A pair of the Battle Brothers went Road Tripping to Atlanta to experience their first Warzone event of the year, hosted by Gigabytes Gaming Cafe and the General Staff. It would be my first time at Gigabytes and my first time playing with the new Warzone Missions so I was excited for a long weekend of gaming.
Background
Warzone Gigabytes is (I believe) a first time event as part of the Warzone series and managed to hit a Major in their first year! So congrats to the General Staff and Gigabytes Cafe on a great turnout. For those who aren't familiar, Gigabytes is a gaming cafe and bistro in Marietta, GA where patrons can play tabletop games, get a meal, drink a beer, buy plastic crack, and just generally indulge the hobby. Fantastic store and I think it won an award for best game store in the US this past year.
Several of us from the GCWA made the five hour drive to Atlanta including Adam Clem, Mark Perry, Mike Sanchez, Ian Thornton, and myself. A few other Gulf Coast guys made it up along with the Montgomery, AL contingent (check out their new podcast, Dangli Boyz). All in all, 64 players threw down for four top spots as Warmaster (Best General), Imperial Envoy (Best Sportsman), Artisan (I think...Best Painted), and Best Overall.
Roadtrip and Night Before
Jarl Clem and I got on the road north around mid-morning, cutting through the desolate, barren land that is South Alabama (I joke, the drive is beautiful). Our goal was to get to Atlanta in time for the baseball game that night as we're both lifelong Braves fans and they were honoring one of our favorite players, Chipper Jones, that night for his induction into the Hall of Fame. This was completely unrelated to 40K but it's part of what I love about traveling to events. They become mini-vacations when you get time to break away from the table top. But that said, we had a great time, had lots of beer, got a cool plaque, Adam tried to get us kicked out (how can you be too loud at a sporting event?), great times all around. The area around the new stadium (The Battery) is a mini-entertainment district in itself and a really cool place to go and hangout if you're in Northwest Atlanta...particularly if you're a baseball fan.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we spent part of the time listening to Slaves of Darkness on the drive up, a Horus Heresy novel about the mustering of the Traitor Legions before the drive to Terra. The relevant part to me was the meeting and parting of Horus and Alpharius (you know I love me some Alpha Legion). But it was funny to see Horus and Perturabo trying to herd the cats that were the Daemon Primarchs.
List
I decided to stick with the T'au Sept Brigade as the Command Points are too good to pass up in a meta where Imperial armies never run out anyways. It was the same list as the Pensacola RTT and a slight variation off my ATC and GCWA GT lists.
Coldstar: 3 Fusion Blasters, Shield Geneator, (Warlord)
Fireblade: Pulse Rifle, Markerlight, Puretide Engram Neurochip
Longstrike: Ion Cannon, 2 Seeker Missiles, Smart Missiles
4 Strike Teams: Shas'ui w/ Markerlight, Pulse Rifles; 3x5 and 1x6
2 Breacher Teams: Shas'ui w/ Markerlight, Pulse Blasters; 2x5
2 Riptides: Heavy Burst Cannon, Smart Missiles, Counterfire Defense System, Target Lock
2 Stealth Teams (3): Shas'vre, all Burst Cannons
3 Tactical Drone Squadrons (4): Shield Drones
2 Hammerheads: Ion Cannon, 2 Seeker Missiles, Smart Missiles
Sky Ray: 6 Seeker Missiles, 2 Markerlights, Smart Missiles
Spoiler alert...I played the Search and Destroy deployment map ALL FIVE GAMES. Which was okay with me as I love that deployment, but still how are those for odds.
Day 1
Round 1
Opponent: Anthony Livesey
Army: Astra Militarum; Shadowsword and 16 Bullgryn plus artillery and infantry support
I had been hearing for weeks that Bullgryn were the 7th Edition Death Star reborn so I was anxious and interested to put that to the test. The mission primary was progressive objectives (5 of them) with Marked for Death as the secondary. He took Tallarn on the Shadowsword so it was able to outflank which is honestly how you should play a single one. The Bullgryns all deployed at the front edge of his DZ circle and were ready to jump forward into my zone on early. I played my tanks back to stay out of LoS of his Shadowsword presuming I'd go second, while leaving the Riptides forward to try and draw fire and tank shots with the drones. I'll go ahead and mention that I'd had a bit too much fun at the game the night before and it was a rough morning. With that in mind, I totally goofed on my M4D units and went with his three artillery/support tanks instead of the Infantry squads. Me being dumb...have you even been dumb? Happened to me. Ultimately wouldn't have changed the outcome though so I'm not beating myself up too much on that.
