<-- more of not-Nathan's orks from: http://mordian7th.blogspot.com/search/label/Orks
Game 3
Jeff: Eldar
Jeff and I have squared off at TSHFT before, but last time it was against his IG at 1850. Jeff's a nice guy and he doesn't play as much since he lives in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. Totally awesome person to get a game in with!
Jeff brought a REALLY tame Eldar list. I therefore will not comment :P.
Eldrad
Avatar
10 stormguardians with fusion gun/flamer and warlock with destructor and a singing spear in a wave serpent with TL bright lance and shuricannon.
7 or 8 fire dragons with exarch with crack shot and fire pike in a wave serpent with TL star cannon and shuricannon
10 dire avengers with exarch with shimmershield and bladestorm in a wave serpent with TL EML and shuricannon
5 guardian jetbikes with warlock and shuricannon
1 falcon without spirit stones and EML?
6 pathfinders
2 Wraithlords with EML and brightlance
The mission was essentially a two objectives each version of capture and control. With pitched battle deployment.
I won the roll to go first and elected to do so as I was hoping to down some skimmers before he got fortune up on 'em.
I deployed mostly in the middle of the board with my lobbas to the wide left. Jeff refused flank to my right to stay away from lobbas.
Turn one, I moved up and shot at the Eldar. Didn't really do anything of note.
Jeff then kind of shuffled around where he was and put fortune on Eldrad, who got out and joined the jetbikes for some reason. He blew up one of my trukks and wrecked the other and did some damage to the stormboyz. I wasn't concerned as I was in range to assault with both one trukk boyz unit and the stormboyz.
Turn two, Snikrot comes in and sets up an assault on the jetbikes and eldrad as well as the stormguardian's wave serpent. I jump the stormboyz up to assault the fire dragon's skimmer and maybe the dire avenger one too (it moved 12", the FD one only 6). My lootas proceed to wreck the DA wave serpent, depositing the direavengers right next to my stormboyz. I refrain from shooting the jetbikes because I think that eldrad won't be able to pile into contact with me, meaning I can beat on easy to kill guardians and hopefully scare him off with 'em. My assault phase though is where I make my first major mistake and get screwed by dice. I declare and assault on the direavengers with my stormboyz instead of hte vehicle. Even though I'm just over an inch away from them, I'd have to move through the wreckage, so I take a difficult terrain check: snake eyes... UGH. So, now they're sitting there in the open! DUMB. Over by the bikes, I immobilize the wave serpent with snikrot, which is good, since the trukk boyz assaulted it too, so now I get free hits with the klaw. However, Eldrad barely squeezes in and gets to fight. He kills two kommandos, and then lose three more to the guardians (AGH!). Then, I kill 4 guardians, but the warlock is still alive. I hold in the fight. I do wreck the wave serpent though, and the guardians emergency disembark.
Jeff springs into action. His falcon zooms off on my right flank, intent on contesting my objectives. THe fire dragons zoom off on his table edge to my left. His wraithlords move up to flame the two of my units and the avatar moves up to finish off the kommandos. He sees off the kommandos, trukk boyz, and the stormboyz easily. UGH.
My go, I move up to assault the storm guarians and the dire avengers with the other trukk squad and push up with my boyz on the right to threaten his objectives. I get a spot of luck and stun his falcon with my lootas. When Jeff tells me he doesn't have spirit stones, I rejoice. That means I can assault it with my boyz on the right and next turn they'll get auto hits! That is awesome. My lobbas hit and wipe out a bunch of guardians, but the avatar has them fearless, so they just sit. I assault the dire avengers with the trukk boyz and beat the daylights out of em, wiping 'em out. The other boyz assault the wave serpent and get no results, but the klaw will auto-hit next turn!
Jeff moves up to try and deal with my other units. He is able to assault my battlewagon with a wraithlord, his fire dragons pop out of their transport and slag my buggies, and his vehicle moves back and picks up the guardians. The avatar and other wraithlord kill the trukk boyz. I knock a weapon off the Falcon in combat.
