Tournament Report

Firstly I apologize for not posting any updates lately but you would not believe the week I've had.

With the big day approaching for Astronomi-con 2011 I spent the majority of last weekend and all my evenings last week painting to try to get the new army done in time. But despite a 40 hour painting fest I was barely able to get 1/3 of the army playable. The majority of the army has paint on it now with a couple of vehicles and 1 infantry squad still needing some conversion work. But as it turns out this was too ambitious a project for me in a 3 month period.

So what is a good Warboss supposed to do? The tournament is tomorrow, only 1/3 of the army is painted and all of your vehicles are in the garage. Do you just mope and show up without something else? Heck no, you grab whatever boyz you can and go for it!

Astro list 2011 (AKA Plan B)
1500 points
HQ
Warboss - Power Klaw, 'Eavy Armor, Cybork Body, Bosspole
Big Mek - Burna, Kustom Force Field, 'Eavy Armor, Cybork Body, Bosspole
Elites
Tank Bustas - 8 Boyz, 3 Bomb Squigs
Troops
Slugga Boyz - 20 Boyz w/ 2 Rokkits
Shoota Boyz - 20 Boyz w/2 Big Shootas
Deff Dread - 2 Rokkits
Grot Mob - 20 Grotz, 2 Slavas
Fast Attack
Storm Boyz - 15 Boyz, Nob w/ Power Klaw, Bosspole, 'Eavy Armor
Kroot Hound Pack - 10 Kroot, 5 hounds, Shaper w/Power Weapon and Slugga, Hyperactive Nymune Organ
Heavy Support
Fighta Bomba
2 Zzap gun platforms - 3 Extra Krew, 3 Ammo Runts

This is not at all what I would consider an optimized list. It's literally a bunch of fun units and random conversions that I've done over the years. I was just showing up to have fun, I knew I had little chance of taking tournament glass with this list. Knowing that I decided to take a bunch of units that rarely see the table. Units like my stormboyz, a unit with which I have a love and hate relationship with. They look great, are impressive on paper, are fluffy as hell but as Jervis once said in a battle report "Every time I've seen stormboyz on the table they've gotten shot at once and ran off the board" which IMO is as true today as it was in 3rd edition with the black codex.
I took my dreadnought which is the first Ork model I ever assembled (almost ten years ago). My grot mob because I never get to use them anymore and My Kroot mercenaries pack. A unit I made up for fun when the Kroot mercs list was first released and hardly ever used (because quite frankly they aren't worth the points you pay) and of course my now semi infamous Fighta Bomba which I took to fill points.
I had to break all my basic rules to pull out this list. No fine tuning, no optimization and zero playtesting.
I actually found myself so unfamiliar with foot sloggers that I made silly mistakes. But I'll get the details in my abridged battle reports.

Day 1 Game 1: Orks vs Orks in the mist

Out of 31 players, 18 of them were marines and 3 of them were Orks. I manage to fight a fellow Ork player in the first round, this should be awesome.
The mission was to claim 6 ammo bins from a downed aircraft. The table is covered in a 'thick fog' that makes any shooting past 12" hit on 5+ (2 Ork players lol) and makes all vehicles and planes roll dangerous terrain tests.
His Army had huge mobz of boyz, Lootas and 7 dreadnoughts. I would need to get my anti-tank on the board quickly.
We had just assumed that the grotz piloting the cargo plan got lost in the mist and plowed it into the ground!
Or forces would all come on piecemeal thanks to reserves and the scenario had rules stating that our forces could randomly arrive from the table edges as well as our board edges.
Luck was not with me this game. Time and time again I maneuvered my foot sloggers in to grab objectives and to try to take out his units. Even with avg rolls I would have faired alot better but instead one one by one my massive mobs of boyz got cut down due to a lack of saves and poor moral tests.
My much needed anti-tank units didn't arrive until the end of the game. My dreadnought clashed with his and despite scoring a number of penetrating hits on him all I managed was to stun him while he blew mine up.
My stormboyz got caught out of position and were destroyed by killer kans because a big mob of boyz couldn't hold themselves in HtH with a dreadnought due to a pooched moral roll.
My anti-tank guns could do more than stun armor 11 tanks.
And the final insult? My plane arrived, bombed a squad of orks (quite successfully) and then plowed into the ground with a failed difficult terrain check the very next round (due to the scenario special rules)
"This altimeter is just painted on!"
I managed to grab enough objectives to hold a draw but the rolls to end the game didn't go my way and forced me to play 2 more turns which resulted in me getting tabled.
Game loss Battlepoints: 0
The Ork player I was fighting would then go on to win best General that weekend, so that made me feel a little less badly. ;)

