A small matter of honour... Part 1

So continuing from where I left off, I went to a tournament at Triple Helix in Westbury, Wiltshire on Saturday. I played four games, two of 1250 and two f 1750 with the same army list +500pts with no units altered from the 1250pts. There were about 40 players in total and every army in 40k was represented!

I'll give you a run down of the games and plenty of photos thrown in for good measure.

Game 1  1250pts vs Tau

Having never faced Tau before I was looking forward to this! It was to be Dawn Assault and the Tau chose to deploy first. After clarification with the referees it was decided that while my platoon counted as one troop choice each individual transport counted as another, as such I either deployed all the men on foot or just deployed chimeras! Consequently I didn't deploy at all and chose to drive on in the first turn.

The armoured might of the Praetorians faces off against the stealth suit brigade.

I think it was clear from the start that he couldn't win. His broadsides did their best to destroy tanks but utterly failed as I passed cover saves with alarming regularity. Meanwhile my tanks with the infantry safely inside proceeded to eliminate unit after unit. His only saving grace was the stealth fields that prevented me from seeing his sniper drone units.

The Hellhound is immobilised...

There used to be Tau in this space...

The Stealth suits turn up late and on the wrong side of the board...

Other than the ineffective broadsides the only other AT he had was his commander and Crisis suits who didn't stand up well against massed multi laser fire. There were also stealth suits who outflanked on the wrong side and could never get close enough to hurt me without subjecting them to the fury of my army.

The game ended with me losing my medusa and a chimera and him losing his commander, a crisis suit two units of pathfinders, a big unit of firewarriors and two units of sniper drones.

A good win had propelled me up the leader board towards the top tables!

Game 2 1250pts vs Orks

In the car on the way to the tournament I had expressed my desire to play against orks. I couldn't remember the last time my Praetorians had faced off against their traditional foe. As luck would have it I was drawn against the one and only ork player there!

This was a custom scenario with 5 objectives. Every time someone moves within 3" of an objective you roll on a chart 1,6 it explodes and is removed, 2,5, it moved 2D6, 3,4 it is stable. Now bear in mind this is every time  anything moves within 3".

The ork army I lined up against was led by Gazghull Thrakka in a wagon with a deathroller, there were a few more truks packed full of boyz, some flash gitz, grots and commandos.

Finally amphibious comes in handy!

The compact ork horde in their battle wagons come under heavy fire in the first turn destroying one truk and scattering some boys.

The front armour 14 of the deathroller doesnt bode well.

The other truks are all eliminated in short order though Gaz advances unscathed and prepares to assault...

The wagon races forward past the objective which explodes, destroys the truk and kills 10 boys inside!!!

Unperturbed  Gaz lets out a might WAAAAAGGGGHHH!!! and charges my line.

It seems my Praetorians had been hoodwinked! What they thought was simply a cow, shed, scarecrow and trees were in fact commandos!!!

The Rough Riders are caught wrong footed and are charged by the orks.

BOOM!

KABOOM!!!

Gazghull makes short work of the tanks...

The guardsman make a brave stand on the hill, 1st rank fire!

The Command Section engage the orks in hand to hand...

I think in the non stop carnage both myself and my opponent forgot about the objectives, as such it ended in a bloody draw. 3 of the 5 objectives had been destroyed and the remaining 2 were uncontested. At the close of play I had my HQ, Hellhound and Veterans intact, my opponent had gaz, a scorcher, a couple of grotz and  2 rather decimated units of boyz.

It had been a great game with plenty of destruction.

That is enough for now, stay tuned for part 2 for the two larger battles, photos of some of the other armies and for a final report...