Thomas Hegstrom-Oakey bring us his Game 1 report of an outstanding 5-0 performance at the Major, the Boise Cup 2019! For full event results via BCP, click here.
Hey my dudes, first off thanks for all the praise and congratulations I’ve received over the last 2 days. Its pretty great to have the appreciation from friends and the community. Just a quick shout out to the event. Aaron Albert, and Matt Johansen run a stellar shindig. Their local store (ABU Games) is in an old gym so they have lots of space to work with and a great store staff willing to work with them. This was their 3rd year running it and its grown to a healthy 80 Warhammer 40k spots, plus a small kill team event. Every table has great, unique, themed terrain on it. In fact many of the tables had unique names. The quality of the event shows, because not only does the local community show up to support it in large numbers, but every year so far its grown in size and is well attended by travelers.
The List:
Thomas Hegstrom Oakley – Boise Cup
- Detachment Battalion 5CP (Blood Angels) [34pl, 547pts]
- Chapter tactics: Blood Angels
+HQ+
Sanginor [150pts, 9pl] x1
Chaplain with jump pack [99pts, 6pl] x1 powerfist
Librarian with jump pack [127pts, 7pl] x1 force sword, inferno pistol
+Troops+
Scouts [57pts, 4pl] x5 stormbolter on sergeant, combat knives, bolt pistols
Scouts [57pts, 4pl] x5 stormbolter on sergeant, combat knives, bolt pistols
Scouts [57pts, 4pl] x5 stormbolter on sergeant, combat knives, bolt pistols
- Detachment Battalion 5CP (Blood Angels) [24pl, 434pts]
- Chapter tactics:Blood Angels
+HQ+
Sanginuary Priest with jump pack index [86pts, 5pl] x1 chainsword, chainsword
Captain with jump pack [124pts, 6pl] x1 thunderhammer, stormshield
+Troops+
Scouts [57pts, 4pl] x5 stormbolter on sergeant, combat knives, bolt pistols
Scouts [57pts, 4pl] x5 stormbolter on sergeant, combat knives, bolt pistols
Infiltrators [110pts, 5pl] x5 bolt carbines
- Detachment Vanguard 1CP (Blood Angels) [56pl, 918pts]
- Chapter tactics:Blood Angels
+HQ+
Librarian in Phobos armour [111pts, 6pl] x1 force sword, camo cloak
+Elites+
Sanguinary Ancient [83pts, 6pl] x1 encarmine sword, inferno pistol, standard of sacrifice
Death Company [380pts, 27pl] x15 5 thunderhammers, 10 chainsword, 10 bolters
Sanguinary Guard [344pts, 20pl] x10 8 encarmine swords, 2 powerfists, 10 angelus boltguns
- Operative Requisition Sanctioned -2 CP [5 pl, 85 pts]
- TOTALS: 12 CP, 16 drops [119pl, 1984pts]
Game one (ITC champions mission 1)
- For secondaries we both chose Head Hunter, and Marked for Death, while I took Ground Control as my 3rd choice, and he took Old School.
I played a stellar dude from my own neck of the woods named Colton. He was playing a pure Ultramarines list with very nasty shooting, including the insatiable G-man, 3 units of Aggressors, 2 units of Devastator Centurions with lascannons and a quad mortar. The table had no true ‘magic boxes’ but was actually set up as WYSIWYG terrain. There was however a large square ruin near the center of the table, that had the second floor entirely line of sight blocked. We had spearhead deployment and knowing I could always Forlorn Fury my Death Company into the second floor of the building and out of line of sight in case he went first I set them up on the line. He castled up most of his forces in and around a small ruin in one corner of his deployment zone using his Scouts to put up an initial screen and control the other objective in his deployment zone.
So, I set up pretty aggressively with Scouts and even my Infiltrators set up out of line of sight around the table to try and keep his Eversor Assassin from dropping in on my characters and have a quick move to the other objectives around the table. My characters I set up huddled behind the central ruin and even though some were in LoS he couldn’t target them because I had Scouts hidden closer. My Sanguinary Guard I opted to deep-strike.
Turn 1
I believe I won the roll off and made him go first. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything he could shoot at and he didn’t want to get much close with his shooty star for fear of my Death Company. He baited out some of his scouts and grabbed the other near center objective. On my turn I used my Librarians, and my unit of Infiltrators to take out one unit of Scouts and hurt another, keeping the Librarians far enough back that they couldn’t be targeted by his shooting. I strung my Infiltrators back enough to receive buffs from my characters that I’d moved forward to the second floor of the central ruin. That netted me a 4 to 1 turn.
