NI4 Game 1

Game one started off on shaky ground, my original opponent was the young lad with a box of models, one one I had a good moan about last post, but as we couldn't get the army list together, the tournament organizer stepped up with his chaos black legion. He force was a good around list, with 5 termies and a sorcerer in termie armour, two squads of marines, one with a lord, a bike squad and a rhino backed up by a squad of havocs. 

Deployment
My opponent deployed across the board, with termies on his right, marines in the middle and left, clearly going after the objectives, the bikes and empty rhino were also on the left with the havocs at the back to provide some long range firepower.

My deployment was along my standard lines, however I had gained 2 units outflanking due to my warlord trait, along side relentless, and as such a blob squad and priest were outflanking. The rest set with wyverns at the rear, blob in front with pcs to the left (right on picture!) and c's on the right In The building, to give the snipers some height.

Its hard to tell deployment from turn one, mostly as nothing has moved!

Turn 1

The pictures above are actually from turn one,thought they were deployment, but on closer inspection you can see the marines have move forward. Nothing else really happened for him as he ran most things and took a few pot shots with the havocs. My turn was not much different, my MoO scattered wildly, about 15 inches or so! As did my wyverns, about 10 for them i think, even with the reroll,which was worse then the original roll! However, the shot clipped a havoc,despite the fact I'd been shooting at the marines in the center! As a result the 5 marines were blown back to the warp, and I gained first blood and a point, and they wyverns started as they would continue for the rest of the tournament.

Turn 2
My opponent continued his advance, getting a marine on to the right objective on top of the building and pushing forward with all the other units, including using a psychic power to jump a bunch of marines right up to my right, just on the corner of the center building. Pot shots were taken by the rest of the units with little damage sustained.

My turn 2 and things get interesting. All my reserves are on and mostly doing there job. The vendetta kills off the rhino and the valkyrie and the blob take out half the bikers. The wyverns helps out too, although with the low numbers doesn't do as much damage as I'd like. Still at this point I'm confident I can secure a win.

Turn 3

And my confidence take a bit of a knock. The marine squad that were jumped get up on the building and make it in to combat and start munching through guardsmen, the termies on the left turn and over the psychic, shooting and assault phases, destroy the outflanking guardsmen with little trouble. Points wise, were pretty even at this point, but I've got a plan!

The destruction on the outflanking unit, already down from 21 to 8 and yet to strike any blows in combat.

Turn 4

Things go from bad to worse for my guardsmen!

Yes, that is a daemon prince

The chaos gods decide that the sgt is doing a fantastic job and gift him with princedom, thus a daemon prince appears in the middle of combat, the remaining guardsmen, priest and two psykers are slain with ease for 4 points! Not only that, butte command squad in contacted by the bikers. A little cheeky on themove I think, withthe bikes moving from one side of the building to the other by going over the top, not sure about that? But they passed there difficult terrain tests, so ill let it go.

The combats.

Termies moving for the objective, just out of shot are my pcs who were running for the same objective but though better of it when the remaining termies, the Libby and sgt?, gave them a bit of a spanking. The rest of the squad had died to the wyverns and vendetta, the valkyrie whittling down the marines on the otherside of the board. 

Turn 5

No pictures here, but it was pretty clear at this point I'd won. My flyers had dropped off their cargo in the last round and both squads were heading to their objectives. The chaos troops consolidated on the objective in my deployment zone and the bikes tried in vain to kill my warlord. I also went for objectives, forgoing trying to kill anything. My wyverns went flat out for the left objective, as the termies had tried to take out the last of the pcs who were going for the center objective, they failed but so did the pcs. The plasma command squad ran for the opposition's home objective and the vets went for the objective on the right that lord was sitting on. I should have charged but decided to run.the lord was on one would and my squad was still 11 strong (vets plus priest) and may have been able to take out the lord. There was also a little bit of rule bending going on on my side. My bloke was just about quarter of an inch from the base of the wall and I rolled a 3 on my run move, I placed him up on the next level, a 3 inch move, but should I? To be honest if it was the other way around I would have been happy to let my opposition do the same. It claimed me the objective from the lord due to the vets being troops.

