Topic: Saim-Lucster's Lightning Brigade (3 Game tournie - Pics too)

[moc065]

Hey guys... I recently did a 3 game tournie locally, and as its been some time since I did one in my home town (usually I am on the road) I thought  that I would share a little with you all.

1.. The tournie was about 16 players and the level of Competition was good as a lot of the gamers are old hands so the lists were decent.
2.. The organizers from Halifax GW are amazing guys, and for the most part I think everyone had fun
3.. We were Guinea Pigs for the managers newest tournie format, so the missions were a little weird in some ways (but still good for most guys).
4.. There was a time limit which factored in a little (2K is tough to do; but we got 3 games in between 1030-1730 of one day -- included an hour break/lunch or so)...
5.. Soft Scores were in effect (which the staff did, so they were a lot more fair than usual), Opponents still voted for their favourite match up, and sportsmanship, but the staff did a lot of the tidying up work...

First off, here are some pics of the most of the armies (I know I missed a couple; but I was gaming... so I can't be everywhere at once)...

Sapce Wolves
   
SM's (best General)
 
CSM
 
Dark Eldar
 
CSM's Khorne
   
Da Orkz (best overall)
   
CSM's
 
CSM's
 
Noise Marines (Favoured Opponent - best sportsman)
 
SM's (best presentation - includes soft scores)
 
My own Eldar


Saim-Lucter's Lightning Brigade

HQ – 783 = 39.15%
(140) 1 Jetbike Autarch; LaserLance, Fusion Gun, and Mandiblasters.
(185) 1 Jetbike Farseer; Fortune, Doom, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Runes of Witness.
(458) 9 Jetbike Warlocks; 2 Embolden, 2 Enhance, 1 Destructor, 1 Spear.

Troops – 565 = 28.25%
(130) 10 Storm Guardians w/ 2 Flamers, Warlock w/ Destructor & Spear.
     (145) Wave Serpent w/ TL Bright Lances & Spirit Stones.
(85) 10 Defender Guardians w/ Shuriken Cannon.
     (145) Wave Serpent w/ TL Bright Lances & Spirit Stones.
(60) 5 Dire Avengers.

Fast Attack - 152 = 7.6%
(152) 5 Swooping Hawks; Exarch with Sunrifle, Intercept & Skyleap.

Heavy Support – 500 = 25%
(180) Falcon w/ EML, Holo Field & Spirit Stones.
(160) Fire prism w/ Holo Field & Spirit Stones.
(160) Fire prism w/ Holo Field & Spirit Stones.

2000pts, 3 Scoring Units, 12 Kill Points, 47 Figures

Obviosly missed a few... Sorry to have left some out, as I did try to get them all; but with that many CSM/SM armies, a lot of them started to look the same after a while... I will check my pics though and add any that I have stashed in the thumbnail vault.

OK, on to the games.....

Game 1 vs the Green and Purple Space Marines of Mr. Hill... (his army won best presentation as the soft scores were added up with the paint scores etc)...

Excellent opponent... (no huge Batreps, just the quick and dirty of it -- OK)
Here is the mission.

And try to remember that part about 5 Mission Objectives... and that was the theme of the day... sort of pooches some armies that work without cookie cutter Troops in Rhino's, etc... but more on that later. You also had to select 5 KP units from your opponents list (pre-game) to gather those KP's to add to the score for a total of 5 MO's + 5 KP's per game (nice concept actually - just not perfect).

First time I have faced Mr Hill but we have been trying for about a month to get a game together as we met via internet and had some discussion in the past... We fire out terrain, roll for Deployment, I take 1st and he fails to Steel the Initiative... I get fortune working and he does a faceplam as he realizes that a Hood might have been a good option... I put down both Vindies, a Whirlwind, and a Rhino and its Tac Marines as my 5 KP's... he writes down my HQ charcters and my Scoring Troops... (theme of the day actually)... I set up dead center in a Turtle, while he has his force in two sections... I work on his Vindies, Whirlwind and Rhino+Tac for the most part but can't bust a single vehicle with shooting, switch to assault mode and have the JB Council chew threw the Vindies, the Whirlwind, and that Rhino... We get 5 full turns in and would have had a 6th (for me to finish the Tac Squad) but ran outta time (no point to start the turn and hose him outta his 6th reply).. anyway, I score 4 KP's and 2 MO's but loose the Defecder guardians, both Serpents, and all but the Storm Warlock as well as the Hawks and half of the council... It was a tough match that was fairly even through out due to my horrible shooting; but I win with a solid 6/10 (scored the card 5/10 by mistake) while he had 2/10 for the Defenders and 1 Objective... Here are some pics of the match at/near the end, etc..

