Torrent of Fire Invitational! Results! Yay!

 Hello,

So the Torrent of Fire Invitational is over and the results are in! I am happy to inform any loyal readers that I performed better than I expected (although not quite what I had hoped!). You can check out the results here: torrentoffire.com and the direct link to the article is: http://www.torrentoffire.com/3755/thats-the-chicago-way-tim-gorhams-the-champion.

Anyway so the event itself was a very well run, the missions were a nice mix of east coast, west coast, and adepticon style missions. The first round was the primer mission 1 which was created by Mike Brandt and honestly although it is a hard mission, it is well designed. More missions like this would be great! I also really enjoyed the pre-brackets, it added another layer of tactics as I thought about my potential match-ups but it also removed some stress as I was able to focus on my likely early round matches instead of it just being a complete and utter mystery. So all in all, it a was a great event which I hope I will be invited to again next year. Great job Chip and the Torrent of Fire crew!

So I didnt take too many pictures so I think I can run through each game pretty quick to give a recap of my experience:

All of the lists for players can be found: http://www.torrentoffire.com/tof_inv

So I wont go into too much detail but I will summarize the lists and highlight major things from the games.

Game 1:
TJ Meyers running a Tau/Space Marine/Inquisition
Farsight
Ovesa
Sha'vastos (puretide, vectored retro, shield generator)
riptide w/ talisman of arthas malach, target lock
5x1 crisis suits w/ 2x flamers
1x3 crisis suit w/ 2x flamers each
skyray
broadsides w/ high yield missiles
Tigurius
1x5 scouts
thunderfire
xenos inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls

My powers:
Eldrad: death mission, executioner, eldritch storm, guide
Shardseer: executioner, mind war, guide
Warlord trait:I got scoring! (this was clutch for this game to be honest)

So not rolling fortune game one...rather sucked but it was interesting, of the 4 people running some form of seer council only ONE PERSON rolled fortune in round one! But oh well. Anyway TJ and I both flopped big time on turn one shooting, but in turn two I managed to remove the broadsides with my riptide (if I recall correctly I killed 1 of them and then the other 2 ran off the table). Other than that I hid from him for most of the game and scored points each turn (this was mission primer one so I was able to score 1 point each turn I held an objective and with a scoring warlord it was not hard to get a minimum of 2 points a turn) and put all my focus toward killing his small crisis suit teams. Something that really helped was honestly that in total both of our shooting was terrible. But it hurt TJ more than me since as a tau primary...shooting is mostly all the army has. In any case the highlight was my one jetbike who was shot by the thunderfire cannon in every turn of the game and still surived to the end, making 2-3 armor saves a turn.

On turn 6 TJ and I ended up having our death stars do some battle in the mid-field which looked like this:

So the game ended with me scoring 10 points and winning by a small margin. It was a super tight game and it could have easily gone much better for TJ if the shooting phases had been a bit more lucrative.

Game 2:

Simon Leen running Sisters of Battle/Inquisition

His army was mostly MSU it had something like:

Cannoness

2x5 Sisters of battle troop squads with lots of flamers inside rhino's

3x5 dominion sister units w/ 5 melta guns each inside immolators w/ twin linked multi-meltas

3x exorcists

coteaz

xenos inquisitor w/ rad grenades, liber heresius (lets his unit scout)

a big deathcult deathstar in a landraider crusader

2x3 acolyte units

My powers:

Eldrad: mind war, fortune, misfortune, perfect timing

Farseer: guide, perfect timing, prescience

(these powers are soooo much better than last time!)

Simon was rolling off a victory over Tony Kopach running his version of the seer council with wave serpent support. When I rolled fortune he looked less than optimistic but he did go first and made a solid attempt at crippling me. However this event was very well terrain-ed so I was able to hide my council and ended up just having my bastion blown up turn 1. Afterward I shot forward with my powered up council and ate the landraider crusader, the deathcults, and the dominion squads. After that it was pretty much just a game running around and killing the remaining units. The game ended with a victory for the seer council some maxed out battle points!

