After much too much preparation, the ‘Ard Boyz Preliminary Round finally came around yesterday. I played at Redcap’s Corner in West Philly, and it was a great event. Fourteen players, nine of them from PAGE CC. All of the other players and spectators were pretty cool, and the shop did a great job running the tournament. Between their boards and terrain we brought, each of the seven boards looked really cool and had a lot of interesting game effects, with a good mix of open plains, cities, hills, and more esoteric worlds like Matt L’s ice caverns.

Final results were:

1 Adam, Orks, 62 pts (Redcap’s)
2 Joe F, Chaos Marines, 55 pts (PAGE)
3 Joe K, Kingbreakers Space Marines, 46 pts (PAGE)
4 Colin, Chaos Marines, 43 pts (PAGE)
5 Rob 1, Tau, 40 pts
5 Rob 2, Tau, 40 pts
7 Brett, Orks, 37 pts (PAGE)
8 Jon D, Space Marines, 35 pts (PAGE)
9 Justin, Eldar, 29 pts (PAGE)
10 Lovell, Necron, 22 pts (PAGE)
11 Jason, Deathwing Dark Angel, 18 pts (PAGE)
12 Warren, Chaos Demons, 15 pts
13 Andrew, Tyranid, 6 pts
14 Akil, Tau, 5 pts (PAGE)

I was pretty happy with third place. After only doing so-so for the past couple months of 40k gaming, I was hoping to win—of course—but was expecting to come in somewhere between 6th and 9th. I definitely felt that these were among the best games I’ve played. Some mistakes, for sure, but ok list construction, solid basic play, and good use of interesting tactics.

Games

Round 1: Land Grab

Setup: Pitched battle deployment (12″ table edge deployment zone), five objectives, against Tau on a fairly crowded Ork settlement board.

Result: Major Victory (held more objectives, equal kill points), bonus point for all HQ alive.

Battle: Sternguard dropped down and obliterated one Hammerhead on turn one. Them and a tac squad got pretty wrapped up in the Tau’s back corner with a squad of Crisis suits, Stealth suits, Devilfish, and Piranha. In the end they were able to contest the objective, but not hold it—the Devilfish snuck onto it at the last minute. Terminators and Heavy Supports spent the game taking down Devilfishes and Firewarriors on the center of the table, though they spent too much effort doing so. My Rhino and Razorback block got blocked fighting some Piranhas, Kroot, and Crisis Suits, and made little progress on the other, very well defended, Tau home objective. They also weren’t able to stop the Crisis Suits from sneaking into my deployment zone in the last assault phase, costing me a bonus point.

The critical move of the game was running a combat squad in the last turn to string out and hold both of my home objectives at once, then swinging both Predators around to make a literal wall in front of them, preventing them from being shot at by the high powered Tau weaponry. That said, the clear highlight of the game was that every single vehicle destroyed—and there were many—exploded when it was destroyed, except for one Piranha. Craters littered the board after just a few turns, and the already tight quarters had become ridiculously cramped by the end.

Lessons: It would have been more effective to concentrate the Rhino and Razorback block on taking the center objective where the Heavy Supports could offer more help, rather than trying to fight into the well guarded Tau objective I sent them toward.

Round 2: Headhunters

Setup: Dawn of War (table halves deployment zone w/ 1 HQ, 2 Troops on board, others walk on), kill points with an adjusted table (basically 5 for HQs, 2 for Elite/FA/Heavy, 1 otherwise), against Chaos Marines on a fairly open desert world.

Result: Major loss, bonus point for more scoring units in enemy deployment zone.

Battle: Rhino, Razorback deployed around some obscuring rock formations. Predators came on alongside Devastators running through an abandoned temple with plentiful difficult terrain and cover. Drop Pods came down to assault advance Plage Marines and block much of the enemy table edge. Sternguard, Librarian, and Tactical squad all got wrapped up in assaults with the Plague Marines throughout the game. Heavy Supports mostly just traded fire with enemy units in cover on the opposite edge. Other Tacticals and Captain got too adventurous going after Chaos Marines and paid for it when the Terminator Lord and his squad managed to assault them, eventually losing the Captain and the game. Landspeeders did their job early on by taking out the enemy’s only vehicle, the Landraider carrying the lord and friends.

