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Offline Guildmage Aech

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Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« on: October 4, 2010, 12:22:38 PM »
Time for another chapter in Hymirl's tournament season, the Wolves have one more tourny booked for November before they get a sabbatical and rotated out in favour of something different (The white scars are looking somewhat forelorn about getting a revamp).

25/26th of September I joined a team pasted together from two of Bristol's wargames clubs and headed north to the cold wastes of Mansfield. And the gaming den of The Maelstrom, and independent gaming store and tourny venue. Theres a buildup thread on the warhammer forum over here featuring things like smack talk and the army lists for each team.

Rocking in for 6 games of highly competitive team based play mirroring some examples of the ETC style and even attended by Team England itself. Dum-dum-DUM!

In our team was yours truly with his Space Wolves, Liam fielding Lyander led crimson fists, his gf with chaos deamons featuring slightly more slaanesh steed-like things than was decent and a warhammer player with the most fluffy and harmless blood angel army in the land. All in all we'd dodged the no repeats of a codex per team rule by mostly fielding marines of different flavours; this wasn't all that clever under a team based system as it means we have no-one to try and put upagainst the horrible MEQ eating enemies but nevermind.

Hymirl's Awesome Space Wolves of Winning!
Wolf Lord with belt of russ and frostblade (joins landraider squad)
Runepriest (joins a rhino squad of choice)
5 annoying wolf scouts with meltagun
8 Grey Hunters with melta, standard, powerfist/combi-melta wolf guard in a (heavy support) landraider
8 Grey Hunters with melta, standard, powerfist/combi-melta wolf guard in a rhino
8 Grey Hunters with melta, standard, powerfist/combi-melta wolf guard in a rhino
6 Long Fangs with 5 missiles and a basic razorback
Land Speeder with melta and flamer.

Arrived with enough time on the friday evening for some friendly games, and time for a practice game Steve Butler's Eldar. Spearhead deployment, secure and control (3 objectives evenly spaced along the centre of the table)


The best defense is offense! Shaken falcons can't shoot brightlances!

Space Wolves advance on the Eldar position, unable to shoot from a glancing hit a Falcon attempts a flat out ram on the empty razorback knocking off it's turret but takes a glancing hit in return, its got holofields but I roll double six immobilising it, which means its destroyed because of it's speed, the dire avenger vehicle upgrade falls out and gets pinned.


Sneak Attack Warwalkers!

Warwalkers attend, and shoot a rhino in the back but then lose one as  my landspeeder turns up from reserve and the long fang's return fire. My land raider immoblises the firedragons wave serpent nice and far away and it's squad run over to go deal with disembarked fire dragons while the wolf lord runs off to fight dire avengers. The seer council counter attack to save the last firedragons and take off after the land raider.

(play was abandoned at this stage while takeaway arrived somewhat slowly and resumed after a beer or two)


Jetbike rampage!

The seer council get involved, managing to knock almost all the weapons off the land raider and immoblising it, they charge a grey hunter unit which counter attacks and uses the banner of cheating to win combat, see them off and consolodate up behind them so they can't rally. The other grey hunter unit meets up with the wolf lord, deals with the last falcon and gets into a fight with the jetbikes for an objective and wins. Two objective secured for the wolves and none for the eldar.

A good laugh for a practice game, tomorrow the tournament would start and serious business would ensue.

Game 1, Very pretty deathwatch marines, pitched battle attack and defend. Codex marines, led by a libarian, two lascannon landraiders each with stormshield terminators and two rhino mounted tactical squads.


Wait... tank rush was my plan too...

An early shot immobilises my land raider in my deployment zone and the enemy armour advanced slowly to keep up rate of fire. The Space wolves most most their units to meet the threat head on while the landspeeder and the long fangs move to position to pelt the enemy objective with fire (missiles are more or less pointless against land raiders so I just didn't bother).


The old razorback for coversaves trick working a treat.

Melta shots on landraiders do little meaningful damage, both units of combat terminators get the charge but are mostly killed by combinations of counter attack, cheaty banner waving, hitting really hard with sticks and a few poor saves on the part of the terminators. The tactical marines run in to finish off the unit most damaged by terminators then get attacked and killed by the fresh unit of Grey Hunters.

The wolf scouts turn up on turn 5 to shiv the half tactical squad left on the deathwatch objective, everything else having been missiled to death by long fangs (with some help from their razorback)


Deathwatch landraiders try to abduct fluffy the objective puppy...

