BoLSCon 2009: Mission 4 - Purple Rain

Mission 4 - Battle Report against Space Marines

Deployment : Spearhead, Random Game Length, Night Fight Turn 3 and 4

Objectives:
Primary - Seize Ground 5 Objectives
Secondary - Kill all of your opponents HQs
Tertiary - Have units in the most terrain features
Modifiers - Each force organization slot you destroy is worth 1 bonus point.

Ok, so I was going to use Vassal to show the turn by turn moves, but unfortunantly I've never used it before, and my current learning curve on little sleep is making it very hard for me not to get frustrated with the program :D

So instead I'll give you the narrative version, I'll try to keep it short but interesting.

Deployments: As usual my opponent rolled and was able to go first, this wasn't that big of a deal for me as going second actually gives me a better chance at contesting objectives. He deployed most of his force but held back a Demolisher and His Librarian and Assault Marines. With a 12" deployment he was able to sit on one of the objectives and was in good position to take the other 2 with 10 man marine squads in rhinos.

My deployment consisted of me keeping everything in reserves. I felt it would be best to to take advantage of the turn 3 and 4 night fight rules. By this I mean I would be able to enter the game on turn 2 with my reserves, do some shooting and hopefully knock out some transports or units and then he would have to try to shoot me using the night fight rules the next two turns. Allowing me plenty of time to manuever into place.

Turn 1:
Marines: He drops his Dreadnaught on the objective closest to me and moves his rhinos to the objectives.

Eldar: I smile and say done :D

Turn 2:
Marines: He rolls for reserves and brings his Demolisher on board to my right, trying to help out the 2 marine squads now sitting on objectives. He then gives me the evil eye and it's now my turn.

Eldar: I roll for reserves, getting everything except a Fire Prism, Falcon, and Jetbike Squad. As I'm setting up my opponent asked me if I wanted a beer, oh he's getting a Great! for sportsmanship :D So I do the sensible thing here I fly one Wave Serpent up and drop off the Dragons to take out the Dreadnaught on my left. I let the council wreck the Dreadnaught Drop Pod next to my left.

I then run my other Dragon Squad up the right side of the table to contend with the Demolisher. I fly my Falcons in and keep one in the center back and one center right to stay away from approaching Assault Bikes on the left. I also put my JetGuardians towards the right to start popping off shots at the rhinos.

I ended up shaking both rhinos, not to bad for first round of shooting, especially with the Dread and Drop Pod gone off my home objective.

Turn 3: Night Fight
Marines: He Rolled Reserves and was able to get his Assuault and Shooty Termies into play. The shooty termies Deep Striked next to the right most Dragon Serpent to try to take it down, while the Assault Termies and Librarian went into his back field. (He later told me this was because I had way to many thing to shoot at him) With reserves deployed he decided to move up with left Demolisher but it was immobolized on the terrain (alot of that going around this tournament) with it stuck it was out of range of my fire dragons that had killed the Dread Naught.

He was able to kill 2 of the dragons with snipers, and failed all of his other Night Sight checks. He shot the Far Right Dragon Serpent with his Demolisher and Termies but I was able to save both from moving flat out. Good start for me.

Eldar: My turn, I get my second Fire Prism in but not the Falcon. I load up the Dragons from the Dreadnaught Kill and start to get them over where they are needed. I unloaded the Fire Dragons to shoot at the right side Demolisher, and moved my bikes forward a bit to take more shots at the rhinos.

I believe I ended up stunning the Demolisher and was able to take out of one the other Rhinos, I then used the Fire Prisms to take out the Shooty Termies that had landed close to my dragons. No way I could let those guys stay alive.

Turn 4: Night Fight Again!
Marines: With all the marines on the table, and another Night Fight turn he was in a pretty rough spot. He moved his Assault bikes withen shooting range of the Council and took some melta shots with no deaths. He then shot at everything else with nothing connecting.

