AWC Invitational Round 1

My first round match up was against Brian Carlson. Brian is a great player and an even better painter/builder. Brian used to work for GW before he decided he liked money. Brian is bringing his Dark Eldar to Adepticon. You can look at his army at

http://briancarlsonminiatures.blogspot.com/

Brian's List from memory was:

Baron

Haemonculus w/webway portal

2 units of 3 true born in venoms w/2 dark lances.

Unit of 6 wracks

Unit of 10 wyches in raider w/stuff

2 units of warriors in venom w/dark lance and maybe splinter cannon

12 Hellions

3 x Beast Squad w/6 Razorwings

2 x Ravager

Bomber

I have included a picture of his army and the board from his perspective.

The mission had three victory conditions. Primary was kill points, the other two were objectives in all four quarter in the center of each and destroy the most expensive unit. (His were the Hellions mine was Mordrak and friends.) As a side note in order to decrease ties the primary objective was weighted more. In case of a tie the primary was considered paramount to the other 2. In case of true tie it would go to victory points. Deployment was the old corner style. The table was covered with 25% terrain with a big piece in the center. Brian one roll and decided to go first. He took the corner to my left. I rolled a 5 for grand strategy and everyone became scoring who could. Brian deployed everything but his beasts in the center of his deployment zone. I deploy the purifiers in their rhino to my right behind terrain on top of an objective, everything else will deep strike on but the interceptors. Mordrak, the librarian and the dread will go together in the raven.

Brian's Turn 1

He moves his wyche raider with the haemonculus in it some ludicrous speed to the other side of the line of site blocking terrain everything moves to get a cover save.

One objective each KP 0-0

My Turn 1

I go get a drink.

One objective each KP 0-0

Brian's Turn 2

One of his beast groups comes on. Has to come on from his board edge. The Haemo jumps out and deploys the portal. Everything else jockeys around to get cover once again. His hellions and the baron along with one warrior squad and the wracks camp in the ruins in his deployment zone on top of an objective in the upper left corner to me. The trueborn with dark lances hope in the ruins across form the big terrain piece. Thier venoms head towards the purifiers. The two ravagers hide behind the center terrain. The bomber is in the upper right corner. The warriors in their raider cruise right by the bomber. The wyche raider shoots at the purifier rhino. The other warrior raider also shoots a the rhino but I pass both cover saves.

Objectives DE 2 GK 1 KP DE 0 GK 0

My Turn 2

Only the termies come in the deep strike almost off the board edge. I tried to place them behind the purifiers. This looks bad for them. The shoot a venom and kill it. The purifiers shoot at the wyche raider and do nothing.

Objectives DE 2 GK 1 KP DE 0 GK 1

Brian's Turn 3

The other two beasts come in via the portal. Everything looks at the termies. Terminators die in a hail of dark matter and shurikens. The bomber was especially effective at killing termies with those stupid missiles and no scatter. The Haemo gets back in with the wyches. The raiders shoot at the rhino but miss.

Objectives DE 2 GK 1 KP DE 1 GK 1

My Turn 3

Everything else comes on. The Raven comes on opposite the big piece of terrain next to the wyche ravager. The strikes deep strike in between the raven and the purifiers. The interceptors come in alongside them. Mordrak and the librarian disembark and the dread also hops off. The shooting begins. The purifiers shoot one of the beast squads. The stormraven takes a dark lance off one of the ravagers. The dread lights up another one of the beast squads. Mordrak and the libby down the ravager with the help of warp rift and some incredible stormbolter fire. The strikes stun another ravager while the interceptors are out of range of their target. In assault the dread hammers the beasts while taking no damage, they flee and are destroyed (actually was two bases left but they would be unable to rally). Mordrak and the boys put a hurting on the wyches but stay locked in combat. The purifiers put a whupping on the other beasts and kill a few causing them to break and run away.

Objectives DE 2 GK 0 KP DE 1 GK 3

Brian's Turn 4

Brian's Fire has been a little neutered this round. However his fleeing beast squad rallies and links up with the other beasts. His one far right raider full of boys goes up and heads for the upper right objective. He shoots a few things and moves his ravagers around. He is able to stun my Raven. the beasts get ready to assault the poor strikes. In assault Mordrak and the boys finish off the wyches and haemoculus, the dread finishes the one beast squad, The strikes kill a few more beast master squads and lose a bunch of guys, but hold

Objectives DE 2 GK 1 KP DE 1 GK 6

My Turn 4.

