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1850 RTT Recap

Saturday, August 30, 2014


Outside of a few home games, I hadn't yet tested any of my lists in a true 7th edition tournament setting. Then the opportunity came up to play in Huzzah Hobbies' monthly 40k RTT a couple weeks back. It was my first time visiting this store so I was excited to check it out and get my first larger point games of 7th under my belt.

I knew the competition would be intense as this was the last RTT before the NOVA Open and everyone was out tuning their tournament lists. Nonetheless, this was a good opportunity to practice some of the basics of 7th while hopefully learning a trick or two from some of the top 40k players in the region.

Since it was kind of a last minute decision to go (ok it was more like 10 hours before round one) I didn't have a lot of time to prepare a new list so I basically went with my NOVA list from last year with a few tweaks; I dropped the Baron, a large wych unit in raider, changed the 5 man warrior squads into wychs, and left the farseer on the shelf in lieu of the avatar and a wraithknight (I wanted to try my new toys).


As expected, there were some tough lists in attendance. My first round opponent's army is pictured above -- 5 serpents, 6 war walkers, Eldrad, another seer plus warlocks which amounted to a sizable pool of warp charge dice used mostly for summoning daemons.


He summoned plague drones, some heralds, and a couple units of horrors. I nearly lost the wraithknight on the first turn, but he held on to take out a couple serpents. I did the best I could to play for objectives and was up going into the last turn, but my archon failed his shadow field on the first wound and I fell behind at the very end.


I had a chance to pull this one out, my dice just weren't with me. It was a close, fun match to start the day off with.

My next round was on the same table against Tau with Farsight allies.


I lost the roll to go first and ate a ton of shooting, easily giving up first blood and several kill points (which was the primary this round).


I managed to take out a devilfish and was in good position for turn 2 assaults which barely kept me in the game.


By turn 3 I felt like my army was on the verge of getting tabled, but then I ended up having a really solid turn and closed the killpoint gap. My wraithknight and avatar performed really well this match. My archon had another poor showing by dying very early in the game. I lost this one by a larger margin than my first round, but it was a lot of fun fighting my way back and giving it a go.


Round 3 I was up against another Daemon summoning Eldar army with Grey Knight allies.


I think I chose the wrong primary objective to go for this game. And my dice were at it again, utterly failing me on critical rolls. I lost the archon yet again on the first wound, then failed several key charges early on. It just wasn't happening for me in this one. A greater daemon was manifested from a warlock, which then tied up my back line for the better part of the game. On top of the dice, I definitely made some tactical errors on this one and things went south real quick.



At the end of the day I took a pretty good beating from 2 Eldar summoning lists and a superior shooting Tau/Tau list. All three opponents were really cool dudes and a pleasure to play against. I definitely need to change some things with my list, but at this point want to see if DE get a new book in coming months (or weeks!).

I've been watching the NOVA live stream and looking forward to catching more matches this weekend. Next year I'm definitely going again :) Good luck to those who are there, and take lots of pictures!

5 comments:

  1. Whew, Eldar summoning daemons, kinda sucks to have the least fluffy combo in the game show up 2x lol, particularly summoning daemons with GK allies...what?!?!

    Still, glad the games were good, were you playing with any of the new objective cards? I played a 3 round RTT last weekend at Dropzone and the cards were a mixed bag, they made the games interesting, but then again the game was kind of disjointed and you definitely need a flexible force to keep up. I do think your DE are prime candidates though, as they bring a lot of fast options with objective secured.

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  2. Yeah, I was hoping to see and play against a little bit more diverse armies, but it's not too surprising to see the nastiest lists come out to try and win top prize at NOVA; my army was just a fish out of water in that sea of competition, lol.

    We were using NOVA missions for this tournament: http://www.novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/GT-40K-Primer-2014-NOVA-Open2.pdf
    Very different from maelstrom missions but they have a similar effect in that your list still needs to be flexible in order to pull out a win against a tough counter army. They are pretty cool missions and less fickle than drawing objective cards. I see a lot of people having fun with maelstrom though, I just haven't had a chance to try them out yet. I definitely should have read through the NOVA pack a little more carefully before the event as I could have made some better choices, but not sure it would have changed the results against those lists (especially when I can't make a single shadowfield save!)

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  3. Hey Joe,
    Is the 40k at huzzah every month? Thanks for the photos. I'm nearby in gaithersburg and looking for a local store to play at!

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    1. Hi Greg,
      Yes, Huzzah hosts a regular monthly tournament for 40k, usually the 3rd Sunday of each month (although this month I think it's the 4th Sunday). Also since you're near Gaithersburg, there's Dream Wizards in Rockville: http://www.dreamwizards.com/
      Organized / open play for 40k is usually Wednesday evenings. You can also schedule games ahead of time with the local game club: http://beltway-gamers.com/forums/

      I'm also local if you're looking for a game sometime!

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    2. Awesome Joe! Thanks so much. I know about dreamwizards, but Wednesdays are always brutal for me (which is their general day). I've got a friend who plays nids and daemons who is dying for more games so gathering info for him as well (he's more DC centric).

      Going to register on the beltway gamers forum. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

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