Berks PA Doubles @ Railyard

kingbreakers-iconSaturday the dynamic duos of Colin and Brett and John L and I went out for a Berks PA 40K Doubles Tournament at Railyard Hobbies. First of all, that place is amazing. I haven’t been to the Railyard before, and it blew my mind.  It’s ridiculously huge, and the terrain building supplies are all but endless. Definitely a good tournament venue, and though a bit out of the way from Center City Philly, potentially worth the trip for terrain materials and tools.

Armies were 1500 points per player, battle forged but no other restrictions. Both players on a team fielded a warlord. All partners were treated as Allies of Convenience. A single psychic warp charge pool was shared.

Eight teams showed, with various Marines, Imperial Guard, Daemons and Chaos Marines, a small Eldar presence, Necrons, some Imperial Knights, a couple more Knights dropping out of a Thunderhawk, and oh yeah a C’Tan and his buddies who just happen to also be Knights. Photos are in the Flickr gallery.

For the Emperor.

For the Emperor.

Armies

John and I fielded what I feel is a well balanced and relatively normal army. Originally we were going to divide into John on offense and me on defense. But then we were both busy and didn’t coordinate at all, so we wound up with a combined thrust across backfield, midfield, and the frontline.

On the Raukaan side:

  • Epistolary w/ The Gorgon’s Chain
  • Ironclad Dreadnought w/ Drop Pod
  • Sternguard x5 w/ 5x Combi-Melta, Drop Pod
  • Tacticals x10 w/ Meltagun, Lascannon, Lascannon Razorback
  • Tacticals x10 w/ Meltagun, Lascannon, Lascannon Razorback
  • Stormtalon Gunship
  • Stormtalon Gunship
  • Centurion Devastators (Grav-Cannons and Grav-Amps, Hurricane Bolters)

On the Kingbreakers side:

  • Captain Angholan (Vulkan)
  • Squad Harmon (Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Melta, Drop Pod)
  • Squad Scolirus (Tacticals x10 w/ Powerfist, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod)
  • Squad Harbinger (Tacticals x5 w/ Combi-Melta, Meltagun, Meltabombs, Drop Pod)
  • Scouts x5 w/ Sniper Rifles
  • Devastators w/ 2x Plasmacannon, 2x Heavy Bolter
  • Knight Errant Greenheart (generic melta Knight)
  • Inquisitor Hersch (Coteaz)
  • Imperial Bunker w/ Void Shield

The few “gimmicks” in there are the Knight, Coteaz, the Void Shield Bunker, and the Librarian with The Gorgon’s Chain hanging out with Centurions hoping to cast Invisibility on them. Well, ok, maybe that’s a couple of gimmicks.  But it’s no re-rollable 3++ on a 6 HP model or a world-ending god shard. And it’s a solidly fluffy, Marines-out-for-a-stroll force composition.

IMG_9026

Come get some!

Round 1

First up we faced Ethan and Dustin with Imperial Guard and Space Wolves with a Knight. Mission was Dawn of War (12″), five objectives, double value Slay (effectively quadruple if you tagged both opposing warlords), Linebreaker, and bonus points for killing both opposing warlords while losing none of your own.

These guys did a good job deploying, in part through simply having so much to field. We had no juicy, vulnerable alpha strike targets and wound up taking risky drops against the opposing Knight, tucked hard into a corner and surrounded by Guardsmen. One Combat Squad went well off course but luckily toward our own forces, and bunkered down in ruins on an objective until it had a chance to pop out late-game and help slag a Punisher. The joint Sternguard attack put five hull points on the traitor Knight but didn’t manage to take it down before being summarily blown off the board. A lone surviving veteran did tie up the enemy Knight in combat for a turn or two, though this mostly just protected it from our lascannons.

Our Knight meanwhile trudged forward dropping melta on Terminators and Guard tanks, eventually walking onto an opposing objective. Centurions defended our center table and wiped out Terminators that made it to threatening positions. Squad Scolirus and Raukaan Tacticals burned out Creed and the Guard’s Company Command, but paid for it when Captain Angholan was forced to face the full withering fire of a Punisher at point blank and was mortally wounded. With things looking grim in the mid-game,  the Space Wolves and Guardsmen  started taking chances on risky reserve drops with terrible results teleporting in and dropping from flyers, further boosting our momentum.

Scoping out the battlefield.

Scoping out the battlefield.

Creeeeed!

Creeeeed!

Notes

We wound up with all the objectives and secondaries, only missing out on max points by losing my warlord. Unfortunately I took a bunch of chances on Angholan withstanding the Punisher, trying to tank wounds on him rather than his squad. He actually made it through the main gun pretty ok, but I forgot it would also then be shooting heavy bolters and a stubber at him and it was just too much. On the upside, it seemed like almost nobody got this bonus either.

The big thing here was that we had a bunch of weapons to fight Terminators, enough alpha strike and mobility to pen their army up against their back line, and nothing especially fearful of the Guard’s large blasts or heavy weaponry. Our small Combat Squads all over the place made for inefficient blast targets, and a combination of good line-of-sight blockers and the Knight’s shield rendered the missile launcher and lascannon teams largely moot until we could take them out.

Aaaaaahhhh!!!

Aaaaaahhhh!!!

Round 2

Next up was Zack and Brad with Imperial Guard and Grey Knights. Mission was Vanguard deployment (corners) for table quarters control with bonuses for Slay, surviving friendly Warlords, and no enemy units in your deployment zone.

