The Debacle on Caldor IV

Adept Kain’s tentacled machine links withdrew slowly from the interface panels surrounding him. He had to cogitate, quietly, outside the noostream for a moment. Would this be his failure, or a last minute recovery from failures made by those before him? Magos Ferdinand was a fool. This whole expedition had been a miscalculation from the start. From the poor research findings Kain had reviewed so far, he doubted their quarry had ever been more than a myth to begin with. And now the expedition’s position had grown untenable, with incalculably valuable resources being thrown after a madman’s quest. Slowly re-interfacing, he assented to the sector governor’s request for exterminatus. Time to end this throne-cursed debacle.

Yesterday PAGE organized a campaign tournament at Redcap’s Corner: The Debacle on Caldor IV. The core of the event was a fairly rigorous tournament, the missions, scoring, and rules for which we’d hold up against pretty much any tournament around in terms of being fair and formally specified. Around that we wrapped a team event with a light storyline, with the Forces of Order and Legions of Discord working to carry out a strategic mission in the waning hours of the planet’s existence.

All in all it seemed to go really well. Ten players showed up and divided neatly into the two teams. Order carried the day handily, but individual player standings were reasonably balanced.  Our victors:

  • Overall Winner—Order: Patrick S, Imperial Fists (78/100 points)
  • Overall Winner—Discord: Mike P, Tyranids (72/100 points)
  • Best General: Byron D, Grey Knights + Inquisition (45/60 points)
  • The Artiste: Rob W, Imperial Guard + Inquisition (23 votes)

Full details, including the mission packs and other rules, are up on the event webpage. Full results with breakdowns are in the final spreadsheet. More photos are up in the Flickr gallery.

Rob W's now "award winning" Imperial Guard.

Rob W’s now “award winning” Imperial Guard.

Background

Caldor IV—once a luscious knight world, now a smoldering husk. Both The Dark Ages and The Heresy it outlasted, but the paranoia and isolation of those times set the kernels of future failure. Over the following eons the houses ossified and turned inward, gazing at all about them with mistrust, then fear, and eventually war. Centuries of infighting eventually slagged the verdant paradise into a charred wasteland. In recent centuries the Mechanicum has resettled the planet, though their motivations for doing so are unclear. Intrigued, the planet has since been the target of continual raids and exploratory incursions by the more intrepid and curious pirates, heretics, and xenos. Weary, stretched to the breaking point, the defense forces have finally all but collapsed after decades of unceasing combat. Sensing the weakness, foes of the Imperium have all piled in, lusting for blood or other, more secret, goals. Beseeched by the Mechanicum, loyalists throughout the sector have poured in to match, deepening the ever swirling maelstrom of the planet-wide conflict. But time and resources have run out.

The Forces of Order and the Legions of Discord are fighting over the war torn Caldor IV and whatever spoils it may have. The planet has three continents: Apollon, Hermea, and Juno. Each of them has a variety of areas—city, industrial, raw wastland, etc.—represented by the different tables in play. Apollon contains the Mechanicus headquarters and primary forges. Hermea has a disproportionate amount of the population. Juno… is not a place people go lightly.

The Legions of Discord have formed an uneasy alliance seeking The Scythe of Unbound Light, a war machine of incredible power believed to be still buried amid the planet’s vast fields of rubble and dunes. Their scryers believe it’s on Juno but will not stake their lives to it, and the precise location is necessary to retrieve it anyway.

The Forces of Order are simply trying to extricate themselves as cleanly as possible from a rapidly worsening quagmire. Originally the Mechanicum came to the planet in search of the Scythe as well, but by this point only fools believe it still exists or ever did. Magos Ferdinand, head of Mars’ expedition, is such a fool and refused to leave the planet until it was too late. Preparations are now underway to virus bomb the planet, the situation having been deemed irrecoverable. However, despite his foolish belief in ancient myths, the Magos’ vast machine knowledge is too valuable to throw away easily. Any effort necessary should be expended to retrieve him if at all possible before Exterminatus. He is assumed to be on Apollon, but his location has not been confirmed since the last round of heavy fighting began.

