Great time today in RI for the 2000 I have been working ot on painting my army for this week.  I learned alot about the list and go to play 3 fun games against 3 great opponents. Major Loss, Major Win, Minor Loss on the day.

Game 1
Necrons first game.  My deployment was deplorable and I went second.  Neither of these is a good thing and that is how the rest of the game went.  Thankfully, my opponent was very pleasant to play against and didn't rub it in at all.  However, the game did have one of those fantastic WTF moments.  See the piles of scarabs below...that's half of them.

Do you know what 10 terminators and a librarian with Unleash Rage turn that into those guys and the others on the other side of the building?  92 Fearless saves.  Yeah, that was pretty awesome!

Game 2
Next game was fun.  It was also the only game of the day where I really had a good plan for the missions and stuck to them.  I was rewarded with a solid victory.  Regular marines with the captain on a bike deathstar.  Not sure what my opponent was thinking, but sending 6 bikes against 10 Assault terminators with a Librarian (Unleash Rage) is beyond me.  I re-roll to hit with claws and hammers, yes even on your turn.  The hammers don't care about your higher toughness and the claws re-roll anyway.  On problem with the game was that a lot of rules questions came up.  Rather than take my word for anything, or look up things in the book, it was off to the tourney judge.  It wasn't that it was offensive to me, more that it slowed the game down a bit and took a lot of the excitement out of it.  I maybe wouldn't complain if I was on the losing side.

Game 3
Regular marines again!  I won first and picked the side of the table that I could see the TV that had the Bruins game on.  I didn't get max points second round so we were not in a position for either of us to place.  I was in position to watch the entire third period though.

I played overly aggressive since my opponent deployed so little.  I ended up taking out the land raider and one of the tactical squads in a razorback without issue.  The main problem was that I miscounted the number of tactical squads with razorbacks.  I counted 4, but there were 6, big difference.  I was killing most everything as it came on, but by turn 4 I was too spread out.  I should have played it safe in the middle of the board.  Either way, it was a very fun game to play.  Great opponent with a very atypical list, which was a nice change.

So I also learned quite a bit about my list...

Positives
1) 3 Powerfists and 3 power weapons, instead of just 3 power weapons was fantastic.
2) Stormraven wasn't so hot, but I knew this going into the day.  If I had another or used a Land Raider, I think things would have gone better, but I don't think that is where I want to sink my points.
3) The two 10 man squads was fantastic.  Just the kind of resiliency that  I needed.
4) Death Co can work with a good player.  I consistently was slaughtering MEQ with these guys.  Proper placement and use of terrain to block LOS and I was able to point these guys to where they did great damage.  Furios Charge, FnP and WS5 can do great things.

Negatives
1) Death Co. Dread was useless, too much of a fire magnet.  I wasn't concerned with getting it to where I wanted it, but had trouble keeping it from getting immobilized every game.  Probably needed to have the librarian closer with shield to make this more worth while.  I may test further to see if keeping it with the shield libby is worthwhile or if going with a regular furioso with the claws would be better.
2) Deployment was a struggle, mostly because I hadn't actually tested the list.  Some bad mistakes in the first and second game could have been avoided if I had been less aggressive.
3) Needs more shooting either to get transports open sooner or to thin out squads.  I find that while I won almost every combat, it took too many turns to do so.  If I can soften them up with shooting, assault and finish them on their turn it would be more ideal. I found I was winning most on my next turn and was open to a lot of return fire.  I already have enough power weapons and attacks for the units I chose so getting some more guns would be a better choice.  Probably Sternguard or Honor Guard with Plasma.

To top off a wonderful day of gaming, I ended up winning the only painting prize for best single model. I was able to pick up a handful of new paints from the new line with the store credit prize.  I made sure to grab a layer, dry, base, and shade to get a feel for how they apply.  Here's the terminator below.  This is a better one of my models that has some subtle conversion and some decent free hand on the banner.

I still need to dedicate a chunk of time to getting one really amazing model done at my highest standard.  Looking ahead, I need to finish paining the Death Co. and get to work on the Sternguard.  Looks like May is going to be a doubles tournament, points and format still being determined.  Rumor is 500 teams, 1 HQ and 1 Troop each.