Over this past weekend, my friend Orion and I attended a Warhammer 40,000 team tournament called Strange Bedfellows. The idea is each player in a team of two brings 1000 points of a faction of their choice to play along with their team partner against other teams. There were no restrictions on what factions could pair with each other... So there were a fair few Imperium/Chaos teams...
We decided to keep it "thematic" fielding two imperial forces that could very likely be fighting together! Orion brought Space Wolf Space Marines, and I brought an artillery detachment of my Tallarn Imperial Guard!
Force construction in 10th edition is pretty loose, so there were a few forces that had only a few BIG models (Greater Daemons of Chaos! etc.)
DAY ONE
The event took place at the upstairs banquet room at a local pub; The Thirsty Scholar. Seems like a nice enough venue.
Round One
The Replacements: Zach (Necrons) Tom (Chaos Space Marines - with Abbadon!)
Our first game was against Zach and Tom. Zach was the tournament organizer and he and Tom put this force together at the last moment because there was an odd number of teams and didn't want to have to make anyone take a bye. (Actually, WE would have been totally okay with a bye - Orion had noted that there were only 11 teams and suggested I bring some Warhammer Underworlds stuff in case we did get a bye... WE WERE PREPARED!)
All set up for Round One.
The wolves took off to go chew on some Necrons and Traitor Marines and my Tallarn just sat back and pummelled them with artillery... The system seemed to be working as we'd intended it to...
Some of the Necrons we were facing.... one of (I think) two or three C'tan Shards and some Tomb Blades?
Scout Sentinels doing their thing - spotting enemy targets for the artillery!
Space Wolf Primaris marines charging some of those Tomb Blades.
Thunderwolves chewing on one of the Shards...
The remains of one of the Thunderwolf units being beat down by two of the Shards and some Chaos Space Marine Havocs(?).
This guy showed up and I thought it was going to ruin my day...
But then Abbadon beat it to the punch...
By the end of Round Five my entire force had been utterly destroyed... Mostly be Abbadon the Destroyer! Wasn't sure how this was going to end, but when all was totalled up we scored enough to eek out a victory at 90-85.
(and when I say "WE scored enough"... I mean "ORION's Space Wolves scored enough...")
Round Two
Knights²: Alex (Grey Knights) and Carlin (Chaos Knights)
Carlan's force of Chaose Knight Wardogs - looked pretty frightening...
Turned out to be not so frightening when I can't stop rolling sixes... This 60 point Scout sentinel (which was really just brought along because their spotting ability VASTLY improves the Artillery's ability to hit), acutally hit one of them in the middle of the bunch with a Hunter-Killer Missile (ONLY 50% chance of hitting) and then rolled a six for damage (on d6, so... the maximum)... AND THEN hit it with a Krak Missile (also only 50% chance of hitting...) and then AGAIN rolled six damage (max on the d6 damage roll) BOTH Saving throws were failed and then Carlan rolled a 6 to see if his Wardog blew up, which meant it did... and dealt mortal wounds to all of the other Wardogs surrounding it...
Yikes...
And then the Thunderwolf Cavalry charged in to chew the legs off the rest of them.... I think only one or two survived the first round...? And the rest were finished off in the second or third round...
Despite fighting an uphill battle at this point, Alex kept teleporting his Grey Knights here and there desperately trying to score victory points... before getting blown to bits by the artillery which, for a while, seemed like I could only roll fives, sixes, and ones... but the ones were only on hit rolls against target which I'd spotted... and got to re-roll anyway...
One of them teleported right amidst the Mortars and killed two teams... which were my only losses for the game (I might have lost a Scout Sentinel or two... but I just kept bringing them back with the Reinforcements! Strategem.
I really liked the look of these teleporting Grey Knights!
We won this one as well... 100-47 (100 being the maximum points that can be scored in a game!?)
After this game we wandered downstairs for supper.
Round Three
Hammer and Anvil: Cory (World Eaters) and Mark (Dark Angels)
So... a Chaos Team...
Setting up for Round Three!
And that's how my first Sentinel died...
(Charged down by a Lord Invocatus!)
Another Lord Invocatus blocking the way of the Thunderwolves while the Dark Angels MEGA TANK blasted away at them...
Wulfen and Scouts in the central plaza wondering where everyone had gotten to...?
Invocatus taken down the remains of the Thunderwolves charge the tank!
This game ended up timing out. Our two previous games we played through five rounds in less than two hours (the timeslots allowed for 2.5 hours). This game just went on and on and we only got to the end of round three in teh 2.5 hours... We won it, though... 50-42!
DAY TWO
Setting up for Day Two!
This is the force that Zach has brought to play on Day Two... Greater Daemons of Nurgle, Slaanesh and Khorne (or.. maybe that was a Daemon Prince...?) plus an Avatar of Khaine and the Yncarne and... something else... They are BEAUTIFUL models!
Round Four
In the first round of day two, we played against the only other team that went 3-0 on Day one: Clown T'aun - Chris (T'au Empire) and Hailey (Aeldari)
The Aeldari list was; Avatar of Khaine, The Yncarne, a Farseer, a Death Jester, and a Solitaire... five models.
