DarkLink
05-30-2011, 11:35 PM
I played at the SoCal Slaughter this weekend and had a blast, and I felt like typing up a battle report with some commentary on my Grey Knight army. A bit of bad luck (every game ended the worst possible time for me) cost me a decent finish, but I’m quite happy with how I performed. With the sole exception of my last game, I solidly demolished my opponents and it was only random game length and a few oddities of the special missions that hurt me. Those are out of my control, so I can’t complain.
First off, here’s the list I took:
Librarian, 2 Skulls, Might of Titan, Quickening, Shrouding, Sanctuary, Warp Rift, Summoning
Coteaz
10 Terminators, 2 Psycannons, Psybolts, Brotherhood Banner
2x10 GKSS, 2 Psycannons, Hammer, Rhino
3x5 Acolytes, 2 meltaguns, Razorback w/ psybolt ammo
3x Psyrifle Dreads
2000pts
For a quick note, modified killpoints were used. The “slaughter points” were basically 1 point per 100 point increment, rounding up. Troops round down to a minimum of 1. So my Terminators (490pts) were 4 points, while my Psyrifle Dreads were 2 points each (135pts).
Game 1:
I ended up being paired off against Yakface and his ork kan wall. He had a pair of dreads, 9 kans with grotzookas, 3 shoota boy squads, 2 loota units and a pair of kustom force fields. This was a fun game against a great guy. He was a great sport about his poor difficult terrain rolls early on, and while I won’t say he had bad luck he did tend to roll poorly at the worst time. I believe he went on to get 3rd place overall.
Basically the mission used some modified kill point setup, and each player nominated three of their own units. Those units got random special rules, but also doubled their killpoints. He nominated his boyz squads, while I nominated my Terminators and Strike Squads. There was also a single bonus objective for each player. If you held your own objective, you got a couple extra bonus points, but had no other effect on the game.
He won the role to go first, and lined up his army. Coteaz allowed me to sieze the initiative (Coteaz is awesome), so I managed to blow up a Kan or two despite the KFFs.
Over the next few turns, my opponent advanced forward, trying to get close enough to engage me. He was slowed by some poor difficult terrain rolls, and by the time he got reasonably close I had killed or damaged most of his Kans. My Terminators marched up the middle, and he attempted to counter assault with his remaining Kans. In a singularly horrible roll, he immobilized and wrecked two Kans in a squadron thanks to Coteaz’s Sanctuary (Coteaz is awesome). My Terminators clubbed the Kans in the face, and his boyz bounced off of them.
By turn 5, the Terminators were locked in with a beat up dread, my Strike Squads were about to finish off the last Kan and about 12 Boyz, and his commandos and third boyz squad was falling back. Only his lootas were mostly untouched, as I’d just ignored them. I still had most of my army.
Naturally, the game ended, denying me a significant number of kill points. I got a minor victory, plus my bonus objective.
I wasn’t a fan of the mission. While the special rules were a nice touch, they weren’t nearly good enough to justify the doubled kill points. I should have just nominated my Acolyte squads and kept them hidden to deny killpoints, even though my Terminators and Strike Squads survived the whole game. Because the rules were random, you could get a useless or an actively bad rule, like Rage.
Game 2:
I was faced off with a BA drop pod army, with 8 Dreads, 2 min. assault squads and a large unit of death company with a reclusiarch and everything in drop pods.
The mission was another odd one. There were three buildings in no-man’s-land (L-shaped deployment zones in table quarters). If a disembarked scoring unit ended its movement inside the building, and no enemies were inside to contest, you could plant a flag. If there was already an enemy flag there, you had to plant your own flag in order to remove theirs. So long as you had a flag planted, at the end of each turn you got 1 point for the corner buildings and 2 points for the center building. You still got points even if the enemy contested, as you still had your flag planted. It wasn’t until your opponent planted his own flag that your went away.
