Those who fail to prepare...

Prepare to fail...

My army is all packed and the C&F t-shirt is washed and good to go. However, I've not played a 1750 point game since Open War and I've not really thought about how I'm going to play the 4 unique missions that the Freebootaz Open has. Coupled with the fact I've been really busy at work over the last few weeks (so no chance at all to change my lists to take advantage of the missions), I'm not really holding out much hope. Well, with the excuses out of the way, let's have a bit of a last minute thought about how to play the missions:

Head Hunter

Spearhead Deployment. 5 Battle Points for killing ALL the enemy HQ, 2 for killing ALL the Elite squad leaders, 2 for killing all the Troops squad leaders and 1 for killing all the Fast Attack squad leaders.

Damn, I should have brought 4 Lords on Thunderwolves! Someone asked what happens if you don't have squad leaders and it was answered that you'd get half Battle Points for killing half of the squad. So 3 Grey Hunters are worth a Battle Point but 9 Tactical Marines aren't. Clearly, this is all about wiping out full squads so it should play pretty similar to Annihilation.

Flee the Flood

I'm not even going to pretend that I understand the deployment for this mission but points wise you get 5 for controlling a 12" deep zone from one of the short board edges, 3 for claiming a central hill and 2 for holding your own deployment zone. Oh and only HQ and Fast Attack can start on the board and Fast Attack MUST do so. Everything else must be left in Reserve.

Damn, I definitely should have brought 4 Thunderlords and some Thundercav as Fast Attack! I'm a bit worried about my Long Fangs in this mission since they're not too great at the old walking onto the board thing. It might just be me but a 12" zone and a hill sound reasonable easy to contest at least. And since your reserves have to enter play via your deployment zone, that should be easy enough to keep hold of (dear hubris, you already know the address, I'll see you later)

Race for the Loot

Spearhead Deployment. 5 Loot makers have to be returned to your deployment zone. It take 5 Troops to lift a Loot marker. 1 Point for each of your first 2, 3 for your 3rd and 5 Points for 4+

Can't really moan too much about this mission as it seems a more complicated version of this that I came up with back in May. Clearly the only thing to do here is kill the enemy Troops. I might just leave a couple of Razorbacks in Reserve to come on late and grab the stash.

Retrieve the Spy

Pitched Battle Deployment,2 Objectives. In addition, you secretly nominate an enemy Troops or Elite unit to contain your spy. You then get 3 Point for eliminating the spy's host unit, 3 for getting the spy off your table edge and 2 for each of the Objectives.

Now, if I was playing against me I'd pick the Wolf Scout unit every time. There are only 6 guys with 4+ saves and they'll probably be coming on near my deployment zone anyway. Kill them, run the spy off - game won. Clearly the best thing to do with the scouts is to Infiltrate them then. Switching it around I need to pick a unit that will be heading towards my board edge anyway and is reasonably killable. I'm not really sure what would happen if I picked a 10 man enemy Tactical Squad and then it got combat squaded though. Would I still have to kill all 10? Hmm, best to pick something easier methinks.

So, that's that. Andy, Graham and myself will be representing Team Claws and Fists and I'll be trying to liveblog through the tournament (hopefully in a bit more detail than at Open War but no promises!)