Coastal Assault 2011

I competed in a local annual tourney last week : Coastal Assault 2011 in Destin, FL, and had a freaking blast. The event featured everything from Magic to Battletech. The 40k event was a 4 round 1850 point tourney. I didn't do as well as I'd have hoped but I was able to play against four people I've never played before, and as always it was good experience in facing various armies and builds. 

My record was 1 Win, 1 Draw, and 2 losses. All games but one were extremely close, which I'll elaborate on after some general pics of the event.

B-B-BEHOLD

My list

HQ: 

Tyrant : Bonesword/Lashwhip // TL Devourers w/Brainleech worms // Paroxysm, Leech Essence, Old Adversary, Regeneration

2x Tyrant Guard w/ Lash Whips

Tyranid Prime : 2x Bone Swords, Devourer

Elites: 

3x Hive Guard

3x Hive Guard

2x Zoanthropes

Troops : 

Tervigon : Cluster Spines // AG/TS // Catalyst

15x Termagants

Tervigon : Cluster Spines // AG/TS // Catalyst

15x Termagants

Heavy Support:

Trygon

Trygon

Game 1 : My first game had me pitted against a Ravenwing Marine army. This was my first time facing them. Speeders, Bikes, Assault Termies, Landraider (with nothing in it apparently? Never disembarked anything), and a Dreadnought

The objective was to essentially capture the center point of the board, which in this case happened to be a big ol' fortress-bastion. Each turn if you have a troop choice controlling the center point with no enemy forces within 6", you earn a number of points based on which turn you're on. Turn 1 - 1 point, Turn 2 - 2 Points etc.

Another interesting spin on this objective was that each player secretly gives a model a 'Void Grenade'. If you don't toss this grenade by the end of the game you lose 3 points. You toss it 6", scatter it as normal, and leave a small blast. Anything this touches is removed from play. At the end of each turn you scatter the blast further. Any rolls of double for the distance moves removes the void blast from play.

First turn one of his bikers boosted up to my left flank, where I had my zoanthropes and Hive Guard inside of some area cover. His biker who had the void grenade tossed it, and it landed just where he wanted it to, wiping both of my Zoeys and one hive guard from existence. Luckily the blast continued to scatter around harmlessly for the remainder of the game.

His weak left flank got nom nommed by my Tervigon and baby-gaunts. My right flank got chewed up by massed bikers and speeder fire and assault. I really would have liked to play this game out, the third picture you see was basically how the board looked when the game ended, minus a speeder or two and minus my two hive guard on the right flank. At the last moment my Trygon, arriving from deep strike finally, used his pointy claws and pulled the pin from his void grenade, throwing it at my opponent's mass of bikers. This scattered off of them and did nothing. My Trygon is a poor throw.

This game ended in a draw. We both fought for the length of the game over the middle piece, no one actually coming out on top. My HQ unit was steadily killing off his assault termies, but we ran out of time in turn 5 I believe.


Game 2: My second game was versus a mechanized Eldar list. I've played mech eldar a few times in the past, but never full on mech, and never against the annoying NightSpinner tank. I dislike that thing. >:[

The eldar player had Eldrad, naturally, which heavily dampened my Tervigon's effectiveness. They were reduced to walking Gaunt-creators. Besides this he had his tanks full of Dire Avengers, one with some fire dragons, and one with Banshees.

Mission two's objective was to control more area terrain pieces than your opponent at the end of the game. To capture one you had to have a scoring unit wholly in, on, or touching a piece of terrain.

This game went by quickly. From the start my opponent's plans were pretty obvious. He backed his tanks into his corner, biding his time, taking shots at what he could, and waiting for the final turns of the game to boost his tanks to my held terrain pieces, contesting them at the last moment.

I moved my gaunts into the three terrain pieces on my side and in the middle, fanning out my Trygon and Tervigons to attempt to create a monstrous creature barrier, allowing me to assault and hopefully destroy any tank that swoops in at the last moment. Over the first 4 turns my hive guard managed to bring down a few of his tanks. I attempted to swing one squad of Hive Guard and a Trygon around the left flank in order to take cover and hopefully secure/contest one of his board-edge's area terrain. This failed pretty miserably, my Trygon and Hive Guard were quickly whittled down and killed by the focused firepower of my opponent's tanks.

As expected, in the final few turns my opponent boosted two of his tanks to two of my terrain pieces, successfully tank shocking a squad of gaunts, causing them to flee. And tank shocking my HQ unit, causing them to move out of the way.

In some spectacularly lucky rolling, I managed to destroy both tanks, winning the game 3-2. I really had to give my thanks to my rolls on this one.

I'll post information about my two losses at another time.
BAI

PS : Here was the winning army. FOOTDAR. Yeah, I don't know how that happened. Would have loved to play this guy to see.