         

~~ Unit of the match goes to the Storm Guardians, for loosing their Serpent, failing their Moral Test, then getting Pinned, regrouping, loosing more guys to enemy fire, and still having the Warlock survive to Score....
~~ TL-BL's did 8 shots into Rhino's and never made a dent.

Game 1 - Victory 6/10.

Cheers and more to follow.

[moc065]

Game 2 - Mr MacRae and his Space Wolves (decent looking army overall, with a mix of OOP and new stuff, and some flavour to the list)

This one was a Spearhead deployment on 6x4... loads of terrain (Halifax GW is great for terrrain BTW). Once again I deploy first and turtle in one corner; but he steels the init and the Hawks are done in before they even get started (LOS was questionable through my Skimmers; but whatever).... a few Warlocks also eat the dust ASAP... I have all of his armour listed as my KP's and he repeats the theme of the day vs me... I responde doing a bit of a back peddle, and the Council actually does its job through the game; but once again my shooting can not crack a single piece of SM armour... Sad, even after I assaulted a Landspeeder it only landed as it was immobilized and lost a flamer (whoooo)... Anyway, in the end, I manage to keep it close but Mr MacRae plays the tighter game and earns a victory with 2 MO's to my 2... but he also got some KP's to win with 5/10 to my 3/10... Well done Mr MacRae, but I want revenge... are some pics, and I learned some interesting tidbits about Space Wolves, so they won't get off so easily next time.

   

~~ Unit of the match again went to the Guardians; but in this case both units, as the gang banged a unit of Wolf Assault Marines (whatever their called) to waste them completely in one round, and they worked over that Landspeeder pretty well. Both squads survived to score in the end.
~~ TL-BL's did another 8-10 shots into Rhino's to not even scratch them again....

Game 2 Loss - 3/10 (and this one hurt as it would have been a Draw for MO's but I couldn't take down that Space Marine Rhino armour.)


Game 3 (honestly the best game of the day for me).... Great opponent, Mr Peori with his Noise Marines (yes more SM Armour to deal with)...

Last game is DOW with 5 MO's still, I through caution to the wind and name his 3 Rhino's, Oblits, and Raptors as the KP choices, he goes for my Troops and the HQ figures (theme of the day)... I win the roll, and give him first turn.. he set a bit and calls the rest walking on, I reserve it all to walk on for turn 1. His army arrives and advances to capture 2/5 MO's and limit my Options... I arrive on one flank and nightfight take care of all my shooting (seriously couldn't roll higher than 16 of sight)... His turn two has him advance and shooting but I was well placed and he kills nothing; his Daemon dude kills off a Champ for the first kill of the match.. My response has the bullets bouncing off his Rhino's and even the hawks can't hit/damage it... so the council (fortuned) come to the rescue... Shoot a squad (w/ Daemon) and multi assault into the squad, the Daemon, Lucious, and some Havoc Marines that were too close... CC goes insanely well as the Havocs loose 2 and break away, the Noise marines die, Lucious Dies (after the fearless factor), and the Daemon take 2 wounds... The Rhino moves back as his Havocs regroup, and he shoots where he can while gaining a new objective, while stripping 1 Serpent of its wepaonry, the CC ends with the council killing the Daemon and consolidating before my turn... My turn 3 has the council and Hawks line up on the rhino and havocs again... the Serpent Rams a Rhino (on objective) and wastes it... (well if shooting isn't working, then do something else)... I start shooting anything in the open while the Council and hawks steamroll the Rhino and Havocs...
    From here on out, I basically Flank rush along his rear/side and eat up the table to eventually take 2 MO's while removing his options to Score... I also bagged all my KP's except a single oblit got away with 1 woudn remaining... so I scored 6/10 to his 1/10 (he bagged my Defender Guardians that were in the Ramming Serpent)... He actually played it well; but the Flank rush is one of the best attributes of my army, and I should have been using it earlier (I was not focused earlier on, and unfortuneately, Mr Peori wore the brunt of it once I got going)... We did get 5 full turns but as in all my games, it would be unfair to start another turn to only get part way into it...

Here are some pics...
           

~~ Units of the match...
• Swooping Hawks for taking down a Rhino, and mass shooting the CSM Sorcerer to a slow death.
• The JB Council for making more saves than is reasonable and mowing through anything they hit, Rhino's, Daemons, Possessed, Havoc's, Noise Marines.....
~~ TL-BL's took another 6 shots into Rhino's only to fail; but at least one Serpent smoked a Rhino by Ramming it at Full Speed (24")... WooHoo.

game 3 Victory -- 6/10

It should be noted that late game bloomers (like Eldar) really do suffer under a time crunch... in all three games my margin of victory may have increased (or at least had the option to win) had I had 1-2 more turns... Not complaining though, as at least none of my opponents stalled the games, etc...

