The FWT Games 2nd Birthday Celebration!

As you know I traveled down to Virginia with Fritz to attend the FTW Games 2nd Birthday Celebration. It was a fantastic time!

We decided to drive down the long way. When traveling South from the NYC area, you have two choices. I 95 which includes the NYC area traffic, Jersey Shore, Baltimore and DC. Or you can go inland a bit and take I 81 which skirts most of the traffic spots by traveling through mostly farmland. But it is quite longer.

We chose the long traffic free way.  It took us about 8 hours to get there, but that included getting lost in the Virginia back woods for a bit.

We arrived on Friday night at about 8:00 to a packed house. First of all the store is in a really nice area, located at:

13176 Midlothian Turnpike
Midlothian, VA 23113

The shopping centers were neatly manicured and well kept.  So the store is in a nice location with ample parking.  Next door to the store is also a pool hall/bar that serves decent food.  A perfect combo!  40k and beer.

Fritz and I arrived and chilled with the crew. The house was full of guys playing Magic and other card games. There was a tournament going on.  But that didn't stop curious 40k guys from showing up and shaking hands with me and Fritz!  We mingled a bit, then jumped over to the bar where beer and nachos flowed.

Then I busted out Rob's Death Company banner that he ordered for the store.  Here you can see Goatboy admiring it with his grubby fingers.

Not much went on for us that night. We hung out for a while then headed back to Rob's to crash and get ready for Saturday.

On Saturday we had a fairly huge breakfast at Denny's and headed back to the store.

The place was packed right at opening with lots of people showing up to take in the many demonstrations or to get a chance to throw some dice.

We met a blog reader who we have played 40k Space Marine with on Xbox live named Joe and I was the first to get him on the table.

Joe had space wolves. I won the roll to go first and passed it to him. So he set up... then asked what I was playing... much to his chagrin I hissed "drop pod dreads..."  :)  He had 3 squads of 10 GK Troops, a wolf lord with about 12 little wolves, terminators, long fangs with missiles and a vindicator oh and a rifleman dread.

For this tournament I switched one of my furiosos from Blood Claws to a Frag Assault launcher with fist and heavy flamer.  This nasty toy got it's chance to lay the pain very quick. I dropped it right next to his wolves, and killed them all.  Then the wolf lord failed leadership and ran off the table. It was not going to be a good game for Joe!

The rest of the game would go about the same.  My dreads slammed down and got into assault with his troops. A DC dread mowed down a squad and the frag dread locked another one down. They were no where near an objective so that would last the whole game out of the way.  Another squad managed to survive a dread charge then run away and actually managed to not get wiped out.

After much slaughter, the game ended in my favor.




Later in the day, I did some painting demonstrations. I did some hand painting on a blog readers Vindicator, painting an angel wing and blood drop on the side, and a skull and number 3 on the dozer blade. Then I demoed how I painted the power swords on my recent army, and helped another guy with painting force weapons.  That was easily the most enjoyable part of my day. I got to talk about painting with lots of interested folks. I forget the name of the guy whos vindicator I painted, so if you can send me pics please do and I will post them up!

Then came the 3 game iron man tournament.  We didn't get started until about 7pm, so we all knew it was going to be a long night. In game one I found myself up against a chaos marine heavy double lash list. He had lots of oblits and I think it was four full squads of chaos marines with Fabius Bile.  It was pretty nasty because most of his boys ended up being fearless which takes away the biggest weakness of the standard chaos marine.  He had lots of melta on the table, and I knew it was going to be a nasty first round. My plan was to drop all of my blood claw dreads, pop smoke, and hope for the best, I needed at least one to survive the first salvo.

So I did just that. I dropped all the blood claws, and the death company.

On his shooting, he began blasting away my dreads like they were made of paper. I didnt make a single cover save, and his first two shots killed both of my DC dreads.  But luckily for me, my blood claw furioso lived! He failed to lash my death company.

On my turn, as you can imagine, the carnage began.  I had a poor reserves roll so not much came on, but I wasted no time getting into assault. My Furioso chewed up most of a squad of chaos marines, and my death company charged another, killing most of them and taking great losses, but locking down Fabius.  My heavy support asscan dread and the frag furioso went to work on another mob of marines, and killed a lot.  On his turn he had little to do but shoot plasma at my troops sitting on objectives. The squads were small so this was not a bad tactic. It would not take many shots to take them out, since I could not hide them from LoS and still claim objectives. In hindsight, I should have hidden them until the last turn.

On his assault phase, my BC dread finished off its victim and the DC finished off Fabius in a stroke of luck.  So on my next turn, I went to work on another unit of marines with my dread... but failed to wipe them out due to a bout of poor dice. This gave him a chance to hit me with lots of power fists, and he killed the dread.

So at this point, I was out of dreads except for one with an assault cannon that had been working on a squad of chaos marines.  My death company was holding off some advancing terminators, and my troops were sitting on objectives.  He had 4 oblits left, and one single fearless chaos marine.  I poured all of my fire power into that single marine, but failed to kill him. Meanwhile, he was pumping plasma into my troops taking cover on objectives, and reduced me to just one objective.