Eldar: The Falcon came in this turn luckily for me. I ran my council over to his assault bikes and doomed the one I'd assault. I then unloaded the Dragons next to the rhino's that were still up and moved my Jetbikes in for the kill. With The Rhino gone the marines dissapeared quite rapidly, leaving one rhino left stunned once again.

The JetCouncil charged one of the bikes and I threw one Spear Lock on the other bike to lock us up in combat during his turn.

Turn 5: The sun arrives!
Marines: With the sun up, there were some tempting targets for his heavy weapons, but first he used his librarian to teleport between my tanks and the objectives. He was able to shake one of my tanks and my Fire Dragons ended up getting pinned by snipers. In the assault phase my Council ended up finishing off the other Assault Bike.

Eldar: My turn, With the council free, I moved it up behind the wall, next to the objective on the far left side next to his marines, from here they wouldn't get shot at because of the solid wall. I then moved my bikes up to contest the one objective with the rhino marines, and to take control of the other objective. From there the Falcon went flying to land next to the objective that the Dreadnaught had originally been at.

From there I had to make a decision on what to do with the Assault marines that were in striking distance of my Guardian Jetbikes, it was a choice between shooting them or trying to block there path. So I went with the riskier option but the one that would solve the problem and tank shocked him with my Fire Prism. Thinking that I'd have a tank hulk there to slow them down I was very very surprised when he rolled double 6's for there Leadership. With them running and not able to regroup from all my friendly units in the area I pretty much had the game in my hands.

With a little shooting I had control of 2 objectives and was contesting the other 3 with a solid amount of units.

Outcome:
At the end of turn 5 we rolled a die and the game was to continue, we had 10 minutes left but he decided to call the game and go ahead and give me the secondary and tertiary points I would've received by moving my guys into terrain during the next turn.

It was a fun and solid game, and I probably the best one I played all weekend, we were both striking back and forth at each other with little result up until he failed that LD test and things just slid into place for me.

I think keeping my guys in reserves kept me from getting blasted into space, and being less aggresive with my council really paid off (I had lost it first turn during the first 2 games)

But Like I said, it was a great game, and I'd gladly give him a rematch as he was a greaty guy to play against.

BoLSCon 2009: Day 2

So once again I started the day facing the dreaded Imperial Guard, I swear they had it in for me, and for what? I hadn't done anything to them. Hell the Swordwind's Sheath had never faced them before ;)

But alas the might and numbers of their guns overwhelmed me, that and time. I made one really bad move at the end of game 4 thinking we would play through turn 5. If I had not made the move I would've tied up the match, and if turn 5 had come around a 50/50 chance of pulling this one off but I alas the guns scared me into moving a little further back out of range and the rest is history.

With the first game a loss, I went on to play a Pre-Heresy Chaos army. I really did enjoy this game, and he ended up receiving best sportsmanship for the tournament. He was playing with Abaddon with 4 assaulty Termies, 3 Rhinos of 10 Man Spacemarines with Mark of Khorne and 3 Squads of Daemons.

It was a capture and control match and I knew he needed to get to me, so I proceded to send in the sacrificial dragons to keep that Land Raider far far away. From there I popped his Rhinos and then slowly moved my forces in for the kill using a Wave Serpent at the End of my Turn 5 to Contest the objective. It was a solid win and a fun game.



Then it was down to the last game, and Nick asked me what was the worst thing that could happen. "I'm facing IG again?" He just shook his head and I realized we'd be playing each other at yet another tournament, during the final game, 6th table from the top... The Swordwind's Sheath was Ready to Exact revenge for their fallen brethren during the North Texas Champion Ship Campaign.

This was a tricky mission, 6 objectives and at the end of each turn they had a chance of disapearing on a roll of a 6, if you had a scoring unit on it, you would get to keep the objective, the unit would disapear and deep strike the next turn. Talk about whoa...