I won the roll and chose to go second. He dropped in stuff all over the place, only bringing in one scoring assault squad to claim a corner objective. My Terminators marched up to the center building and claimed it. The third building was left untouched. He landed too far back to do any real shooting to me, but I was able to immobilize a Blood Talon dread and shake his Librarian. I moved a Strike Squad off to each objective, and the Acolytes followed.
Turn 2, he assaulted my Terminators with his other Blood Talon dread. Stupid cheater claws. Stupid lack of Storm Shields. Maybe I should take a Warding Stave instead of Psybolts. Whatever, 4 Terminators died, I stuck around (stubborn thanks to Coteaz). I also took off one of his arms with Hammers. He also managed to pop the Strike Squad rhino going for the unclaimed objective. His second assault squad dropped in and claimed the last objective.
Turn 3, I Might of Titan’d the dread to death (you can only cast MoT in your own turn). He dropped in an frag cannon’d the Strike Squad that had jumped out of the Rhino mostly to death, and some random shooting finished them off. I also immobilized all but one Dread on the board. I failed to scratch one on the first objective he claimed, which assaulted my GKSS there and I Perils’d and lost my Hammer. Oh well, no big deal. I wasn’t able to claim that objective, so I redirected my efforts elsewhere. I did, however, forget about both my Razorback and Rhino that were still over there, which was really stupid of me and cost me some points later on.
Over the next several turns, I immobilized or killed all of his Dreadnoughts, cleared him off the corner objective (Razorbacks and Terminators picked off his Assault Squad, and the Acolytes killed the Dreads in that vicinity) and claimed it. This swung the points in my favor, while his only remaining scoring unit and his only mobile threat (the death company) were stranded on the far side of the board.
His death company got tied up with my Psyrifle Dreads (he chose to assault them, but I would have assaulted and tied him up even if he had chosen not to). He ran his remaining Assault squad as fast as he could to the center objective, and of course the game went to turn 7 and he managed to claim it at the last second with the one remaining Assault Marine I didn’t kill. This brought me down from a Massacre to a Major Victory.
Forgetting about my Razorback and Rhino (which had three or four turns of shooting to cause a single wound on the assault squad would have prevented him from reaching the center objective. I could have placed the tanks in his way, forcing him to waste even a few inches of movement stopping to melta them or go around, and he wouldn’t have made it. I shouldn’t wasted time with my Terminators killing a Dreadnought in CC just for fun, and instead booked them back to the center objective to keep him from claiming it. Any one of those things would have netted me a Massacre. Stupid me. Never forget the little things.
Once again, I wasn’t a fan of the mission. It was too easy to plant a flag turn 1 and too hard for your opponent to remove it. I was up 1 point from turn one because I had the center objective and he didn’t, and I was basically guaranteed a minor victory unless I let him kill me. Clearing him off the second objective sealed my victory, and it was only stupidity that lost me those few extra points. And, once again, the game ending at the worst time for me.
Game 3
I was now faced up against another GK player. He wasn’t a vet, so to be honest this was an easy game for me. His list wasn’t the greatest either. He had a Libriarian, Inquisitor with Grenades and Purifiers in a Land Raider Redeemer, three Strike Squads in Rhinos with Halberds, a Vindicare, Venerable Psyrifle Dread and a Dreadknight with teleporter. One of those cases of lots of good units (except the Halberds on the GKSS), but a poor army with little cohesion because they didn’t work together well. This’ll also be an example of why not to bother with Halberds on the GKSS.
The Mission was odd again, but much better than the last ones. Basically, if you had a unit with a WS value, you could search any piece of terrain it was in at the end of the movement phase. On a 3+, that terrain became an objective. You could do that once per player turn, to a total of 5 objectives. After that, it worked exactly like any other objective game.
I won the roll and chose to go first, and Coteaz didn’t even need to save me from my opponent attempting to Sieze the initiative. I deployed my Psyrifle Dreads spread out in three terrain pieces in my deployment zone, and the rest of the army right of center. He deployed most of his stuff across from mine, excluding one Strike Squad and the Dreadknights that was across from my lonely Psyrifle Dread.
