Standoff After-Action Report

The dust has settled, and I've had some time to rest and reflect on my attendance at the Standish Standoff 2 on Saturday.

I woke up at a typical 6am for the day as I'd been up til 10pm Friday night finishing off my final two models for my army. I packed up my gear and hit the road around 8am. Stopped for a coffee and a pastry, and arrived at the shop just before 9am.

My first task was to unpack and get my marines ranked up on my display board. One thing i find aweseom is that whenever I run my Biker Army, I typically get a couple "Man, that's a LOT of bikes!" comments by passers-by. Saturday was no exception. I got at least two comments on the biker volume, lol.
Here's the list I played:

Captain on Bike (artificer armor, relic blade)
Bike Command Squad (Champion, Banner Bearer, Apothecary, Storm Shield Vet, Power Axe Vet)
Techmarine on Bike
Bikes One (5 bikes, 2 flamers, combiflamer, meltabombs, heavy bolter attack bike)
Bikes Two (6 bikes, 2 meltaguns, combimelta, meltabombs)
Bikes Three (6 bikes, 2 plasmaguns, plasma pistol, meltabombs)
Attack Bike Squadron (3 bikes, multimeltas)
Landspeeder Squadron (2 Typhoons with heavy bolters)
Assault Squad (10 strong, 2 plasma pistols, sergeant with 2 plasma pistols)

It's my standard Go Fast syle list. I've got running fluff for the army that I add to every time I run it in a GT-style setting.

I ended up with a 36/40 for painting, which was good enough for 6th of 32 (three points behind 1st).

My first game was against a Necron army. I've known the player for a while now, as he ispart of a great club down in Massachusetts. It was a throwback style Necron Phalanx list, with some toys thrown in, like a Tomb Stalker. We were playing Special Ops. I selected Blitzkrieg as my primary, Battlefield Cnotrol as Secondary, and Domination as Tertiary.
The Necrons deployed with obscured LOS behind a big building, in a solid block. I was spread across my zone, and maneuvered myself to execute a textbook pincer movement. I ended up winning by jamming up the Necron movement in the center of the baord, preventing them from taking the central objective as their primary goal. I had 5 units in the Necron Zone as a result of my wide flanking maneuver. We tied on secondary (I didn't hold a majority of quarters) and tertiary (same KPs).

Game two was against a heavily converted/self-built/sculpted Chaos Daemons army run by another great player from the same club. We played Vengeance.
I'm not a huge fan of the mission format, but you play what you play. I know how to deploy versus Daemons pretty well, and filled my deployment zne with my models, and then pressed forward a bit during Turn One.
There were just too many monsters in the Daemon army for me to take down, though my opponent's save rolls were crazy good. I'd sink 4-5 wounds on a monster, and he'd save all but one. I'd then remond him about his Feel No Pain roll, and he'd make that too. That happened three times!
I ended up losing primary, winning secondary (due to a sacrificial Sergeant challenge keeping me on an objective on the final turn), and splitting tertiary.
I was near top-of-the-middle after the game.

Game Three was against a Blood Angels/Guard force. Very much a 5th Edition list with lots of Razorbacks and Predators and two Flyers (Storm Raven and Vendetta). We played Battlefield Superiorty.
I originally had first turn, but the initiative was seized, and I lost a couple random models and my Predator to a Manticore shot on the first turn. Halfmy heavy guns were gone in one shot. Damn.
I retaliated by running my Captain, Command, and Techmarine right up the gut. Bikers can murder transports handily these days with krak grenades. An IG Chimera went up in smoke from the Captain's blade and a random krak grenade or two.
The game ground on and on, with me losing bikes a few at a time, and then assaulting transports with grenades over and over. I had the game with 17 minutes left, but we determined that because we had both had so few models left, we could fit in another turn. That final turn saw the arrival of the enemy Storm Raven carying a small Troops squad and a Dread. The troops landed fine, but the Dread mishapped back into Ongoing Reserve (scattered back onto the Raven when dropping out via Skies of Blood). That swung the primary to my opponent, but tied the secondary and tertiary.
Good, close game that saw me make a crazy number of Jink saves when it mattered!

I ended the day in 16th for raw Battle Points, which is exactly what I expected to do.
I took second place for the pub quiz with a 6 (I think that was 12 correct answers?).
I'd designed my list to be solid on composition, and had an 80 there (-5 points for the third Fast slot).

All told, I ended up in second place for People's Champion (soft scores only) by 2.5 points. The irony was that the winner was my second round opponent, who'd gotten my Favorite Opponent vote for another 5 points. Damn him for being so cool! lol.
I landed at 7th place of 32 for Overall. Not too bad!

Overall, it was a great day. My knee held up to standing for the whole day, which was nice.
My army performed as I thought it would, being very good against some opponents and less useful against others. But for a few rolls here and there and things might have gone more in my favor than they already did.

The one, glaring lesson I took from the day is that I need to improve my painting again. I'm a "clean and smooth" painter. My Ultramarines are always sharp, but I don't do blended highlights, weathering, etc. Clean and smooth doesn't stack up against other folks' styles and armies.
I need more.

To that end, I am either going to attempt to start painting using zenithal highlighting and my airbrush, or start painting another Chapter. I keep gravitating toward Howling Griffons for some reason. I showed my wife the lineup of Marine schemes in the last few pages of How To Paint Space Marines and she liked the look of the Dark Sons. I also thought about doing Subjugators in the past, but if I change, I'm going with a quarter or halved scheme to up the challenge value of painting.