Man did I have a great (although exhausting) time! I have to say this and Nova are up there competining for my favorite event slot, although I might have to give it to adepticon based on that I got to meet a lot of guys I've always wanted to meet!
Let's see I got there way too early Friday and hung out with Brad (Hulksmash for awhile) then we eventually got a pick up game in, in which due to time we called it, but we both agreed I had it. It was a nice friendly warm up for the champs the next day.
Speaking of which I played my grey knights it. In hindsight had I known there were no tyranid players I would have played my tyranids, but after the event of the weekend took place I don't know if that still holds true. Round one I got paired with newish player playing foot marines with sternguard and pedro. Some poor deployment errors, and the bad match up he got, was way more than enough to make up for the slightly below average rolls I had. It was a fun relaxing game which was good, and I actually felt like my opponent honestly enjoyed it.
In round 2 I found myself against Christian A. The guy who won the Bay Area Open with guard. Only about half way through the game did I actually realize that and then I understood why the match was so tough. In general my grey knights have only lost to guard once and Christian came damn close to winning it this time. A had a few above average rolls against chimeras early, and then I also got first turn, which proved to be too much for the guard. But man was that a good game.
Round 3 I played against a grey knight player (it had to heppen eventually), which was a shame since grey knights is the worst match up for my army. He was a guy all the way from Sweden named richard, and he really knew what he was doing. He was also a fantastic sport. I played a lot of really, really good and fun games this weekend, but this one was my favorite. I won the roll for first, which honestly may have been the only reason I had a chance, his list was shootier, more mobile, and more assulty than mine, the only the thing I had him on was durability of scoring models. I threatened his ravens witht eh alpha strike so he opted to reserve them, but the then both came on turn 2 and boosted in my face. He rolled an 11 for his shrouding check which allowed me to blow up a raven and remove the multi melta from the other. In the end his army started walking through ine, killing my vehicles and strikes in droves (he got every single vehicle barring a weaponless dread) eventually though I demeched him and my death cults got 2 seperate charges off on each of his deathcult squads and slaughtered them both, thanks to some cleansing flame back up. In the end I managed to have it set up for a turn 5 win, unless he could pick up a kill point with his dreads (easier said then done since the only this he could shoot at was my infantry, but he did just enough wounds to my death cults, to force me to allocate 1 save to my inquisitor causig him to fail his 3+ go to ground and get insta killed. In the end we drew all the way down including in victory points with a margin of 127 I think in my favor (I needed 185 to win). A great game it was.
Round 4 I got paired up against a space wolf player who knew he was in for some hurt. He basically ran a bunch of grey hunters and long fangs, but again I won the roll for first and there was no decent place to hide. I shot his army for 2 turns killing every rhino and the long fangs, basically leaving him at the mercy of my land raider and death cults. He did have some pay though as a grey hunter squad charged and vaporized a strike squad and he almost stole one of the objectives (recon) which was to get more units (scoring or otherwise into your opponents deployment zone than they have in yours. He used his 3 units of 1 speeder to hide and hopefully threaten the deployment zone. It ended with my deathcults eating 2 or 3 squads of grey hunters and a rune priest and happily camping in his deployent zone, and the heavy bolters and psyflemen shooting what little parts of the speeders they could see.
Every game I played I had a great time in and really enjoyed. As we were waiting for results I found myself sitting with Tony Kopach and Reece Robins talking about how we all drew a game (those 2 drew each other final round) and how Tony was probably guarnteed a spot in the top 16 thanks to getting 11 out of 12 possible objective but me and Reece probably were out since we both only had 8. I also assumed Reece had a stronger strenght of schedule than me since he played Tony drew the round after I did. So the judges came up and started spitting out awards.
Early on the mentioned sportsmanship, and they said 2 players tied for best sportsman, and they were goign to give it to someone named Noah, with no other mention of the other guy (which I found to be strange but made no mention of). Then they got to the final 16 and the 16th seed was Reece, at which point my heart sank as I thought that meant I was out, then in 15th seed they called me! My goal for the weekend had been achieved, to qualify for Sunday. That's all I reasonably wanted to do (winning it all would've been awesome but I did say reasonably lol) I was actually so happy that I didn't even hear them call my name for best overall. That's right, someone had to tap me on the shoulder telling me that I won, for me to realize what had just happned!