First turn I managed to take an arm off his Venerable Dread and instakill the Vindicare, who never got to shoot. To my error, I offhandedly nominated the piece of terrain really far away from my army and got it. Oops. Realized that was a mistake the second the dice left my hand. Oh, well, it did split up his forces. He shunted his psyrifle dread and the lone Strike Squad followed, moved up his Land Raider on its own, and sat his other Strike Squads still to try and shoot my dudes.
I was able to bait his Redeemer close enough to try and melta it with the Acolytes. They failed. Instead, I popped it with Psycannons, then hammered his Purifiers. I shot them to pieces, then assaulted his Librarian and Inquisitor with a Strike Squad. His Grenades didn’t save him, and I killed both off with no losses.
Meanwhile, his Dreadknight assaulted and killed my lone psyrifle dread, and his strike squad sat on the objective. The Dreadknight came to play with the rest of my army, so I moved the Terminators to just within assault range to bait him. He took it, assaulted, and got force weaponed before getting to strike.
All this time, I nominate a string of terrain pieces that my army is camped on. For some reason, my opponent only nominates a single terrain piece and otherwise ignores it. As a result, there is one lone objective in my left deployment, and a string of objectives on the right edge of the board from my deployment to his.
His strike squads both jump out, move forward, shoot, and assault my Terminators. I kill all of them, and only lose a few Terminators. Halberds suck on GKSS. He took Halberds instead of more bodies and psycannons, and then died like a punk in assault against a real opponent anyways.
At this point, he only has a Rhino contesting the objective in his deployment zone, one squad claiming the far lone objective, and I’m sitting on the other three. I shoot everything at his stupid Rhino, but fail to kill it. I also completely forget to move one of my Acolyte squads to contest the objective that he is holding. Silly of me, but this time it doesn’t cost me points. The game ends turn 5. Had it gone on, I would have contested his objective and claimed the other 4, and possibly wiped him if I got a bit luck while shooting at his last Strike Squad. Instead, I got a major victory. However this time my mistake didn’t cost me points. Even if I had moved the Acolytes and contested his objective, I would have still gotten a Major Victory.
It was simply failing to kill his last Rhino, and the game ending turn 5 that cost me a Massacre, but those are just the dice and there’s nothing you can do about that.
Game 4:
While my previous opponents were good sports and cool people, my opponent the next morning was well know for… not being that. In particular, the DE player that came along with me has had to play him several tournaments in a row, and can’t stand him. He’s the sort of player that thinks that you’re cheating him every time you use an ability he isn’t familiar with, he has his own “unique” interpretation of the rule and he thinks you’re a cheater if you don’t agree with it, and he’s willing to argue over some inane stupid point until the time runs out. And he’s an ork player.
I jest, I don’t actually dislike ork players (though anyone who thinks screaming Waaaaaahg is funny needs to get a life). I mean that he plays a horde army and if you get caught up in some stupid argument, you’re never going to finish your game and you’re likely going to lose a lot of points simply by facing this guy. I nearly suffered this fate (though I managed to avoid arguments and the game ended turn 5 with only a few minutes left on the clock).
His army was basically 4x30 orks, 15 deff koptas, snikrot and commandos and a biker warboss. The mission was that you nominated 4 enemy units, and only those units counted as killpoints. Dedicated transports were included, as were units taken in groups like IG platoons. He nominated my Strike Squads and 2 Psyrifle Dreads, and I his warboss and deff koptas in order to maximize kill points.
Long story short, I used my charming personality and carefully stuck to the rules to keep him from getting pissy about anything. Not that I’m actually especially charming, but I get along with people really well.
