lord went and punched the Ghost Ark out of the sky, killing a cryptek on board in the blast, and the scarabs went and killed his command barge. More importantly however, my Annihilation Barges turned around and WTFPWN’d Daves lord right out of this plane of existence, who thankfully did NOT get back up!

In Daves fourth turn he now just had 2 crypteks left, who failed to kill my warriors who again, elected to go to ground and cower.

In the 5^th, the remaining crypteks are eaten and Dave is tabled for a win.

While the primary for this was won 1-0, the secondary mission was simply to kill a troop unit. As Dave had killed one of my warrior units, he achieved this, as had I, so we drew this one for 2 points. I then received all other bonus points except the one for holding 2 objectives at once. We worked out I could only stretch out and pull this off if the game went to turn 7 – and it didn’t. This left me on 16 points to Daves 2.

Given I had used Daves template he so thoughtfully mailed out to everyone as the basis for originally mocking his army, but then writing my own, I was glad to win this one. A 4 instead of a 1 for his consolidation and I would have been sweating it much closer to a draw, if I didn’t manage to finish off with a tabling. Ultimately this game came down to a show down between Scarabs and Wraiths… I’m always going to back the Wraiths in that fight!