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My BoLSCon Rant...
Yeah you probably already read this but it will make me feel better to post it here...
Counting backwards from Game 7 which is freshest in my mind.
My opponent was a fairly straightforward Tau list. Two railheads, unit of 3 broadsides, 6 fireknifes (TL Missle Pod/Plasma rifle), pathfinders, two squads of 6 FWs, Monat with fusion, two squads of kroot.
Given my history I felt pretty ambivalent about my chances. There were 6 objectives, which could vanish from the board at the end of each turn. If they were controlled when they vanished, the controlling player got to keep it and the unit that was controlling it went into reserves and returned through deep strike the next turn.
The guy played like a fucktard. Sorry that’s just the truth. He made moves that made absolutely no sense. Moved guys just because. Moved guys randomly. My moves were calculated and I stuck to my plan and executed it perfectly. I held three objectives on turn 1. Given that I only have three troops choices that was all I could hope to hold. It got even better when one of the objectives on his side of the board vanished uncontrolled. So now I held three to his possible max of two.
That being said..I lost..and badly. Why? Let me give you some highlights from the game. Two brightlances fired 5 shots each at the same devilfish. I either never hit it (twin linked mind you) or rolled a 1 for penetration each time. That devilfish would go on to contest one of my objectives that I held from turn one. My fire prism fired three dispersed blasts into a unit of kroot (KROOT) that were holding one objective. Every shot was right on target. Hitting at least 8 models each time with S5 hits. I killed…zero.
My striking scorpions’ serpent came in on turn two an rammed a hammerhead, stunning it. On turn three the scorps got out and assaulted one of his crisis teams. Three Fireknifes with two shield drones. I charged and layed in with my 36 S4 attacks..of which I got 17 wounds. The outcome…zero. His suits strike back and kill two scorpions. My powerfist then goes with it’s five attacks. Hits with two…applied to the shield drones…zero. I lose..but stay in the fight.
One of his objectives then vanishes controlled. He now has one that I cannot contest. And holds one with the kroot that will not die. I still hold three, but don’t worry that will change. The devilfish that I cannot kill slowly trundles its way over and contests the first one which is held by my untouched and actually unfired at Command wave serpent. (I actually tricked the stupid bastard into never firing at this tank even though his three broadsides were in clear line of sight of it the entire game…not that it mattered apparently.) His monat drops next to my serpent full of avengers on the second objective and cracks it. The avengers pile out and he actually assaulted them in the following turn. They held up, but the objective remained contested. The remaining three fireknifes bunny hopped over to contest the third objective. They should have, at that point been entangled with my scorpions of course, but the scorps were bogged down with the other three..which after three turns were still at 100% strength and I was down to four scorps and the exarch. Yes that’s three turns of at least 4 powerfist attacks at WS5 S6….and no one died. I killed a ton of his shit…but in the end I simply couldn’t make my shots count. Even though I could have contested the one objective that he held, it was still a loss because the other objective had vanished controlled. So couldn’t even pull out a draw.
So if it looks like I had bad luck in that game, consider that that was probably the best luck I had in ANY of the games.
In the game just prior to that I played against an extremely tough army. I cannot fault the guy playing it because it was just a damned tough build. He was a good player and it should have been a fun game. It was a space marine army led by Vulkan so all all bike-mounted melta and flame weapons count as twin linked. Tom played this army so I know he can vouch for the sheer fucktoughery of the whole thing. Here’s one thing I did NOT know about Space Marines..I got first turn in this battle and he started with NOTHING on the board. Zero. In turn one all his shit came on and lit me up. I’m not really sure how that works..but I cant' really bitch about it even though I lost an entire turn of shooting, just because I made a point of moving everything 18+ inches to get the cover save and as a result I took no losses despite all the twin-linked melta weapons.