Mike P's Tyranid swarm sweep the skies clean.

Mike P’s Tyranid swarm sweep the skies clean.

Mechanics

First round pairings are randomly assigned. Starting with the Legion of Discord, the teams alternate assigning a pairing to a continent and the other team picking a table for that pair. In the second and third rounds, the teams alternate putting forward a player and continent, beginning with the team currently leading in total victory points and descending down the win/loss brackets. The other team responds with an opponent and table. The two players must not have already fought, and must be within the closest possible win/loss brackets.

The point of choosing continents is to achieve each or block team’s campaign objective: Discord is trying to locate and retrieve The Scythe of Unbound Light, while Order is trying to do the same for Magos Ferdinand. Two sets of envelopes are prepared with search result cards for a campaign divided by the three continents. Cards reveal the precise location of the target, a clue as to its continent,  a false lead, or nothing. At the end of each round both teams draw search results for each continent they control. Control is determined at the end of each round by the accumulated sum total victory points earned in that continent so far.

The Legions of Discord stare into the abyss after a rough first round.

The Legions of Discord stare into the abyss after a rough first round.

At the end of the day, the team has achieved its campaign objective if it has found the precise location of its target and controls that continent. It still achieves this if it reveals the location in the last round and controls that continent. If one team achieves its campaign objective and the other doesn’t, it achieves a strategic victory. If both teams achieve their campaign objectives the war has been a strategic draw. If neither team achieves their objectives, they have both failed. Tactical victory over the planet is determined by total victory points earned toward the campaign: Match results plus potential bonuses.

To those bonuses, there are a variety of covert missions available. In the second and third rounds the bottom players on the team behind as well as the bottom player on the leading team are given covert missions from a random pool of them. If they achieve these they receive a boon for their team irrespective of match results, such as additional points toward continental control or extra search results.

The Forces of Order discuss their strategy of "We don't know what we're doing, but we're doing it well, so let's keep doing it."

The Forces of Order discuss their strategy of “We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re doing it well, so let’s keep doing it.”

Narrative

With an all out press to secure the Magos and any other retrievable resources before the planet befalls Exterminatus, the reinvigorated Forces of Order rebuffed the Discord aggressors and took a resounding lead. Control over all of the continents yielded possible clues to the Magos’ location, while the Legions did not advance in their campaign.

Concentrating on the wastelands, in the second round Discord retook control of Juno but learned no information. A successful Night Lords covert mission on Hermea infiltrated the Order tactical networks through an exposed data port revealed the disposition of Order forces on the continent and substantially closed the gap for control. On Juno Discord managed to capture an Order Dark Angels sergeant alive for interrogation but he knew nothing. Meanwhile, Order firmly secured the primary Mechanicum installations on Apollon and was able to scour the data records, learning the precise location of Magos Ferdinand: Cowering in hiding among the hab blocks of Hive Promethe on Hermea.

Barreling toward Exterminatus, Discord locked up control of Juno but to no avail as their scryers had failed: A daring Night Lords covert raid through Apollon actually located The Scythe at the last possible hour but it was irretrievable, buried in the previously lost Library of House Etrakus, deep in Order’s stronghold on the continent. Simultaneously, a contingent of Space Marine commanders forcibly picked up Magos Ferdinand and carried him into a waiting shuttle as the virus bombs began launching, ending his “foolish” quest. Perhaps fortunately for him, none were the wiser as to what had been right under his forces through all the years of the Mechanicum’s expedition…

Tom M's terrifying Night Lords mutants lurk in the shadows...

Tom M’s terrifying Night Lords mutants lurk in the shadows…

Outcome

In the end Discord controlled the mysterious wastelands of Juno, found but did not secure The Scythe of Unbound Light, and claimed 123 victory points. Order controlled the Mechanicum headquarters on Apollon and the population centers on Hermea, secured Magos Ferdinand, and claimed 175 victory points to take the day. Along the way:

  • A regiment of Imperial Guard was sent to an unimportant continent to be literally fed to a Tyranid onslaught in vague hopes of achieving absolutely no strategic import…
  • The Night Lords carried out several successful covert missions under cover of darkness, winning their true objectives while harrying Order forces.
  • Grey Knights took desperate risks to decisively battle and expel Lord Typhus, Herald of Nurgle in a wall of reality ripping psychic attacks.

