GoT 4 way free for all 40k tournament!

Last Saturday was the www.guardiansoftyr.com 40k Mayhem tournament. 4 players, each with 1000 points, on a 4 foot x 6 foot board fighting over a relic and kill points. It was definitely mayhem. Alliances were formed, only to be broken the next turn. Backs were stabbed and bodies littered the battlefields at Wargames Workshop Milton Keynes.

The Format of the tournament was 2 games of 4 way or 3 way free for all. Each game to last a max of 3 hours. The objective was a relic in the centre of the board, this was worth 20 points. Kill points were worth 2 points each. There were bonus points for things like turbo boosting, reserves and scout moves. There were also pre-tournament achievement points for things like having a painted army (1pt), 1 point for each unit, 1 point for each troop choice, wearing a t-shirt in the colours of your army. The achievement points and points gained for both games counted towards a total that decided the winner at the end.

Before the tournament had started I had tricks up my sleeve. I had engineered my army to get a ton of achievement points. 32 points to be exact. I had maxed out my force org chart and managed to fit in a fortification and 2 transports! This gave me a bit of a head start as the closest other person only had 23 achievement points. Having such a crazy army was very risky though as there was a lot of easy kill points in it.

My army list for the day:

Big Mek with Shokk attack gun and boss pole

Big Mek with boss pole (Warlord)

3x 10 Grots

3x 10 Ork Boyz

3x 5 Lootas

3x Kannons

2x Trukks

2x Deffkoptas with big shootas

1x buggie with rokkits

Aegis Defence line with Quad gun.

The plan was to simply hide behind the Aegis and shoot everything, once everything was dead hop out and grab the relic. Of course plans rarely survive contact with the enemy though.

Game 1

The tables for the first game were decided by order of achievement points from highest to lowest. This put me on a table with mech Dark Eldar in front of me, Dark Angels diagonally opposite me and Salamanders to my right. I deployed behind my Aegis and got to go first. The Dark Eldar deployed as far from everyone's guns as possible, the Dark Angels turtled up behind their Aegis and the Salamanders put a squad of terminators and a vindicator within spitting distance of my orks, ready to tear them up.

The Salamanders grabbed the relic and started hauling it back to their deployment zone. Bullets were flying in every direction except between myself and the Dark Angels. Forced started thinning out but the Salamanders still held the relic by turn 3. The Dark Eldar sent on their flyer, it dropped a bomb and promptly fell out of the sky due to a hail of fire from the Ork Quad Gun (hehe).

With the relic almost safely in the salamander hands all attention turned to him and his forces came under attack from all angles. He managed a rather cheeky manoeuvre though. The Dark Angels were sending their bikers to grab the relic once the remaining stragglers of salamanders were wiped out. The Salamanders had dragged the objective up a level in the ruins though. Bikes can't clime ladders!! Game ends and nobody has the objective......

Game 2

The tables for the second game were decided by how many points you got in the last game. On the top table were myself (Orks), Ken Chambers (my nemesis) (Tau), the pink Eldar and the Dark Eldar. 

This time I decided to play for second place. I deployed my Aegis further back from the edge of my deployment and stayed behind it hoping that everyone would forget about me.

The Eldar grabbed the relic before the game had even started. They infiltrated their rangers right on it. These were then reinforced with the help of jetbikes and then the wraithknight. The scouts died and the wraithknight picked it up.

Then the Dark Eldar swooped in, stabbing their brothers in the back. The wraithknight was toppled by the combined firepower of the Dark Eldar, Orks and Tau. Wracks got out of their venom and ambled over to the relic and picked it up.

As soon as the wracked picked up the relic they got shot out of existence by the Tau who send over their 2 riptides to pick it up. 2 riptides in 1000 points!!! Goddamit Ken!

The Eldar were wiped out by this point and the Orks and Dark Eldar set out to kill the Riptides. I gave up after a round of unsuccessful shooting and started picking of Tau infantry and Dark Eldar things.

The Riptides just laughed off the incoming fire with their 2+ saves and feel no pain. They went and hit in the corner away from my guns and waited for the end of the game. The end came and they still had the objective. Bodies lay everywhere..... except in the ork deployment zone! My plan to be ignored worked. I only lost 4 units, 2x deffcoptas, a buggy and a trukk. Everyone else was devestated. Ken had just his 2 riptides and his HQ suit thingy, the Deldar had a couple of venoms and a ravager and the Eldar were gone completely.

