This Saturday I played in a local Warhammer 40k tournament with my Space Wolves. For 1850 points I brought seven Thunderwolves – including a Wolf Lord, two Drop Pods with Grey Hunters, a Drop Pod with Melta Wolf Guard, two Lascannon/Plasma Gun Razorbacks with Grey Hunters, and two squads of Missile Launcher Longs Fangs. There were only five attendees, so the tournament organizer played against the bye. The other five armies represented were Tau, Death Wing, two Blood Angels, and an Imperial Guard.
My first game was against the Tau with three Riptides, a bunch of Suits, and some Kroot. The Riptides all had interceptor, so my Drop Pods didn’t last long after arriving and my meltaguns weren’t able to do much against his army. Then I didn’t rush my Thunderwolves straight into the Tau, so he was able to weaken them up quite a bit before they reached assault. They were able to kill a Riptide, but that was it. In the end, I wasn’t completely destroyed, but I wasn’t able to hold enough objectives to prevent him from getting full points.
After that I ended up with the bye. I played against the tournament organizer’s Blood Angels consisting of three Drop Pods, a Land Raider full of five Terminators, two Dreadnoughts, a Vindicator, and a fancy Landspeeder. The mission was a modified Kill Points thing, so I just needed to destroy everything. I was able to destroy the Land Speeder with my Long Fangs on turn one. My melta squads lasted longer this game, but were still ineffectual. The Wolf Guard scattered off target and then completely failed to take out the Land Raider. The Grey Hunters were more effective, with one squad dealing the final blows to the Raider and the other taking out a tactical squad. The Thunderwolves were the MVP, though. They chewed through his command squad and the terminators in assault and took out the Vindicator as well. I manage to all but table him and walked away with full points.
At this point, no one was completely out of competition for first place and there were four of us within 15 points. I was matched up against the Imperial Guard with six big tanks, a large blob of infantry, a Chimera with veterans, and three Ogryns with grenade launchers. My drop pod meltas actually did their job this game and while I didn’t get the best shooting results, they were able to take out a few tanks on the turns they arrived. The problem was keeping them around. Once they landed, he would focus fire on them and pretty much wipe them out. Thankfully, this allowed my Thunderwolves to advance up the left side mostly intact. Once they hit his lines, things started to get chewed up. The overall objective was to take and hold a relic in the center of the table. I was able to sneak in with one of my Razorback squads and take the relic into cover on the fifth turn. I was worried when the game continued to turn six, but they held their ground and even after a seventh turn controlled the objective and there wasn’t much my opponent could do. I won the game with a majority of the points available.
Overall I ended up in second place, while the Tau player took first. I walked away with a new box Thunderwolves to increase my pack.
Later that evening we celebrated Nick’s birthday with his family. We played 7 Wonders with the whole group and Firefly after his parents had left. I managed to win 7 Wonders with a strong science collection. Nick won the game of Firefly without hiring a single crew member after picking up a job to transport passengers across the galaxy. He filled his cargo hold and dropped them off for a 3,000 credit payout. After that it was a quick pick-up and delivery to satisfy Harken and he was off to pay his debt. The rest of us had barely begun to get going.
Until next time, happy gaming!
