Another great event, I think that this 500pt format is a real winner and I think it's officially my favorite format you guys do.
Mini battle reports for the Rats (posted the list & pic earlier in this thread).
Round 1
VS 2 Units of daemonettes, a herald of slaanesh on foot (with Portalglyph), and a large unit of seekers.
2 objectives.
Very nice guy from Canada, beatifully painted models (it ended up winning Best Painted).
I realize that nothing I have can withstand a charge from that many seekers, so I just try to spread out, and make sure he can't charge more than one unit at a time on his second turn. I also put my CSM's on 2nd floor of a ruin so that the seekers can never charge them. I deepstrike 1 oblit because I know he's going to make a PortalGlyph and I want to be able to kill it even if he hides it behind the plentiful ruins (my spawn can't hurt AV12).
His first turn, he hides the portalglyph well and ends up getting 3 rolls with it, but never rolls a 4+ until my oblit successfully melta's it a while later. He moves the seekers up to threaten my oblit, and moves a unit of daemonettes up to threaten my CSM's in the ruin. His first warpstorm kills 3 of my cultists with the Slaanesh roll (appropriately) and they run off the board
I charge the daemonettes with 2 spawn units and wipe them easily, and move the other spawn unit centrally... His turn 2 he charges and kills the oblit... it would be very difficult for me to stop them from also killing the csm's if it weren't for the rule that cavalry can't climb buildings.
ANyway... his seekers do kill the oblit, but meanwhile I've killed both of his troops with spawn and destroyed the portalglyph... and still have enough muscle to take on the seeker unit with everything I have and complete the tabling.
Round 2
vs King of the Elves' eldar - he posted his list earlier in the thread. Farseer, 2 dire avenger squads, fire prism, Forgeworld flyer.
2 relics.
Very cool and mature kid.
All he has for troops are 2 squads of dire avengers, so this mission is basically impossible for him to win on objectives against an army that wants to move forward and charge - there's really no way for him to move his avengers to the middle of the board without tabling me first. His flyer doesn't come on turn 2, and he's only able to kill 1 spawn with shooting before they're charging both of his troops... the squad with the exarch and the farseer actually manages to polish off 4 spawn in assault, which was scary, but all that was left was the farseer at the end. The game ended about tied on victory points, but with my 2 troops squads never having been really attacked and holding both relics.
Round 3
vs Daemons - herald of nurgle, 14 plaguebearers, herald of tzeentch, 11 horrors.
Fascinating gentleman with a strange but very effective army, beautifully painted Nurgle stuff, and an interesting plan for his next army which I may copy someday but probably shouldn't spoil
Victory points, you get double for killing a troop in the opponent's deployment zone, and full points for any troops in opponent's deployment zone that were reduced to half at the end of the game...
When we lined up for this game I realized that Plaguebearers are among the things that Spawn can't kill very well. They have 4+ poison attacks, I have no armor. Not to mention they were joined by a Herald of Nurgle who had the Balesword, which is one of the few things that can inflict instant death on a t6 spawn.
So, it was a weird game... I knew that I couldn't really either charge or shoot his Plaguebearers, which was comprised the majority of his army. It basically came down to me splitting my spawn units and trying to go around both sides to charge the horrors in the back. I did eventually get in a charge this way, and killed over half the horrors but didn't polish them off, and then of course he charge the spawn with his bearers, the balesword killed them instantly, and then he castled up and stopped that from happening again while he took some more pot shots with the horrors' shooting.
I kept getting confused about whether I was ahead or behind on points, since the scoring for this mission was rather unusual, and I'm scatterbrained
So I was halfway between making a desparate all out charge and just retreating with anything, since he had no ability to cross the board or threaten my stuff if I just wanted to hide. Anyway, when he polished off one of my oblits with horror shooting, it became clear that I WAS losing no matter how badly my math was off. So on the last turn I turned my stuff around, made a last charge hoping for a miracle, but a miracle did not in fact occur.
Game 4
vs. Tau - Riptide, Sniper kroot, fire warriors, and the Sunshark Bomber.
Straight kill points, I think?
Excellent sport with a very nicely painted riptide
This I felt a little bad about. It was diagonal deployment, only with the 4'x4' board the usual measurements weren't used, and the deployment zones were only 18" apart. I saw him setting up his troops forward in the zone, and I had a brief internal debate about how much to warn him... I settled on saying "just for clarity, these zones are only 18 inches apart". Anyway... with his first turn he killed one spawn and wounded another, but since I had put them all max forward, I still had spawn 20" away from the kroot and 21" away from the fire warriors. Spawn will on average make these charges with their 12" moves and rerolls to charge dice, and I ended up making both charges on the first turn.
Not only that, but his sunshark bomber didn't come on, and his riptide wounded itself once and then failed all 4 invul & cover saves it was asked to make due to Oblit fire. So, he was tabled on my turn 2. Basically every dice roll was the worst case scenario for him.
Game 5
vs. IG - Company Command Squad in a Chimera, and 2 blob squads.
3 objectives.
Awesome guy with a highly customized guard army with a backstory involving the lack of energy weapons. This army will be awe inspiring when finished.
He gets first turn, is able to kill 1 spawn and wound another, but the terrain in the middle of this board really gave them good places to hide and made it such that he couldn't really focus his fire. It also lacked sufficient cover in the deployment zones for him to really give most of his squads any cover. So, the Oblits made a couple squads run off the board with plasma cannons and assault cannons, and on turn 2, three more of the squads were tied up in assault with surving spawn and slowly ground down. I ended up completing the tabling on turn 5.
So, I probably came in 3rd or 4th place in the standings, and my Rats got a narrow 2nd place for Best Painted. No money for me, but no big deal. The plan of having several aggressive Spawn units that can't be ignored and are also really hard to kill worked great, except in the one game where they ran up against an army with no "weak spot" for them to attack. Such is the life of a 500pt army
Great time, great tourney
