CVinton's Adepticon Championship round up!

Cvinton here for my adepticon championship round-up! (Finally, right?)

Above is what I brought I put all the finishing touches on my guard, packed them all up in two army transports and was the first teasing victim of the trip; I packed like a girl. But hey, at least I beat all the DFG staff in the tournament so there! I placed 78th overall out of the something like 250 people which to me, isn't bad. However, I did go 2-2 which to me, is bad. Everyone likes to blame bad rolls and I check myself every time I say it, but honestly, my luck turned to garbage at one point in the 3rd round and for the most part my units I expected to produce did not, i.e manticores and psyker squad. Next year I hope to be way more solid, and definitely learned a thing or two about 'big-boy' tournaments.

So here is my list, in a nut shell. (If anyone wants the juicy bits of any of the lists, I'm happy to provide)

HQ- CCS in chimera with 4 plasma

Elites- Battle pskyer squad x8 in chimera

Troop-

x3 vets in chimera with 3 plasma

x2 vets in chimera with melta

Fast- x3 Vendettas

Heavy- x2 manticores

Round 1

vs Tom"s Shrike Terminator deathstar

Shrike

Term assault

squad x8 (5 hammers/3claw

s)

ironclad in pod

dread w/assault cannon

tac squad x5 with fist in razorback w assault cannon

tac squad x10 w melta, missile, power weapon

sniper scouts x5

Thunderfire cannon (I loved he had this in his list. When I was dreaming up space marines I wanted 3. So so so so cheap)

x2 Landspeeder typhoons in a squadron

Land Raider with multi-melta

The table set up really sucked for this guy and since I won first turn I was able to punish his deployment by keeping the two neutral table quarters free of stuff form him to deploy within 12" of me. This really neutralized the infilitrating terminators and immediately put me at an advantage.

I really systematically put the screws to this list. His iron clad dropped down first turn and blew the gun off the manticore but I had anticipated that (because I am also smart enough to put my left shoe on my left foot....) and stuck a melta squad by it which in turn blew it and its pod up in subsequent turns.

My vendettas were able to run around relatively free of harassment because he was rolling pretty bad with his raider either to pen or on the pen result. I think in the end, he blew off a las cannon on one.

I really just worked down the list of highest threat to lowest, blowing up the speeder squadron and t-fire (really, because they were the easiest) then the land raider, the walking dread, the razorback and squad, and finally the scouts.

My battle psykers were able to deal with the death star except for one turn in which they actually rolled double flippin' 1's to not run. That cost me 3 chimeras because I had bunched them up in a bottle neck spot to get some plasma shots off. The fact that he did that really kept me from completely sealing up the game because it wrecked the mobility of my troops to claim quarters and exposed my HQ who was then killed and stopped me from getting the center marker.

Next turn, he did run off the board and I got all stupid wanting to save my HQ from the full tac squad that was killing him. I ran 2 10 man vet squads into combat and Tom was like "ok..." and Lord Steve who was watching just cringed. Thank god I got super luck and he failed 3 out of 4 armor saves to tie combat, otherwise I would have broke and being the last turn counted as destroyed. But, either way, victory 2-0 (quarters and KP, neither got lead by example)

Round 2

vs Tom Rychlik's Eldar

Farseer

10 wraithguard with warlock with a singing spear

2 war walkers

3 jet bikes, 1 shuriken cannon

Wraithlord

wave serpent with 10 banshees

6 dire avengers

grav tank with pulse laser

6 path finders

I've never had to play an Eldar psuedo-deathstar but damn is it hard to kill 10 wraithguard with a rerollable 3+.

My strategy for this match was to force him to spread out so I put the objectives as far away from each other as possible. Luckily when he placed the one in my deployment he put it pretty far from the center objective. My list having 5 scoring units is a huge advantage in these objective missions.

The game was mostly me shooting at his stuff and him making his saves. My new personal goal for my army was to utilize tank shock more, having 9 tanks I should be tank shocking much more than I have. For this game it was almost perfectly executed. I had two tanks lined up to push his wraithguard off the objective, rolled difficult for the first one and got stuck. Second one was fine, drove through the ruins, and pushed them back away from but not off the objective.

To end he had 2 units in my deployment while I had 5 in his, he beat me in KP (I hate KP) and I held one objective to his 0. 2-0 on objectives.

Round 3

vs Gagan Thable (Finished #7 in the Sunday championship)

Mephiston

Librian w fear the darkness and Sheild

Sang Priest

Chaplain

Term Assault squad 3 TH/SS

Landraider crusader w/ Extra Armor and Multimelta

10 Assault Squad

powerfist, 2 melta

10 Assault Squad powerfist, 2 melta

5 Assault Squad, 1 melta

Razorback Las/Plas HKM

5 Assault Squad, 1 melta

Razorback Las/Plas HKM

I really botched this bad. This is where my Adepticon wheels fell off. I tried to spread out the objectives in hopes of being able to beat him in scoring units. IG can't stretch out its scoring units and live the way a 10 man marine squad can.....

