Dracus' Journal: Happy Birthday 40K / Tournament at the LA Bunker!

Before we start, make sure to check out 40kn00b.com Warflake is having a giveaway as he hit the 150 follower milestone. Lets help him get to 300 followers! Check out his post on the giveaway here http://www.40kn00b.com/2012/02/150-followers-giveaway.html

Now lets start this post off by saying "Happy Birthday 40K!" My new friend "Elric" (from Return of The Gamer) and I went down to the LA Battle Bunker on Saturday for the 25th Anniversary of 40K, and they also happened to be having a 1500 point tournament.

So after waking up at 6:00, driving 30min over to Elric's house to car pool the 2hr or so drive down to the bunker, we were able to put in orders for Forge World and we also picked up the 25th Anniversary pin that they had. The tournament we played was 3 rounds, I brought my "standard" 1500 points Celestial Lions list and he brought Dark Eldar.

1500 points of Celestial Lion awesome!

Well first round I had the pleasure to play against Chaos Daemons. It would be my first time against Daemons with my new army and the first time in a couple years of playing against Daemons at all. It was an all Tzeentch/Fateweaver list with some pretty awesome conversions.

"I'm coming for you!"

Cool counts as Herald on Chariot, he had 2!

This game was interesting in that it was Kill Points, but you had a building in your deployment zone that was worth 2 Kill Points but could only be destroyed by an IC/MC that you nominated before the game stated. My only IC was Vulkan so he was the man in my army. My opponent chose Fateweaver for his unit to destroy my building. This game ended with only the Fateweaver left on the table for my opponent and I still had the majority of my force left.

Most of the fighting happened in the center of the board where it was nice and clear.

Victory Celestial Lions!

We had a couple interesting points in the game where the Changeling forced my Land Raider Crusader to shoot at my Assault Terminators, none died thankfully. And he also forced Vulkan to flame the Land Raider and denied Vulkan the charge on the Horrors! Fateweaver is one tough MoFo! I locked him up in combat on turn 2 with my Assault Terminators and he only too 1 wound in close combat all game. That combat lasted 5 full turns with me failing several 3++ saves but the Fateweaver staying strong.

Then came my favorite time, Lunch! While at the tournament I was introduced to Loken from apocalypse40k.com and apocalypse40k.blogspot.com. Loken, Elric and I went and had lunch and talked about 40k, tournaments, and Apoc. As Loken is "The Man" when it comes to setting up Apoc games in So. Cal. I was able to pick up some good tips when it comes to trying to set up another Apoc game at my local Store.

Now for Round 2! And who do I get to play against? Elric... the guy I just drove about 2 hrs with to get here. This seems to happen to everyone I read about. Elric had gotten a full 20 points on his first game, and I had gotten 19 points on mine, so at least we knew one of us would be in contention for a good placement at the end of the day. As we rolled off I took first turn and deployed. This game we had 3 objectives as well as the table quarters were objectives themselves. So I took this opportunity to combat squad my Tac Marines to give me a 3rd scoring unit.

Bottom of turn 1.

As you can see from the pic above, I deployed in the center of my edge so that I should be able to react to his deployment a little easier. He did a little more of a Split Deployment with his Ravagers, 1 venom, and 1 Raider on my right flank. Then 2 Venoms and 2 Raiders in the center. I was able to take advantage of this a little bit during my first turn, as I focused my force on the center to try and cut down on his mobility. This trapped the rest of his forces in the corner as it would take him 2+ turns to either skirt around me or to fly over to get the other flank.

One big thing that saved my this game was the Melta Alpha Strike. My Ironclad landed in a great spot and popped open a venom with Blaster Trueborn, the Land Speeder Storm took off the Dark Lance from one of the Raider and the Scouts popped open the other Venom with the combi-Melta then multi-charged the Trueborn and the weaponless Raider. They killed most of the Trueborn and Stunned the Raider. This really hurt his mobility with the majority of his force with the threat of the Assault Terminators coming in behind shortly.

At the end of turn 3 or 4 we had to call it due to time... This round and the 3rd round they made really short as round 1 went to long as people showed up late. Elric conceded defeat and gave me full points (20). It was a fun game and Elric had some bad rolls in the first couple turns with having that first Ironclad Dread eating like 10 or so Dark Lance shots and 7 Blaster shots before going down.

Victory Celestial Lions!

Round 3! After the game I was a little confused to the paring for this game as I found out my 3rd round opponent and a loss and a tie in the first 2 rounds. I guess this was part of a "league" that had been going on at the bunker so maybe I cough up to him in "league points"... I am not sure. But anyway!

Space Wolves! My new opponent was Ernie. A nice guy who had a nasty Long Fang list. He was running something like 15 missiles, witch is understandable with Wolves. He also had 2 units of Gray Hunters in Drop Pods, 1 Gray Hunter Squad in a Rhino, and 3 Razorbacks (2 Twin Las, 1 Las/Plas) for the Long Fang squads. My opponent won first turn and deployed first. With a large building on his side of the board (I was back on the same table as round 1) he deployed 2 units of Long Fangs in the building and the 3rd unit on a bridge that went over some difficult terrain. The Rhino was hid on the side of the building (spearhead deployment) and the Razorbacks were kind of on the outskirts of everything as a buffer.

I did kind of a standard deployment with the LRC in front close to the building with the Long Fangs, the Rhino behind it to block LOS. Combat Squaded the Marines to put the missile in a building in my deployment and hold the home objective. And the Storm was on the opposite flank as the LRC so in the scout move it can hide behind a building in an empty quarter.

I stole the first turn and made excellent use of it. I was able to destroy all 3 of my opponents Razorbacks and killed off some of the Long Fangs that were on the bridge. My opponent did not like that much and in a furry of missiles killed the Ironclad and immobilized the Land Raider, and dropped the Gray Hunters on my home objective.

Bottom of turn 1 on my opponents side.

On turn 2 my shooting was rather uneventful and only killed a few long fangs and some of the gray hunters on my objective. We had to call this game off early as we ran out of time. I think we only got through the top of turn 4. I did lose this game at that point, but I think if the game and played out though the 6 turns I would of had a good win if not a tie at the least. I did make 1 major mistake that cost me the game when it was called. I had only 2 Tac Marines left on my home objective and an Ironclad close by. I declared a charge on the Gray Hunters with both the Tac Marines and the Ironclad Dread, but unfortunately the Ironclad was unable to make it into combat though difficult terrain (rolled a 5... and needed a 6 due to him being on the 2nd level of the building). If I had not charged him with my Tac Marines I would have still contested my home objective and the game would have ended in a tie. Oh well you live and learn. It was still a fun game, but Vulkan was a bit sad the he and his Terminators did not get to see any action.

If you look though the haze you can see Gray Hunters ready to mess up some Tactical Marines.

Victory Space Wolves!

As I look back it was a fun day full of new people, new armies, and 40K. What could be better?

Before I sign off I would also like to thank Pat from the 11th Company Podcast for interviewing me about the "40K in a Flash" campaign on episode 107! I had a good time talking with you Pat.