This is a continuation of my Game reports from Astronomicon. The post below details my games from Day 2, if you want more info on the tournament or the reports of my first three games check out my post from Day 1.
Game 4
Astronomi-con!
First game of the day was against guard. The dude had 13 Lascannons in his army. (Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of his army.) From what I remember his list was:
- HQ Command with Astropath, Lascannon
- 2 Infantry squads with lascannons
- Vets with Lascannon in Chimera
- 2 HW teams with 3 Lascannons
- 1 HW team with Heavy Bolters
- Vets with Plasmagun in Chimera
- 1 Vendetta
- 1 Thunderbolt
- 1 Manticore
- 1 Punisher
The mission was an awesome one, where there was an Inquisitor with a big retinue held a Shrine in the middle of the table and you and your opponent picked 1 of 4 cards at random that had an objective on it. The Inquisitor and his Retinue would shoot at the closest unit of either player before each turn. You could get bonus points for keeping your objective secret though the game, but each card also had some perks to help you if you ended up revealing it.
The 4 objective cards where:
- Assassination – Kill your enemy’s Commander
- Protect the Inquisitor – Keep the Inquisitor alive until the end of the game
- Kill the Inquisitor – The inquisitor must be dead at the end of the game
- Capture and control – Hold more table quarters than your opponent by the end of the game
I ended up drawing “Kill the Inquisitor” which was actually the best I could have hoped for since my army came on the board piecemeal through out the game. Deployment was old-school Escalation, meaning I didn’t start with much on the board while he put all his Lascannon/Heavy bolters units in one corner of the board. I barely even fired at my opponent’s army since I rarely had more than 2 or 3 units on the board at a time and was choosing to deploy them in the opposite corner from the gunline so I wouldn’t get blown away. After some horrible armour saves, my Librarian and his squad died by getting shot up by Chimeras on turn 3. Of course that was his objective to kill my commander. At the end of turn 5 I just barely managed to kill off the Inquisitor. One more turn went by where he almost tabled me and the game ended with a tie (since we both completed our objectives)
Final Game Points: 6 for me, 8 for him.
Game 5
In this game I was matched up against Steve Mason’s Black Legion Army. He had a fairly simple Chaos list that looked something like:
- Chaos Lord with MoS and Deamon Weapon
- 5 Noise Marines, Champ with Siren/Powerfist in a rhino
- 2 units of 10 Chaos Marines, 2 melta, Champ with Fist in rhinos
- 6 Havocs with 4 Missile Launchers
- 3 Obliterators
- Vindicator
This was a fairly simple table as well. The Objective was just Victory Points. There was not much terrain, but there were these patches of ‘salt flats’ all over the board that were area terrain giving a 6+ cover save.
To be honest there’s not much to say about this game. I don’t think it was a good matchup for Steve, as I tabled him by turn 4 or 5, but I think we both still had a lot of fun. Steve is a great guy to play against and I hope to have a rematch next year!
Final Game Points: 12 for me, 2 for him.
Game 6
Orks! It think he was the only Ork player at the tournament, which was weird. His list was kinda nasty, but still pretty fun to play:
- Mek with KFF
- 11 Burnas in a Deffrolla Battlewagon
- 2 units of 20 ork boyz both in Deffrolla Battlewagons
- 7 Ork Bikes
- 2 units of 10 Lootas
- 1 unit of 10 grots
We played on a table with another great mission. This was a convoy raid, where 3 chimeras and 2 Lascannon Sentinels started on one side of the board and tried to get off the other end. Chimeras moved straight forward at the beginning of each turn, firing at the closest target, while the Sentinels moved towards and shot the closest targets. Each chimera held a crate that counted as an objective. You had to pop the Chimera for the objective to fall out, then you needed to have something with a ‘hand’ end their movement next to the crate to pick it up. Then you could move around and pass off the objective if you wanted (with some restrictions). Something that ended up being very important in our game was that if a unit with a Crate charged or was charged, they would drop it immediately. This meant that the two crates I grabbed at the bottom of turn 5 were dropped when I was charged by Boyz and Burnas at the top of 6. I only managed to get one of the two back at the bottom of 6 and we tied. If it went one more turn I would have lost, but if it ended one turn earlier I would have won…
Final game points: 8 for me, 9 for him.
And that was it! It came as a complete surprise when during the Awards Ceremony my name was announced as 3rd Overall, in my 5 years of going to Astro that is by far my best placement. If I had paid a little more attention to my painting, and had a few more dice rolls go my way, I’m sure I could have placed 1st. But that will have to wait until next year 🙂
If you’re interested in more Battle Reports from Astronomi-con, head on over to my buddy Tristan’s blog GWpertinent where he wrote up his experience. He was a first timer and I’m pretty sure he had a good time.