'Ard Boyz semi finals game rundown:

So as I promised, here are a brief set of Battle Reports from the 'Ard Boyz semi finals (sorry about the lack of pictures, didn't really have time to take any).

The missions can be seen here and with that said, onwards to the battle reports:

Game 1:

The caption to the above should also say "and they gave you Vendettas, Manticores and Hydras..."

My opponent in the first round was an IG list with the following:

3 Hydras, 2 Manticores, 6 units of vets in chimeras (2 plasma 4 melta), 1 Psyker battle squad in chimera, a company command squad in a chimera (4 plasma) and 3 vendettas. 

Deployment:

I won the roll to go first, deployed my Fire Dragons to my extreme left flank with my Falcon (that had my messenger in it) in hopes of him deploying to either counter them or avoid them completely. The rest of my army deployed centrally (harlequins screening wraithguard with everything behind cover as best as possible. 

My opponent then deployed his Manticores/Hydras  in the opposite corner from my Fire Dragons (my right flank) and the rest of his army centrally. I redeploy my Fire Dragons in my extreme right flank/corner directly in front of his Manticores and redeploy Eldrad to fortune my falcon (thanks to Divination).

The game:

This is basically where things were at the end of turn 1.

My turn 1:

He fails to sieze and I Fortune the Falcon then zoom it into his deployment zone (easiest 500 VP ever).
-I also Guide my Wraithlords which move up and shake 2 vendettas.
-My Fire Dragons go up 12" towards this Manticores and pop one with side armor shooting from their Shiruken Cannon turrets (I took the opportunity to get some nice side armor shots rather than turbo all the way up and risk just getting blown out of the sky.

opponent turn 1:

In his turn he managed to get a melta vet squad in range of my Falcon and blow it up..so much for passing any fortuned cover saves (which I didn't) and him rolling good doubles ha-oh well. He also blew up one of my Fire Dragon wave serpents but they passed their pinning check and anything else that happened was unimportant.

Rest of the game:

From that point on, my Fire dragons moved up and popped the vendetta that moved to engage them (thanks to the exarch's firepike) and they also destroyed his other manticore while side shots from their Wave Serpent immobilized and destroyed the multi laser of his messenger's transport.

The rest of my army continued to shake his remaining vendettas and just take shots of opportunity where possible and the rest of the game came down to me cleaning up his army while his vets did the best they could to blow up my stuff. As I moved stuff up into range of his vets (like my Wraithlords/Harlequins) his vets proceeded to kill them but I pretty much took out anything that got out of his transports.

The end of the game saw me left with a damaged Wave Serpent, a Fire Dragon squad, a Wraithguard squad, Eldrad/Maugen, 2 DA squads and 2 Jetbike squads while the IG player had just his hydras, 3 chimeras, a psyker battle squad and 2 vet squads left. I managed to get a massacre with 22 points.

Interesting moments in the game involved Maugen taking out his messenger squad  and his command squad (no cover saves for him) while getting some nice side shots on chimeras along with the firepike firedragons killing tanks left and right.

My opponent had an interesting time taking down my messenger-the unit failed their pin check after losing their Falcon transport then got into another Wave Serpent after which died and they get pinned again and then eventually they got roasted by some nice heavy flamer action from a nearby Chimera I failed to kill. All in all  good game, going first won me that game if anything else but I think I played it well aside from throwing my Wraithlords away lol... 

Game 2:

My opponent in game 2 was playing a Space Wolf army that really wasn't anything super cheesy, just a balanced Ragnar list which I was very surprised to see myself facing off against.
He had the following:

Ragnar, 3 Runeprists, 4 Grey hunter squads in Rhinos, 1 Wolf scout squad, 1 large bloodclaw pack in a LRC and 2 longfang squads with missile launchers.

The game was pretty straight forward, he won the roll to go first and gave it to me since it was an objective mission and my first turn I immobilized all but 1 Rhino and took out a few longfangs. The rest of the game was me taking out his other Rhino, his LRC and a longfang squad while getting into position to threaten anything he could bring to the middle.

The end of the game saw a mighty clash of Wraithguard/Harlequins and 2 Wraithlords charging his squads and wiping them out in a crazy multi charge of doom. When the dust cleared from that combat I had lost a few Wraithguard and Harlequins but that was it. All in all, I had an easy matchup because I don't think his army was meant to fight an army like mine.

Interesting moments in our game was when a Falcon tank shocked half his army off of the objective turn 4 then survived 3 turns of shooting/close combat thanks to my opponent rolling poorly and Holofields (gotta love it when they roll a 1 and a 6). Another thing that was kind of funny was he forgot to move/charge an immobilized Wave Serpent that was in my deployment zone with his Wolf Scouts and seeing as how they were scoring I killed them next turn but because that Wave Serpent was alive, I missed out on a battle point (nothing of yours in your deployment zone). I got 23 points and was now waiting to see who my last round opponent will be.

Pre game 3 talk:

At this point, the standings were George Mason in first with 48 points (he won best BA and overall in the Throne of Skulls), Dave Faye and Derek tied for third with 47 points and me in fourth with 45 points.

