Tournament Report: Last Hurrah of 6th

I went to are local area's tournament yesterday, it was the last hurrah for 6th up at game matrix in tacoma WA.  Was a lot of fun and had great opponents all around.  Was nothing fancy, a 1999 pt tourney with no stronghold or escalation, but other stuff was ok.  Don't think anyone was limited to only one ally/formation etc, as I saw no one brought any more than one ally anyway.  I somehow played against all the eldar players that attended lol, first round against an all eldar list that was pretty standard, second was against Tau/dar, and third was against a seer star.  This is a long post.

I was the only IG/Scion player, there were two chaos and a couple of SM with one bringing a knight along for the party.  I brought my scions, if you see my bat reps against my brothers orks, thats pretty much what I brought, with a second valkyrie and AM allies with vanquisher tank commander, platoon, primaris psyker, and wyvern.  It was a good outing as I really haven't played with tank commanders or the wyvern yet so it was a good experience to use them.

I made a lot of mistakes in the first round, most importantly not reading the mission properly.  It was the scouring but slightly modified.  Instead of scoring at the end of the game, you scored at the end of each game turn.  I did not see this so I left two objectives in my deployment zone unsecured, losing me a lot of points (16) until turn 3 when we realized this was how the objectives were scored.  Goes to show READ the mission!  This ended up costing me the game (most likely).

On to the first round!  My first opponent had a general eldar army with an autarch with warp generator with a full ten man squad of warp spiders, unit of jet bikes(4), two full dire squads in wave serpents, a dark reaper squad in a wave serpent, two crimson hunters, and a wraithknight.  All in all a solid mobile list with good firepower.

It was hammer and anvil and I won roll off for first turn and he failed to seize.  I deployed with two tauroxes on the right with my command squad in the ruins, my blob on the left with the psyker and the quad gun and battle cannon taurox on the far left.  My melta command squad was in one of the valkyries.  My leman russes were on the far right.  The objectives were spread about the middle of the field, with two in my deployment zone.

First turn I moved my tauroxes up, depositing one scion plasma squad in the central ruin on one of the objectives (1pt).  The other taurox on the left, I kept it in the open to shoot, which was a big mistake, though it did help knock out a wave serpent which game me first blood.  With combined shooting I knocked one wave serpent out (dark reapers), stunned another and knocked 2 hps off and 3 wounds off of the knight, my russes moved back.

His turn he moved up, dark reapers moved into the ruin and killed the taurox on the left and pinning the squad, I should have gone flat out into the ruin for cover. And to get the objective.  He killed another taurox, again I should have kept it behind the aegis or ruins for cover.  Lesson learned, they have great firepower but need cover to extend their survivability.  The wraithknight moved up but did nothing.

Turn two and I have pics.

My scion squad in the center took better position in the ruin, the other on the right moved from there wreck to get better cover and get closer to objective their (4pts).  The surviving taurox moved back behind the aegis and I got both valkyries on.  They moved up, you can see to where.  The russes moved back again.  I made a bad mistake and did not move my wyvern, nothing was in range as I did not measure properly so it sat out another turn.  This was a critical error.  But despite it all I killed another wave serpent and the wraithknight and killed a dark reaper.

 For his reserves he got on his bikes and one crimson hunter, which he used vector dancer to stay out of the quad guns arc.  He moved his surviving wave serpent up and moved his dark reapers to get a shot at the quad gun.  Dire avenger ran an inch.  Shooting he knocked a hull point of a russ and killed 3 scions on the right.  Knocked a wound off the quad gun. 

 I moved my russes up and my wyvern, my scions on the left no longer pinned moved towards the objective in the ruins and now realising the back objectives were worth points each turn I moved my command squad to claim it.  Wyvern got a few shots off and killed another dark reaper, knocking them down to three.  My valkyries attempted to knock out the crimson hunter but rolled horribly and did not score a single hit.

