Great Lakes Team Tournament After Action Report

This weekend Gamers Sanctuary in Flint hosted the Great Lakes Team Tournament. This was modeled after the Adepticon team tournament format with 4 players per team and each game having the teams be split up into two, two man coalitions. I had thought about mobile blogging the event, but as usual I got wrapped up in the games and forgot all about blogging entirely. I even forgot to take any pictures beyond the picture of our team army.

My teammates were Jeff, Kyle and James. For our team we had a combined force of Grey Knights and Knights of Blood. With both armies being drawn from Matt Ward codices and both having the word knight in them we settled on the team name 'The Knights of Ward'. Jeff and Kyle both have Grey Knight armies of there own whilst Jim borrowed my models for his list.

The general format for the tournament was based on the team tournament at Adepticon, but the way they did the pairings was very different. In each round the teams were assigned to two tables and then were allowed to determine their own pairings, with the restriction that you couldn't repeat the pairings. Additinally your coalition was not necessarily playing against the same team as the other coalition in your team. This was ok, but did end up with some oddness in that Jeff ended up playing against Bill Kim in back to back games. I don't know if there were any other such instances of this happening in the tournament, but it certainly was a possibility. If they host another tournament of this style in the future that may be something to look into.

I am not going to go too in depth on the games as it was a whirlwind of a day and the details are pretty foggy in my head. But I will do a quick rundown. I also feel terrible as I am terrible with names and I forgot to keep any of the army lists or any other papers from the tournament. Anyways...

Game one saw Jeff and I paired up against pair that included Bill Kim. Their team was running all Blood Angels. The mission was the 'secret objectives' mission from the primer pack and was very similar to the first mission of Adepticon. I did not like this mission at Adepticon and I didn't like it here either. This was a pretty close game and I thought we had a good shot up to about the middle of the game, but unfortunately Jeff's DCA couldn't avoid moving through terrain when making some assaults and their lack of grenades and some bad invulnerable saves saw them wiped without doing hardly any damage. That was probably the big turning point in the game. Our objective was to control more center objectives and theirs was to control both deployment zone objectives. Try as we might we came up short on ours and failed to contest either of their objectives giving them a pretty strong win. Jeff's Librarian was a beast in this game though and the frustration became evident as he shut down power after power. I think they only got off one psychic power all game long and that was a Blood Lance shot that was out of hood range and failed to roll the distance necessary to reach its intended target.

Game two saw Kyle and I paired up against a combined Space Wolves and Imperial Guard coalition. This game used table quarters as the primary objective with the caveat that at the beginning of each player turn starting on turn two you would score how many quarters were controlled and add them up over the course of the game. The secondary was kill points. Kyle and I won the roll to go first and things started off ok. My army did absolutely nothing, but Kyle managed to do some damage. Again in this mission the first 3-4 turns seemed to go pretty well, but in late game I couldn't seem to make an armor save to save my life. Kyle didn't have much better luck in the late game either and our opponents were able to make all the right moves to overtake us on combined table quarter points and win out on kill points as well.
Side note, Our other coalition was Jeff and James and this was the game where Jeff faced Bill Kim for the second game in a row. However in this game things went much better for them and they pulled off a pretty decisive win. :)

Game three saw James and I paired up and we were fully prepared to put the 'Brothers in Arms'  rule to full use. As a side note I love this rule in team games! This game saw us paired off against another Grey Knights/Blood Angels combo. This was a very close game and was definitely the most fun game of the day for me. the mission had each coalition place two objective in their own deployment zone more than 12" from any table edge (Dawn of War Deployment) and you got two battle points for each of your own objectives you held and 6 for each of your opponents you held. The secondary was kill points. You could also elect to make one of non-independent character, non-vehicle unit scoring. James made his terminators scoring, but after confirming with the TO that the Death Company could not take advantage of this rule I decided to 'pocket' my Command Counter.   We both rolled our Land Raiders on up the middle of the board with the Razorback Flanking to either side. Though the Land Raiders started in the middle they both ended up running rampant all over the table. James' Raider delivered the Terminators into combat with a Strike Squad and Coteaz on one of their objectives and wiped them out. Those terminators camped that objective the rest of the game, but the Librarian got back in the Land Raider and swung over to rescue one of my assault squads that had lost it's ride. My Land Raider dumped out the Death Co who annihilated a full 10 man strike squad before getting multi-assaulted by another 10 man assault squad and a 5 man interceptor squad. They did take down a few of them, but that many force weapons were just too much for them to handle and they did fall to the Grey Knight scum. The Land Raider however went on to finish off what was left of the Interceptors and tank shocked into the strike squad to contest that objective. It also rescued one of James' assault squads. The final move of the game saw James' Land Raider tank shock a scout squad off the board allowing me to take that objective of theirs. In the end we held both of their objectives while they managed to hold one of ours. In kill points they did manage to play to a tie. This was a really fun game that exemplified why I love team battles.

In the end we ended up taking 3rd place (out of 4). For our efforts we got $5 each in store credit and every team got a free board game. We ended up with this gem here. It's apparently a board game version of a 1st person shooter video game. Kinda sounds fun actually! Gonna have to give this a try some night out at the barn.

Ooh, Gold edition!

Also I ended up winning another $20 in store credit for the 'best painted' award. This is my second time out to Gamers Sanctuary and my second best painted award. I guess they like my stuff out there ;) I used that to pick up a Harlequin Death Jester and Shadow Seer.

Swag is Good!

 And finally as is my custom I picked up some dice. I like to always try to buy some dice whenever I go to a tournament. I am a dice-head and it fulfills my desire to 'pay where you play' So heres the dice I got on this particular day.

And they better roll well!

In the end I had a great day and can't wait for the next time I get to head out there for some more games with those guys!