Turn 4 now. I easily have my objectives, but his eldar are being pesky. I'm forced to devote shooting at the nearby wraithlord, and down it. In assault, I wreck the falcon, and the pathfinders inside are pinned.
Jeff now moves the wave serpent with the guardians onto the objective and hides the remaining jetbike behind it. He shoots up my gretchin which are on one of my objectives and does a bit of damage.
Turn 5. I need to kill either the jetbike or the wave serpent. I put all my shots I can into the wave serpent. I get 5 rokkit hits, but not a single RESULT! GAH. The lobba fails to kill the jetbike. GAH.
Jeff moves his fortuned jetbike and eldrad to his other objective and sits on the objective with the wave serpent. He's able to do enough wounds on the grots (who go to ground) that he forces a morale check! I fail the first one, but pass the second. At this point, I can move back with my one boyz squad and control both objectives, and I can move up at his with my other unit to contest his. If the game goes on, I win, no question. We roll to continue the game, its a 1. AGH.
I shouldn't complain too much here, but this list was really poor, Jeff, while a fun opponent, wasn't really making the best choices all the time, so I was a bit peeved that I didn't win this game. It was my own fault I guess, but I know I'm going to be regretting that assault on the dire avengers for a LONG time.
Result: Draw
13 of 20 points (I got a lot of tertiary and secondary points) You lost to footdar! With a couple tanks. That's worse than losing to mech spam Orks :P.
Game 4
Josh: Tau
Now, Josh has one of the most interestingly converted armies ever. He built it in honor of a group of friends he plays with to commemorate a campaign that they played together. Each crisis suit model is acting out some kind of moment from their campaign. Its a pretty spectacular army!
Now, when it comes to list design, Josh admitted he brought an unusual list. I'd be tempted to say a poor list; but Tau of all stripes look bad to me. :P He brought, roughly: It is poor. =D
Farsight and an 8 suit retinue with drones and everyone with different gear for wound allocation fun.
3 crisis suits, one with fusion gun and target lock, two with tl flamers
2 broadsides with drones
2 units of 6 warriors with drones
1 unit of 7 pathfinders with devilfish
1 unit of 10 warriors with carbines in a devilfish
1 unit of sniper drones
1 skyray missile defense thingy
The mission was kill points, and the deployment was, you divided the table into three 24x48" sections and you chose one short edge to deploy on and which long edge you wanted to have reserves come in on. The mission also forced you to leave some models in reserve kind of like daemons (split your force in half, on a 3+ you deploy the part you wanted to deploy, on a 2+, the stuff you didn't want to reserve, must be reserved). Thankfully, we both got our regular sides in anyway, so that didn't change much for me (since everything I ended up reserving I would've reserved anyway.
The terrain on this table was pretty nuts, especially in combination with the deployment. It was one of those GW battleboard/modular things and it was set up so that 2/3rds of the board was basically a huge hill, with more stuff on top of it. Essentially, whoever got that side would be totally out of line of sight.
I won the roll and elected to force Josh over there, which would mean he'd have to come to the edge of his deployment, on top of the hill, to shoot at me. In retrospect, I should've taken that side and just hid from him. I could've put my lobbas up to the edge and just shot at him with impunity. Oh well...
I deployed using my boyz to create a no-land zone for his deepstriking fusion gun/flamer unit so he couldn't snag a cheap KP off of my lobbas or lootas. Zach deployed on the crest of the hill.
My first turn, I moved up a bit with the kans and some of the rokkit boyz and took shots at his devilfish that scouted up. I ended up stunning it.
Josh moved around a bit with his farsight unit and shot at my battlewagon with the broadsides. He did nothing to it, but did wreck a kan.
