As listeners to the Overlords may well already know (and be healthily bored of hearing about) I went to the NoVA 40k tournament in August and enjoyed about18 hours of 40k playing in the space of 2 days. My brain was shredded by the end of it and I’d managed to pick up a cold from somewhere. I was not worth talking to the next day.
Which was a shame, because I had to podcast then. Episode 63, if you’re interested. I don’t advise you listen to it. My brain was oozing out of my ears that day. And that’s not as much hyperbole as you think.
Anyway. Out of the 8 games in the tournament, I won 5 and lost 3. One of those games was a buy due to an absent opponent and the ‘for fun’ game with a top-table Blood Angels player was a dead loss on my part. So; 4 wins and 4 losses. You always learn more from analysing your losses than your wins. Unless you’re really shit at analysis or have a ego the size of Lake Superior . And I only fit into one of the above categories.
What I said in my previous post (The Loser’s Guide to Losing) about categorising my losses holds true today, and I can class my losses in the tournament into 1 Bad Matchup, 1 Bad Dice and 2 Strategic Mistakes. The Bad Dice was against the Blood Angel player in my buy game.
He was basically using Stormraven Powerbombs. Two Ravens, one with Reclusiarch, Death Company and a Furioso Snippy Dread, and the other holding regular assaults, a Sanguinary Priest and a Death Company Snippy Dread. The Death Company Raven stormed straight into the middle of my army, dropped the bomb and a lot of my guys died. Being able to assault straight out of that thing with all the vicious filth a BA force can muster is one hell of a frightening ability. Why did I let the Raven into my lines? I didn’t. I mean, I tried not to. The first two turns of the game, I was pouring darklight into it. About 21 shots over the two turns. End result: 1 glance, 1 pen. Neither of them doing anything to stop it moving. I don’t like blaming game losses on bad dice, but this one I think is valid. If we played that game again, my tactics would probably be unchanged. I’d just need to roll better. Once the death company were there, I was gone for the game. I managed to kill them all eventually and down one of the Dreads, but it was all out of spite rather than tactical advantage and I lost handily.
Bad Matchup game was against Stelek from YTTH blog and he was packing far too many twin-linked heavy bolters. 10 Razorbacks, full complement of Long Fangs, some Thunderwolves, scouts and a bucket o’ Grey Hunters. When I saw the list, I knew that it was not going to do much for my chances at winning. My only hope was to take down a tonne of armour before he could fire back and gain some level of anti-tank advantage. But he made good use of cover in deployment and my dice were only average. So, in keeping with the Loser’s Guide, I set myself a new objective: I wonder how many Hellions I get into horrendous and complicated assaults. Banzai! My guys accounted for themselves reasonably well, but not as well as I may have liked and one of the mobs flunked a multi-assault with his Long Fangs and got run down. My Hellions should have won that combat (in fact they only lost it by 1 that fateful turn), but there you go. Win some, etc. If they had actually managed to crush the long fangs in assault like they were meant to, we could have had a game going, especially if I then went and parked them in cover. Never mind, eh?
And now we get to the Strategic Mistakes…
Or would, if my lunch break wasn’t over now.
Oh well.
At least this gives me a subject for tomorrow’s post!
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