Tournament Tuesdays: AWC #6 Part Two

In this installment of the series, I provide a brief rundown of how each game went for me.

Mission One



Tau vs Space Marines (Greg S./Ringer)



I was the last player to arrive, so I ended up playing the ringer army. Greg's army is infamous amongst the AWC crew as it has gone undefeated at Adepticon. To Greg's credit, his list was optimized for this style of tournament, so defeating me was a rather simple task for him.

Mission Two

Tau vs Chaos Space Marines (Michael R.)



My second game was against a plague marine themed army. The army was basically two mirror units of five plague marines w/ two plasma guns in rhinos with havok launchers.

When it came to the mission, I made a mistake with how I deployed my marker. Sadly we didn't catch it until later into the game, so while I am ashamed to admit the mistake, in the end, it really didn't have any impact.

Overall, this game played as I suspected, with my forces divided between the two units while my firewarriors raced to secure an objective. Alot of bad tactical decisions on both our ends, but it was a fun game and that is what matters at the end.

Mission Three



Tau vs Blood Angels (Vincent)

My third game was against Vincent and his blood angel army. Vincent had found a loophole in the rules and was able to bring a Death Company Dreadnought in a drop pod as a troop choice. He also had a small squad of scouts and death company marines.

Before the game, my tournament packet had been picked up by another player. To my discredit, I was a bit frazzled by the loss of it so I did not focus on the game. To Vincent's credit, he was being a very sporting player and offered to allow me the chance to redeploy, but not feeling that was right, I declined and played as I placed.

The game was really decided on the first turn, with my forces taking a couple shots at the dreadnought. To my disappointment, I was not able to crack that hard nut, so the second turn was a brief slaughter by my opponent. After the game, Vincent and I had a great conversation about the game and how we approached it.

Mission Four



Tau vs Space Marines (Arturo)



My fourth game was against Arturo and his beautifully painted space marines. I must admit that until I saw his army, I was feeling confident that I had a shot at best painted. With my confidence gone, I settled into playing a fun game against a great person.

To my joy, the fourth mission allowed me to deep strike, so I suddenly had a chance if things went my way. I started the game with everything in reserve, with my suits and vespid prepared to deepstrike while my firewarriors would run for an ammo marker once they hit the board. The plan started to fail in the second turn when I botched my crisis suit's deep strike and he found himself across the board. By the middle of the third turn, my suit was dead from krak missile fire.

The next turn saw my stealth team and vespid both arrive. My luck swung back into the positive as both units hit their mark when deep striking. One round of shooting later, a razorback and a couple of marines were dead. That was the good part. The bad part was I failed all of my ammo rolls and thus had no tau that could actually shot next round. The game ended with Arturo turning my wasps and ninjas into red, white and green splats on the battlefield.

After the game, Arturo and I compared painting notes. Without a doubt, my game with him was my favorite of the day.

Mission Five

Tau vs Eldar (Tom C.)



This was the last game, and one I was eager to play as it would be against a non-marine army. Tom's army was a large squad of pathfinders and a large squad of warp spiders. Since the game was centered on getting your commander off the board, I just focused on that goal and deployed to race for the finish line.

In general, this was a fine game, but I do need to admit one slight annoyance. By the fourth turn, my commander had died to focused deathspinner fire. Since he had a clear line to get his commander in the warp spider squad off the board, that would have been the sporting approach. Instead, my opponent elected to bounce the unit around and draw the game out by wiping out the firewarrior squad. Again, not a show stopper, but not something I would consider very sporting.

With five games over, I ended with a 1-4 record on the day. Not very good, but nothing I am going to lose sleep over either. In two weeks, I will discuss the results and my general opinions on the tournament.