End Times Tournament - Day One

Well after a solid 5 game day at Warhammer World I'm already knackered and there's 3 games left to play tomorrow. Matt and I had totally different fortunes today but we'll come to that. The first 4 games were at 1000pts with this list:

1000pts of Space Wolves

Rune Priest (Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane)

3 Wolf Guard w/ Power Fists

3x 8 Grey Hunters (Melta, Wulfen, Standard)

3x Rhinos

2x 5 Long Fangs (4 Missile Launchers)

No really surprises there but since most of the games were going to be 1000pts today I wanted something solid I could rely on. Well I thought I could....

Game 1 vs. Chaos Space Marines

The opener for the day was against a great guy called Simon who'd got a list based around plague marines. We were playing Spearhead and Seize Ground with 5 objectives. The main factor for this game was that there were 4, yes 4, bastions on the field meaning wherever I deployed my long fangs were going to have a hard time getting to shoot. 

What followed was a very close game with me struggling to make the most of a couple of grey hunter squads charging with standards at plague marines. The rhinos survived a very long time (well two turns) which meant one of the hunter packs was crippled by a lash/plasma cannon (obliterator) combo that thinned them out severely. Simon made a sickening number of 2+ saves for his terminators which didn't help but wasn't really game changing. The main thing was the combo of defensive grenades, toughness 5 and FNP. I don't feel I was very lucky but I played the game wrong from the start. With very little shooting on his side I could've happily sat on my objectives and made him come into line of sight for my long fangs. It ended with a contested objective in the centre, one controlled my deep striking summoned daemons and one comfortably held by a couple of plague marines. 2-0 to Chaos! 371-310 on VPs though.

Game 2 vs. Space Wolves

Out of the 12 players there were 3 Space Wolves lists so it was pretty inevitable I'd get one of them. This game was Annihilation on Pitched Battle. Dave had a lot of vehicles in his list namely 2 dreads, a vindicator, predator, land speeder and 2 razorbacks. The long fangs certainly had their work cut out and would be crucial to my success. 

The game started well with the vindicator missing the long fangs and little else dying. The long fangs returned the favour by killing the rifleman dread and then the other squad achieved a crucial weapon destroyed result on the vindicator. Later turns saw me charge the two small grey hunter packs with a single pack of mine. Having thinned one out with shooting I felt confident but unfortunately I wasted attacks on the nearly dead squad and then didn't have enough to hurt the 6 strong one. This meant I lost the combat and started running. With 3 marines left in the squad I was going to be herded from the table by the impotent vindicator. Another hunter pack that had got out to shoot found itself charged by a dread and hunters. Despite taking heavy casualties the fist wrecked the dread but the hunters ultimately ran off. 

Trying to save the hunters from being shepherded off the table I fired a lot at the vindicator but only shook it having taking the storm bolter off it. This meant it was free to see the squad off the board edge. It met it's end soon after but it was too late. Elsewhere I killed a razorback and the land speeder. That meant Dave only had 4 kill points left in the form of the rune priest, grey hunters, razorback and pred. I'd only lost 2 grey hunter packs and a rune priest. A pretty solid win but I was frustrated by my poor grey hunter combat in the face of a strong performance from Dave. Still a win's a win!

Game 3 vs. Eldar

Matt had just tabled, Frank, my next opponent but since I have significantly less firepower I wasn't as confident. However, if my long fangs performed well I was in with a shout. Sadly, Dawn of War and Capture and Control made things more tricky. His army revolved around A LOT of S6 shots from war walkers.

With Frank reserving his entire army I was left cruising around in rhinos until he brought on most of his walkers in turn two. One outflanked and went at a long fang pack leaving one standing. The rest fired at my transports. Having forgotten to pop smoke really didn't help matters and I lost all three rhinos in a turn. Luckily there were no explosions so the question was could all that S6 deal with my hunters. Luckily for me the single long fang stood up to 3 war walkers giving him everything they had making a staggering 7 3+ saves. I apologised profusely but I can't say I wasn't relieved. The rune priest's squad made for his objective but with all that S6 and some help from fire dragons they didn't last long. The remaining long fang pack spent most of the game with no line of sight to his entire army thanks to another two bastions!! The only times they got some decent shooting opportunites they could only shake the wave serpent and then late on they needed some good frags on his guardians but with no HIT rolls he only lost one. 

With hammer from his entire army and very little I could do in defense my army slowly withered and died leaving me tabled by turn 6. I think the main problems here were forgetting the smoke, failing to down the wave serpent (the fire dragons hurt me by moving across the board late on) and generally not being aggressive enough for his objective. Mind you with the bastions I didn't have much chance and to be fair to Frank he played the game extremely well so I don't want to take anything from him.