So instead of doing the usual reserve everything move I do against Nick, I fielded my entire army so as to have scoring units on the board for those objectives. It was a very intense game, with a bit of argueing that comes from friends, and a rediculous demand from him, after he let me make my Jetbike Assault move after he had started his turn, but before he had begun moving or deploying, (I won't go into it but it did make me a bit upset) but in the end I ended up getting full points off the game. It was fun, and I think me and him just need to try to play more for fun against each other then to smash each other's face in.

So that was it for Day 2, They havn't released the final rankings yet but I'll let you know how i did, I'm also going to write up a couple battle reports, 3 of the 4 games we're pretty interesting, even the loss on the second day to the IG so expect those either tonight or later in the week. :D

BoLSCon 2009: Day 1

Hey Everyone, managed to get my buddies laptop going and unfortunantly I don't have photoshop on here so pictures are going to have to wait. Let's just say it's been a crazy crazy day, 4 games at 2k each is mind blowing. I'm surprised at how well organized everything is going and you can see it.

There are also quite a few beautiful armies here. The most amazing one I saw was a fantisy army where they had LED lights for every single model, and custom created clear plastic where it was shining out of. Once I get back in town I'll have to get you guys some pictures of these thing because they are awesome and give a lot of inspiration.

The morning started off rough though, I'm not going to blame the drinking until midnight or anything like that ;) But I don't think I was totally in the right mind.

I ended up going 3 and 1 and will give more detailed battle reports later but I ended up loosing the fist game to IG, Battle Squad Psykers are cheap haha. After that I played against Dark Templars and Won, then played against Tau and won against a guy having a pretty bad game.

Then the final game of the day was against Marines, It was the best game of the day (and not just because he bought me a beer) but it was very tacticaly challenging and I was in the game completely (beer helps) I ended up getting all of the objectives in the last turn, I felt bad for getting all the points, but it was still just a fun and well played game.

Well that's the update for the night, time to eat some pizza and relax with a couple drinks before I wake up, dice get rolling at 8 am, so wish me luck :D

BoLSCon 2009: The Swordwind's Sheath

Hi Everyone! I'm pleased to let you know that as of last night, about 11 pm I finished painting my army. Now I know you're going to say, "You can never be done painting", and you're right, but I was able to get it to a point where I was happy with it, and Wow does that take a bit of work.

Up above is my Jet Council, led by a Farseer and Autarch with 5 Warlocks, 3 with Destructor, 1 with Embolden, Represented by the Banner with the Biel-Tan symbol, and one with Enhance represented by the banner with the Swordwind's Sheath symbol I created for the North Texas Finals Tournament.

Let me just say thanks for all the help that everyone gave me as I worked on these models and painting them. And thanks to everyone who helped out fine tuning the list.

And if you want to see more pictures just look below :D

Above: My Farseer, converted from the High Elf Mage kit on a horse. The kit made it possible to get some nice flowing robes on the farseer, and I might go back one day and do the same with the warlocks if I can get some more warlock heads. I'm pretty happy with the way he turned out and if I get more time I'd like to add some more runes and the like to his cape.



The Autarch, he was alot of fun, I had a small problem with him and the Farseer, and that is I had needed to glue them to the bikes when I was modeling them to get there arms and feet right. (The Farseer I green stuffed but you get the idea)



Oh those Fire Dragons, how I love them so. This time I went back and ripped off the Exarch's Weapon Arms and Magnatized them so I can switch them out later. But I can see these guys raining fire death during this weekend.



DAVU Falcon, Hopefully these guys are going to stay alive and keep my objective safe.



Oh the Fire Prisms, I've had some fun with these while play testing and I hope that they can pull there wait this weekend.



And here's the army, the board is barely big enough for them all, but luckily it is :D And if you want bigger images just click on them like usual.

Hope you enjoyed and if you're headed down to Austin maybe I'll see you on the other side of the table ;)

BoLSCon 2009: Updates

Ok Guys, I'm sure you all know that the big BoLSCon Tourney is next week, and if you don't now you do. It's been a pretty exciting time getting to this point. I've been able to work on some pretty cool conversion, and play with units I wouldn't have ever though of taking before the guys at Warseer help me out.