After the totals were added up I was expecting Ken to win as he had the relic and me (hopefully) get 2nd. Lo and behold! I beat him with a crap ton of bonus points and kill points. 44 points to 42! The trick was keeping 9 units in reserve as each one got me a point when it came on. Also sitting back and picking off stragglers with my lootas made a big difference. Sorry Ken.

End Result

After the end of the game I had no idea who would win as it was possible to get a huge amount of points if played right, Ken got  52 points in the first game. The results were announced in order from last to first. Making me wait to be put out of my misery. I came first!!! AAAAhhhh! I went into the tournament thinking it was impossible to plan and win in free for all games. I didn't even touch the relic in either game. Turns out that was the winning move. Let everyone duke it out for the relic and you just sit there killing them one by one.

YAY!

Thanks to Ian Wardle of Guardians of Tyr for organising the event and thanks to everyone who took part.

	Total
	Pts	T. ach	G. ach	Kp's	S.troops	Relic
Michael towers	116	32	40	34	10	0
Ken chambers 2	110	16	19	34	1	40
James hulance Taylor 1	81	21	17	22	1	20
Chris king 3	79	23	22	30	4	0
Dan burrows 1	69	22	13	14	0	20
David Stewart 1	69	14	18	16	1	20
Keaton James Callaghan 3	69	12	19	18	0	20
Jake trapnell 0	61	14	15	10	2	20
Michael Stewart 2	60	15	15	28	2	0
Steven almond 1	58	17	21	16	4	0
Dean Hankin 0	45	15	18	12	0	0
Tobias Barr 0	42	17	8	14	3	0
Tom van den end 0	41	16	14	10	1	0
	0		0	0	0	0
numbers after names indicate	0		0	0	0	0
warlord kills	0		0	0	0	0

Ork Aegis Defence line and Quad gun

I've just finished my Ork defence line, Woot. I made it out of plasticard, bitz and a crap ton of individually glued on bolts. The quad gun is a forgeworld ork flakk gun.

Random Model Wednesday 1 - Ork Runtbot

In an effort to stave off my inability to post regularly I have decided to start Random Model Wednesday. I'll pick one of my old models or someone else's, take some photos and write a brief description of any conversion work and painting methods. Wednesday seemed like a good day, nothing ever happens on Wednesdays.

My first Random Model Wednesday model is my Ork Runtbot. It was a limited edition Forgeworld model only sold at events in 2010. You can still see them on Ebay but they sell for silly money.

There's no conversion work on this model as I didn't feel the need to make it unique as its pretty rare anyway. I magnetised the join between the legs and the torso for transport and to avoid it snapping as being resin its quite fragile. I experimented with different washes to create a dirty rusty effect, I never seem to stick to the same method of painting rust for long.

Too much power for a grot!

I've used him a couple of times as a Warboss in my army. I had him leading a large squad of grots in a battlewagon. I quickly learned that this just doesn't work. Putting a big combat monster in a truely terrible combat squad doesn't balance it to a moderate combat squad, it just makes my big thing get trampled when they inevitably fail their morale test and run away. I'd love to make a grot army and have this dude in it but I don't have the patience to make hundreds of grots, I even know what models I want to represent things. There's some resing grot commissars models on the web that I'd use for runtherds, I'd convert some sort of model to represent a big mek with kustom force field, probably a bunch of grots with a big mechanism on wheels. I'd have to make some grot vehicles like buggies or maybe use the forgeworld grot tanks.

Guardians of Tyr 1500 pt 40k tournament today

After a gap in my posts due to a holiday in Croatia I'm back!

Today I took part in the GoT 1500 point tournament in Northampton. There was a good turn out for this one and quite a few new players and armies. I took my bikerz and dakkajets from my previous post, basically: Warboss on bike, 7 nob bikers, Wazdakka, 11 bikers, 3 dakkajets. Its quite a hard list but not impossible to beat by any stretch.One thing I've learnt is that the dakkajets look nice but die quickly and rarely kill much but I just like them too much.

1st game was 2 hidden objectives and I was pitched against a Blood Angel player with Mephiston leading a seemingly random assortment of units. His random assortment proved very capable though. I cocked up on this mission by overestimating the strength of his sanguinary guard and got scared into hiding my nob bikers to claim an objective. Big mistake! My hardest hitting unit hiding like cowards while the rest of my army got slaughtered. In the end I had 1 contested objective and he had 2 uncontested objectives. He also scored a crap ton of bonus points for killing Wazdakka with Mephiston too.