Joint Sternguard blew up a Landraider, dumping out the many Purifiers inside on foot, far removed from our central area. The Sternguard along with reinforcing Raukaan Tacticals and an Ironclad Dreadnought spent the battle in an ongoing fight with them before eventually prevailing.  Our Knight got an early lucky hit torching the Grey Knights warlord and his bodyguards. Greenheart and our lascannon teams then wore down a squad of plasmacannon Sentinels before they could target our Centurions. Squad Harbinger put a lot of wounds on a Dreadknight, which then shunted right into the middle of half a dozen Raukaan lascannons. Captain Angholan and Scolirus spent the battle in assault with a group of Bullgryns protecting their Lord Commissar, eventually smashing her. A late arriving Vendetta and Valkyrie harried a thinly held rear table quarter, but were slowly attrited away by Stormtalons and lascannons.

No further!

No further!

Aaaahhh again!

Aaaahhh again!

Notes

We wound up with max points in this one, controlling all the quarters and picking up the secondaries. This battle was very similar to the previous one given the matchup. Again we were fortunate to have many tools, especially the Centurions and Knight Errant, for taking out Terminators. Zack did a great job of drawing it out with his Guard via harrying thrusts all over the board, but with us largely taking out the Grey Knights early on we just had too much momentum.

I really liked this mission. I wouldn’t want to replace standard objectives with table quarters, but it’s a good mix-in. One thing I liked was that because it’s harder to calculate on the fly, and in some ways easier to swing at the last minute, it can be much less clear who’s ahead and by how much, raising the tension throughout.

You're following the wrong path, commissar!

You’re following the wrong path, commissar!

Round 3

Finally we faced Mike and Al with their four Imperial Knights and Necron C’Tan army. Mission was Hammer and Anvil deployment (long axis) for a combination of kill points and objectives, with bonuses for Slay and each surviving troop unit.

All three objectives wound up placed in a short line along the table center cross axis. We mostly positioned far forward, as near to them as we could, and held on as long as possible. Join Sternguard got a good drop on one of the opposing Knights but its rerollable save via the Adamantine Lance formation shrugged it all off. The Knights and C’Tan hung back for several turns pinging away at our threatening weapons before coming forward supported by Night Scythes. From there the forces of good got slowly rolled up.

Yep.

Yep.

Notes

We picked up a single point for the Raukaan zapping a Night Scythe, and otherwise gave up an obscene amount of points as all our units except one lonely Drop Pod got obliterated. We felt it was a moral victory that we lasted until Turn 7, but the outcome was pretty much foregone from the start. Four Knights with three in an Adamantine Lance, a Transcendant C’Tan, and four Night Scythes with Warriors is a rough force to be looking at across the board. Playing the long axis didn’t help, as it enabled them to lurk out of range of our lascannons for most of the game. I really don’t know how we could have done any better against this army though.

Hands up!

Hands up!

Outcome

We didn’t come in with any tournament bonuses (early list submission, fully painted, etc.), but it seemed like few people did so that didn’t matter. Despite the third round drubbing, John and I held on for second place by a reasonable margin. First place, our Knights+C’Tan opponents, were ridiculously far ahead. A couple people quietly cheered us as the “non-cheese real winners.” I was happy with how we played throughout, and the final results. Depending on how you consider the NOVA Trios (we got crushed on games but got the 2nd best prize), that maintains what I believe is still a straight record of 2nd place results for me throughout 2014.

Thoughts

A couple more general thoughts.

Meta

I’m always hesitant to single out individual units, but it seems very plausible that the Transcendant C’Tan is a gamebreaker. Talking afterward I asked Al what could beat it. He replied “Well, you could buy a Warhound.” I had to work pretty hard to keep a straight face. Eventually he did come up with some other ideas, but they were all generally very specific and substantial purchases.

The Adamantine Lance formation is certainly a huge problem. It makes absolutely no game design sense to take an extremely strong, somewhat undercosted unit like the Imperial Knight, and give a collection of them huge bonuses for no additional points cost. Sure, they have to stay within 3″ of each other to get the effects, but that’s barely a limitation for the group in practice. Some of GW’s formations make rules sense to me as a way to fix or buff underpowered units and armies, like the Stormwing formation. A huge problem in frequently being a deliberate cash grab, like the Tyranid supplements (1, 2, 3), but otherwise solid. Others like the Lance though are definitely detrimental to both the game’s affordability and its play.

Lords of war.

Lords of war.

Tournament

The final mission highlighted issues with the scoring approach being used here, and I gather in several of the Berks PA events. Rather than determining games by victory points and then giving tournament points for wins and losses with bonuses for some special conditions, points earned in missions were simply summed throughout. In that last game the entire opposing army would have only given up fourteen kill points total even if we’d somehow managed to destroy everything. Meanwhile, John and I were each fielding that many units. That’s one thing in terms of the problems inherent to kill points missions, but a huge problem for a tournament if that goes directly into the tournament standings. It wouldn’t have mattered, but those last guys got a massive points boost off John & I between the kill points, objectives, and bonuses, unfair to everybody else. In general, tournament points should always at least be capped, preferably normalized.

That matchup was also a good example of where optional continuous scoring can really help balance the game. If we could have scored points throughout by holding objectives then we could have played a more tactical game, sacrificing units to try and hold up the oncoming tide with no expectation of lasting to the end. We all but certainly would have still lost, but potentially we’d have stood at least a chance of not being completed wiped on points, given that our opponents had so few units with which to attempting claiming and holding throughout.

