Aftermath- 2500 Team tournament.

Hello! I'm going to try to keep this short, it's a little impromptu and it's 2am here, so i'm going to try to retell the tournament from memory, I haven't quite nailed down note taking for battle reports.

Our list:
Autarch- Jetbike, Mantle of the Laughing God, Fusion Gun
5 Dire Avengers Wave Serpent- Scatter Laser Shuriken Cannon Holo Fields
5 Dire Avengers Wave Serpent- Scatter Laser Shuriken Cannon Holo Fields
5 Dire Avengers Wave Serpent- Scatter Laser Shuriken Cannon Holo Fields
Wraithknight stock
Wriathknight stock

My list was alright, good as I could do at 1250 points. My teammate however is a newer player and doesn't know much about Space Wolves, so his list looked a little more like...

Harald, wolf guy
3 Thunderwolf Calv with Stormshield and Chainswords
5 Bloodclaws-Droppod
Lucas the Trickster
3 Terminators with double wolf claws
Arjac hammer tosser fella
5 Grey Hunters in Wolf flyer transport thing.
6 Long Fangs 1 Lascannon 2 Heavy Bolter 2 Missile Launcher

Yeah, count em up, that's 3 named Characters. I wish I had been able to get together with my friend the night before and help him build the list but I couldn't do a thing, and I thought he had it honestly. Another thing that strikes me is that redundancy is the key to success, and my friend has none. While he had a Pod, there was nothing threatening about it since there were no meltas. Lucas the Trickster is funny, but that's it. He does absolutely nothing when your opponent says "Nah i'll deny the challenge." Arjac is okay but really except for Game 2, he bit the dust after achieving absolutely nothing. The list I built for him after the tournament was:

Wolflord-TWC mount THSS
5 TWC 3 THSS 2 Wolf Claw+SS
10 Grey Hunters 2 Melta 1 Combi melta Droppod
10 Grey Hunters 2 Melta 1 Combi melta Droppod
6 Longfangs 5 Lascannon

I don't know how to play Space Wolves, I don't claim to but I think the above list had a little more punch. Now on to our matches!

Game 1:
Pretty awful right off the bat, we play vs Salamanders and Astra Militarum, and we go second. The Militarum player has 3 Wyverns, anything that steps out of a transport gets toasted. Salamanders deepstrike to get front armor on a Wave Serpent, the 3+ jink thanks to Night Fighting saves well, and my teammates Longfangs are blown away in the alpha strike, and thanks to my (bad) call, TWC are in reserves with the Pod and the Flyer. I inflict minimal damage turn 1, and honestly I just made poor choices telling my friend where to pod, he drops it in their back line to try to glance a Wyvern down with pistols and gets nothing but wiped off on turn 2. Our turn 2 I deepstrike 2 Wraithknights, friend gets Termi-squad in, I deal some damage but it's already a losing fight, and thanks to a bit of slow play on both sides, it's been a long time. Game ends on turn 3, we lose 20-0. I was quite tilted after this game, I felt like I was playing my 1250 list against a 2500 list, my partner had pretty much no punch, and everything he had died or never came on the board. Lunch made me feel better though, and I pulled myself up by the bootstraps going into Game to with an optimistic attitude.

Game 2: record 0-1
Mached up against an Razor Spam Ultramarines+Iron Hands list. We go second, and after nothing happening but forcing 2 jinks on me, we pick out a few vehicles and squash them for first blood. Due to a confusion on if the 1 in in-front of ruins was terrain or not, I got ruled against and I lost a Wraithknight to Grav-cannons from a Centurion Squad that came out of a Landraider. Highlight of the game was my Autarch blowing the landraider to kingdom come and then turboing out the next turn for line breaker. What I didn't count on was that their warlord was alone in the Landraider, so after it blew, A Wave Serpent blasted him away. More or less uneventful after that, game ends 10-0 our win, no one got primary as it was the Relic mission.

Game 3:record 1-1
What better way to wind down than to play 2 Ork armies? Here we fought double Orks and it was pretty fun. Game highlights, My Autarch was shot at by 30 sluggas, no wounds. I Fusion Gunned a Morkanaut, and I Heavy Wraithcannoned a Gorkanaut, both being glorious explosions. I lost 2 Wave Serpents in assault, I wasn't counting on Boarding planks on the Battle Wagons, and I play against Orks so little that the WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH escaped my mind, but you learn every day! Game looknig grim at the end, Primary being kill points we were down 6 or so, but when I killed the Mork and Gorkanauts, each had inside a Mek and Scorchas, so each bundle handed us 3 points after wiping them away, we also had first blood and linebreaker, and that cinched Primary. Secondary was Emperors Will, and we tied there, my Autarch Claiming their objective, and their Warboss claiming ours, and tertiary tied as well, and even 4 to 4 on a modified Maelstrom of War chart.

