Freebootaz Open - Vulkan's Retrospective pt 1

If you follow the blog you'll no doubt have noticed our fearless leader blogging his experiences at the Freebootaz Open last week. Well, Graham and I were both present with him on Saturday and I dutifully stepped up to partner him in the Doubles on Sunday. But these are my memories of the Singles on Saturday.

Firstly the list, it seems that special characters are being comp'd out of a lot of tournaments at the moment so as this was not the case here I took the opportunity to bring my freshly painted counts-as-Vulkan. Another unusual thing about this tourney was that I didn't need to submit a list in advance, now this meant that I was tweaking and re-tweaking the list right up to the death! Here's what I settled on the night before:

HQ
Vulkan He'Stan

ELITE
Sternguard
(5) 2x Combi-Melta; Razorback w. TL Lascannons
Assault Terminator Squad
(5) Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield; Land Raider Redeemer, Multi Melta, Extra Armour
Dreadnought
2x TL Autocannon

TROOP
Tactical Squad
(10) Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Sgt w. Combi-Melta; Rhino
Tactical Squad
(10) Flamer, Multi Melta, Sgt w. Power Weapon; Rhino
Scouts
(5) Combat Blades, Sgt w. Meltabombs

FAST
Land Speeder
Multi Melta, Heavy Flamer
Land Speeder
Multi Melta, Heavy Flamer

HEAVY SUPPORT
Thunderfire Cannon

A very minor tweak then to halve down the Sternies to get a Rifleman Dread in the list and I compensated for the loss of the two Lascannons with a TL Lascannon Razorback.

I'm going to sum up the tournament from a number of perspectives in this post and then go into a bit more detail in the next couple of posts. In terms of my list, the feeling I came away with was that I really should have play-tested it first but our club nights have been taken up with the 750pt tourney and I've had little time elsewhere to practice.

I keep on hearing about "that guy" at tournaments, once again I didn't bump into him, all of my opponents were fantastic to play against. In my first game I was up against the eventual tournament winner and I've got to say that he was one f the nicest guys I've ever played against (his list was a total nightmare) but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Games two and three were against two extremely nice guys with great looking armies and Game 4 was against a guy in the same mould as the guy from Game 1; fantastic fun to play against but he had a ruthless streak which lead to a very tough game and not one I was going to do well in!

I'll end on a contentious note, the missions. There were four custom missions:

1) Head Hunter: Spearhead Deployment: 5BPs for wiping out ALL of the enemy HQ Squad Leaders, 2BPs for wiping out ALL of the enemy's Elite Squad Leaders, 2BPs for wiping out ALL of the enemy's Troop Squad Leaders and 1BP for wiping out ALL of the enemy's Fast Attack Squad Leaders.

2) Flee the Flood: One short table edge has a 12" deep zone designated as the mouth of the pass. Armies deploy in 12"x24" zones at the opposite end of the table along the long table edge. 5BPs for holding the mouth of the pass, 3BPs for holding a central hill and 2BPs for holding your own Deployment Zone

3) Race for the Loot: Spearhead Deployment: 5 loot counters are pre-deployed on the table, it takes 5 Troops to move the counters and they take up 5 spaces in a transport. Loot counters need to be moved back to your own deployment zone to score. 1BP for each of your first 2 counters, 3BPs for the third counter and 5 BPs for recovering 4+ counters

4) Retrieve the Spy: Pitched Battle: before the battle secretly select a Elite or Troop unit in your opponent's list to contain "the Spy", there are two objectives on the board. 3BPs for killing the host unit, 3BPs for getting your spy off your board edge, 2BPs for each objective held at the end of the game.

I'm not going to go into this in great detail but the missions did not seem to have been particularly well thought out. They looked fun and a couple of them were but depending on the army you were playing or playing against two or even three were not very well balanced. Mission 4 was probably the only one which was pretty well balanced, Missions 1 and 2 were pretty horrible in terms of favouring certain armies.

Anyway excuses done with so on with the reports, I'll be posting the first two tomorrow afternoon and the following two some time after, depending on time!