Most Perturbatory: Battle Report - Team Shenanigans Tournament

Our first opponents

Well, a couple of odd things happened that made for an awesome tournament. Firstly, I'd like to thank 'LittleSilverGuys' for his great advice on our intended list. Upon further examining our vulnerabilities, we decided to change our list entirely. So, in the spirit of the event, we tooled our lists out to field nearly 20 Terminators and 2 Land Raiders. We placed second overall in the event, so it worked out well for us. Read on for more.

So for our lists, Tom took Logan, WGT in a Land Raider Crusader, and a small WG squad with a Cyclone Missile Launcher. I took Lysander, 7 Assault Terminators in a Land Raider Crusader, 2 Scout sniper squads, and a Dakka Predator. It's not much, but we only had 1000 points each and a 1 HQ, 2 Troop requirement. We arrived at the not-so-LFGS a little late as we were unfamiliar with their tournament schedule, so our first round was a bye. That was alright though. It allowed us to go around and see some of the other armies at the event and to strategize on what shenanigans we wanted to pull. We had considered swapping Logan and Lysander to opposing Terminator Squads to give the WGT, Stubborn and the TH/SS Terminators, Tank Hunters; however, we decided that the benefits didn't justify it.

Our first round (round 2) was against the army in the pictures above. I'll be brief with the summary of events as things moved so fast that I didn't have time to get pictures. We played mission 2 from the Adepticon Team Tournament scenarios and won the roll to choose deployment. We chose to go first since the other armies were assault oriented and we wanted to deprive them of as much range as possible.

We favored the left side as our diagonal had us furthest forward over there and reserved the Scouts in a feeble attempt to keep them alive in reserves. The whole enemy army had decent cover despite our open table through the use of a Kustom Force Field and Venomthropes. We got some good shooting in at the beginning, but failed to do much other than kill some Gargoyles. We ran into some trouble when the Scouts arrived from reserves too early and got wiped out by Hormagaunts assaulting from a Battlewagon and the other Scouts took some heavy losses from a deep striking Doom. Having lost my Land Raider, I marched my Terminators into the horde, while Lysander split off to handle Doom.

Tom moved to support my assault with his Terminators, but his great shooting backfired when our opponents pulled models to prevent his assault. My Terminators died down to the Sgt. by the time Tom made it into assault, but my previous engagement ensured his free hits onto the Ork Killa Kans as well as on the Hormagaunts. The other side lost combat and 3 squads broke. Tom chased them off the board and with my 3 remaining scouts tucked in his Land Raider, we had secured a table quarter. Lysander killed Doom, like a boss, and passed all of his Spirit Leach checks. He then killed an outflanking Deff Dread as well; he did all of it without taking a wound.

With our opponent's forces too scattered to hold a table quarter according the the scenario, we had one the game with a Massacre. Not too bad for a our lists being as inflexible as they were. Onto round 2 (actually round 3).

Our next opponents are the Imperial Guard and Orks on the right side

Despite my best efforts, I don't think I got a picture of the Ork army from our next round on it's own. It's in the second of the pictures above for what it's worth. That aside, I have to say that these were 2 of the funnest opponents I've had the pleasure of playing against. I say this because things began abysmally for our team. We played the third scenario and reserved our units for Dawn of War. Moved onto the terrain-heavy board turn 1, and then turn 2 we both immobilized our Land Raiders on dangerous terrain checks. What are the odds of that? I mean, really! Anyway, that began a very tedious bout of foot slogging across the board and being hit by numerous salvos of Imperial Guard artillery. Those Storm Eagle Rockets are a doozy! Our 2 objectives were on opposite sides of our deployment area, so my Scouts came in and captured our far objective by walking in off our table edge while my other Scout squad chilled in a reinforced ruin with out main objective.

Of course, the unsupported Scouts got murdered by Nobs, so it was up to Logan and the Terminators to foot slog it through S10 artillery to reclaim it whilst Lysander and his boys marched up the opposite side of the table in a futile attempt to contest our opponent's home objective in time. Suffice it to say that in the long run, the last Terminator and Logan captured our far objective while my Scouts captured our main one. We came out barely ahead on Secondary and Tertiary objectives, which shocked me. So we took a minor victory for the match (if I can recall correctly). Despite it being a real tough fight we had an awesome time, mostly due to the attitude of our opponents. They were a blast to fight.

So, what all became of this? Well, Tom and I placed in every category except painting. We came in 2nd for Best Sportsmanship, 3rd for Best Generals, and 2nd Overall. We lost on the Overall by 1 point; 108 to 109. SO CLOSE! But we had a fantastic time and got to meet a bunch of new people and are looking forward to this store moving to our town.

As far as tactics, I've learned that sniper Scouts are completely and entirely worthless; at least in this addition. I'm going to take CC Scouts or Bolter Scouts instead, in the future if I'm in a similar position. Also Terminators, when used with square dice, are extremely resilient! It's astonishing how much punishment they can handle when you're actually rolling close to a statistical average. We'll probably use them again for our next team event. We're still hashing it out, but I'll put it up for discussion within the week. Also, I tried fielding our Land Raiders with Extra Armor. I got the idea when reading Dave40k's article on Stormraven tactics. The initial notion was that when your Land Raiders get stun locked, they're especially vulnerable to follow-up Melta shots that see them wrecked. Now, it wasn't super useful in this event, as we needed Dozer Blades more (man I wish I could take them!), and we didn't fight much in the way of Melta, either. However, I still believe it has it's place and will probably do that in the future as well.

I apologize that I wasn't able to get any photos of my matches. However, I did get some of other people's games during our bye round and of the armies while they were up for painting judgement. It's great motivation to get my own army painted; all 9,000+ points of it. Blehck. Anyway, here you go!