Although the June 40k tournament that would have been run was originally scheduled later in the month, the store asked to move it to the release day of Warhammer 40k 8th Edition.
One of the store regulars ran the standard 8th Edition demo on the little cardboard table Games Workshop supplied; meanwhile, the husband and I ran a tournament in the back half of the store. We ran one of the four missions listed in the 2017 Nova Open Rules, using modified tournament rules from the same event, although with a few notable exceptions. The game had a 175 point per model limit to encourage large amounts of infantry and discourage the use of large, expensive models, especially the super-heavy walkers and gargantuan creatures. We were also given 2000 points to build our armies with, and my husband insisted on being the official game-day tournament organizer (TO) and on me being a competitor in the tournament.
Considering that the 8th Edition rules had just come out, we decided to use the 7th Edition rules one last time. This game, since we wanted people to bring some prettier models, a soft painting score was given. Each person participating and the employee running the store were asked to vote for their three favorite armies, excluding their own, and a pre-determined points value was given to each place. First place started with ten (10) points, second getting eight (8), third getting six (6), and the points descending from there.
The List
Knowing that there were going to be a number of people gunning to win, I ended up writing a rather competitive list.
- Reborn Warhost
- Farseer on Jetbike
- Autarch with War Jump Generator
- Scatter Laser Windriders
- Scatter Laser Windriders
- Scatter Laser Windriders
- Scatter Laser Windriders
- Wraithcannons Wraithguard
- Wave Serpent with Bright Lances
- Falcon with Bright Lances
- Crimson Hunter Exarch
- Aspect Host
- Dark Reapers
- Dark Reapers
- Dark Reapers
- Aspect Host
- Warp Spiders
- Warp Spiders
- Fire Dragons
Round 1
Imperial Guard + Inquisition: lots of infantry, 3 Basilisks, 3 Chimeras with Inquisition Psykers
Going second, I hid my army as well as I could behind the large ruin in the center of the table, and although the Basilisks could still take pot-shots, not a lot of damage occured before I could start advancing. I kept as much of my army together as I could, although the Dark Reapers eventually got left behind, and the large terrain on the board kept about half of the IG army from shooting at me.
Staying in a giant ball allowed my Ynnari to unravel the opponent army by concentrating my fire all in one place while keeping return fire minimized, and after my Autarch, Crimson Hunter, and Warp Spiders arrived, the enemy army was drastically decreased. Overall, we got through three (3) turns before having to score the game. My opponent ended up scoring quite well since he chose the turn-by-turn objective, which involved controlling quarters of the table and my army remained balled up until the very end. I took end-game scoring, which left me with more overall points.
Ynnari 17 | Imperial Guard 12
Round 2
Tau: Stealth Cadre, Farsight Crisis Suit Bomb, Hammerhead, and Skyray
This game, I returned the favor for the Tau I faced in round one (1) of our previous Nova-Inspired Tournament. Seizing the initiative on a board full of line-of-sight-blocking terrain, I made sure to stick most of my army behind the largest peice of terrain in my deployment zone before moving up around one side of an “abandonned” Fortress of Redemption. The most difficult models to deal with were the Stealth Suits he had parked in area cover, giving them a 2+ cover save that my only tool to remove was the Storm of Whispers psychic power my Farseer had been lucky enough to pull.
Keeping my units bunched up and quite close to a key number of the Tau units made my Soulbursting quite potent as most of my units shot twice and I had to utilize a few of my dice to ensure that I could keep track of everyone. The game ended with my opponent tabled at the end of turn three (3). Since it ended a little early, I did not get the chance to maximice my score, but I got quite close.
Ynnari 18 | Tau 4
Results
Overall, I ended up in second place, another Ynnari player taking first since he had maxxed-out scores for both rounds and had won painting. Amusingly, the results for the painting ended up being really close. First place for painting was only one point ahead of the two tied for second, and since one of the two that tied was me, I ended up in third – my husband wanted to be certain that no one would call him out on favoritism.