That said, I was the only one who didn't play Vulcan Hestan with their Space Marine army... and it wouldn't have mattered if I brought him. Not hitting the first time and then missing the reroll nets you 90 points lost.
Yes, I did confirm that, can't even hit with rerolls.
Also, 24" range sucks.
Game 1:
Frank "Raven17" Schuhmann
Final place: 12.
Army: Space Marines
List: Vulkan Hestan, librarian with nullzone and gate, assault terminators in Land Raider, 10 man tactical squad in rhino, 5 scouts with sniper rifles, camo cloaks and missile launcher, 5 scouts with sergeant with combimelter, meltabombs and power fist in land speeder storm, 2 multimelta trikes, 3 multimelta trikes, 2 thunderfire cannons
Mission: 2 objectives
Deployment: spearhead
First turn: him
From Germany and he finished second last year, so I expected a tough game. More so as I was going second. On the other hand I would have the last round to mess up his game, so... He put his objective in the corner of his table edge, I did the same. He put everything on the board and set everything else up for a push on my objective, except his sniper scouts and the thunderfire cannons which he put on his objective. I placed my predators, the veterans with their razorback and the librarian and two melta combat squads in rhinos and a missile launcher combat squad and a multimelta combat squad to castle up at my objective and put the rest in reserve. Before his first turn he scouted his land speeder storm for the first turn charge on my razorback and I fail to seize and cripple his advance. First turn he jumps from the speeder and shoots his combimelta: Hit, Snake eyes. Then: charge. 3 Powerfist autohits, 4 krak grenade autohits. 1 glance, 2 penetrating hits: stunned. I retaliate: 5 sternguard with AP4 bolters rapidfireing: 20 Hits. And, I really got to write the rolls here: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 1, 2, 1. Or something like that. Who cares? Our dice were shit. One could think our luck should get better after that, but tell that to our dice. Hitting vehicles with multimeltas in meltarange? Not a chance. Oh, reroll? Then we fuck that up too. OMG, a hit! Ok, snake eyes on penetration rolls then. Well, at least that bad luck didn't hit just me. He had his scouts and trikes in my quarter and we took some potshots at each other in the middle as we were out of range from each others bases. So, he couldn't get into my rhino castle as his trikes had died and his terminators had to turn around to keep his objective save. In the end he had his tactical squad near my objective and by near I mean 15" away with difficult terrain and 2 rhinos between them, so no chance to contest. But what did do? I tried to get to his objective with a reserved tactical squad and my two speeder to contest and had my deepstriking terminators to hammer all opposition there. Rhino moved 12", popped smoke. His land raider turned around to intercept. Lascannon. Miss. Reroll. Hit. Penetrating (3). Coversave? Nah (3). Result: 5. Hey, since when do we roll above 3? Squad gets out, morale check: 5, 6. Hey, since when do we roll well again? Oh..., yeah... Shit. Well, then. At least we roll better now. My terminators deepstruck. First three armorsaves: 1, 1, 1. Librarian trid to gate: 1,1. Dead. Nope, still shit. Well, I didn't quite get to his objective. I think the tactical squad made it about 35" into his half, so no contesting there, terminators got terminated by mastercrafted thunderhammers, my speeders the same, so no contesting there either. Game ended drawn in objectives after 5 rounds, so it went on to killing stuff and there he was far more resilient. But as shitty as both our dice were, it was a fun and fast paced game and thrilling to the end. I would like to get another game in. Maybe at the 10. Battlefield Ratisbona, but I don't know if I've got time between work and university.
Result: 16:24
Game 2:
Sebastian "Teseus" Kipling
Final place: 25.
