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NOVA 2011: Summary Part 3

Sunday, September 4, 2011



By Sunday, I think everyone was feeling exhausted. Of course staying up till 3am the night before playing Malifaux wasn't helping my sleep index, but there's no better time to go all out than when you have 300+ gamers hold up in a hotel in the middle of a hurricane. Anyway, on to the last 4 games of the Open:


Game 5 - Space Marines
Another Vulcan led army but I wouldn't call them Salamanders since they were mostly purple... He also had a Land Raider w/ Assault terminators, 3 Predators, 3 Speeders, and a handful of Razorbacks.
He won the roll off and opted to go first. The primary objective was Table Quarters followed by Kill Points then Objectives. Based on the amount of KP's his army had vs mine, I was feeling pretty good about this match. Nevertheless, he had a lot of long range guns and I couldn't risk getting my bikes whittled down too early. He deployed aggressively leaving very little space for me to hide my bikes from first turn shooting. I decided to reserve my command squad but this time I split the Chaplain off to go with my smaller 6 man bike squad to ensure that they wouldn't flee off the table before my reinforcements showed up. This turned out to be a really good decision.








First turn, he moves all his vehicle up and unloads everything that can shoot. I take a couple casualties but nothing major as nearly everything had a cover save or was hidden. On my first turn, my Drop Pod scatters wildly from the mark but ends up directly in front of his Land Raider. In his best showing all weekend, my Ironclad finally hit with his meltagun and wrecked that expensive LR, dumping the terminator passengers within. I moved my vindicator out of the ruins and placed the large blast covering all those pesky 2+/5++ models underneath, and hoped that I wouldn't scatter onto my IC dread. Success! He lost 4 of them and I'm pretty sure this is where he gave up. And I don't mean gave up the game either, he definitely still tried to win, but he gave up being a good sport and having a decent attitude.


Anyway, when the game ended we each had the 2 quarters we started in so the match went to kill points. He had only gotten my IC dread and the drop pod vs the 6 KPs I claimed from him. Maybe it was just an honest mistake or maybe he just couldn't do basic math, but he tried to snake me on total Victory Points. I immediately thought something wasn't right when he said the amount so I asked if he was sure; he then adds another 50 pts or so rather abruptly. At this point his attitude was the definition of a sore loser (he refused to shake my hand after the match and left me hanging), so instead of making a scene I decide to just go with what he had and check the math later. We then hand in our score cards where he didn't even try to cover up the low sportsmanship score he had given me -- this one bothered me the most. I understand it's not as fun to lose a match than it is to win, but I try really hard to have fun in my games, whether I'm winning or losing, and I try to make sure my opponent does too. It's just a game, lets not lose perspective here. Just because you lost and took it poorly, you felt it necessary to take it out on my sportsmanship score, the only other variable of mine you could impact after losing? Bad form. Oh yeah, and those victory points...I ran the math with a judge and you somehow "forgot" to add in another 100 I had earned. But don't worry, we got that straightened out ;) WIN.




Game 6 - Tyranids
Swarmlord w/ Tyrant Guards, Prime, Doom of Malan'tai, a couple of Zoanthropes, a couple of outflanking Genestealer Broods, Trygon, Mawloc.
I can't remember the last time I played against Tyranids, especially ones that looked this good! I had a really hard time dealing with this army as it felt like his bugs were on me come turn 2 (which come to think of it, they were). The deployment and mission also weren't helping my cause; Dawn of War. He was setting up on the 2 ft mark as close to me as possible and I wasn't shooting all of my stuff due to first turn night fighting rules. I did the best I could to take out the most immediate threats but after a few things dropped in and 2 stealer squads came on to the same corner I was hiding in, that was pretty much it. My opponent, Scott, was awesome and a lot of fun to play against. He helped explain a lot of the nifty things Tyranids can do, and outside of rolling poorly which can happen to anyone, I was really glad to see that  the Nid's can still be devastating on the battlefield. I've read a lot of articles that say they aren't that good but this guy's list was very effective and it felt like he had me the whole way. I didn't mind losing to such a nice guy and a great looking army! My wife also got a kick out of it. Loss.





Game 7 - Blood Angels
Librarian, Honor Guard, Sternguard, several Assault squads, 3 Devastor squads (all missile launchers), 8 Razorbacks (Las-Plas all with Hunter Killer Missiles).
When this game started I felt ready to pass out from the lack of sleep and not being able to find food in between games. My wife was awesome and brought me pizza and soda not long into the game which definitely kept me alive. This was a tough list and I wasn't entirely sure how to handle it. I captured 3 of the 5 objectives early on and tried to isolate parts of his army so I could take them out piecemeal without feeling the full fury of all those missiles and razorbacks shooting me off the table. But my opponent, Matt, wasn't having any of that. He kept his stuff together and was careful about his maneuvers. I think he knew I was scared of all his guns and armor and he was playing it safe in the beginning because of my 2 demolisher cannons. At any rate, this ended up being a very enjoyable game and Matt was a pleasure to play against. I learned a lot about my army with this game and was already thinking of a few things I wanted to change in my list. In the last turn, his Librarian used a psychic power to push my scouts off of their objective and he drove one of his squads forward to capture the center. Loss.


Game 8 - Blood Angels
Astorath, a couple Chaplains, 2 Death Company Dreads, 3 squads of Death company, 3 Storm Ravens.
When I arrived at the table for my last game I realized I was without an opponent. This was the case for several other guys so we ended up pairing ourselves based on who was left. My new opponent, Jason, was one of the nicest guys I had met and played against the entire weekend. It was a great game to end the Nova with. I had never seen an army like his before. It all started off the table with everything aboard those 3 Ravens. It was a really cool list and I'm not sure I positioned my army in the best spots for the 2 free turns I had without any enemies on the table. I wasn't sure where he would come in from or how devastating it would be when he arrived, so I sorta spread out across the board. I should have stayed together more, lol. His army was crushing mine but it was a fun, friendly match. He gave me a lot of great advice on my army and suggested some things I could do to it to make it even more effective. I'll get more into those changes in my final thoughts piece and lay out some of the things I'd like to try in the next month leading up to the Battle at Blob's Park tournament. Loss.

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