Meeplemart 1000pt 40k Tournament – My Games

This past Sunday my local gaming store Meeplemart held a small 1000pt 40k tournament that was the first local tournament of 6th edition. After 3 games I managed to go home with the Best Overall award and a lot of good stories. Check out my report on the tournament overall as well as read about the three games I played below.

My List

I brought my trusty Salamanders which of course needed to be modified a bit to fit into 1000pts. This was what I decided on:

• Librarian in Terminator armour, storm shield, force halberd and Biomancy powers
• 10 Tactical Marines with meltagun, multimelta, Sargent with powerfist/combi-melta and a drop pod
• 9 Sniper Scouts with Telion and a missile launcher
• 6 Sternguard with 2 combi-metlas, a combi-flamer and a Sargent with lightning claw
• 7 Assault Marines with a Sargent with Thunderhammer

Game 1 – World Eaters

Game 1

The first game of the day had me matched up against my friend Joey. He plays a really in your face World Eaters army that’s packs quite the punch. The first mission and deployment was “Purge the Alien” (kill points) and Dawn of War (standard deployment.) His list was the following:

• Lord Zhufor
• 8 Berserkers with Powerfist Sergent in a Rhino
• 8 Berserkers with Powerfist Sergent in a Rhino
• 3 Terminators
• 2 Obliterators

Unfortunately Joey showed up over an hour late to the tournament. But because I know the guy, and the tournament organizer was flexible, we ended up trying to play our game through the lunch break. I think we ended up playing 3 full turns in about 30 minutes. Because of this I don’t really remember the details on what happened. All I really remember is that the first two turns had us trading kill points until I pulled ahead by 1 point at the top of turn 3 then ran away preventing him from coming back. The highlight of this short game was Lord Zhufor challenging my Librarian and exploding him, giving the World Eaters 3 victory points (1 for the kill, 1 for my Warlord, 1 for Zhufor winning the challenge)

The game ended after turn 3 with 6vp for me and 5 for him.

Minor Victory!

Game 2 – Blood Angels

Shane's Blood Angels

My second game had me playing another close combat heavy army. Shane has a custom chapter he uses the Blood Angels rules for. The second mission was Crusade (multiple objectives) and a Vanguard deployment. His list was:

• Librarian with jumppack
• Sanguinary Priest with jump pack
• 10 Assault Marines with storm sheild Sergent
• 10 Assault Marines with storm sheild Sergent
• 5 Devastators with 2 missile launchers and 1 lascannon
• 5 Devastators with 2 missile launchers and 1 plasmacannon
• 2 Attack Bikes with multimeltas

After deploying our 4 objectives I realized this was going to be a tough game for me. He put both characters into one Assault squad and clumped both squads together. In such a small game I didn’t really have much that could take this blob of angry marines on, so I had to play it smart. Using my Drop Pod I put two combat squads behind his blob, forcing the squad without characters to turn around and deal with me. I kept the rest of my army out of line of sight to his devastators, forcing him to keep moving them around and not getting many good shots off. A great round of shooting on turn 2 had me pin his large Assault marine squad with both characters, helping me split and manage his squads even easier.

Game 2

By the end of turn 5 I had scoring units on 2 of the 4 objectives, and he only had a couple devastators left. That left me with 7vp to his 1.

Major Victory!

Game 3 – Imperial Fists

Lorand's Imperial Fists

For the final game I find out that I’m on the top table playing for 1st place. Not only am I on the top table, but I’m playing against a good friend of mine named Lorand. Lorand and I probably play against each other the most out of anyone I know. We have very similar strategies when it comes to playing Marines in particular and there have been a few times where our armies were almost mirrors of eachother. Luckily, at 1000pts, our armies ended up being a lot different.

The final game was The Relic and Vanguard deployment. This was going to be an interesting game since I had not played The Relic yet. Not only that, but you can see in the photo below the middle of the board was wide open and Lorand plays a very shooty marine army, just waiting for me to break into the open for the objective.

His army list was the following:

• Lysander
• 10 Tactical Marines with missile launcher, plasmagun, Sergent with Powerfist
• 10 Tactical Marines with missile launcher, plasmagun, Sergent with Powerfist
• Dreadnought with 2x twin-linked Autocannons
• Dreadnought with 2x twin-linked Autocannons
• 5 sniper scouts with Telion

Final Table - End of turn 2

As I mentioned, this was an incredibly challenging game. Both of us didn’t really have a solid plan on how we were going to grab that objective out in no-mans land. I was at an even bigger disadvantage since I didn’t have many scoring units. I knew that as soon as I broke cover to grab the objective his Marines and Dreadnoughts were just going to blow me off the board. Using my Sternguard and Drop pod as a early game distraction, I waited for the right moment to strike around the bottom of turn 3. The picture above was the table just before I jumped out and grabbed it with my remaining 3 tactical marines.

Just after I grabbed it I managed to get those 3 marines and my Librarian back into cover. Unfortunately I couldn’t hold off Lysander (although I killed his squad) and he was right infront of my Tactical marines 3 inches away and ready to charge over the wall. Lorand is known for his incredibly bad die rolls and of course this game was no different. Lysander failed that 3″ charge into difficult terrain on turn 4 and that pretty much sealed the game. After running the objective back around my scouts I just managed to kill Lysander while the rest of his army couldn’t touch me.

Final Table - End of turn 5

The game ended at turn 5 and I held the objective. I ended up with 5VP to his 0.

Major Victory!

Result

At the end of the day I ended up with 34 points overall and came in 1st place. That was 9 points more than the guy in 2nd place overall. I’m pretty happy with this result, especially since I almost didn’t get to play the first game!

With the way we handle prizes as Meeplemart we always try to have at least one prize for everyone that attended. We put all the prizes on a table and based off your placement you can go and pick something from the table. Since I came in 1st I was able to pick first. There was some cool stuff available, including and empty Battlefoam 432 bag, but instead I picked something I had my eye on for while:

What I took home as a prize!

The top of the skull comes off and there is a little storage area inside How awesome is that?!