However, I got screwed over by the mission. He kept all the units I nominated in reserves, and he had second turn. My Terminators walked through his boyz, killing 90 of them single handedly with only a single casualty. Coteaz and Sanctuary killed about 20 (Coteaz is awesome), though Coteaz did get picked off by a power klaw (Coteaz is sad that Coteaz does not have an invulnerable save, but decides that he enjoys the challenge of giving his foes a chance). At the end of the game, he had 12 boyz huddled in cover, and 6 deff koptas left. Because he had reserved them, the last unit didn’t come on until turn 5 and I never got a chance to touch it. One more turn and I probably would have tabled him, but because reserves denied my killpoints I actually lost, as in the last turn he got a series of lucky shots and managed to kill my Rhinos and two Dreadnoughts, bringing him ahead of me in killpoints. They were basically my only casualties.
Ultimately, maybe I should have just nominated 3 Boyz squads instead of the deff koptas, since I knew for certain I would face them instead. Regardless, when you are only a few models from tabling your opponent, and you have taken almost no casualties yourself, yet you don’t win, something is wrong with the mission.
Mini-rant time:
And once again the random game length screwed me. Random game length is a horrible rule. When victory or defeat is always dependant on a single dice roll rather than player skill, there’s a problem. I’m not talking about ‘I need to blow up his Rhino contesting my objective or I lose’. That is part of playing the game, you should have brought more anti-tank or placed a higher priority on killing it earlier or maybe you just gambled and it didn’t pay off. Those are all things that make for a good game. Losing despite virtually tabling your opponent because a single dice came up as a 2 is not a good game.
Game 5
Anyways, I’m actually somehow within striking distance of the top players. I’m on table 4, as a matter of fact, so if I do well and none of the top players score a lot of points I could take a top spot. Incidentally, had each of my games ended turn 6, I would have had ~24 more points (I had 140), and had I not made the couple of stupid mistakes that I had I would have had another 6-8. That ultimately would have put me in first at the end of game 4. In fact, I would have had a higher score than the final winner at the end of game 5. Of course, I would have also played higher ranked opponents so my games would have been tougher, but that’s totally irrelevant to the point:rolleyes:.
So I come up against a ‘nidz player. Just a little key-in, I suck against ‘nidz. I have virtually no experience against a competend ‘nidz player with a decent army, and I seem to be utterly incapable of judging ‘nid charge distances. I can do it against every other army, but I just seem to play stupid against ‘nidz.
Anyways, he has a shooty flying Tyrant, 2 genestealers, 1 ymgarl genestealer squad, 1 hive guard squad, 1 zoanthrope squad, lots of gargoyles and 2 tervigons. Great guy, one of those people who makes sure to shake your hand and ask about your army and hold a conversation with you. I voted him as my favorite opponent.
Basically, I was stupid in how I moved the Terminators and managed to get them in range of both genestealer squads. He assaulted with everything but the Hive Tyrant, and they killed each other off. And my Librarian ran of the board. Anyone who tells you ATSKNF is better for Grey Knights than Fearless is an idiot. Grey Knights are not Space Marines, the same rules don’t work the same way for them. ATSKNF’s advantages don’t help the Grey Knights nearly as much as the loss of Fearless hurts them.
Anyways, my Dreds tied up his ymgarl genestealers. My Acolytes all got blown up, and their Razorbacks too. Same thing with my Rhinos. The only thing that was left was my Strike Squads trapped in my deployment zone by about thirty squads of guants. They got slowly whittle away, and one ran off the board. Had they been Fearless, I would have had a shot, but they got chased off. Unlike Space Marines, GKs don’t have the number of units required sometimes to create some room to allow falling back units to regroup. ATSKNF sucks on Grey Knights compared to Fearless. We don’t have many units, we can never afford to have one running away.
Ultimately, I had one Dreadnought left at the bottom of turn 5, so we called it. There was nothing I could do to drop him from a Massacre. Being genuinely beaten made me feel better about being robbed a ton of points by stupid random game length.
Regardless of wins or losses or mistakes or idiotic rules (I think you know which one by now ;)), the tournament was a blast. I had a ton of fun, and it was nice to see that I could play with the big boys in a “real” tournament, as I’ve only ever gone to local tournaments plus ‘ard boyz semis last year. Several of our local players, however, go to a lot of tournaments and are solid players (one is DE, the other plays IG and Space Wolves). Our IG player, Christian, happened to get first overall, btw. My GK list is 1-1 with his same IG army he took to this tournament, and I can play him on even ground with about the nastiest list the IG codex can produce.