Game 3:

Tim Gorham running Iron Hands/Ultramarines/Inquisition

2 beefy biker lords

a grav centurion squad

tigurius

coteaz

xenos inquisitor w/ all the grenades

2x stalkers

2x5 scouts

1x5 legion of the damned unit w/ plasma

2x3 acolytes in razorbacks

My powers:

Eldrad: mind war executioner, fortune, prescience

Farseer: Guide, scriers gaze, misfortune 

Tim played a decent game and had some luck early on which helped him greatly. Turn one (he went first) he moved forward and dropped the two orbital bombardments on my council, i spaced pretty well so he only got 2-3 hits on either one but he put 1 right on top of the shardseer who promptly failed 2/3 look out sirs and then failed an invulnerable save and died (this gave Tim first blood and warlord in one swoop which actually won him the game). Other than that we moved around our deathstars fought, I probably should have played it cagey and just hung back all game but if his deathstar had broken, my farseer had not died turn one, or if I could have gotten a big hit and run move off his unit, then I most likely could have done much better. I will need to watch iron hands players in the future, I recall that during the game some feel no pains were taken on a 5+ (most likely IF this happened it was 100% accidental/heat of the moment/excitement induced). It is an easy mistake to make IF it happened. In any case the lesson for me is to pay take a closer look at the space marine codex and make sure I know everything about my opponents rules. Congrats to Tim on a well fought victory, he won the game 10-9. Hopefully I'll get a rematch at Adepticon this year!

Game 4:

Brad Nichols Tau/Tau

Primary Tau 

Commander, 2 melta, target lock, vectored thrusters, iridium armor, 

puretide, 2 shield drones 

Commander, flamer, vectored thrusters, command node, sensor suite, drone 

controller, 2 marker drones 

Riptide, Ion, melta, interceptor 

10 kroot 

2x6 fire warriors 

Skyray, smart missiles, blacksun 

Longstrike, submunitions, 2 seeker missiles, sensor spines, smart missiles 

3 broadsides, high yield missiles, 3 target locks, 6 missile drones 

Ally Farsight 

Ethereal 

Riptide, Ion, melta, interceptor, talisman, earth caste 

3 crisis suites, 2 missile pods and target locks each, bonding knives, 6 

marker drones 

My powers:

Eldrad: Executioner, death mission, doom, fortune

Farseer: Perfect timing, prescience, guide

I went first and it kind of went down hill for brad from there. We discussed after the game that honestly in order for his style list to have a solid chance he needed to either go first or have me roll crummy powers. But this was by far the most fun game I had. Brad and I did some wonky stuff (he had a fire warrior ride around on a skyray all game which just didnt want to die!) Also he still made a game of it, he kept me from getting the relic for 4 turns with some oddly resiliant kroot and I think I lost about half my windriders to dangerous tests! We ended on turn 5 after Eldrad force weaponed his third riptide! (Yeah we had one of them come back to life to try for some redemption). I won the game with full points which put me in second place right behind Sean Nayden for the most battle points of the potential 4-1 players and the third place "Battle Master" prize.

Game 5:

Paul Murphy Space Marines/Space Wolves

Chapter master on bike with lots of wargear

Khan on bike

bike command squad w/ 4x grav gun and apothecary

2x10 tactical squad in rhino's

2x stalkers

wolf lord on wolf w/ saga of bear and lots of wargear

runepriest on bike w/ 2+ armor

1x5 grey hunter pack in rhino

My powers:

Eldrad: Fortune, perfect timing, prescience, guide

Farseer: Death mission, prescience, perfect timing

The game went pretty quick. He scouted forward...I seized...I killed some stuff. Our deathstars went through 3 rounds of combat which involved lots of hit and running. Eventually he had a terrible round of saves in which I inflicted maybe...12-15 wounds? He rolled probably 7-8 1's which killed off wolf lord, chapter master, rune priest, and most of the bikes. The game was pretty much over after that.

I took a full point win which ended me with 70 total battle points which carried me to victory for the 4-1 battle master award! I received a medal (you can watch myself and the other winners getting our awards here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU9t72xzntw&feature=youtu.be) and $100 cash. It was a great weekend!

-Farseer Tsarith

A picture of the army and the cool medal that Torrent of Fire gave the winners!