The Dark Star GT: Post Day One Update!

02/12/2012

7 Comments

 
Hello all!  Day One at The Dark Star GT has come and gone.  One more critical incident has been overcome and I'm currently preparing myself for the rigors of Day Two, which isn't too terribly awful, considering its only two games today.  But I thought I'd give you guys a quick review of the first day at the GT.  Please note that these will be brief reviews and the in depth battle reports will be coming later.  :)

Unfortunately, I won't be winning the tournament.  I took a loss in game one against a Grey Knights player, simply because the game went to turn 7.  I had perfectly positioned myself for the win on turn 5 and turn 6 (and would have solidly won had it), but the dice were not in my favor this game.  My tactics could not overcome the fickle dice gods.  But that is Warhammer 40k for you.  He played as well as he could with his list (LR-spam GK) and put himself in a position to take advantage of the turn 7 where he got some nice rolls to snatch the win from me.  So a good, very close, win for him.

Second game was against a Deathwing Dark Angels player.  This was a list I feared going in, especially considering the mission objectives (again, will get into them later).  However, he had some didn't make key die rolls in critical moments.  When he needed to make a save, wound, or a penetration roll, he missed it.  Otherwise, he rolled pretty average.  Unfortunately for him, my average rolling was more than enough to tear his list to pieces.  He definitely got visibly frustrated, but he was cool about it the whole time, even pointing out a couple rules things to me that I missed out on (that's what happens when you move away from competitive players!).  He conceded at the end of turn 5, because the game would have gone on to a turn 6.  Which would have probably resulted in him being tabled.  Was ironic that he had mentioned not wishing poor rolling on anyone before the game.  Kind of jinxed himself.  Very cool guy though.

The third game was against Timmah from Equinox Hobbies.  He is more notably known as being a contributing author on YTTH.  Took a loss here.  Timmah is a solid player, probably one of the best I've faced in a long ass time.  Which didn't help that the mission goals favored his army completely.  He had the almost had the win by just deploying on the board.  Provided he had half-way decent rolling, there was no way he'd lose.  It was a completely kill point based game (all three objectives), but with modified parameters.  Needless to say, because I have very few troops (1 KP each...dedicated transports provide zero KP) and lots of Fast Attack, Heavy Support, and Elites (2 KP each)...there was no way I could win.  His army was completely Troops.  If it was normal KP, I'd have had a chance.  I kept up until turn four, which had us tied at 6 KP each...but after my turn produced very little, his rolling picked up exponentially and produced a huge turn of shooting, knocking out pretty much everything in my list.  He took a solid win in this KP mission.

So I went 1-2 Day One.  A little disappointed with that, was hoping for a 2-1.  My tournament goal was 3-2 because I'm out of practice, so hopefully I can manage to pull out a couple wins today.  Looks like Game Four's mission objectives are actually "normal" so I should have a decent chance.  See ya'll soon!  :D
 


Comments

Marshal Laeroth (Admin) link
02/12/2012 12:22pm

Game four was against a Vulkan list. Win for me.

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Marshal Laeroth (Admin) link
02/12/2012 4:20pm

5th game against Blood Angels. Went to VP tie breakers. Win for me. 3-2 for the tournament. :)

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DooMarn
02/13/2012 2:08am

Gratz you reached your goal. One question tho, these tournaments you attend do they ever release the missions before the tournnament or do you get to see them on the spot everytime?
Feels very hard to make a good tournament list without knowing what missions to play. Kind of forces ppl to take 5+ troop choices just to be on the safe side.

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Marshal Laeroth (Admin) link
02/13/2012 9:39am

Thanks! I started getting worried after I took that second loss in Game Three, but knew I could win out. Game Five was dangerously close to a draw though. It was very close the last couple turns and came down to a couple rolls. Great game.

No, this particular event didn't release their missions prior to the tournament. Usually this is so people don't build to take advantage of the rules, but if all the missions are balanced, then that isn't an issue (I.e. Nova Open). Only one mission wasn't here and that was Game Three. But more times than not, large GT's will release their mission primers before the event. :)

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Nathan
02/15/2012 4:05pm

How are you protecting your Vindicators?

Every time I've run them they get waxed right away because they're so dangerous.

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Marshal Laeroth (Admin) link
02/17/2012 7:25pm

Hehe. To be perfectly honest, the only real preservation I did the entire time at the tournament was to ensure my AV13 front armor was facing the majority of the incoming firepower. I was also sure to stay out of melta range of applicable units.

Other than that, I pretty much charged them balls to the wall forward. I made sure to cause as much threat as possible with them and I was entirely successful on that front. They killed thousands of points worth of models and more than made up for their cost. The fact of the matter was, they were protected because I had so many threats in my list. My Terminators needed to die or they would blast huge gouges into your vehicles. My Land Speeders did the same and were a huge objective contesting nuisance. Then my Troops needed to be targeted or else I'd have an easy time claiming victory. Having all of these things worked to keep my Vindicators alive, unless they were truly the biggest threat against my opponent.

Even so, I did lose them on occasion. I lost both in Game One early on due to my opponent's extremely unlikely (and quite frankly...lucky) rolling against them with very minimal weaponry. Then I lost both in Game Three, but they survived til the end of the game essentially. Then finally, I lost one in Game Five near the end. 5 Vindicator deaths in 10 games, not bad in my opinion. And that was with them getting shot non-stop every game.

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Algesan link
02/16/2012 10:10am

Congrats on getting your goal.

About the Vindicators (or any other big threat unit), you take multiples and really just have to rely on average dice. Yes, three S8+ shots could pop three Vindicators, but you take that chance because they will usually soak up firepower before they go down. Of course, good deployment and movement help out quite a bit to keep the AV13 pointed at the incoming fire.

Heh, dice rolling blues. The streak where my Cyclone Terminators couldn't make an armor save but the other three were virtually invulnerable because I couldn't fail their 5+ save. Or one game I didn't bother posting vs. 'Nids. We got to turn four and my opponent offered to go get me a hammer to take after my dice and/or minis. As he put it: "Those Marines can't shoot and can't make an armor save, fire them all."

As for releasing scenarios, it is probably easier for the big GTs to give out the list, which means there can be some gaming in the list building (as Blackmoor admitted he did for NOVA 2011), but I sort of liked the idea of what they did at the local tourney. Four games and they released six scenarios. My understanding is the TO literally rolls a die and then hands out the game to be played. Gives you some idea of what might happen, but with some variance in the scenario types, doesn't let you game the games directly.

Good news, I talked to the local store manager about the date of Coastal Assault and mentioned it would be a sorry thing that I'm going to one tournament for sure and plotting for a second one this year, but I won't be able to go to my own local tourney as long as it was on the last weekend in January. He said that the owner of the stores and managers were discussing moving it to another weekend because they had gotten a lot of comments this year about the conflict, which was resolved in favor of fathers going with their sons to the Pinewood Derby. Especially since in the next year or two a couple of the top five finishers this year will be gone for the same reason as they have boys getting old enough for Cub Scouts.

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