[Tournament Report] Molten Crown Doubles | It's Bogus Journey, not Excellent Adventure

 It's been a week, dear Reader.

 It started with Young Apprentice and his demo kit. Commendably, he wants to run some Combat Patrol and teach his fellow yoofs the noble art of slamming hams. Somewhat less commendably, he gave himself a week to paint it all. He did a bang up job on the Ultramarines, they have a nice mottled look to them that I rather admire, but the pile o' Nids and the fortified compound were tougher prospects. Thus it was that muggins 'ere spent two days developing new and exciting wrist cramp and understanding why the moderns favour this "air brush" technology.

Got 'em done, though. 

Anyway, in the midst of all that there was an exchange of messages which went something like this.

Young Apprentice: also, we need to sort out lists for Molten Crown.
Old Master: You're going to have to tell me what that is first.
Young Apprentice: doubles tournament. Saturday 30th.
Old Master: I had no idea this was on.
Young Apprentice: oh, right. I should have started with: do you want to team up for a 40K doubles tournament?

At first I politely declined. My last competition event was ten years ago, and I got the shakes so bad I had to drop at the end of round one to avoid a category four autism incident. (A category five is the one where I take all my clothes off and return to bed in a torrent of incoherent swearing, so it could have been worse.) Then I thought about it some more. 

When I first moved to rural Wales I found an almost complete lack of accessible hobby community: now there are Friendly Local Gaming Shoppes at either end of the bus route through my town, a club that kindly meets during daytime, and bimonthly events within walking distance of my house. Use it, they say, or lose it. And anyway, I'm considerably saner than I was ten years ago and I have actually made it through one-day events before.

Old Master: You know what? I'm in.

The plan we established was straightforward. He'd bring a fourteen model Custodes list and focus on killing. I'd bring a forty model Necron list and focus on scoring. 

I figured Canoptek Court, although not something I usually play, would be fairly low effort and reward me for interacting with the primary objective: any unit with a Cryptek leader or any Canoptek unit at all would be sporting full rerolls to hit provided I had objective control in that area of the board. 

Young Apprentice would be rocking Lions of the Emperor, with a Lone Operative Sister of Silence character for lurking on our home objective and seven Terminator Custards who could Deep Strike, then split up and become one-man wrecking balls. 

Once I heard the Deep Strike plan, I offered to provide a large unit of Necron Warriors who'd be Infiltrating (thank you Dimensional Sanctum enhancement) to create space for this rapid insertion of large golden objects into the battlespace.

Hold on to that thought. It'll be important later. 

My half of the bargain.

With prizes for the best team name at stake, and twenty minutes to go until lists were locked in, I panicked and entered a Bill and Ted riff. That was eight days ago. We were in business.

 Round One: Golden Pinkies (Custodes & Knights): 30-87 L

 Remember that Deep Strike plan we talked about? I set up to enable that, landing on the primary mission "Linchpin" and selecting the secondary missions "Bring It Down" (because there were Knights on the board, and killing one of those each turn would score that 'un) and Establish Locus (because holding the centre of the board was my job, and I had free roaming Cryptothralls free to touch divots while my proper units did their thing). 

Look at all that space preserved. Look at it!

 Of course, as our opponents were quick to point out, Deep Strike doesn't work like that. Deep Strike Reserves are still Reserves. Deep Strike is something I do to score objectives, and you don't do that in turn one. I've never tried for this kind of alpha strike before and genuinely hadn't clocked it.

Anyway, this left 1000 points of suboptimal Necrons facing down 2000 points of the Imperium's heaviest metal, with... predictable results.

Behold, the space where my Warriors used to be. So well preserved.

Young Apprentice's Blade-Captain arrives and earns a spot prize for killing a Knight Castellan whilst technically dead.

This Warglaive decided to stall for a turn 'cause there was another spot prize in it: roll double 1 for a charge and stand by it.

 Once the Custodians turned up and the Challenger cards started coming out we were able to put some Bring It Down points on the board and not completely wash out, but it was all on them. I'd decided not to use a Stratagem to keep my Doomstalker alive, so there really wasn't anything I could do except chip away at Custodian Guard and kill a whole two of them with sustained Gauss barrage before they cleaned up the rest of my corner.

The Golden Pinkies would go on to put up similar low-80s scores in each round, taking first place in the event. Good on 'em. Nice pair of lads. Rozz, the Knight player, bought me a pity cider after the tournament while we were waiting for his lift, and I felt a lot better about things after that.

Round Two: Empire Vapes (Aeldari & Thousand Sons): 40 - 100 L

 

This was the hard one. A weird vibe at the table - personality clashes between me and their Thousand Sons player. I was in a somewhat tetchy mood at this point, struggling to comprehend basic orders of operation, and I think these were two higher-order players, only one of whom was in the mood to carry their opposition through things.

I feel like I did my job here, though: losing my Immortals to some lazy advancement aside, I managed to keep my Doomstalker up and shooting through the middle turns, and pick up Primary points with my Warriors while Young Apprentice worked the secondary objectives and challenger cards. We put more points on the board, but were undone by the sheer mobility offered by multiple normal units of perfidious Aelf bikers, the blender power of the Howling Banshees, and the Thousand Sons stepping over Custodes survival tech to simply Doombolt whole bodies off the map. At least we made them work for it, holding out until round four.

