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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Tournament Update: Into the Fires of Battle..

Unto the Anvil of War!!  Today saw my Salamander Army attend the first Tournament of 2012 and performed stupendously.  The players pack for the event created by Mark over at Project Circle can be found here.  My army I took was as followed:

Rune Priest
3 Wolf Guard
Dreadnought
10 Grey Hunters
10 Grey Hunters
Long Fangs
Vindicator

The Rune Priest was tooled up almost to the max, while the Long Fangs took a combination of Heavy Bolters and Multi-melta.

For the most part, the vast majority of the army was fully painted in time for the Tournament with the sole exception of the Dreadnaught.  Thankfully, Mark was kind enough to lend me his own fully painted Dread so I was able to field a fully painted army.

Game 1: Salamanders vs Blood Angels

My first game was against a Blood Angels army that contained a heavy contingent of Jump Infantry backed up by a Tactical Squad and a pair of Attack Bikes.  The mission was Seize Ground with the Pitched Battle Deployment.

My opponent Raymond was plagued with some pretty shoddy rolls, which when combined with my Tempest Wrath psychic power forcing his Jump infantry to take Dangerous Terrain rolls as the came ever closer to my Librarian.  With some impressive shooting phases by my Long Fangs and Grey Hunters eventually whittled down his army to the point that I was able to concentrate my forces against his Tactical Marines.  In the final turn, Raymond made a noble last stand, with such ferocity that even Sanguinius himself would have been proud.  Against a power weapon, a force weapon and a Power fist in the squad, the outcome was all but predetermined.

Result:  20 points


Game 2: Dark Angels vs Salamanders

The second game was against the bye-buster army that Mark created for the Tournament using his Dark Angels.  The very mobile MSU army list was not exactly suited for the Annihilation mission with a Dawn of War deployment. 

Once again, my concentrated fire approach went very well, allowing me to pound on transports until the units inside were forced to disembark and could use the Grey Hunters to shoot them to death.  The game ended with a second victory, though in this case, I was unable to kill his Jump-pack Chaplain, I wasn’t able to secure the extra Tournament Points. 

Results: 15 points.


Game 3: Salamanders vs Blood Angels

The third game was against a custom Chapter using the Blood Angels codex.  The army contained a number of different elements including a Tactical Squad, Assault Marines, Dreadnought, a Devastator Squad and a custom-made Attack Bike using a Landspeeder Kit and old Trukk components.  The mission for this game was a Seize Ground using the Spearhead deployment.

It’s at about this stage that you, dear reader may see a pattern forming.  Considering I chose this Codex for its Assault potential, I was spending an awful lot of my time holed up in cover shooting the snot out of everything that stuck its head out and presented itself as a target.  As in the previous two games, I played the shooting game again, determined that Damo, my valiant opponent wasn’t going to shift me from my objective.  Additionally, I was determined to use my overwhelming weight of fire to hopefully blow him off my objective. 

The plan went well enough, though I continued to forget to use my Tempest’s Wrath psychic power that allowed Damo’s Assault Marines to close in and blow the main weapon off my Vindicator.  Focusing fire on the squad holding his objective, he was forced to re-deploy his Assault Marines, pulling them back cement his hold of his home objective and pulling off a tie.

Result: 15 points

Game 4: Salamanders vs Chaos Marines

The fourth and final game was an Annihilation mission with Pitched Battle deployment.  This was a solid army run by Ryan, an opponent that almost always guarantees a fun game.  His army was Khornate themed, consisting of 3 Vindicators and two squads of Marines in Rhinos led by Kharne the betrayer. 

3 Vindicator Tanks is a level of shooting power that is difficult to counter with the army that I created.  Thankfully, with a flurry of good shooting rolls, I managed to disable or destroy all 3 Vindicators over the course of two shooting phases.  A series of unfortunate assaults, including the pointless sacrifice of my Dreadnought in a pointless assault against Kharne’s unit (that bastard is a monstrous creature in combat WTF?!?!?!?!?) saw my entire army shredded with the exception of my Long Fang unit, and Ryan’s assault force reduced to just Kharne (I use the word ‘just’ very loosely here).  It’s like saying ‘I managed to reduce my opponent’s army to just a Warhound Titan.’ 

Surging forward, Kharne rushed towards my remaining Long Fangs, only barely stopping short of assault range due to the presence of a section of defensive barricade.  Desperate and running out of options, my Long Fangs did the one thing they know best – Filled the air between them and their target with the Emperor’s Wrath causing three wounds in the process – 2 from the Heavy Bolters and 1 from the Multi melta.  With desperate anticipation, I watched as Ryan rolled the two armour saves inflicted by the Heavy Bolters, failing both.  With one wound left, it was down to the cover save from the Multi melta.  As the dice tumbled across the table, my heart stopped as the dice came to rest on a.... three – killing Kharne outright and winning me the game. 

Result: 20 points

With the fourth and final game completed, it was all over except for the awards ceremony.  Ryan walked away with a well-earned Third Place, while Damo secured both second place and player’s choice for best army (also very well deserved).  In a shocking twist of fate, I was actually awarded First Place (a shock for everyone I can assure you, especially me!).  Hopefully this is the beginning of a very positive 2012.  The secondary effect has been that I’ve gotten quite jazzed about 40K again, which will hopefully mean that I’ll be painting more Space Marines as well. 

Well, that’s all for this Tournament Report, I’m hoping it wasn’t too long and drawn out.  If you have any suggestions to make it more interesting (more pictures is already on my list), feel free to let me know. 

Catch you all later,

Trev

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the win Trev.

    Some interesting lists there I have to say. I'm surprised there weren't more spam really. At 1000 points in our tournament scene, you'd come up against Purifier spam, or Lash Prince & 9 Oblits, Venom Spam or BA with 6 Predators.

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  2. A lot of players in our area pretty much play whatever they think is cool as opposed to the latest internet hotness. There are one or two exceptions to this though, but thankfully those players either cannot afford to buy all the necessary components for that type of list, or lack the in-game skill needed to make the list work effectively.

    To be honest, we've got a good group of players here that, for the most part, use fluff to determine how their army is built.

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