It's too dang early, I'm nervous, lacking caffeine but I'm also excited and ready to go. I've been preparing for this for a long time and now it's time to actually play some 40k!
(As always I've omitted peoples names for privacy vs the internet reasons)
AKA Operation "Gretchin Freedom"
WIN
Game 1 was a straight forward VP game against a Necron army. My opponent admitted to having slapped together his list quite hastily and hadn't had the chance to buy or paint any of the new codex units. As a result his army was lacking alot of punch.
Textbook is the way I would describe this game.
I deployed centrally to be able to react to him. IMO he made a classic deployment mistake by deploying wide against a fast army. He went first dealing little damage, and I rolled up one of his flanks and proceeded to mulch him...
I scored a perfect 13/13 for gameplay on this one. Not a great way to start the tournament as this shunted me into the winners bracket and guaranteed that I would be fighting good players all weekend. So much for a relaxing weekend ;)
GAME 2: Dark Eldar vs Orks on Cache and Carry
LOSS
Game 2 was against the guy that would eventually win best overall. I know this guy, great player, and I knew I was going to be in for an uphill battle.
We basically have the same army, highly mobile, lots of firepower and excellent assault (Although arguably the Dark Eldar are alot better at it) now throw picking up randomly placed objectives into the mix and you know its going to be a bloodbath.
We both fought tooth and nail for it but my firepower failed me in the long run and I wasn't able to take out the key units I needed to. He had 4 objectives to my 2. But in the last turn I was able to line up the plane for a bombing run. My opponent did say at the beginning of the game "That plane is going to be a gigantic pain in my ass" and he called it. The bombs dropped and I forced him to drop 2 objectives drawing the game for me.
BUT the rules of scenario forced us to roll a D6 for each objective after the last turn was done and on a '1' the objective is a dud. Of course one of mine was a dud, so my draw became a loss. :p
Let's take a moment here and discus one of the things that I can't stand in scenarios. That is rules that can change the outcome of the game AFTER the last turn is already played.
In this case we had to roll a D6 for each objective after the last turn. On a roll of '1' the objective was a dud. So despite the fact that I had drawn the game, one bad die roll resulted in my game becoming a loss.
As both a scenario writer and a player I feel cheated. As the outcome of this game was decided by a die roll after the game making my playing well, almost completely irrelevant.
Which is further compounded by the fact that my opponent ended up winning the con. That one bad die roll could very well have ended up giving him the prize.
That isn't skill... it's plain luck.
IMO the scenario should force you to roll for the duds as you pick up the objectives, that way you have a chance to recover.
DRAW
This was the other unbalanced mission I played that weekend. Not only was the mission heavily biased towards my opponent but he was also using an army that wreaked of limburger.
A tooled up, character heavy Blood Angels army with Feel no Pain and a couple Storm Ravens, just what I needed to make my day complete...
The mission was no picnic either.
It was another VP mission on a table with a bastion.
First you decided who would attack and defend based on a chart. Imperial Players always defended, followed by eldar, tau, orks, necrons etc with Dark Eldar always having priority to Attack.
The defender got
- A Bastion that gave anyone on it a 3+ cover save
- And doubled the victory points of any unit within 6" or on it
- And it had 3 free Heavy Bolters and a LasCannon at BS 2 the defender got to use.
- And it was practically in his deployment zone
- And he got to start with most of his stuff of the board (which IMO in a VP game is to his advantage)
The attacker got
- To deploy everything on the board (disadvantage in a VP game because that more turns to kill his units)
- and everytime I shot with a squad I had to a roll a D6, on a '1' that unit ran out of ammo and couldn't shoot anymore for the rest of the game
- and if a vehicle runs out of ammo that counts as a weapon destroyed so my opponent got free VPs.
Only a tad unbalanced wouldn't you say?
My crowning achievement of the game was how in the first turn I fired my tank bustas into a squad of marines killing one and running out of ammo. Losing my best anti-tank unit before the Storm Ravens even hit the board.
That and having to deal with Mephiston, a T6 character with a power weapon, a jump pack, str 10, preferred enemy and 5 wounds. Who mulched 5 meganobz before I even got to swing. But its perfectly balanced for 250 points because its all psychic powers that you can fail on a 12... I hate GW games designers I really do.
Ultimately I was able to do enough damage to him to pull off a draw, and was within points of winning. But that doesn't remove the awful taste from my mouth.
Day 2: Well so far I haven't really been impressed. One hard fought draw that was taken away from me. One textbook win I wasn't proud of and a draw against a cheese monger in a poorly balanced scenario. Hopefully day 2 will be more interesting
LOSS
Game 4 was against a player I was familiar with and I knew I was going to have a good game going in.
I would be tackling his Nurgle marines in Battle at the Farm. Another VP game (starting to see a trend here) on a table with heavy cover.
