'Ard Boyz 2009 Results

'Ard boyz on Saturday was fun but long. While they did open the doors at 10 to start checking in people and setting up terrain the first games didn’t start until after 11. The lunch break was 4:30 and the last game was called at 8pm. So ya… a long but fun day.

I got lots of great comments on the finished Templar army. Even jokes how I should be docked points for having a great looking fully painted army at ‘Ard Boyz. That made me happy since that was pretty much why I thought getting them done would be really cool.

I didn’t take a ton of pictures because it felt like we needed to get going the whole time. I’m also not going to give a full report but quick synopsis of each game. Later I’ll do a review of how each of my selections worked out for me.

Game 1: Jose’s IG
I had never met Jose before (his first time down to this shop) but while we were milling around outside I saw him carrying his new Battlefoam bag and I had been eyeballing them. So I struck up a conversation with him and he was nice enough to show me the ins and outs of the bag. So it was nice to have that friendly chat before going in to game 1.

Company Command +Astropath
Gaurdsman Marbo
Infantry Platoon 1- 50 Gaurdsman with Commisar, 5 flamers, and 6 power swords
Infantry Platoon 2- 50 Gaurdsman with Commisar, 1 plasman pistol, 3 plasmaguns, 2 meltaguns, and one power sword
3x Heavy Weapon Squad totaling 6 lasxannons and 3 missile launchers
Veteran squad with 2 flamers, 1 heavy flamer and harker
Veteran Squad with 3 meltaguns and greandeirs
Valkyrie with Rocket Pod
3x Sentinals with Heavy Flamers
LRBT with Heavy Stubber and Heavy Bolter
LRBT with Heavy Stubber and Heavy Bolter
2x LR Exterminator with Heavy Subbers and Heavy Bolters

My BT set up waiting for his IG to deploy. Time to get a coffee and read a novel!

His long table edge was stuffed full of guys and he put objectives on opposite ends of his deployment zone. I kept most of my force to one side and put my two objectives near the center of the board for my shooty squads and to stay away from his outflankers.

The big lesson I learned in this game is that 50 gaurdsmen with a commissar and 6 power swords is not a good target for Terminators. They killed not only my assault termies but the GKT as well. Sure there was less than a dozen in the end but man, that was a surprise to me.

His Valk Deepstriked on turn 3 and his sentinels and harker didn’t come until 3 but came out on the same side. Marbo didn’t make it out until turn 4 and that ended up being the last turn of the game (we had 3 minutes to spare but it was my turn 5 so it wasn’t going to improve anything for him).

I thought for sure we were playing for a tie most of the game. But on turn 4 I was able to contest all 3 objectives not in my deployment zone and hold my two. Marbo missed his det charge on my small squad, the sentinels were out of range and I passed the saves I needed. I also had more KP racked up and my HQ was still alive, so Massacre for BT 21 pts.

Game 2: Patrick’s Chaos
Patrick I had only seen at the last tournament in June but he was friends with a group of guys I’ve been talking to a lot at the store and we were introduce also pre Game 1 while hanging outside. So again it was nice to have made those introductions pre game time.

Chaos Sorcerer- Mark of Slaanesh, Lash, Personal Icon
Abaddon
10 Terminators, 4 combi melta, 2 chainfist, Icon of Tzeenth
Rhino w/ 10 Plaguemarines, Aspiring Champ, Fist
Rhino w/ 10 Plaguemarines, 2 Meltaguns, Aspiring Champ, Fist, Icon
Rhino w/ 9 Plaguemarines, 2 meltaguns, Aspiring Champ, Fist, Icon
Rhino w/ 9 Plaguemarines, 2 meltaguns, Aspiring Champ, Fist, Icon
3 Oblits
3 Oblits
2 Oblits

Looking at his list and was glad I had already practiced with Liam. However since it was dawn of war deployment he decided to go first and deepstrike his oblits and abaddon w Termies. This ended up saving my bacon. Turn 2 his 2 man oblits came down, turn 3 a 3 man oblit came, turn 4 the last 3 oblits came down and not until turn 5 did abaddon and the termies come down.

