FS Kifisia Mini Tournament

Just got back from another mini tournament. This time it was held in Fantasy Shop Kifisias where it's located in the northern suburbs of Athens. The turnout wasn't very good unfortunately. Only five people showed up, so Takis ,the organiser (aka Overmind, supreme Tyranid aficionado), had to play too in order to have a pairing for everyone.

First round I went up against my good friend Stavros (aka Talos from the Imperial Seals guild). He was using his usual Necron list with a Deceiver, Lord with veil of Darkness joining 8 Immortals, 2 x 10 Necron Warriors, 3 x 3 Necron Destroyers and a Monolith. Now, he is a very good player and quite proficient with his chosen army as hard as this may be (Necrons don't exactly rank in the top place for competitive play). However he has a lot of successes and last time he won this same tournament between 12 people. Not too bad at all.

Our engagement was a brutal affair. He got very unlucky first turn with some dangerous terrain rolls. He rolled three "1"s when he deep strike his lord and Immortals inside a piece of difficult terrain so that he could destroy my Medusas. Furthermore the Medusas didn't die (one lost it's main gun though) so I scored a direct hit on his guys and he failed 4 out of 6 of his cover saves. Ouch! It just turned downhill for him after that. I was picking off his Destroyer units one by one each turn and his measly warriors was up to no good. He phased out on turn 4 and I got my first win.

Second game I went against Nick, a young and enthusiastic player that I haven't met before. He was using Chaos Space Marine with a Slaneeshi Daemon Prince,a generic greater daemon, 9 Berserkers with Kharn in a rhino, 5 chosen terminators with mark of Khorne inside a Land Raider, a havoc squad and 6 Plague Marines. He got the first turn and we were playing Spearhead so he just set up his stuff as close to the centre as possible. Unfortunately for him I stole the initiative so I killed all his havocs, the rhino and his Daemon Prince on the first round of shooting. Imperial guard firepower for the win. Second turn he rolled his Land Raider towards me ready for an assault on his following turn. My veterans made short work of it though with their meltaguns and the Ventettas managed to kill all the Terminators inside with their lascannons. Medusas killed all the berserkers but Kharn managed to stay alive.

On his next turn, the greater daemon manifested into the material realm. He was out of assault range though so died from massed firepower on my following shooting phase. Kharn charged and killed my Command Squads chimera but then got a lascannon shot in the face and died. Also killed all but one of his Plague Marines. The lone gunman charged a unit of Veterans and cut them down in close combat (I killed off the sergeant by assigning a wound to him so that they would have less chance of getting locked in close combat). With a final lascannon shot the game ended in turn 4 since he had no more units on the table.

Final game was against the other guy that already had two wins today. He told me that he's been playing Lord of the Rings for many years but switched to 40k a few years ago. He had Blood Angels with Mephiston, two sanguinary priests, a chaplain, 10 assault marines with jumpacks and meltaguns. 10 assault marines in a rhino with meltaguns, 10 tacticals with flamer and plasma cannon, 2 baal predators with assault cannons and heavy bolters and 2 predators with autocannon and lascannons. We played Capture and Control (aka autodraw, my least favourite mission) with Dawn of War (my least favourite setup). 

He went first and moved his rhino with the assault squad dangerously close to me. Rest of his vehicles moved from table edge and popped their smoke launchers. I moved a vendetta with the veterans close to his rhino where they disembarked and made short work of the vehicle. My medusas emerged close by and with two direct hits from their mighty artillery shells anihilated the squad. Good start! On his next turn he managed to kill both my vendettas and one of the medusas. He scored one penetrating hit on each vehicle but he was unable to roll less than a "5" on the vehicle damage result table. On my next turn I scored a lot of penetrating and glancing hits on his vehicles but nothing high enough to stop them being a thread. His death stat unit arrived in his third turn and landed close to the veteran squad and the manticore. They shot at the vehicle and destroyed it quite easy with their meltaguns but in return they got a demo charge on the head and disappeared into thin air.

 Rest of the game went on like this. My shooting was pretty bad. I was scoring a lot of successful hits but never managing to roll high enough for damage. The sight around turn four was ridiculous with most of his vehicles being immobilized and having 2-3 weapons destroyed.  On the other hand every time he scored a hit on my vehicles he managed to either destroy or wreck it. Mephiston jumped in on turn 5 to deny my objective and my psyker squad that was closest run into his. If the game ended there it would have been a draw. It went on for another turn though and since there was no way I could kill mephiston or get close to his objective I lost the game.

It was mainly due to my inability to remove his vehicles in the first three turns that I lost. I stayed too stationary trying to bear as much firepower as possible to his predators so I wasn't close enough to contest in the end. Losing both my vendettas on the first turn didn't help either. I should have committed my Company Command 's and my Plattoons Command's vehicles for denying his objective instead of trying to shoot in every possible turn (one lascannon and one autocannon wouldn't have made muchof a difference). In the end bad luck and a few bad decisions cost me the game. He has his tactical squad and Mephiston on the table when the game ended and I had about half of my army alive but in the wrong place. 

So I did finish second in the end. Not a major feat if you consider that there were only six people in the tournament but it was a chance to play a few games against new opponents and have a fun day geeking out with my favourite miniature soldiers :)