Come the Apocalypse GT - A Tale of Two Days

Greetings fellow denizens of the Gulf Coast,

About a dozen Battle Brothers trekked north into the wilds known as Alabama to engage in glorious warfare in the inaugural Come the Apocalypse GT sponsored by Fanatix. All in all it was an excellent showing for the GCWA with four members placing in the top 10: Mark Perry (t-2nd place and 1st Overall), Anthony Hinkel (t-4th), Robert Harp (6th), and Adam Clem (t-7th). Friend of the Alliance Carter Leach tied Mark Perry for 2nd Place. Overall this was a really fun event and well run by Robert Chandler and the Fanatix crew. This will definitely be one we mark down for next year's ITC season. Major props to those guys for getting a GT off the ground in year one.

For those of y'all who have never been, Fanatix is located in Enterprise, AL just a short drive up for those of us from the Gulf Coast area. A few of us had made the drive up before for another tournament, but for the GT they went all out and converted 2/3 of the store into gaming area. I was initially surprised they moved it back to Fanatix from the original location as I didn't see how they would be able to fit enough tables in the store. Major credit to everyone involved as they had 16 tables that were active on Day 1. I honestly never felt crowded during any of my games which is usually an issue at FLGs that host larger events.

The missions were taken straight out of the rulebook with some minor scoring modifications to provide for Major and Minor Victories/Defeats. On the whole, this wasn't an issue although I do have one grief about the Kill Points mission which I'll discuss in Round 2. I would've liked to see some manner of progressive objectives or a bit more emphasis on the secondary; but on the whole, the missions were very straight forward and provided you with all the information you needed in order to accomplish your objectives.

Now onto my tournament experience from the perspective of the actual games. You may be able to glean from the title that my days were polar opposites of each other. The first day went terribly wrong for my record and my second day went exceedingly well. So we'll jump right in.

The List
Tau Empire
Battalion
3x 4 Fusion Commanders w/ 2 Gun Drones
3x Strike Teams with Shas'ui and Markerlight
Battalion
3x  3 Ion Blaster Commanders with Adv Targeting System and 2 Gun Drones
3x Strike Teams with Shas'ui and Markerlight
Vanguard
Coldstar with ATS and Shield Generator (Warlord - Tenacious Survivor)
4 Plasma Commander w/ 2 Gun Drones
3x Stealth Teams with Multitrackers, one fusion, shas'vre with Markerlight and 2 Gun Drones

DAY 1: How NOT to win at a GT

Round 1: Michael Lee, Grey Knights and Assassins
Mission: Retrieval
Deployment: Spearhead Assault

So first round of the tournament, I draw the guy that ended up winning the whole thing. He brought a brutal list consisting of 4 Grandmaster Dreadknights, Celestine, 5 Eversors, 2 or 3 Culexus, 3 Astropaths and a Primaris Psyker. I deployed my Strike Teams and Stealth Teams on the field and he hid most of his psykers and Culexus behind crates in his DZ. He won first turn and brought all four Dreadknights and a Culexus into my backfield, proceeding to slaughter all but one of my Strike Teams turn 1. My counter was brutal as I was able to remove one Dreadknight and reduce his Warlord Dreadknight to a single wound. Unfortunately, I made a severe error in my shooting and completely removed the one available target of one of my Fusion Commanders without him firing a shot. Would it have changed the outcome of the game? Probably not, but it could've removed or severely wounded another Dreadknight and evened the odds. With most of my Infantry wiped out on Turn 1, I was left with my Commanders to try and make up the difference. It was an uphill battle, especially with the Character rule limiting my available targets and psychotic Eversors running around all hopped up on whatever magical cocktail they get injected with. Ultimately was tabled on Turn 5 as Celestine killed the Coldstar in close combat. Final tally was 15-2 for Michael.

Result: Major Loss, 1-19 BPs


Round 2: Doug Kus, Nurgle Daemons
Mission: No Mercy
Deployment: Dawn of War

After the lunch break, I squared off against Chaos Warmaster extraordinaire Mr. Doug Kus. We had driven up together so this one would be for bragging rights. Unfortunately, he was running a highly elite army of Obliterators with Abbadon backed up by Epidemius, some Poxwalkers and a Herald of Nurgle. Total of 11 Kill Points. I had 10 Kill Points tied up in 2 man drone squads. I would use a game like this to make the case for using the ITC method of kill points where a destroyed unit earns you the power level of the destroyed unit. Killing two demon princes on turn 1 should be worth much more than killing 4 gun drones on turn 1. Just a very hard draw for me against an excellent player with a very tough list. He dropped all of his Obliterators on my right flank with Abbadon in the middle. He then chewed through my fire warriors before the Commanders could come on in the bottom of the turn. By that time he'd wracked up a huge tally for Epidemius so the children of Nurgle were receiving major buffs. His list was actually a very good example of the buff stacking that is possible in 8th edition. Simple concept but highly effective. It was a really fun game but he crushed me. Final tally was 23-4.

