The Smurfs at Trenton

[Jack Shrapnel]

So I got the chance to partake in the latest tourney by Table Top Champions event held in Trenton this past weekend. It was a lot of fun and I was a big fan of the modified maelstrom missions as secondary objectives (so much so I’m using this system for our upcoming tourney!)

I’ll try and recap my games to the best of my ability, although unfortunately I did not take pictures nor have a copy of my opponents’ lists, so I’m going to go with what I can remember with my old man brain.

I brought my smurfs list at 1850, which basically is Tigirius with three centurions, Calgar with five terminators, a storm talon and then four squads of tacticals in drop pods. A pretty basic list that has a strong scoring presence and decent shooting, but generally folds to any assault element (unless Calgar and friends stay intact – spoiler alert – they don’t!)


Game ONE:

Game one was against the dreaded Taudar. This was Tau primary with squads of fire warriors, crisis suits, skyray, riptide and hammerheads with rail guns. They brought along some Eldar jetbikes with scatter lasers, and some scorpion outflanking buddies and a basic autarch. My opponent was a really great guy who was a lot of fun to play. He was my vote for favourite opponent. Mission was modified scouring – 3 objectives each worth 1,2,3 and modified maelstrom.

I really wanted first turn but the dice gods apparently were not having it. My opponent moved into position to alpha-strike my meager turn one ground forces which consisted of tiggy/cents or Calgar / termies. I had hidden tiggy and the centurions out of sight of the majority of his army, pretty much offering up terminators as the only real target available. Unfortunately for me, this first volley had me lose three of the terminators and put three wounds on Calgar! My turn one saw a pretty massive strike from the pods, taking out the skyray (as the talon was inbound) and making a hammerhead jink. The cents moved out and unloaded onto the jetbikes with perfect timing, erasing the squad. Calgar threw the two remaining termies in front of him and he moved a bit, but I totally forgot to run him at all!

In the counter-counter attack , I really only lost the remaining couple of terminators and Calgar moved over to Tiggy’s squad to preserve warlord point. Then a few crucial things happened. The centurions got a bead on the riptide (who was bouncing around the board quite a bit) and destroyed it. The tacticals were now in a position to start charging and took out the hammerheads and some firewarriors. The tide had definitely turned against the Taudar as I started to really apply pressure.

A couple really cool things happened though, and funny enough not in my favour, but made the game so fun we were both cheering for “Captain Insano” (I had my opponent agree to give his tau commander a name after his exploits). So I had hovered my talon mid-board to claim a three point objective. He was so low on models and I was pretty confident the talon was safe. Well that was not to be! Captain Insano came bouncing over, failed miserably in shooting the talon with fusion and decided to try a long shot charge – which he subsequently made, and destroyed the talon in combat, glancing it out with two six’s. Needless to say we both cheered!

So Poppa Smurf at this point was hiding in tiggy’s centurion unit with only one wound remaining and preserving warlord while a unit of tacticals had charged Captain Insano and tied him up basically for the rest of the game. But the more I thought about this, it just didn’t sit right. I couldn’t have such a worthy challenger just ignored could I? So Poppa Smurf left the safety of the centurions and began running to midfield, hell bent on stomping the Tau commander. The newly freed up crisis suits shot at Calgar with fusion and plasma, but he made all his 4+ saves, shrugging it off. There was going to be retribution! Calgar made a long charge into the combat and promptly challenged which Captain Insano promptly accepted. He made his attacks and got one wound in, and Poppa Smurf of course rolled a 1, failing his 2+ save and died!  We cheered and celebrated the mighty tau commander who we both agreed was super awesome beyond compare!

In the end the smurfs took a solid win, taking primary/secondary/first blood/linebreaker  but the real story of the game was that tau commander!

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game Two:

Eldar. Dammit.

Okay this was a fairly rough list with a full seer council, Eldrad, Wraithknight, min-troops, warp spyders scorpions with that crazy special character guy, dark reapers. No bikes which was good, but really everything else is just so good in this codex that not having the bikes isn’t much of a detriment. This guy went crazy psychic overload generating on average around 16 dice a turn, and his favourite spell after guide, conceal, fortune, mindwar went off (you know cuz the council generates dice on a 3+!) was the big 10 inch apocalyptic blast S10 AP2, which because he was Eldar, he would reroll the failed dice for, generate charges on 3’s and could reduce the warp cost by 1 if he gave up his invul save on the farseer (which he did every time given he had conceal and fortune up).

