Monday, February 7, 2011

Shrike Fail... or how I had fun in a mini 40k tournament.

This past weekend I participated in a "mini-tournament" at GW Yonge & Lawrence which turned out 18 players - not so mini after all!  There was a GK type theme with each game having some special daemon/warp related rules.  There were three games in which there was one of each basic mission/deployment type involved.  I brought a Shrike based list just for fun since I had just painted up my Raptors jump pack equiped Chaplain.  Also thought a massive first turn charge would be awesome!  Unfortunately for me, the armies I faced and the deployment/mission rules meant I never got a chance. :(

Shrike
Chaplain w jump pack
6 TH/SS terminators in Land Raider: Redeemer
10 Assault marines w 2 flamers, Sgt: bp & combat shield, lightning claw
10 Scouts w 4 shotguns, 5 bolt pistol/ccw, Sgt: shotgun/power fist
10 Tactical marines w flamer, multi-melta Sgt: bolter/power fist in Rhino
2 Land Speeder Typhoons
1 Predator w Autocannon

Game 1 vs. Mike F (Salamanders - Vanilla Marines)
Mission: Seize Ground (4 objectives)
Deployment: Spearhead
Result: Win (2-1 objectives)

** Special rules for this battle meant that if a unit was controlling or contesting an objective at the end of their turn, they needed to pass a Ld test on max Ld 8, each point you failed by would remove one model.  If you were outside of 6" of an objective you gained +2 to Ld. **

Mike is my buddy who lives nearby and has gotten me to start coming to this GW for gaming.  Since his army had three drop pods and he was most likely taking first turn, I chose to reserve everything which meant no first turn charge.  It meant he lost two turns of shooting but also that my reserves came on too piecemeal to really cause him any problems.  Unfortunately for him he forgot to move his troops close enough to secure objectives on his turn 5 (he was hovering nearby to avoid taking warp casualties) and the game ended, giving me the win on a silver platter (lol! sorry Mike!)

Game 2 vs. Aaron P (Orks)
Mission: Capture & Control
Deployment: Dawn of War
Result: Tie (1-1 objective)

** Special rules for this battle was a storm cloud that would randomly move each player turn and caused d6 S6 hits on any unit it touched, but also gave a 5+ invulnerable save to any units within 6" of the cloud. **

Played against Aaron and his awesomely painted Orks.  His army seemed both extremes; Snikrot w burnas is crazy, but his nobz in battlewagons weren't wound allocation builds and then he also took multiple units of grots which were almost a waste of points.  I made a crucial error not running my assault squad as they came on which left them vulnerable to Snikrot - if they hadn't taken a mauling there, there might have been some marines left to contest his objective.  As it was, he managed to kill Shrike in the last assault phase of the game, with my tactical marines in the bottom of the bunker his objective was on top of - unable to contest.  A great battle that really swung back and forth - though I have to say he never looked able to contest my objective.  Very close game with a great sportsman.

Game 3 vs. Mike K (Lamenters - Blood Angels)
Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Result: Loss (0-7 KP)

** Special rules for this battle turned a sergeant or squad leader type model into a "vessel" trying to contain a daemon.  Could not shoot or attack in CC, but gained 2+ invulnerable save and auto-pass any Ld based test. **

This game did not go in my favour at all.  The vessel rules really kind of screwed me, I was definitely lacking enough power to take out vehicles (especially AV14) and losing a power fist to becoming the vessel didn't help.  I also made a huge deployment mistake, infiltrating my scouts and assault marines - but not deploying enough elsewhere to force Mike to deploy anything so he just reserved everything.  I needed to deploy more units at the beginning since what ended up happening was he just stood off from my fleeting army and shot me to bits with his preds and land raider.  My deployment from reserves left something to be desired as well, since I pretty much blocked off my own reserves from coming on where they could impact the game.  Oh yea, blood talons are scary good, his DC dread tore through my entire assault squad in one turn.  Brutal.  Didn't get tabled since we were mostly in a stand off, but at 7KP to 0 I think that's mostly semantics.
So all in all a very enjoyable day getting to play some more 40K and seeing some old buddies/meeting some folks who I only knew online as well.  Looking forward to the next one if I can make it - I gotta get more stuff painted up though as I was one of 4-5 armies that weren't fully painted.  Those that were looked really good too.

2 comments:

eriochrome said...

How tall or how many levels was the bunker? Generally people 1 floor below are within 2 inches of the next level.

Tristan M said...

Yea, I was assuming 3 inches (as per many conventions) and from the height of a bunker that there would be two levels inside. He assumed there was bottom and top only.

Just goes to show how important discussing the battlefield is - depending on how competitive the environment is. It was a tourney but a little fun one with no prizes or anything so no big deal and one of these days the lesson will filter through ;)

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