The dead pile, I'd completely forgotten about the spawn! The charged in to the blob squad on turn 2 and were very quickly dispatched.

End game, the vets are missing from the right hand building, you can just see the lord on top. My warlord is just out of shot the bottom, the last survivor of the command squad.

At the end game the points were - 13 to me (FB, LB, 4 Kill points, 7 objective points) and 10 to my opponent (LB, 3 obj, 7 KP). So a win to me and a food start to my campaign.

As for the battle plan, everything went as planned. I had hoped to keep my objective contested and might have been able to if the daemon prince hadn't turned up, but that's the luck of the dice. On to round 2!

NI4 Post Tournament rewiew

WARNING, there's quite a bit of moaning in this post. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Well, all the dust has settled on Northern Invasion 4, and planning has already started on number 5, plus hopefully an event up here early next year. While the event was generally a success, with most things running as planned, there were as always some teething issues. I will say now, lack of planning and preparation was not one of them, as all the tables were set up properly and all the paperwork was ready to roll, but in an effort to make it as friendly as possible, I think they went to far and it distracted from the fact that this was still a tournament.

My main grip I suppose is that fact that you didn't have to submit a list before the event, which lead to some issues at the start. These were mostly due to some of the younger participants, which while I am more than happy to encourage, turning up with a box of models, dumping them on the table and saying "what have I got? How many point is it?" is not really the way to start a tournament, especially when your already late. One of them had enough models to form an army, a reasonable one at that, the other didn't not have nearly enough, and despite our best efforts to repair models and sort a list out, we couldn't get near enough to the 1500 points to make it worth while. At the time I was quite annoyed but it all, but looking back I'm equally annoyed, sorry we couldn't do something and relieved, as by other accounts the youth in question was a bit of a pain, going to to quite the magic draft as he got bored and also quitting an rpg as it was taking too long. While were on the subject of youths, the other young lad, who was playing decided half way through his first game that he was going to nip off and play the magic draft, not quite sure how he thought he would do that but I guess not having done a draft before he might not have understood what was happening. It was a shame that he abandoned his game,as it made life difficult for both the other player and the tournament organizer, trying to figure out points for the game. In the end they worked it out fairly well, and the score seemed to tie in with the general score for the day.

All this ended up putting us over an hour late in starting, which combined with the fact 2 participants got there late, through no fault of the own but due to late running ferries, it meant that we were still playing at gone 11pm, well those of us staying at the venue were!

Now, I doubt want this to sound like I'm anti youths playing the game, I had two very good and entertaining games against some other young players,where I tried to impart my knowledge to them, whether they listened or not is a different matter! I think getting young players along to tournaments like this is great, however they need to realise it is a tournament.

Anyway, now I've had my moan ill carry on with the good bits! The venue was very good, and as we were staying on site, we could keep gaming into the night. The original idea was to try and play a few kill team missions, but we never got around to it, as explained above, but it was great just playing and having a laugh without having to worry about what time it was, a rare luxury for myself and many others I suspect. As I said at the top, the tables were great,with lots of good scenery and theme, not just a collection of scenery thrown on a table. It really enhanced the gaming experience.

Next we come to the food.  Have attended a few tournaments in my time, this being the 4th, but the food here was by far the best yet. The home made soup was excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed several helping of the chicken and vegetable curries, also home made.

The organizers all did a brilliant job of organizing the event and for us players there was little we needed to worry about, apart from playing games. So good infect that I've already signed up for next year and somehow I've also been roped in to help organize it! Ok itdidnt take much persuasion ("do you fancy helping next year" "yeah, why not"). I think my main input will be getting lists reviewed pre the event and I think that will help iron out the only down points.

So after the mamouth moan at the beginning i will end with this, if you fancy a tripup north for a few games of 40k or AoS or even magic, look out for Northern Invasion 5, you want regret the trip!

Oh and here's a few more general pictures.....

Tables 2, 4 and 6. I ended up playing on 2 and 4.

