Renegade Open Tournament Report

Renegade Open in the

Wastes of the Frozen North

Hello again wargamers.  Joshua Dearth back again with another event report.  This time I got to visit the frozen wastes of Minneapolis in the depths of the December months.  This one almost didn’t happen or me as we just got over 6 feet of snow the week prior to the event and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make the drive across the midwest.  But alas, Tzeentch blessed the region that weekend by allowing for 50 degree temperatures the day before I was to leave, and the temperature didn’t start to drop dramatically back down to the single digits until the night I started the drive back, although the drive back saw some very interesting weather to include freezing fog, massive winds, snow/sleet/lightning at the same time.  I know, Chaos is fickle!

So for those of you who read my last report from my experience at TSHFT this past August you might remember how the community came together and bailed me out of a tight spot when my entire army was stolen and various members of the community and a particular game shop (Game Wizard in Bremerton, WA) came to my rescue to get me enough models to still be able to fly to the east coast to compete in the Nova Open.  That was such a fun weekend and I cannot thank the community enough for allowing me the opportunity to attend.

So fresh out of finally rebuilding/repainting my entire army I was able to attend another GT, this one in the midwest.  The Renegade Open just outside the Twin Cities has been around for a few years.  It is held in the Fantasy Flight Game Center just next door to Fantasy Flight’s headquarters.  (quite a posh setup if I do say so myself).  Complete with a cafe with some phenomenal food, beer, and a very extensive play area.  The general gaming area was pretty much full of people the entire weekend playing various games from Warhammer, X-Wing, a plethora of board games, and pen and paper RPG’s.  It did not feel at any time though that it was overcrowded (a problem I feel a lot of game shops suffer from at times).  The event itself was held in a separate convention style hall just off the game area so it was isolated enough to feel like its own thing.  Here is a basic diagram of the place.

This event did a couple of things a little differently.  First off was that they had two different areas that you could compete in Hobby and Gaming.  You could show up to this event and not even try to win best general and still get a great prize by just having a beautiful army.  Or you could go for just kicking as much ass as you could and say screw that whole painting thing.  Lastly if you wanted you could just be that amazing cheese sauce guy and bring your own chips too and try to win them both!  Also, the primary objectives in this event were a group of 4 chips that were given to you at the start of the event.  You could choose any one of those chips to be a primary objective each game, but you wouldn’t get any of the chips back until after the third round.  Thus you had to choose wisely.  Also like the Nova Open this event would do 3 rounds of regular games and then break everyone up into “pods” that they would then compete in like a separate event on rounds 4-6.

For those that don’t remember my list that I ran at TSHFT and Nova I will recap it here:

Ultramarine CAD

• Tigurius (warlord)
• 5 man Tac squad w/Pod
• 5 man Tac squad w/Pod
• Drop Pod
• Drop Pod
• Drop Pod
• 3 Grav Centurions with scope
• 3 Grav Centurions with scope
• 3 Grav Centurions with scope

Ultramarines Skyhammer Annihilation

• 5 man Assault squad w/2 flamers
• 5 man Assault squad w/2 flamers
• 5 man Devastator squad with 4 multi meltas w/Pod
• 5 man Devastator squad with 4 multi meltas w/Pod

Inquisitorial Detachment

• Coteaz
• Inquisitor w/3 servo skulls

With the release of the new Kayoun book I just had to try the use of the new hip thing “The Hunter’s Eye”.  So I swapped my chapter tactics to White Scars and took the hunter’s eye on a level 2 librarian and made the inquisitor a level 1 psyker and gave him the Daemon Blade just because it sounded cool and I wanted to try it out.

So I will be honest I was curious how this list was going to do going into this event because I felt like the meta had changed enough in the past couple months that the list might not have been as competitive as I had hoped.  But since I went through all the effort of rebuilding this entire list and painting it twice, I figured I owed it to myself to give it another go.

