2 Saturdays ago marked our local GW's Single elimination tournament. A 2000 points win at all costs tournament in which a loss means your out. The TO of this tournament did the same setup when he did the kill team tournament that he ran a couple of months ago. I wasn't expecting this type of setup, I at least wanted to be guaranteed 3 games and me being so new with my army, I wasn't expecting to win it. What I can say is that I prepared for Kill points and pitched battle as the TO told us that the tourney would be using these setups and my army was very stingy in the kill point department with my opponents needing to kill squads to give up one and only having 1 vehicle which was my venerable Dred. My list consisted of the following -
Wolf Lord on Jugger...ah thunderwolf with frost weapon, belt of russ, runic armor, bolt pistol
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, runic armor
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Frost weapon, Storm Shield, runic armor, and saga of the wolfkin
All 3 had 2 wolf body guards and joined a 14 Wolf squad
Rune Priest with Murderous Hurricane and living lightning
Blood claw pack (13) with power weapon
2 Grey hunter packs with power weapon, plasma gun, melta gun
Venerable Dred with Assault Cannon
2 Long Fang squads, 1 with 3 missile launchers and 2 Plasma Cannons, 1 with 3 Lascannons and 2 heavy bolters.
My First game was against an Ork player. Again all I can say is OMG!!! My opponent brought a tough list with 2 15 ork commando units, one led by Snikrot. I gave him first turn as I wanted to see what he was going to do and I wanted to deploy my Long Fangs in the best position that I could. He deployed his hammer unit of Nobs with his warboss in the center of the table. This was the unit that I need to make disappear as I know the power of the unit. Big mistake my opponent did was not to deploy them in his battle wagon opting instead to have them go on foot. He put his big unit of burnas in the wagon which I immobilized in turn 2 thus causing my opponent to have to footslog it.
After taking out his nob squad and then the unit of 3 killer kans, the rest was clean up. The only threat my opponent had was his 2 commando squads which didnt come in until turn 3 and were thus left with taking out just a long fang squad that I let him have. My Wolf lords performed exactly like they had in my last 2 games, just destroying everything they touched. By turn 4, my opponent conceited the game and I scored a mighty 8 kill points and he scored 1. Another victory for my chaos space wolves.
Next game was against the guy who ended up winning the tourny who played a blood angel army that amongst my opponents would be the toughest I would face. The game was pretty even with both of us having a very good hammer unit that if used properly could change the outcome of the game. I started very strong by killing 1 of his Baal Preds and stunning his landraider. He responded by taking out my blood claws and a grey hunter unit with my rune priest. This was just dumb, as he lost 3 jump troops including his Sang priest due to murderous hurricane. My opponent just rolled incredible and I just rolled horribly. This one assault squad accounted for both my Grey Hunters squad and would have kept going if I didn't split one of my lords from my hammer unit to deal with them.
I wasn't the only one rolling badly, my opponent actually ended up immobilizing his landraider and his other Baal Pred. Even though I had lost 3 of my units, it still was a close game until I made a huge mistake. I didn't account for the 2 inches that a unit gets for disembarking from a vehicle, that 2 inches gave my opponent's death company and chaplain to reach one of my lords dogs as I had broke from cover trying to assault another one of his assault units which I couldn't reach due to a bad fleet roll. After the assault phase was done, I had lost all of my dogs as he got his death company and his assault squad in assault with me and put 2 wounds on my 2 lords. My lords fought back and cut down almost half of both huge squads but were eventually brought down. If my 3rd lord was still in the unit, the assault would have definitely gone my way. The game went on until turn 6 with me almost tying it but again due to a low fleet roll, couldn't get to his last baal pred with my remaining Wolf Lord. I lost 7 to 6. Ah well, it was a good game but it goes to show that my army is not unbeatable. Its definitely a hard list and one that is fun to play. It was a great tournament and even though I didn't win I was awarded a Black Library book and an audio book. Pics are of my almost finished Thunderlords and 5 of my 15 Bloodclaws.
