The Battle Barn

Apparently, WMU's Gamers Guild in Kalamazoo is running a 40k tournament as part of Marmalade Dog on the 15th. 1850 points, standard rules as near as I can tell.

http://www.marmaladedog.org/40k.php

Ha...both Daemonhunters and Grey Knights are codecies you can use...I feel like pulling out my old Daemonhunter codex in hopes of stomping on a new GK bandwagoner.

Now THAT would be amusing. A new Codex: Grey Knights army getting its ass kicked by the venerable Codex: Daemonhunters!

I couldn't help but notice they say this is on Saturday the 15th, but Saturday is actually the 16th. I wonder what day it's really on?

It was on Saturday. I came, I saw... I was conquered. The Tau took a beating once again! Except for a Tau versus Tau battle against TauLuke when we can arrange it, my Tau army is taking a vacation. I'll have them fully painted, repaired, and detailed by the time a new codex arrives in another two years or something. <grumble, grumble>

Anyway, first game was against a cheese-heavy list of Blood Angels with three Storm Ravens. Each one carried a blood claw dreadnaught while two of them also carried a small tac squad and one carried Mephiston. A land raider held one more squad. My opponent goes full reserve, turbo-boosts the storm ravens right up into my face when they arrive, and short of killing both the raven and the dread inside in the same round, there's no way to prevent the assault. I made a minor screw-up in spreading myself out too much during deployment and assuming that four fireknives at point-blank range could drop a turbo-boosting AV12 skimmer! Since they didn't, I had to use the broadsides to finish it, leaving me nothing left to fire at the dread that pops out and doesn't even take a pinning check.

Game 2 was against a familiar and very good player from Kalamazoo with a Shrike space marine list. I don't remember the details, but I've never beaten that army because they are tough, assaulty, and fast: the worst possible combination for a Tau opponent. This mission also had weird scoring of 6 objectives on the table plus one in the center where HQ's were supposed to gather. While the objectives had to be at least 12 inches apart, a scoring unit in a land raider can claim two of them without getting out. He ended up winning the tournament.

Game 3 was an Ork horde with a couple of Trukks and a Battlewagon. All three vehicles went down quickly, as did a squad each of Lootas and Stormboyz. My dice turned against me shortly after that when 8 fire warriors in RF and a full crisis team couldn't kill more than 3 of a squad of orks. They were in cover, but hadn't even gone to ground. I just rolled terrible and continued doing so until the end of the game.