First off, here’s the list I took:
Librarian, 2 Skulls, Might of Titan, Quickening, Shrouding, Sanctuary, Warp Rift, Summoning
Coteaz
10 Terminators, 2 Psycannons, Psybolts, Brotherhood Banner
2x10 GKSS, 2 Psycannons, Hammer, Rhino
3x5 Acolytes, 2 meltaguns, Razorback w/ psybolt ammo
3x Psyrifle Dreads
2000pts
For a quick note, modified killpoints were used. The “slaughter points” were basically 1 point per 100 point increment, rounding up. Troops round down to a minimum of 1. So my Terminators (490pts) were 4 points, while my Psyrifle Dreads were 2 points each (135pts).
Game 1:
I ended up being paired off against Yakface and his ork kan wall. He had a pair of dreads, 9 kans with grotzookas, 3 shoota boy squads, 2 loota units and a pair of kustom force fields. This was a fun game against a great guy. He was a great sport about his poor difficult terrain rolls early on, and while I won’t say he had bad luck he did tend to roll poorly at the worst time. I believe he went on to get 3rd place overall.
Basically the mission used some modified kill point setup, and each player nominated three of their own units. Those units got random special rules, but also doubled their killpoints. He nominated his boyz squads, while I nominated my Terminators and Strike Squads. There was also a single bonus objective for each player. If you held your own objective, you got a couple extra bonus points, but had no other effect on the game.
He won the role to go first, and lined up his army. Coteaz allowed me to sieze the initiative (Coteaz is awesome), so I managed to blow up a Kan or two despite the KFFs.
Over the next few turns, my opponent advanced forward, trying to get close enough to engage me. He was slowed by some poor difficult terrain rolls, and by the time he got reasonably close I had killed or damaged most of his Kans. My Terminators marched up the middle, and he attempted to counter assault with his remaining Kans. In a singularly horrible roll, he immobilized and wrecked two Kans in a squadron thanks to Coteaz’s Sanctuary (Coteaz is awesome). My Terminators clubbed the Kans in the face, and his boyz bounced off of them.
By turn 5, the Terminators were locked in with a beat up dread, my Strike Squads were about to finish off the last Kan and about 12 Boyz, and his commandos and third boyz squad was falling back. Only his lootas were mostly untouched, as I’d just ignored them. I still had most of my army.
Naturally, the game ended, denying me a significant number of kill points. I got a minor victory, plus my bonus objective.
I wasn’t a fan of the mission. While the special rules were a nice touch, they weren’t nearly good enough to justify the doubled kill points. I should have just nominated my Acolyte squads and kept them hidden to deny killpoints, even though my Terminators and Strike Squads survived the whole game. Because the rules were random, you could get a useless or an actively bad rule, like Rage.
Game 2:
I was faced off with a BA drop pod army, with 8 Dreads, 2 min. assault squads and a large unit of death company with a reclusiarch and everything in drop pods.
The mission was another odd one. There were three buildings in no-man’s-land (L-shaped deployment zones in table quarters). If a disembarked scoring unit ended its movement inside the building, and no enemies were inside to contest, you could plant a flag. If there was already an enemy flag there, you had to plant your own flag in order to remove theirs. So long as you had a flag planted, at the end of each turn you got 1 point for the corner buildings and 2 points for the center building. You still got points even if the enemy contested, as you still had your flag planted. It wasn’t until your opponent planted his own flag that your went away.
I won the roll and chose to go second. He dropped in stuff all over the place, only bringing in one scoring assault squad to claim a corner objective. My Terminators marched up to the center building and claimed it. The third building was left untouched. He landed too far back to do any real shooting to me, but I was able to immobilize a Blood Talon dread and shake his Librarian. I moved a Strike Squad off to each objective, and the Acolytes followed.
