Berks Winter Blast 2015

A little late in the posting, but finally getting around to posting some photos from the Berks Winter Blast Tournament. 

Now this is a team tournament, each player takes a 1000 point list. no battle brothers are allowed, no allies are allowed. everyone is basically for themselves. forgeworld is allowed. so.. I teamed up with Jared with his Chaos Marines and I took vanialla Space Marines. (I wanted to take Dark Angles but apparently Deathwing Knights can't ride in the storm raven in the Adeptus Storm Wing Formation - SO LAME) so I took vanilla marines. boring, but whateve.

our plan from the outset was to deal with imperial knights, so we spent a few weeks trying to come up with a list that would fair well against said knights.. it was only closer to tournament time that we realized that due to the restrictions on the event, knights would not be allowed. So Jared and I discussed briefly if we should switch up the list, but we decided against it. 

So.. what did we bring you say? air cav... lots of air cav..

Jared brought his chaos fire raptor and storm eagle. I brought the storm wing. that is a TON of meaty flyers right there with enough fire power to down any attempt at some anti flyer lists.. our opponents would really have had to go all out on the air defense to put up a fight against this. 

we each took a dedicated combat unit as well. I took a chaplain with 5 hammernators, Jared took a warp smith and 5 decked out chosen. the warp smith is in case the eagle gets immobilized, he can repair so the guys can actually get out heh. yes, this did happen a couple of times in practice games. 

to round it out, I took an imperial bunker (fortress of redemption tower) with a comms relay and 2 scout squads, jared took a large cultist squad and an autocannon havoc squad... these groups of guys were just there to make sure the coms relay was in effect. if the flyers didn't come on until late game, we were hosed..

Game 1 we played a deathwing, GK terminator list. the GK libby rolled invis with a large group of terminator escort. belial deepstruck in with terminators into our tower backfield, but we ended up getting the flyers on and that was a wrap. terminators just can't deal with all the fire power of the flyers. the invis unit was still around at the end of the game, but the objective was table quarters, and with only one squad remaining it was a solid victory for the air cavalry.

Game 2 was against chaos marines and chaos demons. summoning demons.. and it was an objective mission... oh boy.. very tough. one of our opponents was a very new player and he was still learning all the ropes for the chaos demons, so many special rules.. they really do just ignore most of the rulebook, heh. I believe this game only got to turn 4 or so. we narrowly eeked out a victory as the warp smith and chosen carved a path through screamers and cheap scoring demons... the storm talon sped in at the last minute to blow away and objective secured troop and contest the last objective. it was a VERY narrow victory, man did those guys give us a fight for our lives.

Game 3 the dice turned to favor the air force. We played against our good friends billy and eric from the berks club. both teams were 2-0 going into the game so we knew we were in contention for some top spots here. our opponents were running 2 space marine lists.. one was clan raakun (racoon?) and the other was a vanilla chapter (I never remember what actual tactics eric chooses, just that his army is star wars themed heh). but.. the libby on bike rolled invis. ouch. HOWEVER, the dice would decide the day for sure. our were red hot, and our opponents were ice cold. it ended up being a very decisive win and we called it since it was kill points and we were up quite a bit. loved the guys, just the dice apparently had a new master that round. 

All in All, we finished tied for 3rd place. equally our showing last year. so we were pretty proud about that. We did feel a little dirty with all the flyers in the list, but with all the tau and eldar spam we saw around, truth be told, we only felt a little dirty hehe. 

again another fantastic event run by the berks guys, really enjoyed ourselves and we will definitely be back next year, hey.. that's two third place finishes in a row, gotta defend that title!