Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament - I came 2nd WOO!

Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament. I’ve been to every one of their tournaments so far this year and the next one is a 2000 point apocalypse style event (not quite sure how that’ll work at the moment).

I turned up late because I had the wrong time in my head so I was in a rush and flustered before I started.

I used the same list as the day before:

HQ – Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops – 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports – 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack – 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

1^st game

The first game was an objective game with secret objectives with dawn of war deployment. Both players get random cards that detail which of the 2 objectives on the table they need to go after. These can be the same as your opponent.

When I found the table with my first opponent my heart immediately sank. It was guard mech army with 3 vendettas. My least favourite thing to ever see on the table. It put me in a pretty foul mood before I’d even got out any models. Luckily I was setting up second.

He deployed in a big blob in the middle of his deployment zone with his manticore and medusa to the side. I used this to my advantage and deployed everything in a corner keeping my scarabs out of range of his nasty guns and my wraiths being the only thing he could safely shoot at. It was this deployment that I think won me the game. He focussed his shooting on the wraiths when he could have slaughtered the scarabs with his ordnance barrage manticore. My scarabs grew while my wraiths shrugged off wounds and eventually I got into combat with his tanks with both my wraiths and the scarabs and it all went downhill for him from there. My Nightscythes came on and pounded his tanks, on one occasion I killed a chimera and the arc sparking off it managed to kill another chimera next to it but this was the only time over the whole weekend that the arcing managed to work.

By the end I had both my objectives and my opponent had one of his, kill points didn’t count unfortunately, I’d made it into a slaughterfest.

2^nd game

The next game was 5 objectives on the table with the short edge deployment zone. My opponent had daemons that were a real mix of everything, stuff from all the 4 powers with a daemon prince and a Lord of Change.

I deployed my force as spread out in my zone as possible expecting all his stuff to come in hard and fast next to me. What happened next baffled me immensely. He deep struck a soul grinder and a squad of plague bearers about half way up the table and the rest of his army landed right at the back in his deployment zone, including his shooty units! I managed to keep my poker face though.

My army moved up the table picking off units and when my flyers came on it was all over for him.

I won the game holding 4 objectives and contesting the 5^th with my scarabs. I had a quite unhappy opponent and I don’t blame him for being unhappy but daemons are meant to be an in your face hard and fast army not a sit at the back army especially when they don’t have much shooting.

3^rd game

The final game was a fight for 1^st place with Ken’s Salamanders allied with Tau. Lots of shooty but a real mix of units. The mission was half kill points and half relic.

We deployed facing each other and he kept a variety of units in reserve for the bonus points achievable for deepstriking, outflanking and coming on from reserve.

My wraiths shrugged off a ton of fire and made their way into the squishy innards of his army. My spyders ran around killing all sorts of things including most of a squad of marines, a squad of tau shooty stealt suits (I think), a drop pod and land speeder and nearly killed Vulcan Hestan.

Vulcan Hestan was the bane of my army, he didn’t kill much but just wouldn’t die and kept running away from combat. At the end of the game I had neglected both the Relic and Hestan for a turn and this was my downfall, he ran up and claimed it (any infantry could claim in this game). I charged him in the last turn with 2 spyders and a failed charge from my wraiths but failed to kill him and it was ruled that the relic was still held by Hestan at the end and not contested. In the end this pulled Ken 4 points ahead of me and two points ahead in the overall tournament. So he came first and I came second. To be fair he had put in consistent effort all day long to gather every single bonus point he could and I’d neglected the bonus points most of the time. He deserved victory and he outplayed me in the end anyway.

Congrats to Ken!

The results:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
76	Ken Chambers	8	27	17	24
74	Mike Towers (ME :D )	6	22	26	20
71	Mike Stewart	3	24	15	29
71	Dave Stewart	6	23	5	37
69	Ryan	4	13	23	29
51	Steven Almond	8	13	16	14
50	Glenn Few	7	24	11	8
21	Charles Lister	7	1	4	9

The summary from the GoT guys:

"Ken Chambers wins our October 40k tournament with Salamander Space Marines allied with Tau. He played well and made the most of  the days achievements to win by just 2 points! Well done Ken and the rest of the days contestants, Michael Towers picked up 2nd place with his Necrons and the Stewart brothers in joint third with bragging rights going to David who had more achievements."

It was a good day of games even if it started badly. After two days of using the list I’m thinking of getting rid of the scarab farm, it’s just too vulnerable to blast and flamers but I really do like it. I won’t post what my new ideas are though until I’ve used and tested them though. Some of my opponents have been reading my blog and finding out my tactics lol.