Mission was big guns and modified maelstrom. Deployment was Vanguard strike – smurfs win the roll off for first turn.

Okay so I knew one thing for certain, a D weapon toting GMC was going to run through my army easily, as even my combat unit was going to die to it. There is just nothing tacticals can do vs. a knight. My opponent knew this too and set up his wraithknight directly opposite to my centurions, the only thing that could reliably hurt it with grav. He then tried to make a scout roll with the knight due to the warlord trait allowing him to. I helpfully reminded him that if he scouted the knight it couldn’t charge first turn so he elected not to scout. I had put my centurions 1/2 inch back from the line, so it was actually an impossible charge first turn so I wasn’t worried about losing them to the seize – I was actually terrified the thing would get buffed up (forgetting you cannot buff GMC’s). However he did not seize and I got first turn. I walked my centurions 6” forward, cast prescience with all my dice and erased the wraithknight for first blood. My two initial pods worth of marines tried to target the spyders to eliminate that threat, however I had forgotten about the whole warp jump thing (my bad!) and when the flamer squad targeted them they jumped out of template range, eating some twin linked (chapter tactics!) bolters and losing a few but not enough to matter. The other squad now was out of rapid fire range so instead turned attention to the dark reapers (council was well protected from my drops) and slew a couple, but they decided to stick around.

So basically my first turn I took out the biggest threat to my army, along with a few heavy weapons and jump troops which were going to be a pain all game due to objective hopping with the maelstrom objectives. I was feeling pretty confident. Then his first psychic phase happened. He made his army near the council basically invulnerable with increased saves, rerolling saves, rerolling to hit, and lowered the toughness of the nearest tactical squad by 1, preparing to charge with a guardian squad. He then dropped an apocalyptic blast on the other squad, erasing it from the board. Shit just got real.

So luckily for me, the overwatch killed a guardian and they were unable to tie me up because they failed the charge. Shooting caused some casualties but nothing too major, however now that I realized he was going to be reliably dropping those blasts on me every turn I had to prioritize the seer council and kill it.

Let this be a lesson to all of you little smurfs out there. One does not simply shoot a buffed seer council to death. I learned a crucial thing that turn I wasted so much firepower. Even if you kill a warlock it barely diminishes their power and it was a feat to even do that. I moved up the centurions and had Calgar and his buddies run close as I thought for sure the scorps and their special friend were going to be heading to the centurions ASAP. He did not disappoint, as he moved up in cover with stealth/shrouding preparing to launch an assault on the centurions. The terminators charged him in return, and frankly did little at all, killing maybe two. Total wiff-fest! And because he went first he took out two of them before they could swing, and dropped a couple wounds on Calgar, who apparently picked up the rule “And He Shall Know No Invuls” this game. The terminators had them pinned for the moment though, and the talon was flying around taking shots to try and soften up the ground presence as well. He continued to drop apocalyptic templates on me. It sucked.

So my plan as the templates fell crushing my army was that I had to gain as much maelstrom points as possible while I could, and under no circumstances could the talon die. Not that my opponent was going to make this easy of course. Hell he even tried saying that APOC template hit the flyer because it wasn’t the declared target of the attack (he was erasing another squad while he said this). Had to call over a TO to confirm no, that’s not how the rules worked in this case. Remember little smurfs, flyers can’t be hit by templates. They ain’t no FMC’s.

I was trying to mop up the spyders primarily, as they had the ability to hop around and score those crucial maelstrom points. The scorps and buddy finished off the termies, only to get storm talon fire to the face once their protection was down and die. Another pro-tip that was learned through this – when warp spyders are fleeing they cannot use their special “I jump on your turn when you shoot at me” power. (had to have this one looked up as well to confirm I was right on this).

In the end I had one tactical marine going to ground on an objective, the talon hovering on another objective from turn 5 onwards at my back of the board, two centurions and Tigirius. He was down to Eldrad, the Farseer (with a wound) and one warlock.

This was a very rough game and was only won because I focused immediately on ensuring that no matter what was done by my opponent, I ensured I got a maelstrom point and had units claiming/contesting objectives. Objective secured was huge in this, as he couldn’t just ignore the drop pods and the tacticals, as they were swarming all around the objectives.

Smurfs win Primary, Secondary, get first blood and linebreaker.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game Three:

So my opponent was so excited to play against the smurfs it was pretty awesome. He was taking pictures and being just a generally great guy to play against. He was also the only other undefeated player at this point, as it seemed as though the majority of players were going 1/1 today. My opponent had a cool list. Nicely painted too!