 His third turn his second hunter and his warp spiders, who deep struck right on my objective by the wyvern, He drove off my one scion squad on the right and killed one russ.  Warp spiders killed 12 of the blob and his dark reapers killed the quad gun.  He also dropped one valkyrie.

My turn I consolidated on the objective on the left and set up to deal with the wave serpent and warp spiders.  With combined fire I killed all but four of the spiders, go wyvern.  I also killed the last wave serpent and gunned down a few dire avengers.

 His hunters moved around and killed the last valkyrie.  He failed to do anything to the wyvern.  His autarch split off to go after the platoon.  He assaulted them, they got stuck in he killed two but they held.  The other warp spider killed one guardsmen from the command squad.  The dire avengers moved to secure the 4pt objective. 

next turn I killed the dire avengers with the wyvern and shooting from the scions and command squad.  The tuarox moved and finished off the warp spiders. 

His turn he moved his bikes and finished off the scions on the left, he fired and killed all but my warlord in the command squad.  His autarch won combat and swept the remainder. 

Last turn wyvern shot and killed all but one of the bikes, just did not get enough wounds.  The commander jumped in the taurox to survive and I tried to kill the autarch but failed. 

He moved around a bit, failed to do anything but at this point he had enough pts that he won the game 18 to 7.  Had I taken the other two objectives in my zone from the beginning it would have been a much different game but that's my bad for not reading. 

Despite mistakes the scions did very well and once the wyvern got into range it was money.  I need to pick up some more.  Great opponent and a lot of run.

Round 2

I faced off against Tau/Dar.  He had a farseer on foot, two 5 man dire avenger squads in wave serpents, two 5 fire dragon squads in wave serpents (one had brightlances), two fire prisms, Tau Commander with two body guards (missile pods), two broadsides, a riptide, and kroot with three krootox.

Mission was purge the alien with a twist.  The tourney had a favor of tzeentch rule, which basically was if you killed a unit, dedicated transports excepted, you got a favor point which you could spend at the beginning of movement.  Basically you could move terrain 3d6, change front armor of a vehicle (10+d3), or swap a model for one of yours as long as same unit type (infantry for infantry, bike for bike etc) excepting characters and vehicles.  I won the roll off again and he failed to seize, there was a giant hill which I took and placed the aegis and most of my army, tauroxes were on the left behind some sparse ruins.

He reserved half of his army, keeping his tau minus kroot (outflanking) and two wave serpents with dire avengers.  There was a very large piece of central terrain and another in his deployment, which he hid behind. I was bad at taking pics. 

First turn I moved the tauroxes into firing position and to get some plasma shots out the fire points.  My tanks shifted around to get shots at the riptide, scoring three wounds..  Firing I killed one broadside and a wave serpent.  Wyvern was unlucky and only killed on dire avenger and they passed all their checks. 

His turn he moved up and his one serpent back.  Fire from his tau and serpents wrecked two of my tauroxes, nothing was pinned.  Stuff shifted around but other than that was a minimal skirmishing for both of us.

Turn two both vakyries came on and I moved my surviving taurox to get good cover and moved the scions into the ruins and to get shots at the broadsides.   Tanks shifted again and commenced firing.  The riptide had moved just into range of my blobs small arms and died to some lasguns and a krak grenade, though my leman russ did strip one wound too, it was the blob that finished it off.  This was the only game where I used split fire and it was very useful as I had the quad gun on one side of the big building and the two autocannon teams on the other, so I could engage wave serpents on both sides.

His turn he got all his wave serpents on and a fire prism.  He moved around getting his fire prism on the right to shoot at the wyvern or russes.  With shooting he killed a few scions, and knocked a few hull points off the valkyries.

