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Throne of War GT Part 2 of 2

Reecius

Hey everyone, Reecius here back with part 2 of my Throne of War GT report. To read part 1, click here.

So after day 1 I was sitting pretty in second place but had a tough game ahead of me against Fred and his Ultramarines. His list was nasty.

Game 4

Spearhead Detachment

Ultramarines Spearhead Detachment

Ultramarines Super Heavy Aux

So, a very tough list and one that is quite popular where Fred is from (the Midwest) thanks to Aaron Towler who’s been very successful with it, going 6-0 and the LVO last year in addition to many other strong performances with it. Fred has a little spin on it to make it his own and boy, was it an intimidating list for me.

The terrain had a big impact on this game as well, as we had 3 long LoS blockers running down the middle of the table and we rolled Hammer & Anvil deployment, meaning they basically divided the table into two 2.5’x6′ firing lanes making it very hard to hide anything. Almost any other deployment would have made it far easier to hide but it is what it is. I got to determine who would deploy first/go first and chose to go for it but in retrospect, I should have gone second as it would have allowed me to counter delpoy Fred to gain some better protection. I deployed as centrally as I could behind the LoS blocker in my deployment zone but as described, due to its orientation relative to our deployment zones, it didn’t do a whole lot. Fred wisely forced a flank, he just forced the opposite flank I had thought he would, giving him clear lanes of fire into my backfield but putting him away form almost all of the objectives.

Fred failed to seize and as he had deployed on the line I knew my Scout Sentinels would be able to tag his Predators turn 1 to stop them from shooting so if I focused my Tank Commander and Basilisk on a Repulsor, I felt confident I could take it out but my dice just failed me. My Basilisk double shot and had re-rolls to hit thanks to Aerial Spotters, hit 10 times, but I rolled eight 1’s and 2’s to wound, lol. Son of a $!^#! The Tank Commander picked up the slack a bit but it just wasn’t meant to be and I ended up only doing 8 wounds total to it. Womp, womp.

From there the game went off the rails hard. I tried to keep my opponent pinned in, which I largely did but I just couldn’t kill anything. Throughout the game I killed 2 units total, it was rough. I just couldn’t convert anything I needed. The Bullgryn beat up Bobby G but he got back up and then was able to finish them off with the rest of the army’s firepower. Had he not gotten back up, I could have made a game of it but them there’s the breaks. Plus, the Eliminators are BRUTAL against Guard. They basically killed 2 characters a turn no matter where they were as they ignore LoS. Fred kept them in Repulsors to avoid getting wasted by indirect fire before they could shoot but as they get +2 to hit they were still hitting me on 2’s, lol. That was rough.

So, ultimately, I was winning the board control game but getting my teeth kicked in in the gun fight. By turn 3 it was essentially over and I was just sitting on objectives getting secondary points where I could. Fred, having neutralized my anti-tank threats, then started to retake the board and that was that.

Ultramarines win 31-20

Game 5

Red Corsairs Battalion

Alpha Legion Battallion

A very cool list piloted by Brett Perkins, an excellent player who has won the LVO, so I knew I was in for a tough game. Thankfully though, we got a city table that had a ton of buildings on it which was massively helpful for me to allow me to hide form his very nasty firepower.

Brett seized on me but I had deployed ultra defensively and much of my army was out of LoS so I weathered the storm without taking too much damage. Brett made a mistake, infiltrating his Culstists and getting them up in my face to try and take out some Catachans but left them vulnerable to a Bullgryn counter-charge which between them and the Catachans, murdilated the Cultists, stopping them from being able to regenerate. I was also able to thankfully take out the melee Dread bottom of turn 1 to avoid that thing pulping some of my vehicles.

From there the game became cat and mouse, with both of us trying to use buildings to gain advantageous firing lanes without getting smoked in return. The Bullgryn went hard up the middle with a Catachan blob while the crazy fast Smash Lord tagged my Tank Commnader and stopped him from shooting for the rest of the game. Move+advance+Warp Time+charge is no joke, lol.

I managed to tag a Contemptor with some Catachans in the same way, stopping him from shooting and smoked one other Dread giving me some breathing room but as they’re so mobile they were able to take out my artillery tanks pretty early on and once again, I found myself without a lot of tools to hurt the vehicles. Brett also used the More Where They Came From strat to recycle the big unit of Chaos Marines to jump into my backfield, kill an Engineer unit and threaten my priority objective.

The game was extremely close at this point and to both of our surprise the TO announced we only had 15 minutes left and we were only on top of turn 3! That was weird as I tend to stay very cognizant of time but we both must have been playing very slow. All of my other games went to turn 6 with time to spare.

Unfortunately that put me in a super strong position as I had bottom of the turn and was able to make a play I normally wouldn’t if the game was going to keep going, and bum rushed Brett’s priority objective and swarmed it, taking it away to give me hold, hold more and the bonus point, letting me win the game by 1 point.

While it’s always nice to win, it’s lame to win like that. Neither of us felt the other was slow playing, we just lost track of time. That is why clocks are so important in competitive play, IMO. However, it is what it is and I was able to secure victory by a single point.

Astra Militarum win, 12pts, finishing 4-1.

Big congratz to Fred who won the event. He and AbusePuppy went head to head in the finals and tied, but Fred had gotten so many points previously, he won out. It’s always nice to say the only person that beat you at a tournament was the event winner!

I ended up in 3rd overall, just behind AbusePuppy who got second, and best Imperial player!

Thoughts on my List

My list performed well but in my last two games I really felt the lack of anti tank weapons. I struggled to deal with the tanks and dreads and feel that I need to go back to the older version of my list I had won Broadside Bash with, that had the outflanking Plasma Vets. They pack a serious punch and would have been massively helpful at this event. With the increase in popularity of the small model count armies that rely on efficient vehicles to do a lot of the heavy lifting, I think it’s the right choice. The 3 different specialist detachments were cool but I don’t think you need them all. Likely I will combine the Cadian and Catachan detachments into one and make the Catachan Brigade the Artillery Company, and run the Tallarn detachment reconfigured to bring in the Plasma Vets. Or, alternatively, I may go back to using the Tempestus Drop Force which is also really effective. The cool thing about Guard is that they have so many good options.

The all-stars were the Bullgryn, the artillery tanks, the Tank Commander and the Catachan infantry. So points efficient.

In all though, a great event and one I highly recommend. I plan on coming out next year and my cousin Ranto, from Oz, wants to come out as well with his family as it’s about half way between both of us and we can have a fun family vacation in addition to getting our 40k on!

Thanks for reading.

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