The best layed plans of mice and Jenn

So I had two blogs planned out for this week. The first one was that I was going to write up a report on this weekend's tournament at Merlyn's. The second was one that I have been planning on writing for a very long time: A comparison on the advantages and disadvantages on hard and soft rules systems. Well it's Wednesday night and I have yet to even start on either. I'm past the point now where I can remember enough details about the Merlyn's tournament to give a decent report, and I don't have nearly enough time to write the other one.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and cop out and give you a quick report on my performance at the Merlyn's tournament and some things I observed there...

First of all my list:

HQ:

Farseer: Runes of warding, Runes of witnessing, spirit stones, doom fortune guide
Eldrad
8 warlocks: 1 W/ embolden & spear, 7 W/ Destructor: 278
-Serpent: TL scatterlaser, Shuriken cannon, Spirit stones, Star engines

Elite

5 Harlies, 2 w/ kiss, 2 w/ fusion pistol, shadowseer: 148

Troops
10 Avengers: Exarch, double shuriken catapults, bladestorm
-Serpent: Bright lances, shuriken cannon, Spirit stones, Star engine

10 Guardians: Brightlance

Fast

9 Warp spiders: Exarch, add. death spinner

Heavy
2 War-walkers: 4 scatterlasers: 120

2 War-walkers: 4 scatterlasers: 120

The concept behind this list was that I was going to put out as much str 6 firepower on the field as possible while controlling the table with my seer council. The Seer council has a dread reputation at Merlyn's as most people who play there read Fritz and the other eldar player also runs one as well.

Game 1 was a hybrid capture and control/ Kill points mission. My opponent was playing a Marines list taking the Special character that gives his units stubborn. He focused on taking out my troops early and turtling up on his objective, expecting me to not be able to take it. I let him send half his army at my Gaurdians while I shot the Avengers, council, and harlies at his objective. My walkers outflanked for distraction taking his 10 man squad of terminators out of the action. He had troops inside his land raider sitting on his objective in a ruin thinking that would stave me off. Harlies popped the land raider with ease before I opened fire with the council to wipe the objective clean. Unfortunately the Avengers were caught in an assault and ended up fleeing after taking just one casualty, I was unable to get them rallied and on to the objective in time and they ended the game just 5 inches away. The game ended up being a minor victory for me because I won on kill points

Game two was against Zack and his nids. He ran a tervigon, mawloc, Trygon prime, Trygon and a Flyrant. This is the game that I designed the list for, unforunately my dice decided to even the playing field. We were playing a mission where whenever a unit died you placed an objective wherever the last model was when it died. This meant that the Tervigon was high priority cause he would be putting out objectives like it's no one's business and he will definitely have more scoring units then I. What I didn't realize was that his Tervigon broke on turn one so I really shouldn't have focused on it. I let his tyrant get an assault because of that, which was where the game went south for me. I countercharged the tyrant with the council but it took them three turns to bring it down and that was enough time for him to wrest control of the game. He had me down to just a single spider and three models of the council before the game ended, I took out all but one of his scoring units so he needed to table me for anything better than a minor victory, as it was I survived to turn 7 and kept the minor loss instead.

Game three was against Nick and his Eldar warhost featuring 2 serpent, 2 falcons, a 10 man council led by farseer and a 10 man scorpion squad led by eldrad. He had two units of guardians that he held in reserves. I deployed castled in a corner with line of sight blocking terrain covering me from half his army. Turn one he closed me in rushing the falcons to my left flank as the serpents and their deadly cargo move up directly in front of my army. This game involved a lot of maneuvering and a lot of bad rolling as I was unable to bring down either of his serpents despite opening fire on both of them from the rear with both spiders and walkers. He made a huge play mistake by Seizing the initiative with his council as he rolled them up next to the serpent mine was in, blasted my serpent to smithereens then being caught there as my council takes retribution and unloads 7 destructors on the now doomed council. This was a major turning point in the game and I honestly believe that if he hadn't left himself open like that he would have won the game. As it was I won by enough of a margin to take 3rd place in the tournament. Of course, Jason won the tournament with his foot gaurd, I regret not being able to play him because his army would be a great matchup for me.

Jason always scores higher than me at every tournament we play in and one day it is my goal to win a tournament that he participated in. He's kind of my rival like that.