Turn 2
In his second turn he moved some models around a bit and blew away my poor Infiltrators. He also dropped his Eversor in on my Librarians, which I unfortunately couldn’t completely screen. The Eversor failed to slay my jump pack Librarian even swinging twice, largely because I’d kept the Librarian in range of my ‘Standard of Sacrifice’ carrying Sanguinary Ancient (never leave home without the standard of sacrifice BA players). In my turn I used smites to take out out the Eversor who then blew up in my face and killed the Librarian anyway, womp womp. I failed to knock out his remaining hurt Scout squad from the first turn so he ended up with kill more while I ended up with hold more, 3 to 3.
Turn 3
Turn 3 I honestly can’t remember what he killed but I used my Smash Captain, and just arriving Callidus assassin to knock out his 3rd and final unit of scouts he’d deployed to hold the other objective in his deployment zone. Unfortunately because I flubbed an advance roll I couldn’t get a unit of Scouts close enough and out of line of sight to keep him from being able to fire at my Callidus who got stuck (because of charges, and pile-ins) out in the open. On the other side of the table I dropped my Sanguinary Guard behind the wall of ruins close to his aggressors, and G-man, but out of LOS of his Centurions. I brought most of the support characters over to support them while staying behind them to keep from getting plastered by the nasty Centurions.
Turn 4
On his turn 4 he moved in closer to my Sanguinary Guard behind the ruin with the Aggressors and end up taking out 4 of them with their shooting, and killed my unfortunate Callidus (this was a recurring theme for her this tournament). My turn 4 I decided to go into the Aggressors and G-man. Unfortunately I was stupid in that I got greedy and tried to take down G-man instead of just killing Tigurius and the Aggressors. So I netted Tigurius and one unit of aggressors, but got spanked by G-man for my trouble.
Turn 5
His turn 5 he moved the remaining 2 units of Aggressors and G-man into finish up my support characters. Because the table was true LoS and not magic boxes, I couldn’t keep all my characters in the close by ruin, 1″ from the wall, and out of LOS of the nasty Centurions. So the valiant Chaplain was fed to the ravenous G-man and his flaming sword. Luckily for me my opponent got greedy and advanced his Aggressors because he wanted to shoot my characters in the ruin. He did succeed at killing my Sanguinary Ancient, but couldn’t ace the Sanguinor. The Sanguinor heroically intervened into one unit of the Aggressors slaying them. He also blew away my poor Phobos Libby, who’d had the tenacity to move to close and wasn’t being protected by the now very, very dead Sanguinary Guard. My turn I used the Sanguinor to annihilate the other unit of Aggressors and then stand in the ruin valiantly protecting the Sanguinary Priest from the would be ravages of the lusty G-man who roared his frustration at being thwarted by a wall. The round ended 3-3 again me with more objectives him with more kills.
Turn 6
Round 6, much like the Big Bad Wolf, G-man continued to vent his frustration uselessly at a building he could not enter, and lament the fact that he also cannot climb because my death company were still hidden inside the second floor of the central ruin. My turn I used my remaining 4 CP to pick up my death company and place them back down near his ruin full of nasty Centurions and one lone Quad Mortar. knowing he couldn’t retaliate I brought the rest of my support characters out, made sure I controlled at least 4 objectives and contested a 5th to receive my first bonus point of the game. I made a 10″ charge using the 3d6 strat (since I’d just redeployed the death company) aced his Quad Mortar and shook hands over a game well played. We talked over things after the game, and agreed that the terrain did in fact favor my list. My take away was that my opponent probably needed to use his scouts more sparingly to screen while moving forward to try and root me out of the central ruin, or at least contest the other central objective so I wouldn’t receive the hold more point every turn. He agreed and also said if he had it to play again he’d use a different Assassin. My list really doesn’t care for the Vindicare. 31-18 win for me.
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Good job on winning 5-0!
However, you might want to have a look at the BRB p.179, that little blurb about targeting characters. Specifically this sentence:
“A CHARACTER can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting Phase if they are the closest visible enemy unit to the model that is shooting.”
They keyword you want to pay attention to is *visible*. I see this mistake a lot. Also note that it’s on a model to model basis.
