Greetings fellow
hobbyists or anyone who simply felt like reading my ramblings.
Its Sunday the 17th of April and I've just returned my Imperial Knight army to their cabinet after another enjoyable tournament (and at Nathaniel’s urging, as he "missed my big models" not being in the cabinet yesterday).
Anyway, where to begin...
Into the Fire is an 1850 point, three round, Warhammer 40,000 tournament, which was held at the Sanctuary Gaming Centre in Sutton in Ashfield, in the UK.
I'd paid to enter it well in advance, knowing that the tournaments at Sanctuary are gaining in popularity and generally places can get full quite quickly. If you pay a month in advance, it's a really decent price (£8.00 rather than £15.00 on the day).
Looking at the list of tournament goers, it was quite clear this event was going to be quite a hard one to take part it. There were some really good players planning to attend, so there was no doubt in my mind that there were going to be some hard armies for my own Imperial knights to face.
Then the rules pack became available and it became clear that all the missions were going to be objective based... This kinda puts my army to a disadvantage, as it is comprised of five models. (Five big heavily armed walking mini-titans of joy... but yes only five models.) Now you may be thinking that at this point I was thinking "That's not fair!"... But I think I can be honest and say it was more of a "Oh *%@t, this is gonna be a challenge!”
So I started thinking about my army list, wondering if I should change it? Should I take less knights so I could fit in allied troops, or fit in assassins or someone with psychic abilities? Should I change the formation I use from the Baronial Court, to a Household Detachment and lose a better invulnerable save and gain the ability for my entire army to secure objectives? Decisions, Decisions...
In the end, I chose to stick with the Baronial Court formation, as I would still gain the benefit of the superior 3+ invulnerable save and let’s face it, five big walking heavily armed knights can do a lot of damage. The only change I ended up making was swapping out a Knight Warden for a Knight Paladin, losing a strength 6, twelve shot Avenger Gatling Cannon and gaining a strength 8, two shot, large blast, Rapid Fire Battle Cannon instead.
So how did the tournament go? Some of you may be asking...
Game 1 - Imperial Knights VS Tyranids and Genestealer Cult allies
Mission - Crusade (Eternal War) - 5 objectives.
Deployment - Dawn of War
My opponent Chris had a rather good list, made of a mix of a Tyranid gargantuan creature, two flying hive tryants, genestealer cult units and so on. Overall I felt reasonably confident at the start of the game, until Chris rolled for his Psychic powers and gained invisibility for both his psykers. This would make it harder for my knights to both shoot and attack some of his units. In the end the game was very hard fought, but unfortunately due to randomness of the dice, it did not all go my way and the game was a loss for me after four turns.
Game 2 - Imperial Knights VS Ultramarines Space Marines.
Mission - The Emperors Relic (Combination of The Relic and Emperors Will missions) - 3 Objectives
Deployment - Hammer and Anvil
My next opponent, Michael, had a rather cool force of Ultramarine Space Marines, running with a Gladius formation I believe. He had an Ironclad Dreadnought, a standard lascannon / missile dreadnought, a land raider Redeemer, Vindicator, two devastator squads with lascannon and missile launchers, storm talon, a terminator squad with a terminator Librarian and tactical squads and assault squads.
Michael fought valiantly, succeeding in bringing down one of my knights, but by the end of turn five, I'd succeed in taking all three objectives, had claimed First Strike, Slay the Warlord and Line Breaker. Leading to an 18-0 win for me.
Game 3 - Imperial Knights VS White Scars Space Marines.
Mission - The Scouring
Deployment - Vanguard Strike
My opponent Andy was running with a White Scars Decurion formation, meaning I was facing a huge number of free razor back tanks as well as multiple squads with grav and melta weapons. This was a hard fought match. I succeeded in claiming First Strike and two additional points for destroying his fast attack units.
Andy succeeded in bringing down two of my knights and damaging all the others. He really gave me a run for my money. It was a highly tactical game, when we finished turn five, we both held six points worth of objectives. So I'd managed to win due to having claimed the earlier victory points, so in the end a win 9 - 6 in my favour. Stomps served me very well in this game.
Concluding thoughts
Well, it was a hard fought tournament, loads of fun as usual and the opponents I faced were all very good and I enjoyed all my games. As usual the tournament was well organised. I placed twelfth overall out of thirty, so I'm quite pleased with my performance as a whole.
For those interested in the overall standings, here they are.
More importantly, it again gives me a target to beat in the future at the next Warhammer 40,000 tournament at Sanctuary. If you are interested it is the Warhammer 40,000: Spoils of War tournament on the 18th of June 2016.
Thanks for reading.