On a final note, three thousand points total is probably too many points for a doubles game. Somewhat counter-intuitively, they tend to run slower anyway. At that many points there’s just a lot going on to begin with, and doubles games can take a very long time. That’s particularly true if at least one side is active in all the phases. It seemed like Colin and Brett really suffered from this, with several of their games cut short when they would have benefited from more turns.

Conclusion

Despite those concerns about the scoring and the serious balance problems built into 40k itself right now, this was a super fun event, well run in a low key but smooth manner and with a great crowd. Berks is going to run another team tournament in January, and I’ll definitely try to make it to that.

Again, more photos are in the gallery.

Wwwwaaaaaahhhhh!

Wwwwaaaaaahhhhh!

NOVA Open 40k Narrative Recap

kingbreakers-iconHot on the heels of the NOVA Open 40k Trios Tournament, Carl, Colin, Jason, John, and I plunged into the 40k Narrative Warlords and Nightfighters tracks. This is a quick look at them and especially my personal campaign. Many, many more photos from my games are in the Flickr gallery.

Kramer Doyle, humanity's commander, sends the Kingbreakers off to space to do battle against unimaginable enemies and impossible odds.

One of the Warlords’ strategy sessions. Kramer Doyle, humanity’s commander, sends the Kingbreakers off to space to do battle against unimaginable enemies and impossible odds.

Scorched Earth

The narrative tracks are essentially an ongoing NOVA campaign in which a coalition of forces, the Virtue, have invaded Earth and another coalition, the Humans/UN, is fighting back. It’s not set in the 40k universe, which is a little weird and possibly not quite as compelling as it could be, but does give the organizers—Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer—a lot of leeway to have a motley, random collection of forces fighting on either side.

This year’s campaign was fought for control of three areas: Cities, Space, and Wastelands, with a number of boards associated with each though they only varied a bit, mostly in look, as each followed the standard NOVA table setup. The teams also nominated secondary discretionary objectives that would be available each round to earn bonus points toward the campaign, but also entailed a long list of various board and terrain rules that would be in play in the different areas. For example, having the first couple discretionaries available meant space boards would have meteors dropping at the top of each player turn. In each round after the first, the team falling behind would be secretly given covert mission objectives that they could work toward in order to gain a substantial amount of campaign points and even things up. The teams were also given a bunch of special stratagem cards to distribute among their players to help tip the scales in various matchups.

Players split off into Virtue or Human as part of registering, and then the organizers brought in a bunch of ringers as needed to balance each session. Nightfighters played a game each evening. After the first night those players were paired based on Nightfighting results so far, and then the teams alternated picking an area for that match. So, for example, a matchup where a team felt doomed might be put into either an area where the team was either untouchably far ahead or had already given up, to minimize the negative effects of a loss on overall control of that area. For the Warlords games a modified team championship style matching was used, with teams alternating putting forward a player and an area and the other responding with a match. Mid-day strategy sessions among the Warlords invested a lot of thought and discussion towards contingency planning for areas and matchups, though more effort was probably put toward drinking. Before each round there was a brief session to recap the preceding results, narrate the resultant story progression so far, and work out the final pairings and locations.

A pre-round campaign progress briefing from Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer.

A pre-round campaign progress briefing from Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer.

Games

Competing in both tracks of the narrative I got in a full 7 2000pt games. Combined with 3 more for the Trios and an additional Recon Squad game, it was a lot of 40k over the long weekend! These are quick summaries of each narrative match.

Nightfight 1: Eric Hoerger’s massive Imperial Guard blob lead by White Scars bikers. He wound up getting the 4th highest battle points in the GT with this army, though he took a loss in the middle and thus didn’t make it to the top bracket. This was a pretty grueling end to a long day/several days. The bulk of the army was two 50 man Guardsman blobs, with attached Scars bikers that would pile them into assault super quick. It was ridiculous how fast the blobs were moving across the board. In the end I was almost entirely crushed on units but more or less held 2 objectives to Eric’s 3, but he also claimed 6 more points by maxing out discretionaries.

Just after deployment. Yes, in technical terms that is a metric butt ton of Guardsmen.

Just after deployment. Yes, in technical terms that is a metric butt ton of Guardsmen.

The vanguard approaches.

The vanguard approaches.

Warlord 1: Jeremy Chamblee’s Necrons. My Knight got evaporated on turn 1 by 60 Gauss shots after Jeremy seized the initiative and I had not accounted well for teleporting Warrior blobs. After that I scored a bunch of objective points on the first few turns and fought dearly to hold those but slowly got whittled down and lost control going into the asymmetric end-game scoring. Final score was 8 to 9 on objectives in Jeremy’s favor but he claimed 5 more points on discretionaries. I still felt pretty ok about this game though, battling back reasonably well after the substantial first turn set back when the Knight exploded. It was also pretty cool to meet and play someone I recognized from blogs & forums.

Scouts watching the shit go down.

Scouts watching the shit go down.

Wraiths multicharge anything and everything.

Wraiths multicharge anything and everything.

Deathmarks lurking in the shadows.

Deathmarks lurking in the shadows.

Nightfight 2: Jason Spinnern’s Tzeentch. This must have been a physically brutal game for Jason, immediately following the first day of the GT, just like the first Nightfight round was for me immediately following the Trios. I felt pretty good about the matchup, I’ve been doing well against Tzeentch. My current stock army has enough shooting to ground and take out some FMCs, expendable units and an assault blocker to tarpit and tackle Screamers and remaining daemons if I can get in position, and enough blasts and general shots to quickly whittle down horrors and start reducing psychic dice. In the end I claimed max points for this on the regular game, holding all 6 objectives as well as taking 6 points for the discretionaries, though I did not manage to claim the Human covert mission as well.