So here is a breakdown of the event:

Round 1 against Flying Nids

My opponent ran a 7 FMC tyranid list.  Complete with 3 Flyrants, 3 Harpies, and 1 Crone backed up by a skyblight formation and a malanthrope in a bastion.  Nice list that could hit really hard, especially since I had absolutely NO anti-air defense.  I got SUPER lucky and got Perfect Timing on Coteaz, and I got to go first.  To make matters worse for my opponent I had a really good turn of dice and he had some pretty mediocre rolls.  After turn 1 my opponent had half a squad of gargoyles left.  Only one unit of gargoyles recycled turn 2 and the one that recycled got caught off guard by Coteaz’s “I’ve been expecting you” rule.  We called it after that. Marines win 11-0 I would like to point out that my opponent was a truly great opponent and took this whole game with such a great attitude.  He had a really bad matchup that turned even worse with dice and luck, but kept such a great attitude about it.

Round 2 against Khorne Daemonkin

My second opponent was another truly great opponent that was running a KDK list with the gorepack and the D-thirster, soulgrinder and a 20 man khorne dog unit with a juggernaut lord.  This game was the closest thing to a 40K version of roshambo that I have ever seen.  So I got to go first again on this game.  I dropped down almost encircling his army.  Took out his soulgrinder and the d-thirster, took out 2 bike squads, one unit of bloodletters, and killed a few dogs.  He then charged my entire army with his entire army! So I kicked him in the Khorne Nuggets and he kicked me right back in my white scars! After the smoke cleared from the turn 1 shenanigans, I thoroughly hit-and-ran all over the place then proceeded to unload and recharge where I could.  I want to note that my inquisitor got the vampire ability and the eternal warrior/fnp ability from his Daemon Blade this game.  He charged into the big unit of khorne dogs along with my librarian, two of the cent squads and one of the assault squads.  My little inquisitor had 8 wounds by the end of the game along with his EW and FNP.  Along with taking out a summoned Daemon Prince that my opponent got to summon turn 1 with his Blood Tithe.  He was a little MVP inquisitor that game.  That one ended bottom of turn 2.  Marines 11-0.

Round 3 Trent Northington’s Eldar/Ultramarines

Trent went on to be the champion of this event.  He was running a jet bike heavy eldar army with an Autarch and 2 Farseers backed up by an Ultramarine Skyhammer.  This one is where my dice decided to start leveling off on me.  He made me go first this time (not good when he has a skyhammer with Grav as well).  I dropped in and failed to get two of my cent squads into cover with difficult terrain rolls of 2 and 3 inches.  I lost all of one squad turn 1 and Coteaz’s cent squad got pinned by the skyhammer as well.  Not a great start.  Through a combination of a few bad clutch rolls and my opponent knowing exactly how to take advantage of when I made a mistake I ended up losing that one 7-5.  It was a real hard fight all the way through.  Trent and I have seen each other at a few events and had a great game.  He really played it well and knows how to keep his cool and stay focused.  Very well played by a great general.  It was really interesting to see the Skyhammer used in conjunction with another codex like that.

 Round 4 against Eldar/Dark Eldar

This round was the first round of the “pods”.  My opponent was running the Wraith host along with a minimal Dark Eldar detachment.  He deployed the Wraithknight, one unit of D-Scythes in a Wave Serpent, another wave serpent, two units of warriors, spiritseer, and wraithlord turn 1.  I dropped in and killed everything except the wraithknight I dropped 4 wounds off it turn 1 and with some amazing FNP rolls he kept from getting tabled that turn.  This was a game of “catch me if you can” and it ended turn 5 with a roll and me not being able to get across the board fast enough to catch the speed of the Eldar.  My opponent won 11-2.  Was a brutal fight, my opponent thought he was pretty much done after that first turn, but not willing to throw in the towel, he fought it out and ended up winning it.

