I brought the army for its painted debut (I had brought it to this store in November of 2010 as an unpainted mess for a test run before painting). The tournament was a bit different, being run by a local gamer and having some unique missions. The first game I played was against a GK player. I made a few mistakes and let the deep striking terminators intimidate me. I deployed my army from reserve and doing this meant I just didn't get all the time I needed to shoot. In hindsight I should have just taken my lumps and tried to trash the termies when they came in.
As you can see in the above the termies came in and I ran into a traffic jam trying to get all my guns on them. I did manage to wipe one of the two squads out, but the other one I just couldn't get it done. I lost a lot of KPs in the first few turns and even though by the end I had almost tabled him (3 squads left) he had killed enough in the first few rounds, it didn't matter. The game ended 12-14 with a loss. I made some mistakes but I learned a lot playing against GKs.
My second game was against a friend who was playing IG as well. The mission was pretty much a night fight with blind deployment. We didn't really do this as our table was missing the boards, we just put our stuff down and tried not to look. The tourney didn't have enough boards/foam parts for all of the tables to use it, and we got left out. As neither of us was in it as we had both lost a game it wasn't a big deal to either of us.
This game was exactly what you would think it was, with both of us blasting away. His Leman Russ' trashed my whole right flank and my Manticores and Valkyries chipped away at his troops. The game was really close, ending with a win for me 7-6 KPs.
A picture of the Tournament itself (during my first game). I have only been to the Alamo Games Workshop to play one other time, but everyone was saying how crazy it was to have twenty players. I usually play my tournaments at Black Diamond Games, in Concord, and even though they have regular tournaments there is rarely more then sixteen.
My last game was against a Blood Angels opponent. The mission was a modified Dawn of War (extra points for killing elites and HQs). I won the roll to go first, so I lined up a few squads of guardsmen as far forward as I could to keep his deployment far away from me.
He deployed a tac squad and Mephiston. This was the first game I played against him, having heard he was brutal, I didn't realize how nutty he can be until I had to play against him.
When I took the first turn, I fell back with my squads and his dreadnought dropped right into my lines. I wasn't too worried, as my army (included a squad of melta vets) was going to come on the next turn. This went exactly as I though it would with the dreadnought and drop pod being destroyed when my guardsmen came on.
The rest of his army came in and we started the slug fest in earnest. He destroyed my whole right flank, and managed to get Mephiston near where his dreadnought was. Mephiston suffered from he could only kill one thing and then my guns turned on him. The melta vets finished him off with some lucky melta and one lasgun wound.
I ended up winning the game with 9 KPs and he had 4. I finished the tournament with 2 wins and 1 loss. I was pretty happy with this as I've only used this army for about ten games and I've managed 5-1 in the two tournaments I've used it in. I need to play some more with it, I was still having to check my codex a lot. I've got a lot to learn about guard.
I thought the tournament was over at this point, but the organizer had some kind of death pit event to decide third as seven people had gotten 2 wins and a loss. There were no battle points, just straight record. A friend of mine had mentioned this and we both laughed about the chances of a guard command squad, as the death pit event was just everyone tossed their HQ down and fought it out. There were some tokens on the board, though I figured out real quick it was playing Russian roulette. Some tokens gave you a weapon, some blew up, or made it so you couldn't control your fig anymore (squig i think).
I got lucky and won the second deployment so I deployed as far into the corner as I could. I used my first turn to get into the corner, as the only chance in hell I had was my command squad (with four plasma guns) shooting whatever it could. No way was I going to engage anyone if I didn't have too. There was a demon prince, a thunder wolf lord, and others that were just as nasty. Everyone laughed as I sat there, but as the field got whittled down to only two I stood a pretty good chance. It may have not been the most heroic thing to do, but when you play guard you don't get to be heroic.
The above picture was almost at the end. My squad watched as the demon prince and space wolf lord fought it out. The wolf lord came out on top. At this point I didn't get any more pictures, but I'm sure you can figure out what happened.....or not. The wolf lord came at me, I got 4 shots at extreme range and did no wounds. He got closer, not close enough to charge (Whew) but close enough that I moved forward to get within rapid fire range. I hit with 7 shots, wounded with 6 and he failed two and he died. The lowly guardsmen came out on top of the HQ death match. To be honest I got lucky with getting a hill to camp, the lord having a wound on him, and everyone else being bloodthirsty and killing each other.
All in all it was a fun tournament, I got to play three fun games and it had a killer finale. Hats off the store and especially the organizer for putting on a fun event.
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