Red and her husband ran a silly 40k tournament for Halloween complete with thematic missions and candy instead of points.
Halloween being my favorite holiday, my huband and I decided that we were going to do something different for this monthly tournament. We dropped the points values for army lists to a tiny 750 points, and I took charge making four incredibly thematic missions based around some goofy halloween staples – zombies, bobbing for apples, pumpkins, and a Pumpkin King. We got a bunch of candy to respresent various bits of the missions and went with rules and objectives that were just for the fun.
The List
Since we designed the tournament for a very low points value it was a little difficult for me to figure out what kind of detachment I wanted to use to keep my focus on units that would be relatively efficient for their points. I ended up going with a Vanguard Detachment, which left me with a miniscule 4 CP. Amusingly, my husband was surprised at the number of infantry models I was bringing to play, but honestly, the only choice I was not 100% certain over is the Visarch. Since I have only recently put together Yvraine and the Yncarne (I had been wanting to paint them as I assembled them), unfortunately the Visarch is the only option I have to play Ynnari, which I carry quite the torch for.
- The Visarch
- Warlock with Singing Spear
- 10 Guardian Defenders with Bright Lance Platform
- 10 Guardian Defenders with Bright Lance Platform
- 4 Shadow Spectres with Prism Blaster Exarch
- 4 Fire Dragons with Firepike Exarch
- 4 Striking Scorpions with Biting Blade Exarch
Round 1 – Smashing Pumpkins
Tyranids – Tervigon, lots of Termigaunts (the ones that can shoot – I always mix them up), 4 Neurothropes in a squad, Spore Cannon (not sure – it was an artillery peice)
For this game, we were given 7 “pumpkins” – pumpkin-shaped peanut butter cups – to scatter about the board. Anyone that controlled a “pumpkin” at the beginning of their turn could smash it and take it – to eat it or trade it or whatever.
For this game, I was playing against a new player (who also happened to be a lady and who has been collecting since Tyranids looked like they crawled out of the Alien™ franchise but had never played before). Although my Ynnari were fast enough to pick up objectives very quickly, we traded blow for blow on models since I did a lot of sacrificing to objective snatch.
Round 2 – Bobbing for Apples
Death Guard – 20 poxwalkers, Blight Caster, Plague Lord, 2 sets of Death Guard Marines
For our second game, we placed a “cauldron” of seven “apples” – a little cupcake liner filled with chocolates – in the very center of the board and had to run up to it, each model within 1″ being able to roll a die, retrieving an apple on a 5+, although they could not fight in the fight phase if they went bobbing.
Both my opponent and I made it up to the cauldron on the first turn, my greater movement allowing me to pile more models into the 1″ range even though they had taken casualties from my opponent’s shooting. Because of the nature of the mission, I was put in a location where my army was going to be destroyed pretty quickly, although we retrieved all of the apples long before that.
Round 3 – Zombie Bowling
Astra Militarum (Vostroyan) – 2 Chimeras, Commisar, 3 large squads of Guard, Rough Riders, Techpriest, Astropath (not sure on this one, but it was a very cheap psyker)
For this game, we were forced to deploy within 12″ of the center of the table, each army getting half of the circle. Three objectives were put onto the table, one at the center and one outside of 6″ of the deployments, and we had to search them for the magical “Zombie Bowling Ball” maguffin – finding it on a 6+. Whoever found the bowling ball won, but this was complicated by the hordes of zombies – Starburst™ candies – that swarmed onto the board. Each player started with one set of zombies, but as we killed each other, we added more zombies to the pile that would come on next turn.
Having far fewer models, I had difficulty controlling the objectives and never actually got to roll to search since I went second and lost a lot of my army right off the bat. Thankfully, the tide of zombies that then came on was pretty overwhelming. Both my opponent and I had something like 80 zombies at the end of the game, which went long and ended when the Rough Riders finally found the bowling ball on turn 4.
Round 4 – The Pumpkin King
Adeptus Mechanicus – Imperial Knight and 3 Tech Priests
The objective of the last mission was simple – kill the Pumpkin King (a big bag of cookies). Roughly based on a Chaos Warhound Titan, the Pumpkin King had a set of rules he followed and acted on his own turn, which took place after those of the two players’.
Having a very small army, my opponent staged far back in a corner to ensure that the Pumpkin King would come after me, although that was more destined since my army had lots of short-ranged shooting. Overall, I did most of the leg-work stripping wounds off the giant pumpkin monstrosity, but I could not get that last wound off after the Imperial Knight shot what remained of my army off the table, only leaving the Visarch, Warlock, and Shadow Spectres. Still, with sub-optimal shooting all I had left, I brought the behemoth down to 1 wound left, which the Imperial Knight then succinctly sniped. It was quite fun, and I commended my opponent for his superior tactics.
Results
Since we were interested in seeing if there was an appropriate array of missions, each being better dominated by different army types, we kept track of wins and losses, and were happy to find that most people went 2 for 2. There appeared to only be two people that won 3 of the 4 missions, and both of them used very different tactics to do it. (They were the opponents I played in Rounds 3 and 4.) All in all, we were quite happy with how it turned out.