So I was facing sisters primary, with double exorcists, Jacobus and a couple squads of battle sisters, and an outflanking melta dominion unit in a melta immolator. Then there was an ally of grey knights, with terminators with a termie librarian a stormraven and a dreadknight. On top of this there was an imperial knight. YIKES!

Okay so he had a ton of terminator killing AP1-2, lots of melta, flamers galore, hard hitting termies, AP3 double shot battle cannon for marine killing, and the knight and dreadknight for fast moving unit killers. We were playing dawn of war, with four objectives and modified maelstrom. He got first turn. There was an objective in the ruins in his deployment, one in the ruins in mine, and two midfield by LOS blocking billboards (there was two on every table… was a cool idea I may have to steal borrow at some point!). Seeing I had a drop army primarily, he deployed in standard drop pod defense around his objective in cover. I hid out of LOS.

So first turn he clearly had the ranged shooting advantage as I had nothing that could reach him and I had to slog the centurions across the board to get to him while he rained exorcist shooting and battlecannon shots in safety. That was the plan it seemed. My first turn I largely hid my two deployed units from the majority of shooting, or at worst I’d be getting at least my termie storm shield save. He dropped three terminators pretty much instantly and put two wounds on Poppa Smurf first turn. YIKES!

My first turn I did not drop near his knights and units in the ruin, nowhere near his exorcists that were raining down hell, trying for an early melta shot. I actually dropped behind the LOS blocking terrain near the midfield objectives as far away from his units as possible while still scoring, and stayed out of sight as much as possible with my initial drops, forcing him to come near me. This allowed me to grab some early maelstrom points and was my focus in the crucial turn 1-2, just in case I ended up losing my tacticals I wanted them to do something! I used the melta to drop a rhino and disembark some sisters, netting me first blood.

My opponent realized if he stayed where he was that he was going to lose, he had to break formation, because if he hunkered on his one objective in safety, he was giving me free rein on the objectives and that was the mission. Remember the mission little smurfs! So he started launching forward to make up ground, trying to move around the exorcists to get better firing positions. I couldn’t hide everything and he was able to snipe out the rest of the terminators, leaving a wounded Calgar alone. On my turn Calgar joined up with the nearby tacticals to use their little blue bodies as a shield… or something less mean sounding I guess is how he explained it to them. I took out the unit of sisters and luckily for me both my other pods and the raven came in (yay tiggy rerolls!) so I had a pod on my home objective now and a unit in those ruins. The fourth squad, meltas in hand (jokey with his melta bomb) landed right beside one exorcist that pulled to the centre to make a hole for the grey knight terminators to move forward. They blasted it to smithereens in true ultra-smurf fashion. On my opponent’s turn he now had a target to send the terminators / dreadknight towards, along with the short ranged firepower that had largely been ineffective as it couldn’t reach anything of value. In the meantime the dominions outflanked on the best side for my opponent, and used melta to take out a scoring drop pod. My opponent shot a few smurfs that were in his deployment zone, forcing a check. Calgar lets’ me choose what to do with such a check and I promptly failed and fell back towards my deployment zone, spoiling the charge.

The centurions came to bear on the dreadknight, taking it out. The imperial knight wisely avoided the centurion bubble-of-death and tried to flank my army opposite that unit, focusing on the tacticals with Calgar, trying to force saves. I made sure to keep cover as much as possible, and although I eventually lost the entire squad, Calgar moved over to Tiggy’s unit and they headed for the knight. Meanwhile my stormtalon went for the immolator and wrecked it. The tactical smurfs took out the dominions. All this time I was scoring maelstrom points, which were all about either being in your opponent’s deployment (the crucial turn I wrecked the exorcist), having an objective or destroying a unit. The stormraven came in and utterly destroyed the poor storm talon (despite my cries of “I jink!”).

At the end game Calgar and his centurions got close enough to shoot the imperial knight, taking off a hull point only, and Calgar went for the heroic charge and failed. Game ended at the end of that turn, and in hindsight it was probably a bad idea charging as I risked getting D weaponed out (okay I risked the centurions getting d weaponed out) or stomped, but I wanted Poppa Smurf to do SOMETHING all day other than be a bullet magnet!

Smurfs won primary, secondary, first blood, linebreaker

….and the tourney!

This was a great tournament and I highly recommend attending their future events. Lots of great opponents and everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.