The marines that he had painted were really nice, shame there was so few.

Mephiston next to sanguinary priest! Cheese I cried! Its the sort of thing I'd do though....

2nd game was 5 objectives and I was against my old opponent Mark Pagett and he was using Guard with allied Grey Knights. A spawny army with 2 vendettas and a stormraven! lol. It was a fun game and there were many dead guardsmen. It was a draw in the end with both of us claiming 2 objectives each, he held one with 3 guards men and another held by a commissar lord with one wound (any infantry could hold in this tourny), I held one with some bikes and one with Wazdakka. My dakkajets were actually useful in this game, killing a vendetta and quite a few guardsmen. My nob bikers absorbed his entire army's firepower for pretty much the entire game and slaughtered 2 squads of grey knights, an inquisitor and a squad of guard vets in combat. A fun game.

3rd game was annihilation. I was against Glenn Few, who I played against in the last tournament. He was using his Red Scorpion marines. I felt bad at the end because I know he's still learning and my army just splatted everything. I tabled his army without loosing a unit. I'm sure once he's got used to 6th edition and starts working out some shenanigans to pull with his marines he'll do a lot better.

I didn't play against these nids but they looked really cool so I had to fit them in here somewhere.

The standings at the end are below:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
82	Mike Stewart	4	31	21	26	blood angels
64	Jon Ellam	8	15	13	28	marines
59	Dave Stewart	7	21	6	25	daemons
56	Mike Towers	6	8	13	29	orks
49	Ashley Taylor	4	23	12	10	guard
47	Ken Chambers	8	2	25	12	marines
45	Alex Jarosz	8	16	18	3	marines
41	Mark Perry	9	10	12	10	tyranids
41	Mark Pagett	5	12	11	13	Grey knights
14	Glenn Few	6	1	6	1	marines

A bit of a random mix and not entirely in line with the meta that the internet claims. Not even any Necron players but that's probably my fault as I'm normally the one with them.

I had great fun today and I'm looking forward to the next one already. I don't feel so bad about loosing so terribly to Mike Stewarts Blood Angels in the first game now because he slaughtered everyone else too. I might use guard next time, I have some sneaky ideas for them.

3 Dakkajets put into action in tonights game

Tonight at the club I used the list I mentioned in the last article. It was an ork biker list, with a nob biker squad with warboss, wazdakka with a big squad of bikes and 3 dakkajets. I played against Ian's dark mechanicus army (basically chaos marines). He had a squad of 10 terminators, 6 obliterators, 2 squads of marines in rhinos and a raptor squad with a sorceror. 16 models with 2+ saves!!!

The fastest moving orks in the galaxy!

The green baddy mechanicus of doom

I rolled for a random mission and we got the D3+2 objectives one that allows heavy support units to score and you collect points at the end of every turn for claiming objectives. No good for me as I had no heavys. The deployment was short table edge each, so the opposite of the old pitched battle. We decided to only allow the objectives in the middle of the board instead of the actual game restrictions as I'd have just sat on my 2 objectives the whole game.

Turn 1

I managed to steal the initiative and moved my bike squads onto the objectives in the middle. The mysterious objectives gave me a +1 to cover saves on the middle objective and skyfire for the left objective. The +1 cover save was awesome as ork bikers have a 4+ cover save as basic anyway, the skyfire sucked because Ian had no flyers but if he too the objective he could shoot mine out of the sky with ease.

I shot my nob bikers at his termis, killing a reaper autocannon dude with my precision shots. Yay for nobs all being characters and their dakkaguns being twin linked. Wazdakka and his boyz destroyed an rhino with their shooting.

Now for Ian's retaliation. He shot everything at my 2 squads. My nobs took a handful of wounds and spread them out amongst themselves and the other squad lost 1 or 2 bikes. He then tried charging my nob bikers with the termis. The termis failed to get far enough and my overwatch firing killed the other autocannon, again yay for precision shots when all the shots you need to hit anyway are 6s. His sorceror tried to use lash of submission on my nobs but rolled an 11 and failed, he then rolled too low for them to charge too. This left most of his army in front of me, waiting for me to charge.

I held 2 objectives and had killed the first unit. 7 points to me in turn 1??!?

