Well,
It's about 24 hours before the first game of the invitational and I couldn't be more excited! This will be my first time participating in the invitational but lets take a look at the last year.
Last year I was a relatively untested (competitive player, I had played for years in basements and hobby stores but rarely entered the tournament scene). I participated in the NOVA Open GT last year as my first real GT event and I performed pretty well (about 26th over all and in the second bracket) I met quite a few people at that event namely my now close friend Birdux whose blog you can check out here: birdux.blogspot.com. I spent a good many evenings playing 40k with him and a few others and I decided that the competitive side of 40k was definitely something I enjoyed. So I attended several other major events (Killadelphia, SVDM, and the IFL Road to the NOVA Open League). I attended these events hoping to win myself an invitational ticket, which I did manage to do! I am very proud of that accomplishment, I set a goal and I met it.
The Invitational has a long list of very strong players all playing incredibly tough lists I am sure, it is my hope that I will perform decently well (basically I just don't want to be the one guy that goes 0/5!) I have, what I think is a very strong list this year. As far as the GT I am hoping to fight my way into the top 16 this year. Hopefully my Farseers will guide me through the twisting paths of fate and lead me to victory! In any case, the best of luck to everyone who is attending and I hope to see you all out there! To any loyal readers who want to chat about all the cool things Eldar do, I will be around all day as I am attending both the invite, GT and I will actually be helping to judge the trios event so I will be in the hall from pretty much 7am-midnight every day.
-Tsarith
Welcome,
I am Farseer Tsarith and I have been playing Warhammer 40k for about 14 years. I play in most of the major events in and around the DC area and I frequent Huzzah Hobbies in Sterling, VA. My main passion is my Eldar force which I have been growing since the tail end of 3rd edition. I generally post about events I will be attending, upcoming DC area events, my event results, and of course sometimes just my random thoughts and musings.
-Farseer Tsarith
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
NOVA Open GT & Invitational
Hi guys,
I have definitely had less time to blog these days than I
would like. Anyway due to my victory in the IFL league (shouts to the Iron Fist
League!!!) I will be attending not only the NOVA Open GT but also the NOVA Open
Invitational. I am thinking I will probably just run the same list for both but
we will see. I don’t want to go into the specifics of my list but I am most definitely
sticking with my normal themes of my wonderful jet council. I have quite a bit
of work to do in the next week and a half (I still need to paint nearly a dozen
guys and finish up some display board upgrades!!)
I plan to finish up my army and I will probably post my
list, some cool pics of the finished army, and a few other details the night
before NOVA. I look forward to seeing all my fellow wargamers next week!!
-Tsarith
Monday, August 5, 2013
IFL Finals Results!
So I have been quite busy lately with travel for my job. But I wanted to post up the results of the IFL Road to the NOVA Open finals. So first lets talk about my 3 games and then we can discuss results!
A refresher on my list:
Farseer on jetbike (warlord)
Eldrad
9x Warlocks on jetbikes 3x singing spear
3x3 windrider squad
2x fire prism
Tau Commander with tons of upgrades
Riptide w/ ion accel and SMS
2x10 kroot w/ a kroot hound
Skyray
Game 1 vs Steve (Tetsubo) Schweitzer playing a Tau list:
Ethereal
Commander
2x2 crisis teams
4x12 fire warrior squads
2x4 pathfinder
1x longstrike hammerhead
1x riptide w/ ion accel
1x3 broadside missile unit w/ 6x missile drone
Aegis defense line w/ quad gun
Farseer on jetbike
1x3 windrider squad
Game 1:
Pre battle:
I rolled a bunch of destructors, a protect, and a few of each other power. On my seers I rolled a fortune on the regular seer, Eldrad had a mixture of useless things and a guide, and the regular seer also had a guide and a prescience I believe (I lost my power chart at some point so I cant really remember the other ones exactly).
Turn 1:
Steve took first turn and deployed very statically behind and around a hill that his aegis line turned into a lovely little fortress. He took first blood off a fire prism and put a few wounds on the riptide. I had kept my council back and behind terrain so he didn't really damage it much.
I then cast all my powers, I renewed my riptide back to full health (much to Steve's vast displeasure) and then began the trek across the table. After I turbo boosted I was about 10 inches from his front lines (well placed for a turn 2 assault). My fire prism I believe destroyed his hammer heads gun and my sky ray killed a suit squad.
Turn 2:
Steve shot just about everything at the council and my 2+ re-rolls held up and I lost just 1 warlock. My riptide took a few wounds again from his other shooting.
