This tournament was no exception.
After beating up the Space Marines, I got a coffee and an ice cream from McDonalds (literally steps away from the tables!) and sat with Sean to rest my feet and discuss our games. He'd just had a fun-sounding game vs. CSM with Lash Princes that inexplicably gave up Lash for book powers...
...and we heard Bob making announcements, and ran out to hear that we were, as expected, paired up for the final round!
The good news, games with Sean are always loose, fun, and low-stress. The bad news, one of us was going to get knocked out of 'placing'.
Sean likes to use unusual lists that bring things that folks aren't familiar with. He breaks the Meta. Since I typically build lists to combat the mean things I expect to see, his lists are usually tough for me to handle.
He had something like this:
Urian Rakarth
Eldrad
5 units of 3 Wracks
2 units of 3 Guardian Jetbikes
5 "Master" Grotesques (including one Abberation with Flesh Gauntlet)
2 units of 9 Harlequin with Shadowseers (5 Kisses in each)
Wraithlord with Flamers, Scatter Laser, and Shuriken Cannon
3 Talos with Haywire Blasters
and 2 units of Beasts with 3 Beastmasters and 5 Razorwing Flocks in each
The mission was Objectives, Kill Points, and Quarters. Deployment was the triangley one. Sean won the roll and chose to go first.
Sean started all the Wracks and Jebikes in reserve. Everything else spread out across his triangle's hypotenuse...yeah, I said hypotenuse! The Grots were kind of aiming at my right...the Harlies were central, and a Bird squad was left. The second Bird squad took the rear.
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| Sean's deployment. Note the grots leaning to the right...this motivated me to deep-strike to the left. |
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| Sean's army and his crotch are very impressive! |
Fateweaver scattered backwards a bit, the LOC and one Prince landed fine, with one Prince scattering off a bit out of FW range.
The Flamers I wanted to focus on Harlequin, the first scattered on top of them...a bit too close, lads!...and went back to reserve. The other two landed just fine, and the flaming commenced. I killed all but one Harlie in one unit, and I think I clipped and killed one from the other. I was content. The Circus unloaded on the nearest Beast squad. I was hoping to knock down the Beastmasters (the closest targets) with the first few shots then hope to kill of some birds with the ID S8 shots. I think I managed to leave one Beastmaster alive and kill off 2 Flocks. Not horrible!
Most importantly, I was far enough away from the Grotesquest that if I got knocked down, I'd not have to endure them charging me!
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| Suicide flamers more or less on target, as Fateweaver oversees things from well out of possible assault range... |
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| The suicide drop of the flamers went pretty well. I believe the guys on the hill scattered a bit, but not a bad spot at all. |
Top of turn 2, and looking back at the pictures I don't think Sean did his reserves this turn. I don't know if it would have changed anything, just something I noticed.
He dog-piled things on to my Flamer units that cooked the Harlequin. I killed the last Harley of the first unit with Overwatch (he was the OW absorber so the other unit would be ok), and did a few wounds to birds. He moved a Talos and the reduced Bird squad up hoping to assault a Prince if he could knock it down.
Luckily for me he did not knock it down, but the Flamers were toast...
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| The Flamers pay the price for their early-game roastings of evil space-elves. |
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| A Talos and soem Razorwings prepare to assault the Daemon Prince, which refused to come down to play. |
Bottom of 2, I got everything in except one unit of horrors. I tried to get fancy with the Screamers, dropping them behind him to turbo-boost and slash attack over him, but lost a squad to mishap. The Horrors tried to drop in corners to sit on objectives, with the Changeling's unit scattering up towards the middle of the table...right in harm's way, sadly.
The Prince that was out of formation Glided to be ready to assault either the Talos or the Razorwing. The other three did Vector strikes over the Razorwings...S6 caused ID on the Razor flocks, killing the unit off. The whole circus then fired Bolts at the Talos, killing it. I think I had some Flamers that had scattered too, and put shots on the Grots, doing a few wounds.
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| The Wracks arrive as Sean maneuvers to take out the Gliding Prince. |
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| The Flamers landed nowhere near where I wanted, but put a few wounds on the Grots. |
Top of 3, and three Wrack units and some Jetbikes walk on. All the Wracks go in the back left corner, where I had some Horrors, while the Jetbikes fly up the other end of the table towards my bottom right corner, also where some Horrors are.
Sean got over my head with this next move, as he tried to get in to multi-assaults but ended up blocking his own charge lane. He was not happy with himself. He managed to get the Razorwings in to the Gliding Prince, and the Grotesques went in to the Terrified Screamers. I think the non-Terrified screamers also had to attack themselves from Hallucination. Ouch.
The Prince held his own, thanks to the rerolling saves he only took one wound, and killed one of the Beastmasters. The Screamers did a few wounds to the Grots, but lost combat by a ton and were killed in Sweeping Advance after failing their Morale test. Terrify is a really mean power!
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| The Grots all lined up to beat up my Horrors. |
Bottom of 3, and I keep on swooping. I was slow this turn...I really considered gliding all my FMC over to the Grots and Smashing them to death, but didn't want to get stuck fighting Urien and Eldrad for the rest of the game, so went after the other things first. I got my last Horror unit in, and it went to the back right objective, in Sean's deployment zone.
