Tournament Results

The short story is I took second (missed first by 10 points and 3rd I think was by 1 point) and got best painted army.

The long story is as follows.

So Friday I'm still unhappy with my orks, and I'm still not satisfied with my Tau.  So finally I'm back to Templar, even though they had all kinds of fail in practice games.  I see the big problem is my lack of ability to get to the enemy.  With everybody far better able to kill vehicles at range I'm just not able to cross the board.  That's when it hits me...

Drop Pods

Now I only had two painted pods, plus my old paper made unit (that I made years ago before pods were only Forgeworld).  The paper pod is a little small, but it actually looks good even though it has minimal painting done to it.

So I make a list.

Emperor's Champ, AACNMTO

Marshal, Termie Armor, TH/SS

7 Cursaders, 2 Neos, Fist, Melta in Pod w/ Deathwind

7 Cursaders, 2 Neos, Fist, Melta in Pod w/ Deathwind

7 Cursaders, 2 Neos, Fist, Melta in Pod w/ Deathwind

6 Cursaders, 2 Neos, Fist, Melta in Pod w/ Deathwind

Land Speeder, MM/HF

Land Speeder, MM/HF

1247

Drat, one drop pod short.  Off I go to the store after work.  I figure 'Hey, I'll just get it built and nor worry about getting all the cool magnets or painting.'

6 Hours later I'm finally calling it a night with the pod built (but I did leave out the insides) and a good clip painted.  I woke up at 7 and spent another hour painting.  I didn't finish all the details, and I think the black is actually different than the other pod (used P3 primer rather than GW) but they look close.  I couldn't finish all the details (notice the lights above the door, I need to clean up the dry brushing, and the underside is pretty much undone) but in the end it looked pretty good.

So there I am ready to go.  I'm using just a normal Termie as the marshal but that's ok, and the 4th pod is small but again it doesn't look too out of place.

So Anthony (with his gaurd) and I show up and by the start there are only 12 people.  A little light but everybody says that smaller turnouts are expected at lower point values.  Surprisingly the only ork player actually had to leave before game 1, and less surprising there were no Tau.  So all that concern I had about playing an army everyone else was playing was for naught (this is where you can point and tease me). 

If I'm not mistaken the Armies were: 4 IG Armies, 2 Space Wolves, Podding Vulkan, Podding Templar (woot), 1 Eldar, 1 Pedro Marines, 1 Sisters, and one Deathwing.

So we all laugh 'haha, all the gaurd armies will hopefully play each other, but really everyones going to have to play 1 or maybe even two gaurd armies!'

And of course I played Gaurd 3 times.  No joke.

Game 1- Jason's IG- Dawn of War, Kill points

Jason's gaurd is not a whole lot different the Anthony's.  The armies are bleeding together now (shocking after playing three slightly different IG armies), but I think it was 2 chims of troops, 2 valks with troops, 1 chim with small comand squad, and two of the Plasma variant battle tanks.

I won roll off and chose to go second.  He basically rolls on all tight in one corner and decideds to outflank his gunships. 

Turn 2 the valks both come in and fly fast.

I only get two pods in, and they land right in front of his tank bunker, but thankfully can deploy into cover.  Both Meltas are close but miss. :( A wary beginning.

Turn 3 his shooting chundered a bit, and I had mostly everything come in and land fairly well.

The rest of the game is a bit of a blur but with him having only two turns to shoot and me on top of his guys with nowhere to go he couldn't quite get it going.  My speeders survived a miraculous amount of shooting, and I think I killed more guardsman by exploding vehicles than anything else.  7-3 me for a 17 point victory.

Game 2- Michael's IG- Multiple Objectes (5) Spearhead

Michael's list was heavier on Firepower and light on toops.  He had 2 chims with troops, 1 Chim with ONLY a commisar, 2 squads of 2 LRBT, and 1 more Battle Tank with a more evil gun of doom.

Michael won roll off and made me go first.  2 LRBT are up front a bit, and the other 3 tanks are in the back corner far far away from anything.  Turn 1 he advances his Commisar Chim up and one troop chim to a forward objective and keeps one back by and objective in his zone.