My turn, I get my stormboyz and a unit of trukk boyz and the gretchin in from reserve. I roll for the stormboyz and get a 2 for their jump distance, leaving them just under 3" away from the farsight unit, the trukk boyz move in as well. I'm looking at a nice combo charge right there. The gretchin grab cover and cower. My shooting nets me some dead firewarriors from the lobbas and the devilfish from the rokkits. The lootas shoot up the farsight unit suits to no avail. No problem though, as now I have this assault and should crush face. Unfortunately, I roll double twos for my difficult terrain roll on the stormboyz and they are left out. ARGH! My trukk boyz do OK, and only lose the combat by 1 (lots of S5 with preferred enemy against Orks is ROUGH). I roll morale: fail; I reroll because of boss pole: fail. ARGH! If either my original jump roll had been 3+, my difficult terrain test had been a 3, or I'd passed either Ld6 test, I would've been sittin' pretty. As it stood, I'd just thrown away 3 kill points! AGH!
Josh gets his crisis suits and his sniper drones in from reserve. He drops the crisis suits to flame the stormboyz, but deviates too far away. The sniper drones he sets up to try and screen snikrot's unit from hitting his main lines. In his shooting phase, Josh explodes the trukk, and kills the stormboyz down to the nob with one wound left and a single stormboy. He also knocks the kannon off the BW. I pass my test, and Josh elects not to assault. A strange choice IMO, but meh.
My turn 3, I get snikrot and the buggies in. Here I make the first of two mistakes. I should've simply put the buggies over on my side of the board, away from danger. Instead, I send them up to try and hit his sky ray in the rear. This is a dumb choice as I have low odds of doing anything to it with its 4+ cover, and he has high chances of killing me. HERP A DERP! However, Snikrot gets a good dt roll and is in prime position to dual assault the sniper drones and the fire warriors nearby. Now that his deep strike threat is gone, I start moving the boyz up at his main lines as quickly as possible. My shooting proves to be decent, the lobbas killing two fire warriors. Josh, intending to deny me a dual charge, kills the two closest fire warriors to Snikrot; but he forgot I still have Waagh and can declare it whenever. I do so, and move up snikrot and now have a TRIPLE charge on the warriors, drones, and broadsides. This happens and I either wipe out or run off all three units. Snikrot consolidates into some cover and awaits the retaliation.
Josh's go. He doesn't get the remaining devilfish in. He moves his farsight unit to go after snikrot and Co. His crisis suits move up to finish off the stormboyz, which they do. The farsight unit and the skyray take out the buggies and then shoot at the kommandos. He does a lot of wounds, but I make enough cover saves. But here I make my second mistake. I should've taken models off near by farsight's unit to make him unable to assault me, but I don't. I pass my morale, but then get assaulted. The fight goes poorly, but I put some wounds on and end up holding with Snikrot alive wiht one wound left.
My turn 4. The trukk boyz come in and move up to take out the crisis suits. I push forward with my boyz and kans. My shooting kills the pathfinders and takes his last warrior unit down to just one guy, who is pinned. I kill the crisis suits in melee, and snikrot dies in melee and the farsight unit moves over to kill the trukk boyz.
Josh's go. He gets his devilfish in which moves up to threaten my lootas in my backfield. His farsight unit immobilizes my trukk and then shoots up my trukk boyz. The devilfish kills two lootas, but they are still functional. Farsight and Co assault and wipe out the trukk boyz and fall back towards the sky ray.
My turn 5, time is winding down. I push further up and try and knock out the sky ray with missiles, but only immobilize it. THe lootas shoot at the devilfish, but it takes it like a champ, me failing to get even a result. FUDGE!
Josh's go. He finishes off the trukk at range, and disembarks the firewarriors to shoot at the lootas as well as the devilfish. He kills 4 more, but I pass morale.
We roll to see if the game ends, it goes on. We are tied at the moment.
My turn 6, I push up to try and snag the sky ray. I shoot it with 8 rokkits, and fail to take it out. The lootas went to ground and can't fire. I assault the sky ray with one unit of boyz and the kans. I kill it!
