It has been a crazy two weeks with Adepticon last week and the De La Warr Open this past weekend. I attended both and as I mentioned I did decently well at Adepticon last week and again I think I performed quite well at the De La Warr Open. So to start this event utilized all of the new asymmetrical missions that Mike Brandt and the other TO's have been working on (the goal of these missions being to allow the weaker army builds (non death stars!) to excel). I honestly think that the goal was pretty successful, yes a death star did win the Best General Prize, but battle master was won by a non death star list (it was actually a fluffy Ravenwing army piloted by Matt Defranza). There were also a number of Daemon FMC armies in attendance, actually none other than Justin Cook (the NOVA GT winner) was running Nick Nanavatis Adepticon army which did JUST LAST WEEK win Adepticon. So these missions are very complicated and need a bit more refinement in the wording still but I highly recommend using them, they can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XJ20WB96DzRE635aokDX3XbhOHzw4Xt0UobUZ5j56JM/pub
So the games:
I was running my exact Adepticon list:
Shard Seer (warlord)
Eldrad
Baron
Beast pack (20x khymerae, 2x razorwing flock, 5x beast master)
1x5 kabalite warriors
4x3 windrider squads
2x wraithknights
sky shield landing pad
2x6 swooping hawks
inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls
My first game was against:
a fairly old fashioned Draigo-wing army.
Lord Draigo
Coteaz
10x paladin w/ 4x psy cannons, apoth, some halbards, and some swords.
1x1 paladin (scoring unit obvi)
3x3 henchmen units
1x10 interceptor squad
dreadknight w/ flamer and teleporter
ordo xenos inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls and liber heresius
The game:
I got solid powers (that means fortune and invisibility wooohoooo)
It turns out the invisibility was clutch for the game as it basically neutralized any shooting he could have done to me and it crippled his combat power. The game was pretty much my beast pack fighting his paladin unit in the center of the table for 8 rounds of combat with me slowly wearing him down and my hawks and wraithknights running around killing everything else. It would have been much more difficult but I was able to kill the dreadknight turn 1 due to it failing 4/8 armor saves. The army is actually pretty solid if only those pesky tau riptides didnt exist (they really do a number on paladins). But over all it was fun, my opponent was friendly and we had a good time. I made baron do a cool epic challenge with draigo in the bottom of turn 6 or 7 which was legend....wait for it....DARY LEGENDARY! Anyway I advanced to round two with a full 15 points from round 1.
Game 2:
This round I played a well known GT winner Matt Defranza (he is most well known for his very powerful seer council list which he plays quite well). But for this event he was running his Ravenguard which he has been running on and off to my knowledge at his local game store but this was its first appearance at a GT. Anyway I again received decent enough powers. This game was the relic or you could do turn by turn objectives (every turn you hold it you get a point etc etc). I chose the relic and he chose the turn by turn objective as his army was well suited for board control. He had:
Shrike
command squad in drop pod w/ 5x melta
2x10 scouts
4x10 tactical marines in rhinos w/ melta gun, multi melta, combi melta, melta bomb
10x assault marines w/ melta bomb
2x thunder fire cannon
He combat squad-ed the whole army and rushed his rhinos forward to block me from grabbing the relic early. I mitigated round one shooting by hiding under my sky shield. Sadly he got a bit out of whack and thought my beast pack scored this round so he hesitated on the mid field and i was able to get my pack all over the objective and start killing rhinos and marines. If he had realized it didn't score a turn sooner he could have just dumped 40 marines on top of it which at the least could have kept me off it until turn 4-5 which would have let him get enough ahead on points so it wouldn't matter if I picked up the relic. In the end I won 11-10 (mostly because I got line breaker and he did not).
Game 3:
This round was straight kill points and I was playing against NOVA local Brad Voorhees and his Ovesa Star list. I have actually played and beaten Brad before but this time would be different.
Brad's list:
Farsight
buff commander (no hit and run, this confused me and ultimately tempted me to make a huge fatal error, so good job brad)
O' Vesa
heavy burst cannon riptide
2x ion accel rip tides
1x6 fire warriors
1x3 suits with flamers
4x1 suits (half of them had flamers)
3x sky ray
inquisitor w/ servo skulls
I did well early by killing all the sky rays and getting a riptide. I should have backed off after that (note I did not roll fortune this game, this was probably the only game I actually NEEDED to have it...so boo for me i suppose) anyway I would have actually been fine if I'd done that. I could have drawn brad back onto my side and used characters to soak some damage. But I got greedy and thought I could catch Ovesa who was without hit and run. This led to a 2 turn chase in which I skipped out on 3 easy kill points and let brad pummel me with fire power. The lesson is to keep the focus on the mission and especially in these new missions, 1-2 tactical errors will lead to a quick defeat. I ended up losing but Brad only got 5 points off of the game so I did manage to really keep him from pulling ahead of me battle points wise.
Game 4:
This game was against a space marine/dark angel army consisting of:
Beat face chapter master
1x10 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 scouts (one of these was the dark angel troop choice)
2x2 attack bike squads
2x5 devastators w/ las cannons
thunder fire cannon
Ravenwing command squad
Dark Angel Libby on a bike
I pretty crappy powers but I did manage to swing fortune on the last roll...so that was nice i suppose. Our HQ's all met in the middle of the table round 1...bounced off each other and then I spent about 2 turns killing the bike command squad and the chapter master. While my beast pack dealt with that my wraithknights ran up the other flank and killed off the thunder fire and the devastator squads. At the end of 4 my opponent conceded and we took an early lunch. I proceeded to round 5 with a total of 41 battle points and a 3-1 record.
Game 5:
At this point the event only had one 4-0 player (TJ Meyers and his O'Vesa army). He ended up playing Matt Defranza. There game basically was set up like thus, if TJ beat Matt then TJ would be the Best General. If Matt Beat TJ and got a decent amount of points he would win Best General purely on Battle points. If the pummeled eachother and neither got a load of points I would actually have jumped ahead and even with my loss to Brad win the whole shebang.
My opponent played:
Wolves and Tau
Logan Grimnar
2x rune priest
1x wolf priest
3x7 wolf guard in drop pods lots of combi plasma and combi flamers
Cadre fire blade
riptide w/ ion accel
12x fire warriors
3x broadsides
I ended up winning by a small margin and adding another 12 battle points to bring my total up to 53 battle points and a 4-1 record. TJ won his game and claimed the Best General Prize with a total of 53 battle points and a 5-0 record. He received a huge amount of Ork models (pretty much a decent sized army) and the coveted NOVA Invitational ticket. Matt Defranza ended up with the most battle points at I believe 57 (that was a with a 3-2 record). I think that right there shows some good missions with a ton of victory paths. He was able to to LOSE TWO GAMES and still even in defeat in some of the missions you can score 12-15 points. Congratulations to him and the large amount of Imperial Guard he received. I ended up winning Best Overall/Renaissances Man which awarded me approx 325 of Space Marine loot and the NOVA Invitational Alternate Ticket.
A picture of my prizes!
So over-all it was a great event and I hope to attend it again next year. The Icehouse Warriors put on a great event and it was a blast.
-Farseer Tsarith
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