**Note: Primary was scaled off a maximum of 18 points so your margin of victory determine how many points you received. Secondary had a maximum of 9 points available and was typically scored in 3 point increments. The tertiaries were all the same: Alternate First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker. Each worth two points apiece if only one player achieved it and one point apiece if both scored it.**
So I win the roll to go first and nudge everything out to take shots on the Bullgryn why still maintaining 50% cover (Warzone cover rule). I probably made a mistake at this point by unloading all of my Seeker Missiles into a unit of Bullgryn. My thought was that I may not have a chance to return fire on the Shadowsword when it arrived so I might as well use them while I could. The result was I took out most of that squad and killed off some infantry. The Shadowsword arrived and started popping tanks on the bottom of turn 1. Over the next few turns I actually did a good job of scoring objectives and going into Turn 5, I held a 9-6 lead on primary. Unfortunately, Tony had done a great job of hunting down my vehicles, and with a Riptide dying to Bullgryns...I was in a precarious situation. A failed 3++ against a Volcano Cannon removed my last Riptide and the rout was on. Tony Scored 8 in the 5th round and 5 in the 6th to put the game away and score the victory.
Two cool moments in the game that I want to mention. My Coldstar jumped across the board in an attempt to kill his Company Commander who was regenerating CP. There was a bounty on his head and I wanted the purity seal for killing him. This little dude tanked 5 melta shots to the face with his invulnernable save...no bounty for me this game. The second was the end game sequence. I was a model away from being tabled and my Fireblade was left atop a large outcropping dueling with his Priest. The Fireblade emerged victorious and cast the body of his enemy down. Surveying the field of battle, he saw his Warriors dead or dying...the Tanks and Riptides smoldering wrecks. His last sight was the Imperial Behemoth slowly raising its cannon to take aim at rock on which he stood...
Result: Defeat, 7-27
Round 2
Opponent: Mark Hall
Army: Tyranids/GSC; Carnifex broods with Neurothropes, Genestealers, GSC characters
Mark was running a really cool list that he said he had been experimenting with, but I have to say it looked great on the table top. I believe it was 7 Carnifex (4 Shooters, 3 Shriekers) a couple Neurothropes, Lictors or Raveners leading a unit of termagaunts, and some GSC characters with a big blob of Genestealers. Again we rolled Search and Destroy, which was convenient as we had a big bowl in the middle of the table. The mission involved moving Beacons up and out of your deployment zone while cowing the opponent's in their DZ. Primary was Kill Points.
He went first and moved his Shriekers up to engage my Stealth Team in the bowl. His Genestealers ambushed in on my right flank ready to eat through some Strike Teams and attempt to get into my Sky Ray. The Stealth Team was able to survive and harass the center a bit longer and the Sky Ray flew away from the approaching horde of Genestealers. His bugs were extremely resilient due to a combination of -1 to hit (forget the upgrade) and Jormungandr (sp?) to always be in cover except when advancing/charging. Seeing the Heavy Venom Cannons in action, I knew I wanted no part of those so I sent my other Stealth Team to tie them up for a few turns which really neutered his long range firepower. *Note: Don't underestimate Stealth Teams.* The heavy hitters were able to focus down one of his CC carnifex and one of the shooters while chewing into the big squad of Genestealers.
We both gave the beacon to our Warlords and slowly escorted them around the opposite edges of the big center bowl. My Stealth Teams kept three of the Carnifex occupied for the next few turns and I was able to pick off the others rather systematically. The Genestealers went down to Smart Missiles and the GSC characters began wreaking havoc in my backlines. That being said, my Hammerheads moved out in a convoy to provide Fire Support for the Commander and his Riptide escort. Around Turn 5 we were getting short on time but I was able to draw a bead on his Warlord with the beacon and blast it and the escort away.
I was able to pull out a victory but we were pretty tight on Primaries as Mark was able to chew through all the Fire Warriors and small units. My beacon was in his DZ and I had captured his, although I had been unable to return it to his DZ, cruising me to a comfortable final score.