Caw! Caw!

Caw! Caw!

Like ships passing in the night...

Like ships passing in the night…

Chomp! Chomp!

Chomp! Chomp!

Warlord 2: Connor Carey’s Tyranid/Eldar combo. I took a risk by taking the fight deep into the enemy ranks at the back of the long axis, hoping to take out the core of his Synapse early. A single Zoanthrope survived with a remaining wound after the alpha strike however, the death of which would have really swung the game my way. As it was my backfield shooting took care of the Gaunt hordes pretty handily and I felt well up for a while. But the opposing Wraithknight and Wraithguard started piling S10 shots into my Drop Pods for easy kill points. To make it worse, the asymmetric mission rules handicapped my ability to claim KPs as each of my units could only score once. I did ok at spreading kills around, but it still cost me points compared to what I actually eliminated. Final score was 5 to 11 in his favor as a result and we both picked up 5 more on discretionaries.

Into the heart of darkness!

Into the heart of darkness!

Tyranid infest the local ecclesiarchy church.

Tyranid infest the local ecclesiarchy church.

Forward, ho!

Forward, ho!

Nightfight 3: Joe Johnson’s Adamantium Lance triple Knights with Eldar Crimson Hunter and Wave Serpent escorts. This was a pretty ridiculous list. A bunch of us on the human team spent a lot of time talking about it, but no one really had great answers. The Adamantium Lance formation grants re-rollable saves on the Knights’ Ion Shields as well as D3 Hammer of Wrath attacks and re-rollable charge distance, for no extra points cost, provided they stay within 3″ of the Seneschal (Warlord). Crimson Hunters are awesome escorts for Knights because they have an extra turn and thus don’t fly off the table easily, and are equipped to take out opposing Knights & armour or can go after opposing flyers. Wave Serpents of course are basically one-model gunlines all on their own. I got completely rolled in this game, gaining zero points and giving up the max. One unfortunate thing was that another table revealed the covert mission to the Virtue pretty early, and since that objective was killing things in midfield and running the resulting marker back to the enemy deployment, Joe was able to deny it by just moving his most vulnerable units (single Dire Avengers) back into their zone.

Yep. Trouble ahead.

Yep. Trouble ahead.

Dooooooooom!

Dooooooooom!

Nightfight 4: Craig Valvano’s Eldar, featuring a Revenant Titan! Actually a morning fight due to a schedule flip on the last day. This was kind of a weird game because he was pretty up front about playing for the Infamous Warlord standings, running his Wraightknight off the board from the start, and going for the covert mission, which he achieved. The mission scoring also had a built-in two point imbalance toward the opposing team. Craig went first and rendered the Revenant Invisible, so I took my melta alpha strike elsewhere and basically ignored the big guy as best I could other than scrounging for cover and pinging at it with my Knight until the latter was pulsared into oblivion. Wave Serpents held on tenaciously and wound up being a huge problem, mopping up Tactical stragglers as they ran about trying to tag terrain for the mission. In the end the 2pt imbalance turned the game into a 5-5 draw on objectives, both of us taking 4 discretionaries but him nabbing the covert for a big team boost.

Yep.

Yep.

Dire Avengers leap out to scrub an objective but instead get scrubbed themselves.

Dire Avengers leap out to scrub an objective but instead get scrubbed themselves.

Scouts warily approach an Imperial double agent (for the covert mission this guy flipped sides).

Scouts warily approach an Imperial double agent returning with critical information (for the covert mission this assassin flipped sides but was immediately executed by the Eldar).

Sgt Harbinger stands alone.

Sgt Harbinger stands alone.

Warlord 3: Charles Craig’s Tzeentch. This was a great game to wrap up the campaign. At the bottom of turn one I thought I was about to be rolled off the board: Screamers and Daemon Princes all over my front lines, a Knight Errant coming around my flanks, it was grim. Human team passers-by were giving me condolences. But the Kingbreakers fought back valiantly. After the alpha strike on the traitor Knight did little damage, a bunch of Tacticals and a Landspeeder held on to tarpit and then destroy it. Terminators finally ran a solid wall and tied up the Screamers the whole game until Angholan and Scolirus could drop in and take the Relic off them. The backfield combat squads and Predators took down the most threatening Daemon Prince early after a lucky break on a grounding check. Scouts and the Thunderfire Cannon wiped Pink Horrors off a home objective and then supported the regrouped alpha strike combat squads to whittle down and push back a blob of Horrors on the far edge. We ran out of time against the awards ceremony and called the game on turn 4, scoring it 2 points to 3 in his favor, and a discretionary point or two to him. If we’d played out a couple more turns though I think I could have dealt with the remaining DP and scored a few more points on both objectives and discretionaries while taking away 2 of his; when we ended I’d killed some 1150 points while only losing ~650, and had good positioning as well as the momentum. A great game either way though.

Your weapons are useless, fleshlings!

Your weapons are useless, fleshlings!

Huuuwwwrrr!

Huuuwwwrrr!

Scouts hold down the left flank.

Scouts hold down the left flank.

Captain Angholan and Sgt Scolirus drop in to assist their Terminator brethren and claim the Relic.

Captain Angholan and Sgt Scolirus drop in to assist their Terminator brethren and claim the Relic.