Table 1, 3 and 5. First game was on 3 and I then spent all of day 2 playing on table 5, closest to camera.

One of the many little details found on the boards. There was graffiti, posters and other little bits like this scattered will over the various boards.

Necrons vs Nids, 

Chaos vs marines, the chaos player withdrew half way through this game to go play the magic draft.

Deathwatch list

I'm going to sneak this post in here, as I think the next few weeks are going to be taken up with Northern Invasion battle reports and the likes. I'm down at the in-laws for a few days so hopefully ill get it all written up while the mother in-law is spoiling the bairns!

So I'm going to run through my list and explain my thinking a little bit further than the last Deathwatch post. As this is going to essentially be an extension of my Inquisition list (here) I though that I would just do a quick recap of the forces;

Xenos Inquisitor w/Power armour,  Power Sword, Rad grenades, Psykotroke grenades

Xenos Inquisitor w/Combi-plasma, Power Armour, Psyker ML1

Elite 1 – 7x Acolyte’s w/carapace, hotshot lasgun, 3x stormshield

Elite 2 – 10x Acolyte’s w/carapace, bolt gun, 1x psyker, 1x Priest

Elite 3 – 5x Crusader’s, 5x Death Cult Assassins, 2x Priest

The thinking for the above list is in the Inq post, so I won't go over it again but it won't change with the inclusion of the Deathwatch. So, what is my list?

Black Spear Strike Force formation 

HQ-  Watch Captain w/Artificer Armour, Plasma Pistol, Power weapon, Beacon Angeles

Auxiliary- Ancient - Dreadnought w/ Plasma Cannon

Core- Watch Company-

Watch ccaptain w/ artificer armour, bolt pistol, power weapon.

Aquila Kill team - Librarian ML2 w/boltgun, force sword. 
8x veterans w/boltgun, chainsword

Dominates Kill Team - 2x Vanguard Vets w/stormshield, lightning claw
5x Vets w/boltgun, Stalker Pattern Boltgun

Furor Kill Team- Termie w/storm bolter, power weapon, 
2x termies w/storm bolter, chain fists
2x vets w/Flamer, bolter
3x vets w/infurnus heavy bolters

Purgatus Kill Team - librarian ML2 w/boltgun, force sword
5x vets w/boltgun, stalker pattern boltgun 

Quite a compact list I think. One thing you might notice is there are no transports, well this is due to the deepstrike rule from the strike force. Basic plan is to start with Inq detachment and dread on the table and deepstrike the rest near there specified targets. This is a bit of an alpha strike type list, although its a turn two strike. There should be enough on the board to survive turn 1 quite easily.

I have a few things that I'm not sure about with this list. Firstly it seems that you can't take a boltgun and bolt pistol, which seems odd as that really is the staple marine load. Its not a problem as such but it does mean that you either pay for a pistol or power weapon or take the pretty much useless chainsword. Points wise I've gone for chainsword and extra bodies.

Secondly and related to the first is the fact that I've got a couple of marines in the Furor team armed with bolters and flames. This seems to be not right to me, as its two ranged weapons rather than a ranged and combat weapon, I would have thought I would have had to have one or the other.

The final thing I need to check is pretty much the same as the second, that being all the guys armed with both a regular boltgun and a stalker pattern boltgun. This does seem to be excessive. The idea is good though, move and shoot the boltgun, stand and shoot the stalker, whatever your doing you've got special ammo as well. The stalker pattern is also good for anything t5 and above plus extra range, which you want with t5 plus models.

I think the list is pretty balanced, with some ability to take down light armour (heavy bolters and plasma cannon) and heavy armour (chain fist and dread ccw), and with all the bolters and also stalker pattern bolters I should be able to deal with most things.

Northern invasion review preview

Well, I'm back home after a rather enjoyable tournament. There were a total of 7 participants in the end, not a massive tournament but I ended up playing 4 games in the tournament and 2 for fun. Oh and I brought this home....

A fellow member of my club brought the AoS trophy home, so that was good as well.

More battle reports and my thoughts on the day to follow.