Battle Report: BA vs Salamanders. BFS Game 1

Here was game one of the 2009 Battle for Salvation tournament.

Mission: 5 loot counters
Vulkan Salamanders vs my Blood Angels Mech list with 2 Furioso.

I won the roll to go first and passed first turn to Kris. He deployed, and I reserved every thing.

Turn 1: He moved up hesitantly, keeping his fragile units behind tanks.

Turn 2: He moved up more, preparing for my arrival, and securing objectives. If I was going to have a chance, I would need to blast him off objectives.

On my turn, only a small number of my units came on, including Dante, Corbulo with DC, a Baal and Furioso. I came on and sprayed some shots at his speeders but failed to wound.

Turn 3: He moved up some more, pressing the attack with his Land Raider. I ignored it completely though. He took shots at what he could, but failed to wound any thing thanks to cover and smoke.

Most of my remaing stuff came on and I was getting set up to claim objectives. He was fearful of getting too close to my objectives, because he knew he had to deal with two Furioso dreads assaulting him if he did. So far this game was just a chess match jockeying for objectives.

Turn 4: He started to turn the tide. Melta shots killed two of my tanks and some Rhinos. He got a Melta shot on Dante and killed him. His dreads came in to my objectives, but I intercepted them with my own. I moved my DC up on a far objective in an attempt to take it from him.

Turn 5: He pulled back his land raider to assault my DC. He destroyed the DC Rhino, which worked against him because he now had to climb up and over a large piece of terrain. He would overpower my Deathcompany, but on my turn, I was able to fast move a Baal up to contest the objective. At the bottom of turn 5, I held two, he held two and one was contested... I rolled to see if the game would end... the result was a two! Game ended with a draw. Had the game gone on, he would have defeated me for sure. But that is luck!

10 comments:

pissclams said...

jawaballs,

how effective was extra armor in the tournament. i watched the blog and noticed that it wasnt a factor in this game. However was it in the others ? Ive been playing around with it and im finding its not as effective as i thought. ive found that spending the points elsewhere might be better.

whats your opinion ?

Jawaballs said...

In this game, I believe it allowed me to tie. I believe he stunned the Baal that I managed to contest his 3rd objective with. My extra armor allowed that tank to move, and contest, giving me the tie. I do know that later in the tournament, extra armor allowed me Dreadnought to move and assault, and allowed a rhino to move and take an objective. Also, in probably half of the Death or Glory attempts I have engaged in, EA made a difference. It turns a 33% chance of successfully surviving Death or Glory into a 50% chance. I would love to use those points elsewhere. I spend 135 points on it. But with my tactics, I need it.

jpcrow said...

I find EA to be an excellent use of points, especially in a mechanized list. On a side note, it appears that BA are getting a new 'dex, they mentioned it on BoLS recently.

Jawaballs said...

I saw that! I would expect it should not be too long from now... The updated dex is already done, they just need to flush it out a bit more. I hope they dont change them too much from what they are now though... I wouldnt mind some new models! Perhaps a nice upgrade pack like they did for the black templars.

Jwolf said...

Heh, the draw in round one is always a great start to a 3-game tournament. I won our first 3-game tournament this year with a strategic draw in round one. This gives you an easier pairing for round two and can get you onto table two instead of table one for round three. All you have to do is mop the floor with the other guy in round three and let the guys at table one deny each other the primary objective, and you're golden.
Sucks to eat the single melta to the head on Dante; he's such an asset when he's on the field.

We are also hoping for some nice upgrades for the Blood Angels; bigred has a huge lot of them that just sit around collecting dust.

And I promise to do battle reports after our 3 round tourney this Saturday, so you can review my list and see my amazing strategies at work - "Is that think moving? I'll kill it, then." That way you'll be better able to prepare for our games in August.

Jawaballs said...

I wouldnt mind new sculpts for some of the Characters. But I would LOVE a nice upgrade pack with good shoulder pads and other cool stuff. I am going to redo my entire army seeing as how my painting skills have improved greatly since I painted most of it. When you look at the whole thing, there is a huge difference between some of my first models and my most recent.

And you are dead on with the strategic first round. However, I am not sure a tie is the way to go... Sure, you end up against a weaker opponent in round two... theoreticly, but if you dont crush both of your next opponents, you are done. In the previous tournament, I strategicly ignored the bonus points in the first 2 rounds. That left me coming into the last round in pretty good shape. I was not on the top tables, but high enough so that I could still win if I did not have a great game in round three, who should be my toughest opponent... again theoreticly. I ended up with a minor victory in round three and won the whole thing. My opponent was the one I would have wanted to play of all the top guys... so the strategic sacrifice of points worked! Definitely something to think about in tournaments. I think I even wrote a post about it here someplace.

Cool about your batreps. Fritz and I have been waiting for them! He should have actually scored second yesterday, but his opponent is one of his blog followers. He knew exactly how to play him!

Lucky for me my tactics are more transparent. I dont rely on tricks to win. :)

I'm totally psyched about August man. Do you normally play 2k games? Fritz and I are going to work on some 2k lists but would like to play you on Friday with some 1750.

Ad Astra said...

Eldar trickery is all I have!

Jwolf said...

I only make 2K lists, unless I have an opponent who wants to play something smaller.

As far as tactics go, I play sledgehammer 40K. My general goal is to kill every single model on the opposing side of the board, and I mostly go for that. (I think I had 14 enemy models total left for the May 3-game tournament). So 5th Dimension tactics are essentially antithetical to my preferred tactics, which is good news for you guys.
Though I have been known to hold all my stuff in Reserve, too....

I love Eldar trickery. I played Eldar for a while in 3rd/4th Edition and found their trickery to be really a wonderful thing.

Sabb said...

First off, Awesome tourney! I had a great time playing everyone and my game with Kris was a riot. Though I did feel like a dick pulling the rulebook out a few times.

Anyways, I think the whole "Strategic Draw Round 1" makes it even more important for Indy GTs to start happening. By the 5th game, most of the best players have been going all out, and I can play my last game on table 15 enjoying my Sake without having to play a guy with a Bloodcrusher Army

Jawaballs said...

Hey Greg! First of all, there is no shame in pulling out the rule book. That is why it is there. I fully support guys pulling it out on me because A: I make mistakes and B: I want them to know I am not screwing with them.

Too bad I did'nt get you on the table!

Glad you came and hopefully I will make it to Grim on the 13th!

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