Battle Missions Tournament Game 3

At this point, there were three people who had won all three games. One Lash Chaos, one Orks, and me with Necrons. The Chaos and Orks were paired up against each other while I was paired up with Nathan, who had one draw vs. Cory's Daemons who I played in game 2, and a win against the Chaos player I played against in round one. Now Nathan and I are good friends, and we play each other all the time. In fact, I had played him the day before and beat him in capture and control. We didn't need to exchange lists because we already knew them.

Nathan's list was:

Librarian w/ Bike, Null Zone and Vortex of Doom
Rifleman Dreadnought (2x TL autocannon)
10-man Tactical Squad w/ Flamer, Multi-melta, Power Fist + Rhino w/ Extra Armor
10-man Tactical Squad w/ Flamer, Multi-melta, Power Fist + Rhino w/ Extra Armor
2 Attack Bikes w/ Multi-meltas
2 Attack Bikes w/ Multi-meltas
2 Attack Bikes w/ Multi-meltas
Vindicator
Predator w/ Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Setup
So in this round we roll on the Battle Missions random chart to see what mission we get. We got the Tau Mission "Counter Attack" which is where the player who goes first can only deploy his HS and Troops choices, but they gain the Stealth USR. Deployment is Spearhead, and everything else must enter from the board edges that are not part of either players' deployment zone. The player who goes second can deploy anything. Objective is kill points.

Deployment
He deploys his Vindicator and pred in forests, the vindy was quite far forward. His tactical marines were in their rhinos near his table edge.

I placed my monolith and C'tan forward. I had a crazy plan for this mission. My idea was to line up my guys along his entry point to my left so he had to come in on the opposite side of the board. With this in mind, I packed my scarabs, destroyers and one warrior squad as far to the left as I could. The other warrior squad was behind the C'tan and monolith.

Turn 1
He doesn't move anything. First shot of the game: his vindicator blows up my monolith. His predator downs a destroyer or two but they get back up.

I turbo-boost my scarabs to line up on the table edge to my left. The destroyers and warriors fill in the remaining gaps. Deceiver moves forward. My destroyers get side armor shots on his vindicator, which did not have cover, and they blow it up.

Turn 2
His dreadnought, librarian and one attack bike squad come in from reserves. The libby attaches to the attack bikes. In total his shooting reduces the deceiver to two wounds, and downs 3 destroyers.

One of my destroyers get back up, so there's 3 alive total. I move my deceiver forward and my shooting is useless : (

Turn 3
The rest of his reserves come onto the table, and he focus-fires on the deceiver, killing it.

Now that all of his reserves are on the table, I turbo-boost my scarabs forward so that next turn I can tie up his attack bikes. In shooting, my destroyers pop one of his rhinos.

Kill Points: 2-2

Turn 4
He repositions his stuff, and focus-fires on the scarabs, killing a couple but for the most part their 2+ cover save protects them.

My shooting fails and I charge my scarabs into his bikes.

Turn 5
He charges his tactical squad into the scarabs and one scarab lives through the fight.

My destroyers kill the other rhino, then the last scarab is killed in the assault. Nathan has killed way more stuff than I have, but we're tied in Kill Points at 3 each.

The game continues.

Turn 6
He moves his attack bikes forward and focus-fires my destroyers, killing them.

I move my warriors forward (I've also been moving them forward in the past couple turns). One of his attack bikes took a wound during the CC so I choose them as my target. The first squad of warriors fire at them, reducing it to one two-wound attack bike. Now, my other warrior squad rapid-fires, doing 6 wounds. Nathan makes 5 out of his 6 rolls, meaning the bike survives and the Kill Points score is 4-3.

The game ends.

Postgame
Another close, exciting game. The monolith going down before I could even move was unfortunate, but that's what happens sometimes, and you have to work with what you've got.

In the other game, the Orks stomped the Lash Chaos army. This meant Alex, the Ork player, was the only one with three wins, so he got first place. Nathan, my last round opponent, got second place with 2 wins and a draw. I tied for third with Amin, the Chaos player. Muskie won Best Painted with his Death Guard which has beautiful free-hand on the Land Raider.

One conclusion that I have come to in my experience is that smaller tournaments actually have the potential to be more competitive. Not competitive as in WAAC but rather that the tournament can be run very well and find who the best player is much easier. There were no soft scores at all in this tourney and nobody had any problems with sportsmanship or anything like that. Then again this may have been because most of us were friends. The Best Painted award didn't factor into overall scores but there was a fully painted requirement to enter the tourney. Everyone had nicely painted armies.

The only thing I would have changed is that you should only be allowed to have one list, but I can see the reasoning behind two because some of the Battle Missions are very oddball so it prevents you from getting totally screwed. Also at 1250 you don't really have enough to make a full army so parts will be lacking and having two lists partially solves this problem.