Team Tournament Round III: Finally!

So, here we are... finally!  I'm not sure why it took me so long to get around to writing this game up.  Part of it was time, because these reports take longer to do than any other article type... and maybe part of it was due to Not Brent's Coup of 2011.

Don't say his name three times in front of a mirror.  (Try it!)  Maybe I shouldn't have even put that out there... you won't actually summon Bloody Mary (...Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?) but instead will summon Not Brent, who will serve you a Bloody Mary with way too much tabasco.

Moving on, (...probably a good idea) I'm playing Cory-who-is-not-Cody, aka OverCaffeinated, and his buddy who shall not be named...



(Not to be confused with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, who doesn't like Warmachine and thus has played half a tournament in Lawton lately.)  (Don't try to figure that out - move on.)

...since I don't know if he wants his name posted - I forgot to ask.  So Big Whit and I were playing Chaos Space Marines and Daemons against Eldar and Chaos Space Marines.  This was a great game, truly: our opponents were genuinely funny guys and played well.  I'll cut the tension by stating up front that Whit and I ran away with it, but it was a lot of fun and the opposition party remained cheerful throughout.

This was a fight over objectives.  My primary concern was making sure to neutralize the War Walkers, primarily the Scatter Laser platforms.  Our setup and my drop was practically perfect - all systems are go!

On our side, I allocated the Horrors and 'Bearers to hold our objectives.  Whit was responsible for the third, which you saw in the previous picture.  On the opposite side, our opponents also placed three objectives (this was a custom scenario) so our job was to hold ours and take away one of theirs.

Pathfinders!  Whit hides the DP behind a big rock.  So they've made a firebase with two Daemon Princes and some Plague Marines in support... well, we know what we need to do, yes?

The Fiends were rockstars!  On the right flank they moved quickly through cover and multi-charged two Rhinos and a Daemon Prince.  This is a standard trick: if I just charge vehicles, I'm hanging out in the wind for the next shooting phase, but if I can pick up a unit - even with only one Fiend - I'll take the losses just to stick the combat.  I can always Hit and Run later.

On the left flank, the weren't able to reach the War Walkers, so I made do with assaulting the Wave Serpent.  Nothing doing - story at 11.

Bruce and I argued a bit over a suitable drop for the Oblits.  I advocated strongly for an aggressive posture, which ultimately we did.  My rationale was to overload their shooting and weaken their counter-attack.

Given moves like this, I think it worked out.  The Oblits did enough damage on the drop to justify the move, but the true benefit was salvaging the Fiends from the combined might of the Chaos Space Marines and Eldar.

As an aside, Bruce was a great partner.  I know locally some of the guys thought I was there to make the decisions, given my experience and record, but I never looked at it that way.  We had several disagreements over the best way to proceed, and though this one went my way there were others which went his.

And in one of those Bruce stopped me from making a grave mistake!

I really dig Team events, and in my opinion a great team is one that can communicate quickly and effectively; so while I'm sure we'd both do fine paired with other locals, I'd pick Whit first in Dodge Ball every time.

(Now queue music and we've got Hugs and Gropings.  Gag me with a tape measure already.)

Okay, the Oblits are toast, but sacking them allowed the better part of two Fiends squads to get in the backfield and tear it up.

The Nurgle Daemon Prince was a tough nut to crack.  The Fiend's champ did a few wounds over a few rounds, but the tactic is winning the combat through wounds on lesser foes and allow Fearless to torrent wounds on the Prince.  Ultimately, that's how we brought him down.

Meanwhile Whit works effectively to hold on to our gains.

Here his Plague Marines and Daemon Prince narrowly miss destroying the Wave Serpent.

I'll end it here.  There was a ton of good back and forth combat, and frankly I think it was good for me and Whit that we jelled so well in this final game, because our opponents never gave up and never let up.

I'd like to point out that at the end, when the game was one and it was no longer fun to take a beating, our opponent's understood that we needed to play it out and maximize our points.

It was a tournament, after all, and given that Big Whit and I had won all three of our games, maximizing our score in two of the three - including this one - we were certainly in the running!

It didn't take long, but still it's my least favorite part of tournaments.  Over on the Back 40K the guys have talked at length about different tournament types to avoid these unfortunate Battle Points scrambles... if this is a topic you're interested in, you should certainly give them a read.

So, how did Whit and I do?

You'll have to wait and see...