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NOVA 2011: Summary Part 2

Friday, September 2, 2011



On to the summary of games beginning Saturday. I’ll briefly touch on the big stuff in my opponent’s lists but I wont be posting full army lists as those belong to the authors and it’s up to them if they would like to post them (you can view my list here).



Game 1 - Salamanders
Vulcan; 2x Land Raiders each transporting a squad of assault terminators.
This army was beautiful! (see the image above) I’m sure anyone who attended saw this army on display and drooled over it like I did, haha. Robert, who painted this masterpiece of an army, was an excellent opponent and an awesome guy in general. He was already a winner before our game even started as it was him and his team who won the DC Bar Crawl the night/early morning before. Anyway, 2 LR’s are scary and hard as hell to get rid of! It took a lot of shots, but I was finally able to crack one of them with a demolisher shell. This game felt like an uphill battle from the get go with the raiders and termies keeping the pressure on. I managed to get some VP’s but I just couldn’t overcome this army. Loss.


Game 2 – Black Templars
EC; 10 terminators; 3 Predators; 3 Typhoons; 4 Lasbacks.
Going into the second game, I knew I needed to stay focused on the primary mission for the round, something I didn’t do so well with the 1st game. I also knew I needed to neutralize those Typhoons and Cyclone ML terminators, something I learned from my practice games with John leading up to NOVA. The primary goal for this round was Table Quarters, followed by Objectives then Kill Points. My vindicators scored some devastating hits this match and my IC dread tied up his left flank for most of the game, which freed up my bikes to get to where they needed to. My opponent Bob, aka Marshal Laeroth from around the Internet, is a great guy and we had a really fun game! We grabbed some lunch after the match and discussed lists/tactics as hurricane Irene was bearing down on the area. We wanted to get a second game in as the first one was close and our armies seemed to match up well (we were drawn on the first two mission goals and had to go to KPs where my army does well as it doesn’t offer many). Unfortunately the schedule for the weekend was already rigorous and there just wasn’t any extra time to fit an additional game in. Bob was a pleasure to play against and I look forward to rolling dice with him again the next time our paths cross! Win.



Game 3 – Black Templars
EC; Marshal; Assault terminators in a Land Raider, 4 Crusader squads, 2 Rhinos, 2 Predators, and a beefy Assault squad.
This was a very different game from the one before. For starters, this Templar list was much more close-combat oriented (the 1st one was gunline) and the deployment was Dawn of War. I’ll admit, I haven’t played a single night-fighting match in 5th, which clearly showed as I forgot about my searchlights and Telion’s Acute Sense rule. Woops! But no better way to learn than in a game like this. Erik was a great opponent and really helpful in explaining how his army worked and things that I should think about with mine. He was a much better general than me and was flawless in his tactics and execution with his army. I made some mistakes and got too close with my bikes. This match really showed me that I need to tighten up my game and give some serious thought to when I should hold units in reserve and when it’s ok for my squads to charge in for the kill. Loss.

Game 4 – Grey Knights
Inquisitor w/ rad grenades; lots of grey knights and purifiers; 3 Razorbacks, 3 Rhinos, and the dreaded 3 psyflemen dreadnoughts.
In a word to sum up this match: ouch! I was worried about facing Grey Knights before the tournament as I’ve heard all the horror stories and have seen some of the mathhammer they can achieve. But then I thought, I’ve got enough plasma and 2 demolishers to deal with their Paladins/terminators… only this list didn’t have any :-/
Sooo many psycannons and psybolts that anything I had in LOS of his guns was forced to make handful after handful of saves (even a good cover save isn’t safe against that much dice). I really didn’t know what to do against this army. My opponent, Rick, was really cool about it and gave me a lot of things to think about when facing GKs. Then we ended up talking about Malifaux the rest of the time, which I’m just getting into. Major loss.

That's it for the first day of the GT. Day two and the last 4 games will be up tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. Joe you let Rick beat you? I'm just messing as we traveled together to the event. His army pumps out a lot of fire power but you have to out shoot him and it is hard. Or you can just get into assault and tear him apart.

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  2. Dude, Rick kicked my ass! I totally froze man, and after his first round of shooting, completely psyched myself out. This was another one of those games where I wished I had used Khan and could have outflanked my bikes. That's the plan for next time!

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