It's on the other side of London from me and twice as far out, but I have a long history of visiting Colchester, by chance. Mostly due to a girl I was seeing for a while who lived out there and turned out to be insane. It's otherwise a fairly nice town, and more Importantly, 4tk gaming have an excellent store there, and have recently started running great little tournaments. This weekend was "Clash of Generals", but later in the month there's also a 40k Doubles tourney. Desperate to test my mettle against some worthy opponents, I signed right up.
The Tournament breaks down roughly as follows (you can download the pack here);
1500pts 40k armies
3 games, one Seize Ground, one Anihillation, one Capture and Control in that order
3 "Secret Missions" one could try and do to gain bonus points for both the tournament, and against the usual mission rules (completing a secret mission was worth an extra objective, or kill points, in short). They were "Assassination" (kill all enemy HQs), "Iron Man" (destroy a vehicle in melee) and Camper (have no enemy in your deployment zone at game end). Enemy HQ kills and total wipeouts also added points.
Matches were made at random at first, and then done based on Swiss style, with winners playing winners, and points scores being used to make sure that highest performers played highest performers.
My army was as follows;
Dante
Mephiston
Sanguinary Priest with JP
2x 6-man RAS with PW Sergeant
5 man Death Company with PW
DC Dread with Talons
Stormraven, Extra Armour, TLAC, TLMM
Stormraven, Extra Armour, TLLC, TLMM
Small, but hard hitting. I'd playtested against 4 other armies the previous day, and tabled them all, but I wasn't feeling confident about Objectives, which 2 of the missions were based around. Normally Mephiston and the DC Dread would share the TLC Raven, and the DC had the other. Dante and the Priest hung out with one of the RAS. When I arrived, there seemed to be an interesting mix of armies; very Marine-heavy, naturally. I initially thought I was the only BA player there, but there was a Flesh Tearers player with a fairly standard Razorback spam list, another similar Rspam/Drop Pod list, and I later discovered a guy running what looked like a straight RAS list. There were about the same number of Wolves and counts-as Wolves, several Vanilla Marines, one 'Nid Player, one (very tough) Daemons army, some CSM, 2 Ork hordes (including Nob Bikers), a single Guardsman, and finally, to my surprise, TWO Deathwing Dark Angels armies. Naturally, I got matched against someone running a near-clone of my old Deathwing/Ravenwing list, which was interesting. The main distinction was that he took a 4th squad of Terminators in lieu of Sammael, which IMHO was his undoing. His list was roughly;
Belial, TLC
Deathwing, 2 CF 1 HF 1 TLC one TH/SS
Deathwing, 2 CF 1 HF 1 TLC one TH/SS, Standard Bearer
Deathwing, 2 TLC 1CF 1AC 1 TH/SS
Deathwing, 2 TLC 1CML 2 THSS
Ravenwing Bikers, 2x Melta, MM Attack Bike
Ravenwing Bikers, 2x Plasma, MM Attack Bike
Now, for over a year I'd used a near-identical list, with more AC, one less Deathwing Squad, and Sammael in a Landspeeder. I'd lost exactly one game with it, so I knew this kind of army could be tough. Critically, without Sammael, his Ravenwing weren't scoring, which I knew I'd need to take advantage of. I won the roll for first turn, deployment etc, choosing to go first, and deployed my entire force on the right edge of my board,sitting on one objective to start. He deployed both Attack Bikes, the Plasma bikers, and a HF Deathwing squad, turbo boosting the bikes down my left flank while his Terminators dug in near one of his objectives in some area terrain. He didn't manage to steal the initiative, so I moved the DC Stormraven to his deployment zone, moving Flat-Out in the process. Mephiston and the DC Dread's ride moved 12" towards the bikers,as did Dante's squad. The other RAS also advanced behind them. Shooting was a total wash, with the Ravenwing bikers' cover saves saving them from enough heavy fire to pop a Land Raider several times over. In response, the Deathwing Assaulted Belial's squad aggressively near Dante's RAS thanks to the teleport homers in the RW bikes, and another squad nearby to them. The Attack Bikes shot at a Stormraven each; the DC one was Wrecked in one hit! Disembarking by Deep Strike thanks to Skies of Blood, I lost a single DC to the Dangerous Terrain check for falling out of a speeding, wrecked aircraft, and prepared for some footslogging. The Plasma bikers took out one of Dante's RAS, possibly two, but that was all for the turn, other DA shooting was saved between Armour and FNP.
