A First Time for Everything...

Last weekend was spent taking place in the first every 40k tournament for both myself and friend Mr Drax, and we had an absolute blast!
The event was in a place called Calne, aptly called ‘Calenage’, and was a 500pt Combat Patrol ‘Doubles’ tournament. Wanting to keep mobile, and fearing any CC/mob armies, we decided to go for a combined Mech force – Drax’s armylist can be found here.
In contrast to his (relative) Red Army, here’s the rather smaller list I took with me:

HQ
Librarian
- The Avenger
- Might of Ancients

TROOPS
Tactical Squad (10)
- Power Sword
- Flamer
- Missile Launcher
- Razorback (to carry Assault Squad & Librarian)

FAST ATTACK
Assault Squad (5)
- Power Sword
- Rhino

Landspeeder
- Heavy Bolter

TOTAL: 500pts

Each game was incredibly exciting and different from the last, and our opponents were all great people to play against – whether it be light-hearted when bad dice rolls came their way, or being patient enough to explain rules that we weren’t familiar with.
In all we played 4 games :

Game 1 – Capture Objectives (1 per team)
Our first game had us paired up against a couple of Guard players - (one of who I found to be TSNI from the blog 'Lucky 88s'!) on a rural map intersected by a River, with a bridge allowing easy crossing. This game introduced me to the horror that was Armoured Sentinals – being unaware of a lot of the new Guard codex, this caught me completely unawares, and while one Heavy Plasma toting monster was raining fire down on my Power-Armoured men, the others were making steps to either contest the objective or tie up my remaining Marine squads. Fortunately once outflanked, my Landspeeder and Drax’s Plasmas made short work of them. Except for that damned Plasma Cannon one lurking in the distance… Unfortunately when the time ran out we had pushed into their corner but it would have taken a few more turns of combat if we were going to be able to push to contest their object.

Result – Draw (Win on Victory Points)

Game 2 – Capture Objectives (2 per team)
Our second game had us pitted against another two guard players, this time on a volcanic map with the Skyshield Landing pad. Their armies were again mass infantry barring 3 Chimeras, so while they placed their objectives at the board edge, we both took a side – I place my objective in an area of ‘No man’s land’ so they’ve have to go without cover saves if they wanted to try and claim it, and Drax placed his in the centre-right by some craters. Even better, we rolled off, and won – so we decided to deploy on their side meaning we started with their objectives, and were able to deploy by our objectives too! The game essentially boiled down to a massive firefight – Chimera tank battles on Drax’s side, while my marines just hunkered down by the forward objective and gunned down any squad who tried to leave their cover.

Result – Win (Win on Victory Points)

My Marines weathering the storm by the leftmost objective

Drax's men learning the true defination of 'Dangerous Terrain'!

Game 3 – Kill Points
Unfortunately, anyone who knows me is probably well aware of my distain for this game mode – I feel it rewards or punishes people on their army composition in a way that has no real bearing on what actually happens in the game. And as if to reinforce my bad feelings about this game mode, we found the game was over before it even began – we were up against 1000k point army of Orks, which if we wiped out to the man, would net us only 3 Kill Points (two maxed out boyz & Biker Nob squad. Despite that, the opponents were again great sports, and I finally managed to discover how mind-numbingly resilient a Biker Nob squad is! We tried to limit the damage by keeping our entire force in reserve, and while their charge was quite devastating (3 Chimeras + lots of passengers!), our counter-attack managed to finish them. The game ended shortly after, but at least we managed to kill those damn Nobs!

Result – Loss (Win on Victory points)

The Calvary arrives...

...Followed by the Biker Nobs

There's a time for tactics, and then there's a time for mobbing!

Thats 5 down, only 56 to go!

Game 4 – Escape
Our final game was based on a mass evacuation from the planet, and had a special goal where by the end of the final turn, the army with most points worth of troops within 3” would win! A fantastic game, and the first I’ve had against both Tsench and a Daemon army – this one I’ll hold back on the details for now, and have a go at creating a proper Battle Report in my next blog post!

Finally the end of the day came, scores were tallied, and we came a very nice 5th out of 14!

Unit of the Day: Landspeeder
Surprisingly, I believe my unit of the day had to have been my Landspeeder - in the previous edition I found it would never stand much of a chance of making its points back, but in a target-rich Mech army and, the Heavy Bolter ranges allowing me to fly around and let rip an eye-watering 6 shots in each salvo, it proved a wonderful menace to my opponents!

Anyway, that's enough blabbering from me, safe to say it was an amazing time, I've definately been bitten by the tournament bug, and am looking forward to my next smackdown!