Now I’m not going to go into great detail on this battle, because frankly I felt that I was outclassed. Space Marine bikers are T5 with a 3+ save..so it’s a bitch for me to wound them and even if I do they pretty much just shrug it off. So my solution was to concentrate my fire on doomed units. On turn two (my first turn of shooting) I concentrated everything on one 5 man biker squad. 18 S6 war walker shots, Prism Cannon at S9, Krak missile and shuriken cannon from a WS, fire dragons with heavy flamer and 5 S8 fusion guns, scatter laser and pulse laser from the falcon. The only fire that did NOT go into that squad was from my guardian squad and farseer that assaulted another squad. Anyway through a combination of bad rolls on my part and good rolls on his…despite all that firepower….two marines died. Meanwhile my farseer and guardians opened fire on another squad of bikers and had much better luck..by better luck I mean they actually forced a morale test which caused the unit to fall back out of assault range. Leaving them stuck out subsequently flamed into oblivion. The farseer did survive and went on to carve up several skimmers with his witchblade, but ultimately died to an unsaved multi-melta shot from a surviving skimmer. At the end of the game I had a unit of close-combat kitted avengers tied up in close combat with a full squad of biker marines and unable to wound them (needing 6s). And a couple of immobilized weaponless vehicles just sitting around the board here and there.
Not much to say about the game prior to that, it was against Space Marines led by Pedro Kantor. Who can pretty much suckit. I fought for a draw in this one because on turn one he managed to explode three of my transports before they even got off the blocks. Yes..explode..not wrecked..explode. It wasn’t a horrible game despite that. Except that again I struggled to even so much as wound marines and just watched them make save after save on the few wounds that I did manage. And of course with Pedro leading the army it’s not like they ever had a chance of failing a morale roll.
My final game of day one was against a guard army with a Collosus Siege Mortar. The guy had a beautiful army and he was very nice. It wouldn’t have been a bad game at all except that the Collosus was obscene. It sat hidden in a corner of the board for the entire game and never missed. Not once. Every shot hit precisely on target. The damned thing is supposed to scatter 2D6 inches with no adjustment for BS, but nope…rolled a hit every shot. S6 AP3 pie plate with no cover saves. That means dead eldar. He would use his chimera-transported lasguns and plasma along with the vehicle’s own multilaser to crack open transports and then the siege mortar would kill whatever had been in it. I don’t even recall what the objective of this game was….my objective was to not get my entire army pulverised by the siege mortar.
Game three of day one was against some douche with Space Wolfs. He can tell you about it if he remembers..I actually don’t recall much detail on the game.
Game two of day one was against Tau, and a complete douchebag who kept tossing his hair. My luck, however, held strong. Just to give you an idea of how bad this went, my farseer and guardian squad assaulted his command unit of crisis suits. Two flamers, and a shitton of pistol shots on the charge resulted in..nothing. And then the assault itself netted…nothing…followed by a failed leadership and I was run down…by Tau. Think about the odds on that..remembering that my unit is LD10 and that my Guardians are I5 and Tau are I2.
The first game of the tourney I played Nurgle Space Marines. The guy I played was super nice and I had no problems with his rolls really. But again my list was just outclassed. Two Daemon princes, Greater Daemon, and a shitton of T5 space marines with 3+ saves and FNP all sitting in rhinos and chain firing meltaguns out of them. Even though I did manage to crack open the rhinos, the guys inside were far tougher to kill. I’m not sure I even managed to kill a single squad as I simply couldn’t wound them and even when I did they got a 3+ and a 4+ save each time. I don’t remember killing any of them, but maybe that’s just because I was busy getting my face gnawed off by the two daemon princes and greater daemon the whole time. I did manage to kill 1 obliterator with my prism cannon. Of course…the obliterator cant have the nurgle mark or even if wouldn’t have died.
Annnnnnyway…all in all I’m very disappointed. John says I am entrenched, and he’s probably not wrong there. I’ve had many of my eldar models since Rogue Trader..in fact two of the models in my guardian storm squad are actually RT models.
