The tournament that I prepared for has come and gone, so it’s time to review today’s events and see if my plans worked out. We had 16 players attending, with an interesting mix of armies. Two Eldar, two Dark Eldar, two Imperial Guard, three standard Space Marines, one Blood Angels, one Space Wolves, one Chaos Daemons, one Ork, one Tau (me), and two others that I didn’t see. This gave me a chance to play against armies (or variants thereof) that I’ve never gotten to face before.

Round 1
Deployment: Spearhead
Mission: Seize Ground (5 Objectives), with Kill Points as a secondary objective
Opponent: Dark Eldar

This was the first time I’ve ever faced a Dark Eldar army, and while I knew roughly what to expect, I didn’t know all the details. This, combined with a bit of first-round nerves, led me to make a few critical tactical mistakes. Spearhead is my least favorite deployment format anyway, and against a fast assault army it leaves me at a distinct disadvantage. I left my Fire Warriors in reserve, which was a mistake in retrospect. Had I deployed them along the back edges of my corner, I would have had a gunline that could have been putting out 30″ shots. My opponent went first, and on turn 1 managed to get one of his two Archons in assault with my HQ unit. Amazingly enough, I managed to lock that Archon in melee for two turns, and actually came out on top. I lost my bodyguards and shield drones (which kept me alive) and took two wounds on my commander in the process, though, which left him weakened against the Wyches which followed. Meanwhile, I was able to thin out two of his Warrior squads with Hammerhead submunitions, but that left two more – one in a Raider, one in ruins near an objective, that I could not destroy. The sheer number of lance weapons I had to face kept my vehicles stunned, and my Fire Warriors coming on piecemeal were wiped out one by one. I managed to wipe out one unit of Warriors, destroy one Ravager, and disarm and disable a Raider, but in the end my army’s setup worked against me. I lost two objectives to none, and fifteen kill points to three.

Round 2
Deployment: Dawn of War
Mission: Cut Off the Head (see below), with Capture and Control as a secondary objective
Opponent: Space Marines (Imperial Fists)

The mission was an Annihilation variation – kill points counted, but only after you had killed one of your opponent’s HQ choices. Anything before that did not count towards the objective (but did provide bonus points for the overall standings). My opponent chose to deploy and go second, and deployed nothing before the game. I mostly concentrated my forces in one corner (near my objective), but kept my Piranhas, one Hammerhead, and one Devilfish in the other corner. His army itself consisted of two Land Raiders containing terminators – one with Lysander and Storm Shield/Thunderhammers, and one with a Chaplain – and two Razorbacks containing five-man tactical squads.  He moved them up the middle on his first turn. I responded on turn two by destroying one Razorback and immobilizing the Chaplain’s Land raider with railgun and missile fire. In return, he started moving up Lysander’s Land Raider and destroyed the Devilfish. I eventually lost the Piranhas to lascannon and assault cannon fire, and didn’t manage to do much beyond shaking the mobile Land Raider. I did manage to immobilize the other Razorback about 5 inches from his objective. Unfortunately, without the lighter vehicles as targets, most of my army was left with nothing to target. Lysander and his escort did get out twice; once to kill my Deathrains, and once to kill an immobilized Hammerhead, but beyond that I had few opportunities to kill his HQ. I kept mine on the edge of the board and out of LOS. In the end, no one was claiming either objective uncontested, and no HQs had been destroyed, so no kill points were awarded. With that, the game ended in a draw.

Round 3
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Mission: Once More Into the Breach (see below)
Opponent: Eldar

This was an interesting mission. It was a variation on kill points, but instead of points being awarded for killing units, they were awarded for forcing a morale check by causing 25% casualties during the Shooting phase (even if the check couldn’t fail). Every such check awarded to shooter one point. There was also a secondary objective that awarded points for destroying enemy units in assault. My opponent was running a hybrid Eldar list – one maximum-size Jetbike squad with a Warlock, a Jetbike Farseer with Fortune and Doom that ran with them, two Wave Serpents filled withFire Dragons, two units of Pathfinders, and a Falcon for heavy support. Being mechanized was to my advantage in this game, since my vehicles couldn’t give up points, with one exception: the gun drones. Early on, one of my Piranhas was destroyed by an immobilizing Pulse Laser shot, which caused the squadron’s drones to all disembark together. One was then killed by shuriken cannon fire from the jetbikes, forcing a morale check. The other Piranha ended up getting revenge against the Falcon, however. His Jetbikes spent half the game turbo-boosted, and along with the Farseer’s Fortune, that made landing any wounds on them difficult. The other challenge was not landing too many wounds. On two occasions, both against his Pathfinders, I managed to do so many wounds that the unit was wiped out before a morale check could be taken. Eventually, though, his Jetbikes had to slow down to take shots, and that opened them up to my attacks. I managed to force two morale checks against them in turns 5 and 6. I also forced two checks on his Fire Dragons, but not before he forced checks against my Deathrains and Fireknives. At the end of turn six, we were tied on shooting morale checks with four each. The secondary objective never came into play; we had one assault at the end of the game, with three of his Fire Dragons against my one remaning Fireknife, but neither group could hurt the other. Again, the game ended in a draw.

So, one loss and two draws. Not as good a performance as I’d hoped, but I did hold my own, more or less. Once again, a fast assault army was my undoing; this just shows that I need to practice against such armies more, especially in Spearhead deployment games. Still, I had a great time, and I hope I can attend another event sometime this year (although the schedules rarely work with mine). On a side note, my friend Dennis, who played the other Eldar army at the tournament, came in just shy of getting third place, so congratulations are in order to him!!