When An Unstoppable Force Meets An Immovable Object...

...you get the BFS Winter League Finals!

Mike and his Chaos Space Marines                        Vs.                                                Me and my Necrons

 Such a high profile event attracted a crowd.

Preface:

Both Mike and I had gone undefeated in our respective divisions with a record of 5-0. Each of us then advanced past our divisional rivals to make it to the finals. This would be a match up of two perfect records. A true heavy weight bout. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Lets find out! To add to the suspense, the game was decided by one roll...

Mission:

Emperors Will (NOVA Preliminary)

The 4 corner objectives were in play for the primary goal. If you had all 4 it was worth 4 game points. If you simply had more objectives than your opponent it was worth 2 game points. If it was a tie on objectives you received 0 game points. Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, and the Center Objective were each worth 1 game point. Tie breaker is Victory points

Preliminary rolls:

*Lists will be published soon.

He deployed his sorcerers with his 25 man squad. The sorcerers got pretty great powers. Sorc 1: Invisibility, Hallucination, Dominate and Sorc 2: Hallucination, Dominate and Mental Fortitude.

He also got d3 outflanking units as his Warlord Trait.

Coteaz rolled forewarning for a 4++ save to his squad and prescience.

Zandrekh got to reroll reserve rolls as his Warlord Trait.

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

After winning the roll off I allowed Mike to go first hoping that I can utilize last turn objective grabbing.

My deployment. For the first time I let Coteaz and the Strikes ride in the Chimera. Hopefully this would prevent him from having his Drakes and Scythes from flying within 12 inches because of "Ive Been Expecting You". Also, They would be safe from the baleflamers in there!

After a quick turn one his flyers came in. A critical event was my Dreadknight passed his deny the witch roll against Hallucination from one of the sorcerers. He did shoot up the wraiths though with tesla.

All of Mikes reserves came in including the outflanking obliterator and CSM squad. Because of my deathmarks in reserve, Mike decided to hunker down in his back field and play defensively and wear away my fast CC units.

I targeted his scythes as I knew my scythes could handle them due to skyfire. I used my barges to glance his barge to death. My dreadknight hit into his ranks against an obliterator and squished him. On his turn 3 he charged the Knight with invisible Spawn after once again the Dreadknight denied a hallucination from a sorcerer! He was my early game MVP. The spawn bested him in CC but he dropped the spawn down to 3 models.

After destroying the warriors scythe the Drakes flamed my henchmen in the backfield. On the bottom of 3 I tried to down at least one drake by disembarking from the Chimera. Surprisingly I had no trouble against the back armor with the Strikes.

I also marked and shot up the spawn killing 2 more spawn leaving only 1 behind. I also was close to his objective. Hopefully I could get back into the flyer on the next turn and save them for last minute contesting. Mikes turn 4 was short but effective. He hovered and his drake flamed the Strikes killing Coteaz on the last roll! Or did he?! Realizing I had cast my invulnerable save, the strike to die before him was actually alive and I managed to make the save. This would be significant later. 

My turn 4 was also short but decisive. I moved every gun into position to kill the hell drake. Mike hallucinated my deathmarks and they were stuck in enemy territory as their ride had to fly off the board. Needless to say I downed the drake and I now owned the skies. But unless the deathmarks could stay alive it was looking to be a draw. My plan was to control the right objective with warriors that came in from ongoing reserve and the left objective with my Immortals. If Coteaz and the strikes can take the center, or the deathmarks can stay alive, I would win. I did not see a way that I could lose this one now!

An obliterator ran up and meltagunned my lead barge and it became immobile. The one remaining spawn attacked my chimera and wrecked it. A key roll occurred as he failed his 3 inch charge against my deathmarks. The chaos marines rolled snake eyes!

 I had to get Coteaz into the building and at the same time kill those units. I shot the two barges at the spawn and killed it. I charged Coteaz and the Strikes into the Oblit. Unfortunately I could not kill him! AP 3 swords were useless. Coteaz managed to put one wound with his hammer. This would be very bad for my chances to take the center. Either way if it ended on turn 5 I win because my deathmarks contested his objective.

We rolled. It went to Turn 6

The game continued and here is where things spiraled out of control. The deathmarks were now assaulted and could not hold their ground. My Warriors and Immortals held their objectives. His cultists and warriors held his objectives. Coteaz and the Obliterator continued fighting. The Obliterator killed one more marine on the bottom of 6. I rolled my leadership of 10 and failed! An 11! 

This would do me in. The game ended and we counted our points.

After calculating the Victory points and adding in the 50 point bonus for mikes first kill on the scarabs he won 968 points vs my 761 points that remained on the board. If Coteaz and the Strikes did not run, I would have been up 220 additional points, bringing my total to 981, declaring me the winner! I was sick to my stomach...if it happened on the top of the turn they would automatically regroup too. Mike and I agreed that this was by far the toughest game we had played and it was exciting and fun to be a part of.