Still my biggest frustration was my complete sheer ass luck. I should never have lost to the last guy. I outplayed him in every way except on the dice. As an example he actually moved crisis suits in behind my Scorpion wave serpent on turn two and shot it in the ass. I had cover saves from SMF and made them so the serp survived with only a shaken result. But he had his crisis suits blocking the exit so I wasn’t going to be able to disembark and assault. The stupid fucker actually JSJd AWAY from my serpent in the assault phase (for no real reason other than the fact that he could move in the assault phase..nothing else on the board had LOS to that unit) just to give me room to disembark in my turn and assault. There were no secrets he knew perfectly well what was in the transport and still gave me room to disembark the entire unit. Not that it mattered.
The other thing is…dice without pips or numbers on them should NOT be allowed at a tournament. In fact I’m convinced that there is so much dice fuckery going on that they should supply the dice and the dice should remain at the table.
Several of the guys I played had the same fucking dice…they had some fucked up symbol on either the 1 or the 6. I say it was on either the 1 or the 6 because I was never sure which it was on. Sometimes it was a 1..sometimes a 6. Depending on what he needed.
Anyway..I’m on the verge of just ebaying my shit. I’m disappointed and frustrated. I’m tired of having the world’s worst fucking luck. I joke about how bad my luck is in Vegas and how the best way to win is to bet against me, but I’m really tired of having such bad luck. It has lost all humor value for me. I’d love to have average luck for once.
But hey I'm still smiling right...
Oh and an additional comment. The thing was very well run. But frankly the schedule was entirely too hectic. I would have loved to have had a chance to look at the WHFB and LOTR games and just never had time. I felt completely rushed between games. The two hour game time limit was not the issue..it was the time between games and the rush to get in four games in a day. I think it would have been much more enjoyable if the games were just scheduled to go all day rather than end as early as we did with a longer lunch and longer break between games or even some brackets being staggered so you had a chance to actually WATCH some games. I think if they had gone later into the evening more local folks would have been inclined to stay in the hotel too, which was something they were trying to encourage people to do. Not to mention it would have been better for the vendors there, because if the players actually had some time between games they might wander over and buy something.
I know it was a tough schedule, especially for you guys' first time out - this was a hard schedule.
I really appreciate you guys coming out, and look forward to getting in more games with you all.
Thanks for your feedback; we will have multiple 40K tracks next year, so there will be plenty of opportunity to choose a track that lets you have more roaming time and vendor time.
Also, the guy that won the last game with you travels to a lot of tournaments, and has done so for many years. So don't take your finish too personally; this was a tough field with a lot of very good veteran players in it.
Sorry that your luck was so awful; I can say that luck does run in streaks, some of which can seem very long.
We've been talking about many of the points you brought up. One suggestion is to drop the 3rd game on the first day.
So you play two games and there's a big break; giving you time to check out the vendors and the open gaming (or go back to your room for a nap).
We really like the 7-game Championship Tournament, but I agree that there was a lot to see and not much time to see it!
I especially like the idea of staggering the events so you 40K players can check out WFB and Lord of the Ring games in progress.
One last note: Don't give up on 40K yet! It's a great game and we'd love to have you back next year!
Whoa people actually read our blog. I'm a bit shocked.
Don't worry, I aint giving up on 40k. I've been playing since it was Rogue Trader (Still have my rather dog-eared RT book to prove it) and I aint about to give up now. But that's sort of the the problem. All these years of experience and I still managed to make the worst possible showing. Rolling Stop pointed out that I am probably a bit entrenched. I've been playing Eldar since 2nd Ed. About the only thing that has changed has been the color of my guardians. 4.5 ed Eldar certainly took a hit with 5th Ed rules. In particular in the assault department since there is no more clearing out a safe space with their opening attacks. Everyone else complained about the previously "unkillable" skimmers, but I really think that was minor by comparison. My only other army is an Inquisition force, which, given the way things turned out, maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad idea. Hmm...allied guard....
Anyway, thanks for dropping us a note here. Maybe we should start showing up at BFG for a more frequent schooling to get in shape for next year. If nothing else it would give y'all a chance to laugh at my miserable luck firsthand.
Thanks for the comments!
I agree that 7 might be a bit too much, I know had I been playing and not taking pictures/judging/whatever I would have been wiped out. Now we have a whole year to figure out what to do for BoLSCon 2010!