Lessons: Devastators probably should have just come on alongside the difficult terrain. They still would have been difficult to shoot at from the enemy’s position, and they spent too long (2 turns) moving through the terrain to get into position. That said, the cover saves were very useful once the oblits got into position and started firing…

I should have kept the Captain back on my edge; once the Landraider was out of play the Chaos forces were moving too slowly to engage my guys if I’d held them back and effectively played for the draw. In that case, the Landspeeders could have perhaps slowly whittled away at the Lord and his squad with their multi-meltas, potentially going for a minor win. Beyond that, the Plague Marines are just so tough and the opponent list so low on kill points (just 1 transport, etc), that it looks tough to beat in this scenario.

My Heavy Supports got too fixated on trying to wipe out a unit of Plague Marines, well protected in cover. On the one hand, I was consciously staying on them because they were there on the first turn and I was trying to finish them off for the KP, but I should have switched to a more fragile unit.

Finally, in the last turn, the Terminators took a gamble and shot at some Chaos Marines looking to assault the weakened Tac Squads and Librarian. However, they couldn’t move fast enough to then assault them. That left the Terminators open to all manner of incoming fire in the final round, annihilating them. They should have instead gone after the oblits, which would have either put them safely in close combat, or gained two kill points, removed a big threat, and put them in a less exposed position.

Round 3: Drawn and Quartered

Setup: Spearhead (table quarter deployment zone), two objectives in the other table quarters, against Chaos Demons on a fairly open castle board.

Result: Massacre, all bonus points.

Battle: I set up in the more dense portion of the board, which turned about to be huge. Demons rolled for the second half of their army to come in, and many of their units scattered into terrain and suffered mishaps while trying to Deep Strike near my units. Drop Pods came down in a wall between two of the larger terrain pieces, creating a cordon largely sealing off half the board and providing tight cover against one of the objectives. All of the units inside the enclosure managed to concentrate fire and eliminate many of the Demon units fairly readily, notably including the Icon bearers. Meanwhile, the Rhino and Razorback block struck out for the other objective. Once the enclosure was secured, the Landspeeders moved out to cover them, while the Predators moved to a halfway position where they could shoot on either objective. Both were important in guarding those troops while they sat on the objective. Devastators got wrapped up in close combat with a Nurgle unit of some kind, while the Sternguard and Tac Squads got bogged down in close combat with a Demon Prince. Late in the game an Icon bearing unit managed to get close enough to the enclosure for a Herald of Tzeentch to Deep Strike onto the objective, contesting it. Fortunately, my Terminators had come down the turn before and were readily able to take it out in a huge volley of fire.

Lessons: Chaos Demons seem tough for the controlling player. With them coming in piecemeal via Deep Striking, there’s just so much opportunity to pick them apart shooting, especially if they’re facing a choice of either coming in far away or risking mishaps. Concentrating on the Chaos Icon bearing units and eliminating them was a good decision, preventing the Demons from coming down on target and massing near my guys. Having many units in a reasonable area, particularly one with a bunch of small pieces of terrain, made the Demon’s Deep Striking fairly difficult and helped a lot, particularly with most of the Icons eliminated before they could really matter.

The Demons army seemed surprisingly more shooty than I expected, having read just a little bit about them but never having played or even seen them played before. They had a number of high strength and template attacks that seemed pretty effective when they could get them in position. By having fairly solid support blocks and concentrating my fire, most of the Demon units were actually eliminated before they could assault, making their shooting actually the most damaging part of their game.

Drop Pods were huge in this game. Their wall kept most of the Demons out, mostly protecting my guys from shooting and assaults, enabling the units inside to concentrate on the few demons that managed to successfully risk Deep Striking into the much more dense area inside the enclosure.