George was playing a Grey Knight army a GM, Librarian, some strike squads, 3 Dreads, some razorbacks and I don't even know what else. Dave was playing Black Templars with 30 missile launcher and 12 lascannon shots (no idea on his exact army composition either) and Derek was playing his Deathwing army with 8 TH/SS terminators with 2 landspeeders and 2 predators.

I was kind of biting my nails wondering who I would play and was blindly hoping Mason and Faye would play each other but then I started wishing I would play Mason after seeing his army and I was dreading the possibility of playing Faye or that Deathwing army but alas, I ended up with one of the hardest matchups for my army!

Game 3:

My last game was against a deathwing player who had the following:
Belail, 6 troop terminator squads with TH/SS and 1 Cyclone ML and 2 elite terminator squads with the same setup. I think one of the troop choices had some banner and apothecary. He also 2 landspeeders with a multi melta/2 Cyclone launchers along with 2 Predators with Las sponsons/Autocannon turret.

This game the mission was not decided until the beginning of the 3rd game so we had no idea what we were supposed to go for. My opponent won the roll to go first and deployed his army bunched up close to the middle so I decided to keep everything but my Wraithguard, Harlequins, Eldrad/Maugen and my Wraithlords in reserve. The way he set up allowed me to set my Wraithguard and Wraithlords behind some terrain so that most of his army didn't have any LOS to them and I figured I'd just wait until turn 3 to make my move when missions were decided. I think he was hoping for a KP mission since he was in a position to shoot me out of the sky had I deployed more of my army and that he had only 13 KP in his army.

Turn 1-3:

My opponent moved/ran a lot of his terminators up since the majority had no LOS and he boosted his speeders up towards my harlequins so that next turn he could get close and punk them with the frag shots from the cyclone launchers. I used Maugen to pop one with his crack shot while the rest of my shooting bounced off his cover saves. After seeing what Maugen can do he then boosted his other speeder back behind a hill but my Wraith Lords killed it the next turn. The game pretty much was him taking pot shots at my Wraithlords and I think he only managed 1 or 2 wounds between them.

Turn 3:

This turn we rolled and got table quarters-very good for me since I had 6 scoring units that were fast and all I had to do was take out a few of his scoring units to ensure a win/massacre. Killpoints would have been really rough and there was hardly any terrain but I think I could have pulled out the massacre had it been terrain features. I think my army was better suited for table quarters so I am glad that is what our objective ended up being-plus it let me be more careless with my tanks/firedragons since I didn't need to worry about giving up kill points =).

Opponent:

His turn 3 he just moved up and took pot shots at more things, took out a few Harlequins with some nice Veil rolling and just got closer in general to my lines.

Me:

My turn 3 saw only a Fire Dragon squad come in so I moved up 24" towards a predator of his, mainly to distract him while the rest of my army made a move to take out some terminators of his closing in on my Wraith Guard. I was cornered so I moved my WG so they were only within 12" of one of his squads (the closest) and with my shooting I took out 2 terminators and then with my Harlequin charge I took out the remaining 3 and massacred in a way to block any advancement towards my WG-I guess I had to throw the Harlequins under the bus at some point with this matchup.

Turn 4:

My opponent:
He moves closer to my WG and gets my harlequins down to something like 2 or 3 models while putting some more wounds on my Wraithlords. He moves to engage my Fire Dragons and takes out their tank rather easily.

Me:

I get all but a DA squad and Falcon in, I move my jetbikes behind a hill so they are not shootable and I target some terminator squads close by and actually kill one via shooting and another one is brought down to 4 models and my harlequins fall short of a good charge. My Fire Dragons on the left flank fail to kill the predator and I sigh at the dice suck.

Turn 5-end:

This is roughly where things were at the end except my Falcon

My opponent:

My opponent keeps the terminators coming and manages to down all of my tanks except my falcon which I later fortune and zoom into a table quarter. he charges and wipes my remaining Harlequin speedbump but eventually all the terminators that were near me get shot up by Wraithguard/mass Shiruken fire and charged by Wraithlords and get wiped so in the end, all he has left are 1 elite terminator unit and 3 scoring terminator units (I killed his predators eventually). The game came down to me zooming my jetbikes into the appropriate table quarters to contest his and then I just moved my Falcon and Wraithgaurd appropriately to ensure I had 3 more table quarters than him (since he only had 3 I could move 2 of my scoring units in each table quarter and get the massacre.

So yeah, it was a bloody game and it just came down to him not rolling well enough to kill my stuff and him rolling enough 1s for me to get into position. If it was Kill Points I definitely would have had to hide everything better and not be so careless and if it was terrain features I probably would have had to spread my scoring units out more rather than just castle up in my corner.

Tournament End:

So with the dust settled, Dave Faye managed to massacre George Mason (simply because Mason failed a LD test at the end of his turn and ran with his last scoring unit...) and pulled out 69 Battle Points which put us in a tie for first with some 5 Battle Wagon ork player in 3rd with 65 Battle Points. The tie breaker GW told them to use was bonus points but we obviously tied on that as well so it came down to strength of Schedule and since my opponents did better than his then I won and got to choose my army, yay.

Dave and I also did Rock, Paper Scissors in the end and I won that so that made it official.

So, I think I was the only Eldar player to place first but I heard that 2 other Eldar players made top 3 so go Eldar!


I hope you guys enjoy reading this and feel free to post any comments/questions.