OGC Tournament - Intro and Game One (In Progress)

Tournament Introduction

Last saturday I attended the Oxford Gaming Club 40K Singles Tournament. It was a 1750 Pt tournament, but with a big difference compared to most tournaments. Rather than scoring points for wins or losses, all you scored were victory points, with a few extra bonus for objectives (or kill points in the anniliation mission). In the anniliation game and a special mission they created for the third game there was a bonus of 300 points if you won the game. The other main bonus was 250 points per objective in the first objective game, and in the first and last games you got a bonus of about 400 points if you wiped the opponent out.

I wrongly thought that the best was play the missions as normal - stupid me :( As you only scored the victory points you scored, and not the difference between yours and your opponents victory points conserving your forced did not gain you anything apart from they could fire a bit longer. Also contesting objectives did not add anything to your score at it would not increase your vps, it would only reduce your opponents by denying them the vps for the objective.

This radically changed how battles would be fought and which armies would be good. An agressive army that would get in the face of the enemy and ensure mass carnage occurred would still score big whether it won the game or not, hence the strong showing for assault marine armies (13 out of the 24 competitors were either Space Wolves, Blood Angels or Black Templars). The latest change I made to my Tau army list (swapping a crisis suit for a unit of kroot) was definitely not the best for this tournament.

For those who are interested here's a link to the rules pack

With the Introduction out of the way it's on to how I did


Game One

I was up against a space wolves army to start with. The army was very simular to the list I am building. I only include 1 runepiest and don't have a wolf guard with a cyclone and instead have 2 landspeeders. Other differences are minor; I have less upgrades on my thunderwolves so I can have a full squad rather than 4, and I only include missile launchers in my long fangs.

The list I faced was:

2 Rune Priests (living lightning on both, one also had murderous hurricane, not sure what the other one had as a second power as he always used lightning.

3 units of 9 grey hunters (each including a wolf guard, and special and close combat upgrades)
1 unit of 6 grey hunters (can't remember exactly what they had)
Each grey hunter unit was transported in a rhino with extra armour, the rhino for small grey hunter squad and one of the large grey hunter's rhinos also had a hunter killer missile

2 x long fangs (each with 2 lascannons and 2 missile launchers)

Spare wolf guard in terminator armour with a cyclone missile launcher

1 unit of 4 thunderwolves (1 thunderhammer, 1 storm shield, 1 melta bomb, 1 normal)

My list for the tournament can be found at the bottom of this post.

The army I played against was very nicely converted, and it would be interesting to see what the sons of russ would do to my Tau. At least I was getting my wish and seeing space wolves in action :)

He won the roll off for table side and first turn, and decided to go first. He's a picture of the table during my opponents turn one that one of the tournament organisers took:

The 5 objectives are located:
1) By the bottom right ruin next to the wolf guard with the cyclone
2) Near right just in front of my double kroot screen
3) In the middle of the choas ruin in the middle of the table
4) Just in front of the forest at the top left of the picture (just in front of long rangs)
5) 12" to the right of the fourth objective at the top of the picture

Deployment

2 large grey hunter units (one containing one of the rune priests) on my left (bottom of the photo) along with the cyclone wolf guard.

In the craters in the middle one unit of long fangs deployed, with the thunder wolves just to their left (up in the photo).

On my right hand side (top of the picture) the second unit of long fangs deployed in the forest, while the 2 remaining grey hunter squads with the second rune priest deployed behind the forest (these rhinos were the ones with hunter killer missiles).

My initial thoughts on the deployment was that the space wolves had split their army. From reading the Space Wolves Grey blog, I thought it was best to ensure space wolve units could support each other well. To test the issue I wanted to nullify the right flank (top of the photo) by deploying as far away as possible. However my army was too big, so the toughest things that could take the long fangs fire (a hammerhead and the devilfish) were deployed in the middle, with the rest of my army on the left flank.

The army was screened by the two large units of kroot, with the pathfinders in the middle of my army at the back. The crisis suits were in between the kroot screen and the vehicles, broadsides & pathfinders at the back. My commander joined the first kroot screen to give them better leadership, and I hoped to quickly get that half the unit either in or behind the small bunker. The crisis suits most likely to die, ie. the ones on my left (bottom of the photo), were the firestorms (missile pod & burst cannons), as the plasma on the other suits would probably prove invaluable.

6 Fire warriors and 10 kroot were left in reserve, hoping the empty devilfish would be left alone for the first one to arrive and hop into. The first one to arrive would head cautiously towards the middle objective, followed on foot by the other.

[As it's late I will finish this report tomorrow, however feel free to comment on deployment and your predictions on the outcome]

Rathstar