Standish Standoff 2016, After Action Report

Last Saturday (November 19th) was the sixth annual Standish Standoff tournament at the FLGS. It's our community's annual "big" tournament. This year it was 1750 points.

I ran my Raven Guard, with 100% Raven Guard painted models. The last few months and test games saw me using some stand-in Ultramarines models from my old army. I painted and painted to get all RG models on the table for the event.

My list was as follows:

Shadow Force
Captain, Raven's Fury jump pack, power fist, relic blade, artificer armor
Vanguard Vets, 5x, powerfist + pistol, dual lightning claws, grav + bolt pistols x2, sergeant with relic blade and storm shield, meltabombs on the claws and pistoliers
Sternguard Vets, 5x, 2x combigrav, meltabombs on sergeant
Landspeeder, Typhoon Launchers and Multimelta

CAD
Techmarine with servo harness
Servitors, 4x, two heavy bolters
Scout Squad, 5x, camo, pistol and CCWs, one shotgun, vet sergeant with power sword and meltabombs
Scout Squad, 5x, camo, bolters, heavy bolter with Hellfire
Tac Squad, 5x, plasma cannon, sergeant with combiplas
Assault Squad, 6x, two flamers, vet sergeant w/ lightning claw and meltabombs
Drop Pod (fast attack slot)
Dreadnought, twin-las and missile launcher
Devastator Squad, 5x, two lascannons
Leviathan Dreadnought, claw/drill, armored ceramite, three hunter-killer missiles

Fun, if inefficient. I'm looking squarely at you, Techmarine and Servitors.

My first game was against Warren and his Space Wolf list. I played against it in the first round of a tournament last month as well. The list was 95% units in Drop Pods, led by Ragnar. Everythign arrives turn one and gets Fearless and FNP (6+) until their second turn.
As usual, the game was a Maelstrom mission (as was every mission on the day). Warren placed a trio of objectives in a tight triangle near my deployment zone, so I knew he was going to focus his pods there. So, I used my infiltrators and scout moves to congest the area, and then lucked out and seized the initiative to drop my one pod right in the middle of the mess. This was key to the game being as close as it was, as I didn't have to clear a lot of Fearless Space Wolves off of objectives. Funnily enough, neither of us really drew many numbered objective cards in the game.
Warren took a narrow victory on the back of an early lead.

Game Two was against Thor from Creative Twilight. We seem to play against one another at least every other tourney. I'll just point you at his tourney report for the event for general details of our game. A narrow victory for him after I'd taken the early lead.

The final game of the day was against a very unconventional Tau list. Lots of Fire Warrior and Breacher squads on foot, two or three Ethereals packed into a Devilfish, a trio of flyers, and a metric ton of various Drone squads in a formation.
This one was a solid win for me, as my opponent was very rusty on Maelstrom missions in general. Not a lot of killing in this one, as I didn't really want to throw my jump troops into the massed infantry with Supporting Fire. That rule, along with markerlights, is my bugaboo for Tau. So frustrating. I just camped objectives and used my mobility to rack up points. It was nice to see a Tau list with actual infantry and no suits, and not just because I won. Of course, after the new FAQ, the list is neutered because the Ethereals can't use their command powers from inside that Devilfish.

I ended the day in the middle of the pack, 10th place of 22 on overall points. 13th in just battle points. 7th on soft points.
The only thing I did "well" with was the pub quiz, getting 7 of 10 questions right, if I remember correctly.

The event also featured some painting competitions, but I didn't enter any models this year. I had a few reasons for that.
Firstly, I didn't paint anything specifically for the competition. I painted purely to get models into games, and I don't enter models unless I feel they are showcase quality. My Raven Guard look nice, but they don't have much in the way of character. Flat black models don't tend to win painting awards.
Secondly, I've won a good number of the categories in past Standoffs. I've got a drawer full of purity seals from my Ultramarine models. I kind of feel guilty winning awards and just shoving them in a drawer. It sort of feels disrespectful to the competition. I know that's an odd sentiment, but it's how I feel. Finally, I've lost with models I worked super hard on in the past. The painting judges work super hard at a tough job, but I have some lingering feelings of being robbed. Petty? Probably.
All that added up to a simple lack of desire to enter models. It is what it is. I'll try next year with some Harlequin models or something.

I did have an enjoyable day. Three good games and a day out of the house was nice. There's a different energy to an annual event when compared to a standard monthly tourney.

Now that the event is over, I'm back to slowly painting instead of a flurry of activity. I'm picking away at a Forgeworld Deathstorm Drop Pod that I bought and assembled ages ago for my Ultramarines, but never finished. Once that is done, I'm not sure where I'll go. I've got a preorder in for Blood Bowl next weekend, and am looking forward to painting those models. I'm trying to avoid spending any cash on new Marine kits until I've exhausted some of my existing collection, but the lure of a big kit like a Stormraven or a Knight is strong.