Tournament Victory

Success at a tournament last weekend!  I really liked my list and thought I played solidly (well, mostly), so I’d like to post about the experience.

My List

Battle One – Tyranids

Against these Tyranids the scenario was Dawn of War and Capture and Control.  My opponent won the roll off and deployed two units of termagaunts (with devourers) and a flying Tyrant at the midpoint line.  Coming on from the back he had two Tervigons, a unit of Hive Guard, a unit of Zoanthropes, and more termagaunts.  Outflanking he had a unit of Genestealers and ‘infiltrating’ he had Ymgarl Genestealers.  His objective was 12″ from his edge and about in the middle.  I placed my objective far to my left just at the corner of some ruins.

I was really worried about the Hive Tyrant, probably not justly so…. but he was flying and already halfway across the board.  Fortunately, he was halfway across the board which made him easier to see through the darkness.

In reserve I held the Champion’s Rhino and the Venerable Dread; everything else came on first turn and I refused the left flank.  My hope was to draw my opponent towards me and away from the objective, at least with the MC’s.  If that worked hopefully the Champion, his Crusader Squad, and the Ven Dread could take and hold my objective.  If the Champion and Dread weren’t able to do that, at least I had the mobility (while maintaining firepower because of PotMS) to move in that direction to help.  As for my opponent’s objective, I didn’t give it too much thought.  Not out of confidence, but out of negligence.  Fortunately, despite half my army not being able to see the Hive Tyrant, I was able to kill it.  I should have spent that last point on a searchlight!

My overall plan was good, but my execution of it wasn’t.  On turn 2 the Ven Dread arrived and with no targets nearby I ran him towards the ruins near my objective.  I had briefly considered where the Ymgarl stealers might arrive and figured they’d arrive near the middle of my deployment zone in some woods.  It made more sense for them to be near my objective to cause problems, but that didn’t click until they actually arrived there and assaulted the Venerable.  With furious charge, rending, and the Ymgarl bonus to Strength they got 5 penetrating hits!  Two results were shaken, two results were weapon destroyed, and the fifth was Destroyed.  Here I made what I consider my biggest mistake.  I chose not to reroll the destroyed results.  My thinking was that if the Ymgarl were locked in combat I couldn’t shoot them, and without the DCCW I wouldn’t be killing them anytime soon.  However, my shooting would have caused only a couple casualties and consisted of the EC, Crusader Squad, and Rhino.  And I wouldn’t have been able to charge.  The decision was a bad one made only worse when I was told later that my opponent would not have been able to use the Strength bonus on his Ymrgl next turn, plus no more furious charge.  The lesson?  Know thy enemy!

Here’s a picture before Turn 2:

Opposite my left flank my opponent advanced a Tervigon, a growing number of gaunts, Zoanthropes and Hive Guard.  Protecting my opponent’s objective was the other Tervigon and gaunts.  On my right flank the genestealers arrived, assaulted, but did nothing.  In an effort to destroy the genestealers amongst my tanks I targeted them with a Vindicator and Typhoon.  As was ‘necessary’ for this shot I put my back armor facing a large number of devourer gaunts, another mistake.  The next turn they would immobilize it and destroy all its weapons, leaving it helpless for genestealers to wreck.  The Vindicator missed and instead immobilized the Typhoon.  I was lucky it wasn’t destroyed.  I should have prepared for this and shot the Landspeeder first!  However I wasn’t thinking and “shot the template weapon first”.  Sometimes those hard fast axioms have to be ignored.  The genestealers would also destroy the immobilized Typhoon.

To complete the action on the right flank, I would advance a PotMS Laserback and Typhoon, while my opponent countered by advancing his defensive Tervigon.  The Laserback would end the game contesting his objective, but not before losing his lascannon.  The Laserback’s occupants were sacrificed trying to kill the Tervigon.

On the left flank things were tense.  A Tervigon, three units of gaunts, a single Hive Guard model, and those damn Ymgrl were going to make taking my objective difficult.  Despite not being in cover, that Hive Guard wouldn’t die.  Either I missed or didn’t wound on at least 4 twin-linked lascannon shots.  The game continued to turn 6, which gave me a chance.