Josh's go. He tank shocks the lootas, they pass. He shoots the lobbas with his smart missiles, but doesn't do enough kills to make me test. He shoots the lootas with the warriors, fails to kill one. He DOES however manage to slag both kans, one with a glance that rolled a 6 on 3 plasma shots! GRRRRRRRR! Josh elects to assault my big mob of boyz with Farsight's unit in an attempt to finish me off (he shot it up a bit previously). THe fight ends in a draw, and we are deadlocked with 8 KPs each. Time is called.
Result: Draw! So against the two worst lists...you drew lol. Ironic!
Again, I don't want to bemoan it too much, but had I gotten that charge in on turn 2, I probably would've tabled him. As it stood, I still made some major errors and still had the upper hand at the end. Had it gone on to turn 7 I probably could've assaulted and killed his fire warriors with my lootas, finishing those guys off and killed his farsight unit (or at least beaten it completely) with an assault from the other boyz unit. I was rather frustrated to get a draw in that situation, but it was at least a fun game. And I learned to not make mistakes! ;)
Game 5
Ben: Space Wolves
Ben Cromwell is another member of Team Bio like Joel. I've played him before at TSHFT, and just like Joel, he is a consumate gamer and you should be encouraged to play him any time for all the same reason I listed above. Again, I'll re-iterate; Team Bio is 100% win to play against.
Ben was running, essentially, a loganwing. He had, roughly:
Logan
4 units of 5 wolf guard in termie armor with a cyclone, a SS, and two with lightning claw and stormbolter.
a unit of 9 wolf guard, kitted out, in a rhino
a unit of 8 wolf scouts with wolf guard buddy with meltabombs and a meltagun
a rifleman dread
3 typhoon ML/HB land speeders
Neh at mass Termie armor, large wolf guard squad and large scout squad. Not sure if the list really has the combat punch to take down the Orks with all those Power Weapons. Let's see :p.
The mission was a TSHFT special. You deploy 3 objectives in your opponent's deployment zone, and they deploy 3 in yours. You can only control the objectives you placed, but you can contest the ones in your deployment zone. Deployment was Dawn of War. I placed two objectives essentially at the mid line on my left side, and one kinda forming a tringle with them deeper into his deployment zone. Ben put one on the the line about 12" in from either short edge, and then one deep on my right side.
I won the roll and elected to deploy first, wanting to not get pinned back on my side. I deployed both big mobz up on the board to push him back. I left myself a nice corridor between them to move the trukks up. I decided to reserve nothing except Snikrot. Ben responded by putting Logan and two termie squads on my right side, looking to power into me for those two objectives.
I moved all my army in on and went heavy-ish to the right to block his advance at his two objectives. With night fight and all my movement, I didn't have much to shoot, but got a wound on a terminator, that saved it.
Ben now started bringing in his army other than his wolf scouts. Here he pulled a nice move. I had thought he was going to go heavy to my right, but he put two of his termies to the far left to go after his objective over there and pressure mine over on that side as well. He also put his land speeders over there in a corner, out of range of my lootas. His rifleman and the rhino were kind of in the center. He then moved up at me with his right side terminators and logan. Then he started shooting me. UGH, I hate acute senses! His land speeders first couldn't see, but, with the re-roll were able to spot me! :( He did a number to my boyz with all his frag missiles and stormbolters. ICKY! I had been outfoxed and was now in a rather poor position!
My turn two though proved to be lucky! I was able to get snikrot in, and now moved him in to assault the land speeders, which only moved 6"! I backed away from his terminators on the right, hoping to use defense in depth to wear him down. I shot at and wrecked his rhino, but failed to do anything else on that flank. Snikrot's burnas wrecked a landspeeder and shook another one. In the assault, I wrecked another and knocked both weapons off the last one. That was one major threat averted. Whew!
