The Weekly Round-Up: Dec 7

Hello all! Well, the first of 2 tournaments are now done. This tournament in Petawawa was a lot of fun. All of the tournament rounds used unique scenarios to make the games much more interesting and challenging. The tournament also allowed for unbound armies (which for non 40K readers, means you can take what ever you want with no restrictions) and only one person really took advantage of that out of 10 participants. Otherwise now, I'm gearing up for my next tournament in Kingston next week and pushing through some last minuet painting to get ready for that tournament.

So I'll start with the recap of the Petawawa tournament. There were 4 rounds, each one was a 2 hour match. Each round had a unique scenario and each person could bring an 1850 unbound army. I brought a Farsight primary detachment with a Fire base support cadre for some anti-tank. Though, because I knew there would be a bunch of objective to take, I only took the one compulsory battlesuit squad, while bringing 2 fire warrior squads mounted in devilfishes. So, in keeping with my tournament traditions, I came in dead last! I'm not surprised by that though. For me, it was my first time playing in this meta, and I swear the dice Gods were against me as I could almost never hit anything and when I did, I didn't hurt it. But hey, I like to be at the end of a list, whether I'm first or last, ha! Anyways, I did win some dice ironically. Guess I'd better use them next week to see if that changes my luck with rolling dice!

Round 1
Tau Vs. Grey Knights
Primary/Secondary Objective: Hold table quarters / Hold center of table
Major Loss (for Tau)

So in this scenario, each player's most expensive unit was put in "stasis" on the adjacent corner of the player's deployment corner. It was "unlocked" once a friendly unit touched it and could be used as normal in the subsequent phase. Otherwise, the "stasis" unit was unusable and could not be hurt or targeted for anything. For me, based on how Battlescribe did up my list, we worked out that the Fire base formation was one unit, and for the Grey Knights, it was one of his Storm Raven Gunships.

Grey Knights went first. Using his teleporting Knight suits, he reached his flyer right away. I reached mine by turn 2. We began to posture for the table quarters but with my dice working against me, his Knights moved in and swept through my ranks. By turn 5, it was a draw for the primary objective with each of us holding a quarter with one contested. He had the center for the secondary. Unfortunately, we successfully rolled to play out a full 7 turn game and I pretty much got tabled trying to hold my ground.

Round 2
Tau Vs. Demons
Primary/Secondary Objective: Hold Warp Gates (One in center of each table quarters and one in the center of the table) / Kill Points
Major Loss (Tau)

So, in this scenario, there were five warp gates which were also objectives. Any non-super heavy vehicles, gargantuan creatures, or regular vehicles could use them. You could enter them and come out a random one based on a dice roll (on a six you chose!).

So in this round, I faced the only truly unbound army which consisted of 9 Flying Demon Princes. Long story short, they seized the initiative, flew across the board and touched my army. And since Tau don't like to fight with their fists, it was a short game. I was tabled by turn 5, but the game probably only lasted 20 minuets, ha. It gave me a chance to watch the other games and get a good look at the other armies. But, as a moral victory, I killed 2 1/2 Demon Princes.

Round 3
Tau Vs. Demons (and allied Imperial Knight)
Primary/Secondary Objective: Hold Objectives (same placement as Warp Gates form previous round) / Kill Enemy HQ choices (Most and least expensive unit if no HQ in army)
Minor Loss (Tau)

So, for this scenario, each player had 2 deployment zones, each diagonally across the board from each other. When deploying, you rolled to see which corner your unit went to, and anything that couldn't fit was placed in reserve. The other unique part was that on turn 3, each player removed one of the table quarter objectives. This means there would only be 2 quarters that would matter and the center of the board.

This round saw most of my army deploy in one corner with three squads in the other. It was more even for my opponent. This match saw me marred by poor dice rolling too, and not enough effective anti-tank to handle the swamping amount of Chaos constructs as they lumbered across the board. While I did reap a fair toll on them, I just didn't have enough power to stop them. By this point, I learned that I just need to buy a ton of battle suits and run Farsight armies the way they are suppose to be run, with lost of battle suits. Anyways, we did kill each others War Lords, so we tied the secondary objective. This round also contained the moment of the tournament for me. One the last turn, my Ethereal leader and his squad were hiding in a forest. The Chaos machines fired and killed the squad as they threw themselves in front of the hits to save the Ethereal. However, 3 wounds got through and the Ethereal had to take 3 Feel No Pain (6+) tests. He past all three as I rolled triple 6's. And while the next shot still killed him, that was the most epic moment of the tournament.

Round 4
Tau Vs. Tyranids
Primary/Secondary Objectives: Modified Kill Points / Hold center of table objective
Minor Win (Tau)

So this round was pretty much a straight up brawl. The modified kill points was that each unit had 1 chip. Once that unit kill another unit, you won that chip. So you wanted each of your units to get 1 kill to get as many chips as you could.

This was the one round where I had a slight advantage. I had a lot of shots to fire, but he had a lot of models to kill. This ended up being a tight game as I squeaked ahead by one chip to take the win. Unfortunately for me, (but probably very lucky for him) a unit of 19 gargoyles tied up my Riptide leaving both those units fighting each other all game. In the end, I managed to bring just enough hurt to strip him of his Venomthropes' cover saves and rip the Guants apart with pulse fire and lots of smart missiles. But he had the mother of all Tyranids, the mighty Hierophant! It was all I could do to slow it down while I focused on the easier to kill things. All in all, it was a very good match.


As a quick recap of my painting, I'm just trying to get the base of the Harpy finished, 8 Termagants, and the Imperial Knight done. I should have it all done by Friday. I don't have any shots, but I'll through some up next week along with the tournament recap. If I have the time this week, I'll do up some proper battle reports for each of the rounds. Until next week!

Czar Ziggy