“So, I set up pretty aggressively with Scouts and even my Infiltrators set up out of line of sight around the table — My characters I set up huddled behind the central ruin and even though some were in LoS he couldn’t target them because I had Scouts hidden closer.”
-> Judging by this text the Scouts are completely out of LoS. This means that the characters are actually viable targets.
I’d like to introduce you to the FAQ page 🙂 you might want to take a gander at some of the information there, specifically the changes to that rule. His description represents a legal and correctly-played scenario.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/
Which question do you refer to? Because the only one I find is asking “if a unit can’t shoot at the closest VISIBLE unit can it shoot a character instead”. Again, the keyword is VISIBLE. If the Scouts in the scenario are completely out of LoS like he writes, then the Character is a viable target. You’ll have to be more specific to convince me otherwise. 🙂
Per Big FAQ 2,
An enemy Character with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the
firing model and it is the closest enemy unit to the firing model. Ignore other enemy Characters with a Wounds characteristics of less than 10
when determining if the target is the closest enemy unit to the firing model.
This means that if any other enemy units (other than other Characters with a Wounds characteristics of less than 10) are closer, whether they
are visible or not, then the enemy Character cannot be targeted.
Q: If a model cannot shoot at the closest visible enemy unit for some reason (e.g. it is within 1″ of one of your units) but the next closest visible enemy unit is a Character, can that model then target the character?
A: No.
Check rulebook errata, page 4
Please specify what page in which document you are referring to.
Because I’m looking in the latest published FAQ (version 1.5) uploaded in May 29, and nowhere in this document can I find anything that says the visibilty part has been changed.
Kolobius, that question is a different scenario. The keyword is VISIBLE. If you read the original rule in the rulebook you can see that the question you copied is not necesarry as it’s already covered by the rule itself.
I finally found it, it’s in GHB2018 actually not the FAQ. I stand corrected. It really should be in the FAQ as well however!
I see were the problem is now. Friggin GW does not have the BIG FAQ 2 on the FAQ page anymore. How and why they do these things is insane. Now we have to go through and see which FAQ rulings fell off because Big FAQ 2 is not longer part of the official literature. I wonder if anything else fell off. #@!&*^!*#^@!!@$#%
It is not in the GHB as warhammer 40K does not have a GHB, and I could not find it in the CA 2019 FAQ nor the BRB FAQ.
Well I have to concede we are back to the original BRB ruling of the character rule as none of the literature to change it exists on the FAQ page any longer. What is a word that begins with F and ends with UCK?) Firetruck!!!!. What is GW thinking?
It’s in the latest CA I believe. They’re trying to put the FAQ points in those.
Looks like GW may have deleted that errata when they updated stuff for the latest FAQ, I can’t find it anymore.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t find it. If it’s the case that GW has updated it again (perhaps wrongly) without people noticing then it seems even more important to bring it up. :/
I finally found it, it’s in GHB actually not the FAQ. It really should be in the FAQ as well however!
I get it now the rules are in CA 2019 not the CA 2019 FAQ, or designers commentary, and not in the BRB FAQ. Whew that is a little insane. Did they put the index flow chart in either of the Chapter Approved?
I read your comment after I posted the above. Your are correct they deleted it and some other FAQ’s such as the designers commentary that lets us use the flow chart. This is a cluster FiretrUCK. So now we have to relearn the rules of the game yet again and everyone is going to be playing by different rules depending on which FAQs they have assimilated into their game. I pity the poor fool who starts the game now as they will have no idea what is going on. Sigh.
Congratulations! and thanks for writing up your games. Looking forward to the next one!
Hey thanks a bunch.
Congrats Thomas, I can’t think of more capable guy to go 5-0 with such a maligned army.
Thanks John, appreciate it.
I am surprised that the 1st game is the one that Thomas went with describing. He had some great match ups. Round 4 was a great one for example, Thomas’s BA vs Nick’s Hexfleet Virules.
Also why no article of the winner, Rich Kilton and his Orks?
This is just game one, friend, as it says at the bottom, the rest are on the way =)
It was a fun and extremely close game! Thomas did a good job of burning out my clock so I couldn’t play a round 6, heh.
Did you really “only” have 1984 pts? Couldn’t/wouldn’t squeeze another 16 pts in somewhere?
I switched from a second smash captain (124pts) to a Phobos Librarian (111pts) 2 days before the event, and didn’t have time to make any weapon switches (another thunderhammer on the DC, or maybe some plasma pistols on the Sanguinary Guard) in time.