Doubles tournament FS Victoria 05/11/11 report

Yet another tournament for me this month. This time it was Doubles, so slightly different though. Check here to see the conditions for building the list since it was identical to the one I recently won. This time I would be playing together with my friend Manos. He has an awesome collection of Tyranids (complete with a Hierophant Bio-Titan and more than a dozen Monstrous Creatures) but he was never big on playing 40K. We have recently started some practice games though and I thought a Doubles tournament with a more experienced player (me!) would be an ideal introduction to tournaments.

Unfortunately, no report from the Invulnerable Blog this time round to steal some picture from, so this article is going to be a bit barren I am afraid.

I thought this time we should go for a shooty list. This is what I came up with:

HQ
Tervigon (Catalyst, Cluster Spines)
Company Command Squad, 4 Melta, Chimera (Multilaser, Hull Heavy Flamer)

Elites
3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard

Troops
Tervigon (Catalyst, Cluster Spines)
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Veterans, 3 Meltaguns, Demolitions

Fast Attack
Vendetta

Heavy Support
Hydra (Hull Heavy Bolter)
2 Medusas (Hull Heavy Flamer)

The idea was that I would provide the melta cannon fodder and he would provide resilience (8 T6 models) and scoring units. In retrospect, I was really lacking mobile units, because having the T6 advancing towards the enemy every turn and shooting is not a realistic option when going against armies like Blood Angels or Grey Knights. I will remember that next time!

First game was against George and Stavros, the dynamic duo from the Red Corsairs team, who I've met on the battlefield a few times before. They were fielding Blood Angels with a Librarian, Death Company, Storm Raven and an Assault Squad plus Chaos Space Marines with a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch (Warptime), Khorne Berserkers in a Land Raider and 5 Plague Marines with 2 Meltas in a Rhino. We were playing Capture and Control with Dawn of War.

We lost the die roll but our opponent gave us the first turn .I knew I had to take that Land Raider out as early as possible so I zoomed the Vendetta with the veterans very fast towards the opponents table edge. Rest of our stuff took their position close to our table edge and the Chimer with the CCS started closing in with the Plague Rhino that was parked in his objective.

On his first turn he zoomed the Storm Raven as well, close to the middle of the board. He had some abysmal night fight spotting rolls so not even the Land Raider that was very close to the Vendetta could find it's target.

On our second turn, Vendetta moved close to the Chaos Land Raider and the Veterans made short work of it. The CCS were lucky and managed to destroy the Plague Rhino from inside their Chimera with their meltaguns on long range. The combined efforts of the Hydra and the Hive Guards destroyed the Storm Raven but unfortunately the Medusas couldn't draw line of sight to the Death Company that emerged from inside. They had to shoot at the Assault Squad and unfortunately they missed wildly.

On their second turn Stavros got very unlucky with the Daemon Prince assaulting the Vendetta and he didn't do anything at all. The Khorne Berserkers slaughtered the Veterans of course. Death Company were fairly lucky and managed to destroy the Chimera and assault and kill the Company Command Squad inside. Even luckier was the half depleted Assault Squad that charged my Medusas, destroyed one and blew up the main weapon off the other.

Having not much use of it now, I zoomed the Medusa forward to kite the Death Company. Vendetta flew away to safety (it was my only way to deny his objective so I had to protect it). We threw a lot of shoots on the Assault Squad and managed to kill it but the Death Company went mostly unscathed (3+ save and Feel no Pain and we didn't have any low AP weapons left).

For the rest of the game, the Death Company was chasing away after my vehicles while the Hive Guards were shooting at them. Khorne Berserkers were too far away to do anything so they didn't even reach their own objective by the end of the game. Tzeentch Daemon Prince spent almost 5 close combat rounds swarmed by fearless termagants so he didn't even come close to our objective and also went down to one wound!

On the fifth turn we moved the Vendetta in order to deny his objective. It was held by the 3 remaining plague marines though and they had 2 meltaguns. Fortunately he only managed to kill one of the weapons and the game ended there with us getting the win. It was a close call but I think we played well enough. Maybe I risked too much (we were actually behind in victory points) in order to take away my opponents mobility but it kinda worked out.