Summary

So, all in all I went a measly 1 for 7 on victories. On the other hand, despite the losses I managed to score enough points throughout to keep myself up in the standings and getting paired against tough armies & players. Until getting obliterated by the triple Knights going into the last half of the campaign I was holding in 4th of 15 or so among the humans. Making things even rougher, my list is fairly balanced and in theory has at least some tools for basically any opponent, so I kept getting put forward as a defending player for the Virtue to throw their best possible army matchup against. Long story short, it felt terrible throughout and things were pretty grim at a couple points, but more objectively I guess I did reasonably and was definitely happy with some of my play toward the end of the campaign.

Dan Boyd, John Lamanna, Carl McLaughlin, Colin Kielick, and Jason Woolf lose their minds over the vintage model bins.

Dan Boyd, John Lamanna, Carl McLaughlin, Colin Kielick, and Jason Woolf lose their minds over the vintage model bins.

Conclusion

Despite the grueling schedule and some bleak points in my personal campaign this was an awesome event and a ton of fun with a good bunch of people. It could use a little more strategic input and decision making from the warlords, campaigning over a map, explicit progression tree, or something like that. The very abstract form of fighting for the three areas though gives a lot of room for dungeon mastering behind the scenes to keep the sides fairly even, and compensating for missing players and so on.

The biggest area to improve I would suggest is that the overall tone is very mixed and could use some additional structure. Pretty much everyone is going into the event with a fairly casual, devil may care attitude. But not everyone’s going into it with casual, fluffy lists. In the Nightfighting track a bunch of guys just brought their GT armies plus 150 points of stuff. In the Warlords track, most guys had pretty standard lists while a bunch basically dropped mini-Apocalypse armies, with a Transcendant C’Tan, Eldar Revenant Titan, and an Adamantium Lance triple-Knight list all making appearances. There were definitely some mismatched expectations and assumptions. I think it’d be good to do something like have two tracks, one for more casual & smaller lists—in particular, so people can’t just play their GT lists—and another for anything-goes Apocalypse at higher points, with people opting into one or the other or potentially bringing a list for each and focusing on one or the other on the fly. The rules and missions could also use a fair bit of editing, which we’d be happy to help with, as well as some streamlining. For example, it’d probably be better to have special rules associated with particular tables rather than the large, easy to forget set of rules based on the discretionaries.

All in all though a fantastic time. I’ve already got it on my calendar for next year!

Again, many more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Steve Carey, Owen Beste, and Bob Birrer give the final narrative briefing at the closing awards ceremony.

Steve Carey, Owen Beste, and Bob Birrer give the final narrative briefing at the closing awards ceremony.

Till next year!

Till next year!

Redcap’s 2000pt Tournament

kingbreakers-iconRedcap’s June tournament was the first for 7th edition. Unfortunately it was very lightly attended, probably mostly due to the start of summer. In particular the two adjacent colleges, Drexel and UPenn, just went on summer break. Pat and John volunteered to team up to make an even four contestants and enable a round robin tournament. We bumped the points up from the planned 1850 to 2000 to make list rebuilding easier for them.

Otherwise this was a straight 7th edition tournament. Benn and Jake made up some new bonus battle point conditions and elaborated new details on the more exotic terrain pieces (Radiation! Tesla Towers!) but the missions followed Redcap’s existing format based on the 5e/6e/7e core missions. Notably, this already includes a simple alternate scoring scheme. For objective control missions you can optionally score one victory point each cumulatively at the start of your turn rather than three VPs each at game end. In annihilation you can opt to score a victory point for every 200pts killed rather than one per unit. No limitation was placed on detachments, unbound armies, allies, or anything else. Unfortunately no one showed up with anything super crazy, despite our hopes.

More photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

Stay on target!

Stay on target!

Army

The least traditional army composition actually wound up being mine, which featured a big stack of five source books: Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Inquisition, Stronghold Assault, Imperial Knights:

  • Combined Arms Detachment: Space Marines (Salamanders)
    • Captain Angholan—Vulkan
    • Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
    • Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multi-Melta, Drop Pod
    • Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
    • Scouts x5 w/ 5x Camo Cloaks, 5x Sniper Rifles
    • Squad Harbinger—Devastators x5 w/ Chainsword+Bolt Pistol+Signum, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
    • Akil—Predator w/ Autocannon
    • Justus—Predator w/ Autocannon
    • Imperial Bunker w/ 2x Void Shields
  • Combined Arms Detachment: Astra Militarum
    • Commander Higgenbotham—Company Command Squad w/ Plasmapistol, Flamer
    • Veterans w/ Flamer
    • Veterans w/ Flamer
    • Armoured Sentinel w/ Plasmacannon
  • Inquisitorial Detachment
    • Inquisitor Coteaz
  • Imperial Knight Detachment
    • Knight Errant

The Predators were last second additions to bump to 2000 pts. Given more time to prep I would probably have kitted up another Drop Pod of Tacticals for more deep striking objective grabbing and camping.

One reason for that particular Guard structure is to have two Combined Arms detachments and together with Coteaz have three options for my warlord:

  • Vulkan if a bonus point condition warranted it;
  • Coteaz if I faced daemons;
  • The Company Commander otherwise.

I wound up using the Company Commander each time to get access to the BRB traits but they did not matter.

In each battle I took all of Coteaz’s powers from Divination as I really only cared about Prescience. Despite this list being a bit all over the place, I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, particularly new elements. I wasn’t planning on spending brain cycles debating between multiple powers. In addition, with two mastery levels I generally wouldn’t have enough warp charge to cast multiple powers.