Turn 2, he assaulted my Terminators with his other Blood Talon dread. Stupid cheater claws. Stupid lack of Storm Shields. Maybe I should take a Warding Stave instead of Psybolts. Whatever, 4 Terminators died, I stuck around (stubborn thanks to Coteaz). I also took off one of his arms with Hammers. He also managed to pop the Strike Squad rhino going for the unclaimed objective. His second assault squad dropped in and claimed the last objective.
Turn 3, I Might of Titan’d the dread to death (you can only cast MoT in your own turn). He dropped in an frag cannon’d the Strike Squad that had jumped out of the Rhino mostly to death, and some random shooting finished them off. I also immobilized all but one Dread on the board. I failed to scratch one on the first objective he claimed, which assaulted my GKSS there and I Perils’d and lost my Hammer. Oh well, no big deal. I wasn’t able to claim that objective, so I redirected my efforts elsewhere. I did, however, forget about both my Razorback and Rhino that were still over there, which was really stupid of me and cost me some points later on.
Over the next several turns, I immobilized or killed all of his Dreadnoughts, cleared him off the corner objective (Razorbacks and Terminators picked off his Assault Squad, and the Acolytes killed the Dreads in that vicinity) and claimed it. This swung the points in my favor, while his only remaining scoring unit and his only mobile threat (the death company) were stranded on the far side of the board.
His death company got tied up with my Psyrifle Dreads (he chose to assault them, but I would have assaulted and tied him up even if he had chosen not to). He ran his remaining Assault squad as fast as he could to the center objective, and of course the game went to turn 7 and he managed to claim it at the last second with the one remaining Assault Marine I didn’t kill. This brought me down from a Massacre to a Major Victory.
Forgetting about my Razorback and Rhino (which had three or four turns of shooting to cause a single wound on the assault squad would have prevented him from reaching the center objective. I could have placed the tanks in his way, forcing him to waste even a few inches of movement stopping to melta them or go around, and he wouldn’t have made it. I shouldn’t wasted time with my Terminators killing a Dreadnought in CC just for fun, and instead booked them back to the center objective to keep him from claiming it. Any one of those things would have netted me a Massacre. Stupid me. Never forget the little things.
Once again, I wasn’t a fan of the mission. It was too easy to plant a flag turn 1 and too hard for your opponent to remove it. I was up 1 point from turn one because I had the center objective and he didn’t, and I was basically guaranteed a minor victory unless I let him kill me. Clearing him off the second objective sealed my victory, and it was only stupidity that lost me those few extra points. And, once again, the game ending at the worst time for me.
Game 3
I was now faced up against another GK player. He wasn’t a vet, so to be honest this was an easy game for me. His list wasn’t the greatest either. He had a Libriarian, Inquisitor with Grenades and Purifiers in a Land Raider Redeemer, three Strike Squads in Rhinos with Halberds, a Vindicare, Venerable Psyrifle Dread and a Dreadknight with teleporter. One of those cases of lots of good units (except the Halberds on the GKSS), but a poor army with little cohesion because they didn’t work together well. This’ll also be an example of why not to bother with Halberds on the GKSS.
The Mission was odd again, but much better than the last ones. Basically, if you had a unit with a WS value, you could search any piece of terrain it was in at the end of the movement phase. On a 3+, that terrain became an objective. You could do that once per player turn, to a total of 5 objectives. After that, it worked exactly like any other objective game.
I won the roll and chose to go first, and Coteaz didn’t even need to save me from my opponent attempting to Sieze the initiative. I deployed my Psyrifle Dreads spread out in three terrain pieces in my deployment zone, and the rest of the army right of center. He deployed most of his stuff across from mine, excluding one Strike Squad and the Dreadknights that was across from my lonely Psyrifle Dread.