And many other acts of bravery, treachery, and foolishness were undertaken.

Patrick S' Sentinels of Terra will hold any ground.

Patrick S’ Sentinels of Terra will hold any ground.

Next Up

All in all the event seemed to work out well. The rules and scoring capture the crew’s current consensus on how to balance 40k a bit, as well as incentivize hobby aspects and casual social play, without being subjective, informal, or applying outright bans. I think that has already had effect on who came out and what they brought, mostly on the hobby aspects as balance isn’t generally a huge problem at Redcap’s. We noted several minor tweaks to make to the specific missions used and their basic template, and have a good number of thoughts on further tuning these campaign mechanics to keep the narrative competition a bit tighter. Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

The most tragic outcome of course though is the virus bombing of Caldor IV, a regular setting for PAGE events, in several game universes now. We’ll undoubtedly have to quietly retcon that to avoid actually coming up with a new planet…

Again, full details, including the mission packs and other rules, are up on the event webpage. Full results with breakdowns are in the final spreadsheet. More photos are up in the Flickr gallery.

We are scheduled to run another 40k event at Redcap’s on December 20th. That is tentatively planned to be a skirmish campaign tournament using our Recon Squad variant on the traditional 40k Kill Team rules and ending with our Cataclysm mini-Apocalypse pile-in. See you then!

Never fear, the Maynarkh are here! Lovell H's alternate Necrons for the Forge World dynasty.

Never fear, the Maynarkh are here! Lovell H’s alternate Necrons for the Forge World dynasty.

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!

NOVA Open 40k Trios Recap

kingbreakers-iconThis year I went to the NOVA Open weekend for the first time. I went with Colin & Jason W for the Trios Tournament and 40k Narrative Warlords+Nightfighter, while John L and Carl also went for the two Narrative tracks. The Harmons also came down for the Warmachine/Hordes and Infinity tournaments. I’m hoping to have a couple posts up this week recapping the whole affair.

First up is my first event: The Trios Tournament with Jason and Colin. It’s a cool format, in which three players team up to each play two 1000pt doubles games and a single 2000pt solo game; each round the team gets to choose the doubles based on their match opponents and mission. There was also competition for Best Theme, encompassing the narrative story of why your armies are fighting together, the display board, and overall appearance. We spent a ridiculous amount of time on this part when we should have been just practicing. Our final story was vague but something along the lines of the Kingbreakers emerging triumphant from their fortress monastery after returning with Dark Angels, Imperial Fist, and Blood Angels friends to retake it years after the fall of Forestway. In the end sizable chunks of our armies weren’t finished, barely primed in my case, and there was no detail painting on the fortress, but the sheer size and detail combined with the all-Space Marine armies made it look good.

The display board two weekends out.

The display board two weekends out.

The fortress the day before the tournament.

The fortress the day before the tournament.

Furiously painting literally through the night going into the tournament.

Furiously painting literally through the night going into the tournament.

The chapter rides forth.

The chapter rides forth.

The wall-top shrine.

The wall-top shrine.

No castle's complete without a turbo-laser.

No castle’s complete without a turbo-laser.

The Knight Errant Greenheart, sans pants, goes out from the main gate.

The Knight Errant Greenheart, sans pants…

A few more photos of the individual models and armies are in the Flickr gallery.

Game 1

Jason & I vs Ryan & Andy’s Necrons and Eldar: Crushing loss (1 to 10). This mission was cumulatively scoring objectives, all three of them placed along the diagonal outside the Vanguard deployment zones. We just didn’t score enough points each turn to keep up. Their Wave Serpents had more than enough mobility to contest my Drop Podding guys on the quartile objectives, with Objective Secured overriding my Sternguard on one. Critically my third Drop Pod did not come in from reserve in time to contest the central objective and prevent the Necrons from swarming all over it. Meanwhile a Crimson Hunter went wherever it was needed and blasted away at our Imperials.

The Silent King's troops awaken.

