Ard Boyz Aftermath

Because my day was a Dinosaur fighting a Whale fighting a Squid kind of day.

Well I'm clearly behind the curve in posting up my results (such as they are), but things happen.  First of all, while I didn't place in the top three for the tournament, this was one of the better times I've had at a tournament.  We had 14 players overall, and I ended up placing 6th, finishing the highest out of the Codex: Space Marines participants.  Here's the list of attendees and how they performed:

1st: Blood Angels w/63 pts (Chambers)

2nd: Tyranids w/60 pts (Nidzilla)

3rd: Chaos Marines w/55 pts (Nurgle/Khorne)

4th: Imperial Guard w/54 pts (mech)

5th: Eldar w/45 pts

6th: Space Marines w/41 pts (your's truly)

7th: Space Marines w/34 pts

8th: Space Wolves w/34 pts

9th: Orks w/27 pts

10th: Orks w/23 pts

11th: Space Marines w/17 pts

12th: Black Templars w/12 pts

13th: Space Marines w/11 pts

14th: Chaos Daemons w/10 pts

Games were against the Chaos Daemons in the first round, Chaos Marines in the second, and Blood Angels in the last.  Here's a brief breakdown:

Game 1

I won the roll and had the Daemon player go first.  I castled up in the middle of my deployment zone and waited for the deep strikes.  He rolled for his second wave to come in first and then had two units destroyed via mishaps, landing only a Greater Daemon, a Daemon Prince, and some plague bearers directly in front of my guns.  I killed the Daemon Prince & Greater Daemon with shooting and finished off the Plague Bearers in assault.  He had seven units to roll for reserves on turn two and got none of them.  I had 10 kill points at the end of turn two (I had killed the traitor as well), and he had 1 (the Vindicator in the ruins).  This is where the game turned sour.  I had killed all of his units on the table when his turn three came up.  He said that I had one since I tabled him.  He apparently thought that if he didn't have any more units on the board that he couldn't bring on the rest of his reserves.  I had never experienced a situation like that, and asked him if he was sure because it didn't sound right.  He said that he was, and we ended the game.  Afterwards, we obviously found out that shouldn't have been the case.  I would have felt bad winning that way if it were true, so winning that way when it wasn't was particularly bitter.  This player and I are friends, and there's no hard feelings, but I just wish he wasn't so confident about that bogus rule.  While I accumulated max points for this turn I, in no way, earned them.  On the plus side, he does have a super-sweet Cthulhu Daemon:

I am painted now for extra mind shattering goodness...Cthulhu fhtagn!!!

My second game was the best technical game I played on the weekend (meaning I didn't get tabled or win by either player not knowing the correct rules).  He had a Khorne/Nurgle list with terminators, a land raider, some obliterators and Havocs.  I don't often play with five objectives, so I used max combat squads and waited for him to come to me.  It was a fun, close game, that ended up with me claiming my home objective and one "away" objective.  He claimed his home objective.  All other objectives were contested.  Great guy.  Great game.

I really need to come up with a better tactic than "march forward and die" for my dreads/speeders

None of those models could touch my Ironclad.  I thought I was clever.  A havoc w/Lascannon off screen killed him.
before he could kill more than one berserker.  Pathetic.

My last game was against Chambers' Blood Angels.  Ah Chambers, why do you beat me like I owe you cash every time we play?  I love Chambers like a brother.  Our games generally devolve into us tearing up with laughter (as I'm removing my casualties of course), but they all end the same way.  All two of them that is.  First time out, he beat my face in with his Lusty Loganwing.  Now, his Lamenter themed Blood Angels had a go at me.  I managed to last until turn five or six (they were all sort of one blood streaked haze at that point) before getting tabled.  Victory points?  I killed or damaged just over 300 points of his army.  Amazingly bad performance on my part.  At this point in the tournament, Chambers was in third, and I was in 4th.  A solid showing from one of us and they would have taken home first.  Well, Chambers won.  :)

Note the super awesome suicide death tactic of my Ironclad...again.

I pushed forward my speeders in a feeble attempt to slow the Blood Angels down.  They were destroyed with casual ease, aided and abetted by my pathological aversion to successful cover saves.  As he approached, I thought it would be more sporting if my Vulkan enhanced Multi-Meltas took the night off and I relied on harsh words and stern looks to send off my foes.  Understandably, that tactic was less than successful as well.

At the end of the day, it was a fun time and a so-so tournament.  I enjoyed playing all of my opponents, but the outcome of my first game, and my performance in my last really dampened my experience overall.  My rolling was so bad that Chambers offered me the chance of re-rolling some of my dice.  Run that through your mind a few times.  It's Ard Boyz, we're playing for a win, and my rolls are so appalling that my opponent offers to let me re-roll a few of them because he feels so badly watching this disaster unfold.  Team Snake Eyes, I'm not only the founder, I'm also the President.  :)