After a bloody game, we were tied, one objective a piece. All he had was a couple oblits and a chaos marine.  :) Fun game!

Game Two:
I found myself against a guy named Josh with a very pretty Grey Knight list.  This was the test. This was the list I built mine to beat. However, a kill point mission was not what I was hoping for against this army.  But thats what I got.  He had Coteaz and a Grand master attached to a purifier squad in a chimera. Then he had 3 psy dreads and lots of assassin/henchman spam in psy backs.  I think he had one more squad of purifiers.

It was kill points and 12" deployment I think. It matters not since I was drop podding.  He deployed coteaz on the table attached to a squad of purifiers, in the corner behind some impassable terrain. He had their chimera next to them with the grand master, and some razorbacks with squishy troops, all packed in. He reserved the rest, outflanking the dreads. The dreads would be the key to this fight. They had the capability to take out 3 pods a turn, and in a KP mission, this was bad.  With him out flanking, I knew I had a chance. If I got the 33.3% luck chance and they ended up coming out away from his main force, I could single them out and pop em with melta.  Or just lock em up in assault.  Just as good.

So my first five pods were all of my troops and a DC dread. I dropped my assault marines and tacitcal squad on my right, hoping he would end up there with his dreads. He would be unable to kill them with shooting, and then I would reach them within a turn, and either destroy or lock them down. I then stationed my DC and my DC Dread on his table edge, well away from coteaz. Based on the deployment and terrain, there was only so far that his psy backs full of assassins and henchmen could go, and I wanted my DC there to take them out.

Seeing what I had planned, my opponent mounted up coteaz and company into their chimera and moved out a bit to try to protect his paperbacks.  Psybacks hurt but are still only av11.  He brought on a small assassin squad and assaulted my death company, but lost handily.  He brought on two psy dreads, and unfortunately for me, they came on his favorable side out of reach of my kill zone and free to shoot.  Drat.

So on my turn two I got serious. Mounting up coteaz was a mistake. When he is on the table, the squad he is attached to gets free shots at any thing deep striking that lands within 12". that is a 2 foot bubble of death to any thing in my army, seeing as how coteaz was attached to 4 psy cannons, and they would not only get to shoot the pod, but they also would get to shoot the riders.  But the power does not work while mounted...

Game on!  My feint worked.  Getting Coteaz out of the way left a chance for me to drop dreads right in his ranks, create some havoc, then take cover from the psy dreads using the impassable terrain and pods.

In a feat of drop pod bravery the likes of which have not been seen since the early days of the horus heresy, I struck.

I didn't quite have the tools to do the job though. I needed more melta. You can see in the picture that my three pods landed perfectly. Coteaz in his Chimera moved out and left me space to land.  In a dramatic landing, my dreads got out and opened fire. He was particularly vulnerable because he did not pop smoke on the two rear razorbacks. I was going to pop them, and lather them in flame with the frag dread in the center.

But I whiffed.  The dread's melta missed, and the asscan was ineffective. Drat.

It was still epic though.

The rest of the game would be tight. His dreads put a pounding on me, with all three of them coming safely onto his edge and shooting my dreads and pods to death.  My death company performed fantastic, scoring 4 kill points. And actually one of my exploding pods was an MVP because it killed a henchman that had eluded my DC, forcing the squad to run.

After all that shooting, exploding and podding, the game ended a DRAW in kill points with me winning via secondary objectives.  Fantastic game Josh!

Game Three:
Not much to say here.  I ended up against an entirely unpainted grey plastic Eldar wave serpent army.  The mission was pretty cool though. It was single objectives that were not deployed because they were held by an HQ of choice.  When the HQ died, the objective dropped on the table. The HQ could not be deployed in a transport.  He gave his to a farseer and stood him in the corner behind a serpent filled with Dire Avengers. Then he got inside that serpent and that was the game.  I spent 6 turns chasing serpents around the table and suffering the usual Eldar last turn tank shock. It was not until the end that we realized the game was invalid because he embarked his HQ which was against the rules. There is no way he would have survived wave after wave of me assaulting him on foot and I would have dumped every pod I had on him.

Back to my feelings about fielding grey plastic in tournaments.  Guys come on.  Just don't!  I know they were allowed in this tournament, and I get it that you want to play an army and might not be able to get it painted in time, but tough!  Play it in pickup games, I have no problem with grey plastic in a LGS game but don't like seeing them in game three of a tournament. This is especially bothersome because I believe 3 guys, including Fritz, did not get to play in this tournament. I bet they had painted armies!

This concluded the weekend for us.  The tournament ended at about 3am and we crashed hard.  The next morning Fritz and I were off early for our drive home, battling NJ traffic.

Ok I'm gona go ahead and publish this, it has been in my tray for a while. No time!  I would like to say though that with the advent of 6th ed, we have some huge plans. Stay tuned...

Jawaballs