Mobile land raiders bundle all over the Space Wolves objective to go for the draw, one is killed and the rune priest kills the librarian in a rather brave duel. But the other land raider lives to contest and unfortunatly the game ends on turn 5 putting up a draw. Unfortunately, the rest of my team lost their games so we didn't pick up many points for the round (this was mostly due to the fact that this team took second at the end of the event and had many seasoned players with hard armies to try and challenge Team England).
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Offline g00gle5

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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #1 on: October 6, 2010, 07:06:23 AM »
Every god-damn time. You are such a tease it is unbelieveable, finish this some time soon, please? Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry-on-top.

I thought for a second that this was going to be the same team tournament I was supposed to go to last weekend but our car had a slight encounter with a concrete barrier so we never made it...

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Offline Guildmage Aech

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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #2 on: October 6, 2010, 05:20:06 PM »
Um, forgot about this! I quite like writing them but then get distracted and don't always get back in the mood. I'm an artiste, I need the muse in order to work! Anyhow, lets get back on it! I'm afraid the pictures get a bit more space here on as I had a few drinks and tend to forget stuff like pictures.

Game 2, Imperial Guard, Led by a psyker, featuring two squads of Orgyns in chimeras, a meltagun vet squad in chimera, a platoon with 3 infantry units packing autocannons, two regular Leman Russ and a Vendetta. Spearhead deployment and capture and control with three objectives one in the middle and one in each deployment zone.

The chimeras set up as far forward as possible with the psyker hanging out with the vets, the vendetta tried to hide behind a building and everything else hung back around the IG objective. The Wolves set up as aggressively as possible with the long fangs up a building.

The guard had first turn and made some ineffective shooting, except for the light spray of anti-personnel fire at the long fangs, who failed four out of four armour saves and then failed a morale check. Brilliant. In my turn I start pushing units forward, a bit of melta fire from a rhino's hatch blows up one of the ogryn's chimera pinning them in the explosion.

The centre of the board turns into a scrum, as I lose a rhino and get a unit of grey hunters charged by orgyns, which lose the combat thanks to some counterattack and waving of cheaty banners, the rune priest leads his unit to get involved with the other unit and manages to force weapon one. Meanwhile the landraider trundles around the centre towards the IG objective thoughfully keeping close to the fleeing ogryns to prevent them rallying and eventually dumps the wolf lord and his squad into the IG platoon who gets chewed up.


Not a lot left fighting in the centre but there are a lot of corpses...

By turn 5 most the IG have been beaten to death save for their tanks, the vendetta in particular managed to laugh off being shot at for every turn of the game to carry it's token scoring unit to an objective while tanks contested the others. And game ended on turn 5 so I couldn't do anything about it. Big pile of VPs as bonus points though so it wasn't all bad.

All in all this was my least enjoyable game of the weekend, the guy didn't have an armylist, he army wasn't WYSIWYG and he took full advantage of it but surprising me with things like heavy flamers on chimeras that appear to have heavy bolters while whining "I told you about it earlier..." when its the first I've heard of it generally isn't a good way to win friends.

Game 3, By now our team had actually read the matchups system to try and work out how it works and put me up against a Horde Ork army. Which had; Three units of 30 orks, a battlewagon with a mek, Ghazskull and hardboys in it and maybe a copter or two. The mission was pitched battle, and playing for annihilation. No lies, it was going to be a struggle for the orks...

The three ork mobs advanced as quick as possible while the battlewagon hung back behind buildings to stay safe. I mosed forwards with grey hunters and disembarked in longish rapid fire range to chip off casualties as soon as possible. The wolf scouts fluff their outflank roll to arrive as far away from anything as they possibly can and start running (we'll get back to them later). The orks charged next turn but counter attack and banners meant that they all lost combat pretty horribly and either where destroyed or unrecoverably falling back at the loss of a few grey hunters in each squad, their charge had pulled them out of range of support from Gazkull that turn too.

Some lucky space wolves shooting immoblised the battlewagon, to Gaz jumped out with the boys declared his super Waaagh and hit a unit like a sledgehammer destroying a squad of grey hunters. In my turn I counter attack by assaulting with the unit from the land raider, and not wanting to even try and fight gaz simply pile damage onto his unit and invite him to a morale check at -8, thus breaking the mighty warlord and running him down with a sweeping advance.


Note creative use of beermats as 'vehicle exploded' crater...

At this point units closed onto the battlewagon to try to kill it with close range meltafire (unsuccessful) and powerfists (highly successful) while the rest of the remaining army kept pelting firepower at the last big unit of orks... without a full strength squad and an un-used wolf banner of cheaty combat winning available I couldn't dispatch them like the first two units.