Turn 2
 

There used to be a 10 man terminator squad in front of the nob bikers in the left of the pic. The stuff behind the hill is the dead pile, the stuff on the hill is the obliterators.

2 of my Dakkajets arrive from reserve. In the shooting phase I call the Waaagh to get double the shots with my dakkajets, they killed 2 or 3 marines, pants!

My nob bikers charge the termis after killing another with shooting. My painboy got killed by the overwatch but my nobs annihilate the terminators in combat. It was ridiculous how powerful the nob bikers were. The consolidated back onto the objective.

My biker squad and Wazdakka charge the raptors and sorceror. I thought about issuing a challenge and chose not to. Then Ian issued a challenge, after some thought I thought screw it and let wazdakka accept the challenge. He kicked arse! Ian failed to wound Wazdakka then beat the snot out of the sorceror, doing 4 power klaw wounds and killing it! My bikers then beat the snot out of the raptors. The raptors lost their morale check and ran away. Again I consolidated onto the objective.

In Ians turn he tried to knock out the flyers but didn't roll high enough when he penetrated with his obliterator's las cannons. The rest of the army tried to shoot my bikes but their bolter rounds just pinged off my bikes. He charged my bike squad with his remaining 2 squads of marines. They lost horribly in combat and ran away as well.

At the end of the turn I held 2 objectives again and claimed another 6 points. Ian still had 0 :( I was feeling bad at this point.

Turn 3

Turn 3 was pretty much just me shooting at stragglers running away and my dakkajets ineffectually shooting at the obliterators. The obliterators then returned fire at the dakkajets and were equally ineffectual.

Turn 4

We gave up. It was just getting ridiculous. We gave up counting objective points because it was just silly at this point.



Lessons learnt:
Nob bikers are way more powerful than I thought they'd be. the 4+/5+Fnp against everything including lascannons was just crazy. The allocating half of their shots due to them all being characters was even crazier. You just pick what you want to die basically.

Dakkajets are kind of sucky but a good distraction. I'll keep fielding them simply because I like the models and it fits with my speed freaks army.

Its all well and good having obliterators that can claim objectives but you actually need to move them to the objective!

Mysterious objectives are fun! and they give you a reason to go after them before the last turn.


I'm on holiday for the next 2 weeks so I won't get to play for a while. I'm looking forward to the 40k tournament on the 12th of August in Northampton. Its a 1500 point tournament run by the Guardians of Tyr (see the link on the right hand side). Now I need some sleep. Got work in 7 and a bit hours!

Final Dakkajet finished!

I've just finished painting my 3rd and final Dakkajet. I managed to get it done just in time to use all three at tonights gaming night. The list I'm using is a Warboss on bike + nob bikers, Wazdakka Gutsmek + a big squad of bikers and the 3 dakkajets. It doesn't seem like much but there's a lot of S5 and S6 twin linked shots. I just hope I don't play against someone with armour 13/14.

I didn't really like this dakkajet when I was making it, I was sure it was going to be a massive failure. But I think it turned out alright in the end. Now I wish I could take them as squadrons so I can make more and crazier dakkajets.

The Dakka Skwadron is complete!

Now to see how they fare in a normal 6th edition game.

2 dakkajets from 1 dakkajet kit - plane 2 work in progress pics

My 3rd and final plane is a monsterpiece of orkish bodgery (bojery?). The scratch built fuselage is made of plasticard and bits. The pilot and propeller are from a deffcopta. The wings are from a Dakkajet kit. I found that the exhaust pipes from the kit managed to fit quite nicely when turned upside down.

This isn't my favourite dakkajet by any stretch but at least it looks properly orky. I think the GW kits look to streamlined and well built for orks, I prefer the forgeworld look that's more cobbled together.

Can I get it painted in time for my next game? I damn well better, I hate fielding unpainted models.

2 dakkajets from 1 dakkajet kit - plane 1 Finished!

My 2nd Dakkajet, part of my 2 dakkajets from 1 kit project is now finished (except for the base). Those windows are a pain (pun intended) to paint.

For this kit I scratch built the wings and used the fuselage from the GW kit. The other Dakkajet has a scratch built body and wings from the kit and is a propeller aircraft instead of a jet.

Not really much to say about the painting, it was done in the same way as the last Dakkajet.

Anyway. Pics.... lots of pics:

2 down, 1 to go.

Tune in tomorrow for my work in progress pics for the hideous 3rd dakkajet. Looks a bit like a flying box.