40k Ambassadorial Tournament

Ok so yesterday I played in our area's 40k Ambassadorial Tournament.  Basic concept is a bracket system with 4 rounds, and the main thing behind it is that each player is an ambassador for their faction.  So no allies allowed.  You could only bring units from your faction.   You were allowed to use an ally slot if say you were CSM and wanted black legion and regular CSM.  CADs could only be from one rule book and you could have up to two detachments and formations were allowed.  Total points were 2000pts.

Overall it's a great concept, each army is just there own, if your fighting eldar, its only eldar.  Or your just fighting tau.  No Space wolf/whit scars, etc.  Its just your faction/codex vs someone elses.  Funny how not too long ago this is the only way we played 40k.  It was cool, but honestly I do like allies too, its fun to play 40k different ways and I like how 7th allows you to do that.

Since I am one of two MT players in my area and prob region, and the other was the TO, I took my scions to battle.  Spoilers, I did not win the tournament, or place in the top.  My list was the Ground assault formation with a CAD with two command squads (melta, volley), and two scion squads (plasma, no specials).  The Formation had a plasma command squad, a rifle squad, plasma scion squad, and a flamer squad with a power maul and the commissar joined that one with a power maul as well.  I had 3 missile tauroxes and a gatling taurox, a valkyrie kitted out and a firestorm redoubt with lascannons and some obstacles to fill some points.

I played dark eldar(old), space wolves, daemons, and eldar.  First round I was slow, I must admit that I have not played 40k, for almost 2 months before the tournament, life getting in the way, and I got back from Kansas the night before so was hardly full of energy.

Forgive me, I don't remember all the rules for the missions, they were super special snowflake missions.  First game wasn't too off the wall, each player placed 3 objectives in your opponents zone, which was table quarters, your primary were the objectives in your opponents zone, secondary was an objective in each of the table quarters that no one deployed in, and tertiary were the ones in your own deployment zone.  Primary=9, secondary=6, tertiary=3 each.   

I deployed in my quarter, opponent got to choose hers, placed the fort up front with good lanes of fire for the lascannons.  Two tauroxes behind, my command squad taurox to the side of it with the gatling taurox on my flank with cover in front of it.  Valk in reserve and melta command deep strike.  She kept half her army in reserve and had two wyche squads in venoms, 3 warrior squads in raiders, 2 ravagers, voidraven bomber, urien rakarth with heami and grotesques in raider.  The ravagers, urien, one wyche squad, and one dismounted warrior squad deployed with her aegis and comms relay.  I got night attacker warlord trait, and she got the units can use HQs leadership within 12".  It was night fight but we both ignored it(DE and Warlord).

turn 3

 She had first turn and moved urien's raider and the venom up, the ravagers staid in place.  She dismounted urien's squad who was just in range of a long charge of my redoubt.  She fire dark lances, and got a pen on the redoubt, got the one that cause D3 hits on squad inside.  Lost two scions from my plasma squad that was inside.  I also had my volley command squad in there but they took no wounds.  Tauroxes made all their cover saves and had on units dismounted so took no small arms shots.  Urien successfully got his squads charge on the redoubt, I wasn't sure why she charged it, but thought she had haywire in the squad.  Turns out she didn't, and forgot she was only S7 on the charge and did nothing to the bunker. 

My turn I moved two tauroxes around to the sides of the redoubt and dismounted my command plasma squad to shoot at urien's squad.  My two on my left flank moved off towards here aegis line with one ravager and warrior squad.  The plasma squad ordered preferred enemy on themselves as they were already twin linked from dismounting.  They fired into urien and got 8 hits and 8 wounds, and she then proceeded, to make 6 5+ FnP saves, blah.  Volley command squad and plasma scion squad also opened up and they were much luckier and with combined shooting total I was able to knock a wound of urien, and killed 3 grotesques.  The lascannons on the redoubt could no see urien's squad (thankfully), and the first one fired at the raider getting two hits and exploding it, she did not jink and did not make her flicker field saves.  The second one then had the venom as the next closest and despite her jink, was able to wreck it.  The missile tauroxes near my redoubt opened up on the right ravager and were able to knock two hullpoints off of it and forced it to jink.  The last missile taurox fired at the left ravager and forced a jink as well and knocked on HP off.  The gatling taurox was just in range with its gatling cannon and was able to kill 5 of the warrior squad with the heavy stubber killing two more leaving one lone warrior just out of range of the comms, he passed leadership.

turn 2

Second turn her raider and void raven come on, the rest don't make it in.  Raider moves into her back field to go after my tauroxes pressing her deployment zone. My lascannons intercept the bomber forcing a jink, and knock a hullpoint off.  The wyches move from their wrecked venom and go around the terrain to the right.  Ravagers shooting is ineffective, same with bomber, go snap shots.  Urien assaults my right taurox and kills it, squad passing ld and dismounts on the right side.

