NoVA Battle Reports Intro and Game 1-2

Sorry guys, but I didn't take any pictures. Honestly, I had enough on my mind trying to worry about the camera rig, playing, and making sure Kelly was having a good time that I decided not to worry about it.

The list I took to the NoVA GT this year was as follows:

HQ:

"Smiley" The Librarian - 165 (Shrouding, MoT, Warp Rift)

"The Unshakeable Will" Coteaz - 100 (who died a lot btw :P)

Elites:

3 x Ven Dreads w/ 2 x TLACs + Psybolts

Troops:

5 x Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters - 121

Joker

Psyback + Searchlights

5 x Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters - 121

Joker

Psyback + Searchlights

5 x Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters - 120

Joker

Psyback

4 x Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters - 113

Joker

Psyback

5 x Death Cult Assassins - 125

Psyback

5 x Death Cult Assassins - 130

Chimera w/ HF

Heavy:

2 x Dreads w/ 2 x TLACs + Psybolts

5 x Purgation Squad w/ 4 x Incinerators - 150

Psyback

So, thoughts on the list after having been done.

Death cultists were as good and ridiculous as always. I learned throughout the tourney to get more and more aggressive with them, finally realizing that even assaulting into cover usually worked out in my favor as well.

The Dreads, for whatever reason, were a HUGE psychological factor for most of my opponents. It is a lot of fire power, and they would really psych out a lot of opponents throughout the 8 games.

Overall, the list was very good for the meta. Several of my games were won by my list, not me.

The "joker" squads were so-so but definitely an upgrade over my melta-lytes. The addition of the extra lascannons seemed to add more fuel to the psychology fire the Dreads would start.

The Purgation squad was great. I was glad that I had added them to the list in most games. They provided a "stock" answer to a lot of problems and an awesome suicide unit. (When they didn't get immobilized in a razorback /facepalm) On that note, I will be finding points for a Dozerblade. :)

Game #1:

I played against an inexperienced Ork player who had a great looking Battlewagon/Kan list. He hadn't been playing 40K for long, but I thought he was doing very well with rules for being such a short timer. I stopped the game at several points throughout to give him pointers and show him how to get the most out of his list. Not due to me by any means, but I also think he pretty good overall by the end. Most importantly, he was a great guy and fun to play with.

His list from memory was:

HQ:

Big Mek + KFF

Warboss + Klaw + Pole + Cybork + 'Eavy Armor

Elites:

10 x Nobz (with all kinds of wound allocation and pain boy)

Battlewagon + Deff Rolla + 4 x Rokkits

Troops:

10 x Nobz (with all kinds of wound allocation and pain boy)

Battlewagon + Deff Rolla + 4 x Rokkits

10ish Boyz + Nob w/ Klaw

????

Heavy:

3 x Kanz w/ Rokkits

3 x Kanz w/ Rokkits

Battlewagon w/ Zap gun, Ard Case, Kill Kannon, Deff Rolla

As you may know from listening to the Podcast, Orks were my army for over a year. So, I know, very well, the inner workings of Battlewagon Orks. As such, with my opponent being new and playing an army I am very familiar with, he was seriously disadvantaged here. One of his BWs actually immobilized on terrain in Turn #1 (yes, even after reroll), and that was pretty much ball game right there. This forced his Nobz to get out and hoof it, which got them shot up and mauled by Death Cultists. This forced his other Nobz to try and bail them out, which got them mauled by Death Cultists. Lastly, the Kanz were shot up by Dreads and eventually, also mauled by Death Cultists.

His other BW carrier also got immobilized by a Dread. At that point, the game was over, but we finished it up by giving him a turn to Deff Rolla through a lot of my stuff with his last wagon which hilariously killed Smiley, his assassins, Coteaz's ride, and more assassins. :)

This was a very strong finish for me which would come into play much later in the day.

Game #2:

Funny story here. So, they posted lists, and I took a table with a listener who was playing SoB. I though, COOL! I haven't played SoB in years! Then, they announced the pairings were wrong, and that we would be rematched. So..... I moved tables, sat down, and what do you know? Another SoB player! Another great game. Plays out of Florida and might be now coming our event in November! Another key point here is that he kept referring to his "girls", and this caught on with me and was how I kept referring to my Death Cultists for the rest of the event.

From memory:

HQ:

Canonness w/ Combi-Melta, 2+ Save

Canonness w/ 2+ Save, Eviscerator (probably more)

(Celests?) x 5 w/ Melta (probably not right :P)

Elites:

Celsts w/ Melta in Immolators

Celsts w/ Melta in Immolators

Troops:

10 x SoB w/ Rhino (melta/flamers?)

10 x SoB w/ Rhino (melta/flamers?)

10 x SoB w/ Rhino (melta/flamers?)

(maybe more)

Elites:

(maybe more with immolators?)

Heavy:

3 x Exorcists

Forgive my horrible memory! :)

To start, I got a quick refresher on all the Acts of Faith. Even better, my opponent had been playing the list for a while and knew when to use all of his acts appropriately. This is a big deal for Sister players, and i was thankful that he was on top of things.

