Now for Moros and I, this was our very first GT experience. We have participated in what our local area calls a mini-GT but after experiencing what a real GT was like… They are sadly mistaken. So take this review for what it is.
I want to first start out by saying that we had an absolute blast at this GT. Again, Moros and I were GT virgins going in, but we also were accompanied by Lemun Ross and Chef Todd (two of the greybeards from our club) who have been around the GT scene many times over in their 40k careers and even they had a blast. I think it did worlds to dispel the ever prevalent 'competitive 40k isn't fun' themes that have been echoing through the local scenes. It can be fun and the BFS GT proved it.
We all decided to go up a day early and make sure we found the place and had all our ducks in a line. Since we were there so early we decided to play in the team tournament on Friday. For me, this was the highlight of the weekend. I ran my deathwing partnered with Moros' Blood Angel Mech, it was not a great combination, I wish we would have had our Khorne Demons / Deathwing combo instead, but it was fun nonetheless.
Round 1 we found an Ork/GK list. The mission with kill points (which btw shows how stupid KPs are in competitive play, it just makes for boring ass games) and the GK player simply used his rifle dreads to carve through Moro's razors and preds and the ork player just contained the threat bubble the entire game and they ended up winning like 4 to 1 or something. It was a very very boring game. The dreads got a couple easy KPs early and then just ran away the rest of the game.
Round 2 we played Fritz and (John?) from the BFS club. Nids and Orks. We were excited, we actually got to play Fritz! Game was spearhead, quarters primary. So we parking lot it up in our corner. Fritz and John take a null deployment strategy and start the game with just lootas and a Tyrant. We shoot the crap outta both and somehow the lootas pass their leadership (of which they made 5 in the game and were still around at the end) Doom comes down and eats an entire deathwing squad (yes… it happened) zoans came down and wiffed.
The orks start coming in from reserve and the terminators meet them head on, taking 4 complete turns to finish them off, with a little help from the Blood Angels. Only Belial and my lone dreadnought were alive from the Deathwing at the end of the game. It took the dread 4 turns to kill that doom in close combat but he eventually did, I feared the warp lance and thought the dread could punch them him faster than trying to rapid fire him down from 9 wounds after sucking all the souls from the termie squad.
On turn 5 he managed to do it, and moved in to take the quarter away from the Hive Tyrant and Lootas, we ended up winning this game 3 quarters to 1 but only won the last quarter by less than 60 points.. thank you Fritz for not taking more upgrades on that tyrant.
Round 3 we played a draigo wing / TWC counts as lists, and we were not looking forward to playing these guys. Main reason? Because this is a GT and you are playing proxy armies? Really? I'm glad we were sorely mistaken. These guys were my favorite opponents for the tournament. They were super nice and super fun to play against. We had a very back and forth battle raging. His TWC would push in, my termies would push back, the baals and pallys cross firing the entire game, it was a blast.
. It ended up coming down to the ability to making 3++ saves and his TWC were able to do it better than my termies and they ended up taking a minor victory in a very well fought and bloody match.
We were all exhausted after leaving Lancaster at 5am and not getting to our hotel until after 10pm, we just crashed and waited for the main event on Saturday.
THE GT.
Swag - A GW dice cube which we had to use for all tournament games, a GW tape measure, which we had to use for all tournament games, some magnets, some weird basswood terrin/objective marker from one of the sponsors and when we lost on Sunday we would get official BFS poker chips / objective markers. Not too shabby.
Round one - I draw Jeff from the BFS club and he's running Space Wolves. His list is pretty much the standard SW list. 3x long fangs, rune priest, TWC, las/plas razors for his fangs, and 5 or 6 rhinos with grey hunters, wolf guard sprinkled in here and there, and of course the wolf scouts.
It was Dawn of War and he had everything coming in on turn 1. I deployed 2 termie squads and Belial behind the big terrain piece in the middle, I wanted shots at wherever he wanted to come in on turn 1 without giving him any idea where I was going to come on at. His army came in, in a basic standard gunline, with a parking lot of rhinos on either side. Fangs were in cover, TWC were in between two parking lots, not really in the open for me to start taking pop shots at. I pulled sort of a reverse flank maneuver and brought everything in on one corner maximizing my firepower I could bear onto the long fangs (two packs near) and lengthening the distance between myself and his main parking lot of rhinos and his TWC. This was a grueling tooth and nail fight right to the very end. I was able to stun/immobilize most of his parking lot which caused my opponent to make bad decisions about the men inside the transports, he knew he couldn't fight me with only partial forces. I had Belial's terminator squad surge into his other parking lot between the fangs and the TWC under the covering fire from the Land Raider, Preds and Speeders.
