Small Local Tournament

So it turns out on Thursday my wife told me she was going to a bowling tournament on Sat, and the kids were going to the grandparents.  So this left me free to hit a semi local torunament up in Concord.  I've made it up there only a few times last year, and it always pretty fun and casual.

I wasn't too sure what to bring.  I'm going to be playing a lot of orks soon so I thought I'd try something else.   Since I just played the 1ksons I figured I'd do either the Templar or the Angels.

I figured the Angels are just better at this point.  I think the Pod Templar could be made more effective by adding even more Assault termies and another drop pod (and going smaller troops and cutting a dread/speeder).

The games were all fun and casual.  Only 6 of us so it was small and friendly.  I get an 'F' for picture taking.

Game 1 was against IG.  Long table edge, two objecitves, I won rolloff to go second.  I combat squaded everything.

He set up to do some turtling and shuffled around the first two turns.

I got all but two squad in on my turn 2.   My landings were all pretty solid.  Shooting ensued.

And that's the end of the pictures.   We played through top of 5, but by the end he was pretty well done.  His last troop was routing, most vehcles were killed, one vendetta was still alive with one gun but immobilized in a bad position.  I was pretty smashed up pretty good also, but I still had three troop choices around to grab objectives for the game.

Game 2 was against eldar, a pretty fluff but fun list.  It was kill points so I only combated the vets.  He won roll off and made me go first, then put everything in reserve so DoW was pointless. :)

My turn two everything but one 10 man squad came down and I did some running.

AAAaand that's the end of the pictures.  This game there were two game changing things that occured in my favor.  One was he left his two jetbike squads too close to my Sang Gaurd squad.  That charge just mowed through them, and the rest of my army was on his vehicles.   (He got vengence by having his Firedragons cream most of the squad next turn, followed by Dante smashing them up afterward... etc etc).

The second factor was that his farseer/ Dire Avengers/ Wave Serp didn't make it to the board until turn 5.  Crazy.  So losing that pyschic support hurt, in addition to just the extra shots.

I think we called it at the end of the top of 5, with me having collected 8 kill points to his 5.  Plus I had the bottom of the turn to jump his Dire Avengers in the open, and my VangVets I think only had 1 walker left to deal with in CC.  So another win but a fun game where I had to make the best of not going first.

Game 3 was against a Wolf list nothing horribly surprising here though he did have a handful of Typhoons.  Three objective game and corner deployement.  He won rolloff and wasn't sure what to do.  I talked through the thoughts I would have, and he did make me go first (a good call I think).  Then he put his 3 Long fang squads out and kept the rest in reserve.  I wasn't sure about this, and I think that might not be the best call normally, but it ended up working out well for him.

My deployment I only managed 4 combat squads.  My vets were able to tie up one long fang squad, and a melta squad was able to break one long fang squad.

And that's the end of those pictures!  This game also played out... oddly.  He didn't get his 3 main troop squads in rhinos the first 3 turns.  This made me really bamboozled for where to drop my guys.  One troop came in turn 4, and the last two came in turn 5.

This was the only game I think I made some tactical errors.  I placed my Sang squad way out on the board edge hoping to do some awesome Blood Lance on his speeders.  In the end I only killed the one I ended up melta-ing anyway.  This kept them largely out of the game which was a huge waste (and only blanced by his troops all being out of the game also).

So basically this was a game I was really dealing his piecemeal reserve rolling well, but then I was badly out of position by turn 5.  I had some real critical bad rolls also which of course just re-emphasized this.  Low run rolls, one last melta marine on an objective dying when a vehicles exploded, things like that.

At the end of 5 the game was his but went on to 6. In the end of turn 6 the game was tied.  The tournament was effectively over, and we rolled to see if the game would even go on to turn 7 and it would.  However we both have wives texting us about when we would be home, and everyone but the TO had left already since we were basically playing for the top spot.

The TO said we could play it out, or just split the prize top spot prize.  The prize was a $35 GW box set and a $25 store card.  My opponent said 'hey let's just split it' and he offered to do the gift card since he wanted to pick up some warmachine stuff.

I happily obliged.  I knew I was going to be fighting to hold the tie really anyway, there was no way I was going to manage to win that thing.  Getting to walk away with something and making it home at a reasonable time to the family is all win in my book.

So I thought about grabbing an eighth drop pod but I'm just not sure how much I'll be playing that list really since DoA is just... well better.  So I asked if I could pony up some more cash to get a slightly better box set.

I'm not really sure why I got them.  When I was list building earlier I had though about dropping in 2x5 assault termies in pods (of course short a pod for that list also).  I figure I'll use them at some point, I just don't know when!  Maybe if Templar can ever make Termies troop choices...

Though if I had not felt the rush to get home I probably should have just grabbed some terrain (though I'm not sure there are any $35 box sets).

Either way it was a fun day of games.  Next weekend is Dundracon which I plan to take my orks.  I have a colleague coming in from overseas this week, and I offered to hang out with him on Sat before his flight but he says he's just going to do some shopping.  Yawn.  So at this point I should make it as it is cleared with the wife!

But I will have some dinners going on this week with that colleague, plus Valentines day of course, so paining will be limited.  I'm hoping to finish up the stuff for the Display board tomorrow but that might not happen.   I'm very doubtful I'll get the kopta done but I'll certainly live with the list I took last year anyway.  We'll see what I manage to complete!