Fate, Change, and Prince did Vector Strikes on the Harlequin. The Screamers flew back to deal with Wracks. The Pink Horrors shot at the Jetbikes, killing one, and they failed Morale. The Purple Horrors moved up on the hill and shot and killed a unit of Wracks. Vector Strikes, Fate's Breath, and Gaze left only 2 Harlequin alive. Screamers killed a unit of Wracks. The Prince fighting the Razorwing challenges...I didn't want to take a million bird attacks, and he didn't want to lose a bunch of birds to ID. Boring combat...I think I killed the Beastmaster, but they were Fearless from...whatever that power is that makes them Fearless. Stupid Eldrad!
Top of 4. The Grotesques move to assault the Changeling's unit, more Wracks and Bikes come on. All the wracks go in the same place, the back left corner where I had one Horror unit and some Screamers. The other Bikes went back to the corner in my deployment zone, hiding...
The Wraithlord and a Talos moved in to the middle forest, aiming for my Flamers. The other Talos and the surviving Harlequin went to rescue the Razorwings from my Prince.
The Talos and Harlequin made it in to the Prince fine. The Grots took a few wounds from Horrors Overwatch. The Talos that charged the Flamers was killed! I rolled 4 hits with the two surviving Flamers and got 3 wounds! I love Flamers! The Wraithlord tried to go in to the Flamers too, but needing 8" through terrain he failed. A unit of Wracks went in to the Horrors too, losing none to overwatch.
The Grotesques unsurprisingly plowed over the Horrors. The Wracks killed 2 Horrors, losing none. The Prince challenged again, and the challenge was taken by the Shadowseer who died doing no wounds.
Bottom of 4, the Flamers and LOC go after the Wraithlord, the last Prince goes to save his Brother from the big mean Talos. The Screamers are affected by a Hallucination preventing them from running, charging, or shooting...but I turbo-boost them over a unit of Wrack and kill them with Slash attacks.
The Horrors that shot up the Bikes last turn shoot them again, killing them. The Flamers and Lord of Change kill the Wraithlord. The surrounded Prince challenges again. He kills the last Beastmaster, while the other Prince takes several wounds from the Talos, only doing 1 to it. The Wracks fighting the Horrors do 4 wounds, I save them all! Rawr!!
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| The circus is down on the ground, ready to roll in the mud! |
Top of 5, and the game hangs in the balance here. The Grotesque unit moves up to hit Fateweaver. Eldrad Terrifies the Lord of Change, who fails his Morale test and starts running. Uhoh!
Sean actually pulls a funky combo-assault here where he ties in the Grots with the big Razorwing combat, so everything's in one giant scrum now. Urien challenges, Fateweaver accepts, they wiff at each other (damned Clone field!) There was a lot of simultaneous combat happening here, and I'm a bit fuzzy on how it all went down, but one Prince wrecked a bunch of Razorwings with his S6; the other Smashed and killed several Grotesques with ID, but then died himself to the attack from the Talos. The Fearless Urien and Talos were all that was left. The Horror unit took 3 wounds from the Wracks, and passed all them too! Rawr!
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| The Spawn-that-was-Eldrad limps away as the game comes to a close... |
Bottom of 5, the Screamers move to kill off the last Wrack unit (reading back, I'm not sure how the 5th one died...I'm sorry, I lost track. Need better photos!) that's been fighting the Horrors, to free them up. The last two Flamers go to try to kill the last Jetbike unit camping an objective in my deployment zone (Linebreaker!).
Fateweaver turns Eldrad in to a Spawn, takes a wound from Urien but passes his Ld test. The Talos does a wound to the Prince, who leaves that Talos with a single wound.
And that was game! The Instant Death I was able to cause thru the game really broke his units, and my little objective grabbing units did a better job of hanging on to objectives than his. Eldrad being a Spawn was amusing, but didn't have an effect on the game.
I grabbed 2 objectives, Sean had 1 (the Flamers failing to do anything). I also had all 4 quarters, and KP was 12-7, so I got max points again. Quite a comeback from the first round's butt-woopin!
Sean was a great opponent as always, staying upbeat through a game that was very close and tense until the top of Turn 5. I think his lack of ability to shoot down my Fliers allowed me to dictate who fought what where, and was decisive. I got the luck I needed with the Harlie roasting early-game, and that put him on his back foot right away, playing catch-up against flying things you can't combat isn't easy!
We went back to McDonald's for a seat after packing up our toys, talked Fantasy a little, chatted with Bishop the store owner a bit, and the final scores came out...
Sean was tied for 3rd, and they used Strength of Schedule, with Sean losing out to...ya know, I don't even remember. I suck.
I ended up second overall! Very surprised after the horrible round 1 loss, but very pleased that my Flying Circus did the trick!
First went to Danny Internets and his Imperial Guard!
Thanks to Sean for driving and the fun game. Thanks to James and Ryan for the good games! And a super big thanks to Bobby and Ed for putting on the event! I'm really excited for the BFS GT! Hope to see everyone there!
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