Post-game chat we decided to try splitting up the Custodes Terminators ASAP in our last round, giving us more ability to contest objectives and pull off weirdo secondaries. 

Round Three: Femstodes & the Nosebleeds (Custodes & Blood Angels): 27 - 90 L

 Reader, my beloved, this is the one where I let myself and the Young Master down. Already on in a mood from the previous round (I get narky when I'm offered unsolicited advice with no cooldown time) I deployed like a moose with my units all over the place (I get narkier when I lose a game in the deployment and don't get to do anything for two whole turns). By our second movement phase I had the shakes again and couldn't even touch my Scarabs without knocking over two buildings.

After I'd gone outside, thumped the wall a few times, and rather brusquely ordered Young Apprentice to take charge (yes, I was rude to a teenager: yes, I'm a terrible role model; my saving grace is I know my faults and admit to them), I was back in the zone and ready to get diced into oblivion.

These assholes have just shrugged off a Doomstalker Overwatch (that only landed three hits to begin with) and are about to blend twenty Warriors, two Cryptothralls and a Plasmancer like it ain't no thing. Those models will not score a single point or fire a single shot.

These assholes are the only survivors of what Inquisitor Draxus just did, and they have failed their Battleshock test, costing us eight Victory Points in unscored primary and secondary objectives. Our learned opponents were kind enough to offer a backsie to retroactively apply Insane Bravery, but I decided to take my lumps.

This asshole has had its first Overwatch chumped by saves, rerolled a 2 into a 1 for its number of shots and somehow managed to kill two Sanguinary Guard on my turn, and then scored one wound out of seven hits on its final Overwatch before it gets mobbed by large golden men (airborne, no nipples).

These assholes hurt my sweet little Reanimator son. Also shown: the Young Master's Allarus Captain tearing one of them up to score us a bunch of secondary and challenger points, undoing my failure with the Immortals.

These assholes are about to remove the last Necrons from the board. One unit ate most of a 1000 point army. Tenth edition is supposed to be less lethal, don't you know?

Femstodes & the Nosebleeds were extremely nice people who did their best to keep the mood at the table up, even after I'd had a strop and then dissociated for the rest of the battle round. Anyone who can turn me around and get me smiling after I've been on savage, embarrassing tilt deserves Most Sporting Opponent, so I'm glad they picked it up.

Debrief: Wooden Spoon, Acquired

It's been a long road to get here, with a lot of 17/20 and 31/32 finishes, but I finally came out at the bottom of the placements. There wasn't that much in it: we were in twelfth place with 97 out of 300 possible Victory Points, and tenth place only had 100.

It is time for some sober reflection. Tournament 40K - Matched Play as it should be called - is a different beast from Crusade, in ways that took me a moment to fully accept.

Firstly, the missions. Crusade only has primary objectives, with Agendas being fixed, personal, and only of interest to you. An opponent who chooses to deny you XP by targeting your Agendas on units you can't kill or objectives you can't reach is being a knob for no reason - they still win whether you pick up XP or not. In Matched Play, this "make it impossible" play is normalised. This is fine as a choice by the player: I don't like the system that allows it. 

Secondly, the missions, again. In two out of three games we ran with Tactical secondary objectives and I sort of see the merit in them now. I still think it's a layer of cognitive load I don't want to deal with, but in a game that's on the turn, having a Fixed secondary plan you can no longer achieve means you're no longer in it at all. At least with Tactical you can pull out a twofer that compensates for a crap turn on primary scoring. 

Thirdly, the terrain. I understand why things have to be this way, but the last game really brought out how much I dislike what competition boards have to do with scenery.  There's a ruin. It is apparently infinite in height, and opaque when you're trying to shoot through it, but you can charge through it into something you can't see. Infantry and beasts can walk through it, but a Brutalis Dreadnought has to go around. Whether you are touching the wall or not matters to a degree that involves passing TOs asking about it. All of this amounts to a counter-intuitive, non-immersive insult to the senses. Do Not Want.

Fourthly, the lethality. I hadn't fully appreciated how bad single damage guns or single wound infantry were in the context of the multiple wound super-hunks that hit on them on twos, wound them on threes (twos with a Stratagem), rerolling everything with Lethal and Sustained. The army list was an experiment that didn't work out, it's whatever, but the dust shall have to be blown off my Skorpekh Destroyers and Lychguard quick sharp if I do this again.

Fifthly, and this is a good one: Challenger cards. I really like these. Even when we were being clobbered, drawing a challenger card and having a clutch free Stratagem or a 3 VP mini objective that could stack with secondaries was nice. There were a few points where a single round of attacks from an Allarus Terminator or plinking shots with the Canoptek normal arms scored us 8 or so VP and made me at least feel like we'd done something.

Would I do all this again?

 Well. I'm definitely thinking about it. I know I can get through three 2000 point games in a day now. I came home from a day of slamming hams wanting to slam more hams, once I've recovered the power of speech.

I'm not saying I have the full bug. There's enough about the Matched environment that I actively dislike, and enough about my own cognitive limits and emotional dysregulation that means I couldn't do this for two or three days on the trot. But... yeah. I'd do this RTT thing again. October's singles event is booked out, but December's is the week after my birthday and still has places.

Time to summon the Monolith.