I recently attended the
inaugural London grand tournament, with a total of 86 attendees this was quite
a large tournament, and the largest that I have attended. I took my Tau as per
my previous post. I’ll just post a quick run through of my games rather than a
detailed account of the action.
Game 1, vs chaos sorcerer
cabal and zombie horde. With Typhus and cypher.
So this game I was playing
against ~120 plague zombies with the sorcerer cabal having five level 3
sorcerers. With their ability to take control of one of my models for shooting.
With the obvious target of the Stormsurge of this power, I was hesitant to
deploy too much of my army. My opponent deployed two large zombie blobs one
with two sorcerers and the other with typhus and a sorcerer. He had a large
squad of chaos spawn deployed behind typhus's blob. Cypher and one sorcerer
were outflanking with one of the zombie hordes.
I deployed my storm surge and
ghostkeels far apart to prevent the sorcerer cabal taking too much of a toll in
the first turn. Keeping the rest of my army in reserve.
He marched his hordes forward
in the first turn, successfully using the storm surge to kill a drone from the
ghostkeel unit. But failing to cast invisibility on himself. He then made what
I thought was a mistake by gating next to my storm surge. In my turn I used to
wall of mirrors to kill a couple of the chaos spawn before charging into his
gated unit with the storm surge and stomping all over them until there was only
a single zombie left. In the following turns in managed to six out Typhus with
a D hit that he failed to look out sir. When his reserves arrived I intercepted
them with a lot of my army to reduce their numbers and then charge in with a
riptide to tie them up. The tide survived on a single wound and he hit and run
out of combat. In his final turn his remaining models killed the riptide and
then I retaliated by killing the rest of his unit. Wiping him out for a full
win.
Game two.
In this round we were playing
end game objectives and a the maelstrom mission where you generate objectives
based on the number of objectives you control. I was playing battle company...
My opponent had the battle
company with basic upgrades, an entire parking lot of razorbacks and the
vindicator formation along with some drop podding dreadnoughts for flavour.
My opponent won first turn,
which gave me a chance at the end game objectives. I knew that I wouldn't win
the maelstrom for the secondary's against that many obsec units, but fancied my
chances at the end game. My opponent started by moving up into the mid table
grabbing as many objectives as possible. I took the fight to the enemy with the
ghostkeels excelling in killing space marine vehicles. Three tanks a turn fell
to these elite vehicle hunters. The Stormsurge unfortunately spent a lot of the
game tied up with a single marine in combat (I rolled double 1 to wound three
turns in a row).
The rest of my army was
slowly chewing its way through the marines, being careful to stay in a mutually
supportive position. My opponent didn’t have a huge amount of weapons that posed
a significant threat to me once the vindicators were taken care of.
We had to rush through the
last turns to try and get to the end of the game, but I ended up holding four
objectives to the space marines 1. However the maelstrom went completely to the
marines. Had we had time for another turn, I would have killed the two
remaining marines and the final drop pod to table my opponent. As it was the
game ended on a narrow victory for myself.
Game 3
With two wins under my belt I
was doing a lot better than I expected. But the narrow win against the battle
company meant I dropped down through the rankings. The next mission was kill
points. (battle company would have been a great opponent in this one).
In this round I was facing
Grey Knights using the new angels of death powers. With an allied skyhammer
annihilation force running lots of grav cannons. The grey knight portion of the
army composed of two nemesis dreadknights and two large terminator squads with
attached librarians.
I got the infiltrate warlord
trait and infiltrated my Stormsurge and stealth cadre to get some shots on his
dreadknights. My commander infiltrated into a building to get in range with the
markerlights so I could D shot his dreadknights.
The game started well for me with
both of his dreadknights being torn apart by destroyer missiles and D shots
from the pulse blastcannon. I intercepted his skyhammer devestators taking all
the grav cannons from one squad while the other squad remained untouched. One
of the assault squads mishaped on the deepstrike going into ongoing reserves.
His return fire put the grav
cannons into one of the riptides who survived on one wound thanks to his nova
charged shields. The assault squad charged into my commander and drones keeping
them tied up in combat for most of the game, with the commander eventually
emerging victorious.
In later turns the game
boiled down to a combat between his remaining terminators and the Stormsurge,
riptide and ghostkeels. By the time the combat had ended my Stormsurge, two
ghost keels and a single riptide were victorious. Leaving my opponent with a
drop pod and he conceded.
So at the end of game three I
was 3-0 up on wins, so even if I lost my next two I would have still achieved
the 3-2 I set out to at the start of the tournament.
However this also meant that I would be facing the top tier tables in the next round...