This was the first time in quite some while that my army wasn’t pretty much entirely painted. That was a bummer, but I decided it was worth it in the spirit of trying new stuff for 7th edition. Unfortunately much of that army I had essentially no experience with. Coteaz I’ve used once before. Guardsmen I used in our January Apocalypse battle but they just sat around in a bunker. The Knight I just assembled this week; I actually had to buy the codex while signing up for the tournament yesterday.

All that said, despite its many parts and source books, for a 2000pt battle that doesn’t seem like an obnoxious list to me and is actually pretty balanced and fluffy. Unfortunately it seems like it would be banned under the restrictions some of the major tournaments are gravitating toward. More on that in a future post.

Let's do this thing!

Let’s do this thing!

Round 1

First up: Carl and his Tau, featuring a Commander, some Broadsides and Marker Drones, a Skyray, 2 Riptides and 18 Crisis Suits. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives), long axis deployment. We both picked alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

On the drop I wasn’t able to land my Sternguard out of line of sight and they got hammered by Riptides on the intercept, yielding First Blood, a 2 VP swing as it also denied me First Blood on the Skyray. Tacticals though came down to contest Carl’s home objective. With all his Crisis Suits reserved and the army preferring not to move out aggressively, that left Carl scoring little in the early going. In contrast the Kingbreakers spread out all over the board and ran up an early lead.

As usual with the alpha strike though and particularly against Tau shooting, the momentum slowly turned and the thinly spread Kingbreakers got rolled back across all quadrants. Exacerbating the issue, the Knight was taken down right in the locus of the army, generating a catastrophic titanic explosion that crippled a number of units. Eventually the bunker’s void shields were broken through and the battlements started taking casualties, notably yielding Slay the Warlord when Commander Higgenbotham and his veterans got fragged by a cover-ignoring blast.

Look at me, I'm so awesome!

Look at me, I’m so awesome!

Outcome

Kingbreakers hold out for the win, 9 objective points versus the Tau’s 3 objective points, Slay, and Blood. Tragically the endgame death of my warlord deprived me of a crushing victory by putting Carl just above half my points.

Analysis

I think Carl’s big issue here was that he incorrectly decided very early on that he would have to table me to reclaim victory from my initial points lead, and he focused entirely on that. Among other things, that’s a risky strategy if you’re not totally sure of the clock; between my infantry movement and his extensive shooting + movement—the many assault jumps in his army take quite a bit of time, effectively adding an entire second movement phase to his turn—this game only went 4 turns. Particularly with those assault jumps giving so much mobility, if he hadn’t lost sight of the objectives he would have been easily able to start cranking out objectives points very soon after his Crisis Suits arrived from reserve.

Random meetings in a dark alley in the 41st millenium.

Random meetings in a dark alley in the 41st millenium.

Round 2

Next up: John and Pat with their Clan Raukaan and Imperial Fists team-up, both using their respective codex supplements. Core elements included 3 lascannon Devastator Centurions, 3 grav-amp/hurricane bolter Devastator Centurions, two Librarians with various relics, a Stormtalon flyer, a Thunderfire Cannon, a collection of Drop Pod Tacticals and Sternguard, and of course meltaguns and lascannons everywhere. The mission was Purge the Alien (annihilation), very much a rarity at Redcap’s. Deployment was 12″ long edges. I chose alternate scoring, they went for normal. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

Ghosts on the drop managed to wound the Raukaan Librarian despite his Centurion bodyguards soaking up wounds. This paved the way for the Librarian to die from Perils of the Warp and yield First Blood and Slay the Warlord. Tactical 1 had little impact on the drop and took heavy casualties but Angholan eliminated the Thunderfire Cannon before expiring to overwatch fire. Most of the Imperial Fists spent the game engaging the Knight Errant en route to their encampment, eventually taking it down as it thrashed through ruins. The Stormtalon buzzed about strafing the bunker’s void shields to hopefully expose it for random lascannon potshots. Everybody else spent the match in a drop pod furball mirror match, with Raukaan and Kingbreakers going blow for blow throughout the trench works and ruins across the board.

Barbarians at the gates!

Barbarians at the gates!

Outcome

Kingbreakers prevail again by a slim margin, 5 kill points plus First Blood, Slay, and Linebreaker versus 6 kill points plus Linebreaker. This was a really great game, with tons of different activity going on all over the board. Not only was it extremely close but it was super hard to quickly gauge the score throughout. Nobody had any real idea who was up or down until the final tally, though I think they thought they were much farther behind than they were.

Thoughts

One notable local meta thing is that Redcap’s reworked their cathedral/dockyard ruins set up quite a bit. It’s now visibly more open, though there’s still a ton of ruins for cover and straight out line of sight blocking. I liked the board a lot before even though its very limited firing lanes hampered me, but the new version is much smoother for 40k play, particularly at the larger end of the points spectrum, and more fair to more armies.

No doubt important in this game was the Sternguard more or less successfully going after the Raukaan Librarian. Him taking a Perils wound was huge, but it was a big deal that the Sternguard got at least one wound on him beforehand. The guy’s tough to kill: Can’t be insta-gibbed by double strength, has a 3+/3++ save, Feel No Pain, and typically hangs around with some 2+ save Centurion bodyguards. Even without the Libby going down though, taking out two grav-amp Centurions in that first turn was a big mental boost. John did come in with Invisibility known to his Librarian, but with two of them down I was much less worried about him being able to shield that unit even before he expired prematurely.