I had a secondary terminator squad running straight at his fangs to hopefully take some heat off my armor, but the wolf scouts came and chewed through those termies like butter. (yeah.. 5 wolf scouts with a power weapon and a wolf guard with PF killed a 5 man deathwing squad - go figure right?) but I would have my revenge. He got the rune priest out to deal with Belial and his command squad charging in, ended up losing a multi assault with a 3 man squad of wolf guard, the Priest, a 5 man hunter squad all against my termies and I wiped them clean, the priest got away but I was able to run him off the table on turn 5. This game really came down to a nice turn 5 for me. I was finally able to plink his long fangs long enough to kill them outright, he lost a few more rhinos due to missile fire and belial continued to rampage through his lines. I believe it was kill points and I took him with a major victory. (my land raider had one wolf guard squad shoot at him with combi meltas, one of which hit and wrecked it, that’s it, one hit, one wreck, this would become a very common theme for the weekend)
Round 2 I faced off against Bob Evers from The Brothers Grimm. This guy was hilarious but at times I felt bad for the other players around me. He was loud, he was big, he was a great guy, but again, he was that one guy which you could always tell where he was playing in the room and how he was doing. Bob and I had a lot of fun in this game. He brought his Salamander with Vulkan Marines. His list was what I'm calling a 'noob' list, but Bob was able to make it work. He basically took the default Land Raider, libby,vulkan, and termie friends as his main assault force, but then in support, he took basically 1 of everything else from the SM codex. He has a speeder storm with scouts, land speeder with MM, vindi, attack bike with MM, rifle dread, thunder fire, and 2x10 tacts in rhinos, and a las sponsor pred. really? Haha. I soon learned that Bob plays to have fun, winning is just a bonus for him. I have had a lot of practice dealing with vulkan shenanigans from playing lemun ross at our club so I knew I had the toys to deal with bob's list. But sometimes the dice gods have different plans for me.
He push his land raider straight through the middle of the table and made a beeline for my foot termies. I through some fire back his way, did nothing to his raider, but was able to wreck the rifle dread and take off a weapon and immobilize the predator. I push my own land raider into his zone, hoping it would perhaps make him make a mistake by extending my threat bubble to his vacant backfield. Next, he moved his land raider 12 more inches into my zone and was now in assault range of my two foot squads. Take one multimelta shot at my raider using machine spirit and wrecks it. Bullocks! He got lucky, if he didn't take my land raider out right then and there, he was going to have massive problems dealing with termies and the raider running around on his half of the board. He charges into belial's squad and the other termie squad and even with nullzone I hold fast. He punks Belail, bit surprise, but I finally start rolling some shield saves and I hold. (now Bob is worried, he was hoping to wipe me there). I blow another weapon off the pred, I blow away his attack bike (which took out a speeder) and his speeder, who deepstruck and wiffed. And I assault the scouts that came in on their storm along the far table edge. My terminators march across the board towards his objective to capture/contest. All he has is a TF cannon and a 10 man tact squad over there.
My terminators will continue to do battle, I have the upper hand but he is making 3 up and 3 up on vulkan and one last shield terminator. My tacticals take 3 turns to kill his scout squad and only the sergeant survives. (no seriously what was up with scouts in this tourney?) my terminators eventually go down to thunder fire cannon and the autocannon from the battered pred (rolling 1s is your friend) and it'll take the rest of my army the entire game to take down vulkan and that long termie, but they cause enough havoc for me to lose the game 3 quarters to 1. The dice turned on me after turn 3 and bob just would not fail any sort of save whether it be armor, cover, or invuln. Bob was a great guy to play against, and we had a blast, I think at any given time we have 3 to 4 people watching our game, just to listen to the antics goings on.
Game 3 had me up against Bob's close friend Brandon, also from Brother's Grimm. He was playing Space Wolves and his list was a little less efficient than my opponent in round 1, Jeff. I believe Brandon's list had 2x long fangs packs and 1x in a pod with multi-meltas and logan. (yay logan bomb) some wolf guard in razorbacks and a smattering of grey hunters in rhinos. Oh and he had at least one dread. It was pitched battle, objectives. He deployed first and put his 2x fangs squad in the far corner of the map into terrain and the rest of his army on the opposite side, save one 10 man rhino to capture the far objective. I decided to deny flank him with everything in the far corner, like I was playing spear head, and was going to rush his parking lot knowing that he would not have enough fire power top stop that assault. I put two preds down at the far end to take blows with the fangs, I gambled that str 8 rockets would be not be very effective against my armor 13 and I would just dakka him off the table at some point. I also had one rhino in reserve to come in and steal my far objective.
He brought down logan and fangs in a pod directly in front of my blob into the terrain piece. This may have been a decent strategy against say.. an IG or GK list. But.. not against 3x termie squads waitin to chew through your very expensive unit, very quickly. He shot his multi-meltas at my transports for some reason who btw had cover saves due to the odd shape of the terrain piece, instead of my speeders, (I guess he was going right for my scoring units) and I made both cover saves. In my turn I chewed through his squad and pod that I knew he was in trouble from this point on. He had lost too much on that turn to really come back. Which is pretty much what happened the rest of the game. I charged everything into the objective directly across from me. Where most of his army was blobbed and I was able to take it out. Belial's squad rushed for the center objective, beat down a 10 man grey hunter squad and took the point. And I even had a speeder turbo and contest the objective his fangs and rhino were baby sitting in the far corner.
The strategy with the predators paid off as well, he was unable to do much to the armor 13 and I slowly plinked his fangs to nill. My reserve rhino came on and just stole a free objective as well. So I ended up taking this one 4 objectives and 1 was contested. Fun game, but my opponent was really beat for the day. I think he had, had some rough goes with dice in previous games and he just didn't seem up for this matchup. He made a very fatal flaw with the pod bomb drop, losing all those points on turn 1 was catastrophic. He was better off deploying that pod on my objective on my far corner edge and making me come to him. (which would have been very tough considering my deployment) his dread also got caught in no man's land in the middle of the table instead of helping with the defense of my assault on his objective. Again, was a GREAT, fantastic opponent, he had a lot of jokes and laughs during the game, it was just not a completely optimized list for the event is all.
2-1 heading into round 4.
Round 4 had me up against some scary stuff. Venom spam dark eldar.
But that is going to have to wait till part 2…