Result: Major Loss, 1-19 BPs

Round 3: Aaron Ito, Astra Militarum
Mission: Scouring
Deployment: Search and Destroy

Sitting at 0-2, I was hoping for my first win to pull myself out of the slide. It wasn't to be unfortunately, but I did get to play my first game against another TBS Comics regular in Aaron. He's been capitalizing on the resurgence of the Imperial Guard..erm I mean Astra Militarum...under the 8th Edition reboot. His list consisted of roughly 130 guardsmen (half conscript, half regular infantry) plus 4 or 5 mortar teams, 2 basilisks and 2 manticores. He held three squads of Scions in reserve. The deployment zones let him perform a true castle up deployment. I literally think his entire zone was covered in models. The superior objective was sitting right on the edge of his zone in easy access of a squad of conscripts, forcing me to go aggressive early. Drawing first turn, I moved my stealth teams up close to deploy their homing beacons and bring the fusion commanders in range of the basilisks. As I had found in my previous two games, the commanders are brutally efficient. I was able to destroy both basilisks on turn 1 and chew into his infantry squads on both flanks. At that point, I did a very un-Tau thing and charged multiple units into the front-line of his guardsmen. The hope was to force him to use up orders to let them shoot me the following turn. Due to the number of units/models on each side, this game only got through 3 turns and we were splitting time in the 3rd. Very brutal, bloody game but Aaron was able to grab enough objectives before time ran out to give him a minor victory. Final tally was 12-5 I believe.

Result: Minor Loss, 7-13 BPs
Day 1 Recap

So Day 1 went almost as bad as it could have. I made at least one critical mistake in the first two games, had a very poor mission draw in one game and simply didn't have enough shots to remove 130 bodies from the board in game three. But the group retired to the Beef O'Brady's around the corner for some cold brews, hot food and football. An excellent way to relax after a long day of gaming.

DAY 2: How to rebound 

Round 4: Roger Jones, Imperial Fists
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Round 4 started with a gift. My opponent Roger had made boxes with the seal of the Inquisition on the lid, inside of which he had placed his list. This was a really cool little gift that he gave to all of his opponents over the course of the tournament, great guy and extremely friendly. As to his list, he was running an Imperial Fists force with 5 or 6 Terminator squads, Lysander, an Assault squad, Vanguard Veterans and 2-3 Tactical squads. His list was built around the idea of the Space Marine and his bolter, and man he had a lot of shots he could put out from highly durable squads. With neither of us having any Heavy Support Elements, the mission came down to holding the the four objectives and the secondary objectives. Two were in no man's land and one was in each deployment zone. This was another slow game as the MSU approach we had both taken resulted in a lot of separate shots. As had become a running trend, my Fire Warriors were turned to pulp off Roger's first volley from the Terminators (who had at this point completely surrounded the Fire Caste Infantrymen). It was a fairly brutal round of shooting, as I lost most of the Fire Warriors and a Stealth Team. The response came swiftly in the bottom of the turn as my Commanders were able to clearly off most of the Imperial Fists along my left flank and secure the enemy deployment zone. Still, terminators are hard to chew through and one commander found himself smashed to death in the midfield. Two of the ion Commanders were able to wipe out two Terminator squads in my backfield before taking advantage of a clear line of fire to Lysander and scoring Slay the Warlord. The Coldstar was able to seal the game as he advanced his full 40" across the board to grab and uncontested objective. Final tally was 12-4.

Result: Minor Victory, 13-7 BPs

Round 5: Garrett Baxley, Space Wolves
Mission: Relic
Deployment: Vanguard

The final game of the tournament pitted me against a Space Wolves army that had recently visited the armorer to have their storm shields spruced up. Seriously, there were two models in the entire army without a storm shield. Thunderwolf riding Battle Lords, Wolf Guard with plasma, a crazy biker squad with a ridiculous amount of shots (seriously I think it was like 6-8 bolter shots per bike, getting to shoot every weapon is crazy), a venerable Dreadnought and Bjorn himself. The field was fairly open and our two armies were almost as polar opposite as you could get. I used my standard tactic in relic missions of infiltrating a stealth team on top of the objective to grab it turn one and try to scuttle back to my lines where I could castle up with it. The Stealth team didn't survive turn 1, the plasma toting Wolf Guard made sure of that. The rest of the game proceeded in a very odd way as neither of us really tried to grab the relic until the very end of the game. I was able to secure First Blood and Slay the Warlord off an incredibly lucky fusion shot from one of the Stealth Suits. Bjorn was felled by a fusion commander who dropped in behind Bjorn and his bodyguard. The axe-wielding venerable didn't appreciate that surprise very much and proceeded to hack his way through two commanders in the backfield. More commanders fell to the Thunderwolf riders before the Fire Warriors and surviving commanders could form a defensive line and gun them down through saturation fire. The bike squad was terrifying and began deleting my right flank until my Coldstar and third fusion commander arrived and put them down. As the last turn arrived, the relic stood atop a plateau at the board's center with my stealth team 12" away. An advanced move aided by a command point reroll allowed them to jump onto the relic and secure the victory. Final Tally was 12-2.

Result: Major Victory, 19-1 BPs

Final Thoughts
Day one was frustrating as it was hard to get much success going. Despite that, I had three great games against quality opponents. Day two was an excellent turn of luck to salvage my record, 2-3 wasn't what I was hoping for but you tend to learn more from the losses than from the wins.

But more importantly than records, I was able to enjoy a weekend of wargaming with a great group of guys and friends. Can't express the excellent job that Robert and the Fanatix crew did putting on this event. Great environment, great attitudes all around and a fantastic experience. Highly recommend this event to anyone who is looking for a GT within easy driving distance of the Gulf Coast. Can't wait to attend next year!