Mordrak and the Knights head towards the big center piece of terrain. The storm raven shakes off the stunning. The dread begins stomping towards the upper right corner objective. The purifiers move to help the beleaguered strikes. The interceptors shuffle towards the middle terrain piece. The interceptors down a ravager. The dread shoots a venom down. The purifiers and strikes finish off the beasts but at a terrible cost. I believe two purifiers and two strikes remain,

Objectives DE 2 GK 0 KP DE 1 GK 10

Brian's Turn 5

Brian knows he has to kill off Mordrak if he wants to win. I am ahead on kill points he will likely take objectives and right now our two biggest units are hiding. He shoots just about everything at the Ghost knights in cover that can see them. He also moves the wrack squad that was skulking in a borrowed raider to the objective in the closest left corner. His shooting sees the raven die, the dread get stunned the purifiers die and the interceptors get mowed down to five.

Objectives DE 3 GK 0 KP DE 3 GK 10

My Turn 5

As an aside I thought I was going to lose as neither Brian or I read the part about the primary objective being paramount. I needed to go for the win. I sent the the interceptors shunting to deal with the wracks. The dread stomped towards the other objective. The remaining strikes cower in the purifiers rhino to claim the objective in my right corner. Mordrak and the boys shuffle around in the terrain. The interceptors kill the borrowed raider, The dread kills the other raider. He needs a 5 or 6 to get through it and assault the warrior squad. He doesn't make it.

Objectives DE 2 GK 1 KP DE 3 GK 12

Brian rolls for random game length and it comes up a two the game ends..

At this point I figure I have lost. I have given up a lot of victory points. After adding it up three times I come out like 23 points ahead. After we turn in our results the TO informs us of the primary mission rule which gives me the solid win. Next up is Mitch Tucker and Eldar Flying Circus.

AWC Invitational - There can be only one

All right on March 31st we held the Adeptus Windy City Invitational. For those of you unfamiliar with this it is a 16 person 4 round win/loss tournament we hold before Adepticon to crown a champion for the AWC series. The AWC series is our monthly tournaments we hold at the Chicago Battle Bunker. Each month we hold a tournament at the bunker with the points values from 1500 to 2000 points. We usually have anywhere form 24 to 32 players depending on table space. We also allow the person running the tournament to set up the scenarios. We run the gamut from Adepticon, to NOVA to ATC to Primary/Secondary/Tertiary missions with battle points.

During the season an overall standings is kept on the AWC forums. The 1st place finisher is awarded 24 points, the second is awarded 23 and so on. If we have more than 24 anyone else is awarded one point. There are four winners in each tourney. Overall, best general, best painted and best sportsman. Best overall gets +2 points while the other category winners get +1 bonus points. There were 11 tournaments in total. Your top six count for the standings. You can play in more than six but only your top 6 count. Also each monthly organizer gets awarded points for that month equal to the average of his top 3 scores. This encourages people to help run tourneys. There is a lead organizer every year. The first year Chris Hill and I ran the series. We he was hired by GW last year I became the lead organizer. This year I began as the lead but Mitch Tucker took over when my wife fell ill and required more heart surgeries.

This year I was able to play in 4 tourneys and run one. Of the four I took one overall and one best general. I finished 7th on the points list. With only 5 scores I was very happy to be in the top ten. Going into the Invitational I was seeded 6th as one person above me could not make it due to work schedule.

I decided to take my Mordrak Grey Knight list. The list is:

