After five long months, the weekend of our mini-Tournament finally arrived, and with it came a marathon of 40k gaming!
The tournament was designed in round-robin style such that every player would get one matchup against each of the other four players.
To keep things consistent, we ran two tables with pre-set terrain and missions, and organized the matchups so each player had two games on each table. For missions, we selected Ascension and Reconnaissance, which we felt were fairly different and would reward different playstyles.
To skip right to the end: this was a truly epic weekend. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and the matchups were consistently pretty tight.
Once the dust had settled on Sunday morning, the final standings were as follows:
| Place | Army | Wins | Loss | VP Differential |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Primaris Black Templars | 3 | 1 | +132 |
| 2 | Tzeentch Soup [Daemons/Thousand Sons] | 3 | 1 | +64 |
| 3 | Orks [Da Ironbullz] | 2 | 2 | +15 |
| 4 | Tau | 2 | 2 | -33 |
| 5 | Craftworld Eldar | 0 | 4 | -178 |
You'll note that both pairs of players in first/second and third/fourth places ended with tied records. Before the tournament, we had decided to break ties by the sum of victory points differentials per player across all four games, which we hoped would be a reasonable aggregate measure of overall performance. However, this tiebreaking mechanism actually had a large impact on the final standings, because the players who finished in second (Tzeentch soup) and fourth (Tau) actually beat their respective tied players (Templars for 1st and Orks for 3rd, respectively), so both ties would have been flipped had we used head-to-head record to break ties instead. The fact that the final outcome was so close just shows how well-matched most of the games were!
I've provided a recap of the tournament from the perspective of Da Ironbullz below, and will close this post with some notes on what the next several months will look like on this blog.
After extensive tinkering over the last five months, here was the list I ran at the tournament:
+-------------------------------+
| Patrol Detachment: Orks |
| 1,000 Points; 59 Power Level |
| 4 Command Points |
| Deffskullz Clan Kultur |
+-------------------------------+
HQ: Warboss on Warbike [Warlord] - 115 points
Wargear: Da Killa Klaw (Relic), 2x Dakkaguns
Upgrades: Da Biggest Boss (stratagem), Might Is Right (warlord trait)
HQ: Weirdboy - 75 points
Psychic Powers: Smite, Warpath, Da Krunch
Upgrades: Warphead (stratagem)
Troops: Ork Boyz - 215 points
Boss Nob with Kombi-Rokkit
21x Ork Boyz with Shoota
2x Ork Boy with Shoota & Tankbusta Bombs
Ork Boy with Big Shoota
Troops: Gretchin - 50 points
10x Gretchin
Elites: Meganobz - 158 points
Boss Meganob with dual Killsaws
2x Meganob with dual Killsaws
Meganob with Power Klaw & Kustom Shoota
Elites: Nobz - 132 points
Boss Nob with Power Klaw & Choppa
Nob with Power Klaw & Choppa
2x Nob with Big Choppa & Choppa
2x Nobz with dual Choppas
Fast Attack: Deffkopta with Kustom Mega-Blasta - 25 points
Fast Attack: Stormboyz - 60 points
5x Stormboyz with Choppa & Slugga
Flyer: Chinork Warkopta with 2x Rattler Kannons and Kustom Mega-Blasta - 105 points
Dedicated Transport: Trukk with Big Shoota - 65 points
Coming into the tournament, the general strategy for this list was to hold my backfield with the grots, Weirdboy, and big block of Shoota Boyz (and bring them back with Unstoppable Green Tide if needed) while my big three threats (Nobz in Trukk, Meganobz in Chinork, and Warboss on Bike) tried to get as far downfield and charge as early as possible. The Stormboyz and Deffkopta were thrown in to have some highly mobile harassment abilities, with the Stormboyz also being able to complete actions depending on the scenario and secondaries.
This combination of opponent & mission was the single matchup I was fearing the most out of all possible combinations, so of course I drew Ascension vs. Black Templars as my first matchup of the tournament. Coming into this game, I acknowledged there was very little chance I could win due to the massive gap in assault capabilities between the new Marines codex and the outdated Orks codex, so I aimed to just have fun and try to score as many VPs as I could. The game went about as expected and both of us had an enjoyable experience. I secured the first turn and kamikazed my Chinork into the heart of his army, but badly misplayed my advances with my Meganobz & Shoota Boyz up the center of the Board as I forgot the Warboss on Warbike doesn't confer the advance-and-charge aura to infantry (only the Warboss on foot does). Things went quickly downhill after that first turn, as he readily cleared both my Meganobz and Shoota Boyz with shooting and a counter-charge and slaughtered my Nobz in a single charge by the Bladeguard. Other highlights included my lone 25-point Deffkopta charging one of his Eradicator units on the very first turn and tying them up in combat for four straight turns, and his beatstick biker Chaplain charging my Warboss, killing him outright, only for my Warboss to revenge-kill him from the grave with the 2CP Orks is Never Beaten strat.
