post KotN Day 1

Right, Three games were played today, and I did very badly indeed. I will go in to details below, but mostly the losses were down to my tactical errors but partly down to a bad draw on the maelstrom cards.

Game 1
Eldar Serpent and Wraithknights.
Lost - Primary 3-15, Secondary 3-6, Tertiary 1-0
Overall loss 4-16

Well, this was going to go badly from the start, 2 Wraithknights, 4 Serpents with Dire Avengers and 2 squadrons of 3 Hornets plus a warlord with a 2+/3++.

 With very little to take on all that armour, this was going to end badly. My only bit of 'luck' was stealing the initiative at the beginning of the game, however, as it turned out this wasn't quite such a good thing. With some lucky shooting from the quadgun I managed to take a few of the Serpents down, and managed to eliminated the Avengers inside, but not after they managed to eliminate much of my reserves. Now this is where stealing the initiative proved to be the wrong move. At the beginning of turn 3 (yes, we only got to turn 3!) I had a lot on the board, line breaker and 4 of the objectives using objective secured, and a good chance. At the end of the turn I had nothing, but 1 of the objectives in my own deployment zone.

As you can see from the picture, (sorry for the quality, but they were taken on a ipad in a hurry) ive not much left, mostly the Wyverns and a Vet squad and Command squad in the lower right, with 2 assault marines at the top right and a small squad of Scions at the top. The Eldar on the other hand ae still almost intact. I think that one more turn would have seen me tabled. The only good point was watching a unit of guardsmen taking down a Wraithknight, with the help of a Psyker casting rending and orders (FRFSRF), was worth the look on my opponents face when he had the remover the model was priceless.

Game 2
Salamanders.
Lost - Primary 4-6, Secondary 1-14, Tertiary 2-3
Overall loss 0-20

What can I say, I played well but the dice and cards weren't with me. That showed in the fact that after 2 turns I was 9 to 1 points down on the secondary missions plus I'd given up first blood. I did make some errors, mainly trying to take on a Land Raider with just one Sgt with a power fist, needless to say it didn't go well" however, one member survived to claim my one objective and my vendetta got a VP for destroying his Land Speeder Tempest. I did make a mistake of not assaulting his Tech Marine with Thunderfire Cannon who was sitting on the objective, instead I just contested it. It might have made a difference to the game, but who knows. Again though, I had little left at the end, just one assault marine, one Sternguard, my Scion Command squad, my vendetta, one Vanguard and my Priest and my Commander, who was in a challenge with Vulcan!

 

In this game it was the cards that did it for me, in his first two turns he got some good cards, a lot of D3 points if X, mostly for holding objectives. As for myself, I ended up with a lot of card that were nearly impossible, but not actually impossible so I couldn't discard them. My first turn draw was to destroy a gun emplacement (Quadgun), an artillery piece (Thunderfire Cannon with Techpriest in a bolstered ruin) and issue a challenge (Sgt hiding behind Aegis at the back), all practically impossible and when I did discarded one card I got one that meant I had to basically sacrifice a unit to achieve it! As a result I should have played to the Primary mission, but I didn't and it cost me dearly, well, any chance of some tournament points anyway.

Game 3
Tau.
Lost - Primary 6-12, Secondary 5-9, Tertiary 2-5
Overall loss 0-20

Well, there is very little to say about this, 3 Riptides and all the Skyfire/Interceptor was to much for me to deal with. I took the chance and kept with the plan, hoping to overwhelm them with the number of reserves deepstriking. It didn't work, as I lost most of my guys and my vendetta to Interceptor. As  a result I never got going, and he just took me apart wholemeal with markerlights from the Tetras removing cover and boosting the Riptide firing to wipe out large parts of my army at a time. The game only went to turn 3 and I'm thankful for that, otherwise it would have been a tabling for sure. My opponent ended up coming 6th, so I was basically out played and out classed, just just out codex'd.

A shot of how it all started, well after his turn one movement. 

 

 The Tau in all its glory, minus a few reserves which made little difference to the outcome.

 

I have to say that I had pretty much given up at this point, I was feeling down at the start of the game and when I drew Tau for the last game I all but gave up. This probably didn't help matter during the game, but never mind. So far I'm about 5 to nothing against Tau, and that includes at least 2 tabling's and probably a few that would have been tabling's if we had got to turn 5. I know everyone has a certain army that they struggle against, and Tau are mine. No matter what I do, I just cant seem to get to grips with them.

 

So at the end of day one, three games out of five down and I was sitting on 4 tournament points and in 21st out of 22. Needless to say I was pretty down about it but I had had three good games and was looking forward to turning it around on day 2.