Having the Lascannon combat squad right by the Devastators was very helpful as they were able to move over and support the Devastators when they were assaulted by some nasties. That shifted the combat from a losing war of attrition for the Devastators to a winning war of attrition for the combined Kingbreakers units.

Above all else though, the Librarian was the game maker here. His Null Zone just severely crippled the survivability of the Demons, with many failed Invulnerable rerolls. He more than earned his value for the day in this game.

List

I ran the following for the tournament:

• Librarian, Epistolary, Smite and Null Zone powers
• Sternguard x10, Combi-Melta x5, Drop Pod w/ Beacon

• Captain, Hellfire Boltgun, Digital Weapons, Relic Blade, Melta Bombs
• Tactical, Powerfist, Plasmagun, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod w/ Beacon

• Tactical, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod w/ Beacon
• Terminator x9, Assault Cannon, Chainfist

• Tactical, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Melta Bombs, Rhino
• Tactical, Flamer, Lascannon, Melta Bombs, Razorback w/ Heavy Bolter

• Landspeeder x2, Multi-Melta x2, Heavy Flamer x1, Heavy Bolter x1

• Predator x2, Autocannon x2, Heavy Bolters x2
• Devastators x10, Plasma Cannon x2, Heavy Bolter x2

Unit Performance

Some notes on their performance:

Librarian: I almost took this guy out of the list at the last minute, concerned that he wasn’t bringing in enough points or having enough impact for the points spent. His effect the first two games was again very minimal, but he basically put me on the podium by enabling a massacre in the last round by crippling the Chaos Demon’s Invulnerable saves (Null Zone forces the opponent to reroll Invulnerable saves).

Sternguard: These guys also enact a dramatic entrance, showing up and crippling high profile units. They take a lot of fire for it, but they’re a lot of fun and pretty effective. They’re also solid in close combat, but could stand a Powerfist to fight bigger stuff and take down vehicles.

Captain: Could drop the boltgun to get an extra close combat attack, but originally I kept the boltgun on because he kept doing more shooting than assaulting. I’m torn here. Relic blade was fairly useful. Still not sold on his effectiveness per points, but it’s such a cool model (Emperor’s Champion), that I just can’t part with him.

Tacticals: Generally all performed pretty well, caveat notes about meltas and power weapons below.

Landspeeders: Definitely useful. Although I chose the mixed weaponry because I did not have time to mount a heavy flamer for the one speeder, I was actually happy with it. On several occassions after their primary job of vehicle hunting was basically done, I was able to use the heavy bolter for distance shots supporting other units. However, the flamer was also useful on several occassions when they managed to close with squads, so I wouldn’t drop that either. In each game I also simply put them on the table to begin with, rather than Deep Striking, as there was enough terrain to hide behind in the early game. This was particularly helpful as my opponents largerly put much more fire on the pods than I’d seen in practice games, eliminated their locator beacons.

Predators: Simple, effective, pretty solid. Dakka dakka dakka!

Devastators: Again definitely useful. They struggled in the second game because they had to run onto the board in the Dawn of War deployment setup, but I expected that. With 8–10 men in the squad, these guys have consistently proven very survivable. In these three games with ten guys in, the sergeant and heavy weapons guys never even had to take a save from enemy shooting. The large squad also did better in close combat than expected, though it might be worth considering giving the sergeant a power weapon.

Drop Pods: These give away kill points fairly easily and can hurt a lot of guys if they are hit and explode just after deployment, but they’re definitely awesome. I think their biggest effect is taking the game away from my deployment edge, home objectives, and heavy support units. Their other huge feature is as placeable terrain. In each of the past five games I’ve played I’ve been able to use them pretty effectively as screening walls shielding my guys from shooting and assaults, as well as blocking objective grabs by opponents.

General List Lessons

Heavy weapons? Most of my tac squads run pretty aggressive, with a lot of movement and assaulting. As has become habit since I started adding more Drop Pods and vehicles, they hardly ever got to use their heavy weapons. On the other hand, the less aggressive tac squads definitely made decent use of them; another lascannon for long range pot shots might be useful. I’ll have to think about how to balance these two problems.

