ITC Testing and you - Learn from my mistakes

Tournament report incoming!

It's been a while since the last tournament update, mostly because the last 2 tournaments were pretty shitty, and rather than writing takedown pieces or thrashing them in a heartfelt if whinny blog post, I did my usual thing.

Like a douchier Taylor Swift, I shake it off.

And now I'm back to blab about a 14 man tournament that was held at the FLGS.

So hit the video for an overview or scroll down to read the whole report!

Although in size it's not much, it was my first experience with the full ITC pack – rules, comp and missions, and also my first tournament with the fully painted Army of the Month. And playing with my shiny new models is probably the thing I like the most in the hobby.

Now I was in a pretty crappy state, I went to bed at 7AM, my buddy Marcoux was picking me up at 8:30. Needless to say I was still drunk during most of my first game and pretty hungover for the 2 others. Nevertheless, Practicing games is this state really get me in tournament mode, as I don't really have the «  playing sober » thing down.

The army I played is the second onefrom the AotM Project post. I played the second variant for 2 specific reasons, one being that I want to get in at least 10 games in before I switch anything and also because it's still a « friendly »LGS tournament.  The 1^st list really is min-maxing and I knew some of the regulars are not quite fond of the OPCheesedouchebaggery. Sometimes I forget I'm the French Douche and do nice stuff. DAMN!

GAME 1

Matt with Dark Eldars

His list was something like 1 CAD with 2 Baronial Court of 5 poison 2+ dudes in venoms, 4 more venoms and 2 ravagers. He's also playing two of the 1Chronos, 1 Talos,1 Homoculus forming a unit formation.  And unkillable scourges.  How dare I almost forget about the scourges that lived through so many bolter shots.

I'd seen Matt play that army at the store before, and it's a mathcup I was eager to test. Having a 2++ is nothing impressive versus 36+ poison shots per turn.

We are playing ITC mission 2, Relic in Hammer and Anvil.

I win the roll and chose to go second. I figured I line up my death star and the NDK, and either he kills the big guy or goes for the deathstar. This way, either I get a full deathstar to gate in the middle of the board or I get to prescience my NDK and force psylance the crap out of some talos unit and scream YATHZEE when it dies.

Matt went for the NDK, and I followed on with my plan of man-moding the middle of the board. I also begin to spawn a few units that I will need to either distract the tons of shooting and to get some maelstrom points.

The maelstrom snowballs into Matt's favor and it comes down to secondary, where a few summoning rolls and a Gate of Infinity secures me table quarters and a one point win. Because we are doing Win/Loss system, 1 point is as good as 11-0. Bully!

GAME 2

Phil with the Decurion

Instead of playing wraith spam, Phil plays with Destroyer Cults and the Praetorians/Triarch Stalker formation.

The mission is ITC Mission 4, Scouring in Hammer and Anvil.

This is the game where having a gimmicky army really hurt. When the gimmick don't work, nothing works.

I win the roll and chose to go second. I deployed the star on the line, where I probably should have kept it on the back and just gate once I was buffed up. As a result, I lost 5 terminators on the 1^st turn.

Now I didn't feel like it was that bad, because I though I could get stuck in close combat for pretty much the rest of the game. Alas, it was not to be. I got denied on sanctuary, and suddenly, charging into a bunch of AP2 guys really didn't look so hot. So I chickened out and Gated to the realtive safety of the other side of the board.

Turn 2, I lost my NDK to 6 wounds from destroyers, as well as most of the units I summonned. I kept the game somewhat close for 3 turns, at least Maelstrom wise, despite my deathstar failing everything – a 3 dice Gate, the second Sanctuary and a 7 inch charge on the turn where I did get my sanctuary off.

When the gimmick don't work, not much works. Also, don't misplay your deployment when you have a 20 model army. Pretty much 11-0 for Phil, maybe 11-1, I think I had linebreaker. #Smallvictories

GAME 3

Because of an odd number of players and a round 1 draw, I got paired up to play against Marcoux, who was 2-0.

Marcoux, with TFG's army.

Marcoux, the undisputed best sportsman of 2015, was rocking an army to lose all of his friends.

3 Imperial Knights in the ObSec detachement, Eldar CAD with 3 hornets and D-Weapon Platforms.

Lucky for him,  I was happy to play versus that list. It's something I considered building – 3 IK and something on the side, and something I felt that I had a quite decent match against.

Scenario was ITC Mission 6, Crusade in Dawn of War deployment.

I won the roll and elected to go second as I wasn't too scared of the alpha strike from 3 knights. My plan was get in the middle of the board, man-mode the knight(s) and then hit and run my unit to the platforms. My genius plan kinda worked. I did exactly that, with the only part being I forgot to cast hammerhand once in the middle of the board, so I spent a turn at not hitting the knights with full power.

This ended up costing me too much, because after one knight and the weapon platforms, I did not have enough power left to take on the other knights.

I guess it's the learning curve.

My biggest learning points are the following :

1- I need to deploy a lot more carefully than jut cramming everything in the middle of the board, specially when I take 2^nd turn. Manmode has it's limits.

2- ITC ruling on casting only one power per mastery level is a total bust for the conclave. You can keep a librarian in another squad more than 12'' away to cast 4 spells instead of 2, and even then, you lose most of the conclave's awesomeness.

It look like it hurts the conclave, but it's even worse for the grey knight strike squad, who can't cast both hammerhand and force on the same turn.

3- It is impossible to get tired of hearing « U Can't touch this » by MC Hammer when you are in the assault phase. I played it every single assault phase on my phone, on repeat if it proved to be a long assault phase. BEST. SONG. EVER.

So until next time,

No excuses, hobby like a champion!