2009 Battle for Salvation Fall tournament results!

Hey all! First off, make sure to watch my youtube channel for the video uploads from this tournament. I got a lot of footage and will be posting it up furiously all week. But on with the batreps!

I went to this tournament with a fully untested list and very low expectations for myself. This was a 2k point tournament and I have played very few games at this total, and the ones I did were with a very different list. I had success at Mechanicon at 1850 with 2 Venerable Furioso dreads, so I went balls out and played 3 venerable death company furioso dreads. All I can say is "Epic". One is scary, but three? Lets say that they earned their name, Furioso. They were some Mad Robots.

The rest of my list was filled out by my three jacked Baal Preds, 2 two bike attack bike squads with meltas, two tactical squads with rhino, lascannon, meltagun and power weapon, and a Colorados, captain of the 2nd company. (So far as I can tell, that is the offical name of the 2nd company captain for the BA.)

At first glimpse, my army gets two reactions. "Shooty Blood Angels?" With a scrunched up mock confused face... and "Where are all your troops? Two troops squads?" Etc. I just smile and shrug.

Game One:

Matt and Bobby, the head organizers, opened up this tournament to something unusual. They allowed round one challenges. If some one wanted to drop a challenge on round one, the challenged player could decline. Or take the challenge. Basicly Matt allowed dudes with balls to step up and pick a hard opponent to begin with. Only one challenge was made however. Charlie, the guy I narrowly beat in round three of the first BFS tournament to earn me the best overall win wanted a rematch. Remembering his bad ass Blood Angel army led by Mephiston, I wanted no part of him and tried to weasel out. Matt would have nothing to do with that though, calling me nickname for a female cat and giving Charlie his shot at glory. Accepting my fate, I lined up across from Charlie, and announced to him that he would indeed suffer this affront.

Time to deal some suffering.

My 2k BA vs Charlie's 2k BA. Charlie ran a new list though. Dante, a couple rhinos and razorbacks, a couple of assault squads, one being a 10 man squad, a couple of tactical squads, again, one being a 10 man squad, a 5 man Devastator squad, and a Predator with all Lascannons and a Land Raider full of Death Company.

Mission:
Kill Points Modified: We had to select 5 units of our enemy force and nominate them as KP. Those 5 KP were the only ones we could grab earn.

Deployment:
Modified DoW. Instead of DoW happening on turn 1, you rolled randomly for it. On a 4+, DoW happened, but it only happens once per game.

Turn 1:
I won the die roll! Or did I seize initiative? I forget, and I forgot to make video, so I will never know. It matters not though. Suffering would come early, and I would waste no time trying to cut him down. I deployed just my two Lascannon Combat Squads in cover. Every thing else came on turn one except the pods with dreads.

Charlie selected my angel wing Predator, two bike squads, and two rhinos as his kill points. I selected a rhino and razorback, a 5 man tactical, a 10 man tactical and I forget which other at the moment.

So I rolled on my forces and got them ready to advance and slaughter in turn 2. My Lascannons shot at a Razorback, but failed to destroy it. My bikes turbo boosted up for a second turn attack on his Land Raider. That was about all I could do.

On his turn, he rolled out his forces, getting them all on the table. With my Las and Melta guns, and knowing that he had to protect his rhinos, he kept them back and away from my guns. This left his assault forces having to advance into my predator fire. It would go badly.

Turn Two:
I deal some big hits. First of all, all three pods came down. I played balls to the wall. Go big or go home. In every game I dropped my pods very close to the edge of the board, right in the thick of it. I drop one near his devastators and the 10 man tactical in rhino hiding near a bastion. The other two drop near his Predator and razorback. I kept them well away from the Land Raider and death company. The stuff that was nearby was particularly squishy, the only thing he had on that side of the table that could hurt my dread was a single power fist.

My predators shot up a tactical squad, reducing it to 4 models that my Death Company would assault, and also his Devs, reducing them to two models. My dreads destroyed both his Predator and the razorback. And to make matters worse, my attack bikes destroyed his Land Raider. The game went very badly, very fast for Charlie.

On his turn, he assaulted my dreads. He dual assaulted them with his 10 man jump squad, and he threw in Dante and a 5 man tactical. This was not a good idea. His shooting was accurate, but the venerable dreads shruged off his shots. Turning two destroyed results into Shaken instead. Then It was time for the assault.

Poor Charlie, his Blood Angels resembled those from the recent GW novels. No luck at all. (By the way, Charlie is a cool dude, and he knows this is all for fun. I am not being a dick to him.) He failed to hurt my dreads, and I dealt 5 wounds, killing 3 members from the tactical squad and two from the assault squad. Not a big deal, but when you lose combat by 5, that means leadership tests... Luckily Dante was not attached to the squad and he kept his Fearless feature. That would mean my dreads could not sweeping advance. His tactical squad made its leadership, but the Assault squad with the only weapon that could hurt my dreads failed... and with my dreads being locked in combat, they escaped and ran off the table. His death company assault and killed the bikes that destroyed their ride.

Turn Three:

I moved up my rhinos previously to deal with his 10 man tactical. My dread moved and popped the rhino and my troops assaulted. Risky, but I wanted that squad dead. Most of them would die in the charge to three power weapon attacks, including my captain. The dread was short on movement to get into base to base. But I didnt need him. My predators took out his devastators and finished off his first assault squad, and my two Lascannon combat squads started working on his Death Company. I would get two rounds of shooting on them.

On my assault though, my dreads would pretty much finish the game. One squished Dante and the other finished off the tactical.

Turn Four:

The game was pretty much over. My Lascannon squads finished off his Death company, and by the end of my turn he had nothing left on the table. I condensed a lot of the action and might not be accurate on when things happened, but it was definitely over at the middle of four, without Charlie taking his turn. Massacre for me!

Charlie was prepared for my predators and knew what they can do, but was completely unprepared for the dreads. Those things would turn the tide in all three of my games today.

As for the day? I will go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. Jawaballs repeated for Best Overall and this was a big tournament with some great players. It came down to a tie breaker between me and Greg Sabino from Brothers Grimm and his name is Saab online here, and the nod went to me due to strength of opponents. I played my last two games on the 1st and 4th tables, meaning I played against the 1st and 7th best performing guys sequentially. Greg, while matching my battle points, did it on lower ranking tables and against guys who scored less battle points. Table one was the highest ranking table and so forth. While Greg's opponents may have been no less skilled then mine, they scored less battle points, making them "weaker" in this tournament. We were tied at sportsmanship. The only other tiebreaker could have been painting, but since Matt did not use a numeric rubric to judge painting, there was no real score to measure. I would have probably won any way though if painting was a tie breaker. (Not to be cocky or any thing. It's just that my army was in the running for best painted, and had I just a little more time to finish the details like power swords and transfers, might have won. Greg's, while nice, was not there.)

That wraps up game one. I will post game two tomorrow. Loads of video to come too.

More to come...

Jawaballs