Adepticon 2012: Part VI (Final Round!)

Going in to the 4^th round at Adepticon things were going great for my first real ‘GT’ experience – too great. I had racked up 3 wins against 3 great opponents and in facing Necrons, Tau and Eldar I had faced a slew of really fun armies and avoided the dreaded Grey Knights. Tim was excited for me but I had a strange feeling in my gut, something bad was about to happen – with 3 wins I would be in the top 25% of tables and with over 25% of the field being Grey Knights I knew my luck was running out. The pairings were posted and with some reservation I headed up to the wall to find my next table assignment.

Arriving at my final table I see a display board with Grey Knights on the other side, crap. Looking over the board I see a pretty standard MSU list with four Razorbacks, two Rhinos, a Landraider, some Death Cultists and a couple Psyflemen dreads – perfect, the exact army I was hoping to avoid! Looking at the table and trying to figure out how im going to manage to squeeze out a victory I figure I will have to mass in the center and then gradually fight a withdrawal into a corner so I can avoid the Landraider full of Death Cult as long as possible.  The objectives were to kill more than ½ the enemy kill points, not too bad when we both have about 18 of them, hold more of the three objective than your opponent and get more units into the enemy deployment zone than he gets into yours. With my three landspeeders the last objective was fairly attainable provided I could hide them for the duration and perhaps I would be able to grind up enough of the transports and small 5 man units in them to pull off the kill point victory condition.

With my plan in place my opponent arrived and introduced himself as Nick and handed me his list, I handed him mine and began looking over his list. When Nick introduced himself he left of his last name, as we all do, Nanavati. Perfect, not only did I pull the one list I really didn’t want to see – I managed to pull that list with one of the best players in the country. See – the gut is always right. We deployed our forces, Nick first as I lost the roll, and then I went to seize the initiative and succeeded! However Coteaz and his clown shoes made sure I had to re-roll that and of course I failed the second time. Fast forward to the part where the Death Cult managed to get off their multi assault into three squads, I needed him to roll a 5 or less for the assault range through cover and he rolled a 6 (of course he did), where his assassins plowed through over 20 Marines (and a Rune Priest) in one round and the game was essentially over. I managed to maul all his transports, both purifier squads and three of his strike squads but it wasn’t enough. The dreadnoughts shredded the speeders in the last turn and their loss, three more kill points, placed both the Kill Points and Units in the Enemy Deployment Zone squarely into his hands. Nick got the crushing victory he needed to vault him back into the top 16 and Overall Champion for the day.  That’s right, three little speeders on the last turn in the last round of the day getting shredded despite their cover saves by a combination of Dreadnoughts, Psycannons and even a couple Storm Bolters is what dictated the outcome of the entire day.

I fought my plan the best way I thought how at the time, are there things I would change after the fact – of course there are. That being said, I went for the objectives and didn’t worry what I was up against whether it was Grey Knights or a guy with multiple GT wins under his belt. That alone was probably my biggest take away from Adepticon itself. Fight your army your way. Use your army the way you practice because you know what it can and can’t do. Don’t worry about your opponents and their armies; you can’t control what they or their army do.

Know your army, know what it can do and don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t always work – because it won’t! An excellent and worthy conclusion to an awesome day, absolutely perfect.

still practicing_ (even against Nick Nanavati)

Tallarn