On the road again... Jawaballs gets thumped hard.

Well, not really. I drove a couple hours out to Scranton, PA this past weekend for a small tournament at Unknown Comics and Games. Fritz was supposed to come with me, but had to bail, so I went lone wolf again. Based on what Autarch Andrew had to say about the competition around there, I will not be telling the truth if I said my expectations were low. Without getting too optimistic, I considered myself a favorite to win. :) Was I ever wrong!

I played three games. I will give a summary of all three here.

Game One:
Vs Vanilla marines, lots of tacticals and some small assault squads in razorbacks, and one big one with a chaplain, also two vindicators and a dakka pred.

The objective was victory points and to kill the troops.

The missions were a little different here. The goal over all was to amass various point totals for completing objectives. In this case, I had to kill all of his troops. (35 marines and 10 scouts) ick... Other objectives were to wipe him off the table, and something else, I forget.

I thought I would still pull it off though. He deployed 25 of them in one building... so I dropped two pods next to it and popped smoke on my dreads, letting their assault do the trick. It mattered not though. Both dreads were destroyed by a single las cannon shot each. One shot each hit, penned, I failed smoke, then he rolled a 5 twice for the destroyed result... each. It was going to be one of those days. If just one of those dreads had gotten into that building the game would have gone very differently. None of his marines had fists.

So that was about how it went... I dropped my other dread near another 10 man squad on the other side of the table, but on his turn his chaplain led assault squad came in and assaulted the dread... tieing it up for a couple turns. By the time I dealt with them and got into grips with the tactical squad the game was over. It ended with victory points about even, and neither of us picking up the other objectives.

Game Two:
Capture the bases.
vs Tau.

I smiled when I saw the army I was about to play... Tau?? Sweet. He had two fish, 4 squads of fire warriors with two of them with the fish. 2 squads of suits one of them being his commander, 2 squads of pathfinders, one big squad of 4 pirhana, a squads of three twin linked rail gun suits in the back, and maybe some more...

The objective was to capture the enemy base. The secondary objective was to mass kill points. You got a max of 5 points, one for each KP.

This game had a nice quirk in that there was weird weather. You randomly rolled each turn to determine the result. One of them, which you needed a 2 to get, was Warp Storm. Once warp storm was in play, I got to roll a die for each of his squads that were on the table, and on a 1 or 2 he had to take d6 Str 4 wounds. Muahaha my eyes lit up when I saw this. He deployed his entire army and I only had two tactical squads out. He failed to roll a 1 or 2 for my two squads... but then it was my turn... enter the legendary Jawaballs ability to roll 1 and 2... I no joke did it for every one of his squads. By the end of the warp storm, his two pathfinder squads were running off the table, fire warriors were laying dead all over, and even his commander suffered a wound!

But that would be the only luck for me this game. I still had to capture his base and I went first. It was defended by cover, impassable terrain, immobilized fish, 3 rail gun suits and his 4 pirhana, along with some fire warriors hiding nearby to pop out and rapid fire if they had to. I was dropping my pods as close as I could and trying to hide from the fusion and rail guns. I almost managed to get in and wipe out his suits. I had one dread land safely. It got out and hid behind a rock, but in range to assault next turn. Next turn, another landed in a perfect spot, got out and hid as best it could. My one behind the rock came out and laid the hurt on the pirhana, who he had used to stop me from getting my pods near his suits. I destroyed one and forced all the drones to disembark. Then I assaulted the drones... but unfortunately they all died, my glimmer of hope of being locked in combat for a turn ended with my dread sitting in the open facing 3 fusion guns and 3 TL Rail Guns. On his turn he whacked both dreads. I realize now that I should have assaulted the pirhanas instad of the drones. I hit 6 times, which would have hit the ships as easily as the drones since they moved less then 12 and I needed 4s. 6 penetrations would have wiped out those ships. I would have been left in the open, but the railguns would only have killed one of the dreads, leaving my other to assault the suits and wiping out all of his base defenders. Then I would have assaulted his fire warriors with one of my bikes and claimed his base with the other. (Any model could claim the base in this game.) Instead after taking out my dreads his ships then killed my bikes.

I stopped his attempt to take my base cold, and at the end of the game, he was not actually holding his own. I was successful at taking it away from him since nothing was within 3, but it did not matter. He did not need to be holding it, he only had to stop me from taking it.

The game ended in my second draw of the day.

But I still had a chance. I needed a big win in game three.

I played thousand sons.

he had 3 squads of 7 T-sons, a squad of plague marines, a squad of 3 oblits, 2 vindicators with upgrades, a winged prince and Arihman. Each of his tsons had a caster. This game was a blood bath. The objectives were to claim loot counters with points being given for each one held, and to wipe out each others heavy support. At the end of the game, neither of us were holding an objective since all of our troops were dead, but all of our heavies were still functional. I scored zero points while he got 5 for killing my captain.

Game breaker in this one? Can Arihman shoot his psychic power shooting attack more then once per turn? In one turn he shot it three times at a dreadnought... blowing off two arms and immobilziing it. I didnt know it, but some one pointed out later that he can only use it once per turn. Any of you have any input on that with page numbers? Nothing like that freak caster sitting in a rhino and blasting away with that damn power. He did it three times in one turn, then twice more a turn in the next two turns. Can he even fit in a rhino? He looked pretty big. It didnt matter because I dont think I would have scored many more points any way, but I would like to know for next time.

So at the end of the day I finished 10th out of 16. I could have picked up 30 points in the last game, and 1st was only 20 points ahead of me... so 10th is a lot closer then you would think... but what is important is that I learned how to play the missions for this location. At Brothers Grim the missions are usually more in your face bloody. These missions were more subtle. Next time I go there, I will definitely change my list and include more tactical marines. I think that lots of troops actually is a big advantage there. The best part is that I took draws in my first two games which would pretty much eliminate me from contention in most of the tournaments I attend, but I still was in reach to win the whole thing, and needed only to score 20 out of 30 in the last game to win it all. Oh and they give out a crap load of store credit to the winner. 1st place got 150 bucks! Worth going for that alone. If you are within a couple hours of this place, I definitely suggest you make the trip.

Unknown Comics and Games is located at:

205 N. Washington Avenue
Scranton, PA 18503

I was impressed with the stylish and crisp design of the store itself, as well as its size. It is not wide, but it is long, and the products are well displayed... some on wire racks, some on nice open shelves. They are easy to find, look at and get to. A nice change from some of the cluttered, unorganized messes that you encounter on occasion.

The missions were fun and fair, and they used a minimum of comp and painting points. So if you are not a painter, you can show up and not be penalized too badly, and same for playing jacked out lists. (I scored two out of three comp points.)

John, who ran the tournament, was passionate and open to input. I didn't realize who the owner was until right before I left, I think is name was Jim, sorry man! I will edit this once I see my video. But it was cool because he was right in with the rest of us, talking and having fun. I had to actually ask him if he was the owner once I put it together.

They hold tournaments the first weekend of every month. There is not a lot of room, especially since there was also a Magic tournament going on at the same time as ours... but the venue can probably hold a 24 man tournament easily.


More to come...

Jawaballs