I then cast all my powers again (I used scriers gaze to keep all my reserves out) and went about positioning myself to charge into the mass of fire warriors and such. I also again renewed the riptide (I really REALLY like that power). I shot and killed a few pathfinders and such but the big deal was my charge which brought me into the broadsides and some other squad. I actually did very little damage, just one wound but I was thankfully in combat now.
Turn 3:
Steve is starting to feel the heat from that council being in his face, but he presses on. He continues to shoot my riptide finally bringing the jerk down. We have some more fun combat which results in little happening.
This is where my exact memory goes a bit hazy on how this exactly went. But I think it was something like:
I cast my powers, using my protect/jinx on his broadside unit. I then did some useless shooting and kept most of my reserves out again with scriers gaze. We had combat, I believe I used heroic intervention to get Eldrad into the challenge with the commander ganking him with the force weapon and then I managed to kill enough of the broadsides to finally wipe them.
We might have messed around for another turn but at about this point Steve put out his hand and gracefully surrendered the game.
We broke for a nice lunch at a deli around the corner from Brandt's place and we all prepared mentally for round 2.
Game 2:
My next opponent was none other than Andrew Gonyo playing his dreaded Tau army. I was very anxious going into the game having lost to him previously in a test game when he first started using the list and also this year at SVDM he kindly smacked me around. But I was feeling good coming off my solid round 1 victory and confident with the knowledge that all I needed to do was kill enough of his troops to beat him on objectives (yay for NOVA terrain giving me giant hills to hide behind!)
Pre game:
Eldrad: guide, executioner, eldritch storm, death mission
Farseer: fortune, executioner, prescience
The warlocks rolled a smattering of powers (protects, destructors, etc etc)
Gonyo took first turn and so I set up very defensivly behind the LOS blocking hill. I then used my sky ray and fire prisms to complete the solid LOS blocking wall and hid my council behind the hill. My riptide was left pretty open but I needed to give up something so I would much rather lose him than half my council. I also needed to keep the infiltrating kroot from getting too close so it all worked out.
Turn 1:
Gonyo put some hurt on me this turn. He took first blood off a prism and stunned the other. And he also glanced the sky ray once or twice. I believe he killed my riptide but he might have done that turn 2, either way I don't think the riptide did anything of consequence but at least the council was left untouched. He also used his infiltrate to put some kroot near me.
I cast all my powers (yay fortune and protect!) then proceeded to conga line my council toward the kroot that infiltrated near me, setting up a guaranteed double charge for turn 2 on the 40 kroot. My stunned fire prism managed to snap shot and blow up a sky ray (but all the missiles had been fired so it wasn't a huge deal) Also my sky ray shot all its missiles at another sky ray and took off a marker light and immobilized it I believe.
Turn 2:
Gonyos reserved squad of kroot come in on my board edge thanks to the beacon thing on the riptide. He blows up my fire prism...I guess he didn't like that it was boss enough to snap shoot and kill an av13 tank ;P Other than that he edged everything away from my council but didn't even come close to getting far enough away with the 40 kroot.
I cast all my powers, most of my reserves showed up and after casting my powers I split Eldrad off and left him behind to join a warlock squad that had just come in (this ended up being a really good thing). My council got into position to charge the two kroot squads. Then I used Eldrad's eldritch storm and the wind rider squad he joined to kill about half of the kroot squad that had come in on my board edge. I then charged and unsurprisingly killed the 2 kroot squads (yay for a decent sized dead pile of kroot!)
Turn 3:
Gonyo had no more reserves but was in a pretty decent position. He spent a lot of time shooting me doing little damage but he did manage to kill 2/3 of a jetbike unit. We had a cool moment where we thought Eldrad had died, but then I remembered that the blessings persist so Eldrad managed to make some cool 2+ cover saves which ultimately meant the jetbike unit lived.
All of my other reserves arrived at this point but I managed to come on the board in a way that he again got no interceptor shots. My council cast its powers back up and started drifting across the table toward another kroot squad. My 10 kroot came on the safe side of the table (the other squad died since Gonyo covered the board edge). I used them to kill off some more of his kroot but this time failed to use eldritch storm so they were not pinned this turn.
At this point we had about 25 minutes left in the round, we discussed and agreed that we would see what time looked like at the end of his turn.
Turn 4:
Gonyo went and used his kroot to kill some of my guys but I made some good saves. But he did manage to put his squad on my corner objective nicely contesting it. He started moving to bubble wrap his but the way he had covered the board edge earlier meant his unit was very strung out and far out of position. He managed at the end of his turn to hold 3 objectives and contest my corner one.
(time was at about 10 minutes left so we agreed to stop after my go)
I took my turn choosing to pass on casting a bunch of warlock powers (no reason to give up victory points eh?)