My opponent was going to defend and got to place a handful of units (Including a daemon prince) on the board while I got to "Sneak" up with a unit before the game officially started. The goal was to move them up as close as I could before my opponent would make a lucky die roll and "Sound the Alarm" starting the game. So I picked the stealthiest unit I had... my meganobz. I assume there was a mek somewhere blasting really loud background noise to cover the approach as they ripped trees out by there roots... hehehe
My reserves poured on more quickly than my opponent could handle and I was dispatching his ordnance before it became much of a threat. But he countered by taking out my trukks just in time to keep my Orks out of assault range. From the fence in the picture to the tree line you can barely make out is just about 12".
I assaulted a dreadnought (barely visible far right) with a power klaw and did squat to it for 4 turns! and I fired everything I had at a landraider but couldn't make a dent. My Huey arrived early on but immobilized itself 4 turns in a row due to its overcharged engines, but the grot riggers kept fixin 'er.
In the last turn I botched the roll and the Huey stayed stuck, as did my battlewagon that I rolled double '1's for in the forest the previous turn, giving my opponent the 90 VP he needed for the win.
In the end it was a loss by a matter of only about 10 VP. All the skill in the world couldn't make up for some bad die rolls in this case. But I had a blast and it was nice to play a game against a great player. :)
GAME 5: Orks vs Grey Knights on Hammer and Ambul
WIN
A Grey Knight army with 2 nemesis Dread Knights and a vindicare... lovely
On another Victory Points mission *sigh*
At least I've got a great shot of my trukk firing his rokkit launcha at the DreadKnights head, turns out its just at the right height ;)
Turn 1 he blew away my battlewagon with a Turbo Penetrator round and the Ambulls arrived and started eating my biggest squad of boyz. Wasn't exactly a good start... but if its one thing I've learned is that if you give up on the first turn you've already lost the game.
I fought back hard, Vaporizing the Vindicare in Turn 1 and peppering squads of Grey Knights with Big Shoota Fire. I assaulted both Dreadknights in turn with power klaws. He mulched my boyz with the Nob but my Meganobz prevailed killing both dreadknights with a bazillion power klaw swipes.
As is typically with the Grey Knights, every unit I kill gives me a crazy amount of VP and I managed to win by a fair margin.
I lost quite a few BP however because the Ambulls wouldn't stop eating my squads... My 16 man boyz squad spend 5 out of 6 turns killing 3 Ambulls. My Nob murdered more Orks than the Ambulls did using his bosspole to keep them from running until finally he showed them how its done killing all 3 Ambulls himself with a choppa. Now that's impressive!
But somehow killing the Ambulls didn't give me a single VP... will have to take that up with the organizers.
GAME 6: Grey Knights vs Orks on Night Patrol
My Last Game was against another Grey Knight player, but this guy came highly recommended by a mutual friend and I can see why.
This was by far the best game I had all weekend.
My opponent put up a good fight, no arguments and we both managed to have a good game.
It was a fairly straight forward VP game (again with the VP games!) I managed to get my Warboss and a squad of Boyz into HtH with Grey Knights early on and I took down the Dreadknight with my meganobz (having learned how to do it the previous game)
All that was left was a landraider, a librarian and alot of Terminators to deal with.
So I back off and pumped as much firepower into them as I could. The librarian mulched a squad of mine then consolidated back to the door of the land raider but was peppered and killed by Big Shoota Fire before he could get back in.
I also peppered down alot of terminators. As a friend once said to me, "Even if you can't AP him, make him roll saves he'll fail sooner or later"
Once again the downside of grey Knights in VP is that every unit killed gives up alot of points and I won this one by a fair margin as well.
But I would definitely play this guy again.
My final record was 3 wins a draw and 2 losses.
I tied for 7th overall out of 30 players, which wasn't bad at all.
If that one scenario hadn't taken away my draw I would have been in 4th.
No complaints I performed quite well :)
Next I get to show you what I do post con!
I don't recall having many VP games when I was at Astros but I haven't gone for a year or two and I know they are always changing things. I worry a bit what 6th Edition will bring, but my armies are both relics so I'll be updating one some more, luckily I've spent about a half decade updating it already so I generally can field something, just not necessarily what I want or what is effective under the current rules.
ReplyDeleteMy other army is Orks and haven't been used since 2nd Edition...
Are VPs like 2nd Edition or close to it, basically every point spent on a unit is a Victory Point? And if you kill half you get some VPs and you have to wipe the squad out to a man to get full VPs? The game is heavily weighted towards shooting and movement now, it seems, but I remember when hordes and gun lines were more prevalent. They play slower in tournaments and the all reserve tactic can neuter or at least annoy them.
For sixth I'll probably run three FA choices in my Chaos army now that it isn't a comp. hit. Plus use Forgeworld stuff, assuming I ever get a job and get back to the hobby...
Thanks for writing up the battle reports I've been following along all season in my RSS reader.
VP's are still pretty much the same as back then.
ReplyDeleteThere was a surprising number of them at Astro this year, usually there is more of a mix of table corners and objective missions.
Thanks for the read! I wish I could update more frequently.