Skeletor says: Protect me, you fools!  With your lives if necessary! And maybe even if not!

Skeletor says: Protect me, you fools! With your lives if necessary! And maybe even if not!

Alternate Scoring

This was the first I’ve seen Redcap’s alternate annihilation scoring, and it might actually have been its first appearance. It was pretty obvious for Pat and John that they should take normal scoring as my list featured a whopping 21 possible kill points, even before any combat squadding. Much of that was also fairly squishy.

On my end, choosing alternate scoring was a mistake that very nearly cost me the round. Glancing at John & Pat’s army they didn’t seem to have a ton of units, certainly an underestimate. None of it seemed super squishy either—not many Rhinos or such, and a bunch of hard targets like Centurions and a flyer. My logic was that alternate scoring would defeat a core strength of Marines: Having a bunch of single dudes or pairs hanging around doing nothing but not yielding up a kill point for wiping their entire unit. This is precisely a big part of how I snuck in the win: By the end I had four near-dead but persistent Space Marine infantry units—3 Tacticals, 2 Tacticals, 1 Sternguard, 1 Scout. Thinking about it more clearly though, 200 pts per Victory Point in alternate versus a straight-up unit per point in normal scoring is too high a tradeoff. For example, you’d have to kill an entire 10 man Tactical (140 pts + upgrades) as well as their transport (35 pts) for that point, versus two under normal scoring, three if they combat squad.

So, under the current Redcap’s rules, my new heuristic is I should all but always choose alternate objective scoring and almost always choose normal annihilation. Alternate annihilation only possibly makes sense if facing an extremely dense Terminator army or such, and even then only if they have large blobs (not the standard 5 man squads) or very expensive kit-outs. I think that logic holds for most armies, so both sets of alternate scoring conditions probably warrant some tweaking, one for being universally better and the other universally worse.

All these void shields and no one brought a fly swatter?!  Damnit!

All these void shields and no one brought a fly swatter?! Damnit!

Round 3

Final match: Colin and his Blood Angels/Dark Angels deep striking bonanza. He brought close to what he announced he would: Belial, 15 Terminators, a Reclusiarch, 2 Furioso Dreadnoughts, a Death Company Dreadnought, Assault Marines, Death Company Tacticals, and Scouts. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives) and table corners deployment. We both went for alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

This was probably the most thought I’ve seen put into objective placement under the new 7th edition rules. I placed mine as hard as possible into diagonally opposed corners, hoping to curtail adjacent deep striking surface area. Colin placed both of his near the center, in opposite directions along the long axis.

Deployment.

Deployment.

Fight!

The Inquisition detects a group of Blood Angels Scouts skulking about outside a continental capital and decides to bring them in for questioning about suspected mutations within their geneseed. Captain Angholan takes this charge a bit too zealously and accidentally flames the initiates to a crisp for First Blood. Hearing their dieing calls for help, equally suspicion-clouded Dark Angels in the sector drop in alongside more Blood Angels to avenge their barbecuing. Kingbreakers call in reinforcements, and before long nobody can back down from the fighting throughout the shanty town surrounding the city.

Far from the Kingbreakers outpost, Belial precision deep strikes in tight quarters and wipes out Squad Titus. The Kingbreakers’ Knight ally is mobbed by Furiosos and assault cannon Terminators, with Angholan nearby but unable to break through copious slum detritus in time to assist before it is detonated. Ghosts make a desperate landing into a massive vat of highly corrosive industrial waste, taking heavy casualties as the veterans struggle to not sink under the weight of their power armor. Their sacrifices are awarded however by perfect positioning and the outright kill of a fearsome Death Company Dreadnought before joining the ongoing firefight echoing down the main avenues.

Up and down the alleyways, Devastators and Predators trade fire with Terminators, screaming balls of plasma charges and pounding autocannon thumps rebutted by the continual chittering of assault cannon hits across the scrap metal structures. Heads tucked low, the Forest Guard charge forward in all directions to reclaim ground for their fallen battle brothers but are repulsed by the raging Blood Angels Reclusiarch and caught short working their way through ruined Drop Pods.

Stick 'em up! --- I can't! This is as much flexibility as I have!

Stick ’em up! — I can’t! This is as much flexibility as I have!

Outcome

Dark-Blood Angels win convincingly, 8 objective points and Linebreaker to 1 objective point and First Blood.

Through turn 3 we were tied, neither of us scoring much on objectives as nearly all were contested. After that though Colin had swept my Troops off and gotten more of his on, quickly racking up the points with three objectives scored on each of turns 3 and 4. Nearly all his army consists of troops, including the Dreadnoughts and Drop Pods, and in several cases trumped my Predators and other units to claim objectives out from under them.

Both of us screwed up and forgot to take a moment to punch a building when we had nothing else to do, and thus gave up a cheap bonus battle point. Always stay on top of your bonus points!

Thoughts

Everybody else chose to go second against Colin so the Deathwing and Pods would come down and they’d have a chance to shoot at him on their first turn. I went first so I could claim First Blood against the Scouts and setup my guys on objectives to hopefully claim points on turn 2. I think that was a reasonable decision, though I have to think more about whether it was best. Among the downsides were letting Colin basically optimally target all my dudes rather than forcing him to go after some objectives blind. It put a lot of pressure on me to instantly build up effective defenses around those objectives to score at least once or twice before probably getting wiped. Compounding the basic challenge there is basically everything in his army having Objective Secured. It’d be a lot easier to do when looking at opposing Sternguard or regular Terminators coming down. All in all, not a ridiculously poor strategy, but a tough road.

