Tournament Report: Jawaballs Blood Angels shakedown

I had the pleasure of playing at another Brothers Grim tournament this past weekend. They run them every other month. This weekend, I decided to go with a new Blood Angels list called the Bowling Ball of Doom.

Reclusiarch
Libby with Blood lance and Preferred enemy
2 priests with PW, one in Termy armor
5 assault termies 3 TH 2 LC
LRC with multi melta
Ras x2 with Razor, asscan, melta, PW
Ras with jump packs, melta pw
2 Baal preds
2 ac/lc preds

My battery was dead so I got little footage and what i did get is not worth posting cause it was hurried and boring. But I will summarize the games here.

Game One was against a guy I have seen often at the store and had many conversations with. He is a lawyer in the real life and you can tell that his profession translates into his gaming! :) He is a strong player and smart guy and fun to play against. He had a ultramarine list with 3 pods full of sternguard and tacticals, a couple of melta bikes, a termy squad with termy libby, a dread with TL Las, and scouts.

The mission was 5 objectives DOW. He began by dropping two pods right in front of my line of armor but rolled poorly on his shots and did little damage. Then all but 5 sternguard vets died because they took a morale test and chose to fall back. I unloaded my LRC and slaughtered them. That is just about how the rest of the game went. He dropped guys in my assault range, and they died. Finally, I sent out my termies to start mopping up, and they got in range of his termies to charge. He was keeping them back. Surprisingly, my squad died and only managed to kill one or two of his! He killed my chaplain, libby, priest a LC term and 2 storm shields with 5 termies and a libby. But it was just a morale victory for him and a lesson for me. The game ended shortly after with me getting all but one battle point.

Game two found me matched up against a TAU player who crushed his opponent. It was bases with a modified deployment. The board was cut into two corners and I deployed as far as I could, in assault reach of his base. But he seized the initiative and blew up my razor back and immobilized my LRC! My squad would have to advance on foot! No worries though. On turn 3 they made it into assault with the troops he had on his base. A few minutes later and 12 kroot, 10 fire warriors, a full squad of pathfinders and a squad of suits with drones lay dead at my feet and his base was squarely mine. At that point I sent off my chaplain to deal with a pesky squad of suits that had been moving out of range after shooting... he left them just close enough for me to reach them, and they died. My termy priest went after his broadsides in the corner and cut them down. This game ended in a turn 5 tabling.

Game three had me lined up against an Eldar army for the tournament win. I was one point away from the top guys at table one. But looking across the table at my opponent I have to say I was worried. He had 3 serpents with fire dragons in each and 3 falcons with Dire Avengers. In reserve he had a jacked out seer council on bikes. Oh yes, I came up against the best tournament list the Eldar could muster in a mission tailored for them to win. Kill points with a unique twist. There were 5 scattering objectives. Every turn all 5 scattered. We could claim them as normal objectives at the end of the game. For every one that we claimed, we scored 2 kill points! That would come in huge for me.

The game started off well though. I won the roll to go first, and scout moved my Baals up, then moved 12". Next thing you know I was all the way across the table and taking side shots at his transports from point blank range. Between the preds and my las/ac fire, I destroyed one Serpent and killed a squad of dragons. The next turn I immobilized another serp with dragons. He was definitely not used to seeing his tanks dead! All he had to do was use his speed to stay out of my reach, and pop my transports with his ranged weapons, then at the end swoop in for the bonus points. But the scatters favored me! They clustered every thing into the center of the table, forcing him to dance around on the edges. I managed to take down all three of his serps, all of the dragons inside, and almost wiped out his council. I left a Baal in their assault range when they came on the table knowing that he would viciously take it down, it was responsible for killing two squads of dragons! But I moved up a razor back into nearby ruined building terrain and waited for him to come. Sure enough, he brought them in, an exploded the tank, but could not consolidate, and that left him just close enough for me to assault with a squad with a priest. My plan was to get in with the first squad, then pile on ICs as I broke them off the terminators and ran them over. The first squad made a boat load of armor saves and FNP saves while failing to do much damage before he got his shields up. The next round I got could not reach him with any other ICs and he managed to get his shields up, and we both got a kill. The next turn I managed to get my libby in, but every one else was short. After all they had to mop up an immobiized serpent and dragon squad. This was my best chance because the libby blocked his shield power and I won the combat by two, but he made his leadership test and held. At the end of the game, I had a squad that was able to claim three of the objectives and he was unable to reach them with his turbo boosting falcons. That gave me the edge in KPs and the win! But failing to kill his seer council left me with a draw on the secondary objective which was to kill his HQ and I failed to score two of the bonus points. I ended the game 7 points shy, and 8 points shy of maximum for the day. That would leave me at 2nd place in the tournament.

I didn't see what the final standings were because I had to jet after awards were passed out. Sick baby and angry wife needed me home and it was already 9pm and I had a 1.5 hour drive. I did win a Baal Predator though!

Yet another well run Grim tournament. The missions as always were unique and fun and the players are top notch. I only wish they could start them up earlier! I think as time goes on and the baby gets older, devoting entire days to gaming will become tougher and tougher. We did not start rolling dice until almost 12:30 pm. By 12:30 I had already been up for 6 hours and had been waiting at Grim for 2 because I thought it was supposed to start sooner. In my opinion this one, and all tournaments like the ones I have gone to in Scranton PA, should start at 10am. That gives dudes with families a chance to have their cake and eat it too. We can get in a day of gaming, then spend an evening with the wife watching some crap movie. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and being away an entire day costs me dearly! After speaking to Dave who organizes the day I know why he rolls at noon, he is there until 3am the night before because Grim runs late night gaming on Fridays and the man needs some rest. I can see that. But also he said something about guys not getting up early enough to show up on time which I don't agree with. It was a 40 man tournament with a pretty big wait list. Guys were driving 2 and 3 hours to get there and showing up early. I don't think it would be any problem at all filling a Grim tournament with 40 guys who want to show up at 10am at this point.

Ick listen to me! I am talking like a family guy. How my life has changed. A year ago I would not have even thought about that stuff. Oh the nasty twists of life.

More to come...