I didn’t play any board games this weekend. Instead I spent most of the day Saturday playing in a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Tournament. It was 1850 points and I brought my Space Wolves with an Astra Militarum allied detachment. The exact list is below:
Primary Detachment – Space Wolves
HQ
Rune Priest
Troops
10x Grey Hunters
2x Plasmagun
Rhino
5x Grey Hunters
Meltagun
Razorback, Lascannon, TL-Plasmagun
5x Grey Hunters
Meltagun
Razorback, Lascannon, TL-Plasmagun
Heavy Support
5x Long Fangs
4x Lascannon
5x Long Fangs
4x Missile Launchers
5x Long Fangs
4x Missile Launchers
Elite
10x Wolf Guard
2x Terminator Armor, Cyclone Missile Launcher
6x Storm Bolters
2x Combi-melta
Secondary Detachment – Astra Militarum Allies
HQ
Company Command Squad
Company Commander with Shotgun
4x Veterans with Flamers
Troops
Veteran Squad
Chimera
Fast Attack
Vendetta Squadron
2x Vendetta
There were quite a few people at the tournament. I think the total attendance was 12. The armies were nicely diverse with a couple Necrons, Chaos Marines, Daemons, Tau, Space Wolves, Space Marines, and Tyranids all getting representation.
My first game was against a Space Marines player using the Ravenwing rules. He had four Rhinos and a Razorback full of Marines that scouted halfway across the board. Going first, I had setup to pound them with my missiles early, but he ended up stealing the initiative and going first. That swung the entire game. He was able to destroy or neutralize all of my tanks in the first turn.
With all of these marines sitting right in my face, there wasn’t much I could do. I took down a few of his tanks and started into the squads, but there were just too many to deal with. My Vendettas didn’t come in until turn three, and by then there wasn’t much left. I conceded the loss on turn four when all but my Vendettas were dead.
My second game was against Tyranids with four units of Genestealers, six Carnifexes, a flying thing, and a Tyranid Prime. The game was a modified version of kill points where the unit that got the kill received the kill point and each unit could only score a single point.
I deployed first and we had short table edges. I was able to get into some ruins and had a nice setup. I wasn’t able to kill anything completely first turn, but I did weaken one of the Carnifex units. He then couldn’t assault with his Genestealers in the first, so they were left fairly exposed. My Vendettas actually made it on second turn and shot up his flyer, while my marines shot up the Genestealers, but failed to kill them all.
He got a couple of easy points from my tanks, and then the Genestealers got into combat with the marines and killed them off after a few turns. I was able to finish off three of the Genestealer squads after the combat ended and one unit of Carnifexes. The game ended turn 5, denying me the opportunity to shoot more and resulted in use getting a draw.
My final game was against Necrons with two Monoliths, a Nightscythe, Deathscythe, Anarath in a Command Barge, some Warriors, Immortals and a Ghost Ark. The mission was to secure five objectives, one in each quarter and one in the center.
Again I decided to go first and setup with my Long Fangs on a hill with good firing lanes to wherever he deployed. Sadly he stole the initiative and again I was left in the open. His monoliths were able to use their large blasts to decimate my Long Fangs and Wolf Guard. Then on my turn, I rolled up to one his Monoliths with my melta-guns, and promptly failed to hit with all of them. Those Grey Hunters promptly died on the next turn.
The only things I managed to kill the entire game, was a unit of Deathmarks and a unit of Immortals that I was able to get into close combat with. The only positive was that after my Vendettas arrived on turn four, they survived and due to some misplacement on his part I was able to switch them to hover mode and claim the center objective. I had the objective in my quarter claimed as well, and contested another. So we each held two objectives, but the center was worth an additional point. Had the game ended then, I actually would have managed a win even after getting destroyed. Sadly the game went on to a sixth turn, and he was able to mop up the little that was left. and took the win.
The Tau player ended up taking first with a Farsight Enclave army. For being the first games I’ve played with 7th edition and the first games in over two years, I played pretty poorly. That said, my opponents were great and the games were fun. I am really glad that Paradox has started hosting them again, and I am looking forward to the next one in November.
Until next time, happy gaming.