 

Third turn my valkyries moved up, I had a favor of tzeentch from killing the riptide so I moved the big arch to get a clear shot on his guys hiding.  My melta command squad jumped out of the valkyrie. in front of his farseer and broadsides.  Fire from my scions killed the broadside, my command squad killed the farseer, the wyvern killed a crisis suit and pu a wound on another, they failed leadership and ran off the board.  Leman russes split fired, one killed a wave serpent and blew it up (he used his shields every time so no downgrading pens).  The other put two hull points of damage on another and destroyed the bright lance.

His turn he moved his wave serpents around and got his last fire prism in but the kroot failed to make it.  He continued shooting but was only successful in stripping some hull points off my taurox and killing a few more scions, though the melta command squad survived with just the commander.  Both valkyries were brought to a single hull point with one having its velocity locked.

 My turn, one valk went off the board, the other went into hover and the commander jumped in.  The valk moved back towards my lines, plus I moved the arch again to get clear shots at the fire dragons and for the valk to hid behind.  It turbo boosted back to get a better jink save.  Rest of shooting I immobilized the right fire prism, killed the fire dragons with hot shot fire and put some hull point damage on a wave serpent.

His turn his kroot came on, he moved his wave serpent with last fire dragons up in a last ditch to get into my parking lot.  Kroot opened up on the valk, I made all my jink saves though.  His fire prism got a glance on the wyvern, it made its other cover saves.

At this point I started my turn but time was called, basically the kroot were going to get hot shotted to death with volley guns and 2 1/2 scion squads, the prism had only one HP left and was immobilized so was going to die and I had plenty to deal with the wave serpent and fire dragons.  I had a solid victory of 10-3.

Now last round I played against the jetseer and you can imagine how that went.  It was still a fun game, they guy was a great player and we both had a good time.

It was night fighting turn one, he won the roll off and made me go first.  The pretty much made sure I could do nothing.  First turn I was only able to kill a squad of warp spiders, they ran off the board, go wyvern.  Unfortunately he stunned it on his turn with his vaul weapons battery (the monfilimant ones) and finished it off next turn.

He had too much cover saves and his seer star got its powers and ran around invincible.  The wraithknight did well, I had a very bad time wounding it and just could not roll to wound.  That being said I still killed quite a bit of his army but in the end I did not have the tools to deal with the star and night fighting and going first just sealed the deal.  Had I been able to go second and forced him to move closer, my first turn shooting would have been much better, as it was I got two units that could fire and he just ran up on me and took me apart piece by piece.  The scions though held on till the end and dished out a lot of fire and killed another warpspider squad and I wrecked a few of his transports and warriors.   The valkyries did well, but just weren't enough and the loss of the wyvern so early ended any chances I had.

But it was a fun game and I managed to hold on to decent loss, only losing 2-7 and keeping him from getting all the objectives in the end.  I did not take krak grenades on the blob which unfortunately cost them as his wraightknight saved itself in combat and since the primaris psyker had krak grenades, I could not run away as I did not have weapons are useless.  So probably will either drop his grenades or give the blob them.

Lessons learned from the tourney, make sure you understand the mission and don't assume. It cost me game one.  The scions did quite well and took a lot of firepower to drag them down, they dished it out and made a nice tally of kills.  I played better with my tauroxes in the second two rounds and it paid off, cover is important for them and I should have used it better the first game.  The second was hard as there was very little to use.  And despite it all, the third game I still put up a good fight and the tauroxes did their job.  I would like to not they did not give up first blood a single time, so use them right an they will do well.

For the army overall, I would probably drop the tank commander, he was good but a lot of points.  Yarrick and a vendetta would have paid off much better.  Not having the senior orders was a deal breaker, but would have been very useful and it hurt, especially in the last game where cover was what saved him.  Overall though was a very good list and the wyverns were very useful and I will be picking up quite a few of them.  I may give the hydra a try, just to see if I can make it work. 

Other wise was a lot of fun and all my opponent were great and it was a blast, and yes I even had fun against the seer star.  I am looking forward to 7th though and taking it down a notch :).  We were talking the whole time about how it would change the army and how he was going to try new things.  Great fun and looking forward to getting more scions to play.