In practice though I poorly bubble wrapped the far objective with disembarked Tacticals. In my head I was trying to get a couple shots on the opposing Scouts just in case, and to bubble wrap the Drop Pod a bit. The first of course was completely unnecessary, and the second a lesser priority. That line of thought wound up skewing my deployment around the objective and Belial’s squad was able to contest it, preventing me from scoring it on turn 2. In reality with how my Pod came down I should have been able to deploy those guys to force Belial far enough away from the objective to score that critical point at least once.

Mid-game.

Mid-game.

Somewhat similarly, despite me placing my objectives in the corners, I opted to not build my castle there. That left my control over that objective much much more tenuous, and in fact Colin got a lucky break when my combat squad holding it broke from shooting casualties and ran out of place, costing me another point. Otherwise though my whole castle group would have had extremely limited firing options.

Instead I placed the fortification where the Devastators would have somewhat reasonable firing lanes on both the central objectives, and they did wind up doing a lot. The fort was also then positioned for the Guardsmen to run at either my corner objective or the closer of the central markers.

Unfortunately I wound up not actually executing that well and used my Guardsmen poorly. Timing is everything and I misgauged a bit. I also didn’t utilize my orders well, just through inexperience. Moving toward the corner objective, if my Guardsmen had charged Colin’s Assault Marines a turn earlier instead of rapid firing I might have been able to stall the Blood Angels just long enough for my Predator to score it once. Similarly, I started moving my other squad of Guardsmen toward the central objective late, partly out of neglect and partly fear they’d get shot up too early. I then compounded that by not using my orders to have them shoot + run, or even better to run faster, and potentially get onto that objective to score once.

Stop kicking me! Stop kicking me!

Stop kicking me! Stop kicking me!

Outcome

Despite the crushing loss at the end, I still wound up apparently winning the tournament, though I confess I don’t fully understand the rankings. Carl actually wound up with more battle points than me, with John and then Colin in 3rd and 4th. I’m assuming that whatever scoring was used in Torrent of Fire to run the round-robin—not the way most 40k tournaments are usually done—bracketed me ahead for beating Carl and John, Carl beating both John and Colin, and John beating Colin. Carl also won the painting raffle so I think he came out ahead on loot regardless.

Either way and despite the low attendance, I was pleased to continue my streak of not finishing worse than 2nd this year. The loss to Colin was a blow as I had tried to kit out my army specifically to fight his, but I think with just a bit better play I might be able to swing at least a close game.

Army Thoughts

Scouts continue to be particularly useful in 7th to infiltrate onto objectives way out in no-man’s land. That’s going to be increasingly important through the combination of the new objective placement rules with increasing focus on cumulative and other scoring mechanisms not simply applied at game-end.

Even with my inexperience and some misplay, the Guard contingent did a good job. The bubble wrapping was useful and they actually did some damage in shooting. That core of Company Command + a Veteran Squad or two is basically the cheapest setup for an Allied or Combined Arms detachment, respectively. Taking an Infantry Platoon would incur another ~40 points, trading off the Vet Squad surcharge for a required Platoon Command Squad. This scheme also basically matched the models I had on hand, though I still had to build four plain Guardsmen the morning of the tournament as my others all had obvious special weapons and such. I would definitely consider bringing more Guardsmen just to sacrifice for bubble wrapping both the bunker and the Knight.

Two Combined Arms detachments would also enable both a bunker and a Void Shield Generator. That’s definitely something I’m thinking about, caveat that I think castling up is going to be less and less viable with the newly developing objective placement rules and scoring mechanisms.

No castles, only attack!  Attack!

No castles, only attack! Attack!

The Knight was somewhat disappointing, though not a blowout. It didn’t actually manage to kill hardly anything, but everybody saw it as a huge threat and devoted significant focus toward bringing it down, in and itself a useful thing. I was torn beforehand but currently think the Errant with its melta blast is indeed the better option, compared to the 2x large blast of the Paladin variant. It’s a tough call, but the second blast is probably overkill and the melta bonuses more useful.

With Drop Pods and such increasingly back in vogue the Knight can really stand solid bubble wrapping to stand off melta weapons. It also needs to be kept away from terrain to have maximal impact. Somewhat oddly it moves a very fast 12″ over open ground but apparently—the intent is unclear—moves in terrain like a typical model with Move Through Cover, at most 6″. Note that this is a big debuff for super-heavy walkers versus other super-heavy vehicles, which move 12″ regardless of terrain and can’t immobilize. Given the fire that will concentrate on the Knight, I think you really want it running forward as fast as possible to smash some enemies in assault before it goes down. Just as importantly, that will help ensure the catastrophic super-heavy explosion happens in their lines and not yours.

Seventh

Although a small tournament, this was a great day with a bunch of good players and tight games. It was unfortunate there wasn’t a wider variety of armies to see more of what’s possible under raw 7th edition rules. We also did uncover a whole bunch of things that are either ambiguous or deceptively substantial changes in the rules. But I remain really optimistic about the core of this edition, and am currently as excited about 40k as I was at the start of 5th, which is quite a bit.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

You gonna die, boy! --- Aw, leave me alone, you guys don't even score!  Seriously, you're like the only thing in the game that doesn't anymore!  Just let me have this, it's all I do!  Aauuguguh!

You gonna die, boy! — Aw, leave me alone, you guys don’t even score! Seriously, you’re like the only thing in the game that doesn’t anymore! Just let me have this, it’s all I do! Aauuguguh!