Mordrak and 3 Ghost Knights w/Halberds

Librarian w/Teleport Homer, Might, Shrouding, Sanctuary and Rift

6 Purifiers 1 Hammer, 3 Halberds, 2 Psycannons in a Rhino

Venerable Dread w/AC & SB and Psybolt Ammo

5 Terminators w/4 Halberds, 1 Hammer and Psycannon

10 Strikes 2 Psycannons

10 Interceptors 2 Psycannons, Hammer

Storm Raven w/TLLC & TLMM

After playing a couple of practice games and discussing it with a friend of mine Fred Fortman who was unable to attend the Invitational I dropped the dread knight and a few things and added the purifiers and the ven dread. The dread knight hadn't been pulling its weight, especially with all the DE and other GKs. Plus the top seeded player Alan Bajramovic plays horde orks (as a matter of fact he is taking them to the ETC) and the road to the title would run through him. My only concern was my lack of long range firepower. This was to come back to haunt me in the later rounds. Anyway I went 2-2. I won the first two rounds beating Brian Carlson's Dark Eldar and Mitch Tucker's Eldar in the first two rounds. I lost to eventual champion Jordan Nach's IG in the semis and dropped a super close hard fought loss to Alan's ork in the third place game. All in all 4 great games against great opponents. I will be posting my battle reports in the coming days.

Battle Report 1850 Grey Knights vs Tyranids

All right got a couple of games in versus Fred Fortman a very very good player in our area and nationally. I was taking my revised Mordrak list which I am taking to the AWC Invitational . The list is 1850:

Mordrak and 3 Ghost Knights w/halberds

Librarian w/Sanctuary, Shrouding, Might, Warp Rift and teleport homer

6 Purifiers 3 halberds, 2 psycannon, justicar w/hammer in rhino

5 Terminators 4 halberds, hammer, psycannon

10 Strikes 2 psycannons

10 Interceptors 2 psycannons and justicar w/hammer

Stormraven w/TLLC & TLMM

Ven Dread w/Autocannon and psybolt ammo

Fred was playing

Swarmlord w/two guard

Troop tervigon w/10 gaunts w/a lot of shots

2 x 20 Hormagaunts w/poison and some other stuff

17 genestealers

16 genestealers

Doom in a pod

2 x 3 hive guard
We were playing the old corner deployment zone. The three victory conditions were kill the highest point HQ, As many units with in 6" of the board center and home and home objective. Fred one the roll to go first Fred put his objective all the way in the very back corner of his deployment zone. Because of all the outflanking genestealers and the need to get to the middle I placed my objective in the middle of my deployment zone.
Fred deploys the swarmlord in the middle of the board behind a big los blocking terrain piece in the middle. Hive guard units on either side. The tervigon on my left towards my smaller area of my trangle. Devigaunts behind the tyrant. Finally the hormagaunts were in a line along the deployment zone and another group a little farther back. The Doom was in reserve on his pod, one unit of genestealers (17) infiltrating and one unit outflanking. I place my strikes next to a piece of terrain opposite his right flank with the tervigon and gaunts, I place the termies and dread behind the terrain the interceptors go to the right of the terrain. Mordrak and the libby go in the raven a little farther back out of hive guard range to my right while the purifiers go in their rhino behind the interceptors. With a 4 on the Grand Strategy roll the interceptors and the dread were scoring. Right now I am thinking this is going to be an uphill battle. It will be very tough to claim the center condition with out wiping everyone out. Also it will be hard to kill the swarmlord and get someone to his objective. Oh well maybe I can kill off enough guys and send the interceptors there. He places his stealers 18" away form the strikes in terrain. I fail to seize the initiative

Fred's Turn One

Everyone moves forward. The tervigon poops out ten gaunts but rolls doubles and is done. The gaunts head for Fred's objective. Everyone but the hive guard fleet forward. The guard kill one strike and one interceptor. Somehow the tervigon gives the genestealers feel no pain. Great genestealers in cover with feel no pain. Next turn will be full of charges.

My Turn One

I am at a quandary. The way Fred has set up it is forcing me to the little leg of my triangle. Either I can fall back and shoot and hope for bad fleet rolls or I can move forward and take the fight to them. I decide to do a little of both. Both the strikes and interceptors cast warp quake anticipating Doom coming in. The strikes fall back and shoot at the infiltrating genestealers. The strikes move forward and 12" towards the leftmost hoppys and shoot them. Everyone else backs up and begins to blast genestealers. Mordrak gets out and him and the libby begin to shoot genestealers too. The raven knowing it will soon be a burning wreck targets the Swarmlord with all the missiles and the multi melta and twin lascannon. I do two wounds to the Swarmlord and one to a guard. The interceptors kill a few hormagaunts. Everyone else unloads on the genestealers I do not kill enough maybe like seven after all is said and done. The interceptors charge the hormagaunts killing most of them after no retreat there are 3 left. This was my first big mistake I should have shot more at them. If I could have wiped them out the interceptors could have got away. Now I have to move in and will be in range of the Swarmlord next turn.