The league this year was a huge success. Thanks to Ed and the rest of the club members we will look to do another in the Summer. I will have to wait to take my revenge!

Necrons: 35-7-3

Ultramarines: 1-1-0

IG: 0-1-0

BA: 1-1-0

Overall: 37-10-3

The Battle for Salvation Winter League

This February the Battle for Salvation Gaming Club began its first League. Run by Ed, our club secretary, who divided the players up into two divisions. Each entrant wrote their name and their primary force, which would not be allowed to change for the duration of the league. These cards were shuffled and drawn randomly to decide which players played in each division. The Battle for Salvation Divisions (BFS) and the Comic Book Heaven Division (CBH) were created:

                  BFS

1. Ed (Dark Angels)
2. James (Imperial Guard)
3. Andrew (Space Marines)
4. Mike (Chaos Space Marines)
5. Silex (Grey Knights)
6. Gerard (Dark Eldar)

                  CBH

1. Bob (Necrons)
2. Ryan (Orks)
3. Joey (Chaos Space Marines)
4. Will (Chaos Space Marines)
5. Fareed (Space Wolves)
6. Matt (Space Wolves)

The rules of the league are as follows: 

• Using the preliminary NOVA format missions on the Nova Open website, each week the entire league would play a randomly determined mission. 
• Each week would also be at a different points level. Week 1 was 1500 points with no allies. Week 2 was 1750 and allies could now be used. Week 3 was at 1850 points continuing the use of allies. Week 4 was at 2000 points and now your list must be set so that no more changes can be allowed from week to week. Week 5 would be a repeat of week 4 and the end of the regular season.
• The schedule was set up to play each person in your division once. Thus the regular season would be a 5 game season.
• The top two in each division would enter the 4 player playoffs. The first game is the divisional games and the winners of each division would then play each other for the title of league champion.
• If there was a tie for a spot in the playoffs, the head to head matchup would be the tiebreaker.

As competitor this was so much fun to be a part of. It was like an ongoing tournament from week to week. There were some silly scenarios that there could be a possible 3 way tie in the CBH division but everything went smoothly and here are my games.

Week 1 vs Matt

This game was really one of futility. I had chosen to go first in this Kill Point mission. Matt set up a refused flank and seized the initiative! His long fangs tore into my immortals killing them all and destroying one of my Annihilation Barges.

I held up in the middle avoiding his scouts and awaited my flyer relief. I failed many rolls and Matt was taking advantage of it. Ultimately the flyers proved to be a saving grace allowing my destroyer lord, wraiths and scarabs to hit his lines.

As the luck began to turn and the game neared its end I managed to wipe most of his squads and get the wraiths into one big combat with his rune priests. We tied on Kill Points and I won on the tie breaker of Victory points by about 75 points.

(1-0)

Week2 vs. Will

Now at 1750 and allies I felt more at home with my original force. Will brought 2 Helldrakes though at 1750 can be really nasty.In this objectives game I chose to go second.

Wills flyers and my failure of reserve rolls let his hell drakes have free reign killing my Strikes and Immortals.

Once some reserves came in and I was able to get rear armor shots with tesla the drakes were eventually down over two turns.

I focused mainly on eliminating scoring units as did Will. The main issue was his deployment. My overlord on a barge and wraiths and scarabs got into his ranks tying up his plague marines and havocs. 

In the end it came down to killing his scoring warlord. Getting him off the objective would tie and slay the warlord gives me the win. 3 annihilation barges shot and the last one killed him.

(2-0)

Week 3 vs Joey

My cousin Joey and I have been known to have many close games. Especially in 4th and 5th ed. This is not the case for 6th. In this game I forced Joey to go first but after seeing his deployment I attempted to seize the initiative and thanks to coteaz, I succeeded!

Because his lascannon havocs were a real threat I set up across from two of the squads and creamed them on turn one.  From that point on my CC got closer and picked off some of his units from a far. The deathmarks came in and killed the other Havoc squad eliminating the threat against my tesla. I pulled another victory out.

(3-0)

Week 4 vs. Ryan

This game was by far the closest and most controversial game. Ryan, not only desperately needing a win to stay in contention for a playoff spot, is my brother so that makes this game even more important!

Going first now, using my full army, I pushed forward and attempted as many shots as I could. Once the flyers came in I began to be a bit worried. He used the Waagh and got many shots against my one flyer but he rolled poorly and I managed to survive the attack.

