Venom-Spam at the Masters - Day 1

Game 1: Charlie St Clair.  Capture and Control, Quarters

In what I’m sure was an un-tampered and in no way altered draw by Phil, I wound up playing against Charlie in the first round.  Nothing like the guy going for the Masters hat trick for a challenging start!  Luckily, both of the games I’d played in the past year had been this exact match-up, my Dark Eldar against his Wolves.  Not so good was that both of them had been losses.

Charlie’s list was:

Nigel Stormcaller (not nyal!)

5 Scouts, Melta, Wolf Guard, Combi-Melta

2 x 9 Grey Hunters, Wolf Standard, Melta, Wolf Guard, Combi-Melta in Rhino

2 x 8 Grey Hunters, Wolf Standard, Melta, Wolf Guard, Combi-Melta in Rhino

5 Grey Hunters, Flamer in Las/Plas Razorback

2 x 5 Long Fangs, 4 Missiles

5 Long Fangs, 4 Missiles, HB Razorback

Obviously, I’m a much better player than Charlie, so naturally I put my superior ability to use and outplayed him to win the roll for first turn :D 

I was able to force him into a quarter with a building roughly in the middle.  This meant that he could either put the Long Fangs into the building, losing most or all in the first turn, or as he did, keep them safe behind the building, but limit their line of sight and give cover to most of their shooting, both situations I was happy with.

In my first turn I was able to take out three of his tanks, and take the weapon off of a razorback, meaning the only shooting coming back at me would be the Long Fangs and a Living Lightning.  I also cleaned up the squad of Grey Hunters that had their rhino destroyed.  Charlie returned the favour by promptly rolling a perils with Nigel, and didn’t achieve much with the Long Fangs.

A nice picture just before the fun started

In the second turn, I finished off the rest of the tanks, and most of the grey hunters in this turn and the next.  Nigel rolled a 1 for the first save he was given, and died in turn 2, after adding nothing to the game.  From here it was clean-up, and getting to Charlie’s objective to kill the 5 Grey Hunters holding it.  There was a dicey moment at the end of turn 5 where the scouts were left with one model after a torrent of shooting, and he was contesting the objective which would have made it a draw if the game ended.  Luckily it didn’t, and I was able to kill all bar one Long Fang by the end of the game.

Win 20-1

Game 2: Matt Robinson.  Capture and Control, Quarters.

So I was off to a flying start, and now figured I’d be playing something awful, like Doug’s Razorspam, or Hagen’s carpark, but instead got to play Matt Robinson and his Eldar.  Matt had been fortunate enough to draw the Daemon player in the first round (funny how in 40k getting to play Daemons is a good thing!), and done bad things to him.  Looking at his list, I figured he was going to be more than a little out of his depth in this game, since it was arguably one of the weakest at the event.

I should add at this point that each table was rolling up their own missions individually at the start of each game.  We’d gone from being promised different missions in the player’s pack then being told it was rulebook missions, and then finally to having each table playing a different rulebook mission.   No disrespect to Phil and the other TO’s, but it felt like there was just a lack of interest and effort on their part.  Every table should at least be playing the same mission, which they at least fixed on the second day.

Matt had:

Farseer

3 x 10 Guardians in Wave Serpents

5 Jetbikes

3 Vypers, Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannons

3 D-Cannons

3 Warwalkers, Shuriken Cannons

Falcon

Matt won the roll for first turn, and amazed me by giving it to me.  Not complaining, I set up in the corner that would give him the least amount of cover.  The game started as expected, with me picking off his jetbikes and farseer in the first turn with Venoms, and over the first few turns I killed the Vypers, 2 Wave Serpents, the D-Cannons, and 2 of the Walkers.  The venoms were able to mop up all bar one of the guardians when Matt hopped the third squad out to shoot the beast unit.  The Guardians were about to charge (?), which would give me the game, but the beasts were nice enough to run away from the shooting.

Towards the end of the game, there was just the Falcon and a Wave Serpent left.  The Wave Serpent was on Matt’s objective surrounded by blasters, and the Falcon desperately trying to contest mine.  I was able to stunlock the Falcon for a couple of turns before destroying it, and also killed the Wave Serpent and guardian inside.  Even if I hadn’t been stunning the Falcon, it would have had to ram its way through 2 Venoms to get to my objective, so I was fairly safe.

Win 20-1

Game 3: David Dawn. Seize Ground (3), Pitched Battle.

Okay, now on two max wins, and I figure I’m definitely playing a big fish on the top table right?  Well, the only other person on 2 wins is Dave Dawn, and fate would have it that he’s playing Nids.  Pretty much an auto-win for me, but I didn’t quite thank him for the free win before the game started.

Dave had:

Flyrant

Tyranid Prime

2 x 5 Ymgarls

Doom of Malan’tai in Pod

20 Hormagaunts, Toxin Sacs

15 Termagants, Devourers

2 x 6 Genestealers

2 Trygons

Dave put all of his stuff in reserve, and I deployed centrally (having the first turn).  The game was basically a turkey shoot.  I killed stuff as it came on, for not much loss in return.  The only thing that didn’t work for me was the beasts, which couldn’t fight off 5 Ymgarls, and ended up getting charged by half of the Nid army after being reduced to WS1.  Not pretty!

I ended up tabling Dave on Turn 6, basically due to him trickling in piecemeal and not being able to kill him any faster…

Win 19-2

So I finished the day on 59/60, and was destined for a top table clash with Hagen’s guard in the morning, which I wasn’t exactly feeling confident about and would be a very tough game.