Tales of a Tournament Newbie

So, Blog Wars 3, my first tournament!  But not my last, I need to somehow salvage some credit as a gamer!  The wooden spoon was not unexpected, but there again not exactly welcome.  I went with the aim of having fun, playing some good games with new people and I certainly wasn't diappointed there.  I had a fantastic time, even if I did loose every one of my games, and was tabled in the final one.  So what happened, where did it all go wrong?!

I thought my army stood a chance a good number of scoring units, my Sternguard being made scoring by my choice of Pedro Kantor as my commander, a couple of HQ units, a hammer in the form of assault terminators and an anvil of a dreadnought/drop pod combination.  All this backed up with some fast movers in the form of scout bikes and a landspeeder.

My army designed to represent a crusading force of Imperial fist successors based on a core from a chapter of my own led by Kantor and some CF supported by a few BTs.

The whole list consisted of:

HQ

Pedro Kantor

Space Marine Captain; Combi Melta, Power sword

Elites

Terminator Assult Squad (5 man)

Land Raider Crusader; MM

Dreadnought; Multimelta, Power Fist & SB

Drop Pod

Sterguard Squad (5 man); Power fist

Drop Pod; Deathwind

Troops

Tactical Squad (10 man); Lascannon, Meltagun

Scout squad (5 man); Sniper Rifles (4); ML; Cammo cloaks

Scout squad (5 man); Shotguns (3) HB, Bolt Pistol & CCW

Heavy Support

Thunderfire Cannon

Fast Attack

Landspeeder; MM, HB

Scout Bike Squad (3 man); GL, Locator Beacon

My cunning master plan was to infiltrate the two scout squads and scoot the bikers forwards with their scout move towards an objective or major threat and then use their locator beacon to ensure that one of my two drop pods, depending on whether I was heading for an objective or threat, would land without scattering.  My Landspeeder would zoom up a flank and pick off any artillery or vehicles or harass characters whilst my hammer would be the terminators and commander in the landraider.  These would, in theory strike at a weak point or be used to blunt an enemy attack.  My tactical squad and scouts would make objective sitting their primary task whilst hopefully providing protection to the Thunderfire that I would use to smash apart horde armies.  That was the plan, but as everyone knows no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy!

Ian King's (Buckaroo Mathammer) scout army.

So game one was against a scout army, should be an easy one, lots of four plus armour, easy to get the KPs!  Unless they're being led by Shrike and a squad of Vanguard, and every squad sergeant toting a power fist!  The scouts themselves weren't too bad...to begin with...but there were so many of them that eventually I suffered big time!  I had some good initial gains, destroying his Whirlwind and a scout squad with sniper rifles, unfortunately this ended up with Kantor being too far from the serious fight that was yet to come.  Shrike deep struck into my right flank hitting my thunderfire and scouts collapsing my flank.  In the end I killed him for 2KPs, but I also lost Kantor.  Overall I lost 5-25, worst score possible. 

Grazer's (Claws and Fists) 'Nids.

Second game was against the great devourer.  The good news was I had played Ken's nid army at this mission in a warm up game.  I'd lost, but that had taught me some important points.  Even though this mission was about holding table quarters I had learned that deploying forwards was not such a good plan! Unfortunately my opponent knew how to get the best out of his army and even though I felt I did better than in my warm up match I still struggled.  The Doom of Malantai is hard!  But I did manage to kill it, eventually!  And there was a comedy moment as he charged my land raider with his carnifex which was then counter charged and killed by a loan scout!  But another bad loss and I was on my way to the bottom table.

Ginge's oh so nasty foot slogging Guard.

My final game was against our very own Ginge and his Guard, wonderfully converted and characterful and hopefully ready to be turned to mincemeat, especially by my Thunderfire.  Unfortunately this was not to be the case.  Dawn of War saw me having to bring my TF on as reserves and before it could even fire a single shot it was taken out by the massed heavy weapons of Ginge's infantry.  My scout bikes roared in from my left flank and ended up being tied up in combat for far, far too long, 6 rounds where I could only kill 3 guardsmen! Things went from bad to worse with some horrific dice rolls, never before have a I seen so many ones and twos, and a major error in leaving my hammer unit exposed to a charge from Ginge's Rough Riders.  And damn Marbo Fett and his demo charge!  I so nearly had the central objective with my drop podded in Sternguard/Kantor combo but for him.  The end result was an embarrassing tabling and the wooden spoon.

So I'm looking forwads to next time and I think a change of army is called for, perhaps the Sons of Russ if I can paint them in time...I have my eye on you Ginge, honour must be served!