Livonia Michigan, RIW 40K Team Event Recap ... Best Painted

Warhammer 40,000 – Last weekend I participated in a really fun raffle event for Warhammer 40K. This is the first tournament I've played in for Warhammer 40k in quite a long time. Going into it I knew this was supposed to be a super fun casual event. The requirements were to build a battleforged 750 point list. The other limits were it had to be from a single source and Forge World was not allowed.

Looking at this I built a few lists that seemed pretty strong, Centurions in Drop Pods with Grav Guns, a Skyhammer formation, or the Armored core, even the three Landraider formation seemed viable. However because there was a painting competition I opted to use only fully painted models. A CAD detachment of Pedro Kantor, two 10-man Tactical Squads and a unit of Sternguard Veterans all mounted in Rhinos completed my force. I don't think it was the strongest choice for the format but I like how they look on the tabletop and under the right circumstance they're pretty solid.

The event had over 22 players so it was a pretty full house taking up seven or eight tables. The terrain was pretty nice and varied. Every table had some cool features and didn't have anything to crazy. Pairings for the first round were random and then for each round after the first the highest scoring players were teamed with the lowest scoring players. This was a cool idea in theory as it should put newer players with more seasoned players and help them to get better at the game. Prizes were awarded in the form of tickets for winning the battle, bounties (Like kill a psyker, kill the unactive warlord etc ... first player to do one of the bounties won tickets)

Round One: I was paired with a Daemon player going against Imperial Guard (real squats!) and Raven Wing Dark Angels. The mission was straight up Purge the Alien with a bounty on Psykers, deployment was Dawn of War. My teammate for the round had a Portal that brought back a unit of D4 daemons a turn which was placed near a table edge that the Master of the Ravenwing outflanked near and proceeded to kill off each unit that re-spawned. Needless to say we lost horribly. I lost my rhinos early and had to walk across the table suffering the slings and arrows of battle cannons and plasma talons. Overall a 0-18 loss. Ouch!

Round Two: This is a five objective game 3VP for each objective you hold at the end of the game, with short edge deployment. Surprise! I was paired with the Imperial Guard player that just trounced me in the first round. WE faced off against a Sisters of Battle force which was paired with the ringer list of 5 Vindicare Assassins. (Yes these are the Power Ranger Themed ones I recently painted). The assassins and sisters took out my rhinos early. My teammate was able to crack the Immolator with his blast templates and my now walking marines took out the small squads with bolter fire. Pedro and the Sternguard died to Vindicare and Melta fire in the third turn. The sisters player then had to drop for a prior appointment so we tallied up the points and called it. 8-2 win.

Round Three: A fluke of math paired me with the same Guard Player, who was very nice. This game the objective was to claim this area in the middle of the board. At the start of each turn you control it uncontested is worth 3VP and if you both have units in it 1VP. This is a mess of a game. The plan was to cover the area with tanks so nobody else could get in it. This fell apart when I got my rhino stuck in the river. My other big flub was this game was being positive you disembark 6" when getting out of a wrecked vehicle. I was so sure of this I had to look it up and upon reading it again couldn't find a reference to 3" disembarking anywhere on the page where emergency disembarking was discussed. The egg on my face came when my opponent flipped the page and found it under the effects for wrecked results. (to be fair my partner and other opponent though the same thing as I did) This game was tough and we played it out to the end of the round for a 3-4 loss.

At the end of the event each player put their "best pained" single model up for display so a "local judge" could critique them. During the event the organizer had a group of secret judges that came around and looked at each army an scored them. I won best painted army over all which netted me a bunch of raffle tickets. The best painted individual model was a cool conversion of a scout bike leader. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to snap a photo of this model.

With the prize draw they gave away a ton of product and several gift cards to the store. I walked away with the Conquest collectible card game which I haven't had a chance to open yet. 

Next up on my personal painting table are some drop pods so I have better transports for the next event.