Team Championships France

Not long ago I played in the Team Championships near Lyon, France. Sixteen teams participated with at least 2 teams coming from Switzerland. It was nice to have team mates that spoke and read French because they had to explain the missions of each game to me and they were slightly complex at times. It was a five game format over two days.

The Basic rules:

1. Only one special character per army.
2. 2000 point army build
3. No triplicate of units. Example: cannot have three units of TH/SS terminators
4. Four members per team and each member must take a different army selection.
5. ETC style format- For those who do not understand what this is than I will explain. Each team member will play individual games. Before the game starts the Team Captains roll a dice. The loser than places an army list on one of the four tables. The winner of the roll matches one of their team lists to the one placed on the table and than places a second list on a different table. This continues until all tables have match ups. Before the game starts the Team Captains roll again and the winner is allowed to swap one army list.
6. You received extra points for having a painted army, good composition and turning in your army list on time. All army lists had to be turned in to the TO basically one month in advance.
7. Win is worth 3 pts, Draw 2 pts, Loss 1 pt and you can gain extra points by achieving secondary objectives.
8. Individual games points are totaled and the team with the highest point total at the end is declared the winner/draw/tie which determines your next match up.
9. Five Games over two days.
10. Winner of the tournament is the team with the most points from: Battle Points, Painting and composition( you also received a few points for getting your army lists in on time and paying the tournament on time)

“Team Genève” brought the following armies.

Brian – Space Marine Bike army (me)

David- Necrons

Greg- Blood angels

Albert- Chaos Marines.

Game 1 – our opponents were Orks, Blood Angels, Tyranids, and Marines. We lost both the dice rolls by our team captain and I found myself playing against the opposing team captain who was the Ork player.

Mission- Capture and Control- except the objectives had to be placed 12 inches from the center of the table and they moved random direction 2d6 each player turn. Secondary objective was killing the enemy commander.

Deployment – Pitch Battle.

The Ork player army list is pretty close to the following.

1. Unit Nob bikers
2. Unit of Nobs in truck
3. Burna boys in a truck
4. Nobs in a truck
5. Gretchen
6. Mech boy
7. 2 couple more units of boyz in trucks.

My army list

1. Khan
2. Chaplain
3. Command Squad on bikes
4. 2 Full Squads of bikes with meltas and multi melta
5. 9 Terminators TH/SS
6. Stern guard in a Rhino
7. 2 units of attack Bikes.

Deployment- Ork player won the roll to go first and deployed his entire army with the exception of his Gretchen. I deployed my entire army in the center of my deployment zone. My terminators were in the center set up in cover.

Turn 1. The ork objective moved toward his table edge 8 inches (note: don’t let an ork player use a squig as an objective marker. Dang thing kept moving towards his lines!!!) and my objective moved towards the ork's edge (this was annoying). The majority of the orks moved forward with the Nob bikers extending to the flank.

I extended my flank with the command squad and moved the termies forward. Attack bikes spread out to look for shots on the trucks next turn.

Turn 2. Ork objective moved another 9 inches toward their side of the board and my objective was wandering around in the middle. The ork player moved his nob bikers back toward the center and both burna boys and nobs toward the center. He is looking to try and get the overlapping charge on my termies. But he is worried about my command squad which is hanging around the flanks.

I move my attack bikes in and was able to bring down one of the boyz trucks. My terminators stay in cover but continue moving forward. I am looking at getting charged by at least 3 possibly 4 units of orks. Not happy about this situation but with my terminators in cover they will be giving out a lot of pain before they go down. In addition I had moved my attack bikes in close to my termies hoping they will get charged. I did this for a couple reasons. 1. Three attack bikes gives me 6 more attacks against the orks. 2 The high toughness of the bikes will draw away some of the attacks and wounds against the termies.

Turn 3. Of course ork objective moves back toward their lines and is almost at the end of the table. At this point I am thinking the secondary objective of killing the ork general is what I need to achieve. My objective stays in the center. The ork player is ready and commits to the charge. Hitting my termies and attack bikes with four units. The marines cause 12 wounds with the nob bikers and burnas taking up most of the wounds. In return the orks kill all the termies and my attack bikes. But it came down to the last ork power claw killing my last terminator. If this did not happen I probably could have passed the moral check.

On my turn my bikes converged on the orks. Stern guard dismounted and command squad moved in. The orks suffered a bunch of twin link bolters shots and the meltas from the stern guard hit the nob bikes. The command squad than hit the nob bikes and were joined in by the rest of the bike squads. The orks took a beating but were not finished.

Turn 4. Gretchen come in and basically walk up to the objective. The close combat continues in the center with more orks getting committed to the carnage. My marines hold the line and give better than they are receiving. Khan pulls the command squad out of combat with the hit and run rule and circles back towards the nob bikes which are stuck in combat with marine regular bikes. The orks had lost combat but during the assault phase had called the waaagh.

Objectives on my turn continue their movements with mine in the center and the orks staying with the 20 Gretchen ( this is just absurd lol)

The Command Squad sounds the charge again and hits the ork nobs bikers with Khan cutting off the Warboss’s head with his special attack. This time the orks cannot take the punishment and flee with 3 units getting chased down.

Turn 5. Yes yes ork objective stays with the Gretchen and my objective continues to move toward the orks.

Ork player commits some boyz to slow down my bikers. After shooting they assault my bike squads. Not much happens but during my turn I have to commit my command squad to free my bike squads to capture my objective. I was hoping to get some attack bikes in range of the ork objective to contest but they were a little to short on distance.

Turn 6. The game ends with both of us holding objectives but I get the points for the win because I had killed the enemy commander. So while I complained that you should not have your ork player use a squig as an objective. I think the real thought maybe is don’t let an ultramarine player use a drunken smurf as their objective!!!

Overall “Team Genève” had a draw against our opponents. Albert with his chaos won against marines. But the Necrons(David) lost to Tyranids and Blood Angels lost to Blood Angels. My opponent knew a little English and I am picking up a few words like fusion is melta and energy stick is a power weapon. But with the team format it is nice because my team mates are around to help with any explanations. But overall what I have been finding is that if the player is experienced than you really need very little explanation from either party. You just kind of get what the other guys is doing even though you may not understand completely the language.

We started learning a little about the tactics of the list placements. At the beginning of the game (strategy phase before captains roll for lists) each of us looked at the other teams armies and gave our captain an idea on what would be a good match up for them as an individual. Our first thought was to try matching lists that our army would have a challenge against but not a rock / scissor game. The first round we tried matching up power list against power list and it resulted in a tie for the team. Our learning coming out of this round is too look for the mismatch next round and worse case put a power list gamer against a power list gamer for maybe a tie. But in order to do this you need to have confidence you can pull wins in the other games.

The next interesting challenge though is once you get your first placement of lists there is the second die roll made by the army captains. This is almost as good as stealing the initiative because than you can change one list placement and this give you that “advantage” hopefully for a win. I actually like the second die roll because it adds an interesting tactical challenge to your thinking because you also have to plan what would change if you had the opportunity.

Well that’s it for now. I will write about my other games shortly….