Turn 2, and I took the offensive into high gear. Dante and his RAS jumped at Belial's chums, but as the other RAS wouldn't be able to make it into Assault, I had them head back nearer the objective I'd deployed on, hiding behind some dense cover to avoid incoming Assault Cannon fire. Mephiston and the DC Dread disembarked from the surviving Stormraven, which had moved only 6" in order to be used as a mobile fire platform. Dante immolated a Terminator, and another fell to massed bolt pistol fire, as the DC Dread and Mephiston both took one each. The Death Company meanwhile moved towards the nearest DW squad, and managed to kill one with bolt pistol fire! The Stormraven was less impressive, taking a single Terminator for all its massed fire. Mephiston powered up in a halo of energy and charged into Belial, the DC Dread and Dante's Squad joining since there's no kill like Overkill. Mephiston crushed the squad, while Dante personally slew Belial with no chance of a return strike. I consolidated into cover, mindful of the mass of plasma and melta weapons still pointed in my direction. My opponent in turn failed to slay any of the Death Comany with shooting, nor the Stormraven, though a RAS trooper was plasma'd. Then the Deathwing nearest Dante and his squad assaulted them, and the brutal melee saw all but two of the Deathwing killed, but Dante was powerfisted, and the Priest alone survived, jumping back an impressive 13 inches from the combat! The DW consolidated towards their biker allies.
My turn 3, and I forgot to move the auto-rallied Priest. The remaining RAS moved onto the objective I deployed on, well out of range of any enemy fire. The Stormraven moved to gain some cover from some of the DA weapons, but it was minimal. The DC moved closer to the Deathwing, while the DC Dread and Mephiston fleeted towards the RW bikers and Deathwing. The Stormraven took out one MM Attack Bike, the Death Company's bolt rounds bounced off the Deathwing nearest them, and then the carnage began anew. The Death Company killed the entire Deathwing squad for no casualties, and Mephiston and the Dread slew the last Deathwing on the board, unable to multi-assault the bikes. My opponent's reserves still failed to show, and he retreated the Bikers and MM AB slowly enough to shoot at Mephiston. He took a wound or two, but was unfazed.
My turn 4, and to cut a long story short, I wiped the DA off the board, while the Priest and RAS hooked up. At this point I was informed that his Reserves still had to come on before the game was over, which surprised me; my local group had always considered that if your entire force on the table was removed, then you had lost. His turn 4, and finally on a 2+ his last Deathwing squad turned up, along with melta RW. He Deepstruck the DW near my RAS/objective, and the RW Scouted in from my left flank, Turbo-boosting towards the Stormraven. A single RAS trooper fell to the Terminators' fire, but it was clear the game wasn't quite over; if I lost that squad and couldn't claim objectives, I could still win but would be much lower on the Tournment rankings due to how the scoring system worked.
My Turn 5 saw me running the DC Dread towards the new bikers (who were the only thing it could see) while Mephiston used Wings to try and get closer to the DW. The Stormraven fired upon the DW, taking only one for its trouble, and the RAS took one down with pistol fire before assaulting. The DW were cut down to two men, but in return my RAS was left with the Priest, Sgt and a single trooper. My opponent's Turn 5 saw him fail to hit the Stormraven with his Melta bikers, and my Sergeant and Priest thankfully cut down the Thunder Hammer and CF DW. The game didn't end!
Turn 6, and Mephiston turned round and Winged his way towards the bikers, while the Stormraven killed two with heavy weapons fire. As Mephiston got into Assault, my opponent simply shook my hand and took the bike off. Win for the Blood Angels! As it turned out, a combination of a total wipeout, completing my mission and the enemy HQ kill had got me joint third place for the round. So far, so good...
After Lunch, I played a mech Tau player with a list roughly as follows;
Commander in Crisis Suit, bodyguard
2x Devilfish with Fire Warriors
Devilfish with Pathfinders
2x Railgun Hammerhead
Ion Cannon Hammerhead
I'm sure I'm missing something, as it totalled 14 killpoints at the end of the game. I may have just spoiled the end of the battle by saying so, but there you go... Probably more Fire Warriors + Transport(s). Unfortunately for my opponent, I play against Tau a LOT. Including a friend's "Mephiston assassination squad" of Farsight plus 4 Battlesuits with Fusion and Plasma. This sensible, normal person's Tau list didn't know what it was in for.
