The NOVA Open, Part 3

Unto the battle report section of this series!  I write these reports as a quick summary that’s easy to read and focuses on the high points of the game rather than a turn by turn long and uninteresting read.

Game 1, versus Philly Paul and his beautiful Eldar army, painted by Next Level Painting.  I met Paul at other events before but never had the change to play him.

The game was a close one, where failing a grimoire roll early on put me on the back foot the whole game.  That is until bottom of turn 4, at the beginning of my movement phase, where the judge announces to finish the game and not start another turn.  Paul asks if we can play another turn quickly.  OH LORD, WHAT A TEST OF CHARACTER IS ANSWERING THIS.  Bluntly saying no means I win, no question asked, as Paul can’t make scoring moves with his jetbikes and I get to rake the points.  Saying yes probably means losing the game to secondary objective.  I agreed to another turn, and promptly lost 14-11, but also earned a lot of not being a total dick points, which I’m a big fan of getting.  I’ll admit that if my opponent had not been as fun as Paul to play against, I’d given the question a lot more thoughts.

My 2^nd game is against Stephen and his Necron. To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much of this game as the scenario/matchup made for an uninteresting game that ended something like a tie on primary and all secondary for me and not quite a lot for him.  I won 9-7 I think.  Stephen, if you read this I’m really sorry I don’t recall our game, I will gladly offer drinks at the next event we attend. 

Game 3 is versus Jimmy and his Iron Hands gunline with Gerontius, the Imperial Knight special character.  The game is straight KPs, and having no plan on how to tackle Mr Titan, I figure I’ll avoid it for as long as possible.  Franck sets up the Knight on one flank.  Going second, I try to bait the titan to stay on the flank with my GUO and 2 squads of horrors, with my 4 FMC on the other side ready to go ham on the gunline.  The Plan^TM worked, and by turn 6 there was an untouched Knight and 2 tactical marines on his side, and I lost A unit of horrors and 2 spawned units.  14-2 win and tired like crazy after this day of wargaming.

Game 4, to determine which bracket I’d be placed for the next 4 games vs Simon and the Sisters of Battle.

This proved to be a really weird game, as Simon was under the weather and coughing his lungs out throughout the match.  The game itself was flawed from the start as I picked the wrong objective mission on an oversight.  As time was called, Simon had 4 Primary points to my 0 and I had 6 secondary points to his 0.  Yay for weird wins!  Simon also dropped out of the tournament after the game, as his health did not improve despite is impressive chugging of a Dayquil bottle.

With a 6-points win, I was placed in the 3^rd Bracket, along with some serious opponents.

Follow the end of this Tournament report in part 4