Army: Black Templars
List: Emperor's champion, Chaplain with 3 cenobites, 5 man terminator squad with tankhunters and 2 cyclones, all lascannon Predator, 20 man crusader squad with power fist, meltagun, 2x 10 man crusader squad with meltagun and power fist in rhino, 8 man crusader squad with power weapon and plasmagun, techmarine with powerfist, stormshield and servo-harness
Mission: 2 objectives
Deployment: pitched battle
First turn: him
The draw mission. Again. Ok, let's see, can't always be that way, no? Objectives in either corner as before. He reserved the pod with techmarine and the marine blob with chaplain, I reserved the speeders. He put his rhinos, terminators and the preadtor in his corner, I put some combat squads, 2 rhinos, my predators near my corner and the razorback near the middle, Dreadnought, trikes and a full squad in rhino for the push opposite to his corner. And form that point on I effectively played with half my army, because he didn't even try to go for my objective. Dropped the pod to intercept my push and then we come to the epic fail that is my attack. Dreadnought: first hit: no CC arm, techmarine explodes him in close combat. Terminators: Deepstruck in, lost two guys, FAILED THEIR LEADERSHIP, ran off the board. Tactical squad: got shot out of their rhino, got assaulted, lost by one, FAILED THEIR LEADERSHIP, ran off the board. Trikes: exploded the pod and killed 2 marines and put a wound on the techmarine, yay for explosions! Then died. Librarian with gate: passed the test, double six on the scatter, killed one of his own, then get blown to bits with his veterans after doing nothing. But all that would not have mattered if I would have REMBERED that he still had a 24 man marine blob in reserve when I boosted my speeder out of sight from the rest of his army along his table edge on turn 4 to contest. Well, both speeders downed, my attack annihilated and half my army did precisely nothing. Even lost in victory points. So, here is my end game quote:
Result: 18:22
Game 3:
Heinz "McGurk" Tschig
Final place: 24.
Army: Imperial Guard
List: Command squad with lascannon, 3 vendettas, platoon command with 4 flamers, platoon command with 4 meltaguns, 5x infantry squad with missile launcher, 5x infantry squad with lascannon, 2 manticores, hydra squadron (3 hydras)
Mission: 5 objectives
Deployment: spearhead
First turn: me
Well, driving 2 hours to play a guy, who lives 30 minutes away from home. Yeah, win. ;)
And then he brought an imperial guard antitank list. Well, first round == win. 3 vs 2 on third try. I win, yay! I put everything on the board this time, he did the same and barely fit everything into his quarter. I controlled three objectives from the start, he had none. He failed to seize and I opened up on his infantry squads. No cover == dead guardsmen. We then exchanged shots until my terminator hit his lines and killed 4 infantry squads, the hydras and his command squad on their own. His only chance would have been to shoot me of my objectives and then fly his vendettas up to claim them, because he was too slow to quickly get anywhere by any other means. Going second and getting a quarter made it an uphillbattle for him from the start.
Result 22:18
Game 4:
Michael "Ithros" Rohrer
Final place: 13.
Army: Grey Knights
List: Grand master with radgrenades, 5 paladins with 2 psycannons and wound allocation shenanigans, 10 purifiers with halberds in land raider, dread knight with teleporter, sword and psycannon, dread knight with teleporter, sword and incinerator, 2x 5 man strike squad with psycannon
Mission: table quarters
Deployment: spearhead
First turn: him
He had the disadvantage in scoring units so he made his paladins and purifiers scoring. Grand masters ftw, lol. He put the land raider with purifiers and grand master near the center of the board, his paladins 12" in the middle from his table edge. I put my speeders out of LoS and spread my combat squads around my quarter edges. Dreadnought and meltaguns in rhinos for the push, heavy weapons in cover, predators with good line of fire into his quarter. He kept one of his strike squads in reserve for deepstrike, I kept my trikes in reserve and waited for his land raider to push forward to get a shot off. And then he didn't move the damn thing more then 2" all game. Don't know why, simply driving on and slaughtering my infantry would have brought an easy win for him as he was geared up for close combat and I was not. Instead he waited for my terminators to walk up then assaulted them in the open. Well that led to dead purifiers and a grand master with 2 wounds remaining after my terminators heroically folded like grass, but more about the grand master later. Dreadnights take their 30" jump to each get into the adjacent quarter and one dies to return fire on my first turn after killing a marine with his incinerator. Ok, immobilized a predator too, but who cares? Open line of fire on 2/3 of the board, could have been worse. We proceeded to shoot each other form across the board, I walked some marines in the other quarters and put them into buildings. He deepstruck his strike squad into a quarter to contest, I tried to shoot them out again. He kills some rhinos, I killed his land raider. His paladins refuse to die to concentrated fire, my dreadnought decided to die after walking 8" and 2 psycannon hits. Hey, could have been 8 hits, but he didn't roll so well either. On turn 5 I got control of my quarter, he had his quarter contested by me and I got the other two contested by him. Well, my turn to roll for turn 6. With my dice it shouldn't be hard to roll 1 or 2 to end the game and win...? So it went on and he walked his two wound grand master into my quarter into cover with LoS for my whole army. Nothing much else happened, the other quarters were still contested and I had no realistic chance to kill something else than the grand master to win. He ends his turn my whole army opens up on his lone grand master. I still had 2 predators with all weapons, a razorback with just the plasmagun on rapidfire, 5 meltas, 3 krak missiles, and bolters form 4 squads. Well, after NOT going to ground the grand master was still standing with one wound and the game was drawn. Yes, I DID hit with the meltas. Out of laziness to embed something here again, please refer to the out come of game 2, thx.