I won best overall in the 256 person GT! Apparently I was the guy who tied for best sportsman with Noah, and I had a 38 out of 40 for paint. I was absolutely ecstatic! I was telling my team mates from the team tournament that I was going to be too full of myself with happiness to actually give a crap during the team tournament, but I'm glad that didn't actulayy happen.
On a humorous note, aside from the comedations and the fancy plaque, I pretty much won a free tyranid army. WOO! Exactly what I needed lol....
So Saturday came around and me and my amazing teammates, Andrew Gonyo, Brad Townsend, and Aaron Aelong were in the team tournament. Also I have to give a shout out to Andrew for building, converting, sculpting, and painting the eintire 4k point army and display board which was apparently 100 hours worth of work to an excpetional standard. The guy has mad skizzles. We were all trying our absolute best to try and win it, with no honest expectation of doing so given that there were 116 teams. However, in round 3 Brad and I drew he game only getting half the points. Well we figured it was okay we were still sitting at 201 out of a possble 227 battle point after round 3, and then we figured if we could max out round 4 we could stand a pretty good shot at winning! However, the unthinkable happened. Aaron and Brad lost their half of round 4, and Andrew and I came damn close to losing too, but eventually squeaked it out.
There were no hard feelings between any of us, we all did our best and we all had a good time, but we were pretty bummed out when they didn't call our name for any of the other prizes. We assumed all out efforts were for nothing but then, right as I was about to pass out from a combination of dissapointment and exhaustion, they announced the winners, team They Shall Know Fear! That was us! We won the team tournament! We all started screaming like little girls and have a bromantic orgy with each other but it was all good and fun. I'm pretty sure we ended up with a box bigger than me, and in it we found ourselves with easily 300-400 worht of models per person. We all hung out in our hotel room until about 12:30 or so at which point I decided sleep needed to happen since I had to be up at 4:30am for champs.
More on that to come, but so far I have won best overall out of 256, tying for best sport, (which I think I'm most proud of), and getting a 38 out of 40 for paint which was also freaking awesome! And then our team won the team tournament! What an amazing weekend!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Adepticon in 2 Days!
I'm heading out to Adepticon this Thursday and man is it stressful! Missing 3 days of school is cool until the work load hits you. On the bright side I'm looking forward to an awesome weekend full of gaming!
I'm supposed to arrive Thursday afternoon at 3pm, so if any of you guys want to meet up let me know!
I've signed up to play in the team tournament on the team "They Shall Know Fear" featuring myself, Hulksmash, Target (Andrew Gonyo), and Aaron Aelong, all incredibly exceptional players. And I have to give a shout out to Andrew for painting all 4000 points of the army to a very high standard in an incredibly short amount of time!
I'm also playing in the 40k championships where I will be featuring my grey knight list! It's pretty much an1850 version of the army I took took to WFN. I'm looking forward to catching up with some awesome friends and meeting some new people.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Colonial GT Stuffs!
I know I'm like ridiculousy far behind on posting stuff for the blog, but that's life. I did bring my tyranids with me to the colonial GT this past weekend in ew Jerseey, which was also a fantastic event which I highly reccomend you guys to check out. My friends and myself ended up taking the entire top 5.
1st Luke Riabowl with dark eldar
2nd Andrew Gonyo with grey knights
3rd Rich Therkorn with sisters
4th Eric Hoerger with necrons
5th Nick Nanavati with nids
Congrats to us for sweeping the GT lol.
Here's the list I brought.
HQ
Swarmlord 280
Tyrant Guard- lash whips 65
Elites
2 Hive Guard 100
2 Hive Guard 100
8 Ymgarl Stealers 184
Troops
10 Gaunts 50
10 Gaunts 50
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Heavy
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
It's my standard 1850 list which I've played easilly 100+ times. I know this army better than my grey knights and my demons combined, which I'm sure is a direct correlation to the list's success.