Ben now moved up his units at me. He didn't get his wolf scouts in. On my left, the terminators nearest to snikrot advanced and shot them up, killing a few. The landspeeder zoomed up the board as a distraction and potential objective contester. The wolf guard in power armor moved to assault my mob on the right, but he shot at it with his terminators over there, and I simply killed the models he was in range to assault. The terminators assaulted and beat snikrot's unit in combat, but not before Snikrot killed the CML! I actually held in that combat, which was awesome.
My turn three. I maneouver my depleted shoota boyz from the right and one trukk boyz squad to take out the power armor wolf guard. I put some shots into the termies behind them and drop one. I also shoot up the termies in the middle-left and drop two. The battlewagon turns and shoots the land speeder out of the sky in a hail of shots! I zoomed the other trukk over to the left in order to assist over there as well. I'm still leaving my buggies and stormboyz in the backfield to keep the scouts from assaulting the lootas. I light up the wolfguard and wipe them out in the assault, but take some casualties in return. Snikrot loses combat and falls back.
Ben's go. His scouts come in and move to wipe out the lobbas. The termies in the middle move to assault the shoota boyz. The left side termies start heading towards the objective over there and finish off the fleeing kommandos for fun with some shooting. The rifleman shoots the zooming trukk and stuns it. In his assaults, Ben wipes out the shoota boyz and the lobbas.
My 4. I move the trukks to block the wolf scouts from getting to the lootas. I move the empty trukk over towards the left to contest eventually. I also start moving that way with the BW. The trukk boyz move to assault the termies. The stormboyz and killa kans on the right start advancing at the termies and logan on the right. I'm able to immobilize the rifleman, and move the shoota boyz to be controlling all three of my objectives. I take down another termie with shooting. In the assault, I kill another termie, but lose, but hold.
Ben goes, he moves to assault the buggies, moves to counter assault with Logan and his termies, and his other termies to go control the objective on the far left. The rifleman knocks the gun off the trukk with boyz still in it, poised to assault his termies on the left. He succeeds in killing my boyz fighting the termies, but I kill the one unit off before dying. He also kills one buggy with meltabombs.
My 5. I move up both trukks to try and contest ben's objective over there and jump the boyz out to assault the termies. I jump the stormboyz up to assault logan's unit. My rokkits in the shoota boy squad finish off the rifleman. My gretchin jump out and move to control two objectives themselves, and my battlewagon spins in place to shoot at scouts. The lootas shoot at scouts as well, in the end, only the wolf guard and the meltagun remain. MY assault on the termies with logan goes well, I kill two of the 4 remaining and hold. My trukk boyz on the left hit the termies but fail to do anything, but only lose one model. They are fearless, and take a no retreat wound.
Ben's 5. He assaults into the trukk boyz with his last terminator unit and beats the unit, but I kill two more termies from the other unit. THe wolf scouts assault the lootas and die in teh process, taking two lootas with them. In the fight with logan, logan kills me before I can swing. At this point, I have 3 objectives and he has 1. We roll, the game continues.
My 6. I zoom the buggy up to be in position to contest objectives on the right; move up the kans to assault logan's unit. I tank shock the termies with a trukk, he passes and I'm now contesting it. The other trukk imobilizes itself on snake eyes. The BW moves up to also contest. I assault the termies and logan with the kans, I'm able to kill the remaining termies and logan whiffs.
Ben's 6. At this point, its all over essentialy, but he still goes for it, shooting at my boyz unit with the two depleted termie units on the left, hoping to panic them. Nothin' doin'. Logan goes nuts and wrecks two kans, but fails to kill the last. Game ends.
Result: Win!
15 of 20 battle points.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed in my draws, but was content that I didn't lose any games. I had a lot of fun and the event was solid as usual. I also ended up getting a $35 gift certificate from the raffle! w00t!
Can't wait for September TSHFT! Hope to see some of y'all there!
