BMG Tourney: Game Three

by SandWyrm

 

Now that I'd vanquished both the Nids and the IG with my combination of generalship and high comp scores, I prepared for my third and final game. At this point, I had a perfect 100 points for the first 2 games. So nothing short of a loss by massacre was going to keep me from making the top 3.

My third opponent was Wineas, who I'd seen before at other local tourneys. In fact, I'm certain that we had fought before, though he assured me we hadn't. He had just fought Farmpunk to a draw in round 2, which Farmpunk is still fuming about.

I think he's BlueMoon's brother in law or something. I know that he wrote an earlier version of the comp rules and came up with the missions for the tourney. We had exchanged a lot of emails on the comp system before the event. Obviously, Farmpunk and I weren't listened to.

Which is funny, because he didn't adjust his force for a good comp score. :)

Looking at Wineas's Black Templars list, I saw that he had the same problems, to a lesser extent, that all my opponents that day had. Not enough light AT.

HQ

Emperor's Champion w/Accept Any Challenge, No Matter The Odds.

Elites

5 Terminators w/2 x Assault Cannon, Tank Hunters, Crusader Seals

Venerable Dreadnought w/Twin-Linked Lascannon, Tank Hunters, Extra Armor

Troops

Crusader Squad 1: (10 Initiates, 4 Neophytes) w/Power Fist, Flamer, Kraks, Land Raider Crusader

Crusader Squad 2: (5 Initiates) w/Plasma Gun, Heavy Bolter, Rhino (Extra Armor, Smoke)

Crusader Squad 3: (5 Initiates) w/Plasma Gun, Heavy Bolter, Rhino (Extra Armor, Smoke)

Fast Attack

Attack Bike w/Multi-Melta

Attack Bike w/Multi-Melta

Heavy Support

Vindicator w/Dozer Blade, Extra Armor, Smoke Launcher

Vindicator w/Dozer Blade, Extra Armor, Smoke Launcher

Sure the Vindicators were a risk, the Crusader could torrent Chimeras, the Dred had a lascannon, and the melta bikes were fast enough to get to me, but he didn't really have a good punch-in AT unit. I expected few problems.

The scenario was a Victory Point based Annihilation mission (Cool!) with Night Fight for the entire game (Uh...). Deployment was Pitched Battle. Wineas won the roll for first turn.

He deployed timidly, putting only his Raider and Vindicators on the table, with the attack bikes behind the Raider. With the Termies deep-striking and both Rhinos (Who had nothing that could hurt me) in reserve to keep them safe. I put everything on the table, with the Plasma Vets in reserve, as always.

Turn one, he moves everything forward. In return I push 2 Chimeltas up into his face. I was going in agressive, looking to knock the Raider and it's Vindicator Escort out as fast as possible, but he was sporting Daemon-Hunter style glancing smoke. I sniped off one attack bike with my Vendetta before a lucky Vindicator round took it down. The other bike got one ineffective shot off before it got sniped down by the Sentinels.

The Vindicator next to the Raider is wrecked right away by my meltas, but  the Raider is only stunned, which gets downgraded to a shaken. I've got my guys close enough that he'll have to back the Raider up to unload and assault me.

Wineas does this and wipes out the 2 Melta Squads in assault, but that's what I want. I unload on his unit and take down all but 2 of the squad. Leaving just the Emperor's Champion and the squad Sergeant alive. They pop the turret off the Eradicator on their following turn, but are wiped out on mine with fire from my Plasma Vets. Bye bye!

For the rest of the game, I shoot up his Raider, Dred, and surviving Vindicator, but they just won't die. The Raider took 20 melta shots at close range over 3 turns and all I did was immobilize it once and keep stunning it over and over, which of course kept getting downgraded to shaken results. Allowing Wineas to keep firing his assault cannons in return using his Power of the Machine Spirit.

Wineas's Rhinos came on at the start of turn 3, but he hides them as they have zero AT value. 

I got so frustrated on the left with the resilience of the immobilized Vindicator that I finally just parked an empty Chimera in front of it's gun and called it good. This forced Wineas's Dred forward to kill the Chimera, but once it had done so I was finally able to take the Dred down because it had lost it's cover. The Vindicators Demolisher Cannon followed it soon after, but the tank still wasn't dead.

Now, at the start of turn 5, we had a tie going, as I didn't have enough of a victory point margin over Wineas to get the win. But then his Termies finally came on. Deep-Striking into his own deployment zone to pump assault cannon rounds into my Hellhound from the side.

They stun the Hellhound, but then I kill them all with a direct hit from the Demolisher and some supporting shots from the Plasma Vets. The game then ends, and I have all the points I need for a Major Victory. We both get bonus points for keeping half of our troops alive. I net something like 60+ points, which gets capped at 50. Giving me a perfect score of 150 for the entire tourney.

I found Wineas to be a good, thoughtful player. He knew he couldn't do much to me, so he concentrated on keeping his troops safe and making it as hard as he could for me to get anything but a draw. Unfortunately he should have hidden the Termies too. But a lot of people don't expect me to take them down so easily. Hehe.

The real problem was Wineas's list. He admitted to me that it had too little AT, and that he usually used meltas on Speeders for that. But had left them out of this list for some reason. 

Conclusion

Well, that's it. I won first place in the tourney and took the best painted army prize too. I was very pleased with my generalship in all 3 games (sleep and Starbucks work wonders) and felt that I earned it to a large degree.

But... The comp bonuses were just too much of a boost. I shouldn't have been looking at a sure thing going into the third game. But my (and Farmpunk's) soft scores were just ridiculously huge compared to everyone else. 

To sum it up, TheGraveMind should have ignored comp. Snowjob should have minded it (and brought a better list). And Wineas should have brought his speeders to the tourney, along with some meltas for his Rhino-bourne troops.

And that was the tourney!

I'm going to take the rest of this week off from posting. Next week I'll post my ideas for a hobby-centric tourney that works. :)