Warhammer 40k Blood Angels: Tourny Report Toywiz Conflict GT

Last weekend I went to a GT at Toywiz in Nanuet, NY. First off, I have to say congratulations to the staff at ToyWiz in putting on a fantastic tournament. It was well run, efficient and fun! This was a Grand Tournament, with 5 games being played over 2 days. The pairings for the first round were based on army list, which was a great feature of the GT. That would leave power gamers playing against power games in the first round instead of pounding on noobs. Another great feature about this is that it gives guys with army lists that are NOT built to destroy the world still able to have a chance at winning. So, pretty much any one has a chance to win! Finally, the tournament gave points, or penalties for army lists. At the GW GT guys can show up with their super nidzilla lists, or double ork warboss nob bike armies and table every one and win the whole thing. Here, there are 20 points up for grabs for having a good, balanced list. Of the possible 20, I scored 11. The guy who won best general only scored 1... (nidzilla) I was in contention to win the entire thing though. In addition to the army list points, there are a total of 20 possible painting points. I was the only one to score all 20 points. Between 20 points for both comp and painting, plus 20 points for sportsmanship, there are 60 points up for grabs that the GW power gamers dont usually worry about, which allowed guys like me a serious chance at placing. Now to the games.

Game 1:
The games were fast paced, and soem guys dont appreciate my making videos, so I only have a little bit if vid. I did make a nice video for game one. The mission was loot counters, and there were 3. I had the pleasure of placing 2 of the three. I placed them both near each other, and would completely ignore the third which was on the other side of the table. From the start of the game, I would be in place to control one, and challenge another.

My opponent had a drop pod ravenguard force. He ended up dropping two pods on an objective on the far side of the table, and two pods on the right side objective. So after a couple of turns, he held two pretty strongly. But I was able to come onto the table all in the middle, on top of an objective. That enabled me to focus every thing on the right side, and take that objective, then deny him the left at the end. I ran a dread, speeder, bike and dante at the right side and destroyed every thing, including his pods. Then i held it with an assault squad in a rhino. Having secured that objective, I focused on the left side.

He flanked in with Shreik and an assault squad and chaplain, but they had fist. Only shreik and krak grenades could hurt the dread. He rolled poorly and the dread would kill them all granting me an objective point for killing Shreik. Wrapping up the game, I tank shocked two rhinos through his squads... causing TWO of them to fail morale and fall back... This tank shock left one of my rhinos directly on top of the objective and his guys out of scoring range... At the end, I won maximum points. I killed his commander earning 1 point, held all of the objectives, winning the game, and beat him in kill points and table corners scoring two more bonus points. In Anthony's defense, I think that my army should probably have been in the upper tier. It is more of a sleeper army. No one really knows about the power of the Dante/Corbs/Furioso combo. Well Anthony found out! He made some serious tactical errors though. First of all, he deployed his marines out of their pods, on MY side of the table, this allowed me to come on with all of my AP2 shots, and waste them all. Also, he needs to give his jump forces a fist. Going up against my Furioso with no way to kill it except for Shreik really hurt him... especially when my dread targeted the commander first and squashed him.

Game 2:
This game would be a drastic turn around for my fortunes. The mission was to have the highest costing unit on either deployment zones. So the guy with the most expensive squad on both edges of the table won. Sadly, My army is made up to NOT surrender lots of victory points, and instead spreads points around to most efficiently use my squads. Therefore thereby meaning, my squads are cheap. My most expensive was 210 points, a tactical squad. The next was Dante at 200, then a paultry 165 and less for all the rest. My opponent had 4 squads that were more expensive then my highest, and one of them was a 3 unit speeder squad. No way in hell I was going to be able to knock that out... :( So I did what I could. I split my forces to match his deployment. I sent some rock hard forces at his right side where two of his expensive squads were, and the rest went for the other two on the left. As I thought, his speeders would escape my attack on the left... and suprisingly, he overwhelmed me on the right. I failed to knock out his point squad there and that squad would move to hold onto his table edge outscoring Dante. His speeders wheeled around to mine, and outscored my Tactical squad. That ended it! He won the game, and scored some bonus points. I got 5 points for the loss plus a bonus. Crap mission. Cool in that it gave the advantage to armies that wouldnt normally have had a chance, but sucky in that it wasnt me who had the advantage.

Game 3:
Kill Points... vehicles, tanks, monstrous creatures, commanders count for DOUBLE kill points... gulp. Basicly I had to run him off the table. I was not successful. At the end of the game he had easily double my kill points. Rhinos counting as 2 kill points, as well as my tanks and mostly every thing else really kicked me in the ass. Really though, our armies were very similar. He had transports, tanks and every thing I had. He just got the drop on me and ran over me. Good game Stephen! (A member from our brother club at Brothers Grim)

Game 4:
I came back with a vengance. After two serious losses, I would need two big wins to have a chance. In this game, I played a chaos army, and in a tight fight ended up with the win. I didnt make any video and honestly the game was so fast that I dont remember the turn by turn... But this set me up for a big finish...

Game 5:
I got to play my buddy Greg from Brothers Grim! Last time we met, I gave him a lesson on Assault. There isnt much he can do when his assaulty army comes up against a BETTER assaulty army... But this game was different! He refined his list, added some fire power and put the screws to me. It was a loot counter mission, and we ended up in a battle for one counter that I placed in the middle of the board. After a huge blood fest, the game came out tied. Shreik came on flank marching, and forced me to split Dante off to intercept him. After, of course, he took out my assault squads enroute to kill his dudes on the left side. The game came down to one last tactical marine contesting the objective in the middle of the board... that gave him the tie! Great game man. If we had to end it was best to end on that note.

The only thing I can say negatively about Greg was that he COST ME 3RD PLACE! I would have had 3rd overall if I scored 5 more battle points. His one little survivor cost me. You will pay my friend... :) I went on to finish 6th over all. Not a bad showing.


On to the rest of the tournament. LOOT! There were two painting awards. Players choice and Best Army. I was a contender for both. A word on players choice... this award is not really about which army is the favorite at the tournament. It pretty much comes down to how many friends you bring. I only brought 2. I know for a fact that I scored 8 of the 30 votes that were entered, not including guys that might have voted for me that I didnt see. Sadly though, about half of the guys in the tournament were from a single club... the local club. Not surprisingly, a member of their club won players choice. His army was great to give him props... but after seeing the numbers of guys from him club... I knew I wouldnt have a chance. He had the best army from his club. Morale of the story... bring more friends. :)

But Best Army was a different story! This award was based on both Composition points and painting points. I would beat the kid who won players choice by a single point! I beat him in painting by 3 points, but he outscored me in comp by 2. Victory Jawaballs!

Well, car is finished being worked on, so time to go. I will add more to this later.