Meltas, power weapons. At the last minute I didn’t have time to assemble all of the melta, multi-melta, powerfist, and power sword models I had been proxying, so most of my tac squads got shifted to traditional missile/flamer/chainsword units. A few more Terminators were added to soak up the released points. In the end this wasn’t terrible, but a few more meltaguns would have been useful. This is particularly true in the first game, where I could have taken down more Tau vehicles much more quickly. Similar applies to the powerfists. Power swords would also have been useful for the combats against Chaos Marines.

Large Terminator squads? I’m not sure that larger Terminator squads are particularly more survivable than smaller ones. It seems like anything that can kill Terminators easily can kill a lot of Terminators easily. They also tend to get bunched up a lot, i.e., after Deep Striking, and moving through terrain with their large bases, exposing them to blast weapons, especially plasma cannons. Large groups are also harder to bring down exactly where you want, even with locator beacons on the pods.

Combat Tactics. I made heavy use of the Marines’ Combat Tactics rule throughout all three games, much more so than in previous games, enabling squads to drop out of combat and charge back in. I think a large part of the effect of the Drop Pods is taking the action away from my table edge so there’s no risk in running off the table by doing this. I would hesitate to lose this ability by taking one of the special characters instead of the plain Captain.

Troops. At times I felt slightly light on Troops for securing objectives, and would have been happy with another squad. Securing all of the objectives in the first scenario would have been basically impossible without tabling the opponent anyway, so that’s not really a problem. What would be useful though is a fast-moving Troop squad to do last minute runs into the opponent’s deployment zone and so on, claiming or denying bonus points.

General Lessons

Some overarching things I learned or utilized in this tournament.

Pay attention. In the first game I put a ton of effort into taking down a surprisingly resilient Devilfish, thinking it had a Firewarrior squad inside that was going to try to claim the center objective. Unfortunately, I had already annihilated those Fire warriors, I had just lost track of which transport they’d come from…

Take it down! If something’s worth shooting at, it’s probably worth shooting at alot. For the most part, I only shot at 1 or 2 targets per round, with some exceptions for specialty shots like the Landspeeders going after vehicles, or for mass chaos. My favorite of the latter was at the end of the first game when the Sternguard, Librarian, and Captain all split up at once to shoot and assault three different targets to try and hold them down so they couldn’t contest a nearby objective; it didn’t work though, the Sternguard couldn’t quite tag their Devilfish target.

Move carefully. I’ve trained myself to move, shoot, and assault in a left to right pattern across the board. Obviously there are exceptions when I need to know one result before making a decision, and/or execute some sort of pattern, but in general I try to stick to this. Holding to this pattern as well as pausing at the end of each phase to double check each unit has pretty much eliminated problems I was having, especially in big games, with forgetting that odd small squad remainder or vehicle storm bolter.

Make blocks, have a plan. Conceptually my list was structured into blocks made of several units, as organized above. Each block of these had a specific general role, vague plan, with the overall goal of the units in the block supporting each other closely. So, for example, my Rhino and Razorbacks were one block with the goal of racing for an objective together and covering each other. The Devastators and Predators were another block with the goal of supporting advancing units and concentrated on large units. Even though plans obviously changed often and much, having these general goals was very helpful. Concentrating units is also very helpful and the biggest lesson I have had to learn. In the future I will probably go even farther, with fewer blocks consisting of even more units.

Objective placement. Be very careful in placing objectives! Placing them near each other may make it possible to defend and hold both more easily, but on the other hand may just leave them open if your home forces are assaulted or overrun. Precise placement also has to be considered carefully. Obviously, hiding them behind terrain may help prevent the enemy from getting to or shooting on them, but it also makes it harder for your own units to rush back onto them if necessary.

Wrap-Up

All in all, a great day of gaming (basically 12 hours from setup to tear down with food breaks, etc!). Thanks to Redcap’s for hosting and everyone that came out! I’m definitely looking forward to making some adjustments and trying my luck in the next round.