My sixth and final opponent of DaBoyz GT 2012 was Cory and his deathwing. The GT format had 3 mission objectives each worth 10 battle points with a 3 point bonus each game for first blood. Mission #6 was Vanguard Strike deployment. Mission objectives were d3+2 objectives (elite units score), modified kill points, and linebreaker.
Cory's list:
Belial + claws
Lord Commissar
Deathwing Command Squad
Dreadnought + lascannon, missile launcher
Deathwing Squads x4
Veterans x10 + melta x3
Vendetta
My list can be found here.
We rolled 4 objectives for the d3+2 so we each placed 2. He's got a ton of scoring units thanks to the mission format, but only one cyclone launcher and the rest are assault cannons. My plan is to use my range to whittle him down before pushing for objectives with speed. I win the roll but give Cory first turn.
He deploys all his terminators in a wall with the (scoring) dread in the back. All of the guard are reserved in the vendetta.
My grotesques are scoring this mission so I put Maugan and Malys with them. The Baron is with the beasts. Walkers are using the large central building to block LoS. The venom is also out of sight with the big warrior squad on the pyramid objective. Wyches, 5 warriors, and the flyer are reserved with the rangers outflanking.
The terminators advance and focus on the icarus for first blood (tournament ruling).
My army advances enough to fire the 36" weapons on the terminators with the vehicles out of range or out of sight of his 48" shooting. Maugan, walkers, venom, and warriors fire on terminators and Cory only fails 2 saves all turn.
His vendetta arrives on a flank and explodes a single walker. The unit that lost 2 models pulls back towards the flank edge.
The rest of the terminators push forward. My warriors on the pyramid take several casualties from bolters and assault cannon. The rest of his shooting is mitigated by grotesques and beasts behind the ADL.
My flyer arrives and guns for his vendetta, but fails to scratch it. My rangers arrive on the right flank and I try to get them behind terrain, but roll no higher than 2 on move-through-cover and run 1" even with fleet. Cory only fails 2 more saves against all the rest of my shooting.
His flank unit pulls around to get sight on my rangers. They survive the fire and pass morale surprisingly.
The vendetta zooms along my back edge and takes out another walker.
His terminator wall holds their ground in terrain on his side of middle. The stack of objectives on top of the building are not in play, but there's one in front of my grotesques and just off pic right of his cyclone.
I make my push with the beasts and join Maugan to them for fearless.
The rangers have gone to ground and I bring my flyer over to help, but fail to wipe out the 3 man squad.
My wyches and warriors arrive in the backfield and head for objectives. Venom and walker drop a couple more terminators. Beasts assault one squad and they exchange casualties.
Cory hovers the vendetta and drops out the melta vets with commissar. I lose the walker and a few wyches.
He brings the hammer unit up to help with the beasts. I lose combat but hit-and-run out of there. Rolling quite high for distance, I dive deep into his DZ towards his dreadnought.
I decide to pull the grotesques back to cope with the vets.
Beasts continue to run around his DZ. Maugan breaks off and heads for the dread. His shooting immobilizes it and he claims another hull point in assault.
Grotesques assault the vets and kill most of the squad. However, Cory issued a challenge with the powerfist commissar. In the moment of pressure (15 min called at this point), I forget Malys had grenades and feared her getting gibbed, so I accepted with the aberration. Cory then passes enough saves to keep him alive and his stubborn morale test.
We scramble to get one more turn in. Cory brings back Belial's unit to assault the beasts. He makes his range and when the dice fall, I've lost by only a few, pass morale, hit-and-run and head for the central objective. Maugan finishes the dread.
In my last turn before time's out, I get the beasts into denial range of the central objective. His lord commissar passes every single save locked in combat with my aberration.
We tally up the score to 20-13 in my favor. I had won modified kill points since a couple models from almost every unit survived. We drew on objectives with 1 each since my grotesques never got out of assault to score. We also drew on linebreaker since his lone commissar wouldn't go down. It was a really fun and relaxed game overall. Cory was a local so it felt more like a fun RTT game than the final round of a GT. I made a mistake placing the icarus up too far and taking the challenge with the aberration which cost me a lot of points in the end. I did get pretty lucky with the beasts tho so it's all good.
I ended up with 119/198 battle points. Ben Mohlie took best general with 'cron air earning 172 battle points. I ended up with 45/70 painting points. I was pretty down on myself about this score but the army wasn't 100% finished to the same standard and it was made clear to me that was the reason behind the score. Sportsmanship was 36/60 and just above middle pack with the best sport earning 53. Everything together put me at 12th overall out of 74! My best GT finish yet at a singles event and bragging rights as "Top Local" tho most of DaBoyz were staffing and not playing. Calypso2ts would have also beat me out and made it into the top 10 if he wouldn't have dropped out after day 1. It was a really fun event and all my opponents were great. The paint score was the only thing to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I felt the amount of conversions, freehand, and quality of painting on the 90% that was completely finished should have got me in the top 10 at least. The remaining 10% was completely airbrushed, shaded, and based, but not highlighted or detailed so I can understand the reasoning behind the judge's decision even if I didn't agree with it. My lack of practice with the list also cost me just as much if not more. I was 8 points away from the top 10 and 30 points away from the top 3 overall so I'd like to think that finishing the painting and getting more practice would make me a viable contender. I did win an award for "Best Table" with all the terrain I contributed to the event. They gave me a really nice custom etched beer mug and a $100 boxed set so thanks for all that guys!
As the way it goes after painting so furiously towards a deadline, I need to take a break from this army to regain perspective and motivation. The region is heading back towards a comp environment and several events are banning special characters so it's back to older armies and one long term new project with the prize support and credit I've been hording.
**Edit** Always forget the baby pic ~
Great battle report! Way to pull out the win. I can't believe that paint score... you have a fantastic looking army, one of the best DE schemes around; and at any of the events around my neck of the woods you would have easily earned at least 20 pts higher.
ReplyDeleteGood game with interesting moves.Your army is actually awesome and those marks are just a subjective opinion:)
ReplyDeleteKeep on going. Hope to see your nidz in action soon:)
Cute kid.
ReplyDeletePainting scores are like that, you've put tons of work into your army and you expect people to recognize that when they often don't. but all in all it's a source of pride and that's an award in and of itself. The validation from others is nice but at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, is what matters.
I know I would love to see it in person.