Fred's Turn 2

Here comes everybody. The genestealers come on in my right table edge and move forward. The Doom drops down on my right between the interceptor combat and the rest of my army. It is out of range for the big sucking spell due to fear of mishap. The other genestealers move forward to hopefully get a charge off on the strikes. Hormagaunts surge forward followed by the swarmlord moving to get a charge in the interceptors. The tervigon and devilgaunts move forward. The spawned gaunts go sit on Fred's home objective. I cast shrouding. The hive guard combine to blow up the stormraven. Doom shoots at the temies but does nothing. The devgaunts drop a terminator. Everyone else fleets. I cast sanctuary. The stealers assault the strikes losing maybe two guys to dangerous terrain. Swarmy goes and talks to the interceptors. The swarmlord puts a hurt on the interceptors killing six of them they finish off the gaunts. I am able to down the injured guard and put a wound on the swarmlord. Of course I pass my leadership.The genestealers strike after the strikes so I am able to cut the genestealers down to manageable numbers but still take a beating. I think the genestealers are left at about 5 and there are four strikes left.

My Turn 2

The termies and ghost warriors turn around to try and shoot the outflanking genestealers who of course are in cover.... The dreadnought gets ready to go in and help out the strikes. The interceptors prepare to meet the emperor. The ghost warriors, termies and the two psycannons from the purifiers down about 4 genestealers. The dread and the strikes finish off the other genestealers leaving me with out a DCCW and two strikes. The interceptors go down like five dollar whores.

Fred's Turn 3

Here comes everyone forward again. The devgaunts finish off the strikes, the hiveguard finish off the dread and the purifier rhino. Doom drops a template on the purfiers but nothing happens. Everyone else moves forward and fleets. Due to difficult terrain and sanctuary there are no charges.

My Turn 3

It is looking bleak. I have lost both the strikes and the interceptors along with the raven and the dread and the rhino. Well Mordrak usually winds up laying in a pile of his comrades bodies why should this be any different. I have the Swarmlord 13 genestealers a bunch of hormagaunts, the Doom and whatever the hell else coming for me. I move forward I am able to multicharge the Swarmlord, Doom and hormagaunts with the librarian, the termies and purifiers. Mordrak and the warriors charge the genestealers. in the big combat I lose the libby, two termies and like three of the purifiers. However I kill 14 gaunts, one guard and put a wound on old Swarmy. (by the way the Swarmlord rolled abysmally killing like one guy) the Swarmlord, Doom and the gaunts die to no retreat. The warriors kill about 7 of the genestealers take some casualties I think I am left with one warrior and a wounded Mordrak. He passes morale with 5 or so genestealers left

Fred's Turn 4

Well that was quite a blow to Fred but he still has all his shooting left. The devgaunts polish off the purifiers while the hiveguard finish the termies. I kill all but one of the stealers and lose the last warrior and take a wound on Mordrak. He also moves everything closer for the oncoming shooting of Mordrak.

My Turn 4

Mordrak kills the last stealer and makes his peace with the emperor.

Fred's Turn 5

Mordrak dies in a hail of whatever it is that tyranids shoot.

Was an uphill game from the beginning but I made a couple of tactical mistakes. I should have shot more at the gaunts and maybe could have freed up the interceptors. I also set up poorly and was in combat too early. Oh well was a great game.

Tyranids at Local RTT

I got to play in an RTT yesterday over in Tampa. They used the NOVA mission format which I enjoyed - it's similar to the BeakyCon mission format except that if you win the primary objective you win the mission - if you draw on the primary then secondary is the first tie breaker and tertiary is the second tie breaker. I like the BeakyCon mission better because it really eliminates bad matchups as I'll explain below.

As it turns out all three games were versus good friends I often play so we are very familiar with each others' armies. The first game was versus Chris Winan's Imperial Guard and the primary objective was kill points. Deployment was Dawn of War. As you've probably guessed I brought my Tyranids - which I had to tweak a bit to scale down to an 1850 point list. Kill points versus shooty mech armies are a bad matchup for my Tyranids and Chris was smart, castling his army in one corner of his deployment zone making sure to keep all his armor beyond the range of my Hive Guard. You do have to win by at least a margin of three kill points to grab that objective so the NOVA system does give you a bit of a break in that regard... Still it was not enough for me though and my dice let me down on some key rolls. I suppose I could have played it very conservative and castled as well hoping that my Tyrannofex could pop enough tanks for the win or force a tie breaker on objective markers. I did manage to win the secondary (objective markers) and drew on the tertiary (table quarters)... Every little bit can count.

