A Small Matter of Honour

May 7, 2011 by neathleanan 2 Comments

Well, I’m  back home from the Sad Muppet Society‘s annual 40K tournament, A Small Matter of Honour. Anyone paying attention will know I’ve been updating my Grey Knights for this event, so how did it go?

As a computer once said, “Umm, tricky…”

Game One

In game one, I faced Steve and his Space Wolves. We were playing Annihilation with Pitched Battle deployment. Intending to take the initiative and ride up one flank with the Stormraven, I deployed first. Steve setup a classic refused flank and proceeded to shoot down my Stormraven.

After this things went from bad to worse. Although I only lost by one kill point in the end; Steve did do a lot better at killing stuff.

Game Two

So, with one defeat under my belt, it was time for my second 1250 point game. This time against a fellow muppet, Dom Flanngian and his Nurgly chaos space marines.  This time, Capture & Control and Dawn of War.

Typically, the objectives were placed in opposite corners of the board and with me holding off everything to arrive on turn one; Dom took to opportunity to zoom a Death Guard unit and Daemon Prince straight at my objective.

This bold gambit might of worked, if the daemon prince hadn’t been shoot down in my first turn. Using the Stormraven to get my Terminators in, we took out the Death Guard’s ride, and then the Death Guard themselves.

By turn three, I was ready to launch my own counter assault, speeding the Stormraven across the board.  By the end of the game, Dom just had (half) a unit of Lesser Daemons and my Stormraven and a Strike squad was parked on his objective.

A nice big win to me and promotion to the main hall.

Game Three

If there was a plan, things didn’t work along to it in this game. Spearhead deployment and Seize Ground scenario versus Dane Fleet’s Orks.

I won’t dwell on this game, however suffice to say, my army does not work well against Ork hordes; especially in close combat. In the end, my Stormraven survived and… that was it!

So, moving along swiftly…

Game Four

Firmly kicked back out the main hall to one of the ‘lower’ rooms; the final game was a Pitched Battle/Seize Ground scenario against Murat’s Space Marines.

After deploying, I was quietly confident as Murat lacked a lot of long range weaponry.

After falling to stead the initiative, Murat moved a tactical squad, assault squad of DOOM, and  melta dreadnought towards my Stormraven; which moved up to intercept them.

On one flank, my Crusader delivered the death cult assassins into a tactical squad before taking a Vincator shell and blowing up. However, the assassins and inquisitor took the ten man marine squad.

On the other flank, the Stormraven endured three melta hits and promptly delivered the Grand Master and Terminators straight into the assault squad. Together with three Grey Knight Strike squads teleported around the Stormraven; this flank fell in two turns.

Elsewhere, Murat attempted to deep strike a Storm Guard Veterans and Librarian (and lots of meltaguns) behind one of my scoring dreadnought. unfortunately he scattered onto a building were he could not deploy the unit. A couple of minutes studying the rulebook later, Murat rolled on the Deep Strike Mishap table; and I then placed his unit 14″ away from my Terminators; lined them up to be charged by my Terminators the following turn and appropriately mowed down.

In the end, I held five objectives to Murat’s one. Another very big win for me and a nice way to end the day.

Conclusion

In the end, I finished 23rd which considering this is a new army, and I reckon as tricky army to use; is not too bad. The main lesions I learned on the day is that Grey Knights do not belong in close combat. Power weapons are nice, but a few bad dice rolls (a had a lot of these, of course), and with just one attack each normal Grey Knights are easily overwhelmed.

On the other hand, Stormravens are great! If I was to expand my army; then they would gain a second Stormraven to replace the Land Raider Crusader. Sure, they may only have armour 12, but the ability to redeploy elements of the army fast was critical to both of my wins today.

An Eldar Jetbike from Dave Lugg’s Best Army

Anyway, great event as always and a big congratulations to all the winners; especially Nick Jenkin who walked away with a very well deserved Best Sportsman award. And finally, a HUGE thank you to the guys running the event who did a great job (as always!).

The next project? Well suffice to say it will involve pointy ears…