I used Eldrad and my kroot to kill off enough of his kroot to push him out of contest range to hold the corner objective. Then I took the one on the center line in on my end of the board and used my farseer to split off and go contest his center line objective. I then put a windrider squad on the one in the middle and charged my warlocks into his kroot squad which pulled his strung out unit off the middle and managed to contest his remaining objective.
Game End:
I manage to win 10-1 on points. This moves me into the final round!
Game 3
My final opponent was yet again, a tau player. Vaden was running:
Commander
Aun'Va
1x3 crisis team (missiles and flamers)
Riptide w/ ion accel
4x fire warriors
1x kroot w/ hound
sky ray
hammerhead w/ longstrike
2x4 pathfinder
aegis line
farseer on bike
1x3 windrider unit w/ shuriken cannon
For once I actually won the first turn roll but don't worry he seized the initiative...
Powers:
Eldrad: eldritch storm, death mission, fortune, mindwar
Farseer: guide, fortune, prescience
Warlocks: no protects, a bunch of destructors though
(that's right, DOUBLE fortune woot woot!)
So anyway I won the roll, deployed first in a stupid aggressive stance (I wont be doing that again, I should really know better. But honestly coming off the win from Gonyo I felt a bit invincible).
Turn 1:
Vaden seizes and has a great chance to do some damage.
He shoots me...ALOT. He wounds the commander 3 times but that commander really should have died. He passed about 30 armor saves and definitely made himself the MVP of the day.
I cast all my powers (still a bit shocked I didn't get wrecked after his seize..but oh well thank you 2+ armor save). Anyway my fire prism immobilizes his hammer head, my skyray makes some suits go to ground but does no damage. I move my council up into the center building where it cant really get shot (oh and I renewed all the wounds back on the commander ;P)
Turn 2:
Vaden shoots at me again, blowing up a fire prism for first blood. My riptide and commander boss all their 2+ rerolls and he passes the turn.
I cast all my powers....and then move through the terrain and get ready to charge my council into his fire warriors which he dangled out to bait me (yes I know it was bait..but the council is like a honey badger...even when it should die it gives no fucks) My riptide bummed around and shot some pathfinders and my remaining fire prism tried to shoot at his hammerhead, but didn't do anything. My council then charged and killed 2 squads of fire warriors and I used my massacre move to get the commander and the farseer and Eldrad out in front to soak some damage.
Turn 3:
Vaden goes for broke and shoots with everything again. Eldrad, the farseer, and the commander all take some wounds but I end up alright.
I then charge his riptide and some battle suits. I actually don't do much damage here, I am pretty sure we end the round still in combat with eachother.
Turn 4:
Vaden shoots at my riptide not doing much since he also has a fortune on him. In combat Eldrad punches the riptide in his secret spot, Vaden fails an armor save and I pass my psychic test causing instant death with my force weapon. I then actually fail to overrun the farseer from the squad but he runs off the table.
Now for my turn I basically just charge Aun'Va and the broadsides. My force weapon kills Aun"va and one of his guards and my warlocks kill a broadside.
Vaden offers his hand and surrenders.
It seems that Eldrad and his seer council correctly read the strands of fate and led me to victory!
I receive full points for the win and claim the top spot in the IFL Road to the NOVA Open!! This awards a cash prize and a coveted ticket to the NOVA Open Invitational!!! I have been working all year to win a spot to this so I am ecstatic to not only win a spot, but this also happens to have been the LAST qualifier for the event. Anyway I want to give a huge thank you to all the IFL guys who put on this event, to Mike Brandt for hosting the finals, and to everyone who played this year. It was a well run league, good job IFL!
Now I just need to furiously do some prep work for the Invitational!
-Tsarith
A refresher on my list:
Farseer on jetbike (warlord)
Eldrad
9x Warlocks on jetbikes 3x singing spear
3x3 windrider squad
2x fire prism
Tau Commander with tons of upgrades
Riptide w/ ion accel and SMS
2x10 kroot w/ a kroot hound
Skyray
Game 1 vs Steve (Tetsubo) Schweitzer playing a Tau list:
Ethereal
Commander
2x2 crisis teams
4x12 fire warrior squads
2x4 pathfinder
1x longstrike hammerhead
1x riptide w/ ion accel
1x3 broadside missile unit w/ 6x missile drone
Aegis defense line w/ quad gun
Farseer on jetbike
1x3 windrider squad
Game 1:
Pre battle:
I rolled a bunch of destructors, a protect, and a few of each other power. On my seers I rolled a fortune on the regular seer, Eldrad had a mixture of useless things and a guide, and the regular seer also had a guide and a prescience I believe (I lost my power chart at some point so I cant really remember the other ones exactly).
