The one where I met Battlefield Birmingham... The Final Chapter (Part 5)

I sadly come to the end of my BBV tale. I'm currently sitting on 23 points languishing near the bottom (but not quite at the bottom) of the table! Up to now I have played 4 fantastic opponents and regardless of the result I have had a great game each time.

The last game standings were up and I was back to the beginning again with the draw having me play Ozzie Lennon. Now something which isn't always done is asking to have your game changed! We both agreed that it would be better to play other people to ensure we don't have a replay of the first game! The Tournament Team agreed and we could swap with the players next to us if they agreed. Thankfully they did and I'm pleased they did because it will give both of us a different experience of play styles instead of just a repeat!

The board next to us were setting up and rolling for powers. After asking we had a roll off to see who would play who. The choice was either Nids or Marines... The Nids player rolled off and rolled Ozzie, which meant that I was playing the Marine list. Looking at the Nids, I didn't fancy going up against that and I'm thankful he drew it instead of me! It would have been another tough test and I'm fairly confident that I could have bounded across the board with the Dreadknights and killed the beasts he was fielding but its the weight of troops which was a concern!

So I'm playing Marines! There has been a lot of love on Twitter for these guys and I'm really pleased I played him, no disrespect to the other two players. The marines' player is called James Heap, he played Liam in the last round and soundly beat him but that's not to say Liam didn't give him a good game because every time I looked round there was never much left on the board! So this wasn't going to be easy and with a large selection of troops this mission wasn't going to be straightforward!

Game: Crusade (5 Objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War

Powers: Scriers' Gaze, Misfortune, Presience

Tigger's Powers: Misfortune, Presience, Forewarning

Warlord Trait: Master of Ambush (Outflanking units have Acute Senses)

So my Warlord trait is about as useless as a chocolate teapot again! I just hope they bring out a GK book with traits that are helpful! Or, if they do bring out '40k 6.5' have a Primaris Trait so I can do something with it instead of the bollocks that I keep getting! Then I remembered... I'm on table 13 again! The table I got tabled on last time I was on the table!

I won the roll off to plant objectives first and so it would be my honor to pop one behind a house so no-one can see it, another 12" away from that and another 12" away from that! My plan was simple. Hide and pop out to hold objectives in the final turn. James put one objective in the deployment zone in the centre of the board and the other in ruins in the right hand corner of the board.

Sadly, I lost the roll off for table sides... so I had to move to have 2 objectives spread apart whereas he now has 3 objectives fairly close together behind his Aegis! Hmm...bollocks! Well a few things would go in my favor; 1. I have 1 DK scoring. 2. My DKs jump forward 30" if needed to get close. 3. All I have to do is blow him off one objective and see if he spreads out so I can nip behind the lines and break his force up!

In my deployment I decide that, as ever, the Jetbikes were going to remain off as well as a squad in the stormraven. The other two squads I hid so he couldn't see them, or so I thought, and the Farseer was hidden, along with the two Dreadknights who were over on the right hand side of the board, right on the table edge. The only thing visible... the Wraithknight. Now, I've not got a problem because it's Night Fighting, the Wraith is in ruins and he hasn't got much in the way of high AP shooting to go at him.

Before we start, James deploys his scout moves placing his scouts 18" away from the wraith in ruins. We'll come back to this... it's fairly important!!!

In the first turn due to night fighting, placement and lack of heavy weapons James pumps everything he has into the Wraithknight causing 3 wounds! To be honest, it was what anyone would have done in the circumstances and it was a great feat to take 3 wounds off considering the disadvantage of range/night/cover. During this time James moved his scouts slightly forward of the 18" he previously set away. In my head I had one thing to do...charge the scouts! In my turn the Wraith jumped off the ruin getting about 5" away. My DKs jumped up the board 12" and remained hugging the board edge! One of the DKs could torrent and managed to kill 1 of the marines holding the objective I had hidden behind the building!
The assault phase caused a great pain to James' scouts with 4 of them falling in the initial combat. I knew that charging the scouts would be okay as long as they stay in combat. Thankfully, they did! And they did so for another 4 rounds! It was only on my turn 3 they finally succumbed to the gigantic blow of the wraithknight!

Meanwhile, the thunderfire cannon was turning its attention to the squad which were hiding but not hiding well enough in the ruins. 8 hits on the squad and 7 saves! Grey Knight power!

Finally breaking from combat, the Wraithknight turned its attention to the Predator which was pumping out shots onto the DKs and the Farseer, who by this time was sat on the ruins with the Mantle!

Well the monsters were doing their job! The Dreadknights were walking up the other side of the board laying the flamers down as well as their great swords! They drew some attention from the Company Command squad and I was fearful of this, but after asking I realized that only one could do significant damage with his thunderhammer, the rest would just bounce on my 2+. Thankfully during the whole of our rounds of combat the thunderhammer missed every time! The Warlord, Sicarius took a wound from the DK's force sword and got sucked into the warp! Eventually, with the help of a GK strike squad I was able to kill the CCS and the surrounding troops. This cleared the way for 2 objectives.

I should mention that James did a fantastic job of trying to blow up my Stormraven and the quadgun stripped a hull point off as well as another HP taken from a missile shot up into the sky! He had a round of shooting where every heavy weapon he had left hit! (2 missile launchers, quad gun, lascannon, Predator's lascannons and autocannon - while it was still alive!) It was a great round of shooting but unfortunately for him, he couldn't strip the last HP off while it was in the air! He did manage to do it and wreck the raven but that provided me with another piece of terrain for my troops to hide behind!

The game ended on Turn 6 with the GKs holding all 5 objectives and James unfortunately having nothing left on the board! In the end, I lost my stormraven and 1 GK. This wasn't an easy game and without the scouts coming forward in the first turn I'm not sure the game who have gone my way that easily in the first few turns. It does prove how powerful the swords are though in game play against marines, but it is like with any battle, you have to pick who you fight. I would have had a real problem if he had terminators in the list because it would be hard to shift and also the weight of dice against a wraith or dread would have had a different result.

In the end of this game; I won the game 20-0 and as for tournament points 20-1.

At the end of the tournament I finished in 39th.

Really pleased that I manged to play 5 great games of 40k and met many more fantastic people! Of course, there was the occasional knobend but I avoided them! The same may not be able to be said for my friends though!

Oh, my friends... Well the last game paired Pete and Nigel up against each other and Liam was playing Ozzie's dad (Tau).

Graham, up against an Eldar force, ran the guy close! On turn 5 he was winning, on turn 6 he was drawing and on turn 7... he lost!

Overall standings: Pete: 36, Me: 39, Graham: 50, Nigel: 51, Liam: 54.

I mentioned earlier about the best painted... well... It came to to two... Nigel and Graham! Just to remind you of what the forces look like:
Nigel's

And Graham's

The winner...

Graham by a nose! As you can see from the photo he looks really happy about winning!



Overall I had a really good time at Battlefield Birmingham and I cannot wait for my next venture! I'm looking at variant lists now to see what I can do to tweak it so I can win 3 instead of 2!








I hope you have enjoyed reading this report as much as I have done writing it!
I'll be bounding a few ideas out there in the next few days of lists and combos. I was certain the way I wanted to work for the next tourney but now, I'm not too sure! I'll post on here and see what you think!

Thanks for reading! I'll see you soon!