Round 5 against Joe Wirtz War Convocation

This was my first game against a War Convocation.  He had an allied section of marines with a Techmarine, and a Cullexis in a pod.  He ended up going first on this one.  I decided to play this one much more conservatively than I normally do and keeping most of my army on my half of the table or in the middle.  Forcing him to come out to me for most of the fight and thus giving me much more board control.  In the end I ended up winning the game by being able to maintain that board control long enough.  Joe was a great opponent with a TRULY AMAZING looking army.  He obviously put a lot of love and work into that list, custom converting his marine scouts from servitor models, his Techmarine was scratch built and looked great, and he even custom built his own Cullexis to fit the theme of his Mechanicum army.  Was such a beautiful army and he played it very well.  I was truly impressed by the War Convocation and am seeing why they have such an appeal.

Round 6

This round I drew the Ringer of the tournament Jorell Rohan.  He and I had met once before at the Bugeater in Omaha in June.  He was running the new Tau at this event.  He (as the ringer) was allowed to use the new Mont’ka book.  He ran a really suit centric list with a lot of markerlight support.  I got first turn, he deployed 5 individual broadsides across his deployment zone from one side of the board to the other, and his three pathfinder units that were part of the formation that grants them stealth as long as they don’t move were in my two corners and the middle piece of terrain.  I was worried if I was going to be able to hit an army so spread out in one turn.  I dropped down in almost every spot I needed, threw out a couple good psychic powers got a lot of well placed shooting and by nearly the end of my shooting phase all he had left was a single broadside in a ruin and 1 lone pathfinder that was running.  The pathfinder happened to be suffering from soul blaze at the time and I had a unit of 5 assault marines in position to charge the broadside that would have only needed a 7 inch charge.  My decision would come down to my last single centurion split firing into either the broadside or the lone pathfinder.  I chose to fire at the broadside and see if I could get lucky at the end of the turn.  With the broadside dead we started the bottom of turn 1 with a single roll that would go on to be one of the most memorable 40k wins of my gaming career.  The last single pathfinder died to soulblaze at the bottom of turn 1! Thus winning me the game as it was his last model on the table!  The judges thought this was such an amazingly weird thing to have happen that they awarded me a raffle ticket.

The Renegade open did have a few things different at their event from standard ITC events.  First off they allowed massive fortifications, they used the more liberal interpretation of the Hunter Contingent Rule, and they allowed the Tau Supremacy Suit from FW.  That thing was really cool to see on the table at this event! Notably none of those things effected the top tables of this event, even slightly.

So after it was all said and done the staff at the Renegade gave out all of their placks and trophies for the winners.  They had given out SO much prize support all weekend long to raffle drawings, and they gave away $400 cash to the winner Trent Northington! They also had sold special raffle tickets to raise money for the Toys For Tots program that would give away a nicely painted Necron army.  The last major drawing they did before the Necron army was called and I was in the middle of conversing with someone in regards to my companion that had attended the weekend with me and I heard the number get called and it happened to be the raffle that I had won for tabling my opponent with soulblaze!  I rushed up to the front to claim my prize and was handed a box, I eloquently asked “What is it?”.  They laughed as they said it is a Tau Supremacy Suit from FW! I suddenly got a tad more excited as they snapped a picture of me and my rather amazing prize!  I can’t wait to get it painted up, even if I can’t use it in the ITC! Still a sexy beast!

So all in all it was a truly great weekend.  Fantasy Flight has a great game center, the staff and players at this event were top notch.  I had 6 amazing games against some very competitive opponents and did NOT ONCE have to play against “That Guy”.  I have been playing tournaments for a long time and I can honestly say that the tournament scene in Warhammer 40K has never been better than it is right now.  The competition is great, the armies are so varied and unique, and the players are just turning out better and better lately.  I for one am so happy with what 7th edition has brought to the community and cannot wait to see what the future has in store.  Thanks again for reading and I will have another report for you guys in a few weeks as I will be attending the Toledo Game Room GT and TSHFT in January in back to back weekends.

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