Second game was against double orks. I knew one of the guys who works at the FLGS and he is a very cool person. They had Gutzmek, Zogwart, big unit of Warbikers as Troops, 10 pimped out Nobz in a Battlewagon, 25 shoota boys, some grot artillery units and Stormboys with Zagstruck. We were playing Seize Ground with Spearhead.

We went first we I deployed fairly aggressively. He didn't screen his Battlewagon or anything so the field was open for a first turn charge. I move the Vendetta during the scout phase 12'' away from his BW. On the first turn the Veterans disembarked and the Vendetta flew back to safety. Manos rolled to hit with the meltaguns and he managed to fail all of them. Fortunately we were in charge range so 10 meltabombs on auto hit did the trick. Hive Guards shot at the artillery unit since it was the only thing in range but due to cover saves and randomising hits they didn't suffer much.

On his turn everything moved towards me of course to get into close combat. Wazdakka broke off his squad in order to chase (and shoot at) the Vendetta and all the bikes turbo boosted. Nobz charged the Veterns and I was quick to remove them before even any blows were struck since the outcome of that battle was pretty obvious.

Our next turn was quite comical. I threw everything but the kitchen sink at Wazdakka but still didn't manage to kill him. For a start, the CCS disembarked in front of him to bring some meltagun justice. I failed to order Fire On My Target though so I only caused one wound. After shooing all the Hive Guard and the Vendetta he still remained alive. The ork was on fire. Some more comedy rolls ensued like the Medusas causing 5 hits on the Warbikes and then rolling three "1"s. Fortunately I managed to kill them with some more shooting from the Hydra, Tervigons and a lot of Termagants (Manos was doing very good with his spawn rolls) before they had the chance to kill me. 

On our opponents next turn, Wazdakka charged the Hive Guard and the big unit of shootas almost charged the Termagants. That was too close for comfort. We were running late again so we had to finish our game early but again it was obvious we would have won since we had more objectives and were doing very well with victory points as well. 

Last game was against a team with Space Marines (10 Sternguard! with combi-meltas and Libby in a drop pod, Tactical in a Rhino and a bunch of Scouts) and Grey Knights (Crowe, 10 purifiers in a Rhino, Dreadknight). They told us they didn't know the rules very well so we should give them some slack (wonder how we got to play against them though since we had two wins). We were playing Annihilation with Pitched Battle. 

The game was not something special unless you consider our very bad luck/our opponents very good luck. I usually don't complain about this stuff but this time it was obscene! Okay first of all I did a mistake in the deployment. We were playing first so I deployed very defensively with everything in the centre of the board and the Termagants around to protect our vehicles. However I moved the Vendetta flat out in the scout move to get a 4+ and didn't protect it like the rest of the vehicles. That was a big mistake since it was my best bet to kill the Dreadknight. Anyway I thought a +4 cover would protect it somehow.

How wrong was I!  His drop pod landed exactly on the spot and he combat squaded his Sternguard (they had 8 combi meltas in total). He fired 4 of them on the Vendetta, hit with all 4 and then I botched all the cover saves as a result the Vendetta was destroyed. The veterans shot with 3 Meltaguns, a demo charge and the lasguns against the Sternguard combat squad but only 3 of the guys died. In their turn they charged the veterans and cut them down in combat.

Other highlights include: Command squad firing 4 meltas with "Bring it Down!" on the Dreadknight and only causing one wound, Hive Guards pouring dozens of shots on Crowe without managing to do anything and in turn got charged by him and died, a singe hunter-killer missile fired on the Hydra and destroyed it, Tervigon charging the librarian and one sternguard and slowly dying while the libby survived (he didn't even used the force weapon).

Dice was so bad that if our opponets didn't do a lot of glaring mistakes (i.e. leaving the Purifiers in the open to get shot from the Medusas) we would probably have lost the game. At the end one of our opponents mentioned to me that we were very lucky to have won but I don't think he knows the game well enough to realise what had happened.

Anyway, at least we barely made it. We had three wins but not enough Victory Points so we ended up second. Can't complain though, it was Manos first proper tournament so he was very happy with the result. You can find the table with the official results here. Thanks for reading.