Actually, let me pause for a huge rules revelation I had while there. When a unit deep strikes and combat squads, at our shop, we have always played it that you plop down all ten guys in one spot and split them. This was totally wrong and one of those situations where I never questioned it because thats the way its always been. You split, put your two combat squads in two locations and scatter both separately. So, right from the start, my plan was dumb. Live and learn.

Back to the story, for my set up, I screwed this up too, I split my force in half, which is a good bait strat, but I made the bait too much. In one corner I put 2 plasma squads and a manticore and in the other I put everything else. This let him beat on my about 2/3 of my army vs his full army.

Lastly, for my marked unit I picked an assault squad inside a razorback...how retarded. I have no idea why I didn't pick the razorback, because in order to get the squad inside at the very least I'd I have to blow up the razorback. Or honestly, why not pick mephiston, I have 9 twin linked las cannons and a billion plasmaguns. I took him out like a chump. I was an idiot for this match.

To total up my mistakes, I messed up the objectives, I messed up my deployment, I messed up knowing rules, and I messed up my objective choice.

Now, despite all the mistakes, I managed to do pretty well for the first few turns, which boosted my moral a little. This was short lived because around turn three, he had some amazing saves and I had some bad bad shooting and that was pretty much the end of it. I hung myself out thinking statistically I was good, 8 plasma shots from vets into 5 assault marines...2 die. 6 plasma shoots into mephiston who only has 3 wounds left...he lives with 1 wound...Land Raider that has to reroll his successful 5+ cover save vs a melta shot...makes it. Manticore finally hits the Land Raider...makes it 5+ cover. Not a good day to fight the blood angels.

He wraps me up after that, soundly beating me 0-3 and to be honest, I really deserved it.

Round 4

vs Drew Brown

Gharzgkhull

Big Mek kustom force feild, burna

15 Lootaz

5 Meganobz 3 kombi skorch, 2 kombi shoot

battlewagon

30 boyz slugga/chop nob with klaw

30 boyz slugga/chop nob with klaw

28 boyz slugga/chop nob with klaw

3 kanz w rokkitz

3 kanz w rokkitz

How terrible to play this, not get first turn and have a mek in the middle of the board with a line of 30 boyz on either said, 24" away from you? I was pushed basically to the board edge to deploy anything and because of the terrain had to caste up. Dawn of war really neutralized my manticores and because he was able to get boyz to them so quickly I couldn't really use my pie plates to mop up these mobs. Its games like these where I kick myself for never taking Valkyries.

I should have cared a little more about this game and played smarter but after the demoralizing defeat at mostly my own hands I didn't care. His tide came across the board, I put a little bit of a fight, got to laugh manically as I put like 4 heavy flamer templates on the same boyz squad burning it to a crisp, and still not really do much this game.

Every once in a while I get this little bug that says, "Yeah, put a melta squad in that vendetta...it'll be awesome!" and I do it...and then like bring home a fattie from the bar, get that morning feeling of "shit..." And likewise I swear I'll nnneeeevvvveeerrr do it again...but I do. It just makes that already juicy vendetta even juicier.

Actually, I should could have won this by the rules, because we were told at the start of the tourny that at the 15 min mark, finish up your turns and do not start another. At the 15 I had my objectives controlled and had his taken, but still lost in KP (I hate you so much, KP, you're soooo unbalanced). I really should have just said "well, the did say after 15, don't start another round..." but I didn't, because I didn't care. We played out 2 more turns going to 7 and I got mopped up. I let him take a dangerous terrain test on his kan and it got immobilized and wrecked, even though it wouldn't have. That was my little victory dance for being a softy and letting his boyz just run the table on me.

In the end I played 78th. If I had been more assertive in that last game and not filled out my score card like a retard I would have finished 21st, but next year I'll take these lessons to heart and place better, no doubt.

Adepticon was a great time, they announced not one player was given a negative mark which to me was awesome. that means Just under a thousand games of 40k were played and two thousand opinions where given and not one single person said they'd never play someone again. Thats a pretty staggering and really makes me wonder where all this win at all cost, douche bag tourny players are hanging out?

- OST jumping in here with my sexy Green Font! I love that we can still discuss Adepticon after a week, leftovers are soooo good. In all seriousness, I didn't really see any WAAC going on either, furthering my opinion that WAAC is a myth kept alive by folks who have never attended a GT and dream that those of us who do are all horrible people to insulate themselves from some insecurity they have deep inside themselves that they project onto the world rather than just deal with (there is my Dr. Phil moment). Thanks for the great write up and the honest report.