Lessons learned
I miss my trukks, the lack of mobility is amplified by coming on piecemeal and on random table edges. My specialist units were always out of position.
Not having Nobz in my boyz squads (they weren't painted) made them unable to deal with any significant threat in HtH.
Sometimes your tactics can be bang on but the dice just aren't with you.
Don't fly in fog unless you have your IFR rating lol


Day 1: Game 2 Orks vs Dark Eldar
Round 2 I get pitted against Mike, an old friend of mine and his Dark Eldar. Mike has won more best generals at this tournament than anyone else so I know I'm in for a rough ride.
The scenario we are playing is 'Hammer and Ambull' I'm familiar with it because I played it at the last Astro. It's a victory points mission where some old school Ambul models pop out at random to harass you.
I deployed defensively seeing the raider heavy force in front me. My hope was to pop as many boats as possible so that I could gun him down before he could get into HtH.
But of course my crappy luck continued and in the first round an Ambul popped up in my lines and killed all the grotz crewing my Zzap guns leaving me with some big shootas as my only weapons with more than 24" range.
Mike skillfully outflanked and outmaneuvered my army and cut my units down one at a time. He also fielded a very large squad of warp beasts that I had a very hard time dealing with. My plane didn't arrive early enough to bomb them and I couldn't deal enough wounds to the squad to make it go away quickly enough.
In this game the big mobz were definitely to my disadvantage. A squad of Dark Eldar charges in, kills 8 Orks. I swing back and kill 2-3 Dark Eldar (bad luck + Feel no pain) I'm still fearless due to being over 12, so I take 6 extra wounds. I have a 6+ save on my Orks so they all die. Next turn he mops up the squad, any boyz that survive get cut down because our initiative isn't high enough to run away from Dark Eldar.
Rinse wash repeat and you have the whole game.
Game loss Battlepoints: 1
Lessons learned
- Still miss my trukks
- I took the grot crewed Zzap gunz as an experiment. On paper it looks better than taking the gun trukks. They are 40 points cheaper, have BS3 instead of BS2 and can re-roll to hit thanks to the ammo runts.
But they have no survivability. In two games now my grotz have been looked at funny and proceeded to run off the board. An armor 10 trukk would be alot tougher, and can move 12" and still shoot. Keeping them around for 2-3 turns more than the grotz more than makes up for the lower BS. I think I made the right call putting them in my KoS army. Now I just need to finish painting them.