Game 4 vs. Space Wolves

The other Space Wolf list was an interesting one. In just 1000pts Andy managed to squeeze a tooled up Thunderlord and cavalry bodyguard. This meant just a couple of small squads in a razorback and rhino and a 6 man long fang pack. It would all come down to how effective the thunderwolves would be and as I know all too well they can be hit and miss. I had to hope for a miss! We were playing Seize Ground and Pitched Battle.

The game started off well for me with his shooting only killing a couple of long fangs whilst I took down his transports and easily dealt with one of the grey hunter packs with rapid fire. One of the other squads then lost their rhino and found themselves on the end of a TWC charge. The lord didn't miss with any of his thunder hammer attacks and despite causing a couple of wounds my squad was done for. Unfortunately, and as it turned out crucially, my power fist guy didn't attack as I simply forgot! For the next few turns I easily dealt with the other grey hunters meaning I had a good shot at a 2-0 win. 

The thunderlord had other ideas. Despite being left alone after easily wiping out another grey hunter pack (after passing a lot of saves and not missing any attacks again) he got to charge my now only remaining grey hunters. With him only having 2 wounds left I felt confident I could deal with him. Yet again I couldn't make the attacks count and he was saving well so I ultimately lost another hunter pack. With no troops left on the board my only hope of victory was a tabling. I moved my rhinos into position to hopefully shepherd off the long fangs if they ran and I hoped my rune priest could take the thunderlord remaining wound before he inevitably died. To be fair it was a hell of a long shot but we didn't get a turn 6 so I don't know how that would've turned out. An honourable and somewhat bloody draw with me taking it on VPs.

Game 5 vs. Tyranids

I always feel confident playing Tyranids as I feel their codex is the weakest of the 5th edition and Space Wolves are almost designed to beat them. Even so with 30 genestealers in Charles' list it could be pretty tricky. We'd now moved up to 1,500pts which meant I'd gained a dread in a drop pod, a lone wolf (of the chainfist persuasion), a speeder, a second rune priest and a cyclone wolf guard. We played Annihilation on Spearhead with Charles going first.

Charles started badly with one zoanthrope taking a perils wound and the other passing his test only to have it nullified. With his genestealers and trygon prime in reserve I then had a turn to shoot as much as I could of the rest of his army. The drop pod came in but the dread could only score a couple of wounds on his venomthropes. The long fangs hammered the tyrant guard and dealt with some of the warriors. In return the dread lost his assault cannon and got shaken whilst Charles moved comfortably out of charge range. He was unlucky to only get one of his genestealers to arrive totally on the wrong side of the board. I took the speeder over and flamed a few only to have him charge me, rip off the flamer and immobilise it. Shooting from elsewhere caused the genestealers to flee and they wouldn't return. The trygon scattered nicely away from the long fangs who were able to bring it down with help from murderous hurricane.

After a couple of turns of combat the lone wolf killed both zoanthropes whilst taking a wound. I now needed to get him killed in order to prevent him giving up D3 points at the end. One of the rune priests did a dirty Jaws attack that killed a warrior, venomthrope and hive guard in a single shot. The lone wolf dealt with remaining venomthrope and one of the hunter packs finished off the warriors. 

The other two genestealer packs turned up with one coming on to kill off the drop pod, the dread having been taken down by hive guard. Those genestealers then hugged the drop pod wreck for cover (I was hoping for a nice explosion - ah well!). The remaining genestealers came on and took two phases to kill off the larger long pack losing a few in the process. They proceeded onto the other long fangs with the squad leader holding on until the end, killing 6 genestealers over two phases and wiping out the squad!!! 

The hive tyrant did some nice paroxysm to help kill the long fangs but little else having been whittled down to a single wound and then finished off by a grey hunter pack. The other grey hunters mopped up the hive guard and Charles was left with a solitary genestealer brood hiding by the drop pod. With no turn 6 they held on until the end but it was all over anyway. Despite the lone wolf giving up 2 KP I still won by a comfortable margin in both kill points and VPs.

Conclusion

The luckiest long fang!

A good end to the day which sees me placed right in the middle in 6th. Some poor combats from grey hunters are what cost me with me struggling to take out plague marines and thunderwolves alike. Bastions really didn't help me much either mind you. Mine and Matt's placings are inextricably linked. If I win I rely on the result of Matt's game to determine if I'm in the top 4 play off. However, to be honest I don't want to be in the top 4 since it's most likely I'll have to play grey knights and based on the lists they've got I wouldn't fancy my chances. I'd much rather be playing off for the "Top Imperial Player" with the rest of them.

Anyway, we'll see what tomorrow brings. I've got some more great ideas for Blog Wars 2 out of it if nothing else!