Result: 18:22
Game 5:
Herbert "CEO" Bachmann
Final place: 9.
Army: Tau
List: Shas'el with wound allocation shenanigans, 2+ reserve ninjapod and 2 man retinue and missile pods on everyone, 5 man fire warrios with devilfish, kroot blob, 2x 1 man broadside team, 1x 2 man broadside team, 3x krisis team with wound allocation shenanigans and missile pods on everyone, 8 pathfinders with devilfish
Mission: killpoints
Deployment: dawn of war
First turn: him
Killpointspoints with cardboard tanks vs tau. Lost first turn, so I reserved everything and hoped to get the first strike on him and to kill some units and then get the fuck out of sight. Well, let's summarize how that went: Rolled crap for reserves, drove on the board, killed nothing, got nuked. Game was desided by the roll for first turn as I can't bring enough firepower to bear while moving. Also he had 2 turns to get into position. Could have brought everything in on my first turn, but that would have given him 2-3 more shooting phases. Reserve rolls didn't work out in my favour too. All in all the expected outcome after I lost the roll for first turn, as he had a very mobile army and was able to negate coversaves with his markerlights.
Result: 8:32
Final place: 21.
Conclusion:
Don't bring a gun to a knife fight.
...
Ok, let's elaborate that a bit more.
I simply wasn't prepared for the playstyle of my opponents. Defensive BT and GK? That can work out by sheer luck (BT) or simple resilence (GK). And staying out of range. I don't think my multimeltas fired more than three times in the whole tournament. The free ones from the combat squads that is, not the trikes. Since the need for farreaching antitank and DS2 has risen I did already replace these with lascannons. Yes, they are painted, shut up. ;P
Or my army style simply met a missmatch. Tau? Additionally having that many killpoints is a big disadvantage for that mission. Apart from considering a 35 point rhino as the same as a 875 point paladin squad is bad mission design. Hey, it's GW! But that game wouldn't have brought me into the top ten anymore anyway.
Interestingly I don't have as many problems with armies like Dark Eldar or Imperial Guard. Or Tyranids, but they are commonly not considered as a good tournament army. In test games and even in tournaments these armies rarely pose a challenge. The cause may be my opponents playstyle, but the armylists I played were mostly solid and most even geared to kill vehicles and/or marines, so I don't quite get that.
The armylist style was also something I didn't expect. No restrictions generally means that players bring the vilest abominations from hell. Well, some players did, but most lists I would have considered subpar. Bringing Vulkan doesn't make make a Space Marine list autowin for example. Still, if I recall correctly I was the only SM player who didn't bring him.
But back to the knife fight. What bit me in the ass was mostly my lack of close combat power and resilence of individual units. Yes, I got the nunbers, but I don't have the reliable killingpower. In the five games of the tournament I was only able to kill more than half of my opponents army in the third game. Even when I had the superior range in the other games.
Considering the armies I faced this year I should have brought Black Templars again. Far more resilence, as I didn't encounter much melta, superior close combat and enough shooting to crack open transports. Next year maybe. Maybe with the new imba BT codex... ;D
Didn't get to make pictures again, so here are some Galleries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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