NOVA: SandWyrm's Games Part II

by SandWyrm

Continued from here.

(BTW, We're getting a lot of painting questions. I'll get to them after I finish the tourney reports. -SW)

Ok... So I'm 2 games into the NOVA Open, and my record is 0-2. Not good. And the one victory I did have (Whiskey Challenge) for the weekend was kind of close for comfort. If I was going to have any chance at all at Best Overall, I needed to start winning some games!

NOVA Game 3: Kevin Genson's Chaos Marines

Another "Judge" match with someone who had refereed the invitational. Kevin was running Fabious Bile Chaos Marines. Which made me go "Um... OK" when I saw his list. In a normal tourney this is the kind of list that would make me lick my chops. But with the terrain being what it was, I wasn't sure if it was good or bad.

His list was basically:

Fabious
3 x Chaos Space Marines in Rhinos (2 x Flamer, 2 x Melta, and 2 x Plasma)
2 Squads of 3 Obliterators each
5 Chosen w/Plasma Guns
1 Vindicator

I found out once the game was over that Kevin was playing as a ringer. So I don't know if the list was carefully calculated to be more average in competitiveness, or whether he was bringing the best army he could. In either case, I knew I had to beat this list or hang my head in shame on the interwebs.

Both our attitudes were in the dumper this round, so we decided to play it casual and joke around. That made it the best match I had from a fun standpoint as we threw insults at our troops left and right. :)

The table was fine, apart from yet another LOS-blocking hill in the middle. The mission was Kill Points, Table Quarters, Objectives, with a Dawn of War deployment. I set up the blob in that building on the near-left, while the autocannon HWS went in the "grass".

The game went pretty simply. Fabious rolled up to the hill in his Rhino and got shot off of it. Leaving the bodies of his Chosen to rot as he high-tailed it back to his deployment zone to deny me the winning Kill Point. Everything else but one squad of Oblits died on his side. The lone Oblit contested the center.

My casualties were much less, but for some reason I forgot to grab enough objectives. So we tied on the primary, secondary, and the tertiary. It then went to straight victory points, where I won with 1723 to his 943. It wasn't the best game I've ever run from a competitive standpoint, but at least I didn't lose to Chaos Marines. :)

NOVA Game 4: Brian Hudson's Space Wolves

Things were looking up a bit as I headed into round 4. At least until I saw my opponent. Space Wolves with ThunderCav. Great.

I think Brian was being canny with his list. It was printed in full color with unique names for everything. If you asked him about the names he used "Are these 'Devastators' actually Long Fangs?" then he had a story to tell about why he didn't use regular names for fluffy purposes.

It was all a sham to knock me off my guard. :)


I wasn't fooled. Behind the fluff was a hard list that was very similar to Spag's, but without the drop pod. Instead Brian had taken some Feransian wolves and other gear.

The game was Objectives/Table Quarters/Kill Points, with a Spearhead deployment. We had the worst possible table for me. I was deployed on one hill, he was deployed on the opposite, and we had the center hill between us. The pic above isn't the exact table we had, but it's close.

Since his TWC was hidden behind the hill, I couldn't get LOS with more than 2 units. So I shot up his Long Fangs and Grey Hunters instead; doing a nice amount of damage. Then the TWC moved right over the hill and assaulted my blocking infantry.

Now, this list of mine was created specifically to allow me to torrent TWC down. But one less turn of shooting (because of the hill), plus some very good save-rolling on Brian's part meant that I never got them down to less than 3 models. Though each had a wound on them.

Anyhow, the Thunderwolves came over the hill and killed stuff. He charged into my blob, which bought me 2 extra turns to try and fight off his Grey Hunters coming in from reserve. Then the TWC failed a morale check, ran to within an inch of the table edge, then turned around and assaulted 3 tanks at once.

I don't mean to say that Brian is a bad general, but his approach wasn't exactly subtle or nuanced. He ran a big rock forward and killed me. I have huge problems killing TWC at the best of times, much less when my long range shooting is gimped by the terrain. I think Alex had a similar experience vs. Orks with his Tau.

Anyhow, Brian won it on objectives, 2-1. While I was cleaning up, I realized that I'd forgotten to bring one of my reserve Chimeras on. Which would have allowed me to tie him on objectives, but still lose on the third tie-breaker: Kill Points. Oh well.

For what it's worth, Brian did complement me on giving him a hard fight. He told me that he usually tables Guard armies. But I made him work for it. Yeah thanks. I get a lot of practice in *almost* killing Spag's wolves. :P

Continue to Part III...