FTN Seasonal Day 2 Bat Reps and Wrap Up

Hey guys. Back again for a post on Day 2 of the FTN Winter Seasonal. To recap from Day 1, I was coming into the second day 0-3 but with a mid pack battle point total of 39 points. The day started with me being matched up against Steve Bewley and his Chaos Daemons. For those who have been following for a while, you may realize this was a rematch from Game 5 at SCARAB 2014,

Steve's list was somewhat similar to what we had played last time, though he added a Lord of Change and swapped Plaguebearers for Nurglings. I won the roll for deployment and chose to deploy first. The mission was Emperor's Will with Progressive Crusade Objectives as secondary. I deployed my Bastion to be in a position to claim a Crusade objective as well as my Emperor's Will, and then had my Flyers along my front line. Steve countered with very conservative deployment to be out of range of my Flyrants turn 1.

Early on I grabbed a large lead in the progressive secondary and locked it down at the top of the fourth turn. Meanwhile, our fliers had been dealing blows to each others' armies but mostly avoiding each other. The Dimachaeron managed to kill a Daemon Prince before getting struck down by Be'lakor. The Rippers did a number on the far side of the board and eventually drew Fateweaver back to clean them up. In the end, Steve was able to hold on to his Emperor's Will objective and contest mine, while we split the tertiary and bonus points. The final score was 15-14 in favor of Steve, and another great game.

For the final game of the tournament, I was matched up against Mark Poole's single CAD Eldar. Just before the game began, TPM announced that certain players had a bounty on their head, and I was surprised to hear I was one of them. I wished Mark good luck and got down to figuring out how to win a Kill Point mission against Eldar in Hammer & Anvil deployment.

Mark's great Eldar Army

The board we were set up on had some castle terrain and lots of wall sections that blocked line of sight. The mission was an all-or-nothing Primary, where units from eliminated detachments were worth double points. Also, if the army was a single detachment, Troops were worth 2 Kill Points. This was a weakness of Mark's list in that he had a single CAD with 6 Troop choices and 4 Troop dedicated transports.

Mark deployed first and lined up mostly along his front line with four serpents and two Wraithknights. His seers were behind them with the Wraithblades and the bikes were in reserve. I countered with the Bastion on my right flank and then the Tyrant guard behind that. I also deployed the Malanthope behind a tower on my back line and hormagaunts behind a wall. Everything else just about was deep striking. I had gotten the Warlord trait that allows for rerolling reserves, so wasn't terribly concerned with the Comms relay.

Turn 1, Mark blew up the Bastion, having nothing else to shoot at. I ran the Tyrant Guard to try to get behind a wall be he didn't quite make it and was gunned down in turn 2. All hell broke loose in my turn 2, with everything showing up from reserves at once. Two of three flyrants stuck their landings behind a Serpent, and no one scattered too far. Mawlocs took out a couple Wraithblades or scattered off.

One flyrant got grounded turn 3 but was then able to jump on the jetbikes and ensure his death was rewarded. Meanwhile, the remaining flyrants and Crone hunted Wave Serpents and Dire Avengers, and the Dimachaeron managed to kill a Wraithknight in combat before being cut down by the Wraithblades. The final score was 23-9, a solid Tyranid victory. The double points for troops was really what won the game for me as I was able to score 5 bonus points from that and win Kill points 11-6. Mark was an awesome opponent and rounded out a weekend of five great games.

When it came down to voting for my favorite opponent, it was a super tough decision, with each game having some fun moments and laughs. I ended the tournament with a respectable 76 Battle Points, good for 32nd out of a 52 player field. In retrospect, I'm also happy that looking back I can see one or two things I could have done better that could have very well swung the game in my favor. I never felt like I was in a game I couldn't win.

While we waited for the final tallies to be done and awards announced, I picked up some hobby supplies as well as Scheme and Strategy cards for Malifaux. Again, Atomic Empire is an absolutely awesome store and great location. Lots of thanks to them for hosting the Seasonal.

As the awards were announced, I was happy to see Adam win best painted, and Josh, my third round opponent, come in second. Meanwhile, Steve came in second for sportsmanship.

Finally, the two huge awards (literally) were given for Best Overall and Best General.

While it was dwarfed by the Lightning Claw, the lit-up Stormlord was pretty dang cool, and went to Mike Twitchell, who won best overall.

Again, to wrap up my coverage, thanks to everyone who made it a great weekend. Thanks to Chandler for going with me and talking about armies and strategies there and back. Thanks to the Forge the Narrative guys for putting on the event and hanging out and giving us shoutouts while we were there. Thanks to J.Troop for the great feedback and kind words about our podcast. Thanks to everyone who we hung out with and chatted with. And finally and most importantly, thanks to EJ, Ender, Josh, Steve, and Mark for five awesome games. I don't have a single complaint about the weekend and I'm already looking forward to the next one.