Tournament Talk 2/28/15

Got some games of 40k in this week for the first time in several months. Hopped down to Crossroad Games for the monthly tournament. Pretty decent showing with 10 players for the day. Not having a lot of recent game time I brought my same list from the Standish Standoff (event from November 2014) and having an extra 50pts I just added some war gear and move items around to play basically the same army. Plus that one is already painted.  Event was 1700 points using book Maelstorm Missions with a modified battle points based on margin of victory. I honestly never got the details for the scoring and was just so pumped to play I wasn’t too interested to ask after them at the start of the day. Only house rule to modify the games was any card drawn that is never attainable you can immediately discard and replace it. Helps keep you from being hand locked with unattainable cards.

So that said here is what I brought for the day.

Detachment: Combined Arms Detachment
Faction: Tau
HQ1 152: (Farsight) Commander, XV84 Crisis Battlesuit^IA3, 1x missile pod, drone controller, 2x markerlight drone
HQ2 179: (Tau) Commander, drone controller, 2x markerlight drone, Command & Control Node, Puretide Engram, Multi-Spectrum sensor, Neuroweb system jammer, 2x Flamer
Elite1 265: (Farsight) XV104 Riptide, Hvy Burst Cannon, TL-Fusion Blaster, Velocity Tracker, Earth Cast Pilot Array, Stimulant Injector
Troops1 210: (Farsight) XV8 Crises Team, 3x Crises Suits, 3x Markerlight drones, 3x bonding knife ritual, 6x missile pod, 3x target lock
Troops2 210: (Farsight) XV8 Crises Team , 3x Crises Suits,3x Markerlight drones, 3x bonding knife ritual, 6x missile pod, 3x target lock

Detachment: Tau Firebase Support Cadre
Elite 220: (Tau) XV104 Riptide, TL Plasma Rifle, Ion Accelerator, Stimulant Injector
Heavy 231: (Tau) XV88 Broadside Team, 3x Broadsides, 3x High Yield Missile Pods, 3x smart missile system, 3x missile drone
Heavy 231: (Tau) XV88 Broadside Team, 3x Broadsides, 3x High Yield Missile Pods, 3x smart missile system, 3x missile drone

Total: 1698 points

Round one I got paired up with Marshall who brought a pretty elite Eldar Iyanden force including 2 Wrathknights, 3 units of wraithguard 2 spirit sears, 2 wave serpents, and 2 units of jetbikes. He had a lot of AP2 shooting, a lot. So although we both had elite armies, mine utilized good armor saves to survive and his guns cut through that like a knife thru butter. My only saving grace was a decent warlord trait drawn allowing me to score double points on any # objective card I score with my warlords unit. I was able to snag a couple of extra points that way early in the game and get a huge lead early on. After the first couple rounds the game turned into me trying to delay and deny my opponent more than scoring myself then a complete run hide and don’t get table. We got to the bottom of round 4 as time got called. Looking at the points we pulled a tie, given the absolute beating I got across the table top that was a win in my eyes. A great game and lots of fun.

Round 2 I faced Todd. He has the most beautifully painted Ultramarines. Perhaps some of the finest painting across and army I have had the pleasure of playing against. That said he had a pretty balanced marine army. A couple tactical squads in Rhinos, assault squad, ironclad in drop pod, dev squad and a vindicator. I lost the roll for deployment so set my army up across from him to be out of range from the vindicator…. Or so I thought. I left one drone out in range. Fortunately a bad scatter caused the shot to miss. Again a large blast low AP would be the bane of my suit based gun line. My first round of shooting put a lot of hurt on him with some decent rolls. I wrecked the dreadnaught, vindicator and a rhino. Keeping him pushed back. The game started to turn heavily against him as I drew and completed several d3 objectives cards and proceeded to roll 3 points for each one. One nearly glorious moment as a lone marine assaulting a tau riptide nearly swept the riptide as I failed a break check. Was a baited breath roll to be sure.

Round 3 paired me up with Marcello. He had just curb stomped my first round Eldar opponent tabling him handedly early in the game. He brought a dark elder homunculi list. I've never played against dark elder, but he had a lot of melee and a lot of T5 and T7 wounds on the table. Pretty much the perfect pairing against the elder whose elite high AP shooting is wasted on piles of wounds. Marcello gave me a good stomping last time we played each other in a tournament and has been a routinely excellent opponent in player given most of his standings at events. One thing we both agreed on is that it would be a fast game. Either I could keep him off my gun line and shoot him down. Or he would make it and stomp me in hand to hand. First round shooting spelled his doom as a long series of failed 3+ armour saves with 5+ feel no pain saves. From the number of wounds I sent his way he should have saved that down to around 10 wounds taken on a unit of 4 talos. Instead we saw the unit nearly wiped out and finished off in over watch on the charge.

All in all the event was a great time. I got to catch up with a number of players I've not seen in several months and generally get my gaming geek on. The best surprise was at day end I came out on top and took a win. I knew I had done well but I didn't honestly think I was in contention to win. Defiantly put a smile on my face.