My turn the melta squad comes in and makes a pinpoint drop in front of the ravager near her aegis.  My tauroxes move up to support.  The other missile taurox moves back to support if urien keeps on coming.  My plasma scion squad gets out of the bunker and the other scion squad from their dead transport moves around to deal with the wyches.  With combined fire urien and all the grotesques are killed leaving a lone heami.  Melta squad wastes the ravager and taurox kills the other.  the Raider takes a pen from the last missile taurox and jinks, only losing one HP.  My lascannons don't do great and only get a glance through the jink on the void raven, but its still only snap firing.  My scion squad on the right kills all but two wyches and they run off the board.

The rest of her stuff come on and deploys to where her wyches were, with one raider moving near the center and the other raider and venom on the far right.  Overall her shooting is blah, kills a plasma gunner from my command squad and a few guys on the right.  The heami does the most and kills 5 scions from the squad that was previously in the redoubt.  He charges them, does nothing and then gets killed my scions in cc.

My turn the valk comes on and goes up the center.  The troops on my left move into her deployment zone onto objectives and the flamer squad with commissar dismounts, flamers manage to kill the raider( got two 6s), and kill 6 of the guys inside, gatling taurox finishes them off.  Lascannons wiff.  On my right I wreck a venom and take two HPs off the raider despite its jink (go rending lasguns!).  valk does some damage to the other raider as well. 

At this point we call the game, we were playing slow and it was over for her with only a couple of squads left and I still had almost my entire army left.  Didn't have enough time for another round.  I ended up getting a primary, secondary and tertiary with slay the warlord, first blood and line breaker for a very solid victory and she got a secondary.  This was my best game and played my army well here.  Next games I made a lot of mistakes and had some bad luck.

Space wolves were next with a drop heavy army with the void claws (termies that deep strike turn 1), with murder fang, bunch of grey hunters, pred & whirlwind, storm wolf with blood claws.

I deployed with just redoubt and two squads, going for negating his alpha strike by leaving just AV14 on the field with a few things hiding.  This lost me the game.  There were there objectives in the center that activated on a roll (so each turn one was active for scoring).  His pred and whirlwind were all that deployed.

I got first turn, and knocked a hullpoint off the pred.  He came in and got some amazing luck.  Melta drop pod came right in and got his meltas in range, murderfang was right in front, and his termies were in the center, I got first blood by intercepting a drop pod and shook murder fang.  Then the amazing rolls began.  Murder fang flamed a couple guys, but then we realised he had been shaken (interceptor) and took that back.  Whirlwind killed a few guys on top.  His meltas opened up and proceeded to pen and got the roll that reduced the armor by d3, he rolled a six so I now had an AV11 redoubt and the rest of his weapons could now pen it and proceeded to explode it and killed everything inside and left me with 6 scions on the board.

I had the rerolls to reserve for warlord which was why I felt confident with a heavy reserve.  Valk came in, melta squad came in, BUT the formation rolled 2s twice and stayed in the motor pool. Suffice it to say the game ended there.  I killed murder fang and 12 marines or so and then the rest of his army came in and tabled me.  He ended up placing second place, but damn that hurt.  Well I risked it and it did not pay off at all.  I was not expecting the redoubt to be wiped off the board turn one, had he not got the reduce AV result, I would have survived and had a bit more forces left turn 2 and could have made it to turn 3 where hopefully they could have come in with 2 reserve rolls.


On too game three, I did not take a lot of pics.  He got first turn and I was playing deamons.  He had fateweaver, some screamers, two units of hounds and some khorne heralds on mounts(don't remember name), the khorne skull cannon, the flamer chariot, soul grinder and some nurglings, deamonettes and tzeentch flamers.  There was a big LoS blocking piece of terrain and I put the redoubt on my far right, which ended up keeping fateweaver out of the game as he hid and cast invisibility when he could.  I got the infiltrate 3 units and put two scion squads forward but forgot about the hounds and it costed me.  Mission obectives was a modified kill points where you got points only for killing all of an opponents force org slot (so kill all FA get 9 pts, etc).  Not a bad concept but it had a key flaw, if you did not bring any in a slot, auto points to the opponent which was really stupid.  I had talked to the TO and he agreed that my formation scions were elites and tauroxes heavy so I had a full force org and wouldn't just lose the game from the beginning.

His turn the screamers moved up invis and the hounds jumped over the terain and assualted my scions killing 6 but they escaped combat and fell back.  Despite being invis I killed two screamers when they assaulted my other scion squad (got lucky in overwatch too).  Screamers killed the scions though.

My turn I readjusted and the squad rallied and then ran getting away from the hounds.  lascannons needed 6s anyways and the screamers were closest and got two hits in and killed two screamers.  Bunch of my twin linked autos got through and kille 3 more leaving one left.  Fired at the second squad off hounds and put 5 wounds on them (killing two and one had one wound left), he made a lot of invul saves and I just rolled a lot of ones and twos for wounding.

Hounds kept coming, he invised one.  his vehicles shifted bu didn't do much. Last screamer moved up.  Deamonettes deep struck next to the bastion.  One of his flamers mishapped and I placed them in the far back corner.  the other scattered almost off the board near the bastion.  Some nurglings popped down in the back field.  His hounds got into assault with the taurox and formerly fleeing scion squad, killing both.