The Silent King’s troops awaken.

Kingbreakers huddle up amongst the ruins of a xenos invasion.

Kingbreakers huddle up amongst the ruins of a xenos invasion.

Game 2

Colin & I vs Todd & Ronald’s Eldar and Tyranids: Crushing win (5 to 2). Five objectives, scored equally at game end, Hammer and Anvil zones. We were up for a while, but they pulled it together to make it a close run thing in the endgame. Our forces spent a lot of time fighting back Tyranids, which left a lot of very mobile Eldar to branch out at the end toward multiple objectives. Fortunately we had the right guys in just the right places all over the board and made some lucky rolls in the closing moments: Scouts assaulted some Windrider Jetbikes that had swooped onto our home objective and made enough saves to contest the ground; Tacticals made a hard rush on foot to run around a Wave Serpent and contest Dire Avengers on our previously unprotected home flank by mere fractions of an inch; Terminators crushed several monsters to claim table center; Belial and Captain Angholan tanked a punishing amount of fire to shield Sgt Scolirus as he powerfisted a Wave Serpent into oblivion in the last moment to claim an opposing home objective. All of that happened in the bottom of the last turn as time ran out!

Big momma.

Big momma.

Flyers inbound!

Flyers inbound!

Terminators flood the corridors of the ravaged city.

Terminators flood the corridors of the ravaged city.

Belial and Scolirus lead the forward charge.

Belial and Scolirus lead the forward charge.

Game 3

Me vs Jason’s Salamanders: Minor loss? Draw? I can’t actually remember and didn’t write it down, but believe the former. Mission was Dawn of War deployment, four objectives plus the Relic at table center (a moveable objective). This was also a close game, though I’m fairly confident that if I had another shot at it I could convert this near mirror match into a win. By this point I was going on nearly no sleep for many days between prep, driving, and non-40k activities in the preceding week, and had been playing 1000 points for both of the previous games. All of a sudden I had to switch mindset to a 2000 pt army and just didn’t make the transition well. For literally more than half the game I totally forgot about Coteaz, and made a number of other similar mistakes throughout. Without that sloppyness alone I think it would have ended very differently. One interesting thing was that Jason’s Thunderfire Cannon really hampered my Knight, forcing it to move as if in difficult terrain via Tremor shells and preventing it from clearing the large line of sight blockers at table center fast enough to get shots on critical targets.

Salamanders come-a-knockin' to settle once & for all if Kingbreakers are actually a descendant chapter or not...

Salamanders come-a-knockin’ to settle once & for all if Kingbreakers are actually a descendant chapter or not…

Squad Titus corners some jerk named Vulkan.

Squad Titus corners some jerk named Vulkan.

Outcome

I have no idea where we placed, but I’m sure we were down near the bottom. Results were never published as far as I know. This was one of the three execution areas to be improved in an otherwise really fun & interesting tournament. Another was that set-up, judging, and player voting for army theme & appearance was somewhat slap-dash and disorganized. Hardly anybody actually saw our display because there was no set time or space for checking out everyone’s setups and ours wasn’t practical to have up all day, something we have to keep in mind for the future. Finally, the rule packet could also have stood quite a bit of editing and clarification, which we’d be happy to help with. However, the TOs Troy and James were great guys and it’s a fun, novel tournament format. I really enjoyed it despite not doing well. I think I’d like to see the solo mission reduced in points so it’s less of a leap from the 1k games if you play it at the end of the day, but also appreciate the challenge of handling both and making that transition. I would definitely be up for this event again.

In the end though we did win the Best Theme award. Another team apparently actually won the voting, but they also won the tournament overall so we got bumped up. This was pretty cool, and definitely rewarded both the effort on our fortress monastery display board as well as not going with a more powerful but random, non-fluffy collection of armies.

Again, a few more photos of our armies and many from the games are in the Flickr gallery.

The team w/ tournament organizers James and Troy at the awards ceremony.

The team w/ tournament organizers James and Troy at the awards ceremony.

Well, guess we're doin' Space Wolves for next year's armies...

Well, guess we’re doin’ Space Wolves for next year’s armies…