So the scores go in, etc etc... My final score is some 72points (give or take) and I actually took 3rd place overall with only 24 battle Points, 12 Sportsmanship Points (full score ), and some 36 points for presentation (soft scores went into this, and I figure the JB Council was not doing me any favours, although I might have done OK for the paint section)... I know that I should have gone for Masascres throughout; but I was more into the fun of it, etc...


Big thanks goes out to Halifax GW staff for an excellent Tournie... I had a blast, and I know a lot of other guys did too... All three of my opponents were decent chaps, and I thought that they all played well.... My horrible dice vs armour did not help me any; but that is no excuse.... I made mistakes (especially vs the Wolves) and suffered for them...

Comments are always welcome.

Cheers

[NewHeretic]

I love your painting.  I'm surprised you don't give yourself more credit.

Your last opponent seems to be handicapping himself slightly by placing his tanks on bases.  He still has to measure shooting distance from the gun mounts, but movement and shooting at the tank is based on the front of the base, rather than its actual footprint since he extended the base out to cover the spikey bits in front.  I assume that was done to protect them from breakage.  Am I missing something?

NewHeretic

[Sanctjud]

Thanks for the battle report.
How was the arm?  Did it take a wee bit longer than usual? .

You have alot of CSM players there...must have had somewhat of a /yawn reaction heh.

-Sanct.

[angel of death 007]

Moc first off let me say some very well played games and congrats.  After reading the reports with the majority focusing on have 5 scoring and 5 killpoint why did you choose mostly armor for your killpoints?   

Main reason I can think of is the fact that warlocks can pop armor with ease.  Only problem I see though is that troops are going to be counting for points if they reach their objectives... so any troop choice had the potential to be worth 1 point...   by choosing your opponents troops for your killpoints not only do you deny/contest the objective by targeting them but if you kill them they also become a kill point for you.  Seems more of the two fold thing to do...  both denying them the point and potentially granting you one.   

Other than that... i don't see anything else too bad that jumps out at me.   Now the problem with the space wolves.... care to allaborate on that one?  Was it psychic powers, your powers got denyed, the army composition or???

In almost every tourny I go to I always play some varient of power armor.   I am trying to remember the last time I didn't play a power armor army in a game in a tourny.    So even though most wouldn't agree with me here I somewhat taylor my list to deal with power armor. 

[moc065]

Thanks for the kind words.

@ NewHeretic.
     Thanks for the words in regard to my Painting... but they are not GD level at all, they are a solid 7/10 with good PoP effect and decent freehand to bring them to a possible 8/10 at best. They get lots of looks at events etc; but the army has some parts that are well over 15+ years old (Hawks, etc) so they have their real life battle damage as well.
     Mr Peori (my last opponent) had no handicap due to the bases on his tanks, as they only project about 1/8 of an inch on the sides and just enough in front to protect his spikey dozer blades from smashing into stuff. We actually measured to the figure for game purposes, and when I assaulted his stuff (with Swooping Hawks, or Council) I actually appreciated that I wasn't banging my metal off of stuff, as the bases lined up well to my bases.

@ Sancty.
     Your Welcome; although they are just mini's as I didn't have nearly enough time to take decent notes/pics.     
     The arm is getting better 6 weeks of Cast before it was off, and now a month of physio... the doctor told me that he actually expected more time in the cast, so I guess that means that I am drinking enough milk still to help my old bones heal...
     The number of CSM players was actually OK with me, I only faced one out of the lot, although I heard a few guys complaining that they had Chaos vs Chaos in a couple match ups (1st round was purely random; then winners vs winner, etc).... I will say this though, I was impressed that not all CSM's were Nurgle, or Khorne... they had a pretty decent mix between the factions (Dieties) and one most were themed but one guy had a spread... I also got some great ideas for my own Khorne army, so there are good sides to it all. Final note in this regard... 1K sons were missing, so our assessment of them must be fairly decent... Oh and Oblit Spam and the Lash were there; but not in an insane abundance...