At this point I had plenty of firepower to bring to bear but it wouldn’t be easy to get him off my objective.  To deal with the Termagaunts I had two units of Crusaders with Flamers.  I flamed what I could but four gaunts remained to be assaulted.  The closer squad rolled for difficult terrain… double ones!  Not good.  The second Crusader Squad, the further at about 4-5 inches, was able to assault (thank the Emperor) and wiped the gaunts off the objective.  By now I had assaulted the Tervigon, which was not in contesting range, with the EC and Crusader Squad.  In return my opponent assaulted me with the Ymgarl who were now contesting my objective.  Despite the EC taking his final wound, I won combat by two.  The Tervigon fell to No Retreat and the Ymgrl were forced to take a morale test.  If the Ymgrl stay, my opponent wins.  He has me beat on KP, which is the tie breaker, but… he rolls double sixes!  The game is mine.  Damn that was close.

A close game, but it shouldn’t have been.  My opponent’s list was far from optimized and he wasn’t the most skilled player.  I just played badly.  It all came down to that last Morale test and the Dice Gods looked favorably upon me!

Battle Two – Blood Angels

Ah, my frequent adversary Bryan and his Blood Angels.  Bryan runs two Stormravens, each with a Dread inside (Libby and Furioso), a Chaplain with Honor Guard, and two Assault Squads with Priests.  The scenario was Spearhead and Annihilation.  Great.  Annihilation versus Blood Angels; not my preferred match up.  I won the roll off and chose to go second.  Now, this may seem counter-intuitive.  Ideally I should try to get as many shots off at the Stormravens before they can move.  However, if I choose to go first he can just reserve them.  Instead, I would use Reserves (which had worked against Bryan’s list earlier this week).  Bryan deployed both Stormravens and left his jump packers in reserve.  In my corner, behind some ruins, I deployed both slow Laserbacks with Crusader Squads (PW, Flamer) and the Venerable Dread.  I hoped to draw Bryan as much as possible into my deployment zone and bring everything else onto my far right flank.  The key to this strategy was killing his SRs, but he would still have plenty of mobility with his jump packs.  It all depended on where he dropped his Assault Squads.

I wasn’t able to steal the initiative and the Stormravens went flat out towards my corner but stayed mostly in the center of the board.  His limited shooting destroyed the weapon on one Laserback.  It looked like he was mostly taking the bait but his ASMs hadn’t come in yet.  During my shooting phase I was able to destroy one of the Stormravens!  Good start.  All of his reserves arrived on Turn 2 and it became clear that the bait worked.  All of the jump packers dropped in my spearhead deployment zone within 12″ of the left table edge.  The remaining Stormraven was near my long table edge and moved 12″ further into the corner.  Due to the threat of the Vindicators arriving and nuking his ASMs he chose to run with both squads.  The remainder of his shooting was effective, but not very influential as he wasn’t able to open up the Laserbacks to plasma cannon the squads inside.  His Libby Dread assaulted my Venerable.  At the same initiative he wrecked me while I immobilized him.  That’s a good enough result!

Half of my reserves arrive and with a nice mix of firepower.  I deploy heavy on my right side and destroy the second Stormraven.  In the left corner, both PW/Flamer Crusader Squads dismount, shoot and assault an ASM.  There were no casualties from shooting, but the assault killed about 4, including the Priest!  Again, that’s a good enough result!  My opponent has taken the bait and his mobility is severely reduced.  Despite being behind in KP, I had control of the battle, now I just had to avoid screwing that up.  Things were looking good.

Bryan cleans up everything in my left corner and he has 5 KP to my 3KP.  The best course of action for Bryan is to use terrain, play defensively, and ride me out.  Instead, possibly because he thought it would be cheesy otherwise, he advanced towards me.  There was no more shooting on Bryan’s part for the remainder of the game.  Nothing would have range.  I kept my distance and was out of range for a few Vindicator shots, but it was enough.  I won by 3 KPs which included the Champion dismounting to assault and kill another Sanguinary Priest.

