Trenton ITC tourney recap for the bugs

[Jack Shrapnel]

So I attended Trenton's ITC tourney yesterday and brought my Nids with me. 

I ran:

triple devourer flyrant with e-grubs (grubs were there for knights but I never faced the night player
triple mucolids
triple venomthropes
malanthrope
two units of two dakka fexes
tyrannofex in a pod

Ben's tournaments follow ITC rules to the letter.  He rules the tau contingent gets to share marker lights and gets +1 BS when they focus three or more units on one unit (like exactly how the rule reads without the endless arguing over what "like a single unit" means).  I will state however, that I learned this a little late and assumed it was as written by the latest 1+ armor (can't target lock out with all the buffs). 

Game one:

I was facing a tau player at his first tournament.  He ran a big unit of missile suits, buffmander, ghostkeel formation with stealth suits, riptide, fire warriors, breacher team in devilfish, hammerhead pathfinders, piranha.  zero skyfire. So definitely could have been a lot worse I think to myself.  Nids vs. Tau is a very uphill battle most of the time and they have all the tools to wreck an MC heavy list, but I think if I can get up in the air I should be pretty safe.  Game was emperor's will plus modified maelstrom.  Tau won first turn and I deployed very defensively using LOS blocking, malanthrope bubble and distance to mitigate what could target me and do damage.

He then made me pick up my warlord for first blood after 13-14 unsaved wounds and I had to pick up my venomthropes with the other shots from the ghostkeel formation.  EEP!  luckily he didn't realize he could have gotten two flyrants if he hadn't poured so much firepower into the one, but I don't think either of us expected how brutal that would be. 

So I took to the air and rammed everything in range of the missile suits.  I got catalyst off which saved me for certain, and poured psychic powers and devourer fire into the suits.  This is the point that I luckily avoided being tabled.  He had stuck his suits out just a little bit to far to ensure they could see the warlord flyrant.  His jump back could have gotten him safely out of range of the dakka fexes, however he rolled poorly.  So the suits ate 48 TL S6 shots and died - just barely. 

With no skyfire he was able to drop wounds off the flyrants, but it took him a couple of turns to down the second one (with my one remaining flyrant on 2 wounds).  The mucolids all dropped in quickly, but only one hit combat, killing some pathfinders and making them run.  T-fex landed and roasted stealth suits.  one fex squad had a single fex with a couple wounds remaining and hid on my emperors will objective with the malanthrope. the other fexes did some great work, even though by the end of the game I think they were down to a single wound a piece.  

I was able to survive for more than half the game thanks to some luck, flying, and my opponent being new and having an unoptimized list. Then Jordan came by and informed me that no, my opponent didn't get to give monster hunter and twin linked and ignore cover to everything that he focused fire with. TO Ben confirmed this. 

oh... whoops!

so at this point I've got his main units trying to stop the fex's, t-fex and tyrannoctye from being on his objective.  We come down to our last turn because of time and I drop the last wounded flyrant beside his ghoskeel on the objective to contest. Have primary, maelstrom and two out of three tertiary for a win. 

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game two - bugs vs. white scars battle company

oh man this one looked rough. A ton of free vehicles. A ton of assault cannon razorbacks holding grav toting marines. Drop grav cents. Scouting devestators with a FNP BA priest. Kahn leading grav bikes. My opponent Derek (super great guy) looked at my army, then at his and apologized as he's a nid player as well and knows what scouting gravspam does to nids. So looking at the mission and both our armies I know one thing. I'm getting primary as long as I don't get tabled, which is a VERY real possibility vs. this list especially since I have 16 models all incredibly vulnerable to grav as they rely on their toughness to survive. But primary is kill points, and all those free rhinos and razorbacks are very easy to punk for my list. If I don't get tabled.

Thing is I know another thing. I'm NOT getting maelstrom, which under ITC is worth the same amount of points as the primary. He's just got WAY too much board coverage. Like the whole board. There's no way with my piddly amount of grav-vulnerable models I can split my forces chasing objectives in his board half and the middle as he's going to cover them both. And if my flyrants land I lose.

So I have to pick up tertiaries and not get tabled. Okay... I got this.... eep... vanguard strike, he's even closer.... plus his whole army can scout.... did I mention eep? Oh and he gets to go first too.

Okay so I deploy my entire army (aside from deep strikers) WAY back in the corner as far away as possible using LOS blocking, ruins and distance as much as possible. I'm little more than a large template and this could go so bad it isn't even funny. He scouts forward and I fail to seize. Luckily he can't get close enough to both see and bring the power of all his grav to bear.

