 |
| Epic Assault |
So Michael had to leave after game two, so I played both armies for the last game. Getting tabled quickly in the last game at least gave me an hour or so to relax before the last game. I was definately tired and starting to drag a little after the beating in the second game. The good part was I was no firmly in the losers bracket and playing against other less experienced players and less nasty lists.
I played a space marine and blood angel team played by Chris and Joe. The space marines had a 10 man TH/SS terminator squad with Marneus Calgar attached that took up most of his points. He had a lascannon predator, a tactical squad in a rhino, and small scout squad.
We had a nice relaxed game and we agreed we needed something “awesome” to happen. I deployed first and had first turn and pulled the Eldrad trickery redeploying essentially the entire Eldar army. That gave me a nice alpha strike on his predator which was immobilized and couldn’t move or shoot. I also unloaded with the war walkers on the scout squad with 20 guided hits. I then rolled to wound and all 20 wounded! That was probably the highlight of the tournament for me as I had been rolling poorly for most of the tournament. Joe then got to have a great moment when he rolled 19 of the 20 3+ saves! Crazy dice on both sides there.
On the next turn the Blood Angels dropped a death company dreadnought in my back lines and heavy flamered a couple assault marines and stunned one of the War Walkers. The rest of their rhinos moved up, and popped smoke and went to my turn. My baal predator got the right side on the outflank and came in behind his rhinos and immobilized one. The assault marines moved up together with the storm raven full of terminators and got ready for the assaults on the next turn. The other squad dumped some melta guns into the DC dread and blew it up. The wave serpents stunned the predator again and started to flank to one side to be ready to pick up objectives on the other side.
His next turn the terminators came in off the scouts teleport homers. The blood angels had a tooled out death company with Dante come down and infernus pistoled the wave serpent with the fire dragons to death. Everything else moved up. That was when I decided that we were going to do something awesome. I dropped my terminators out of the storm raven, and took both full assault squads and assaulted the giant blob of terminators. There were going to be a lot of dice on this assault. 20 Lightning claw/Power Weapon attacks and 29 Strength 5 normal attacks. That was enough to wipe the terminators out completely and put one would on Calgar. My powerfists and TH/SS didn’t get to swing. Calgar killed one of the sanguinary priests and two or three of the assault marines. It was a ton of fun rolling that many dice and seeing that giant mob.
The rest was mostly just cleanup at that point. The tooled out death company did manage to bring down Eldrad’s falcon and kill everyone inside and the vanilla tacticals destroyed the Baal predator with a meltagun shot. So I ended the tournament with 1-2 record for 5th place. I learned a lot playing in a more competitive environment than I’m used to, though I still prefer friendly games and unique missions to tournament play.
So I have made some more progress on my custom Mephiston. I really don’t like the correct miniature for this so I put some pieces together to make up a version for the Lamenters. Not sure on his fluff name or story yet, but I will be figuring something out as I’m on the finishing touches for him. The banner was a lot of fun to do, though it needs some more cleanup still.
So we showed up for the doubles tournament (first tournament either Michael or me had ever played in) and got to play three games. There were six teams and the first army we got put against was Imperial Guard and Orks. This was a great game and I really enjoyed both players. The Ork player was Mark from the Overlords Podcast and the IG player was his brother Mike. They were real fun to play against and were very patient with our rustyness with the rules (generally we play about once every 2-3 months).
They managed to quite soundly defeat us in all three of the mission goals, but I think we could have done a lot better had we matched up with them later in the tournament when we knew how to play the army a little better. The primary was victory points and had we played point denial we could have stood a chance at winning.
They managed to wipe out most of the Lamenters, but hardly touched the Eldar at all. A little better juding of distances on my part (18″ is a really hard distance for me to judge) would have helped out on getting charges off. If there is one thing I’ve learned with Assault Marines is that they must get the charge to survive.
Also for the Eldar positioning is huge, especially for the psychic powers. We needed to focus fire a little better and the assault squads need to operate together to do any real damage.
All in all this was a really fun game and I would love to get a rematch.
There is a team tournament at a semi-local game store later this month, and I’m hoping to make some nice progress on the army so that it looks semi respectable.
I’m getting better with the airbrush and the coat went on much smoother this time. I’m using Vallejo paint which I love (mainly the dropper bottles). They took some adjusting to get them thinned correctly as I’m using the heavy pigment line of colors to get a nice coat with the yellow colors.
Making more progress on my Lamenters. Started doing details on a Baal Predator, though there is a long way to go.
The other model is my custom Mephiston. Not sure what his name or fluff is going to be yet, but played with him the other day and he was a blast to play. He’s made up out of bits from the command squad box, and sanguinary guard. Not pictured here is a nice banner that goes over his head.
I’ve been working on the Terminators and am really enjoying painting these guys up. I’ve decided on making the helmets red for these guys, and maybe even expanding that out to the rest of the army. I just love the look. I might just keep it for Sergeants and terminators, etc. Still have a bunch of detail work and to finish the hammers up. The bases as well need to be changed to match the Assault squad. I’m also working on a terminator Reclusiarch, to take a break from yellow.
Took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to paint these. I didn’t like the bright yellows so I muted it down with an earthier color. Also changed the color on the bases a couple of times. Not really happy still. I might go back and redo those to get the to where I’m happy.