Monday, February 28, 2011

Dundracon 2011: Round 2 and 3 - We're not Dark Angels!

Continued from here, or you can read the entire thing from start to finish here...

In round 2 I drew Austin, running a nicely painted Dark Angels army - as vanilla marines. I was soon to find out why...

This scenario was based on victory points (not kill points, mind you!). Whoever came out 201 kill points ahead was declared the winner. We were lucky to be on a board with a medium amount of terrain.

I forget the exact details of Austin's list but it contained a librarian attached to a tactical squad, all deployed in a drop pod, another drop pod containing an AC dreadnought, two rhinos with tactical squads, and a land raider crusader with a chapter master and 7 terminators (if memory serves, 4 with thunderhammer and storm shield and 3 with twin lightning claws).

There isn't much to tell about this game; Austin and I took turns beating each other in the face through turn 7. The high point for me was watching his terminators fail their invuln saves against 3 dangerous terrain wounds, but other than that we did extensive damage to one another throughout the game. When the game ended on turn 7, Austin came out 300 victory points ahead.After the fact, we realized the game had a fixed length of 6 turns, but I don't expect that the result would have been any different.

I don't really have any complaints here. It was a tough game based on actual points value of units destroyed instead of kill points and we both gave it our best shot. It was a good game and I don't know if I'd change anything if we were to repeat it.

Round 3 I drew Ian, whom I'd played against at Kublacon in 2010.

I was NOT happy with the scenario. Basically, we would roll for objectives as in Seize Ground, but in order to gain points, we had to have a scoring unit sitting on an objective at the end of our opponent's turns. This is bad for Eldar, since it involves sitting still for basically an entire round, a tactic that doesn't lend itself well to an army with low numbers, low toughness and medium armor.

Ian brought another vanilla space marine list; two drop pod dreadnoughts, an LRC full of termies, a rhino with a tactical squad and another drop pod containing a Master of the Forge and a bunch of sternguard.

We both kept most of our armies in reserve, though I started my dire avengers on the table. On my first turn, I ran my dire avengers into some trenches near which I'd placed my objectives. On his turn, the first of his drop pod dreads came down, disembarked and roasted an entire unit of dire avengers while managing to contest the other. No points for me!

Later on he put another heavy flamer on my other dire avenger unit and toasted them too. At this point my only hope was to stop him from claiming, but it was already too late. My army stalled out a bit in turn 2, preventing me from putting enough pressure on any of his scoring units to keep them off of objectives. It wasn't until turn 5 that I was able to pop a rhino sitting on one of his objectives, after I'd already tried to pop it with a night spinner. Oops.

We had a pretty good, crazy game, but after my Troops were fried I was unable to respond quickly enough to keep the game a draw. I believe Ian finished with 7 loot counters to my zero. Ouch!

Mistake One.
Like the Cajun says in Apocalypse Now: "Never get off the boat." I could have left my dire avengers inside of their transports for at least the first turn, allowing me to rack up 2 loot counters a round. I could have also done the "Turbo Dance" between the two nearer objectives, possibly buying me even more time and loot counters. This would have at least slowed the dreadnoughts down, preventing them from hitting me in close combat on anything but a 6 and granting me cover saves against his weapons fire on a 4+.

Mistake Two. 
After losing my Troops choices, I should have prioritized taking out Ian's tactical squads FIRST, ignoring the dreadnought and other apparent threats. I lost focus and started picking off units that were simply targets of opportunity instead of working toward the scenario.

Overall, I had a good time (y'know, as good as it gets with three losses anyway) and it definitely gave me some useful information overall. No more "soft" lists for me! I'll definitely be bringing something less fluffy to Kublacon in May!

Wondering what I have in mind? Well you'll have to wait for my next post!

Fonkin out!

Friday, February 25, 2011

Dundracon 2011: Round 1 - Eldar vs. Tau

The first game of the tournament was a modified Seize Ground mission using table quarters. Objectives could NOT be placed in the same corners that both players deployed in. There wasn't a lot of line-of-sight-blocking terrain besides a large, round storage tank of some kind.

I drew Keith and his awesome-looking Tau army (Keith went on to win the best painted category for the tournament).

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Dundracon Post Mortem: and I do mean Post Mortem!

Well guys, I said it going in. And I quote: "I could be sabotaging myself. I could misjudge the metagame, and there's always room for statistical anomalies, but overall I'm looking for a good 3rd game at Dundracon this time."

I did everything right, leading up to the con. I packed early, double-checked that I had everything I needed, finished magnetizing my night spinners and got plenty of rest. Everything was smooth sailing...

Until the first game!

Friday, February 18, 2011

Dundracon Day 1

Yes we are off! Off to the Con on this miserable (for California), dreary, drippy morning! I couldn't be happier.

What you can expect upon my return is - at the least - a Fonkin-style tourney battle report from the Rogue Trader game (with pictures), plus any other items of note that might prove entertaining. So far my schedule is looking like this:

Get to the hotel and check in, then quickly finish magnetizing and gluing my night spinner turrets for the tournament on Saturday. If time allows I'll probably try to get a practice game in with some of my less-practiced buddies, or if not maybe get an evening of cards and socializing in.

Saturday starts early with three rounds of 40k running until probably around 7 or 8 o'clock.

Sunday is high-level, totally rad, planet-saving 1st edition D&D.

Hope to see you there! Ta ta!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Dundracon 2011: T minus 3 days and counting!

After a hard weekend of moving all my family's worldly belongings, I'm really looking forward to the con! Not only because of the Rogue Trader tournament, but because this is a convention I go to every year.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Dundracon 2011 - 40k Tournament around the corner

It's tourney time in this neck of the woods, and with the approach of the ONE Con I'm pretty much guaranteed to attend during the year, my thoughts turn to lists.

With MSU, Null Deployment, Razorspam, Wolfmissiles and Dark Eldar Alpha Strike all abuzz on teh interwebz, one might be tempted to gear one's list towards beating these power-builds. I, however, am not. I'm going to go have FUN. Too bad the WAACs won't be joining me...

Let's take a look at my first prospective list...