Turn 2 I get 1 troop w/ the Marshal and 2 speeders.  My speeders I get brave with  and they land both close enough to shoot the forward LRBT.  The other pod comes down by the objective he is advanced  his squad.  I manage to pop one LRBT and his Commisar Chim but that's it (and if I recal I even lost 1-2 guys to the exposion).

His turn he easily downs both speeders and picks off a few marines, who fail their LD 10 and break.

Turn 3 I get all 3 pods, one I have come up with the forward objective and the other two go off to my backfield to camp objectives with are in a 12" triangle type shape.  I pop his other forward Chim and kill some gaurd, but can't manage to do more the drop on 1 on this commisar.

Turn 3-6 is basically the same thing.  He pounds me with ordinance and I take saves.  I kill off his troop up at the objective, but his commisar manages to live.  In the end I haven't even shot at any other tank.  In the last turn I spread my last squad (which was still at 9 guys) to form a conga line arc to claim all 3 objective, but with his shooting I have to pull off one of them so I claim two objectives.  He's got one chim claiming an objective, the commisar is contesting with a drop pod.  Templar eek out a narrow win by hiding behind cover 9-5 (4 points for holding per counter, 1 point for contesting).

At this point polling around it looks like I may be in first with 26 points.  Anthony had 25 points and a Space Wolf player had 25 points.  SO we KNOW what is going to come next...

Game 3- Anthony's IG- Long Table Edge, Single objectives

Anthony ran a list like he's been running just trimmed to the appropriate points.  1 chim with HQ, 1 chim with vets, 2 vendettas with vets, 2 LRBT, and Marbo!

He also beats my 5 which I had hoped would let me go second with a 6 and he makes me go first.  I place my objective deep (which I think might have been a mistake) and he places his also deep.

Turn 2 I drop literally 3 pods and both speeders.  A really great roll I would say.  I put the EC squad back on the objective, 2 up on him and 2 speeders up as well.  One speeder lands on a tank but goes back in reserve, and one pod actully lands right between his untis on the corner of a building and they are able to squeeze to get cover and be cloese to his objective.  My shooting is inefective (immbolized a chim and took a weapon).  He proceeds to kill the speeder and starts whittling away but not breaking my squads, but also killed both pods).

The rest of the turns are kind of a blur.  He shot me, I shot and charged him.  I killed a lot of vehicles, but he didn't clear me off his objective until turn 5.  Marbo came in close to my roof troops and killed himself and 1 of mine with the demo charge.  My speeder didn't come until 5 and failed to kill one of the vendettas.  Time is winding down and we roll a turn 6.  We look at the board and can see how it looks more or less.  He's got one objective with one vendetta, and another one free to blast up to my units waiting for him.  But I've got 2 full squad in cover a big spread to prevent units coming in to contest.  First we think maybe he can tank shock them, but the Birds aren't tanks so no go.  He's got some templates but with a go to ground no way.  Even with turn 7 we decide it is a tie. 10-10.

Of course the Wolf player tabled the guy he played so his 20 points (45 total) put him at first, and I take second (36 total).  For whatever reason Michael came in 3rd, but by my count he should have had 35 points, the same as Anthony.  Anthony thought maybe it was painting, but upon reflection the both had "Spue grey" for most of the army so... not sure what the dealio was.

Speaking of painting I got that award to which is a first.  Granted there were only 12 people and nearly ever army was not fully painted.  There was an Eldar player that had a pretty good looking complete army, and the Salamander army was nearly done as well I think that probably would win if it was totally done.  This was judged by the players so I guess they liked the paper drop pod. :p Against any other well painted army there is no way this army should win again, but the small numbers and large amount of upainted armies made the arena small.

So I got $60 in gift cards, which I promptly used to buy another drop pod and Lysander (so I can make a proper TH/SS Termie Marshal).

I had fun which was good and was really what I was most worried about I think.  The only thing I regret is having to play 3 gaurd armies.  Sure it worked out for 2nd, but now I don't really know if Drop Pod Templar are great, or just good against gaurd.  I killed a good clip of gaurd with exploding vehicles, Marines wont die like that.  There were 0 psychic powers I had to worry about either.  I also never ran up against a 'Ard' unit like Nob bikers, Assault Termies, Wolf riding bastards, etc.

So the only thing to do now is bring the podding boys in black back Feb 6th at the 1500 point tournament!