Toy Soldier Doubles - Afterthoughts

Ello all,

It's been a bit without a blog on here, the last one up was Angryman's write up for the Stockport "Toy Soldier Doubles" tournament we went to last weekend. So I thought I'd do one from Team Daemon's point of view. I can't remember most of the details, or the missions, so it's more of an overview.

Game 1:
First game we played against the worst list we could possibly face. Grey Knights and Guard. List was roughly:

Company Command w/ Plasmas

3 Ratlings

3 Vet Squads with 3 Meltas
1 Vet Squad with heavy Weapon?

3 Vendettas

Inquisitor Coteaz
4 or 5 Henchmen Squads in Psybolt Razorbacks
3 Dreads with Psy Autocannons

Luckily there were no actual Grey Knights in the list with Warp Quake to cause us issues, but with us dropping in with bad reserve rolls, we were piece meal targets to an army with a LOT of shooting. We had to take pot shots at units here and there and against 6 or 7 scoring units, we could only hope to tie some up. In the end, we lost 18 - 2.


Game 2:
Next game on the Saturday was against Jak, who had been to MAWS before and Rob. They played Dark Angels and Imperial Guard.

When we saw 30 tactical marines and a Dreadnaught, we were initially really scared, as that's a lot of rapid fire to deal with, alongside a walker which we couldn't really dent.

Some bad deployment on their part and their bad luck with reserve rolls, compared to our good luck with reserve rolls (I think everything of ours showed up on turn 2) meant that we could overwhelm what was down on the table.

Along with that, we knocked out their mobile units early in the  game (Guard Chimeras) and the rest we could pick off. I think it was 16 - 4 win.

Game 3:
The last win pushed us up the table a bit, and we came face to face with a Chaos Space marine and Chaos Daemon team. There was some disagreement at first over how in a doubles game our Daemons would deploy (Rulespack says if you share same codex, treated as same army. We had played entire force split, they argued 2 armies, 2 splits ) and the referee wasn't around at the time, so we split into 2. Unfortunately we both had the unfavoured sides show up straight away.

This was Capture and Control, and they went all guns blazing (literally) for our base, whereas we abandoned our base, hoping for a late deep strike to contest ours.

It went down to the wire with my Bloodcrushers managing to immobilise a late rhino rush towards the objective we held.

Unfortunately the only thing of ours remaining in Deep Strike was Fateweaver and it was a "Anything but a hit and he's dead" roll, which we failed and Fateweaver landed off the board. Thinking about it, we probably should have just bolstered the objective we held and not threw away 333 victory points.

However, one thing we learnt during this game is we go all in for our deep strike placements. The other Daemon player was very cautious and when we placed our units down was shocked to see how offensively we played them. It was pretty even on VPs, so this was a straight 10-10 draw. However, we could have nicked some extra points had Fateweaver lived.

After the game, we clarified with the referee and we had been playing it correctly in previous games. Our combined forces deployed as 1.

Game 4:
The first game on the Sunday was against 2 of the local players from the Northwest Gaming Centre, playing Imperial Guard and Crimson Fists.

I think this was our longest game of the weekend due to the fact they'd never played against Chaos Daemons before and also some confusion with rules clarifications (such as Kantor's "everyone is Stubborn" USR not affecting Guardsmen, as per the rulespack).

If I remember rightly, the game was Kill points and we went from 1 KP behind at the start of Turn 5, to winning by 4, due to some very, very lucky rolling. I got my winged Daemon Prince into a Leman Russ and anything other than a 6 for my Bloodcrushers assault into terrain and they would have been out of charge for attacking a Whirlwind.

I think we won 18 - 2 overall.

Game 5:
There was some controversy over the Sunday as a player who on the Saturday had been found to be using an illegal list because it wasn't submitted in advance (200 - 300 pts over what it should have, as well as other shenanigans) so it had an effect on the standings.

In the end the TO basically just said to people, play whoever you want to play, so figuring we'd get finished a bit quicker and not have to rush, we played Angryman and Col Straken from MAWS.

By this time, me and Sanguinius were shattered from a long weekend and after being told about the mess up with the standings, not bothered about what the result would be for this game. So we started off by making pretty daft Deep Strike placements. In the end, we started to even out, picked off a few of the easier kill points and think we lost by about 2. Which considering the 3 Dreads in the list as well as mobile units in transports, wasn't too bad.

Conclusion:
To sum up the tournament, I thought overall it was OK. I really enjoy doubles and team tournaments, much more than singles. It takes a lot of the pressure off me, means I don't have to worry if I need to make a phone call and also stops a lot of issues arising ("How far did that move?", "What unit is that?" etc.)

As I said a bit earlier, there was some contentious rulings, but the TO was let down late on by the person who was supposed to referee the 40k side of things. This meant stuff like dodgy list submissions by last minute players making up the numbers, as well as some other decisions.

However, a TO can't be held responsible for cheating in game. That's down to players. It's the 2nd time that the same person at a NWGC tournament has caused problems with cheating.

Luckily, the rules pack was very clear on the allies rulings, which sorted out a lot of problems from last time (Ork Warboss with Wyches in a Raider springs to mind), so I'd like to see that rulespack used again at some point for another doubles tournament.

Other than that, there's the list variety issue that a few people brought up on comments afterwards. I think there were 4 lists with 3 Vendettas, then 2 or 3 Grey Knight armies without a single Grey Knight in them (admittedly, 1 had some Termis). This is more of a commentary on where 40k is going at the moment, which I'm not too keen on and is putting me off attending other tourneys.

The last thing to point out to me is the painting system. I'm not one to say to people "You need to have spent X amount of hours painting this model" but I think the 3 colour system is too easily abused, if not completely ignored. A Grey Knight army had it's 3 colours being Chaos Black spray, an extremely quick drybrush, and then a few small white lines. I understand the time, patience, skill and cost involved in nicely painted armies but I think the 3 colour system taken to an absolute minimum like that, is a bit extreme.

Anyways, that's just my gripes for the weekend. I'd like to get involved in some other doubles and team tourneys rather than singles stuff, but we'll see what's actually around.

Cheers,
SB