Onslaught!

I want to start by thanking ward for all his hard work to put on another good event. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I met a couple of great players and look forward to having a couple more games against them.

I was pleased because they was a very solid representation from a lot of xenos armies. Tyranids had five, necrons had 4, daemons were 3, 3 dark eldar and 3 eldar. The rest were a fairly eclectic mix of grey knight, blood angels and vanilla marines.

The scoring was evenly weighted between sportsmanship, presentation, and generalship. Secondaries were used to determine best general and votes were given out for best presentation and best sport. There were bonus points to be had if you followed a loose comp and had fluff, early submitted list etc.

I took my necrons for hopefully the last tournament for a long while. They are too efficient. First world problems, I know. They've become boring. After the initial set up of my army I would overhear "he's hear again" lol.  That being said I did go 4-0 with them, so credit has to be given.

Destroyer Lord: Scythe, Weave, Scarabs, Orb
Overlord: Scythe, Scarabs

10 Teslamortals: Haywiretek
10 Gaussmortals: Haywiretek, Night Scythe
5 Teslamortals
5 Teslamortals

10 Deathmarks: Despairtek, Nightscythe

7 Scarabs
7 Scarabs

Doomscythe
Annibarge
Annibarge

Game 1: Tyranids (Scouring, Vanguard Strike)

Hive Tyrant

3 Warriors
3 Warriors
10 Termagaunts
Tervigon

3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard
3 Zoanthropes

Trygon Prime
Dakkafex
Dakkafex

I lost first turn, but fortunately the objective weighting was in my favour. I made my bonehead move for the tourney and left my Annibarge vulnerable to hiveguard and he blew it up. I responded by having the big tesla unit go off for 23 hits and proceeded to melt the trygon.

The next couple of turns were him advancing into midfield. I managed to squeak by killing the tervigon with the deathmarks and polished off the monsterous creaures on that side. He played very defensively after the trygon dies which gave me board control and consquently the win.

Game 2: Dave Sinn's Imperial Guard (Emperor's Will, Dawn of War)

Company Command: Plasma and Chimera

Vet Squad: Plasma, Chimera
Vet Squad: Plasma, Chimera
Vet Squad: Plasma, Chimera
Vet Squad: Plasma, Chimera
Vet Squad: Melta, Chimera
Vet Squad: Melta, Chimera

Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta

Griffon
Griffon
Manticore

So looking at the army I needed my scarabs to drop the chimeras to keep him out of my deployment zone. Troop units in your enemy's DZ scored an additional 2 points. Unfortunately, this punk was packing three indirect firing ordanance blasts that instant kill scarabs. Tournament scenery being what it is I was fortunate to have a large building in my deployment zone. I rolled up the conqueror of cities so I had stealth on one of my scarab units. They actually did very little to his army in the game. I reserved everything else other than my annihilation barges.

Early game I pushed up the left side to get at his objective with my mounted immortal unit and to deal with his heavies. He pushed a little into midfield and blew up an annibarge with his vendettas for first blood, my objective had skyfire so the haywire cryptek with the teslamortals was a threat to the hovering vendettas in my backfield. Im pretty sure every plasma gunner killed himself putting shots down on the immortal unit in his backfield.  He had an abysmal turn of shooting trying to destroy an annihiliation barge and doom scythe. In the end, I contested the objective in his zone with a troop model getting the linebreaker bonuses. We lost track of time and dave graciously let me finish my turn for the massacre.

Game 3: Geoff's Grey Knights (Purge the Alien, Dawn of War)

Draigo

10 Strike Knights
10 Strike Knights
10 Srike Knights
7 Terminators
7 Terminators

Dreadknight: Heavy Incinerator and Heavy Psycannon

Hmmm, foot list with lots of strength 7 shooting and force weapons in a kill point mission. HELLLOO useless scarabs. Prepare to block.

I was expecting a straight up 24" gun fight with me running away from terminators. However, he decided to reserve the terminators, dreadknight and combat squad the majority of his strike squads keeping 2 half units for deepstrike. I would advise against this to minimize killpoints and to put a load of guns on the table turn 1.

I had turn one, I dropped a couple of marines for the loss of an annihilation barge. My deathmark unit came in and I managed to drop the rest of the the big strike squad with draigo. He retaliated with a dread knight into the destroyer lord, passed mindshackle and dropped him. I got back up and made the dreadknight punch itself in the face. The majority of his deepstriking units hit my deployment zone on the right side, I took the lead on kill points cleaning up the majority of the strike combat squads.

The game ended with me cleaning up the the strike squads and the dread knight and running away from the rest of his army blocking the termies with the scarabs. Minor win for me.

Game 4: Scott's Mech Blood Angels (Crusade 4 Objectives Vanguard)

Librarian
4 Plasma Honour Guard in Rhino
Furioso Frag Cannon Drop Pord
Furioso Frag Cannon
10 Assault Marines in Land Raider
5 Assault Marines in Rhino
5 Assault Marines in Razorback
Baal Pred with assault Cannon
Baal Pred with assault Cannon
Stormraven
Vindicator

So I won first turn and gave it to him. He deployed to rush me across a pyramid in the middle. I was worried about the podding furioso blowing up the scarabs so I bubblewrapped them with my troops. His pod arrived outside of a safe distance from the scarabs however the baal preds put the beat down on one unit so I lost first blood. He managed to tie up one of my big troop choices with the podded dread but the other scarab unit came to the rescue and finally managed to bring it down.

Scott then split his force with the land raider filled with the big unit and the razorback assault marines on one side and the gun tanks plus honour guard and other assault squad on the other.  With him having so few troops I felt that I could prioritize them  and then play keep away with the objectives. My doom scythe came in and blew up both baals, the vindi and the troops transport in one shot. The deathmarks did very little this game only managing to pot shot the odd model, the destroyer lord managed to get a hold of the librarians squad and slowly wittle it down. I made a stupid mistake and left the gauss squad plus overlord open to a charge from a furioso in a storm raven so that was their demise.

The game came down to the two objectives in my deployment zone. One was held by the big immortal squad, and it got charged by the honour guard and his other troop squad. The assault marines came out on top only to get blown away by an annihilation barge at the bottom of 7.  The other objective was held by the little 5 man immortal unit. They all took wounds from a storm ravens plasma cannon, multimelta and missiles. I went to ground in the open and saved one to win the game. Too close.

Epilogue

So I went 4-0-0 in the tournament and thought I had placed myself well for a shot at best overall, but I was to be denied. Mr. Dan Byers and his Raven Guard, counts as blood angels snatched it away from me. He beat me by one point. Had I written some background story for my necrons I wouldve tied him and therefore have beaten him on the generalship tiebreaker. I have to say, I really disagree with the secondary system implemented in the tournament. This is the only tournament that I know of that doesn't award its best general trophy to the person who won all of their games. They take the unbalanced bonus objectives into account to determine the winner. Oh well. Otherwise, this is a great tournament that I would recommend to anyone.