Mind Games held a 1000pts tournament today. My wife was going to a football game (we are a messed up couple) so I decided to skip out and go play Warhammer 40k! It also helped that she doesn't have a ticket for me, but we won't get into that. For this tournament, I took 1000pts of Tau. The list comprised of:
1. Tau Commander: Fusion blaster, missile pod, shield generator, iridium armor, stimulant injector.
2. Riptide: Ion blaster, smart missile system, stimulant injector, velocity tracker.
3. Riptide: Heavy burst cannon, fusion blaster, advanced targeting system, stimulant injector.
4. Fire warrior team w/Devilfish. (6)
5. Fire warrior team. (6)
6. Pathfinder team w/2 ion rifles. (9)
My theory with the game was first, big guns = dead models, and taking two riptides seemed like the best choice. The heavy weapons gave me some flexibility in taking out targets, and the heavy burst cannon plus pathfinder teams meant I could do some serious damage.
Game 1: Vs. Space Wolfs
Okay, repeat after me. DO NOT WALK SPACE MARINES ACROSS THE BOARD! That's a little harsh, but the way this game worked is he had 3 tactical squads footslogging across the board along with a dreadnought and speeder. I felt bad when I looked at the list, but what can you do? Game 1 came down to the first turn when I wiped one squad of tactical marines with his psycher off the table. This particular guy had a lance that removed a model on a failed initiative roll as well as a shoot-anywhere-beam-of-death weapon. Having two riptides, I knew that with my low initiative values I would be loosing a guy a turn so the psycher became first target. I passed the turn having killed off the psycher and the rest of the group whom were standing out in the open (missing in above picture, they were just to the right of that tactical squad in the middle). From there it became an academic game of wipe a unit a turn until there was only his speeder left.
Total: 1-0, 9 pts earned.
In all honesty, this was a rough match up for this guy, and he ended up not winning any games.
Game 2: Vs. Eldar
Wrathknights are tough. The above picture is the state of the board upon game ending. Simply put, this game was based around killing off his troops, toughness 6 models with 4++ saves and ignoring the walkers. Even that ended up being a pain, and by the end I had only killed 8 of the buggers. 8! Meanwhile his wraith knights had a field day with my riptides and troops, and in the end I lost this one 2-1 in-game points. He got first blood, and I was broken (a game rule the store uses). I had broken him (under the pt values we were using). In retrospect, I was unbroken, and so was he, so it should have only been 1-0 his favor.
1-1, 1 pt earned.
If I could change how I played, I would have changed one move where I dumped my firewarriors close to his troops, and instead would have pushed them back towards an objective for the tie. This guy ended up in 4th place, earning $25 for how nice his models looked. And they looked really good!
Game 3: Vs. Tau
Alright! I figured I had an easy win here since most of his army was kroot and firewarriors and old broadsides. Here's what the board looked like at the start:
I was set to run my riptides up the ally's between the center building and the two on my flank. Guess again, I suppose, since he seized the initiative! Player turn one ended up with him blasting my left riptide with 20 sniper rounds and every other heavy weapon he had. It had one wound left when an failed overcharge, failed armor save, and failed feel no pain gave him the first blood point. From there it ended up turning into a slug fest, with smart missiles killing kroot from the devil fish and the riptide slowly advancing forward under constant sniper and railshot rounds. His army kept on the riptide, eventually bringing it down in a hail of 12 S6 ap2 plasma shots, more than enough to finish off the tide with ease. My commander deep struck behind enemy lines, but that didn't end up mattering much because he really wasn't able to down anything important back there except distract all the heavy weapons. By the end of the game, both warlords were alive but he outscored me 7-4
1-2, 4 pts earned.
Him seizing the initiative totally cost me the game. Otherwise I could have boosted my shields up to 3++ on both tides and walked forward in a path of destruction, preventing myself from taking the game killing wounds. Absolutely nothing you can do to change the result of this one however, so there will be no loosing sleep over it.
So thus having earned a total of 14 pts, I found myself in 5th place. 1st through 3rd ended up in the money, and 4th won best painted. Placing 5th out of 9 players made me feel pretty good, and I hope to get the chance to play in some more tournaments in the future!
-Cj
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