The second game was versus Mat Douthat's Space Wolves which features a Wolfstar lead by two Wolf Lords. We play each other a lot during the week nights and I've posted some batreps here. We are fairly even in our games and the last time I played Mat at an RTT I lost a very close game versus his Grey Knights. The primary was objective markers and NOVA uses five - one in the center of each table quarter and one in the center of the table. Deployment was Pitched Battle. Mat decided to hold his entire army in reserve at the last moment which came back to bite him as his Wolfstar did not come in from reserves until the fifth turn and his Long Fangs did not arrive until the fourth turn. So it was a fairly easy victory as my Hive Tyrant had a field day since there were no SW units that could really hurt him. I scored the primary, secondary and tertiary this game - moving back up in the rankings.

The third and final game was versus Scott Lester's Grey Knights (three Stormravens loaded for Grizzly Bears). Scott and I have played lots of games at local RTTs so I knew I would have to play smart. The primary was table quarters, secondary was objective markers and the tertiary was kill points. Deployment was Spearhead. This might sound like a bad matchup for my army and it is in many ways but my goal was to play the mission and not worry about trying to kill lots of Grey Knights. Again I faced an army that I only had one unit that could touch his armor (my Tyrannofex) - Scott was smart and kept the fliers all close together, moving flatout and casting the Shrouding with his Librarian inside the central Stormraven... It doesn't get much easier than that in my opinion.

I had to hope I'd get in one lucky shot before his Stormravens could shoot down the Tyrannofex using PotMS... He did make a mistake one turn and got too close to my Hive Guard (hiding behind a bunker... Heh) - I scored one penetrating hit then rolled a 1 on the armor penetration table... Oh well. I knew that Scott was focused on blasting my Tyranids and keeping all his infantry embarked in the Stormravens meant he could only hold a relatively small number of objective markers and at most be in three of the four table quarters. I brought in my genestealers behind cover in the table quarter beside my deployment zone hugging the board edge and going to ground for the 3++... Sometimes it is more important to make your saves than inflict wounds. I also dropped my Zoanthropes over beside the genestealers to act as a distraction and draw fire. The fifth turn rolled around and I decided to take a calculated risk moving my Prime and his Warriors along with my termagant brood out from behind cover into the adjacent table quarter (note I went second this game). I then rolled to see if the game would end and up popped a 2! A quick count showed we were tied on table quarters and a lone Broodlord stood defiantly beside an objective marker while there were no Grey Knights beside any... A close win for the Tyranids... But wait... NOVA has six fixed turns - someone earlier (not the TO) had told me it was five turns then random game length... Geez what a disappointment. I conceded the game then as I had already moved a lot of my units and didn't think it would be kosher to ask to move them back again and replay the fifth turn. It was my fault as I should have more closely read all of the mission rules... It is what it is and now I know. Hee. No big deal really.

So I ended up with one win and two losses - all three games were versus the Big Three - Imperial Guard, Space Wolves and finally Grey Knights. I know some of my detractors will say that this is proof my army is not competitive BUT stop to consider all three games were versus friends who know my army inside out - Imperial Guard took 1st place and Grey Knights took 2nd place. Scott had told me his army was designed to deal with my Tyranid army. So I'm not discouraged and look at it as part of the learning experience. If I had known it was six turns maybe I could have won the game versus Grey Knights - as I pointed out Scott was very intent upon killing Tyranids. Most players won't have these kind of advantages in my opinion. Sure anyone who is a smart player will figure out how to counter my army but I don't think it's necessarily that easy for people unfamiliar with my brand of Tyranids.

It was a fun day playing three games with good friends and overall a well run tournament. I like the NOVA mission format but still favor the BeakyCon method since I think it provides a more equal setting versus the various armies people are playing now. On a final note my good buddy John Lennon brought his Tyranids as well and went 2-1... Pretty cool.