Turn 1:
Steve took first turn and deployed very statically behind and around a hill that his aegis line turned into a lovely little fortress. He took first blood off a fire prism and put a few wounds on the riptide. I had kept my council back and behind terrain so he didn't really damage it much.
I then cast all my powers, I renewed my riptide back to full health (much to Steve's vast displeasure) and then began the trek across the table. After I turbo boosted I was about 10 inches from his front lines (well placed for a turn 2 assault). My fire prism I believe destroyed his hammer heads gun and my sky ray killed a suit squad.
Turn 2:
Steve shot just about everything at the council and my 2+ re-rolls held up and I lost just 1 warlock. My riptide took a few wounds again from his other shooting.
I then cast all my powers again (I used scriers gaze to keep all my reserves out) and went about positioning myself to charge into the mass of fire warriors and such. I also again renewed the riptide (I really REALLY like that power). I shot and killed a few pathfinders and such but the big deal was my charge which brought me into the broadsides and some other squad. I actually did very little damage, just one wound but I was thankfully in combat now.
Turn 3:
Steve is starting to feel the heat from that council being in his face, but he presses on. He continues to shoot my riptide finally bringing the jerk down. We have some more fun combat which results in little happening.
This is where my exact memory goes a bit hazy on how this exactly went. But I think it was something like:
I cast my powers, using my protect/jinx on his broadside unit. I then did some useless shooting and kept most of my reserves out again with scriers gaze. We had combat, I believe I used heroic intervention to get Eldrad into the challenge with the commander ganking him with the force weapon and then I managed to kill enough of the broadsides to finally wipe them.
We might have messed around for another turn but at about this point Steve put out his hand and gracefully surrendered the game.
We broke for a nice lunch at a deli around the corner from Brandt's place and we all prepared mentally for round 2.
Game 2:
My next opponent was none other than Andrew Gonyo playing his dreaded Tau army. I was very anxious going into the game having lost to him previously in a test game when he first started using the list and also this year at SVDM he kindly smacked me around. But I was feeling good coming off my solid round 1 victory and confident with the knowledge that all I needed to do was kill enough of his troops to beat him on objectives (yay for NOVA terrain giving me giant hills to hide behind!)
Pre game:
Eldrad: guide, executioner, eldritch storm, death mission
Farseer: fortune, executioner, prescience
The warlocks rolled a smattering of powers (protects, destructors, etc etc)
Gonyo took first turn and so I set up very defensivly behind the LOS blocking hill. I then used my sky ray and fire prisms to complete the solid LOS blocking wall and hid my council behind the hill. My riptide was left pretty open but I needed to give up something so I would much rather lose him than half my council. I also needed to keep the infiltrating kroot from getting too close so it all worked out.
Turn 1:
Gonyo put some hurt on me this turn. He took first blood off a prism and stunned the other. And he also glanced the sky ray once or twice. I believe he killed my riptide but he might have done that turn 2, either way I don't think the riptide did anything of consequence but at least the council was left untouched. He also used his infiltrate to put some kroot near me.
I cast all my powers (yay fortune and protect!) then proceeded to conga line my council toward the kroot that infiltrated near me, setting up a guaranteed double charge for turn 2 on the 40 kroot. My stunned fire prism managed to snap shot and blow up a sky ray (but all the missiles had been fired so it wasn't a huge deal) Also my sky ray shot all its missiles at another sky ray and took off a marker light and immobilized it I believe.
Turn 2:
Gonyos reserved squad of kroot come in on my board edge thanks to the beacon thing on the riptide. He blows up my fire prism...I guess he didn't like that it was boss enough to snap shoot and kill an av13 tank ;P Other than that he edged everything away from my council but didn't even come close to getting far enough away with the 40 kroot.
I cast all my powers, most of my reserves showed up and after casting my powers I split Eldrad off and left him behind to join a warlock squad that had just come in (this ended up being a really good thing). My council got into position to charge the two kroot squads. Then I used Eldrad's eldritch storm and the wind rider squad he joined to kill about half of the kroot squad that had come in on my board edge. I then charged and unsurprisingly killed the 2 kroot squads (yay for a decent sized dead pile of kroot!)
Turn 3:
Gonyo had no more reserves but was in a pretty decent position. He spent a lot of time shooting me doing little damage but he did manage to kill 2/3 of a jetbike unit. We had a cool moment where we thought Eldrad had died, but then I remembered that the blessings persist so Eldrad managed to make some cool 2+ cover saves which ultimately meant the jetbike unit lived.
