DarkStar Recap Part I - Games One and Two

Hey everyone,

BeeCee here. I just got back from Darkstar and I had an absolute blast. As some of you may know, this was my first tournament of 40k ever and also the first time I've ever had a fully painted army on the table!

Here is my unreltenting tide of Tyranids. Well ok, they relent some when you shoot at the gaunts with... well... anything.

So going in to the tourney I had two main goals. The first one was to win at least one game and secondly to meet some of the cool people that exist within this great 40k community. I also had a stretch goal (this kind of sounds like a kickstarter pitch here...) that if I did halfway decent maybe I could walk away with best Tyranid player. My thought was, with all the hate directed at the bugs right now and the fact that most of the hardcore competitive players are not playing bugs, that maybe with a decent showing I could steal it.
I am happy to report that I achieved all of the goals! I went 3-2, hung out with the good folks of 40Kegger, and won best Tyranid player by ONE OVERALL POINT! Apparently the almost all-nighter I spent in the hotel room the night before getting a little bit more painting done did it for me.

Sleep is for the weak! Get to painting you jackwagon!

My first game saw me face Adam Sammon's breathtaking Grey Knights army.

Adam's army was just amazing with the level of detail!

The game 1 scenario was a basic objective mission with 5 objectives and another bonus 2 VP if you managed to wipe out all of your opponents troops. I won the roll and decided to deploy first and take first turn. I deployed the bulk of my forces in the center to deny Adam's terminators a juicy spot to deep strike on me.

The highlights of turn 1 included devastating shooting from my exocrines to drop Adam's dreadknight on turn 1 giving me first blood and also removing a very powerful threat at the same time. I started all four of my flying monstrous creatures on the board on turn 1 and then flew them off at the top of turn 2. This allowed me to engage the stormraven on my own turn and a torrent of haywire missiles and massed brainleech devourer fire dropped that big bird out of the sky before it could devestate my army (it did however scatter and land on my hormagaunts killing 7/15).

The Tyranid air force, ready to scramble. 

 Adam wasn't powerless without those big threats however, he still had a land raider crusader. Despite me throwing 4 warp lance shots and 4 haywire missile shots at it, I was never able to crack that box open. (cracking AV 14 would be a huge problem for me throughout the entire weekend) I was able to keep Adam's quad gun out of commission with sustained fire from the exocrines, forcing Adam's units to go to ground in order to stay alive.

In the end, I had one objective, Adam had another objective. we both had linebreaker and I won on first blood. My MVPs of the game had to be my exocrines, their ability to put the dreadknight down on turn one and keep the quad gun unit locked down for a few turns was instramental in my win. It was a great game and alot of fun.

Goal number one was out of the way, I had won a game. Now I was playing with house money for the rest of the weekend. It was a huge relief to get that first win. I really didn't want to go 0-5!

Game two saw me matched up with John Lester's Farsight/Tau army with four riptides and four solo broadsides. The deployment was hammer and anvil and the mission was a modified from of the relic where there were two loot counters you had to drag back to your deployment zone.

I won the roll and chose to deploy first, John had alot of interceptor and the fact that anything I reserved would have to traverse the entire length of the board to get to his power base which was roughly an inch from his table edge meant I didn't reserve any of my FMCs. I knew my army could not survive 5+ turns of sustained riptide fire so I had to hope to distract them a little bit to maybe make a push for the loot counters and grab on and hide like a small child.

John's Tau ready to blast the Tyranids to dust.

Then he stole the initiative...

There is no caption for the amount of sorrow I instantly felt when John stole the initiative.

I am already blocking out the horror of this game but I can say that my only glimmer of swinging the tide came in the form of my flyrant crashing in to the core of the Tau line and attempting to fire off a psychic scream hopefully blowing a hole in the Tau battlegroup. It was not to be as I promptly rolled an 11, failing the psychic test. Game 2 was a resounding defeat and I needed to regain some momentum for game three!

The hive tyrant makes his play. Only to roll an 11. Thanks big guy!

Game three might be my most memorable game yet. All the gory details are coming soon!

For more pics of the amazing armies at Darkstar check out Ryan Carlson's page! Click on his name to see more! (In case you didn't know, Ryan's army won best painted.... for the second year in a row. Amazing stuff!)