Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Game Reports 21-22: I am Disappoint



This weekend I attended a small tournament at Merlyns with relatively poor turnout (5 players) So instead of doing a full tournament report I decided to just do a quick report on the two games I did play (I had a second round bye unfortunately)


Game 21
Opponent: Alex
My list: Mechrons 1250
His list: Grey Knights airstrike: Inquisitor w/ prescience leading a 5 man terminator squad in a storm raven, 10 man strike squad with 2x psycannons combat squadded, one in a psyback the other in a storm raven. Dreadknight with incinerator, dreadfist.  
Mission: Modified Scouring, dawn of war deployment. Each player placed three objectives valuing 1 2 and 3 victory points, they knew the value of each objective they placed but not of the objectives their opponents placed. Slay the warlord was worth 2 vps instead of the normal 1. 
Highlights: This game was somewhat frustrating. It began with me moving my wraithstar forward in an attempt to knock out his 5 man strike squad/ psyback early. In response he moved his dreadknight over to intercept, normally this isn't a problem but my dice weren't with me early on and I lost 3 wraiths rather quickly and the dreadknight was able to insta-kill two more once they got into melee before finally knocking out the d.lord. This put me on the back foot early on and I fought tooth and nail to try and regain the upperhand all game. I got some good luck back when I took out the storm raven that was carrying on the second half of the strike squad, killing the strike squad to the man in the resulting crash. However despite me committing most of my army towards shooting down the dreadknight throughout the game it managed to sweep across my board, with near impunity, killing an annihilation barge, a ghost ark, a unit of warriors and finally moving to contest my number 3 objective. He figured out that it was my 3 objective by calling my bluff due to the fact that I was hovering over my 2 objective but staying near to the 3 all game. I managed to down the other stormraven and kill most of the terminator squad inside, but unfortunately he retreated the terminators back towards his own 3 objective. The final turn came down to me trying to knock the final wound off the dreadknight for the win, I shot at it with 2 annihilation barges, one ghost ark, 10 immortals, and 8 warriors but was unable to deal the killing blow, resulting in him contesting my 3 and managing to claim his own 3 and his own 2. 
MVP Moment: The dreadknight singlehandedly won his game. Every single kill he made this game was made through his dreadknight. If I had managed to kill it on the final turn I would have ended up winning the game. 
Result: Close loss, WLD record: 12-7-2.

With that loss, my hopes of walking out of this tournament a winner withered to nothingness, I was very disappointed to be down and out... Then I was told I had a bye and my tournament was kinda ruined at that point. 

Game 22
Opponent: Kriston Broxson
My list: Mechrons 1250
His list: Necron Air support: Orikan the diviner, 3 units of 10 immortals in nightscythes, 3 tomb spyders, 8 scarabs. 
Mission: Endless War, Kill Points, vanguard strike deployment. Endless war is a format that the TO at Merlyns has been running for years. Every non-vehicle unit gains the Without Number rule from the 4th edition Tyranid codex, meaning that as soon as the entire unit is killed it is immediately placed in reserve. It's purpose is to discourage fully mechanized armies and provide an interesting strategic twist. 
Highlights: What an interesting game. I attempted to alpha strike the scarab squad in order to force him to miss a turn of spawning early on with the spyders while also keeping the scarabs from eating my vehicles too early. Unfortunately I whiffed on two of my annihilation barge rounds and was unable to take them out, allowing him to counterstrike during his next turn and claim first blood. I made the very stupid play mistake of deploying my warriors mostly out of cover in order to bubble wrap my vehicles against the scarabs... Only to have them die in droves from Gauss Blaster fire. I did manage to take out all of his fliers, and two units of immortals but since we were playing a mostly midfield game any casualties I inflicted were able to come back the next turn and take vengeance on whatever I had furthest forward. I am very dissapointed in the number of play mistakes I made on this mission. Kriston won rightfully and efficiently. 
MVP Moment: Deploying my warriors early on was a fatal play mistake and one I am not going to be repeating. Also failing to kill the scarabs first turn allowed him to accelerate his path to victory just that little bit more. 
Result: Decisive loss, WLD record: 12-8-2.

Overall I am very dissapointed in my performance at this tournament and even put off posting this update a couple days just so I could force myself to think about why I lost a little bit longer. My takeback from the event though is that I need to playtest more, I've been waaay too reckless with my wraithstar lately and it's been affecting my performance, I need to learn to throttle myself and not have them shoot out up front in order to get shot to shit early on. The fact that I have been playing a lot less is also problematic, its something I need to tend to. Look forward to game report 23 either thursday or friday, and then tournament report number 3 this weekend. It's going to be 1850 and I'm planning on bringing double wraithstar, I've yet to hammer down my list for sure but I've got a pretty solid start on it. 

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