Templecon Recap: Day 2 and 3, GT

Grand Tournament started Saturday morning.  I end up facing Dan and his GK who is the same fella that stomped me first round at the Battlegrounds invitational in January.  This game went much like that one did, even with some changes to Dan's list, which was now sporting a bastion and a Vindicare to go along with the Draigo, Coteaz with Paladins Deathstar.  I had a lot of fun this game despite getting stomped.  I learned quite a few things from our first game and didn't make the same mistakes.  I was not prepared for the Vindicare sniping away my characters all game at all.  Dan made sick amound of feel no pains on the Paladins.

Game two was a disaster.  This was the least fun game of warhammer that I have ever played.  My opponent was a great guy...Aaron I believe.  The dice completely crapped out.  I'm not the type that complains about dice and am quick to note when I make strategic mistake in the hopes that I won't repeat it, but the dice killed me this game.  I failed a half dozen armor saves in one round on the Sternguard....who's drop pod scattered 12", the Stormraven came on turn 4, failed a 4+ save on a pen them promptly exploded onto my blob guard and killing all the marines inside. Vanguard Vets scattered 6" then rolled a 3" charge when I only needed 4.  It was awful...when your opponent asks if you need a hug, you know it has been a rough day!  This is a game that I felt I should have won if the dice had been probable, but that's part of the game!

Game three was Tau with Chaos Marine allies. First turn I kill both squads of pathfinders and my opponents starts to crumble.  Without the ability to strip cover off me, the plasma and railguns do next to nothing the whole game.  Vanguard Vets whiped a couple of fire warrior squads when they dropped in and mopped up after that.  Kharne gave me some trouble, but I had enough bodies to outlast him. The blob with the axes and presience finally did him in.  I nearly maxed out on points, just missing a few on the VP differential scale.  Needless to say after the first two games, I needed this win to keep me interested for Sunday.  There was no hope of placing, but at least I could go into the last day trying to make a good showing...

Game 4 Sunday morning.  People drop and I end up with a bye.  Ringer is there so I get to play a game and it ends up being the most satisfying of the weekend.  Mike is playing GK and it is quite similar to what spanked me around in round 1.  After getting stomped by paladins twice hard I'm starting to get the point on how to take these guys out.  First I concentrate on killing everything that is not a paladin.  I go after the dreads and the strike squad first.  I have to sacrifice the Sternguard to whipe out the 10 man strike squad, but considering the the whole GK army is 27 models to my 70+ I'll trade 1 to 1 any day of the week.  I made a couple of mistakes in this game, but nothing I would regret.  The blob ended up taking out the Dreadknight after a few turns of waiting for the sergeants with the meltabombs to pile into range.  This worked perfectly.  We traded models and I forced Draigo to split from the rest of the paladinds, once this happened the las cannons chewed through the paladins. I then charged Draigo with my blob.  I kept him bogged down by challenging with the 3 sergeants and Commissar for 2 full game turns while I shot up the pallys.

Game 5 was against Necrons.  This was a great matchup for me.  The flyers really don't bother me too much...especially when none come in on turn 2 and only 1 on turn 3.  The other 2 waited until turn 4 to show up.  By then the Lemun Russ Eradicator had chewed up almost all of the warriors and the lascannons had killed most of the wraiths.  We were playing a modified objective game where points for the objectives were tallied each round rather than the end of the game.  After two rounds my opponent asked that I stop tallying them and conceded the objectives to me for the rest of the game and we should just play out the secondary and tertiary.  I was amused by this!  I nearly tabled him after 5 rounds, we rolled to play another and he declined going on.

Ended up with two wins, two losses and the bye (technically a win, but whatever).  The weekends was great and I had a wonderful time playing Blood Angels with the Guard and probably for the last time now that the DA book is out!  I'm already working on the DA+IG list as we speak!

Templecon Recap, Day 1

I can't remember enough about the weekend to give a full Batrep on each game...especially the team drinking charity event, but there were some great moments I wanted to include and summaries of each game.

Double event.  Game one is a total blur, I remember we played Marcus and Kevin and a couple of other guys rented some super heavies and started playing on our table.  Probably should point out for those unfamiliar with the event that the rules for the whole day are more of a guide.  Judges can be bribed, you can pay cash to re-roll dice or orbital bombardments to place on any table in the room at any time...you don't need to even be playing in the event to buy these and use them.  In fact we there was such a crowd around our table first round with people paying to help each side that it raised the most money for the first round.

Anyway our opponents were playing...New Dark Angels and Chaos Marines. John and I brought Ravenwing and Tau.  It was the usual I sacrifice my whole army while John shoots stuff the whole game.  Worked out pretty well and we got the win.

Game two involved beer, I recall very little else other than that we won.

Apparently Titans use these templates?

View of the baneblade shooting at the titan.

Game 3 we were on table 2.  Depending on how things went on the main table we could pull off first place...that didn't happen, but I can tell you what did.  There were no less than 20 orbital bombardments used during this game taking out 50% of each sides models before the first player turn was even done, and we drank beer.  A stompa showed up and started shooting anything in front of it and we drank port.  I realize that our opponents are so drunk they have no idea what is going on and I sip whiskey for the rest of the game and we mop them up nicely.  Turns out the top table was a blowout so we didn't snipe first, but we drank very heavily and had a great time for charity.  Tons of money was raised for the RI Food Bank.