The Nature of the Beast

Last Saturday Castle Perilous in Carbondale, Il hosted an RTT. It was 1750pts and you were to have a minimum of 40% of those total points (700) as troops, and no more than 25% of them in any other force organization type. Now I'm not a fan of further restrictions on the rules unless special circumstances apply. The tournament organizer believing that "math-hammer" is the root of all evil and needs to be regulated from the local tournament scene does not qualify in my book. I love this game, however, and I love getting together with my lads and rolling some dice and talking some smack. My reservations about the set up were overcome and Aerion (Black Templars), Partho (Orks), Da Goffer (Orks), and me (Salamanders) showed up to represent Team Snake Eyes come hell or high water.

There were 11 players at the event with the following army list breakdown: (4) Orks, (4) Space Marines, (1) Black Templars, (1) Dark Eldar, & (1) Tau. Aerion's Templar list can be found here. The orks were mainly mechanized or hybrid foot/mech lists as were the Tau...I think. The Tau were all based white, so it was hard for me to tell what they truly were since I never played that guy. The marines were: Drop Vulkan, Bikes, "mish-mash" (not really sure what that kid had in mind), and my Salamander list which was: Vulkan, Tac Squad w/ MM, F, CM, PF & Rhino x2, Tac Squad w/LC, F, PF & Assault Cannon Razorback, Dread w/MM & HF x3, Land Speeder w/HF & MM x2, Dakka Predator x2, & Vindicator.

I ended up as overall winner going 2-0-1. Partho & Aerion went 2-1-0 and Da Goffer went 0-1-1 with a bye. I played Partho's Speed Freak Orks in the 1st round (win), a local guy's Hybrid Orks in the 2nd (win), and the Drop Pod Vulkan list in the 3rd (draw). Sportsmanship and painting were also scored and I'm certain that they helped push me into first place, but I don't believe anyone went 3-0 on the day.

Here's the deployment of my first game. It was one of the goofy diagonal ones and Partho's Speed Freaks went first.

It didn't take long for his boyz to get up close and personal but I stayed buttoned up in my tanks. When he hit my lines he did an number on them, but then the Salamanders came out to play...

Point blank flamers & bolt pistols followed up by Vulkan He'Stan's assault and the powerfist armed squads turned the tide. He put a powerful hurt on me, but at the end of turn six, I had tabled him.

Here is my deployment from the second game. I didn't take any pictures since there were 3 battlewagons full of boyz, 2 full mobs on the table, and 2 full mobs in reserve. Not only that, but it was an old school mission with the "traitor" rules...you know the ones where you have to swap an elite model for one of your opponents. Take a look at my list above, and you'll see it has three dreadnoughts in my elite slots. I traded a 115 point dreadnought for a 15 point burna boy. I was not happy. That essentially meant that I was operating a 1650 list vs. an 1850 list. I killed everything but the dregs of his last two mobs in that game, but it was a never ending shootout. I moved up a bit to get good shots and then backed up to my edge with my finger on the trigger the whole time. I assaulted when absolutely necessary (to kill off his two warbosses) but only then.

My last game was boring. No really, it was boring. Don't get me wrong, my opponent was awesome, but he got intimidated by my Vindicator. He made me go first and I knew he had five drop pods in his army. I castled up in a corner and waited for him. He saw my wall of steel and fire and said "Hell no". He dropped his entire army on the opposite corner. He had Telion shoot missles at me for six turns while I shot him up (barely) with autocannons. We went through 6 turns in about 45 minutes and killed a couple hundred points of each other's stuff. No surprise, game ended in a draw.

Aside from some minor issues with the organization of the event, we had a lot of fun. We met some really cool guys who came up from Kentucky and had some good games overall. The next tournament in C'dale is September 25th. Still thinking about that one...

A tip of the hat for my favorite tank movie (see above photo) as well as to honor the passing of Clyde. He kept us all safe from the Chaos Squirrels in Aerion's back yard for many years, and we'll miss him dearly. RIP buddy.