I managed to down his flyers with barges and moved my deathmarks into position. After ryans boyz killed my Dreadknight I exacted revenge! But Ryan hung tough and fought back. He ran over my scarabs and wraiths pushing me back to the mid field. His remaining lootas and lobbas attempted to pick off my scoring units and immobilized the chimera. I was forced to keep the remaining strikes in the chimera and hoped the henchmen would survive.

 Looking as though it would be a tie on primary objectives I still was confident that I would win on Victory Points but then ryan took the center objective with one of his two remaining boyz squads. He also turbo boosted his warboss to eventually contest on turn 5. Luckily for me one Barge totalled 9 hits and 7 wounds and he failed 3 killing that warboss. 

But Ryan had one ork left on the objective after I shot the rest of my army at the squad. If the game ended it would be his. If it went on I had a chance. Here is the controversy. We were running out of time to play at the Comic Book Store and Bishop made the decision that he wouldnt mind if we finished our game. So I rolled and it went on. I was able to remove him from the center and win the game. I felt bad because if it had ended on time he would win. But all is fair in love and war. :)

(4-0)

Week 5 vs. Fareed

With my playoff spot guaranteed this game was more or less to help Fareed understand how to utilize his new Imperial Guard Allies. Fareed had been eliminated from the playoffs but his army had some strengths that did well against mine.

Fareed had 40 Grey Hunters in rhinos. Which I couldnt deal with. They swarmed my right flank. Fareed failed to kill my Annihilation barges and I beat the left side. Roughly an even battle all the way through, I won on a last minute contest with my warriors in a scythe.

(5-0)

Playoffs

With the regular seasons conclusion the playoffs looked like this:

BFS- Mike vs Andrew

CBH- Bob vs Joey

Game 1 vs. Joey

Joey was unhappy about his list as he was forced to lock in when he did not have the desired models. Despite doing well in his last two games and finishing 4-1, Joey felt that his list was poorly designed. I agreed.

I forced Joey to go first as this was Objectives and Quarters. He had no real shooting other than Drakes and I could take advantage of that with my deployment.

I destroyed most of the Nob bikers on turn 1 and 2. His Drakes came in staggered and on turn three we had this epic match up!

Joey hung around for a while but with the lack of troops and scoring units and all his tough to kill units dead we called the game winning me our division!

A little foreshadowing. This was near the end of Mike and Andrews game. Mike would eventually go on to win against andrew. Similarly mike went undefeated in the BFS division too...

Necrons: 35-6-3

Ultramarines: 1-1-0

IG: 0-1-0
BA: 1-1-0
Overall: 37-9-3

BFS League, Necron Fine Tuning and Ultramarines

The past month has been very eventful at the BFS club. My fellow Tournament Organizer and partner in crime, Ed, has decided to start up the first ever Battle For Salvation League. I am going to do a separate post on the league, the matches I played in, and the results thus far. For now, these are some games that I played in between league games. The necrons continue their fine tuning and the Ultramarines get another shot  as I begin to update the army.

Necrons/Grey Knights vs. BA/Grey Knights

Bruce is attempting to make a two land raider list work. The gimmick with this list is to use shield of sanguinius on land raider redeemers. He also ran a librarian to give stealth to the land raiders, inquisitor and GK termies and a strike squad. His BA libby was accompanied by 2 assault squads. 

Despite the cover saves and killing my scarabs on turn one and two, my haywire crypteks proved to be too much for the land raiders. I used all my tesla to take out ground troops.

After his shooting and raiders were non factors my CC units got into the heart of his army. Victory for the Necrons!

Necrons/Grey Knights vs. Tyranids

A game at the comic store against Brother Captain James. James' Tyranids can be really tough to beat if he gets the right psychic powers. Hoping for some luck from the psychic powers chart James furiously writes them down as he rolls. The penis mightier than the sword my friend!

I decided to go first but my shooting was ineffective. I moved up the wraiths hoping to stay out of sight but one Tyrant got a little to close. The other attempted to get in my ranks.

My turn two shooting was great against the one tyrant and I killed him before I got to charge. I ran scarabs to prolong the CC and not allow the other tyrant to escape.

Once reserves started coming in I had to disperse my army using my new Deathmark unit to kill gaunts. Deathmarks armed with a Despair Flamer Cryptek is a pretty nifty combo. Similar to a baleflamer would for at least one unit.

Ultimately once the tyrants were down and the Dreadknight force weaponed a tervigon, James conceeded. Most my army was intact but he did do a lot of damage to my army.

Ultramarines vs. Chaos Space Marines

Ultramarines get another shot. Here against Dariens CSM's at Comic Book Heaven. 

\ 

In this battle the Ultramarines did not fail me. I am currently converting the army to be on grass bases so they can be paired with my IG. 

Necrons: 30-6-3
Ultramarines: 1-1-0
IG: 0-1-0
BA: 1-1-0
Overall: 32-9-3