The mob tries to go for the unit that just destroyed the battlewagon but trying to save the last three marines I back them away and move in with the landspeeder to try and distract them. The land speeder distracts them all to well getting charged and then immoblised with a powerclaw. Its now turn 7 and I notice my wolf scouts having been running since turn 2 now have the oppotunity to assault into combat... unfortunatly outnumbered 2/1 against. On the up side they might manage to save the speeder from becoming victory points so they charge anyway... manage a pathetic 2 kills, lose 3, fail their morale and run away.... thus giving away VPs for themselves instead. But at least the meant the speeder got to live!

That was the end of day one, a win, loss and draw is quite reasonable progress. The rest of my team wheren't doing as well though, although our captain had managed two wins and thus claimed to be MVP! (In fairness I had claimed MVP after round one with a try for a draw).

Game 4 Moar orks! Another massive ork horde for the wolves to try and kill, meaning that it would be the second game in a row where every marine has to average three orks dead each in order to see them off. I can't remember the mission but it was dawn of war with objectives of some kind I think.

The orks had, a mek with a shock attack gun, lootas, stormboys, tankbustas two big units of orks on foot, a battlewagon carrying a load of burnas and another mek and a dread.


Yikes!

Most this game followed the same plan as the previous one, using counter attack and flag waving to break charging hordes of orks. The stormboys caught quite a lot of bolter fire to the face and failed their morale check, didn't rally the turn after and didn't get a chance after that as some scouts turned up next to them to shout "Boo!" and scare them off the table (while they shot the shock attack gun mek with a meltagun, which was also very useful).


Space Wolves deployment, Long Fangs loving deployment in high places like a fat kid loves cake...

The lootas traded fire with the long fangs who managed their 'fail all our armour saves' trick again but managed to pass a morale check and keep fighting for a change, the managed to win eventually with only one of them left standing.


Not a lot of marines left, but not many orks either...note creative use of beer mats as 'vehicle expoded' template for rhino.

Very wary of open topped vehicles carrying a dozen flamer armed burna boys (their horriblness learned against Changeyname at the 40KO tourny) I was sure to stay outside of their drive by range, when they did get involved it was to charge using them as powerweapons... luckily a good round of initiative 4 attacks killed most of them before they hit.
The dreadnought managed to run amok killing a lot of space wolves but by turn 6 it was all over and the wolves stood battered but victorious.

Game 5 Chaos Deamons!
Featuring; A couple of units of slaanesh steed things, horrors, flamers, plaguebearers, bloodletters, bloodletters on rhinos, herald of tzeentch on a chariot, and a greater deamon of khorne.

On review it seems the only pictures I took of this game where so eye wateringly out of focus I'm not going to inflict them on you. In summary though this game went my way as most the early anti-tank fire with bolts of change was fairly ineffectual and I was able to quickly mop up the tzeentch units with boltguns and fast response times... the herald even managed to lose a prolonged duel with an empty razorback.

The deamons came back fighting and managed to get most their khorne units into combat except for the bloodcrushers which I shot, a lot, until they all died because I knew exactly what they where like in close combat. Unfortunatly my scoring units got whittled down to nothing, the last grey hunter being killed by the Greater Deamon before my wolf lord smacked it upside the head with his frost blade... fortunatly it was the last chaos model left alive so while I couldn't actually hold the objectives I got to win by killing absolutely positively everybody in the room. Its the space wolf way!

In other good news, the rest of my team win all their games too and we win a second round, the blood Angel player even managing to beat a particularly nasty space wolves army by remembering how to play 40K and dancing like a butterfly in the face of horrible firepower.

Game 6 At this point we found that the placings for the tournament where as follows, Team England playing against the team that thrashed us in round one on the first row of tables, and us in third somehow playing against a semi-serious team just behind us. At this point where where shocked to find that actually placing was a possiblity!

He had Tyrant, Tyrannofex, termigants, tervigon and a trygon prime, plus some outflanking genestealers, two hive guard (behind the building) and another trygon (out of shot). The mission was Dawn of War with 4 objectives that scattered randomly in a manner that seemed fairly pointless but anyway.


Um... shoot it, shoot it now!

We traded some fire as the nids closed, the tervigon produced 9 termigants and broke itself to limit the ammont of scoring units to a total of 4. Some nasty missile fire put a few holes into one of the Trygon. In my second turn my scouts attended and assassinated the lurking unit of termigants at the back of the army before being outflanked and assinated themselves by genestealers. The trygon that deep striked into the middle of my army was fired upon and killed by two units of Grey hunters, their rhinos and the rune priest who pelted with with as much bolter, melta and mind bullets as they could manage. The Long fangs managed to reduce the other trygon to 1 wound despite it getting some cover saves.