Day 1 Game 3: Bi-round vs the organizer - Orks vs. Mech Guard.
By round 3 having only scored 1 of a potential 30 battlepoints I was at the bottom of the heap. This put me up against one of the organizers in a bi-round since there was an odd number of players. In the bi round I was guaranteed 10 battlepoints regardless of the outcome and atm I could use the charity.
Christian, the organizer is also a friend and I always have a blast playing against him so I was looking forward to finishing day 1 with an enjoyable game.
The scenario had us picking up ammo crates from a supply drop. The player with the most crates at the end of the game would win. However at the end of the game we needed to roll off for each crate we captured, on a 1: the crate is damaged and doesn't count, 2-5 the crate is valid and on a 6 the crate is worth 2.
Deployment would be from reserve with only a few units on the board.
I had first turn, firing a Zzap gun at a chimera and rolling a str of '2'. The first multi-laser shot of the game then killed enough grotz in my Zzap gun squad to force them to run off the board. Ld 5 sucks! but so is life as a grot.
Both of our forces rolled on piecemeal and mostly on the flanks. We both struggled to grab objectives but near the end of the game Christian had 3 and I had none. My Orks were forced to run into the no mans land of the center of the table to grab objectives and were being swiftly cut down by numerous Chimera hulls.
Luckily I was able to play the delay game. My stormboyz arrived on my left flank and engaged several chimeras in HtH. Slowly ripping them open like a couple soup cans they tore off the tracks and the weapons while throwing Frag stikkbombs into whatever holes they could carve. Ultimately they wouldn't kill either tank, just disable them, but they managed to tie them and there squads (as well as most of the guardsmen on that flank) up for several turns giving me a chance to survive my march into the center.
My Kroot also showed up on a flank, my right. They too proceeded to mangle a tank, Christian's Russ. Again slowly tearing off the tracks and weapons. My Dreadnought eventually showed up on the same flank to finish the job while the Kroot abandoned the tank to assault a nearby chimera with similar effect. Ultimately the Kroot would disable 3 tanks with the dreadnought finishing off 2 of them.
My plane arrived and dropped its bombs on a squad of guardsmen holding onto an objective vaporizing them instantly and bringing Christians # to 2. My 4 remaining stormboyz abandoned trying to claw open Chimeras and jumped to the center of the map to engage another squad holding an objective. They get close and then I pooch a difficult terrain roll ending that dream as I watch in horror as 50+ guardsmen gun them all down.
However all this bought me valueable time. My grotz formed a conga line towards the center to grab an objective. The Conga line tactic worked well by keeping half there squad in cover and I managed to nab one objective. Meanwhile my Warboss, Big Mek and there squad marched and ran towards an objective in the open. The multilasers cut them down leaving the boss, the mek with 1 wound and a single Ork. Then I failed the moral test... I re-rolled using the bosspole scored snakeyes! then the Warboss proceeded to saw Madspannerz (the big mek) in half because using the pole inflicts and wound because the last boy had to stay alive because he was the only one in range of the objective!
I had one last turn to go and I grab the 2nd objective making it a draw before we roll off to see which objectives are real and fake.
I rolled first to find out that I had one good and one fake objective.
Christian then rolled the same result, ending the game in a draw.
Game Draw battlepoints: 10
Lessons learned:
- Despite being near useless for everything else, my Kroot apparently like killing tanks. Next time I use them I'll have to put meltabombs on the Shaper.
- Despite the fact that they pretty much drew the game for me the Stormboyz still look better on paper then they actually are.
- Grotz will run away at the drop of a hat, always give them a slava with the higher ld and the re-roll.
- Never give up until the last turn


Well Day 1 didn't go all that great but at least I had fun. I went home that night exhausted and hoping to bounce back a little.

Day 2:
Well unfortunately there was no Day 2 for me. On the way to the convention center that morning I got into an accident and totalled my van. There had been a blizzard the night before and the roads were extremely slippery. Fortunately no one was injured but my van was a write off. Given how poorly I had performed the previous day at least I wasn't going to lose my chance at tournament glass. But I was still sad that I couldn't finish the day.

I showed up later in the day to collect my figs and to put in my tickets for the raffle.

I left disappointed but received a call later that apparently I had won a gift certificate in the raffle. So the weekend wasn't a total write off. ;)

More importantly I had a talk with the judges about my painting score. Showing up as is, with 60% of my army made up of old figs I still scored 5 points higher than in previous years. He also stated that my score could go as high as 10-12 points higher than my previous scores once I had the new army completed and gave me a few pointers at what I could do to maximize my score.
So all in all that vindication was worth it. I can return to my painting desk with renewed vigor knowing that once its done it will be all worth it.

And maybe then my luck at the tournament table will turn around ;)