@ AoD 007.
     Game 1 and 3 I palyed well, as I did what I needed to do in order to win, and claim my KP's for those 2 games... game 2 (after lunch didn't go so well... I set up well, his Steeling the initiative and wasting most of Hawks sortof sucked. My Fortune was working 4/5 times; but Doom was probably 1/5 due to the psychic hood.... so that was getting irratating too. Biggest problem I had was myself and my dice. Honestly. I should have just flank rushed the puppies on the northern side of the table to steam roll the Pred, Landspeeder and foot Marines, before working on the other stuff (after prisms softened it up)... but instead I devided my force, went for some quicke kills on his HQ's (hoods were pissing me off) and CC went south (Autarch hits 2/6 on a 3+ to hit,... 29 Witchblade attacks on 4 remaing SM Bikers only kill off 2 of them - yes I rolled that many 1's.. actually Yatzee was seen twice - 6 ones to hit, and 6 ones to wound... WOOOOO). Basically I screwed up the priority, and my dice humbled me for it.
     I choose Armour for the KP's in all my missions as I actually just dislike SM armour as a whole... Its so underpriced and good that I just hate it. So my personal mission got in the way of competitive tactics. Composition with Eldar vs SM's is crap in general... Honestly, the SM's take 3-4 Tac squads in Rhinos and get good Comp scores for Cookie Cutter lists, while I take 3 different Troops choices and get hammered because they are in Skimmers (sad)... my JB Council didn't help my Comp scores; but to me they are not tougher than many SM combo's... at least my Relic Blade is on the Charge only, not premently. I don't wanna sound like a whiner; but in general (Dark Eldar, Eldar, Tau, and a few other armies) get hammer for Comp as soon as they do 1-2 things to try to slightly competitive...

     I should have just ran my Uber council in Serpent, ditched the Hawks and taking another TL-BL Serpent (DA dedicated) to field 7 Skimmers and do a pure Flank Rush mech/reserve army to show them what competitive Eldar really can look like. I took what I considered a decent list with some flavour and competitiveness and got hammered for it, as I heard cries of Skimmer Spam all over (not from staff mind you, as I think some of them saw the weaknesses in my list)... Other than my own mistakes and poor dice -- honestly the TL-BL's were not working for crap, etc -- I had a great time, met a few great gamers (possibly joining one of their gaming groups) and I actually made it to a local event and didn't have to run home early do to family situation...

     Once again, I would like to thank the GW Staff for such a great event (Prizes for several guys - with no entry fee at all = win, win, win, win)... Dave's newest tournie concept was decent overall; but its harsh on guys that run lower numbers of Troops due to points cost (Necrons, Eldar, and a few others could suffer emensly). I would also like to thank my opponets for being excellent gamers and sportsmen.... I learned something in every game, and I would relish a full game vs any of you at any time in the future.

PS... I will add my opponents lists ASAP (as I have got them now)...

Cheers and Happy Gaming.

[Khain Mor (/kharandhil)]

Cool tournament, I only wish you had taken mroe picture, it's always cooler to see such awesomely painted armies in action.

I think the loss was to blame on bad luck, you have redicoulous firepower and still failed to shoot down those space pupies, that's just sad.

I do find it kind of sad that: in the grim future there are only space marines (or their dark borthers) I'm glad to see a dark eldar army though.

[Lazarus]

Good looking stuff



On comp: Field what you want since you'll get docked anyways. Especially if you think you can net more battle points compared to the few extra comp you'll lose.

[angel of death 007]

     I choose Armour for the KP's in all my missions as I actually just dislike SM armour as a whole... Its so underpriced and good that I just hate it. So my personal mission got in the way of competitive tactics. Composition with Eldar vs SM's is crap in general... Honestly, the SM's take 3-4 Tac squads in Rhinos and get good Comp scores for Cookie Cutter lists, while I take 3 different Troops choices and get hammered because they are in Skimmers (sad)... my JB Council didn't help my Comp scores; but to me they are not tougher than many SM combo's... at least my Relic Blade is on the Charge only, not premently. I don't wanna sound like a whiner; but in general (Dark Eldar, Eldar, Tau, and a few other armies) get hammer for Comp as soon as they do 1-2 things to try to slightly competitive...

honestly the TL-BL's were not working for crap, etc

I dislike a lot of stuff, especially in the newer 5th edition codexes, but my hatred for certain units, characters, etc... I try not to let bother me so much that it becomes a focus.   I try to look at it more as an annoyance than anything else.   

As far as comp goes...  fifth edition really messed with most people's armies.  With the 5th edition armies get all the bonus's cheaper armor, transports, and troops.   Plus those MEQ units can craft their unit for whatever cause they want (anti armor, anti infantry, etc).   Unfortuneatly we get dinged on comp no matter what it seems in tourny's.   

As far as twin BL's...    i lost faith in them awhile ago as my luck goes they can't hit the broad side of a barn.. and even if they do they don't result in much.   With as active as my WS are i have found twin SC to be just as effiecient.   

[Lazarus]

Don't worry, every new army seems to get the Lance rule and AP1 as well as higher strength sometimes too.....I'd imagine when we get our new Bright Lance it will be suitably scary.