Game 1, Al’s black legion I made a silly mistake at the start of this game when I forgot I had a re-roll after I failed the retain with my drop podding devs. That aside most of my activity was spent on chasing a ravager/reaver round the table in full Ahab mode (terminator air assault twice, shot with predator annihilators all three turns) only to have it still standing on 1DC at the end of the game. Al had a very beefy foot retinue with havoks and oblits which denied quite a bit of the table to me as all my best attacks were going after the reaver. Ended 2–0 to me turn 3 once I got onto the blitz.
Game 2, Tim’s black legion Black legion again, again with a beefy foot retinue now with even more obliterators! My main memory from this was the deathwheels: turns out they have 4DC … I probably wasted a minimum of 1 activation a turn trying to plink-break deathwheels that had 2BMs, thinking they’d break at 3. By the time I finally got the message it was too late! That aside the game was mostly shaped by a lot of Tim’s formations breaking in turn 1 then not rallying until later – unfortunately I didn’t exploit this enough (and a few were fearless ) and we ended in a 0–0 draw after four turns, in Tim’s favour on points.
Game 3, Richard’s Tau Poor match up for tau, and with my spaceship plotted for turn 1 Richard deployed heavily on one flank away from his blitz, behind two units of scouts, with 6 Skyrays and no gaps to pod into. In the end a gap opened up for 1 pod to default move into (only place it could go that table quarter more or less …) and I got a few air activations in. Ultimately the tau ended penned into their deployment corner while I got onto the blitz and had my lander sat on another take and hold from turn 2. 2–0 win to me in turn 3.
Game 4, Dave’s Marines 4th time I’ve played Dave’s marines and this was the first I got to choose spacecraft turns first! Following which Dave won strategy and barrelled on to knock over my clean ravenwing in assault for no losses. A few activations later I counter terminator air assaulted his BTS terminator air assault and wiped them … and then we spent most of the rest of the game alternating removing each other’s formations from the table. By turn 3 start we both had each other’s blitz and it pretty much came down to the strategy roll to decide who would take 2–1. Dave got the roll meaning he could take my BTS out and claim a T&H objective in the one go – my only real chance to pull things back for a draw and force turn 4 was my terminator air assault … which failed to activate. 2–1 win to Dave and one of the best games of epic I’ve ever played!
After that I ended up 4th, just shy of Tim and Steve who were tied four points ahead of me.
The first epic tournament I went to was this same event a bit over two years ago. At that event I played Tim, Richard, and Dave (same order even) and I fared substantially better this time, with the experience from the two tournaments I’d managed to attend in the intervening two years.
Having played two games vs. black legion I'm tempted to get mine out again and try some different things … probably with more death wheels and obliterators. I hadn't used the EUK Dark Angles before this weekend – I was pleased with how my list played but i'd probably drop a hunter, a dreadnaught and try to shuffle to other bits to get an extra activation in (this is where getting test games in in advance would help
).
Thanks for a well organised and enjoyable event!
Pictures to follow.
