Hey got in a local tournament today. Wasn't sure about playing or not until a friend of mine got on my ass telling me I needed the practice and it would help for ETC. I was reluctant about going, but decided I wanted to just hang out and get a few games in with the dropping wolves. Well I'm very thankful about it as I got some good practice against reserving mech lists in that forced me to go first in an objective based game and using drop pods to manipulate my opponents.
I think my list can struggle against a mech list especially when I'm going first and they are holding off everything cause they can wait my drop pods out which lets them pick where we fight. So today was defiantly a lesson in bunkering up and creating drop pod walls. I had some really good success in getting people to assault throw away units only to get double tapped with plasma later.
My list was the exact same as I'm bringing to ETC but I got Arjac Rockfist to replace one of my normal chain fist/melta terminators. I figured there would be some tough special characters rolling around so I brought a character killer. This would allow me to eliminate them and get the game more in tune with what the ETC would be like.
First game was against a mech Blood Angels.
Librarian
2 Priests
Redeemer
Crusader
Vindicator
2 Baal Predators
2 Razor Backs w/ assault cannons
2 Units of 10 assault marines with melta and power weapons
2 Units of 5 assault marines
5 Objectives Dawn of War
Game went bad form the get go, he went first and everything comes in dawn of war style and he pops smoke on everything. I drop pod in everything hits and have melta one inch away on land raiders (the combi unit was on top of a land raider) even Arjac was ramping up the thunder hammer to drop the vindicator. So all my awesome shooting managed to stun the redeemer. He proceeded to rub it in my face with flaming tons of dudes anyway (thanks for that dumb machine spirit).
The rest of the game was a major slug fest forcing me to kill a lot of vehicles with chain fists. Though I was very amazed at the stopping power of the drop pods. The remain drops pods came down and I used them plus some impassible terrain to cut the board in half. All his dudes and one objective on one side and on the other side was my dudes and the other 4 objectives. By turn 3 or 4 it was impossible for him to win as the out flanking baals he planned on contesting objective with couldn't get past my drop pod wall.
I've talked to Brad a lot about this but didn't think about it until i actually got to put it into effect and was very impressed with my home made wall, needless to say my opponent was not.
Second Game was against an Eldar opponent... Well needless to say i had an uneventful game that went really, really well.
Nothing of note happened in this game... except a doomed Arjac taking on 10 Harlequins... which was awesome.
Final Round
Similar Army build to the last guy... except he had an assult termi squad instead in a land raider instead of a 10 man assault squad (much more intimidating).
Round was two objectives in each deployment with a twist, in order to take your opponents objective you needed to hold an objective in the center of the board.
Well I was forced to come down first so i crashed his base with objective in it, while in the back i had long fangs all over my objective. Well second round comes in and I get 2 reserves in which isn't what i wanted. So again i went to work building some more drop pod walls. I dropped everything pretty close to his board edge and used one of my drop pods already down and some terrain to build a wall with the combi weapon wolf guard in the center, and throw one of my smaller units out front as bait.
Well the trick worked, I funneled him and only allowed an assault into the one unit I wanted. He took the bait assaulted into the only unit I wanted, afterward seeing the combi weapons unit behind them waiting to explode them in the face! So I destroyed his one unit I was afraid of. Rest of the game was me just chasing him down.
I ended the tournament in first place.
Again i got some great opportunities to use the drop pods to funnel my opponents where I wanted them or wall off portions of the board using a home made wall. Happy i went and the $90 in store credit isn't so bad.
Most impressive thing about the day is everyone knew I was on the ETC team. People I didn't know were walking up to me and wishing me luck in Germany. So it felt pretty good after seeing all the people "hating" us, our lists, and our mothers, then going to a bunch of people really wishing all us luck and hoping we destroy Europeans WWII style.