I felt optimistic about this matchup for three reasons: (1) the Eldar player in our tournament was a brand-new 40k player, (2) the Craftworlds codex is currently pretty underpowered, and (3) this mission [Reconnaissance] rewards mobility, which my list had in droves. The Eldar won the first turn and were able to get the Wave Serpent, Spiritseer, and Wraithblades onto one of the objectives in my backfield, which required me to redirect my Meganobz to deal with them. Meanwhile, my Warboss & Nobz' Trukk got off a long first-turn charge down the right flank onto his Wraithlord. Once my most threatening units were locked in combat, there wasn't much the Eldar could do. Even despite the small board size, he was able to infiltrate his Striking Scorpions successfully and cleared my Stormboyz with them, but otherwise the game slid steadily in the Orks favor.
I had never played Tau before, so this was the matchup where I felt the least prepared. I thought Ascension should play to my strengths by being able to assail the center with large numbers and strong melee units, but wasn't sure just how deadly the Tau shooting would be. The Tau won the roll for first turn and masterfully clogged up the ruins on the center of the board with their Devilfish. In return, my Meganobz, Warboss, and Shoota Boyz had to assault the Devilfish to clear out space to take the center objective, which left me somewhat vulerable to shooting from the left flank. The Tau capitalized on that opportunity by sending in the quad-fusion Coldstar commander on a suicide mission to melt my Warboss and Meganobz, which left me a little too feeble to hold the center objective for long. My Nobz were able to hold the objective on the right flank, but I ended up ceding the central objective by Turn 3. Since the VPs awarded for holding the center escalate each turn, the game slipped out of reach for Da Ironbullz in turns 4-5 as I simply didn't have enough units left to score substantial primaries. All in all, it was a hard-fought game, and a close but well-earned victory for the Tau.
This game was effectively the rubber match for the entire tournament. The stakes could hardly have been higher: If the Thousand Sons won this game, they would go undefeated in the tournament and claim first place, otherwise the Templars would almost certainly finish first overall due to their hefty VP differential. If I was able to squeak out a win and if the Tau lost vs. Eldar, Da Ironbullz would claim a surprising third place. If I lost and the Tau won, Da Ironbullz would finish fourth. If both the Orks and Tau lost their final games, the third place would come down to the overall VP margin, where the Orks were slightly (but not unassailably) ahead. Suffice to say that a lot was riding on this game!
I was also looking forward to this game for another reason: this same Tzeentch list tabled me on Turn 2 two weeks ago in one of our warm-up matches for the tournament. Da Ironbullz wanted revenge! I won the roll for first turn and followed a similar game plan to what I ran vs. the Eldar on this same mission. My Warboss and Nobz' Trukk landed a long first-turn charge around the right flank on his Screamers and Herald on Disc while my Deffkopta tied up his massive Pink Horror Bomb in combat. The Warboss crushed the Herald, which was vital to my success by getting rid of his aura buffs. In response, the Terminators killed the Warboss outright between psychic and shooting. However, my fast alpha-strike startled my opponent and put him on the back foot for the rest of the game. My Nobz and Meganobz teamed up to clear out his Terminators and Terminator lord, and while I ceded the objective in my deployment zone due to the Screamers flying over the center ruins on the table to easily dispatch my Grots and Weirdboy, I was able to score nearly perfect on my secondaries and hold 2-3 of the objectives to seal up the win.
The past five months have been focused entirely on getting a 1,000 point list built enough to play in the tournament.
While I was able to accomplish this right at the buzzer, I failed spectacularly on my goal of having a fully painted army, in large part due to the fact that my list kept shifting (sometimes substantially!).
From the very start, my goal with this army was to carefully build, convert, and paint a highly detailed "display-quality" army chock-full of meticulously painted conversions. I always intended for Da Ironbullz to be a hobby project first and foremost and a gaming army second, so the mad dash over the last few months to getting everything assembled pushed me well out of my comfort zone of what I was hoping to do with this army.
With that in mind, I'm going to focus for the rest of the summer on cleaning up and finishing the 54 models (!!) I built but did not paint over the last four months as I worked towards our May mini-tournament. This includes:
For context, compare that list to the list below, which is the full tally of all 19 painted models in Da Ironbullz to date. The discrepancy makes it pretty obvious that I need to catch up on painting!
If you've been following this blog, you might notice that the Chinork Warkopta is not included in either list. I'm going to be icing that kitbash for now, because I estimate it will probably take me another 20 hours to build and convert, and I'm eager to get back to painting.
Long story short: while I may not be posting or gaming as regularly, you can expect updates whenever I make progress. My goal is to have all of these models painted by the fall, which would be hugely satisfying!