Dawn of War deployment, my opponent won first turn, and deployed his commander + bodyguard, and 2 lots of Fire Warriors in Transports. I deployed Mephiston alone, about 19" from the enemy behind some cover. My opponent's first turn left him unable to shoot Mephy, so he tried to move away with his jetpck move (having moved nearer to try and shoot him) but in my turn he Fleeted well into range of Assault, and promptly tore them to pieces, cutting them down with a Sweeping Advance. The two Railgun Hammerheads plus some Devilfish then turned up, but were unable to do more than take two wounds from Mephiston. In my turn, Dante's unit, the DC Stormraven and the other RAS turned up. The Stormraven flew in from my oard edge 6" to get some unlimited range shooting, the naked RAS dropped and scattered about 7" conveniently behind some cover, while Dante's unit dropped against the side of one of the Devilfish and blew it up, killing 1/3 the contents and pinning the rest, with Mephiston multi-assaulting a Hammerhead and Devilfish and blowing up the Hammerhead, wrecking the Devilfish. The third Hammerhead came on in my opponent's turn, Ion Cannon taking down two of the naked RAS, before they got into CC and blew off its cannon with a glancing Krak grenade! Meltabombs only stunned it... Basically from that point on Dante's unit shot Transports with his Inferno Pistol and assaulted the contents to death, weathering a huge storm of fire so I eventually lost his RAS and he took one wound, but the Priest was unharmed. Mephiston was driven to a single wound by massed small arms fire, but within a turn or two the result was a total wipeout in my favour... I scored 2 short of the max points possible for a round, only failing to get those two by virtue of my opponent having only one HQ! Mephiston unsurprisingly completed "Iron Man" for me there, too.
At this point, I was psyched. I'd come with a joke list, and destroyed two opponents. On top of that, I was now ranked second! If I won the third game, I'd win the tournament! The bad news is that it meant playing the SW Razorback spam list. The player was a very cool guy, and we joked about how the game might play out as we waited for the game to start, but little did I realise how anticlimactic it was all to be... The list went something like;
Rune Priest, Jaws and I never found out the other power
Grey Hunters, Assback
Grey Hunters, Lasplas-Back
Blood Claws, Lasplas-back
Long Fangs, 5 missile launchers
3X Landspeeder Typhoons
2x Predator Destructors, one with HB Sponsons one las
Capture and Control, on an insanely terrain-heavy board, Spearhead deployment. I won the dice-off and decided to go second as it was objective-based. I STUPIDLY decided to Deep Strike everything from reserves rather than coming in from my board edge, singlehandedly losing myself the game right there. DS Mishap lost me Mephiston, the DC Dread and my Las-Raven, while my Ass-Raven got popped on its first turn on the board. Dante missed a Dreadnought's rear armour with his inferno pistol, as did 7 bolt pistol shots, and at that point I tried to concede as there was absolutely no hope. I wasn't allowed to by the organisers though, so the whole bloody mess played out for 5 or 6 tortuous turns as I was whittled to death by largely krak missiles. I was absolutely gutted, as by making one colossal error at the start I'd made the final showdown which would decide the Tourney into a boring waste of time for both myself and my opponent, who said to me while we were gaming that he genuinely wasn't finding it very fun either. The Tourney organisers even joked about allowing us a rematch because of how unexciting the thing had turned out. So, I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and came 5th out of 24 total players. No awards, no fanfare, nothing but a sense of self-loathing for ruining my own fun day by being an idiot. Considering the last game was also only perhaps the 4th "full-size" game of 40k I've EVER lost, it was especially upsetting I guess. Once things went South, I never felt like I had a chance at all, and that was fairly crushing.
Tht said, the event was genuinely fun, the terrain was top-notch and the different theme boards really helped make the thing enjoyable. The players I met and played were all fantastic. If I hadn't just moved another hour's journey and £13 of train fare further away from Colchester, I'd totally go back on a regular basis to anything 4tk ran. Another player at my former local GW store asked me about the doubles tourney they have coming up, but I'm waiting to see how things go with a job that will require me to work weekends, so didn't want to commit to a fourth tourney in the month (I'm reserved for the 40konline UK tourney at the end, and signed up for a DIFFERENT Doubles tourney on top of that some other time this month). If any other tourneys I play later are even half as fun, they'll be worth it, I just hope to never repeat the experience of that third game... Also, if I end up going to the tourney I'm in reserve for, I'll be taking this same list, plus a full 10-man RAS plus weapon upgrades for the extra 250pts. Or perhaps a smaller RAS with another priest...