Result: Victory, 22-8
Round 3
Opponent: Charles Feltman
Army: Dark Angels/Blood Angels; Dark Angels Primaris gunline with Blood Angels Captains and Mephiston
Charles had a different twist on the Marine gunline that I've played against a few times. He went with the Banner Ancient surrounded by Hellblasters and Aggressors with Azrael providing the 4++ and a Darkshroud giving -1 to hit. I remember this being a 6 Objective Mission with a large LoS blocking terrain piece in the middle of the board which allowed me to protect my tanks for much of the game. I had a huge advantage in this game with my range, he wasn't going to be able to reach me with the vast majority of his weapons, even if the banner tripped on his slain models and I feel like I did a good job playing that to my advantage. He had the +1 to go first and I rolled my dice first...1...he doesn't bother rolling so I immediately roll to seize...6...good start.
The Riptides went up and around the center blocker and sat just outside of 30" to avoid return fire from the Hellblasters. The Hammerheads stayed still so that they could shoot more accurately in case I failed to get 5 Markerlights on a target. The first order of business was to remove one of the Hellblaster squads and the Darkshroud, both of which went down fairly easily, although he was able to trip the banner and shoot one of my Stealth Teams off the board in my own turn. But I was able to take down those two units and started to bleed off other Primaris units and his scouts. He responded my moving Mephiston and a Smash Captain up the board and annihilating my other Stealth Team, but by and large he was out of range of my important stuff.
Turn 2 I was able to remove most of the threats on my left flank (pending the arrival of two Smash Captains) and continued to kill off his Scouts and Primaris without much return threat. Mephiston came in along my board edge but unfortunately for Charles, failed his charge and was left hanging in the breeze. The two SmashCaptain had jumped over to deal with my Riptides but even with rerolls on one and a 3D6 charge on the other...the Angel's Wing Captain failed the charge and the Riptides gunned the other down in overwatch. At this point, the game switched over to mop up duty and I was able to win by a comfortable margin. Rough matchup but hat's off to Charles for a really fun game to finish out Day 1.
Result: Victory, 28-10
Day 2
Round 4
Opponent: Aaron Ware
Army: Necrons; Tesseract Vault, 12 Destroyers, Wraiths, Deceiver, Immortals and Crypteks
This was an interesting mission and suitably had a crazy finish. Aaron was running the Destroyer Cult with a Vault, unit of 4 Wraiths, some immortals and Crypteks to finish out the Battalion. The mission had six objectives that you could "dig" to score. In practice, this meant if you held the objective at the beginning of your turn you could roll a dice and get 1 VP on that objective, but if your dice roll was equal to or less than the turn number then the objective would disappear. Remaining objectives were worth 3 VPs at the end of the game.
Aaron gets first turn and immediately digs his objective, rolls a 1, CP rerolls it, gets another 1, so not the best start. His Vault was bounced forward by the Deceiver and started throwing out mortal wounds into my unsuspecting Fire Warriors, clearing a hole to punch through with his Destroyers. I took a little damage on my tanks but was largely out of range of the worst of his firepower. My turn 1 I pour everything I had into the Vault to get it off the field and was successful in destroying it. However, I also rolled snake eyes on the Dig objective in my DZ which really hurt me over the course of the game.
The bulk of the game turned it's attention to my right flank where the firing lines of Destroyers dueled with the Hammerheads and one of the Riptides. I was never able to really break through and grab the objective my Stealth Suits had previously occupied but he couldn't get clean shots at my Hammerheads. I began winning the attrition battle and ultimately was able to clear out the Destroyers and Wraiths. While that fight was going on the right, a smaller but more crucial fight was occurring on my far left flank between a unit of immortals and my remaining Stealth Team. The only objective to not disappear was over there and I was trying desperately to remove his ObSec units from the vicinity so I could hold it at the end of the game. This took the intervention of both a Riptide and Cryptek to determine the outcome but weight of fire carried the day and the Stealth Team settled in for the long haul.
I had a probable misplay with my Coldstar late in the game as I was trying to make something happen to break the stalemate. The Deceiver had just died in the midfield (in CC if you can believe that...go Coldstar!) and the Commander moved up to try and get to the right flank objective (hadn't disappeared yet). I charged the Riptide into the Destroyers and the Commander into an Immortal but the Destroyers fell back and swarmed the commander. His Shield Generator was finely tuned and saved 6 of the 8 wounds but sadly the D3 damage came up as 3 for each and he went down, giving up Slay the Warlord.