The wolf lord and his unit charged into the ruins to fight the tervigon and the hive guard to death in a very long combat.... meanwhile I tried my best to shoot the rest of the army to killing the other Trygon and the Tyrant, but not before the tyrant managed to get a dozen shots off at a grey hunter unit causing them to run off the table like a bunch of eldar. The tryannofex proved to be extremely hard to kill thanks to his krak missile repellant armour save, and charged into my last unengaged grey hunter squad.

The game swungback and forth as the nids tried to pull a victory out of the bag. Come turn 7 the situation had one objective contested between my razorback and a couple of genestealers, another objective contested between the tervigon on one wound and my wolf lord with his squad, another contested between my land raider and the termigants that where making an annoyingly large ammount of cover saves, who turn moved to back up contest the objective with my wolf lord's unit should the tervigon die and lastly the Trannofex fighting the last grey hunter of his squad on the last objective. But in the last turn of the game the wolf lord decide to get his ass in gear, actually hits the tergivon for a change and kills it, consolidating his boys onto the objective.

For the win I would need to kill a Tryannofex which was on 5 wounds, with one model armed with a powerfist, before it killed said model with powerfist. Bad times. But no, as I see my Rune preist was in range for combat, "Simple I say, he runs into combat, 3s to hit, a 6 to wound, pass a psychic test and instant kill the beastie." So in he runs...

Rolls two 3s to hit.

Rolls a 6 to wound.

Passes a psychic test.

And instant kills the beastie. Troop unit survives, claims objective, wins the game. Many thanks. ;D

Unfortunately, the rest of my team lost all their games so we lost the round and finished in 5th place overall out of 12 teams. Mid table, average... and more than we expected. Can't argue with that! :D
« Last Edit: October 6, 2010, 05:22:30 PM by Hymirl »
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Offline Lord Alliben

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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #3 on: October 7, 2010, 12:42:27 PM »
Thanks for the battle reports and pics. Sorry your team didn't do better. Glad to see the Space Puppies win a bunch of games. As always. (Don't mind me. I'm just bitter because I'm primarily a Tyranid player.)

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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #4 on: October 8, 2010, 05:26:49 AM »
Good stuff, Hymirl, always nice to see your laid back gaming-attitude come through in your reports, as well.

I love the fact you call it the banner of cheatyness-waving, as I've been discovering more and more recently that it is a horrendous piece of kit, but Space Wolf leadership does suck, so I don't take it too hard on the chin.

I absolutely loved the end of the day, blaise-Rune Priest taking a stroll into combat to win the game for you. Those moments are definitely the highlights of tournaments for me.

Always a pleasure to read, do more!

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Offline Guildmage Aech

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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2010, 03:04:28 PM »
Thanks for the battle reports and pics. Sorry your team didn't do better. Glad to see the Space Puppies win a bunch of games. As always. (Don't mind me. I'm just bitter because I'm primarily a Tyranid player.)

I'm not sure about Tyranids to be honest. It might just be the army I'm using but they seem to have to really struggle to stay in the game. I even got the codex to write a list or two out of interest of giving them a go (eventually abandoned to how much GW want for hiveguard and zonothropes!)

I love the fact you call it the banner of cheatyness-waving, as I've been discovering more and more recently that it is a horrendous piece of kit, but Space Wolf leadership does suck, so I don't take it too hard on the chin.

It amuses me a lot to call it that, simply because I consider it to be somewhat silly I can have an army standard in every unit... if it where only one per army it wouldn't be so bad. As to leadership I've not had a problem, with a Wolf Guard leading each Grey Hunter unit I'm LD9 or 10 across the board depending where the characters are.. its only the scouts that have LD8 to test on and frankly they're disposable enough for me not to care. :)
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Re: Team Challenge Tourny Report.
« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2010, 03:56:01 PM »
Thanks for the battle reports and pics. Sorry your team didn't do better. Glad to see the Space Puppies win a bunch of games. As always. (Don't mind me. I'm just bitter because I'm primarily a Tyranid player.)

I'm not sure about Tyranids to be honest. It might just be the army I'm using but they seem to have to really struggle to stay in the game. I even got the codex to write a list or two out of interest of giving them a go (eventually abandoned to how much GW want for hiveguard and zonothropes!)

Haha. I was being sarcastic about being glad to see Space Wolves win. I was being bitter because my Nids struggle so much against them. Sorry if that was unclear. The last tournament I played in I got wiped by wolves but handily won my other games against normal marines. There were 3 wolf players there and they took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. It was ugly. Lol.

 


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