Ready to go!
Round One, T'au shooting blew up a unit of Space Wolf scours which allowed the Yncarne to teleport right into the midst of our army...
She promptly blew up a Mortar Squad... I guess this tactic worked out pretty well for them the day before.
This did not work out so well for them against us...
On our half of the First Round both the Yncarne and the Avatar of Khaine were swarmed by Space Wolves...
And utterly destroyed...
At the end of round one (or maybe two..?), our two opponents looked at each other and said: "Well, this is not how I expected THIS game to go!)
And that left the Thunderwolves sitting in the direct fire-lanes of the T'au! So they consolidated out of there as best they could and charged off in another direction the following turn...
Leaving the poor Scout Sentinels feeling a little exposed...
Eeep!
I can't remember if that T'au Commander even bothered to destroy the scout sentinel... or was just getting into position to shoot the fleeing Thunderwovles - who'd taken off to kill the Aeldari Farseer, who had teleported onto the flanks to sieze an objective.
The other scout Sentinel was left to the two remaining Aeldari Harlequins! First it was shot at by a Death Jester - and survived!
Then it was charged by a Harlequin Death Jester - which, the previous day, had just been dancing through enemy units slaying all before them... and somehow my brave little Scout Sentinel survived... with ONE WOUND!
Thunderwolves charged the T'au Commander and some of the other units... it was a mess...
We won this game 78-35...
Round Five
Sask Vypers - Rhett (Astra Militarum) and Tyler (World Eaters)
facing doesn't really matter at all in the game... but I still find it funny that so many make no effort at all to face their models in the general direction that they are headed.. it makes for funny pictures, like this one where it looks like Angron is fleeing my brave little Scout Sentinel.
These guys knew what they were doing and in the first turn made SURE to destroy BOTH of my Scout Sentinels before I even had enough Command Points to bring one back... One was destroyed by both Manticore's unloading on it, the other was destroyed by Angron charging it!?
Angron fighting the Thunderwolves.
Angron chewing through more Thunderwolves and trying to get to our objective marker.
Angron coming back like a bad case of herpes, after we had destroyed him once, to just slaughter the rest of my force...
Angry Angron...
This was the second game that my force was tabled...
We lost this one 78-66...
As we were both 4-1 at this point, it came down to battle points and they ended the tournament with a total of 420 to our 373... so they won, we were in second place.'
Overall... a fun weekend. Lots of friendly people to play games with and lots of beautifully painted models. I didn't go inspecting all the forces, but I'd guess that 90+% were fully painted - and most of them very well painted at that! The few that weren't, were "combat ready" (had at least three colours on them) and I didn't see anyone playing with bare plastic!
It was a bit loud and a little overwhelming for me. I forgot my earplugs on day one and was more or less in a state of being completely overwhelmed the whole day. I have auditory processing issues and I end up not being able to hear anything because I can't filter out background noise. I remembered them on Sunday, which, because they block out noise, I still often didn't hear what people were saying to me, unless they were facing me and speaking clearly... but it was better than the previous day!
I do not play this game enough anymore to really get how it is played - at least in the matched play competitive format - like what all the objectives are and how to score them...? Luckily Orion was VERY GOOD at that and took care of it and just said "shoot that thing" and I did and it worked out for us!
I do miss playing 40K. I'm not sure if I love playing at this level of matched play competition, though... I like NARRATIVE and scenarios that make sense and have understandable objectives and playing campaigns. I think my IDEAL situation would be running a Wrath & Glory role-playing game campaign... and occasionally busting out the 40k armies to play out larger engagements that the player characters find themselves in the midst of!
I kind of regret buying the "Small Format Rulebook" now - the one with just the roles (which is SO SMALL I can barely even read it WITH my reading glasses on) - and not the bigger book that probably (maybe) had rules and scenarios for narrative play. I really liked the Narrative section of 9th edition - with the Crusade Campaign rules... I liked starting the crusades with Combat Patrols of 500 points (or 25 Power Level or whatever it was...). I'm not 100% sure if the Narrative campaign system is even IN the new core book, or if that is a separate book now...?
Also, it seems the old Combat Patrol rules are gone and have been replaced with FIXED LISTS... like an Astra Militarum Combat Patrol always has a Cadian Command Squad, 2 Squads of Cadian Shock Troops, one Armoured Sentinel, and two Ordnance Teams... most of which I have... except for the two ordonance teams... which I am NOT going to go out and buy.
I know I COULD just play 9th edition... Like if I was only ever going to play with Amanda and no one else... but if I wanted to continue to play with Orion or others, that wouldn't work out because there is no way I could keep the rules for BOTH editions straight in my head. I can barely keep ONE straight in my head, because I keep getting things mixed up with the five other different editions I've played!
Maybe I just need to become one of those retro-cranks that still play Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader (first edition - which I DO still have a copy of! it's a reprint, not the ORIGINAL copy I bought back in 1987, but still...). Ha!
Well if this weren't enough gaming for one weekend... I DID also got in a game of Warhammer Underworlds! I'll have a brief report of that up soon as well!