End 2-1, 25 points, 8th of 12 teams.

What did I learn?

• Wyverns are still a total annoyance, though it's only 1 player that I seem to get paired with at every local tournament that bugs me. 
• I really need to help my teammate with list building, came in a little unprepared for this.
• Always discuss terrain, it really hurts when it comes down to an arguement about what is and isn't cover, and you end up being on the losing side. Better safe than sorry, I should have left my Wraithknight on the roof of the ruins.

All in all the last two games were fun, first game was an grind, Room for improvement? Always. The key is to learn from mistakes, and trudge forward to get better.

2500 Doubles Tournament Practice

Hello and welcome to the first post! This blog serves to put everything 40k that I am doing out in a public forum. A little bit about me, I have been playing 40k since March of 2012, my first army was Dark Angels from the Dark Vengeance set, I had picked up about 5-7 of the Dark Angels sets to build up my army, but my first models were the Eldar. I built them up for my friend and I loved them all so much, that here I am now, I've sold every other army I've collected to focus and perfect my Eldar gameplay, painting, and collection. Now onto the content!

This last Saturday I played a practice game for an up coming (this weekend) doubles tournament at the FLGS. Rules being two players, 1250 each, 1 HQ, 2 Troops, 1 Elite, 1 Fast Attack, 1 Heavy Support, and 1 slot each (except HQ) to be shared between the team. So it's basically 2500, 1 Detachment, 2 players. For the sake of simplicity and 'balance', all teams are counted as Allies of Convenience, which means that there's no buddy-buddy transport riding, no psychic powers being shared, and you can't be within an inch of each other, seems okay.

Moving onto the game, this was Space Wolves and Astram Militarum vs Double Eldar! It was a really fun game that took us from about 1-6pm, going the full 7 turns, not something you see all the time. Since I didn't notes to write a battle report during the game, this will all just be what I remember. Lets start with the that were made. I only played with a 2250 list against their 2500 total list. Whoops, I don't know why but I just had in my head that it was 2250 not 2500. Second, my Space Wolves opponent took 2 Lone Wolves with dedicated transport Drop pods, he text me later saying that they lost that in the new codex and apologized, I just laughed it off. Third, I accidentally started playing my army as one, like battle brothers, so by the time we found out it was too late, and we just said they can do the same. Kind of hard though to pilot TWO armies that are identical right?

The mission was 1 objective in deployment, one in the dead center. My two Farseers rolled Shrouding and Fortune, nothing else mattered all game. I had them sitting on the objective with my Striking Scorpions (probably my favorite unit) in ruins, a Sun-cannon Wraithknight on the top deck in ruins within 6" for the 2+ cover save. I knew from the beginning I was out gunned, out tanked, and fighting a losing game. The summary of my focus was to bait his droppods with Infiltrating Rangers on the left flank of the field, protect the objective, and turbo out on the last turns. I lost 3/4 Wave Serpents by turn 3, the fourth lasting surprisingly until turn 6, my Jetbikes came on board preemptively turn 2, and were blasted by the Wyverns (which in retrospect I should have focused earlier), and on turn 6, my only remaining units were Scorpions with 2 Farseers on the objective, a Wraithknight, and a Wave Serpent. The Wave Serpent bit the dust turn 6 from 2 Vendettas, a Lascannon Devastator squad, and a Tank Command squadron, ouch. Wraithknight breaks for the middle objective while the Farseers bust out to provide Shrouding for the now dead Wave Serpent, my 2+ save were so tired at this point, the Scorpions are Hammered by Wyverns, everything falling apart here. Turn 7 and Wyverns blast off my 3+ armor Farseers on jetbikes and my Wraithknight falls to the full volley of the Imperium, Eldar loss tabled on the last turn.

Thinking now I feel kind of silly that I forgot 250 points, taking a second Wraithknight probably would have done the trick, it would have done better than my Nightspinner who ate a S10 scattered large blast from the Tank command squad, poor guy didn't have time to jink. I have a good bit to think about before this weekend, I usually go into tournaments with a losing attitude, but I look forward to having fun and laughing with my opponent, so we will see how the weekend fares for me!

-Autarch Deafbeats