Game 7 (Round 3 of mini-bracket)
I finally got to play against an army I feared... a flyer-wing with more flyers then me! The most important roll of the game was the roll to see who went first or 2nd. Luckily I won the roll and went 2nd. I knew if I had deployed my flyers first they would have been shot out of the sky with Doug's 8!
Doug also had Immotek which is a flyer killer himself and 3 squads of scarabs (which ended up almost costing me the game). He had one loss where his opponent was able to table his army off before his flyers arrived. That is the danger when everything is off the board with the exception of a few models.
This mission was Objectives then Quarters then Kill Points.
The other scary combo that Doug was fielding was 2 squads of deathmarks with the crypteks with the flamer o'doom. The one that wounds vs your leadership on strength 8 ap1. With the deathmarks causing the unit to be wounded on 2's it meant for some nastiness. Since he had 2 of those squads, both of my wraith units were marked.
Doug's big mistake was that he pulled his flyers into my one flank (to successfully annihilate my one wraith/lord squad) but then set himself up in a nice formation for my doom scythes. NOVA had FAQ'd that the beam from the death ray could hit flyers (but not both flyers and ground at the same time). My flyers then rolled up and shot / beamed the crap out of his.
Lucky for doug he did save 2 flyers with jink saves on my beams, and I failed to pen on one of the others. In the end I downed 3 of the flyers and evened up the odds. My other wraith unit then ran (away from the deathmarks now on foot) to try and clean up the right flank of the pesky 5 man units.
This fight was tough. Immotek successfully lightning struck down one of my doomscythes and put some wounds occasionally on other units. I lost my left flank but rolled up Doug's right. Since Doug got the scoring ability on his warlord trait, Immotek was able to stretch his way down my left flank to cover off on that objective. The middle was a huge scrum of immortal on immortal fighting. My last immortal squad was able to stop within 3 inches of the center objective and melee. Had the game ended on turn 5 it would have been a tie on objectives and quarters.
At this point I figured I would ignore Doug's flyers for the most part. I did forget to move one on (this happened twice over the weekend) after I zoomed off. That loss of firepower was big in these final turns. I need to make sure I always check for a flyer off the board.
The pesky scarabs did what they needed to do and joined the melee in the middle and won the fight, piling into my unlocked immortals on turn 6. He brought a second unit in as well. My other unit of immortals had 2 remaining. I threw my remaining 2 wraiths who had pulled his units off his back corner objective into the middle and killed off Doug's remaining troop on the center objective. Doug caused 3 wounds on my immortals... 2 remained... I failed both saves and lost the middle objective.
We both had 2 objectives, 2 quarters and I ended up winning on kill points. Very close game. It was on to the final round!
Game 8 (Final round of mini bracket)
I went into game 8 nervous. Not that it really mattered, it was just a fun tournament at this point, but I now really wanted to win this. That also would mean I would exit with a 6-2 record, which is more then I could ask for. I was up against a list my opponent said he designed for the NOVA missions... drop space wolves. He was right, he had an army that was great on table quarters and could weather a ton of firepower.
He had a strong drop list combined with 3 long fang missile units and corteaz with a unit of grey knights.
The mission was Quarters then Objectives then Kill Points
I completely spaced out and didn't take any pictures outside of turn 2. I decided to try and roll up a flank and use my flyers to concentrate firepower and soften things up for my wraiths. I figured if I could hurt one of his home quarters and camp out with my wraiths I could use firepower to knock out his "lighter" quarter late game. It almost worked...
I set up my barge on the right flank behind the hill. I figured it would be a bit of a bait for one of his drop squads. It ended up doing just that as I got lucky that one scattered off the board (I placed it in the rear right). Stupid for me, I think my opponent would have castled up in that quarter regardless.
My flyers all came in on turn 2 and I committed them all to the left side. The combined firepower of all my flyers allowed my wraiths to work over the remaining space wolves in combat.
Turn 3 I angled my flyers to the middle and concentrated on the grey knights. It worked as I pulled down them all in shooting and insta-killed corteaz (due to one missed 2+ save on strength 7). He did the smart thing and focused his missile shots on my wraiths. I had one unit that had one wraith and an injured destroyer lord left. They fled to try and use their points to hold a quarter. The other unit pressed the center of the board to stop the advancing pod on the right.
My flyers on turn 4 failed miserably to either hit or wound much of anything and he made most of his saves. My 1 man wraith and lord unit worked back to my home objective (my lord had the scoring warlord roll) to grab my objective as one of my opponents drop pods landed in my left quarter and tied up my back units in shooting / assault.
Turn 5 I made some pretty big mistakes. At this point I knew we would probably tie quarters and it would turn to objectives.
I had the one on my left (with my lord and solo wraith). The one on my opponent's side (my left) I had as well. He took the middle with some advancing grey hunters and had his rear right. On my side left, I was able to drop a 5 man warrior squad to contest the objective. Hooray I figured I would have the win if I could knock out one guy (the only one within 3") of my right objective. It worked.
In case it would go another round I pulled two flyers off the board. I then shot up the one guy off the objective (unit was still intact) so I know had the 2-1 objective bonus... and then realized my mistake. I forgot to move a flyer that had a unit embarked. I asked my opponent if I had moved it and he thought I had... I thought back to the flight path and did the honest thing. I destroyed my flyer since I failed to move it. Zooming flyers are considered destroyed if they don't move at least 18". Since this was such an important game I didn't want to "take back" a move.
Still with that, I figured I had the game, but go figure I didn't think about the fact that combat was won by my opponent on my left side flank. He rolled high enough on the consolidation and proceeded to contest my objective! Crap!
The dice gods did have something to bless me with. His unit with his rune priest that was on my right side objective (although not claiming) broke on a roll of an 11. Now this isn't normally bad since they would auto rally if the game went on.
Well it didn't. We rolled and the game ended. Crap on a stick.
Quarters? We each had 2. His center unit was more in the quarter that his broken unit was in.
Objectives? We each had 2.
Kill Points? Well my honesty killed me on that. Since I moved two flyers off the board (for the next round of shooting) and I self-killed the one I didn't move, plus the fact it had a unit on board which is then forced into ongoing reserve. oh, and I didn't bother to assault or shoot at his drop pods. I was only up by two kill points. Yup two. So we tied on all three and it went to victory points.
After recounting at least three times and adding up our totals at least three times I won by a total of 70 points.
Had I lost on victory points I would have had a hard time moving on from those mistakes. Either way I'm glad I did the right thing about killing my own flyer since I forgot to move it in the movement phase. It would have cost me the game combined with the fact I put two flyers into ongoing reserves. And since I ignored (and forgot to charge a couple rounds) the drop pods, that was easy kill points I should have grabbed.
What a nail biter.
With that, my NOVA games were done and I finished 6-2 and won my bracket. An exciting weekend of gaming and I think I'm better equipped to run my necron flyer / wraith list.
Since I'm horrible at battle reports (I need to take notes and take pictures), you'll be happy to hear I'm back to hobby and painting articles!