First turn I managed to take an arm off his Venerable Dread and instakill the Vindicare, who never got to shoot. To my error, I offhandedly nominated the piece of terrain really far away from my army and got it. Oops. Realized that was a mistake the second the dice left my hand. Oh, well, it did split up his forces. He shunted his psyrifle dread and the lone Strike Squad followed, moved up his Land Raider on its own, and sat his other Strike Squads still to try and shoot my dudes.
I was able to bait his Redeemer close enough to try and melta it with the Acolytes. They failed. Instead, I popped it with Psycannons, then hammered his Purifiers. I shot them to pieces, then assaulted his Librarian and Inquisitor with a Strike Squad. His Grenades didn’t save him, and I killed both off with no losses.
Meanwhile, his Dreadknight assaulted and killed my lone psyrifle dread, and his strike squad sat on the objective. The Dreadknight came to play with the rest of my army, so I moved the Terminators to just within assault range to bait him. He took it, assaulted, and got force weaponed before getting to strike.
All this time, I nominate a string of terrain pieces that my army is camped on. For some reason, my opponent only nominates a single terrain piece and otherwise ignores it. As a result, there is one lone objective in my left deployment, and a string of objectives on the right edge of the board from my deployment to his.
His strike squads both jump out, move forward, shoot, and assault my Terminators. I kill all of them, and only lose a few Terminators. Halberds suck on GKSS. He took Halberds instead of more bodies and psycannons, and then died like a punk in assault against a real opponent anyways.
At this point, he only has a Rhino contesting the objective in his deployment zone, one squad claiming the far lone objective, and I’m sitting on the other three. I shoot everything at his stupid Rhino, but fail to kill it. I also completely forget to move one of my Acolyte squads to contest the objective that he is holding. Silly of me, but this time it doesn’t cost me points. The game ends turn 5. Had it gone on, I would have contested his objective and claimed the other 4, and possibly wiped him if I got a bit luck while shooting at his last Strike Squad. Instead, I got a major victory. However this time my mistake didn’t cost me points. Even if I had moved the Acolytes and contested his objective, I would have still gotten a Major Victory.
It was simply failing to kill his last Rhino, and the game ending turn 5 that cost me a Massacre, but those are just the dice and there’s nothing you can do about that.
Game 4:
While my previous opponents were good sports and cool people, my opponent the next morning was well know for… not being that. In particular, the DE player that came along with me has had to play him several tournaments in a row, and can’t stand him. He’s the sort of player that thinks that you’re cheating him every time you use an ability he isn’t familiar with, he has his own “unique” interpretation of the rule and he thinks you’re a cheater if you don’t agree with it, and he’s willing to argue over some inane stupid point until the time runs out. And he’s an ork player.
I jest, I don’t actually dislike ork players (though anyone who thinks screaming Waaaaaahg is funny needs to get a life). I mean that he plays a horde army and if you get caught up in some stupid argument, you’re never going to finish your game and you’re likely going to lose a lot of points simply by facing this guy. I nearly suffered this fate (though I managed to avoid arguments and the game ended turn 5 with only a few minutes left on the clock).
His army was basically 4x30 orks, 15 deff koptas, snikrot and commandos and a biker warboss. The mission was that you nominated 4 enemy units, and only those units counted as killpoints. Dedicated transports were included, as were units taken in groups like IG platoons. He nominated my Strike Squads and 2 Psyrifle Dreads, and I his warboss and deff koptas in order to maximize kill points.
Long story short, I used my charming personality and carefully stuck to the rules to keep him from getting pissy about anything. Not that I’m actually especially charming, but I get along with people really well.
However, I got screwed over by the mission. He kept all the units I nominated in reserves, and he had second turn. My Terminators walked through his boyz, killing 90 of them single handedly with only a single casualty. Coteaz and Sanctuary killed about 20 (Coteaz is awesome), though Coteaz did get picked off by a power klaw (Coteaz is sad that Coteaz does not have an invulnerable save, but decides that he enjoys the challenge of giving his foes a chance). At the end of the game, he had 12 boyz huddled in cover, and 6 deff koptas left. Because he had reserved them, the last unit didn’t come on until turn 5 and I never got a chance to touch it. One more turn and I probably would have tabled him, but because reserves denied my killpoints I actually lost, as in the last turn he got a series of lucky shots and managed to kill my Rhinos and two Dreadnoughts, bringing him ahead of me in killpoints. They were basically my only casualties.
