After Action Report: Games Links Tournament part I

So this week instead of a Video Battle report I am going to break down the tournament I attended over the weekend. Don't worry if you're a fan of the video batreps, they'll be back next week!

So anyway, myself and my two friends Nate and Jim took a little road trip this weekend to Game Links in Fowlerville, MI to attend their grand opening tournament. The guys from Dark Future Games teamed up with Michigan 40k to put on the event. It was a three round tournament set for 1850 points. It used a Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary battle points system. I am not really a fan of this system, but see few better ways to produce a single winner in the span of a single day tournament without having to limit the number of entrants. In total there were 22 entrants. Not bad for their first tournament!



A quick pick of the game room. Thanks to Game Links for hosting the event!

More after the jump...

The tables were serviceable, mostly consisting of 3 2'x4' sections of board set up on folding tables. They also had a decent amount of terrain on them. All of the terrain was finished and looked good. The terrain was mostly hills cut out of foam board. Each table did tend to have some sort of ruins or buildings to break things up, but some ice worlds, desert etc. would have been nice. All in all though, not bad for their first tourney, especially since all of the terrain was made in the last two weeks leading up to the event.

My list for the day was as follows:
Librarian with jump pack, Shield and Unleash Rage
2x Sanguinary Priests with jump packs and power weapons
Chaplain
Death Company, 2x Bolters, 1x Bolter & Powerfist, 1x Power Weapon & Bolt Pistol
Razorback with twin-linked Assualt Cannon and Dozer blade
2x Assualt squad with 2x melta guns and power fist
1x Assualt squad with flamer
Las/plas Razorback
2x Devastators with 2x missile launcher 1x Lascannon in
Las/plas Razorbacks
Baal Predator with twin-linked Assualt Cannons, Heavy Bolter sponsons, Storm Bolter


Anyway on to my games.

Game 1. vs. Space Wolves

 So my first opponent was a guy named Marty. He was running a unique Space Wolves army led by Bjorn the Felhanded. His list looked like this:
Bjorn the Felhannded with plasma cannon
Rune Priest with Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf
Rune Priest with Murderous Hurricane and Jaws of the World Wolf
Dreadnought with Multi-melta and CCW in a Drop Pod
Rifleman Dreadnought
5 Wolfguard, 3 powerfists, 1 stormbolter, 1 terminator armour with Cyclone Missile launcher
3x 7 Grey Hunters, melta gun, Mark of the Wolfen, Wolf Banner in Rhino
6 Long Fangs, 3x Heavy Bolters, 2x Plasma Cannons
6 Long Fangs 4x Missile Launchers, Lascannon

The game used the Dawn of War Deployment right out of the rulebook. The mission objectives were
Primary: Battlefield Control (15/7/0) Hold as many terrain features as possible, any non-vehicle could hold one or more terrain features.
Secondary: Annihilation (10/5/0) Player with the most victory points, must win by at least 200 or a draw
Tertiary: Elimination. (5/0/0) Eliminate all of your opponents troops, both could achieve this one.

So this game started off pretty well for me. I ended up going second. Marty deployed one Grey Hunters pack in a rhino with one of the wolfguard with powerfists attached and the Living Lightning Rune Priest. On his first turn everything else walked/drove on with the Melta dread dropping in near my board edge. On my turn I rolled on all of my razorbacks with their attendant squads. I left the jumppack troops to deepstrike and had the Baal predator outflanking. The Devastators rolled on in the corners and disembarked into the bunker in the back corner of the pic below, the others disembarked onto the hill inthe bottom corner to get good lines of fire. The Death Company drove in and exploded the drop Dread. His 2nd round of shooting was fairly dismal, I think he only managed to shake and stun one of the Devastators razorbacks. In my second turn the Baal Predator came on and failed to do anything to his Rifleman, but a lascannon saw it wrecked. I also managed to wreck the forward Grey Hunters Rhino. Turn 3 for Marty got a little better. He took out the Baal with a lucky missile shot (2 had range, one hit, it penned and wrecked it!) He also finished off the Devs razorback. My turn 3 I got in both assault squads. They deep struck in near the two remaining Rhinos. The squad with the Librarian exploded the one they shot at, while the other squad only stunned theirs. The devastators then had to shoot at it to finish the job, exploding it, but had to ignore the advanceing Grey Hunters to do so.

This is how things looked at the end of turn 3. Things were still going well for me at this point.

                                            

Also at the end of turn 3. I forgot about the camera for the rest of this game but I did get more pic happy as the day wore on!

So Marty's turn 4 is when things really started to go downhill for me. I completely forgot to use Shield until halfway through his Shooting phase when he aimed Bjorns plasma cannon at the libby's assualt squad. Which of course was too late. Doh! Bjorn killed 6 and the HB/plasma cannon Long Fangs and the Grey Hunters combined to kill off all the rest except the Librarian who escaped with one wound remaining. But he failed morale and fell back! Fortunately far enough away from any enemies that he would regroup next turn. The other assualt squad had 6 missiles and one lascannon turned on them from the other Long Fangs in combination with the Grey Hunter pack rapid firing at them and the Rune Priest casting murderous hurrincane at them. When all was said and done they were down to only one marine with a melta gun and the Priest.

My turn 4 the Librarian joined up with the Death Company who disembarked from their ride and they proceeded to assualt and wipe out the Grey Hunters, getting some sweet revenge for their fallen brothers. They rolled a 6 for their consolidation roll though and had to run out of the crater they were in and into the open right in front of Bjorn the the predator, Doh again! Fortunately Bjorn was immobilized by a lascannon shot, but his plasma cannon was still functioning and was aimed right at the Death co. :( On the other side of the table my Sang Priest and his melta toting cronie whiffed in the shooting phase and rolled snake eyes, failing to get into assualt with the Grey Hunters! Now they were sitting ducks for his shooting in turn 5. Things continued to go downhill for me from there. In the end he controlled 5 pieces of terrain to my 1 and he crushed me in VPs. neither of us achieved the tertiary objective. In the end I picked up one whopping point from one of the bonus points for having a scoring unit left at the end of the game.

Not the start to the day I was looking for. It was a fun game though and Marty was a good sport both when things were going poorly for him and when they went well for him. Since Jim had earned max points in his game I jokingly wished Marty good luck on getting second place, and eventually that's what he did! Good job Marty and great game!

Well this is running a bit longer than I expected so I will cover the other two games in a second post.