Ultimately I was able to finish off the Necrons and complete the table wipe but Aaron had been scoring Objectives consistently and I hadn't been able to keep my ObSec guys alive long enough to even attempt to Dig. Holding the last Objective bumped the 6 point deficit to a 3 point which was classified as a Pyrrhic Victory and a 10-5 Primary Score. I scored 6 points on Secondary to his 3 (it was percentage Kill Points), then 4 to 2 on Tertiary to force a tie. Honestly I think it surprised us both, me thinking he had run away with the progressive objectives and him thinking the tabling would put me over the top. I'm kinda glad we were both wrong, this was a great game and a real nailbiter right down to the tallying of the scores.
Result: Tie, 15-15
Round 5
Opponent: Will Clayton
Army: Ynnari/Eldar; Wraith Constructs (10 Blades/10 Guard), some Aspect Warriors, Yvraine and Psykers with a Wave Serpent
My last round was against Will, one of the previous showrunners of the Redstone Rumble in Huntsville, and his Ynnari. It was a very unconventional list as he was running a lot of Iyanden Wraithblade/Guard along with a Wraithlord (which he said was strictly there because it was painted and the list deadline slipped up on him). The Ynnari contingent was properly bundled in a Wave Serpent with all of his Eldar Psykers and Yvraine, plus a unit of Reapers. Some Swooping Hawks were set up Swooping - or whatever it is they do to Deep Strike. I wasn't really sure how this was going to play out, but fortunately we were playing on planet bowling ball (a beautiful bowling ball, but still not much LoS blocking) so I'd have free reign to shoot. The primary was 6 Objectives, two of which would be zeroed out by secret choice before the game began, secondary was KPs with a race to 6 for the bonus 3 points.
I seized the initiative again and slid my tanks right to clear the one LoS blocker in the center while my Riptides went right to catch the Eldar in a bit of a pincer. I was able to down the Wave Serpent and chew a big chunk out of the Wraithblades. He got into me with his Blades in his turn and they proved an incredibly resilient foe when powered up by Eldar psychic powers. It took several turns to dislodge them from my tank lines and it became particularly hairy when the Wraithguard dropped in and started popping tanks.
The game devolved into a close range shooting match with the Wraiths and Hammerheads constantly charging and falling back while the Riptides lent their firepower to the melee as well as Character hunting. I was finally able to get my bounty as a Riptide drew a clear shot on Yvraine and overkilled her with Heavy Burst Cannon fire. We were running short on time at this point and with most of the game's points decided we split time and worked out the last remaining points of contention. He had won the race on secondary and beat me 9-6 for that. I edged into a middle tier on the victory as I had good board control, giving me 12-4 on primary. We split tertiary as we'd thoroughly bled each other over the course of the game.
Great game, really tight despite the lack of LoS blocking terrain and had a great time to finish out the games!
Result: Victory, 21-16
Results and Placing
All said, I finished the event with a 3-1-1 record and a respectable 93 Battle Points, which was good for a tie at 20th overall out of 64...not bad! To check out the other winners, visit Warzone Atlanta's Facebook page or home site, but a shout-out to Stephen Mitchell for winning the title of Warmaster and an even bigger shout-out to our own Mark Perry who broke through and took home Best Overall, second in Battle Points to only the Warmaster. Fabio Van Der Merwe took home Artisan with a beautifully painted Dark Eldar (and Harlequins I believe) army. Unfortunately I'm blanking on the gentleman who won Imperial Envoy, but I know that there were two players with a perfect Sportmanship score, so if someone knows who those two players are...I'd love to give them credit!
For myself, the overall scores came in which included painting and sportsmanship and I got a nice jump up to 15th with 27/33 on the painting rubric and 26/33 on the Sportmanship rating. Not too shabby!
I want to give a special thank you to my five opponents: Tony, Mark, Charles, Aaron, and Will. You guys were awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed all five games whether they were win, loss or tie. My one criticism (and I used that term very loosely here as it's really not a gripe at all) of the event was that we had to pick favorite opponents for the sportsmanship portion. I'd love to play all of you again, you were all excellent opponents that challenged me while keeping the games fun. So my sincere thanks for contributing to a great weekend, I hope we toss dice again down the road, especially as I'll be at Warzone Atlanta.
Keep a look out for more BatReps in the near future! The next GT on the horizon is Warzone: Come the Apocalypse in Dothan, AL. We'll be bringing a large contingent so stay tuned!
Don't forget to like our Facebook Page "Battle Brothers of the GCWA" to stay up to date on our latest content. Also, jump over to iTunes or podOmatic to subscribe to the podcast so you can stay informed on all the competitive 40K news from around the Gulf Coast! Thanks for reading.
