The scoring for the tournament was broken down as follows. The primary way of differenciating players was through tournament points, with 3 points being awarded for a win, 2 for a draw and nothing for a loss. The second was through victory points scored in games, it wasn't a margin of victory, just a straight up, how many points did you score method. The 3rd bracket was how many points you lost over the course of your games. As in, if you lost a full unit, as in completely dead, how many points was that worth, tallied up to form a total, and whoever lost the least if it came down to this would be placed higher.
3 games were played by each player over the course of the day, and everyone was playing the same mission each round. I came down with one of my friends who had not yet attended the club. I won't name drop as I'm not sure if he's ok with that but he brought Necrons and I was bringing my improved Space Wolves, although it is not yet optimised. My list was as follows.
Rune Priest with Chooser of the Slain, Living Lightning and Jaws.
Rune Priest with Tempest's Wrath and Jaws.
Allied Primaris Psyker.
3 Wolf Guard, 1 in Terminator Armour with Power Fist and 2 with Standard Power Fists.
5 Wolf Scouts with Meltagun.
Allied Veteran Squad with a Grenade Launcher.
2 squads of 7 Grey Hunters with Meltagun and Wolf Banner.
10 Grey Hunters with Wolf Banner and 2 Meltaguns.
2 packs of 5 Long Fangs with 4 Missile Launchers.
5 Long Fangs with 2 Missile Launchers and 2 Lascannons.
Allied Manticore.
All of this came to 1,499pts.
My friend was taking something along these lines.
Overlord with Warscythe and Mindshackle Scarabs in Catacomb Command Barge.
20 Necron Warriors.
2 squads of 15 Necron Warriors.
2 squads of 3 Destroyers.
2 Monoliths.
Just before I start I want to quickly say that all of my opponents were great and I enjoyed every game. But anyway, on to the games:
My first game was against a Tau player. Now, in every tournament that I have attended my first game has ended in defeat. However, against Tau, I was reasonably confident that I could break this curse. This was then cemented when the mission was Big Guns Never Tire, and I got the first turn, blowing away his Hammerhead and getting 2 victory points straight off the bat. However, he fired back to knock out my Manticore with a single shot from his Broadside, the same Broadside then found a Scout squad behind in the next turn which promptly melted him with a single shot. In essence, I had to keep my objectives and I'd win on secondaries to take the game, but I needed to push for a third objective to try and get as many points as I could.
The game ended with my having 3 objectives, first blood and killing 2 Heavy Support choices, and my opponent having 2 objectives and having killed one of my 4 Heavy Supports. Meaning a 12 – 7 victory to me. I was pleased with this, but this was nothing compared to the carnage that descended on the tables next to me. On the table ahead, our resident tournament player brought down some Tyranids with a large number of victory points, landing him on the top table, whilst my friend on the table below me beat down an Ork army claiming a 14 – 3 victory, landing him on the top table also. Necron Vs Necron action.
I ended up on table 2, playing against a Chaos Space Marine army with 2 squads of Obliterators, some Sorcerers, a Defiler and a lot of standard marines. It was the Emperor's Will, and when I failed to kill anything (night fighting - I only wounded an Obliterator) in my first turn I knew I was in trouble, the Manticore died in the first shot of the game and from there I lost the ranged firepower to knock my opponent off his objective, I kept dropping as many templates as I could onto my opponents objective, but when I finally killed the first squad another took its place. In the end, everything piled onto my objective and the ranged battle was his. I killed the Defiler and Oblits but for some reason the last men standing in both the Chosen squad and a marine squad refused to die giving up points, he jumped my objective on turn 6 and on turn 7 took it. I avoided a tabling by having a single Long Fang remaining, losing 12 – 0.
Meanwhile, my friend was tabled on turn 7 by the other Necron army and unluckily didn't manage to kill a unit, so he joined me one table ahead of me after losing 15 – 0.
I was pushed back towards mid table after that game, and my third game came against the other Chaos Marine player in the room (there were only 2), He was running a similar list except instead of standard marines he had Plague Marines and had dropped 1 Obliterator and the Chosen. I was going second in this game of Crusade and Dawn of War. I spotted a mistake at the start of the game, where my opponent had deployed his defiler behind a large ruin which blocked line of sight and his Obliterators nearby. So, I proceeded to stick my Manticore on the other side of the terrain and put my flimsy Guardsmen on that objective.
We got night fighting, and I failed to sieze. In my opponent's shooting phase, nothing died. In mine, the Manticore smashed a Plague Marine squad reducing it to 2 men, and a few more were shot by bolters and other pieces of small arms weaponary. In turn 2 the pile of dead started to increase, before this game, my Terminator Wolf Guard had been allocated 3 wounds over the course of 2 games on a 2+ save, he had died in both games. This time, he didn't get the luxury of that save, but he managed to pass far too many 5+ invulns before finally succumbing to Plasma cannon fire.
My scouts came on behind the Defiler, and missed with their Meltagun, a Long Fangs pack was shot and ran off the board giving my opponent First Blood, but then he moved a squad of Plague Marines off an objective to go and take another one, whilst en route they were cut down by Long Fangs. My Warlord, although managing a successful duel with a Sorcerer was punched in the face by a Power Fist after a glorious intervention, whilst my Primaris psyker squad and a lone scout managed to take down the remaining Plague Marines and the Obliterator squad. Claiming a 3rd objective. Meanwhile, a Defiler was munching his way through a pack of Grey Hunters whilst my Rune Priest 'perils of the warp' – ed himself to death.
Luckily for me, the game ended at the close of turn 5, as the defiler had finished with the Grey Hunters and was ready to drop his Battlecannon on my Veterans. As it stood, I had 3 objectives and my opponent had none, also gaining a Slay the Warlord point after my Manticore dropped a missile on my opponent's other Chaos Sorcerer. Thus resulting in a 10 – 2 victory to me. This result pushed me up the table a considerable way and now that the results are out I can edit this post and say that I finished in 5th place.
My friend ended up playing Eldar in his last game, and unfortunately lost that one as well, mainting his record of winning 1 and losing 2 games in every tournament he has attended, hopefully he can break his own tournament curse next time, he's a good enough player to do so.
That's all for the tournament, all I can say is that if you live anywhere within the region of South Sheffield then I'd definitely recommend coming down to the club. It's a really friendly club and they did a fantastic job of running this event without even considering that it was the first tournament the club has run. Just put Steel City Wargaming into any search engine and it should be one of the top options.
Well, that's all for today. See you Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment