NOVA Coverage: Games 5-6

I'll apologize right now, during the mini-tournament in my 2-2 bracket I got caught up in the games.  As I mentioned before I was able to win all 4 games; in the process of concentrating and working at it I didn't take many pictures.  Here's the lightning round of how each went!

Game 5 (Round 1 of the bracket tournament)

I played Jason from Texas who borrowed a friend of his army.  I loved the Kromlech (I think) Mexican sombreros and bits.  Unfortunately the army wasn't painted.  Jason had an ork list that had 3 big mobs of boys, 1 stormboy mob, 1 massive nob biker mob with boss and a big squad of lootas.  He had all infantry which is great for scoring at NOVA and had very little killpoints.  I had some concerns about running against this style of a list as the nob bikers can brutalize my wraiths.  At least there was only 1 loota squad so I wasn't as worried about my flyers being destroyed.

The mission was objectives, quarters then kill points.

I deployed my wraith units away from each other.  I wanted to use one as a sacrificial bait squad (I know, pretty expensive) and one to try and roll up a flank.  I knew with that many orks, I would have to soften them up before assaulting.  If the squad was small enough I could split my destroyer lord off and take advantage of his toughness of 6.  It actually worked that I would issue a challenge.  If the nob accepted, I had a good chance (which worked) to kill the nob before he could use all of his challenge rerolls (from cheering orks) to strike with his klaw.  After that the second time I charged a mob with my lord, the orks needed 4's by 6's by my 2+ save.  A depleted mob was decently easy to handle.

The nob bikers zoomed forward on the left flank and I retreated my unit into the ruins so I would at least get to strike first.  My unit of other wraiths played hide and go seek with the unit of storm boys and held behind the right hill until they got within my charge range.

As I expected my unit was utterly destroyed but fortunately my destroyer lord got back up (to later annoy the far boys squad).  Once combat was finished my opponent was relatively bunched up for my flyer strafing run.  This is where my doom scythes paid dividends.  They both came in and their laser beams of doom along with 3 sets of twin link teslas killed all but 2 bikers and a wounded boss.  It neutered the squad enough that I could take it apart with the rest of my army.

I proceeded to tear into the rest with my flyers and strafed around the board.  In the end I tabled my opponent and got the win.  He was a good sport about it and it advanced me to round 2.

Game 6

My 6th game was against Jimmy V.  Before the tournament started, we set up together to get our armies judged for painting.  I really loved the way his biker list looked, and was very impressed it could fit into a small case... what a perfect army for traveling.

This mission was Quarters then Objectives then Kill Points

We had another hammer and anvil style deployment which in this case worked to my advantage. I went 2nd and made sure I was out of any range of shots the opening round.  Jimmy's command squads (he had two) were nasty in combat.  Toughness 5 with storm shields, combat weapons and an apothecary.  The captains had 2+ armor so could take the bulk of wounds before the rest of the squad was touched.  I knew I wouldn't get to escape them long with their mobility so decided to "attempt" to refuse one flank with my wraiths and double up on one of the squads.

It worked  only due to the fact I had some good rolling but more importantly Jimmy missed some major 2+ saves.  My one unit of wraiths tied up the command squad long enough to have the other one jump in.

My flyers all failed their first roll for reserves, but with the communications relay, I made every second roll.  It paid for itself for the whole tournament in this game alone.  I committed all 5 flyers at the right flank and tore into his other command squad wiping them out.  Between death rays and tons of tesla, the pulled them down. 

My combination of 2 wraith units finally pulled down the other command squad and my flyers then proceeded to hunt down the rest of the bikes.  Strength 7 on toughness 5 negates a lot of the bonuses of the bikes.  Jimmy did have one lone attack bike that chased after a hiding leftover wraith (I was using one to help claim quarters) and assassinated it!  My immortals were not too happy with that fact and decided to shoot and charge the remaining attack bike. 

In the end Jimmy was left with a wounded attack bike on his far corner and I picked up all 4 quarters.  It was a rough matchup for him.

With the night being done, I was excited and nervous about going into my game 7 and 3rd game of my mini bracket tournament!