My scions all dismounted to try and stem the tide.  Overall I was able to kill the screamers, all but one of the invis hounds and in a glorious charge my flamer scion squad killed all but one of the other hounds, losing only 2 in return (got lucky here).  wasn't able to do much to the deamonettes.

He moved up his heralds who ended up charging in to the fight, killing most of them but he wiffed a lot of wounds and hits so I got lucky and I killed the last hound before being swept.  a few more things deep struck in his back field and the sould grinder go on top of the terrain.  the khorne chariot cannon thing got an big ignores cover blast off and killed 5 scions.  the tzeencth flamer was not in range.

My turn the valk came in and dropped the melta squad off, who did well and killed two heralds, I killed the flamers and was able to kill all but one of the heralds.  Most of the deamonettes were killed at this point too. 

His turn he got a lot of ignores cover shooting in and killed a taurox and a bunch more scions.  The herald moved up  in the middle, he got indecisive though and didn't know which unit to go after so placed him within range of my valk (in hover), taurox and scion  squad, but not close to any of them.  His deamonettes attempted to charge, got hit hard in overwatch, wiffed their attacks and got slaughtered by my scions.  The khorn herald then proceed to fail his charge on that squad in trying to finish off my last troop choice.

I then killed the herald, did some damage to few other things, nothing significant, and the game ended.  Despite my losses he only succeeded in killing my elites, so I only gave up on primary objective, but I was unable to kill any of his so did not score.  He got first blood linebreaker and slay the warlord.  I got a few secondaries and he got some too, so I ended up losing despite doing a lot of damage to his army.  I made the mistake of underestimating his khorne dogs and should have deployed farther back.  Other than that, my plan worked out ok, and had I had my squads back I would have had another turn or two of shooting to whittle his dogs down.  He played a high pressure list well and was able to keep the first wave alive and pressuring me long enough for his second wave to get and I never got a chance to really get the pressure off of me.


Last game was eldar.  To be short I deployed, was going to go first and he then seized on me, one shotted the redoubt and killed all but one of my tauroxes (he had six wave serpents).  So yeah, go dice rolls!  He rolled sixs like a boss!  almost every serpent shield was a 6.  We forged a narrative though and he let my one taurox live with my lord commissar to go head to head with his farseer and autarch.  I ended up rolling really shitty and and lost, even though only needing 2s to wound with a power maul (yeah ones!).

Here are pretty pictures:

Stuff

no stuff

advance up the trenches

wave serpents don't like krak grenades

narrative forged!

Despite having nothing except scions left, I did not get tabled and killed three wave serpents, got some charges off and krak grenaded them.  And my melta command squad continued being bosses and deep striking in melta another one in the rear.  Other than that killed some trivial stuff while I got pummled to death with serpent shields.  The board kinda sucked as I had almost no line of sight blocking terrain to hide behind.  So yeah I died.  But despite losing half my army before I got to play I still killed half his wave serpents and other random things.

Overall I prob will not take the redoubt again.  It did well in two games by negating flying stuff (fateweaver did jack all).  But having it die turn one in two games makes it such a millstone, too may points and instead of giving me the high armor and protection I needed, it just did super crap in half of my games.  I might give it another chance, as I haven't played with it enough to really draw conclusions yet, but right now I would rather have had more valks or tauroxes or scions.

Lesson learned here kids is that you should practice more before a tournament and actually use your list before going.  eh.  I had to submit it a month in advance and moving a house is kinda time consuming so shit happens.  I will say though, the scions themselves did well as always and did a lot of damage in most of my games while soaking a bunch in return.  Its sad that infantry have more survivability against wave serpents than vehicles.  The ground assault formation is awesome though, and was absolutely great and did a lot of work.  Had they been in my second game, things may have gone different.

But I had a fun time despite getting my ass handed to me.  good opponents all around and a good event despite the third mission (needs some tweaking IMO).  The scions are a good army, I just need more models for them and should have just brought more of them and tauroxes vs the redoubt of explody.

EDIT:

I have been remiss and forgot to mention the rest of the players at the tournament.  So first off Tyranids won overall, no skyblight or special formations, no malanthropes, just stock Tyranids.  Goes to show that a great general can win with anything despite what the internet says.  He had two flyrants, venomthrope, hive guard, tervigon with termigaunts, hive crone, 6 raveners, and two carnifexs and an exocrine.  Really nothing crazy but he won it all.

There was an awesome Space marine battle company, per the Codex Astartes, I believe he was the dark angel player and got third place (but they're crap too!).  Cool to see someone play a literal fluff army. 

Space wolves got second, he was a really good player, had nothing real crazy and just ran a solid drop pod list with grey hunters and a few extra things.  There was a Salamanders army with vulkan, nothing crazy just a bunch of marines with some bikes and a few tanks.

Most armies were represented and when the pics of them get posted online I will link/show them.  A lot of good players and good people, no ass holes, just a group of gamers having fun.  Def helped to make a good event, and I will be attending next year if I can.

GG