All of my other reserves arrived at this point but I managed to come on the board in a way that he again got no interceptor shots. My council cast its powers back up and started drifting across the table toward another kroot squad. My 10 kroot came on the safe side of the table (the other squad died since Gonyo covered the board edge). I used them to kill off some more of his kroot but this time failed to use eldritch storm so they were not pinned this turn.
At this point we had about 25 minutes left in the round, we discussed and agreed that we would see what time looked like at the end of his turn.
Turn 4:
Gonyo went and used his kroot to kill some of my guys but I made some good saves. But he did manage to put his squad on my corner objective nicely contesting it. He started moving to bubble wrap his but the way he had covered the board edge earlier meant his unit was very strung out and far out of position. He managed at the end of his turn to hold 3 objectives and contest my corner one.
(time was at about 10 minutes left so we agreed to stop after my go)
I took my turn choosing to pass on casting a bunch of warlock powers (no reason to give up victory points eh?)
I used Eldrad and my kroot to kill off enough of his kroot to push him out of contest range to hold the corner objective. Then I took the one on the center line in on my end of the board and used my farseer to split off and go contest his center line objective. I then put a windrider squad on the one in the middle and charged my warlocks into his kroot squad which pulled his strung out unit off the middle and managed to contest his remaining objective.
Game End:
I manage to win 10-1 on points. This moves me into the final round!
Game 3
My final opponent was yet again, a tau player. Vaden was running:
Commander
Aun'Va
1x3 crisis team (missiles and flamers)
Riptide w/ ion accel
4x fire warriors
1x kroot w/ hound
sky ray
hammerhead w/ longstrike
2x4 pathfinder
aegis line
farseer on bike
1x3 windrider unit w/ shuriken cannon
For once I actually won the first turn roll but don't worry he seized the initiative...
Powers:
Eldrad: eldritch storm, death mission, fortune, mindwar
Farseer: guide, fortune, prescience
Warlocks: no protects, a bunch of destructors though
(that's right, DOUBLE fortune woot woot!)
So anyway I won the roll, deployed first in a stupid aggressive stance (I wont be doing that again, I should really know better. But honestly coming off the win from Gonyo I felt a bit invincible).
Turn 1:
Vaden seizes and has a great chance to do some damage.
He shoots me...ALOT. He wounds the commander 3 times but that commander really should have died. He passed about 30 armor saves and definitely made himself the MVP of the day.
I cast all my powers (still a bit shocked I didn't get wrecked after his seize..but oh well thank you 2+ armor save). Anyway my fire prism immobilizes his hammer head, my skyray makes some suits go to ground but does no damage. I move my council up into the center building where it cant really get shot (oh and I renewed all the wounds back on the commander ;P)
Turn 2:
Vaden shoots at me again, blowing up a fire prism for first blood. My riptide and commander boss all their 2+ rerolls and he passes the turn.
I cast all my powers....and then move through the terrain and get ready to charge my council into his fire warriors which he dangled out to bait me (yes I know it was bait..but the council is like a honey badger...even when it should die it gives no fucks) My riptide bummed around and shot some pathfinders and my remaining fire prism tried to shoot at his hammerhead, but didn't do anything. My council then charged and killed 2 squads of fire warriors and I used my massacre move to get the commander and the farseer and Eldrad out in front to soak some damage.
Turn 3:
Vaden goes for broke and shoots with everything again. Eldrad, the farseer, and the commander all take some wounds but I end up alright.
I then charge his riptide and some battle suits. I actually don't do much damage here, I am pretty sure we end the round still in combat with eachother.
Turn 4:
Vaden shoots at my riptide not doing much since he also has a fortune on him. In combat Eldrad punches the riptide in his secret spot, Vaden fails an armor save and I pass my psychic test causing instant death with my force weapon. I then actually fail to overrun the farseer from the squad but he runs off the table.
Now for my turn I basically just charge Aun'Va and the broadsides. My force weapon kills Aun"va and one of his guards and my warlocks kill a broadside.
Vaden offers his hand and surrenders.
It seems that Eldrad and his seer council correctly read the strands of fate and led me to victory!
I receive full points for the win and claim the top spot in the IFL Road to the NOVA Open!! This awards a cash prize and a coveted ticket to the NOVA Open Invitational!!! I have been working all year to win a spot to this so I am ecstatic to not only win a spot, but this also happens to have been the LAST qualifier for the event. Anyway I want to give a huge thank you to all the IFL guys who put on this event, to Mike Brandt for hosting the finals, and to everyone who played this year. It was a well run league, good job IFL!
Now I just need to furiously do some prep work for the Invitational!
-Tsarith
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