Battle Three – Orks

Finally!  Orks.  I haven’t played Orks since my return to 40k and 5th edition, so I was really excited about this game.  Also, as you’ll see in the picture, we were playing on the desert board.  So, the Battle for Armageddon it is!  The scenario was Seize Ground (5 objectives) and Pitched Battle.  Gavin’s horde was led by the named Weirdboy and a big Mekboy and consisted of 3 large mobs of Boyz, Lootaz, Burnaz in a Truck, a squad of Kans, and 3 Deff Dreads.  I won the roll off and chose to go first.

A majority of the objectives were on my left flank, but because of my good mobility I deployed most of my combat power on my right flank.  Much like the game versus the Tyranids, I would move in a right to left direction as the game progressed.  On my left flank I had a slow Laserback and the Champion’s Rhino.  Opposing my right flank my opponent deployed a mob of Boyz led by the Mekboy and most of his walkers.  In the middle using a building as cover was the Truck with Burnaz.  Opposing my left flank were the Lootas, the Weirdboy with Boyz, another mob of Boyz and a Deff Dread.  Gavin failed to steal the initiative and braced for impact, which really wasn’t necessary.  My opening volley only brought down one Kan, killed a single Boy, and immobilized the Burna Truck.  My second turn’s shooting was similarly unimpressive which resulted in the first two turns boiling down to the Orks advancing and myself maneuvering to avoid being Waaagh’d.  Someone at this point made a comment about my moving backwards towards my board edge.  I can’t remember exactly what was said, but it spoke about how un-Templar-like I was being.  Nonsense!, which I would prove on Turn 3 with three separate assaults.

Quick educational side note regarding shooting before assaults.  Think before you shoot!  If you’ve never played a tournament opponent (like I hadn’t with Gavin), the safest approach is to assume he’s smart enough to remove casualties that keep you from assaulting.  However, if you have the opportunity in previous turns, or in the same turn, test your opponent.  This requires a decent ability to estimate assault range.  What you do is move your Templar squad so that you’re 6″ away from the second ‘rank’ of his squad.  You want to make sure you can assault after shooting, but you also want it to look iffy enough that if you’re opponent removes first ‘rank’ models that you might not be able to assault.  Once you’ve moved to this distance, shoot and see which casualties he removes.  If he removes first ‘rank’ models he’s smart and you know for future assaults that if you’re barely within assault range to the first ‘rank’, it’s best to avoid shooting altogether.  If you’re opponent doesn’t give it a thought and removes models closest to his board edge, it’s possible that in future assaults you can shoot all you want and he won’t remove those models that would keep you from assaulting.  Risky still, but shooting or not shooting before an assault could mean the difference between victory and defeat.  Hopefully that all makes sense??

In the middle of the board, I would assault the Burnaz with the Venerable Dread and a large mob of Orks with a 5-man PW/Flamer Crusader Squad.  On my left flank I assaulted the Weirdboy and his Boyz with the Champion and Crusader Squad.  My shooting prior to each of these assaults was limited, which effected the PW/Flamer assault the most.  Due to smart casualty removal I didn’t shoot the flamer and ended up losing this combat, and eventually the entire 5 man squad.  The Champion took down the Weirdboy and the Crusaders caused plenty of wounds against the Boyz, with 5 more dying to No Retreat.  The Champion would fall during the next assault phase to a power klaw, but the Crusader Squad would be unscathed and spread out to capture two objectives before the game ended.  The Venerable was locked in close combat with the Burnaz and would be assaulted by a Deff Dread next turn.  This walker versus walker fight is best described as a S10 slap fight with Burna spectators!  The Venerable was immobilized and stunned multiple times while the Deff Dread was immobilized, lost 3 or 4 arms, and was stunned multiple times.  Eventually, on the fourth or fifth assault phase, the Deff Dread pulled out the victory and destroyed the Venerable!  It was an exciting fight!

Here’s a picture shortly before the Venerable’s fall:

From this point on, Gavin tried to claim objectives but I just had too much combat power left.  The black Deff Dread (a troop choice) was destroyed and the Mekboy with a Nob contested another objective, but were taken down by chainswords in close combat.  I won the game with 3 objectives to Gavin’s 0.

I want to do a review of my list, but it’ll have to wait.  I’m heading up to Denver tomorrow for Genghis Con and just don’t have time to finish it tonight.  Thanks for reading.  Maybe someday I’ll learn to write shorter posts…. or not.

~ by BigDunc on February 17, 2011.