Round 1 I got paired up against a draigowing grey knight list in a kill point mission (which I will be battle reporting)
Rounds 2, 3, and 5 I got paired against horde orks and battle wagon orks, and balanced orks. Orks are an incredible easy match up for nids and I masacred all 3 of my games in relatively the same manner. It pretty much always comes down to the ymgarls and a crap ton of gaunts multi assulating 60-90 orks and killing them with fearless saves very early on. If you want me to battle report these I can, but all 3 games were relllativel simillar and there was very little in the way of advanced tactics in these games, no offence to any of my opponents, it's just that the match up was heavily in my favor.
Round 4 I got tabled by a dark eldar player (Luke who won) I play Luke almost weekly and I don't think either of us were surprised at all by the result, he's a fnatastc player who didn't make any mistakes. I can also battle report this one if you want, but it was pretty much on the lines of him rolling dice and me taking models off the table.
So onto round 1 vs grey knights
His list from memory
Draigo
Librarian- a crap ton of powers and 3 servo skulls
10 Paladins- 4 psy cannons 2 hammers, 1 staff, 4 halberds, 3 swords, all diversified, they had the banner of fuck you tyranids.
Solo paladin- hammer
Solo paladin- halberd
3 Ven dreads- 2 auto cannons with psybolt ammo
There was a lot of area terrain pretty much throown all over the board.
Looking at the list and the fact that it was kill points spearhead, I figured there was no reason for me to win. I won th roll to go first and took it. I deployed in my standard fashion with all of my monsters behind a gaunt wall ready to run riht at him... The ymgarls were put in a terrain piece where they could multi assualt 2 ven deads or the paadins if they came up.
The mission had special rules making the first 3 turns of the game night fight so his dreadnaughts were far up the board witht the paladins. The 2 solo paladins were deep striking.
On my turn 1 I felt that I had 2 options. Run away, hope to snipe off the solo paladins and hope the stealers kill the dreads or successfully run away also and barely win on kill points. Or run at him nd make a game out of it. After considering my options and realizing that regardless of how bad I lost I would get 7 points, I figured I should at least play for the win. So everything ran at him, I feel no pained a swarmlord and a trygon and immobilized a ven dread with hive guard.
My plan for this game was simple, get a multi assualt off on the paladins with 3 trygons and swarmlord (and the gaunts or stealers (to tie up the hammers and halberds) or try and kill the other 5 kill points in his army and not die, either were going to be easy.
On his turn 1 he walked back a little ( I was really hoping he would take the bait and charge at me) and shot a trygon down to 3 wounds (without feel no pain).
On my turn 2 my ymgarls failed to show up I think, and I pressed forward with the gaunt wall. I feel no pained the 3 wound trygon (making it unappealing to shoot at, but sitll appealing for the kill point) ad the swarmlord. My guns mostly bounced off the dreads thanks to night fight. I did manage to paroxize the paladins with swarmlord., bringing htem to WS and BS 1.
On his turn 2 a paladin with the hammer showed up and deepstruck near his paladins. Very close to where the ymgarls would show up, although my opponent didn't know that at the time. He walked his entire paladin unit into the center of his deployment zone and put every model in a forest. He continued to shoot the feel no pain trygon but it survived with 1 wound.
On my turn 3 my ymgarls showed up and multi assualted the 1 paladin and a dreadnaught, killing the paladin. (at the worst they trade kill points) I also spawn gauts with a tervigon. The gaunts walk up and so does a healthy trygon and the swarmlord. They all charge a dreadnaught that was about 6 inches in fron of his paladin unit. I actually failed to kill the dread though, damn venerable!
My plan was to use the consolidatin moves to move the trygon and swarmlord back and the gaunts in front to screen.
Since I failed to kill the dread I had to consolidate th un engaged gaunts and since when I moved them they were strung out in a congo line when I assualted they were a congo line and when I piled in they were in a congo line in fron of his paladins. His paladins could still assualt around them but we need a total of 12" on 2 different difficult terrain rolls.
Here's where I think my opponent made a fatal mistake. He charged the paladins into the ymgarls slaughtering them all. However, if he multi assualted the ymgarls and the guants (a very easy task) he could have made the whole combat a multi assualt in which my mosters would lose by about 10 and then get pulled into combat with the paladins. where they would quickly meet their fate to double hammer hand and auto passing force weapon checks.
