April Tourney Report

Saturday I attended the FLGS's monthly 40K tourney. This one was at 1750 points, and I ran this list.
It is basically the list I ran in March, minus the Hyperios Whirlwinds, and with an Assault Marine Squad and Jump Librarian added, with some shuffling of attack bikes. I've really enjoyed my bikes in Sixth Edition, and since I'm paring down my Marines to a fast-only style, I figured I'd keep going with them.

My first game was against Thor, from Creative Twilight. He was running Chaos Marines. We played Search and Destroy.
Things started out very slow due to Night Fight on turn one, and both of us playing pretty speedy armies. The first turn was mostly maneuvering and rearrangement. On Turn Two, I committed to the fight. I sent my Assault Marines into his Spawn with attached Lord. You see, I really love Assault Marines. I'm a White Scar/Raven Guard player at heart, but wear Ultramarine clothing. Whenever I field Assault Marines, I tend to hover around the edges with them, or hold them back a little too long. This tends to lead to them being shot down to ineffectiveness, or on the receiving end of a charge. Either way, they die without having accomplished much. I decided that this month they'd be bold, and be the first to the fray.
They slammed into the Spawn after a short volley of pistol shots, and actually managed to kill all of the Spawn in one go. A major factor was the ability to soak the Chaos Lord's challenge onto my sergeant, so the Librarian could use his force staff to take down two entire Spawn.
After that, things degenerated for me. My army has no answer to Chaos Marine characters and their nasty melee upgrades. None. Once those Lords got into my units, I didn't have much chance of survival.
In the end, I lost 33-1. Despite the loss, the game was enjoyable and challenging.

My second game was against Kamui and his Ork/Grot army. This one was Target Priority, on the shop's lava board. It's a board with a lot of 1"-2" wide lava streams, with some LOS-blocking rocks, impassable volcanoes, and some burned out tree area terrain. Most people at the shop love playing on this board both because it looks great, and because of all the lava. The cowards play the lava as difficult terrain. Others like myself play it as both difficult and dangerous. The crazies play it as lethal, though that's really tough to do due to the limited approaches amongst the spiderweb of lava.
My speed won me this one. I was able to roll a flank and reach the objective in Kamui's deployment zone, while using my own shattered units to claim my own objective and push onto the center marker.
Trukk Orks have it rough in 6th Edition. Once the trukks were down, I was able to charge my bike squads into the 12-strong Mobs. I'd challenge with a sergeant, and them immediately smack a wound onto a Nob with a Hammer of Wrath attack. The three remaining attacks would typically land twice, and wound once or twice. Nobs with a 6+ armor save and one remaining wound just never got to swing back. The game would have been a LOT closer if I'd not managed to use Terrify with my Librarian on the Warboss and his Nobz. They failed the immediate Morale test, ran, and were bogged down for the rest of the game. I also managed to Terrify the combined GrotGuard platoon in the last turn and send them packing, leaving the back objective open for the taking.
I ended up winning 30-3, but it was still a close game. I think another big factor int he game was the slowness at which we were forced to play due to the lava. We were rolling a LOT of dangerous terrain tests, which added several minutes to each of our turns.

The final game was against a Chaos Marine/Daemon list loosely themed around Typhus and Zombies. Typhus, three huge zombie squads, Huron, two units of Nurgle Spawn, some Chaos Hounds, Plaguebearers, and a Herald on Nurgle.
The mission was Defensive Onslaught.
This game was close til the last turn or two, and I lost 31-3. Again, I had no answer to Chaos characters. My Captain went toe-to-toe with Huron and did ok, but he was at one wound when he went in and wasn't able to do much before dying. I think if he'd had full wounds, it would have been closer.

All in all, a good day. I manged to win the "Master Class" side of the painting competition with one of mu Honour Guard models. The two divisions were one for entrants who'd never won a painting award, and one for anyone who had won a competition before.
I won't have the chance to play a game again til probably late June. The May event was pushed to June 1st, and I can't make that day. I might be lucky enough to sneak in on a Wednesday, but I doubt it.

I'll have to content myself with painting and clearing out Marine kits. My Hive Tyrant's limbs are coming along, and I hope to have a WIP shot soon. I assembled the three major parts of my next Sternguard model (body, backpack, bolter) and will prime and paint him in the coming week or two. Two more after that and I can stop with the Sternguard and switch to either my final Landspeeder or some Scout Bikers.