Ultimately, maybe I should have just nominated 3 Boyz squads instead of the deff koptas, since I knew for certain I would face them instead. Regardless, when you are only a few models from tabling your opponent, and you have taken almost no casualties yourself, yet you don’t win, something is wrong with the mission.
Mini-rant time:
And once again the random game length screwed me. Random game length is a horrible rule. When victory or defeat is always dependant on a single dice roll rather than player skill, there’s a problem. I’m not talking about ‘I need to blow up his Rhino contesting my objective or I lose’. That is part of playing the game, you should have brought more anti-tank or placed a higher priority on killing it earlier or maybe you just gambled and it didn’t pay off. Those are all things that make for a good game. Losing despite virtually tabling your opponent because a single dice came up as a 2 is not a good game.
Game 5
Anyways, I’m actually somehow within striking distance of the top players. I’m on table 4, as a matter of fact, so if I do well and none of the top players score a lot of points I could take a top spot. Incidentally, had each of my games ended turn 6, I would have had ~24 more points (I had 140), and had I not made the couple of stupid mistakes that I had I would have had another 6-8. That ultimately would have put me in first at the end of game 4. In fact, I would have had a higher score than the final winner at the end of game 5. Of course, I would have also played higher ranked opponents so my games would have been tougher, but that’s totally irrelevant to the point:rolleyes:.
So I come up against a ‘nidz player. Just a little key-in, I suck against ‘nidz. I have virtually no experience against a competend ‘nidz player with a decent army, and I seem to be utterly incapable of judging ‘nid charge distances. I can do it against every other army, but I just seem to play stupid against ‘nidz.
Anyways, he has a shooty flying Tyrant, 2 genestealers, 1 ymgarl genestealer squad, 1 hive guard squad, 1 zoanthrope squad, lots of gargoyles and 2 tervigons. Great guy, one of those people who makes sure to shake your hand and ask about your army and hold a conversation with you. I voted him as my favorite opponent.
Basically, I was stupid in how I moved the Terminators and managed to get them in range of both genestealer squads. He assaulted with everything but the Hive Tyrant, and they killed each other off. And my Librarian ran of the board. Anyone who tells you ATSKNF is better for Grey Knights than Fearless is an idiot. Grey Knights are not Space Marines, the same rules don’t work the same way for them. ATSKNF’s advantages don’t help the Grey Knights nearly as much as the loss of Fearless hurts them.
Anyways, my Dreds tied up his ymgarl genestealers. My Acolytes all got blown up, and their Razorbacks too. Same thing with my Rhinos. The only thing that was left was my Strike Squads trapped in my deployment zone by about thirty squads of guants. They got slowly whittle away, and one ran off the board. Had they been Fearless, I would have had a shot, but they got chased off. Unlike Space Marines, GKs don’t have the number of units required sometimes to create some room to allow falling back units to regroup. ATSKNF sucks on Grey Knights compared to Fearless. We don’t have many units, we can never afford to have one running away.
Ultimately, I had one Dreadnought left at the bottom of turn 5, so we called it. There was nothing I could do to drop him from a Massacre. Being genuinely beaten made me feel better about being robbed a ton of points by stupid random game length.
Regardless of wins or losses or mistakes or idiotic rules (I think you know which one by now ;)), the tournament was a blast. I had a ton of fun, and it was nice to see that I could play with the big boys in a “real” tournament, as I’ve only ever gone to local tournaments plus ‘ard boyz semis last year. Several of our local players, however, go to a lot of tournaments and are solid players (one is DE, the other plays IG and Space Wolves). Our IG player, Christian, happened to get first overall, btw. My GK list is 1-1 with his same IG army he took to this tournament, and I can play him on even ground with about the nastiest list the IG codex can produce.