But as it was he assualted the ymgarls and killed them, he also shot away the trygon with 1 wound, and I finished off the dread from the previous turn, cosolidating torwards his other dread.
His last paladin also showed up behind my army. I assume he didn't think I would tur around and split my army to deal with it. But against Draigowing like this every single kill point matters sO I was more than happy to just kill the paladin even if it meants putting my trygon out of position. I didn't relaize that that paladin had a halberd and would strike before my trygon though, thankfully he fai,ed to wond and my trygon killed it.
My swarmlord and trygon walked away from the paladins and charged a dreadnaught, killing it. They consolidated even further from the paladins. The gaunts that I spawned got right in front of the paladins , hopefully keeping them from moving anywhere useful.
Going into his bottom of 4 I'm up 4 kill points to 2.
On his turn 4 he said he wanted to disengage Draigo form the paladins (so the paladins could shoot something while Draigo killed the guants, but he ended his movement phase in coherency with the paladins. But I allowed him to fix this in the assualt phase and charge the gaunts anyway, killling them. The dread and paladins shot a tervigon and left it at 1 wound.
On my turn 5 the tervigon feel no pained itself and ran full speed away, 6" back plus 6" run getting out of range and sight. My hive guard failed to kill the last dread.
On his he failed to kill my hive guard who were in cover and had feel no pain.
The game ended there 4-3 me with a monor win for the nids with no bonus points. For such a terrible match up given the mission I'm very pleased about the result.
My opponent was a great sport and had an excellent looking army, we played a dentlemen's game and that's all I can ask for. Definitely looking forward to a rematch!
1st Luke Riabowl with dark eldar
2nd Andrew Gonyo with grey knights
3rd Rich Therkorn with sisters
4th Eric Hoerger with necrons
5th Nick Nanavati with nids
Congrats to us for sweeping the GT lol.
Here's the list I brought.
HQ
Swarmlord 280
Tyrant Guard- lash whips 65
Elites
2 Hive Guard 100
2 Hive Guard 100
8 Ymgarl Stealers 184
Troops
10 Gaunts 50
10 Gaunts 50
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Heavy
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
It's my standard 1850 list which I've played easilly 100+ times. I know this army better than my grey knights and my demons combined, which I'm sure is a direct correlation to the list's success.
Round 1 I got paired up against a draigowing grey knight list in a kill point mission (which I will be battle reporting)
Rounds 2, 3, and 5 I got paired against horde orks and battle wagon orks, and balanced orks. Orks are an incredible easy match up for nids and I masacred all 3 of my games in relatively the same manner. It pretty much always comes down to the ymgarls and a crap ton of gaunts multi assulating 60-90 orks and killing them with fearless saves very early on. If you want me to battle report these I can, but all 3 games were relllativel simillar and there was very little in the way of advanced tactics in these games, no offence to any of my opponents, it's just that the match up was heavily in my favor.
Round 4 I got tabled by a dark eldar player (Luke who won) I play Luke almost weekly and I don't think either of us were surprised at all by the result, he's a fnatastc player who didn't make any mistakes. I can also battle report this one if you want, but it was pretty much on the lines of him rolling dice and me taking models off the table.
So onto round 1 vs grey knights
His list from memory
Draigo
Librarian- a crap ton of powers and 3 servo skulls
10 Paladins- 4 psy cannons 2 hammers, 1 staff, 4 halberds, 3 swords, all diversified, they had the banner of fuck you tyranids.
Solo paladin- hammer
Solo paladin- halberd
3 Ven dreads- 2 auto cannons with psybolt ammo
There was a lot of area terrain pretty much throown all over the board.
Looking at the list and the fact that it was kill points spearhead, I figured there was no reason for me to win. I won th roll to go first and took it. I deployed in my standard fashion with all of my monsters behind a gaunt wall ready to run riht at him... The ymgarls were put in a terrain piece where they could multi assualt 2 ven deads or the paadins if they came up.
The mission had special rules making the first 3 turns of the game night fight so his dreadnaughts were far up the board witht the paladins. The 2 solo paladins were deep striking.