Cents drop down and scatter on the other side of the LOS blocker. I hope he sticks them out and tries for an early snipe, cuz 2+ ruin cover in a malanthrope bubble is about as safe as I can get. He doesn't fall for it and puts them back behind it out of sight(damn, I really wanted to kill those guys) and prepares for the turn two unleashing hell because I have to stick my nose out sometime right? I tell Derek that if he's not going to take my bait then I'm not going to be very happy. He still does not.

I power up with catalyst, then drive straight right with all the flyrants, taking out key rides - the ones with grav, and some of those damn assault cannons and a bunch of bikes. The fexes play safe with cover but advance a bit. The venomthropes actually lead the left flank, with fexes behind. Derek jokes about his all star BA scouts who run over to kill the venomthropes, promptly failing their charge. the venomthropes charge them on my turn and kill every last scout. He puts some wounds on my warlord - 3 in fact by the time all the jinking is over, as well as a couple fex wounds. (malanthrope stayed in the ruins - keeping synapse for the fexes who trailed back for cover - thanks wrecked vehicles!

My warlord promptly fails his grounding test and falls. Dammit I think, then roll a 1 to wound. He lives! I happily tell Derek that on my turn he's allowed to charge. Oh oh centurions... someone wants to have a word with you.

Warlord on one wound jumps to the centurions and kills one and causes a wound to another... dammit... FNP... double dammit.. hit and run! Carnifexen (is that a word?) are doing major work, taking out whatever they aim at, while my cover saves keep grav at bay for the most part. but now the warlord is exposed. The venoms run behind LOS blocker, keeping in range of the warlord who is hanging out in the open with one wound... but still on the ground and still very able to charge the remaining centurions. Derek unleashes hell and I'm jinking for a 2+ thanks to my venom buddies. He dumps an incredible amount of shots into him and I roll about 4 ones in the pack and reliably make ALL the FNP rolls. Hey cents, wanna try that again?

So the flyrant with FNP charges the cents again, reducing them to one wounded cent and the priest. The priest smacks my flyrant with his pointy stick and kills him. Who needs grav when you got a close combat weapon on a S4 model? yeah, that seriously happened. But I'm so happy he lived this long I totally forgave him.

Meanwhile the t-fex dropped down and unleashed template hell. He was making a play for Derek's backfield objective and Kahn and his couple remaining buddies wanted to charge in and instagib him - by the time the shooting was over t-fex was down to one wound. Kahn charged in and rolled the 6 for instadeath. Then Derek remembered he was only AP3. (sad trombone music). Tfex killed his biker friends and Kahn tried again, failed then jumped out. Derek tried to remove the t-fex and just couldn't. Kahn tried to grab an easy kill point off the tyrannocyte who was rocking a massive 4+ save, who killed him in combat (seriously that happened).

Meanwhile we had stopped counting both KP and maelstrom because I had maybe one secondary to Derek's 8 and he had two KP to my over a dozen.

Once the marines were out of their rides and the grav taken out for the most part, it was the advancing wall of fexes that began to clean up. I managed to get all three tertiary objectives and the primary, while Derek got the maelstrom hands down.

second upset win for the nids!

...Derek said he was just happy he did not have to face Jordan next, who was doing awful things to his opponent on another table and we assumed was the next opponent for whomever won between us.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game Three - the patience test.

okay so I normally am a fairly patient guy (honest I am!) but this one was incredibly trying... so there may be some venting involved.

My opponent announced immediately that his last game only made it to turn 2 but he won anyways. He was playing around 150 orcs of various types including lootas, grot artillery, dakka jet, nobs, burnas, and a LOT of regular boys. I told him point blank at the beginning of our game there was no way we would only get that far, and I'd help him move his models if need be, but we were getting to at least turn four. Despite my insistence that we would actually get to play several turns, setup was very lengthy. As well during the course of this game there were several rules that were insisted upon that required TO intervention, including my opponent saying his dakkajet was AP3 shooting.

It probably didn't help that my opponent had about 8 dice to his name (with those squiggly designs making them unreadable) and no codex other than a phone download. nothing was WYSIWYG and the only painted models were about 30 of the boys that he borrowed from the tourney organizer. Oh and he took at least three phone calls during the game, during the second one saying to his friend "oh yeah I'm winning everything today so far... this game? oh yeah I'm winning this one too"

at that point I told him to get off the phone, we're playing in a time limited tournament and enough was enough. But I did so very calmly. even if inside I was ready to flip the table by this point.