Since the DS for him were spread out I could focus a little better, and my drop pods both came down in turn 2. I led the game the whole time, but never by too huge a lead in KP.

See all that stuff in the top right corner? I'm just waiting for that to all deep strike on my head!

The ‘DOH’ moment came when I shot a rhino my GKT were waiting 1” away from to charge the juicy contents when it exploded, wounding 4 of them and killing 3. Yes three failed rolls (that means 1s). It happens but that hurt a lot. I then charged the remaining BC in but that was foolish as he was cut down before doing anything by the sorcerer. He should have just run away. That single series of ‘DOH’ cost me the game.

Since Abbadon came so late I mostly moved away from him. They did catch one drop pod squad and the EC squad and run them down, and though brought him within 4 KP which made it a tie. It was a game where his bad deepstrike luck and my ‘DOH’ moment kind of balanced each other out. I picked up two bonus points for having more scoring units in his objective than he had in mine and by killing all his troop choices, so Tie for 12 points which still put me on table 3 for the final game.

Game 3: Jeff’s Chaos
I seem to play Jeff every other tournament, and I have only tied him once and lost the rest. He is a great general and brings dead ‘ard lists. His list was an expansion of the one I’ve played in prior tourny’s.

This is the only list I can’t find… so this is from memory and likely slightly wrong but you get the general idea.
DP Lash
DP Lash
6 Chosen outflanking in rhino 3 melta, 2 flamer, rhino had combi plas
6 Chosen outflanking in rhino 3 melta, 2 flamer, rhino had combi plas
8 Plaguemarines, rhino w combi plas, combo of plas/meta in squad and fist
8 Plaguemarines, rhino w combi plas, combo of plas/meta in squad and fist
10 Chaos marines, rhino w Havoc missile launchers, some combo of plas/melta and fist
10 Chaos marines, rhino w Havoc missile launchers, some combo of plas/melta and fist
Defiler
3 oblits
3 oblits

I am going to mostly chalk this game up to my bad deployment. First off I absolutely hate the board we played on (the black volcano board) as I think it is the worst board there. Then I just over committed to going for one objective. I should have at least sent my LRC/Termies over to the second instead of hoping for the dop pods to be enough. Lastly I don’t know what I was thinking with my Speeders and Pred, but the terrain had me a little flustered.

Jeff kept his Defiler and a squad of marines off the board, and of course his outflanking chosen. It was a good hard fight but I could never really seem to get much going for me. Jeff passed the one and only psyhood test I had to make all day but his oblits amazingly failed to pass shrouding on the GKT. The GKT did kill a DP before dying to a hail of plasma, and the command squad was able to wrap off the second while engaged with plague marines.

My deployment left me in a bad way and Jeff’s superior tactics trumped me good. I had very little left on the table by the end of the game and Jeff had a solid massacre on me. And Jeff also let a rule I wasn’t sure about slide on turn 5 (hitting vehicles you are next two on the opponents assault phase) because he knew the game was going down for him either way. I looked up the rule afterward while we packed up and he was indeed correct and I thought that was still pretty big of him to let pass even though it mattered little at that point.

So total goose egg for me game 3: 0 points. I think I’m now 0-3-1 against Jeff. Hehe

In the end the placing were announced for top 5 who all scored over 50 points (of course only top 3 get to go to the next round.

5th Patricks Chaos
4th Daemons
3rd Jeff’s Chaos
2nd Orks (lots of boys)
1st Eldar (didn’t get to really check his list out)

All and all I had fun all games against tough opponents. Two of the guys I played were right up there, and at least for Patrick I didn’t make it easy. Jeff I think has made it to the semis every year so… hey what can you do!

I’ll do a breakdown of my unit’s performance later and how I would have changed my list based on the performance later.

Odd notes from the front:
There was only one ork player there (and he took 2nd)!
There were a ton of IG and Chaos. SM and Daemons were only slightly less popular.
No Tau, no necron, no DE, no Daemon hunters (aside from allies) and I didn’t see any bugs either (but I might have missed them) but I know the guys were saying no Nidzilla so I think they were also absent.
Check out this whacky pic of the game going on next two me on game 2. That’s a 6 LR army vs a 5 LR army!