Let just say I'm enjoying my Eldar now that they all have 3+ saves, and most have 4++, I was getting way tired of being mowed down by bolters, must be that Chaos army that I played for years before trying out Eldar, I just don't like seeing my guys die like that ;)

So I made a couple small changed to the army list, I got rid of 2 singing spears from the council and the Chin Cannon from the Falcon and gave then dropped Star Engines on the Beast. I did this mostly because I had the extra points, in CC I was finding my council to be lacking attacks and I felt that 2 base for 2 more models would help out quite a bit, and during the 6 games I played with the Falcon I didn't once find a time use the cannon because I was always on the move with it and that's why I though the Star Engines would be more useful, especially in those end games where that extra 12" move could come in very very useful.

So I've gotten all my vehicles painted now, an extra Prism and WaveSerpent and All the Bike done, except for the warlocks and council. I'll be painting them tonight and the weekend, might even finish them too, we'll see. But I had a take a break from painting last night, my hand was starting to cramp up from painting vines on 21 bikes ;) Don't worry I'll throw up some pics soon, I just need to get painting done first.

Thoughts of a Gamer: Beating the Clock

So this past weekend I've been playing my 2k list for the BoLSCon Tournament coming up here in a couple weeks. I know I should've been painting but I needed to get a better feel for my list, (since I've never played it's kind before and just wanted to try some new things.

So yesterday me and my friend, we're both going to be going out and braving that new tourney scene and we figured we try playing in the 2 hour, dice down, time limit. Let me just say it's quite a pain to play 2k points in under 2 hours, the furthest we were able to get was half of turn 5, and most of the time it was just to turn four and that got me to thinking about the Dice Down rules and if they actually provided a fair game.

We were able to play 3 games yesterday with the two hour time limit (and I'm not going to admit I may have left work a little early to do so) The first game we made it to my turn four, I was able to win and block him off of the objective with him not being able to reach mine, and him not having any troops on his (we was playing Nids and they were trying to totally swarm me) it was a pretty solid win but at the same time it did not allow him to play out his turn which could've resulted in him destroying one of my blocking tanks and consolidating to contest the objective.

The second game he went first, I played his Nids against his SM list he'll be using. We were able to make it all the way to his turn five. I was going to tie the game once my lictors automatically came in (sucky sucky reserve rolls on my side) by contesting the only objective he held and he had just wide out the troops on the objective I held. But the timer went off before it was my turn meaning it was a game win for him, all of maybe five more minutes and it would've been a tie, possibly a win for me if I could pull off some miracle rolls on another objective, but alas the clock had run out.

The third game is the one I don't feel as bad about. I went first with my Eldar vs his SM list and instead of keeping things in reserves like I usually do I figured I'd trying actually playing with things on the board, but was a little worried about those darn drop pods of his. But it turned out to be a good call on my side, I pretty much went all out to his objective while blasting away at him with my Falcon and Prisms. By second turn I'd taken out his HQ and most of his troops and had lost a couple dragons and bikes. We made it to my turn 3 (there had been a lot of combat and slaughtering on my part and it was clear he wasn't going to get to either objective and that wiping him off the board was a real possibility) and the time ran out again with out the other person getting a chance to have there turn.

It seems very unfair to me for my opponent or even myself not to be able to complete a full turn. That can drastically give the other player a huge advantage. I know why it is that it's done this way, to keep tournaments moving along but it seems to me that this could be worked differently. Maybe by dropping it to 1 hr and 45 minutes with a 15 minute warning and then at that time players maybe finish the full turn that they are on. Or by building in more time between rounds although this can be a challenge too for players that somehow manage to finish fast. It just seems very difficult to me to see myself reaching games of 4 and 5 turns especially against opponents with many large units where it takes just 15 minutes to move them all.

Maybe it's just a part of the tournament scene, and something some people can take advantage of somehow, but to me it just seems like by dropping the dice at the time limit you're taking away quite a bit from the players.