We had some banter throughout about the new Dex. He wasn't looking forward to it. Neither am I. However, as a plus, he got to see how the new Death Cult Assassins will work out. :) You can't go wrong there!

So, my overall strategy here is, of course, "stop the exorcists!" I got turn 1. I started shooting Dreads at them. The one thing that really railed my opponent this game was that his cover saves were very much, below average. This meant that, although I wasn't really "killing" his exorcists, what I was doing was stun locking them. By doing this, this meant that he could not fire back at my Dreads or vehicles at range. This then freed me up to focus down most of his transports at a safe distance, which is bad for the "girls".

When an Exorcist finally did get to shoot.... he'd roll a 1 and proceed to miss. :(

So, my Dreads wen't basically unmolested the whole game, and since we were playing Quarters, this meant that I could be those big, spendy Ven Dreads into quarters to claim them. This taught me a valuable lesson about those Ven Dreads being excellent Quarter claimers which I would use throughout the event.

Lacking long range firepower and having his transports shut down early put my opponent in a pickle. Wisely, he then started using the high amount of LoS blocking terrain to get the "girls" into good positions for taking quarters and fighting back. Eventually, though, the fire power in my list started to add up, and I was able to finally push in with the Incinerators and Assassins to assault and take down high point targets.

The game thusly ended with me having a presence in all the quarters to threaten him.

Great guy, and I really wanted to play that game again where he had at least average dice on cover saves. I think things could have been much different if he had a chance with those Exorcists to put some punch down on my Dreads.

Game Plan

Not sure if anyone else does this or just me, especially everyone out there who follows the blogosphere pretty regularly, but with 3 days to go until NoVA, I find myself trying to match up my list versus those posted by other BLOGGERs.

I think one of the funny things about this kind of obsession is that you always assume the other guy who built that list actually knows how to use it well. That's rarely the case! (Speaking from personal experience here.)

The good news is, I haven't seen a list yet where I feel like I would get destroyed by it. So, I feel okay so far as long as my dice don't go to crap like last year. I'm still hoping to get destroyed by a Dark Eldar player as well so someone can show how this army doesn't fail at life! :)

I'm still sweating how I'm going to fight Guard well, and it's really bothering me about dropping that 6th Dread because of it. Those incinerators on that Purgation squad though really army money at taking out certain threats to my list. Not to mention, they are now a big part of my ability wrestle for mid-board.

Turns out that I'm not really liking the Jokearo, at least so far, but I'm probably stuck with it not with only 3 days to go. One thing I'm really hoping for here is that I don't regret not having the melta acolytes en masse for taking on Guard. Part of my original strategy was to drive forward in a big Razor wall vs. Guard and just suicide my melta vets to kill their Chimera walls. I won't be able to do that anymore!

So, my other big concern here are equally spammy GK lists. I guess we'll see if my theory about Strike Squads being not worth their points hold true in that kind of fight. The advantage here will be to me, though, with Dreads as I'll have 5 and he'll likely only have 3. Now, if I can just land that poor sucker who wants to let his Dreads shoot over his Razors so I can do the same but with a Shrouding librarian!

Anyone else obsess like this a few days before?

Just a thought for today

So, it's been rolling around in my head about the potential level of frustration of going to a tournament and not performing well, consistently, is exactly how I feel after putting hours into painting my army and it still looking like crap. Doesn't matter how much time or thought I put into it, it doesn't get any better.

Point? Not one at the moment other than making me glad right now we are running tier competition on our 2nd day in November.

Ard Boyz Bust

So, turns out that GW didn't see fit to place a Round 2 'Ard Boyz store anywhere in North or South Carolina. The closest store to us will be in Atlanta, 6 hours away.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but if Atlanta is the closest store for us, and I know that it's the closest store for anyone in Georgia, South Carolina, and probably northern Florida, how many people are going to have to go to that single store?

3 rounds. Battle points. A horde of people. Sounds like it's worth a 6 hour car trip to me. /facepalm.

Not a happy camper.

NoVA Team Tournament Thunder Dome

We talk about this in Episode 81.

Stephen and I want to participate in the Team Tournament on Friday at the NoVA. However, we are going to be short a man. And, we want to know if anyone out there wants to be our 3rd.

We have no intention of taking this team tournament overly seriously. So, if you are looking to win this thing, we're probably not the team for you, not to mention it's Stephen and I... so your team mates aren't exactly awesome to begin with.

Anyways, assuming that more than 1 person wants to be our 3rd team mate, we are thinking about something fun to do to determine the 3rd team mate rather than just a random decision making process.

This will probably devolve into a 40k rendition of the Thunder Dome during the Whiskey Challenge on Thursday. I'm working on the rules for that now.

If you are interested in goofing off for a few minutes on Thursday and in potentially playing with us as a 3rd during the team tournament on Friday, please let me know either in this thread or via e-mail. I want to judge any interest that may exist in doing something like that.

If there isn't any interest, we'll do something else. (assuming anyone even wants to be our 3rd in the team tournament )