Friday, June 24, 2011

First GT and first time with Grey Knights (crazy isn't it)

Well, I went to my first GT in Raleigh this weekend.  It was hosted at Endless Gaming owned by Mike Walsh.  Great guy and knows a lot of the competitive players in the SE so it was going to be a bloodbath from the first die role.  There was no painting in the rubic for the overall winner so I didn't have to have the best pained army, just meet all the min. requirements.  Don't get me wrong, I like a nicely painted army and there were some there that were worth there weight in gold, but I am not a top notch painter.  The event was 5 rounds over the two days and I would come up against some real heavy weights.  Here is a brief AAR for the 5 rounds.

Round 1 Pat- 11 company Demons


This was going to be an interesting battle,  he made the comment about the tau models and that it was interesting to see that I actually had fluff for the background as to why I used the models.  He had a proxy army as well and did well at the grand opening.  I played his teammate Neil that last time for first place and was expecting the game to be as "challenging" as that game but was pleasantly surprised to see that Pat was a great opponent and despite the outcome, I didn't here about a cheezy army or rules issues during the game.

I won the matches 3-0

Round 2 Hod WC member from FL  CSM

Hod was a great guy that came up from FL to play and was using a twin prince CSM army with 2 land raiders.  This was the reason for the two regular dreadnoughts and not the rifle dreads that have been all over the internet.  Hod got nervous because he had not seen this load out for a GK army and therefore chose to come in from reserve, which in retrospect he should have started on the board.   We had a couple of rules questions in regard to tank shocking and movement of the troops but we got it resolved and this game was in the bag after round 4.  Hod was a great sport and promised me a game when I go down to Tampa for Steve, BeakyCon in October.

I won 3-0

Round 3 Shane (Deadshane dakka) - Witchhunter with IG allies

This was going to be a huge challenge as I looked at the list.  There were a ton of autocannons in the list but it was dawn of war so I had one turn to get as far as possible before the stormravens were going to be shot down.  I won the roll to go first and he chose to not put the autocannons on the board first, instead he put the sisters and the conscript platoon on the board for initial deployment.  The battle came down to a couple of key engagements.
a.) the exorcists rolled a 3 and 5 for the nightfight rolls so the stormravens were allowed to move up turn two and drop their payload off.  This was huge.
b.) I killed enough conscripts to be able to get to the sisters and when they rolled their moral they rolled a 5 which means they stated in range for me to charge them and therefore charge the sisters.  We had a issue with the inq mandate and the pyschotrope grenades but it didn't matter in the resolution of the combat anyways.
c.) The sister squad with the priest move to close to one of the dreadnoughts so therefore was unable to shoot and decimate a squad of the death cult assassins that were eating him alive.

Shane was a great guy and realized the mistake of the priest and said it probably cost him the game.  I win 3-0


Now by this time in the event, my list has won some serious respect.  There hasn't been a net list like this at all and not the crew is looking at the core parts and trying to figure out how to optimize it.  Delgado is the first to start breaking it apart because he know that there are only four of us still undefeated going into day two and Mike has told us that we will be matched up for game 5.

Day Two

I am in first after day one.  Brandon is in the middle somewhere, he won one of the three games that he played.  I know that I have to play Brian.

We are paired off and he wins the roll to go first on spearhead deployment and I choose to have everything on the board because his effective range is only 24" with his ass spam army of BA.  I rolled Cotez seize and got the 6 on the double roll.  It was all over after that.  His cc army vs my cc army is a win for me hands down.  To quote Brian, "GK army can to it better and cost less than his BA army".

I win 3-0

Now we only have two undefeated armies and the next one for me is the list I am dreading.  The SW razorspam list.  Richard is a great player and wins the roll to go first which I do not seize.  In the end we end up drawing the battle which with all the great dice he had and the bad dice I had I was still happy with the outcome of that, if you can believe it.  After we add up victory points to break up the tie it comes down to his win with about 200 over me.  A great win for him and a second place finish for me, with my first outing with the GK DC list.  Overall I'm happy and have won $250 in stuff and a ticket to next years Throne of Skulls event, not bad.