13.3.16 & 17 Dark Star GT - When Expectations and Reality Meet

Hope you enjoy this post covering Dark Star GT.

Despite Dark Star being held at The Mermaid in Mounds View, MN I was pleasantly surprised how clean the room was.  Terribly surprised actually.

Sat wore my utilikilt  and fill to here with MN beer t-shirt.  SOP, Standard Operating Procedure.  Always wear this first day of tournament.

Forgot my phone at home that morning.  Have very few pics of the GT.  Since there aren't pics it didn't happen, right?

First game.  Grey Knights vs Space Wolves with Imperial Guard.

Player took back his army roster so I don't have a copy to review and post.  grrrrr!  Found the army list in my 40k bag.

Vindicare Assassin was extremely helpful.  He popped a Land Raider.  He also took Logan's and Arjac's invul save.  This game was an ass-kicking.  Didn't help that I boxed myself in with poor deployment.  As the game went on I felt a bit better about it.  Psyflemen were great at taking out Long Fang pack and several other pieces of armour.  Possibly most amateur thing I pulled this game, besides where I deployed my Rhino's, was using Cleansing Flame when Crowe stepped forward to take Logan's challenge.  When Crowe died couldn't use Heroic Sacrifice.  Silly.  The three Purifier squads on Logan tore him down in the following turn.

Loss 10-7 Space Wolves.

Second game.  Grey Knights vs Imperial Guard with Grey Knights.

Once again Vindicare did well.  Took down more than his fair share.  I'll keep him in my army roster.  Always wanted to use an assassin in a game.  Now that I can, won't sideline him.  Lost one Psyflemen this game.  They also did well.  During this game one of the Psyflemen suffered from Crew Stunned.  There was a Vendetta in range.  Light bulb went on above my head and my opponent saw it and smiled.  He thought the same.  Since I could only hit it on a 6 and weapons are twin-linked  decided to shoot at Vendetta.  Flyer went down.  Mike, my opponent, was a great guy and by far the most fun I've had in a game since Scott at Fantasy Flight several months ago.

Loss 7-5

Third game.  Grey Knights vs Blood Angels with Imperial Guard (seems all my games are going to be  imperium)

First thing Ryan did was apologize for his printer not printing his army roster dark enough.

Ryan was a great guy.  His energy was mellow.  Confident in his ability.  Not one genuine rule was looked up in our game.  He was a great guy to game with.  Little harder game.  This game had a rule to destroy the most expensive unit in the other army.  Wondered what happened if a combat squad was the most expensive unit.  Is it just the combat squad or does the entire squad of 10 have to be destroyed?  TO judged combat squad.  Not 10 mins later a different TO walked over asking us the same rule because someone asked him.  Informed him main TO said combat squad.

It was during this game that a TO asked if we could set our armies up for presentation and bring them up to the front for pictures.  Ryan and I did so after the game.

Loss 9-5

That was it for Sat.  Spent the night listening to fellow players games.  Answering the same question each time.  Loss, Loss, Loss.  Listened to advice how to up my game. Along with each piece of advice was the standard 'lose Psyflemen, pick up Dreadknights.'  Asked several players if they had their army pictured at the front.  Everyone said no.  At that point I had an idea of what was going on with the request for our armies.  Wasn't til a debriefing with Bryan in the room talking about each others games that Bryan suggested that if I go first have Rhinos infront of aegis.  If second behind.  That clicked and instantly started having a different feeling about the outcome of Sun games.  To be fair 40k buddy, Connor, said a couple Fri ago 'Don't mean to be a hater.  Maybe Purifiers aren't for you.'

Sun wore my VNV Nation Faith Power Glory workman shirt.

Fourth game.  Grey Knights vs Space Wolves.

Applied the new tactic for this game and instantly it was a much different game than previous games.  Opponent decided to deploy and go second.  Placed Rhinos infront of aegis and away I went.  Was very careful of Rhinos not blocking Psyflemen line of sight.  This was the shooting game I expected from my army.  My Purifiers stepped up and were not found wanting.  Kept moving my Rhinos so his long fangs would have to continue to move to shoot them.  Felt I grew as a player while doing that.  There wasn't much left on the field at the end of the game.  His side: Predator, Long Fang pack and two Space Wolves.  Mine Two Psyflemen, two Rhinos and assassin.  Travis, my opponent, was a damned straight up guy.  He's a worker at The Source and enjoyable person to play against at the table.