On my turn 1 I felt that I had 2 options. Run away, hope to snipe off the solo paladins and hope the stealers kill the dreads or successfully run away also and barely win on kill points. Or run at him nd make a game out of it. After considering my options and realizing that regardless of how bad I lost I would get 7 points, I figured I should at least play for the win. So everything ran at him, I feel no pained a swarmlord and a trygon and immobilized a ven dread with hive guard.
My plan for this game was simple, get a multi assualt off on the paladins with 3 trygons and swarmlord (and the gaunts or stealers (to tie up the hammers and halberds) or try and kill the other 5 kill points in his army and not die, either were going to be easy.
On his turn 1 he walked back a little ( I was really hoping he would take the bait and charge at me) and shot a trygon down to 3 wounds (without feel no pain).
On my turn 2 my ymgarls failed to show up I think, and I pressed forward with the gaunt wall. I feel no pained the 3 wound trygon (making it unappealing to shoot at, but sitll appealing for the kill point) ad the swarmlord. My guns mostly bounced off the dreads thanks to night fight. I did manage to paroxize the paladins with swarmlord., bringing htem to WS and BS 1.
On his turn 2 a paladin with the hammer showed up and deepstruck near his paladins. Very close to where the ymgarls would show up, although my opponent didn't know that at the time. He walked his entire paladin unit into the center of his deployment zone and put every model in a forest. He continued to shoot the feel no pain trygon but it survived with 1 wound.
On my turn 3 my ymgarls showed up and multi assualted the 1 paladin and a dreadnaught, killing the paladin. (at the worst they trade kill points) I also spawn gauts with a tervigon. The gaunts walk up and so does a healthy trygon and the swarmlord. They all charge a dreadnaught that was about 6 inches in fron of his paladin unit. I actually failed to kill the dread though, damn venerable!
My plan was to use the consolidatin moves to move the trygon and swarmlord back and the gaunts in front to screen.
Since I failed to kill the dread I had to consolidate th un engaged gaunts and since when I moved them they were strung out in a congo line when I assualted they were a congo line and when I piled in they were in a congo line in fron of his paladins. His paladins could still assualt around them but we need a total of 12" on 2 different difficult terrain rolls.
Here's where I think my opponent made a fatal mistake. He charged the paladins into the ymgarls slaughtering them all. However, if he multi assualted the ymgarls and the guants (a very easy task) he could have made the whole combat a multi assualt in which my mosters would lose by about 10 and then get pulled into combat with the paladins. where they would quickly meet their fate to double hammer hand and auto passing force weapon checks.
But as it was he assualted the ymgarls and killed them, he also shot away the trygon with 1 wound, and I finished off the dread from the previous turn, cosolidating torwards his other dread.
His last paladin also showed up behind my army. I assume he didn't think I would tur around and split my army to deal with it. But against Draigowing like this every single kill point matters sO I was more than happy to just kill the paladin even if it meants putting my trygon out of position. I didn't relaize that that paladin had a halberd and would strike before my trygon though, thankfully he fai,ed to wond and my trygon killed it.
My swarmlord and trygon walked away from the paladins and charged a dreadnaught, killing it. They consolidated even further from the paladins. The gaunts that I spawned got right in front of the paladins , hopefully keeping them from moving anywhere useful.
Going into his bottom of 4 I'm up 4 kill points to 2.
On his turn 4 he said he wanted to disengage Draigo form the paladins (so the paladins could shoot something while Draigo killed the guants, but he ended his movement phase in coherency with the paladins. But I allowed him to fix this in the assualt phase and charge the gaunts anyway, killling them. The dread and paladins shot a tervigon and left it at 1 wound.
On my turn 5 the tervigon feel no pained itself and ran full speed away, 6" back plus 6" run getting out of range and sight. My hive guard failed to kill the last dread.
On his he failed to kill my hive guard who were in cover and had feel no pain.
The game ended there 4-3 me with a monor win for the nids with no bonus points. For such a terrible match up given the mission I'm very pleased about the result.
My opponent was a great sport and had an excellent looking army, we played a dentlemen's game and that's all I can ask for. Definitely looking forward to a rematch!
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