Picking up speed and sprinting to the finish...

Sorry for the lack of updates but things have been a little hectic around here lately. First I went out of town for the holiday weekend and had a great time visiting family that I haven’t seen in a couple of years. Second, the new job is going very well as things are ramping up with the project. Regardless, the WH40k Summer League soldiers on we are now beginning the Fourth and final round.

For Round 3, I played two 1850pt. games and ended up getting a Draw in both matches. The first game was against another Dark Angels player using a Black/White list featuring both Belial and Samuel (AV14 Landspeeder) and lots of multi-melta’s and melta guns. The mission was Secure and Control and the deployment selected was Spearhead with my opponent winning the toss to go first.

It was a knock down dragged out fight with my Mortis Dreadnaught w/ Two Twin-Linked Auto cannons being my armies MVP. He took out a couple of attack bikes and then chewed up a Landspeeder and part of a squad of bikes. The other two dreads helped finish off the remaining bike squad. My shooting was spot on for much of the game. While I was taking casualties and losing terminators to my opponent’s melta guns he was also taking heavy losses from my assault cannon and auto cannons. The game ended after six turns with each of us holding our own objectives.

I think that I might have one the game had I kept a unit of terminators in reserve and Deepstriked them into his back field after he had committed his bikes to attacking my army. That unit could have contested his objective and might have prevented the game from becoming a Draw. To be honest though, this player is one of better players at the LGS so I was glad to have gotten a draw instead of a loss.

My second game was against one of the store’s Tyranid players and it went better than I expected. This mission was Annihilation with a Pitched Battle deployment. He ran a mix of giant and small bugs and it was interesting to play against him. This was the first time that I had truly played against the Nids since the new codex was released earlier this year. Now, understand I have a Nid army but I have not played it or updated it with the new models so I went into this game a little blind. He had a Trygon that was just insane in that it regenerate wounds like I have never seen before; recovered three wounds in one turn.

In this game, I made an error in that I spread my army apart too much and I feel that is was cost me some units. I placed my Mortis and one Venerable dreadnaught’s on high ground to the right of my main force. They were attacked by the Trygon and a Genestealer squad and I diverted a squad of terminators to assist. I feel now that I made an error in that I should have kept the squad with the main force because they could have done more damage and helped finish off a few of his units more quickly. I’ve realized that I should have just used the two dreads as throw away units for that game because they did tie up his Trygon and Genestealers for most of the game.

When the game ended I had Belial and two terminators left while my opponent has the Trygon, a single Genestealer and roughly 10 lurking termagants on the table. It was a really good game and I’m looking forward to playing him again in the future as he was one of the first kids to join our merry band of gamers oh so many years ago. He has transformed into a very good player and is in his senior year of high school so he has really come a long way.

On a final note, I am very pleased with how I am doing in the league so far. Round 4 kicked off this past weekend and the point values jump to 2500pts. I am currently hovering in 5th or 6th place out of a field of 20 players. This next round lasts for only one week so I am going to try to get in a City Fight game in as we are allowed a one-time five point bonus if we do a mission from either City Fight, Planet Strike or Battle Missions books. I’m choosing the City Fight because it will be easier to setup and play and it will allow me to use some of the nice terrain that we made last fall.

Until next time...