Doubles Tourney 9.20.2014 The Fenrisian Conscription Service...

I was ten minutes late to the tourney and my partner, Rob, decided to go with Fenrisian Conscription Service as our team name...It has a certain ring to it but I think I would have gone with something a little more sassy like "Interplanetary Roto Rooters."

Why don't they play some metal at these events? Something like Gwar would be perfect and you can call me the salaminizer...

At any rate, this was yet another 'Arvard 'Ardboyz doubles tourney under the belt. The Sons of Corax came out of their foam to make a sudden appearance due to fluff circumstances and a last minute partner switcheroo.

The Sons of Corax posing as an Iron Hands offshoot...

Rob and I came in second place...Which seems to be a theme with me at the 'Ardboyz doubles (My fifth year in a row and a couple of second place finishes...) but we nailed best appearance.

This tourney made me think a lot about what part of 40K is fun to me...And it certainly isn't the competitive aspect. I still enjoy the building, converting and painting but playing is losing its luster and it has been for quite some time.

In this tourney I took a strange Space Marine list that wasn't a whole lot of fun to play. I was going to do an "All my eggs in one basket" type of list that consisted of 800 points worth of douchebaggery in a land raider. I would have gotten my ass handed to me but I would have had a lot more fun due to moving less models around and generally just caring less.

Not a bad amount of models for 1250...

I played with the following:

Sons of Corax Army List 9.20.2014

Using Iron Hands chapter tactics from Codex: Space Marines

HQ:

Librarian = 65 + Auspex (5) = 70

Troops:

Tac squad x 5 (70) + Meltgun (10) + (Meltabombs (5) = 85

Dedicated transport = Razorback (55) w/ Twin linked lascannon (20) = 75

Scouts x 5 (55) + Powerfist (25) + Meltabombs (5) = 85

Dedicated Transport = Land speeder storm (45) w/ Heavy flamer (free upgrade) = 45

Scouts x 5 (55) + Sniper rifles (5x1=5) + Camo cloaks (5x2=10) = 70

Elites:

Ironclad dreadnought (135) w/ Heavy flamer (10) and Meltagun (free) and Seismic Hammer (free) = 145

Dedicated transport = Drop pod (35) + Deathwind Launcher (15) = 50

Dreadnought w/ Two Twin-linked Autocannons (5+15) = 120

Fast Attack:

Stormtalon Gunship (110) + Skyhammer Missiles (15) = 125

Land speeder (50) + Heavy flamer (free) + Multi melta (20) = 70

Land speeder (50) + Heavy bolter (free) + Typhoon Missile Launcher (25) = 75

Heavy support:

Thunderfire Cannon = 100

Vindicator (125) + Siege Shield (10) = 135

Total = 1250

It' a hell of a lot of shooting, which isn't my style. I'd rather go hard and fast and originally planned on bringing a bunch of fast chaos space marine stuff just to make a go at it. Shooty armies bore the pants off me. 

Anyway, Rob brought his Space Wolves and we made a go at it. His list went something like this:

Rune Priest 

Dude in termie armor with chainfist

Grey hunters in assback

blood claws in flying shoebox thingy

3 thunderwolfers

We went 2-1.

I should have just done something more like this:

Chapter Master w/ all the good stuff

Chaplain Termie

Sniper scouts

Scouts in storm

Ironclad in pod

6x thunderhammernators

This would have also come to around 1250 and would have been more fun. Shit, I've got tons of painted terminators just collecting dust in a shoebox. I like the all or nothing lists because they either run straight through stuff or they get trampled. In any scenario the game ends quickly. These long drawn out games are just too damn much.

I was going to take pictures and do some long, drawn out battle reports but yeah, those are boring as hell unless you add pizzazz to them the way Payson does. 

There was a low turnout for this tourney. Six teams...Lowest ever which made me wonder if 40K is taking a downturn or if the tourney was just at a bad time. A lot of the dudes that played in past tournies weren't there.

The first game was against some marine spammers-Imperial Fists and Blood Angels with some inquisition thrown in. Their list was something like two land raiders, two baal preds, two of this, two of that, blah, blah, blah...Very boring. It was a good game on our part and our dice were excellent. The dudes we played weren't great at the game, they castled most of their army up around just one objective and spread themselves pretty thin. 

There was one issue at the end of the game where I was asked to take a morale test on my scouts during our turn because we had both forgotten. I did it and rolled boxcars, double sixes...But it was a test for pinning and after a quick look in the rulebook we found that barrage weapons no longer pin. So, our opponents said, "Well then, you should test leadership to see if your guys run away." Even though it was in our turn (like I said the test had slipped both our minds) I rolled the dice and made the leadership test. Then, the opponents said, "No, you have to use the double sixes," and I said "It's a different test, so you roll again." There was a bit of back and forth here and I decided to just use the double sixes and have my scouts run off the board rather than argue about it, but this was just fucking douchy on their part. Anyway, they still lost, so all that griping got them nowhere. 

In our second game we faced a tough Necron and Tyranid list that ran roughshod over us. Both our dice were pretty cold in this one and our xeno opponents made pretty much every cover and jink save possible. Lots of sixes on that side of the table. I made some serious tactical errors as well and spent a lot of time trying to bring his flyrant down when I should have been more focused on the necrons...

There was a sketchy issue in this game as well. The tyranid player tried to use his tervigon's crushing claws and adrenal glands upgrade on my ironclad dreadnought. His model was WYSIWYG but a quick glance at his army list and hmmmm....YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY PURCHASE THESE UPGRADES FOR YOUR MODEL DIPSHIT! This was enraging because, well, it's cheating and he probably did this in his last game. It made me question everything else in his armylist and it spoiled the spirit of the game. I chose not to tattletale to the T.O. but now I am very suspect of these two connivers if I see them at another tournament.

Rob cooled me down a little here. "Dude he didn't mean to do it. It was an easy mistake to make." Yeah I guess, but it clearly said tervigon 200 points and yada, yada. But let's quickly delve into this. A tervigon is base strength five. The adrenal glands give it +1 strength on the charge and the crushing claws give it another +1 strength and armourbane, so the thing would have torn open my dread like a paper mache sarcophagus. The two duked it out in combat for a while and some lucky smash rolls on his part were the end of Mr. Ironclad, but that's not the point. The point is he wrote his list and knew he didn't give this model the upgrade but continued to use it in the game. Cheating. Plain and simple.

The third and final game was against a couple of dudes running a somewhat fluffy Space Marines/AM/Chaos Space Marines list consisting of Astral Claws and Red Corsairs. Cool idea. These two clowns were fun to play but were so slow we only got to the bottom of the third turn. They spent most of the time discussing tactics instead of moving models and rolling dice but whatever. It was the third game, we were tired and these were friends so it was less serious and instead of getting melta-ed immediately, my ironclad dreadnought punched out a good amount of stuff.

In the end, The Fenrisian Conscription Service did very well for themselves and it was nice for the Sons of Corax to see the light of day again.

And will I learn my lesson and go to another tournament in the future? Probably...But I'm taking my daemons next time...