Hi all !!
I was over in Tampa yesterday to play in the team tourney - 1500 points per player so 3000 points per team. My partner (John Lennon) and I were planning to run two Tyranid armies but found out upon arrival that teams couldn't use use the same codex... Luckily I had my Grey Knights in the car so I quickly put together a Draigowing army featuring three Venerable psyflemen dreadnaughts. John's army featured a Flyrant with Ancient Adversary, two Tervigons, two full broods of Hive Guard, gargoyles and lots of gaunts. I had planned to run a Tyranid army with three broods of Yrmgarls and large genestealer broods with Broodlords... Oh well it was not to be.
The reason why you couldn't play two armies from the same codex is that at their last team tournament two brothers showed up with Bugz and were fielding the Doom in both lists which turned out to be quite the terror. I also heard that in general people didn't like certain combos teams were using for dual codex armies.
It turned out that the Draigowing-Tyranid alliance was quite powerful though so all was not lost. The three Venerable brother dreadnaughts were a true terror to behold gunning down lots of armor and infantry over the course of the three games.
The tournament started late (2pm) and finished around 11pm so it was a very long day indeed. None of our games got past the fourth turn either which I expected with all those models to push around the table. It would be nice if the next time it could start sooner.
Lots of people I talked to there were asking about BeakyCon - looks like it will be a full house again this year. As a note Mat (my partner for the GT) and I met with Marriot in the morning and were able to reach an agreement on the conference room we will use this coming October.
The first game was versus Dark Eldar (Tau James) and Blood Angels (Austin). Pitched Battle with one objective marker in the center of the table for the primary. Our opponents won the roll for the initiative so John and I opted to hold our entire armies in reserve to avoid the enemy alphastrike. My two squads of Paladins (one with Draigo attached) would deep strike while my Venerable brothers would walk onto the table along our long board edge. We were afraid our opponents might use their skimmers to block off our long table edge during their first two turns but fortunately that idea didn't occur to them... Instead they moved up to midfield flooding the board with all of their units. There was lots and lots of dark lances and blasters in the dark eldar army so I was a bit worried about my Paladins getting torched. At the bottom of the second turn our reserve rolls were horrible. Mostly John's gaunts and gargoyles arrived with no supporting synaspse. My only two units to arrive was one Venerable brother who used a brood of Hive Guard for cover and a deep striking squad of Paladins (no Draigo). I deep struck into a corner of the table and dropped one of the Ravagers. My Venerable brother stunned one of the two Stormravens (no extra armor). John stunned the other Stormraven with his Hive Guard and setup a big screen for his gaunts using the gargoyles. The next turn was pretty tough as we would have to absorb lots and lots of shooting from the dark eldar. My invulnerable saves were on fire though and my Venerable brother managed to survive getting immobilized and losing one cannon. The next turn our reserve rolls were a lot better with most of our units arriving and we were able to inflict a lot of damage with our shooting. We ended up winning the game with a couple of termagants holding the primary objective. It was a really hard fought game and it's always nice to walk away with a win for the first round. I lost two Paladins total... John's Bugz had to soak up most of the pain. : )
Second round so us facing Blood Angels (Alberto) and Space Wolves (Jim)... Lots of Grey Hunters in rhinos, lots of Devs and Long Fangs plus lots of assault squads. They had Logan and Mephiston for their respective HQ. This game the primary was killpoints:
HQ - 3 kp each
Troops & transports - 1 kp each
HS, Elites & FA - 2 kp each
You could select one enemy unit for double kp - we selected Mephiston and our opponents selected John's Flyrant. Deployment was Spearhead and we won the roll for initiative taking the quarter with the most terrain. This game there was lots of shuffling units back and forth on both sides over the course of the game—we managed to get way ahead on the killpoints with lots of focused fire and we kept our armies blobbed up together with the Paladins in the middle. The last turn our opponents took a stab for the win with some late assaults but they were too far behind at that point. Again I only lost two Paladins during an assault from Mephiston - my daemonhammers smacked him back down for four wounds though and he barely managed to block activation of my Nemesis force weapons with his hood. Draigo would have charged him if it had gone into another a turn. So another win with full battlepoints.
The last game was versus dark eldar (Keegan) and Tau (Charles). Wow another game versus lots and lots of Killy enemy shooting - sigh. Mission was similar to the first with one primary objective marker in the middle of the table with Pitched Battle deployment. This time each player had to select one infantry unit that could hold the objective - only these units could contest as well. I selected Draigo and John selected a Tervigon. Our opponents selected a squad of Warriors and Broadside team. We won the initiative setting up for the alphastrike with all my terminators deepstriking then our opponents seized the initiative. Geez !! I remember a team tournament last year in Kissimmee where my team had the initiative seized twice and the second time in the final round it ended up costing us first place... So I was starting to get all kinds of horrid flashbacks - I really don't like that silly rule !! Two of my Venerable brothers were well hidden from the Tau railguns and my other Venerable managed to survive the first turn of enemy shooting only losing one cannon... John's Nidz also weathered the storm well. Over the course of the game we were constantly punished with smart missiles, poisoned weapons, railguns, dark lances and blasters... The fourth turn rolled around and Draigo and his Paladins were still in reserve—I opted to deep strike them on top of the objective for the win. There was only one lone Warrior left from our opponents' side within range to hold or contest. My terminators scattered back 8" so I then opted to shoot down the lone Warrior and then John's Tervigon ran in to take the primary objective for the win. This game I lost one Venerable brother and three Paladins. John was down to a handful of Bugz as the enemy shooting phases were just horrendous.
So we ended up taking first place by a large margin and John scored one of the new Tervigons just released by GW and on the shelves this Saturday. It was overall a great day and all our opponents were fantastic. Like I said it was a great day to play some 40k and a nice opportunity to break out the Grey Knights again.
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