Ard Boyz Battle Reports

Well now that I've had some time to recover, I'll post some brief battle reports of my games. Before I get to that, however, I'll go over the atmosphere at Castle Perilous. Of the 8 players who participated, 7 were local, and the last (who won the event btw) has family in town and plans his visits around local events. Seems pretty smart to me. Of all the armies present, only three were painted. The remainder had a few colors splashed on or primer. I know this is Ard Boyz and it's not required, but I'm sorry, I enjoy my games more where there are two painted armies on the table. I'm not an expert painter...I have friends who are and I ask for their help. :-)

Game #1 I staggered into a Major Loss against a Drop Pod heavy Black Templars list. I have never played against more than one drop pod at a time, and I've never been too impressed. In this game, however, I was simply out-classed. This guy only killed about 260 points of my army to the 1300 or so of his that I killed, but while I was busy killing the units that he dropped in my face, he kept me bottled up in my deployment zone and dropped a few scoring units on the objectives I couldn't reach. I castled in my corner to prevent him podding into my guys, but that just meant he had me behind a steel curtain by the end of turn 6. He had three objectives at the end, and I had none. His list wasn't obscene, but he did take a grey knight hero for the psychic hood. It was Ard Boyz after all. More on that later. Here are some pictures of the first and last turns of that game. This was my second game against this opponent (he beat the snot out of me a few years back at a RTT. I think he shows up at our store to play us because there's no one to give him any real competition). He's a great guy though, and I welcome his presence at any event.



Game #2 was against a local Tau player that I hadn't had the priviledge of playing yet, but I'm glad I got the opportunity to do so. He was another fantastic guy with a solid Tau list. I'll be honest here. I have played Tau a handful of times, and I've handled them soundly every time...every time but this one. This guy knew his Tau, had a solid list, and good rolls going for him. This mission was victory points with table quarters a secondary objective. You want to know how I played it? Backwards that's how. Dumbass. The whole game I was gunning to own the four quarters, and never even considered going after his expensive units. He poured ridiculous amounts of fire into my land raider and terminators (duh, because they're expensive...) and his battle suits worked me over good. I killed off all his scoring units, and did some damage to his suits. We ended up with a draw, but I got four extra points because I owned all the table quarters. This kid was a great player, and I look forward to playing him again. He's got my ticket to the next round of Ard Boyz and I'm rooting for him. Here are some shots of his deployment and what my guys looked like after my first turn of movement.



Game #3 was against a local Space Wolf player. He had four drop pods, some speeders, the wolf version of assault marines, Canis Wolfborne with a crap-ton of wolves and some long fangs. This was the dreaded "screw you mechanized army players" mission. I had 42 kill points available, but at the end of the game, I had earned 29 kp from my opponent, and he had 20 kp from me, giving me the massacre. I didn't take any pictures because this game was pretty intense and I felt like I was behind in the kp tally pretty much the whole game. That may not have been true, but I earned 5 or 6 kp in turn 6 alone so it was close either way.

Final thoughts? Regular viewers may remember a blog post I made about my internal debate about taking a Daemon Hunter's Inquisitor with mystics to defend against deep striking. I decided against it since I was looking for practice with my Space Marines without relying on the "crutch" of one trick pony units from other armies. Turns out that was a lousy idea. The moral high road rewarded my conservative stance with a total of 14 drop pods over three games. I don't really regret my decision, but I do think it's kind of funny.

I feel a little bit "dirty" about how "uncool" I was about certain rules questions and with my opponents forgetting certain things during their turn. It was Ard Boyz, and it's kind of the point, but at heart I'm a friendly player who has only recently gotten the tournament bug. I'm still looking for a happy medium.

Finally, I realize that I have no idea how some guys do it, but I can't "see" into a game's future very well. I thought like I was doing well in my first game, and I lost it...badly. I felt like I was suffering from some seriously bad dice rolls in game two (I was, my opponent spent a great deal of our game apologizing for MY bad rolls...) but I ended up with a draw. I thought I was either loosing or playing towards a draw in my final game, but I ended up with a massacre against the guy. I don't feel like I was pouting, but I know I need to work on that aspect of my game play. So much more to do.