But what the hell, right? I paid my ten bucks to play some games and hang out with friends, much the same as we always do!
Game One was against Daniel (guys with names starting with the letter 'D' don't get nicknames on this blog... that's my evil influence it is), who brought a Tau / Guard gunline. The Tau portion of his army is looking tres bien, and my understanding is he has a secret Samoan painter working on it for him.
He doesn't need the Guard, be he said he doesn't have enough models for a Tau-only yet. He made sure to pack in the important stuff first!
I brought The Brotherhood, my rogue chapter counts-as army. Usually I play them as Space Wolves, but yeah, I intend for them to be able to sit in for Chaos Space Marines if I want.
There, I admit it! It's not like it was that much of a secret...
...as these were the original test models for the army.
Anyway, I thought this was the first time I'd played Tau, but today I remembered I played The Hoff's Tau a few months ago. I made the same mistake then as I made Saturday, concentrating way too much ineffectual firepower on the Riptides.
At the very end, I failed to keep his Riptide stuck in combat and he jumped over for a perfect shot on my very last Troop model, which was holding the objective. (There were five, so he was 20%.) With that, Daniel won the Primary - objectives - and the secondary - Kill Points, blowing me out of the water by game's end. I won the tertiary, which was declaring in advance how many Kill Points I would earn without going over. I said five...
...so ironically, in the latter third of the game I was avoiding killing units! I had killed 5, so I needed to hold the Riptide in place and try to win by taking the primary and tertiary.
Ah well. This was a really challenging game. The Tau's firepower is every bit as good as everybody already knows, but my path to victory, hindsight being 20/20, was to ignore the Riptides and frag Fire Warriors into oblivion. I also really missed the Lone Wolves, which could have made a very nice counter-attacking model to keep the Riptides from kicking me around.
All in all, it was a really fun game, by far the best I've had against Daniel. He's been playing and practicing with this army and it shows. His target priority and focus on the objectives was darn near perfect.
I was playing Farseer Tim next. As he said, "It's 1pm on Saturday, time to play." Meaning, if you haven't guessed, we usually play on Saturdays after lunch. He's my most frequent opponent of late, a canny veteran player who's happy to finally have rules for his beloved Iyanden army.
See that building on the left, right in front of my Razorback? It has an enclosed room. The mission stated the objectives have to be placed in the 'No-Man's Land' section of the board. I'd set up intending to place mine right in that room.
Naturally, Tim drove me nuts by placing his first, on the other side! Since he has a small, elite army, he was going to have to come to me anyway, so he just played to his strengths. I placed my objective marker on the far right, trying to split his force. He has three units of Wraithguard, one each with shooting, templates, and melee options. His Warlord was his Wraith Knight.
See this? His flyer came in and deprived my Quad Gun of a target... unless I wanted to shoot the Card Pimp in Question anyway.
Trust me, there is an Eldar flyer behind that piece of terrain. See what I said about how canny Tim is?
So, the entire reason I took Space Wolves this weekend was as an attempt to break the meta. I had a Librarian to shut down the psychic phase half the time (broken) and he stuck with his book powers, Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf (very broken). Woot!
Still, I know I should stick with an army. My biggest flaw as a tournament player has always been jumping from army to army, which the Master Manipulator (every store needs one) and Evil Homer pretty much broke me from back when I started playing Daemons last edition.
I know better, but this year I just haven't been inspired. Daemons are my favorite army, and I have everything I need to use any evil option in the book. Eldar were a favorite army, but I'm a bit uninspired by the newest book - not because I don't recognize the potential. In fact, I think they're perfectly suited to my style of play.
This year, I just haven't cared much. I've talked about that a bit in the Terrible Tuesday articles, but suffice it to say I skipped the tournament season this year, after three years of three Indy events. It's not burnout so much as a break.
Reread the first paragraph if you care to know why!
Ah, yes - I got both my units of Wolf Scouts with plasma and guns and plasma and knives and plasma and chains. And plasma!
Broken toy. :)
And we're back to Jaws and firepower from one unit. The three Grey Hunters might have gotten lucky and killed the last Wraith Blade with the Melta Gun, but that was all the firepower I could afford to spend. As it was, we ended up in a protracted combat.
Vector Dancer is unreal-cool.
Technically I think I won but realistically it was a draw. Here, I earned points by getting the two Scout units into his deployment zone.
Let me add this: this game is an example of why I'm not a fan of Battle Points in 6th edition. Tim and I are veteran players, so we're bound to bloody one another, barring luck or a mismatch in missions. Meaning usually points will be split or unearned.
How is a close-fought game worse than a bad matchup wherein on player massacres another? The latter game will earn a bunch of points while the former - arguably a 'better' game - earns bunkus?
The first game was perhaps an example of the system working, where Daniel earned all the points by playing a hard fought game but wrapping it up by the end... not to confuse my argument or anything.
Ah, well!
Game Three was great. I played the Master Manipulator (every store needs one) in a Hoffman Gambit. Meaning we declared it a draw and went out for beers.
Shiner Bock just makes everything okay!