Highlight of the fourth game was this Purifier.  He was the last member of his squad.  A squad of Blood Angels will shoot at him next turn and remove him from the board.  Rhino wanted to Tank Shock him.  Since he's Fearless he doesn't have to roll.  Decided to remove him on my terms not my opponents.  Death or Glory.  Penetrated the Rhino and Immobilized it!  It remained where it started the rest of the game.  The Purifier was indeed removed due to Blood Angels shooting in the following turn.

Loss 5-0

Fifth game.  Grey Knights vs Imperial Guard.  Yep, all Imperium.

During my fourth game 40k buddy Puck asked me if I lost that game can he request the judge that he  put us together.  I said yeah.  Puck brought his pretty Imperial Guard army.  He decided to deploy and go first.  Failed to seize initiative.  This was yet another ass-kicking.  Held my own for a bit.  Assassin did some solid work.  One medusa was down.  Only had one left.  Should've deployed everything on one side instead of squaring off against him. Then swept to the middle.  I need to work with different deployments in different situations.  Need to learn how to use my armies more efficiently.  Up until turn 4 Mike from game two was my favourite opponent.  The pure fun I had with Puck finally out-shined Mike.  Puck said a couple times during the game "My cheeks are hurting from smiling too much."  He said he wanted to have fun with at least one player this tournament and knew he would have fun with me.  Previous opponents weren't.  This was the second game to get to turn five.  Need to be a quicker player.  Game ended excellently.  Last model in my army Crowe was in close combat with a Platoon Commander.  Cleansing Flame failed to wound.  Crowe couldn't wound.  Platoon Commander didn't wound either.  Game ended.  I jumped up and down several times yelling "Not getting tabled! Not getting tabled!"  Damn that was fun.  Puck suggested we skip arm in arm and submit our results together.  We did so.  He's a great guy.

Here are pics of the event.

Those curious about my painting score and Grey Knights diorama.  According to John who was running the event.  I was in the top 6 (results says I tied for 6th).  Believe he was being kind.  Ryan, my third round opponent once again walked away with this years best painted army award.  Go, Ryan.  Asked John what I can do with my army to increase the score.  Heard exactly what I was expecting.  Highlights.  While my army is highlighted.  I don't disagree that it doesn't have the highlights paint judges wanted.  This was something I thought of after my Purifiers were table ready.  They should have some highlights.  Still not sure if I want to paint them alabaster to match their fluff.  At this point thinking no.  Just light highlight and they'll be great.

In the end my expectations and reality aligned perfectly.  I didn't feel my army would get best painted army because of aforementioned reason.  I also expected to lose every game.  For reasons Suijin and Ayce00 mentioned.  I've only played this army twice before the tournament.  Need to have more games under my belt to know how to use them correctly.  Which goes right with what Bryan has asked Sat night "How many times did you lose with your Necrons til you figured them out?"  Completely agree.

Here are the results of Dark Star. Tied with someone for 38 pts in painting.  Those not wanting to click

                          bat   spt  army ds  sos  total

JJ

Virnala

GK

25

32

38

10

225

105

In case you don't know.  bat = battle points, spt = sportsmanship, army = paint score, ds - Dark Star points, sos = strength of schedule (have no idea what that means), total = sum of bat, spt, army & ds.

Would like to thank the Dark Star team.  John Stentz and crew for running the event and allowing us to play in their sandbox.  I appreciate the number of times you suffered my petitions to look at my diorama.  It wasn't long til the other TO would walk by saying "I've already seen it" or pointing at me while looking at my opponent "How can you handle this guy?"  even "Ok, JJ, what do you want to show me now?"  All meant in jest and clearly picking me for demanding so much of their attention.  You're a great coterie, Dark Star Team.

Want to express congratulations to my friend Bryan who walked away with Best Opponent at Dark Star, Go you!  He provides a challenging and fun game.  He deserves it.  Great job, Bryan.


slainte mhath