I took the list I came up with after my last playtest game, so I hadn't played with that exact iteration before. Fortunately, unlike at NOVA last year, I felt that I brought the best list I could.
My round 1 opponent was EJ, running Daemons painted up by Kenny at Next Level Painting. It was pretty cool lining up against the Daemons I've seen Kenny run and paint on his videos. The mission was a progressive scoring primary, with Relic and KP secondary and tertiary.
I had first turn and moved forward aggressively, getting into range of his warlord with all three flyrants and taking him down despite a 2+ cover save. However, my positioning wasn't as good as it should have been and he EJ was able to counter with 2 Vector Strikes on one flyrant, while a third Daemon Prince jumped forward and assaulted the hormagaunts. The Balesword Daemon princes made short work of any Monstrous Creatures on the ground. After turn 5 I had a two point lead on the Primary and needed the game to end. It didn't and EJ was able to tie up the Primary, winning on the secondary and tertiary for a final score of 22-12.
Game 2 was against Ender and his Superfriends with some IG allies in Drop Pods plus two Wyverns. The mission was Kill Points with Vanguard deployment. I made Ender deploy first and he deployed his Superfriends across his front line. I countered by deploying the Malanthrope, Tyrant Guard, and Dimachaeron in my back corner, along with the bastion. This ended up being a bit of a mistake that may have cost me the game.
Ender was able to get all three of my models into combat with the Superfriends turn 2 and take them out. Where I messed up was just not knowing the Comms Relay rules well enough and not realizing being in combat prevented me from using it. As a result, combined with poor dice, neither mawloc arrived when Superfriends were clumped up and only a single Flyrant showed up for my heavy hitters. Despite being down big early, I was able to make a game of it, ending with a 23-19 loss.
Game 3 was against Josh Kinder and his beautiful 30k minis running as Grey Knights and Blood Angels. He had a Typhon super heavy that has a S10 AP1 Apocalyptic Blast and was generally big and scary.
The mission was the Relic, but with that big tank with a boost to Thunderblitz, I knew trying to pick it up was suicide while it was still around. I managed to put 3 HPs on it in my first pass with the Flyrants, but then didn't do a good job with my flight paths and took too long to swing back around. Honestly, in hindsight, landing next to it turn 3 probably would have been the smart play as the rest of his army was pretty small, and the Dimachaeron had tied up and eaten his blob of Death Company. The game ended on Turn 5 before I could execute my final attack run on the Typhon. My only hope was the game to go to 6, to blow up the tank, and have the explosion take out Draigo with the Relic who was nearby. In the end, Josh won 21-8.
And so, I ended the day 0-3, but with 39 Battle Points, which I felt was respectable. I also had three fantastic games with no complaints. EJ provided some really solid advice about where I made mistakes, which was really just that first aggressive move with the flyrants. He felt I played the rest of the game well, but losing the two flyrants early through being too aggressive and a bad luck Perils and Grounding left me with too little punch for the late turns.
Game 2 I had an uphill battle to overcome bad deployment and luck, but made a game of it and had a good time. Game 3 was fun and Josh and I had a blast, with the funniest moment possibly being a Librarian having his head explode while creating a vortex that annihilated the bastion, turning the back half of the battlefield into what we imagined to be two large craters.
We hung out with a bunch of the guys at the Mexican restaurant across the parking lot and then turned in, ready to get up early on Sunday for day two.
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