So we were playing hammer and anvil and the relic along with modified maelstrom. I quickly moved up one of the flyrants in jump mode to the relic, while the others took to the air and caused havoc. The dakkafexes each took out a unit of boys, however there was just wave after wave coming, and eventually the fexes were worn down to nothing. In the meantime though, the t-fex was doing work and the tyrants were pretty much unstoppable. The t-fex alone was responsible for killing the nobs, trukk, burnas inside the truk and a squad of boys.

Luckily I had my dice counted out for my opponent to use so we were able to get the game going at a proper pace, even having some assistance from an observer moving boys. (Jordan tried to help after his game was done by donating his dice for the guy to use, but at that point we had a system going)

psychic scream vs. orks is pretty devastating.

So in the end I lost all four fexes, a venomthrope and a couple of spores detonated taking out several orks with him. My opponent was down to two depleted squads of boys a shock attack gun one nob and his wounded warlord. I was surrounding his warlord and single nob with the t-fex, tyrannocyte and a flyrant ready to open fire and the t-fex ready to charge. My opponent conceeded at this point. I was able to secure the primary (the flyrant had the relic all game) maelstrom and all tertiary (as my opponent conceeded the warlord death as my last point I needed)

so despite the win, this game definitely did not FEEL like a win, because it was one of the most frustrating games I've had in a tourney in a very long time and I had to be constantly watching everything he was trying to pull all the time. If it weren't for the deliberate cheating and the cocky phone calls I would have just probably played it out at his pace... but that kind of stuff meant hard mode.

So at the end of the tourney I netted best general (Jordan got best overall!) so I'd say it was a successful tourney for the bugs. I really enjoy Ben's tournies. It's nice to play in a tourney sometimes without having to plan or organize things myself!

[voodoo]

Cool! Glad things went well for you despite the maddening 3rd game.

[Jack Shrapnel]

lol.. whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger... let's just say he didn't get my favourite opponent vote

[thesanityassassin]

Ugh, that sounds nightmarish. Having played a 150+ Ork army before, it's not easy to get through games even for an experienced player! Beyond even moving them there are just so many damn dice to roll. I always found them a ton of fun in casual games where you're not on a strict time limit, but you've gotta be super familiar with the list and really on the ball to dare taking them to a timed event.

[Jack Shrapnel]

try sitting there while someone tries to roll 8 dice 20 times for one assault. I could feel my brain snap a little each time.

I think it also goes to prove the whole point about the power of slowplay, especially in an environment with secondary maelstrom missions, etc. He had gone undefeated up to the matchup with me, but because he only got a couple of turns in. Easy to score a couple backfield objectives in the first turn or two, and the mission before facing me he played kill points vs. space wolves and only got to turn two. It's a LOT easier to kill a rhino or drop pod completely in two turns vs. 150 orks. This guy definitely knew what he was doing and tried everything he could NOT to have the game proceed.

That's why at club championship, intentional slow play like this is punished... harshly....

[raceygaming]

Ya If you are going to bring Ork you best practice up at fast playing. I tried double Greentide and a CAD at 2500 pts. It was 240+ models and I was able to play a full 4 turns in just under 2 hours vs Decruion Crons.
You have to get that Move + run in together and then just move the front row, then move on. once every one has their front most limit set you can go back and fill in the rest of the movement of the hordes.

Despite tau vs Ork being awesome for Tau I feel like I dodged a bullet on that game.

[danny1995]

Yeah, the bigger the unit, the easier it is to move with minimal measuring. I've played opponents before with MASSIVE numbers of Orks at a tournament, and what we agreed on by his advice at the beginning of the game is he would move the the front models and the sides of each unit, then move on to the next and I'd move the rest of them inside the sort of box that was created by doing that, really cut down on time when it came to his movement phase.

[thesanityassassin]

One of the big things to watch out for PLAYING a huge horde too is your opponent can force you to slow play. I know this is kind of worst case scenario, but I've had a player force me to roll out 30 boyz charging a single Marine rather than simply roll my Nob first (or just remove him) "Because he might survive". Same with "no you can't run during your move because it might change what you do". Technically they're following the rules, but it was frustratingly clear that they were just trying to slow me down so I didn't hit combat.

[danny1995]

That is where you show up with VICIOUS amounts of precounted dice. Stacks of 20 dice pre-counted out.