Welcome back to part two of this Kill Team tournament report! If you missed the first article, where I talk about preparing for the event and my first three games on Saturday, you can find it right here!

After a strong start going 2-1, my last game on Saturday promises to be a real doozy. I’ll likely get paired into a player who’s pretty good, and when BCP finally pops up with the notifications it looks like I’ll be going into Hierotek Circle. I steel myself and hope I can end Saturday on a high note.

Game Four vs. Ivan’s Hierotek Circle

I’m finally off of Volkus and onto a Gallowdark board, and we are playing Loot.

Now, I have played Hierotek before, but it was a learning game for my friend, David. I can’t really count that as a rep in good faith, but it’s half a rep for sure. I’m sure at no point will this bite me in the ass.

I decide pretty early on in deployment that this is going to be a game that I win or lose depending on how well I score on Crit op, and decide to make that my big priority this game. If I can do alright on my other two scoring categories, and lock Ivan out on the Crit op, I think that’s my best shot. I also decide to take Champion again. Good ol’ Champion, nothing beats that.

Turning point one, I start by moving my Heavy bolter into the large room with the central objective behind some barricades to prepare to have him on guard, and have the Fearmonger poison my home objective. Ivan plays very cagey, setting up Deathmarks near the hatchways on each flank. I decide to get aggressive with my meltagun gunner and run him up near the central hatchway, without opening the door. I figure hey, if I lose initiative, he just scampers off to safety with Return to Darkness. What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, then Ivan activates his Despotek, goes on engage, and opens the door in his drop zone and then passes it back to me. I have no idea how, but I know that I’ve made a horrible mistake and my gunner is absolutely fucked. 

It turns out, yeah, my gunner is absolutely fucked, since Ivan teleports the Despotek to the other door, commands him to open it, and promptly applies magnified shooting directly to the gunners face and placing down his first marker for Confirm Kill. It’s a brutal lesson in the teleport shenanigans Hierotek can pull off, but at least I learn about it early enough in the game to do something about it.

Turning point two, I select my Fearmonger to be my Champion and try to score with an aggressive Terrorchem Vial play against his Deathmark near the door. Sadly, it doesn’t kill the Deathmark, so I don’t score champion, but it does bring the Deathmark down to 1hp, so Ivan’s going to be forced to waste an activation on it just for the Deathmark to immediately biff it to poison. The Heavy Bolter runs up, loots, and goes on guard the following turning point to lock down the big room. I run my Ventrilokar and Visionary behind the heavy bolter, and my Skinthief over to support my Fearmonger. I leave the central room alone, correctly deciding that only pain awaits me in there as Ivan stages for the next turning point.

In turning point three, Ivan is able to take out my Heavy Gunner and Skinthief with nasty Hierotek shooting, but I manage to score 2 on Champion with the Fearmonger and score another two for Loot. Killing my operatives also forces Ivan out of position, and the Confirm Kill markers left behind aren’t scorable for him this turning point. I see a big play at the end of turning point three for my Visionary to charge his exposed Immortal, fight him and then charge into a nearby Deathmark with We Have Come for You for two more Champion points, as long as I win initiative. Fortune favors me, and I’m going first on turning point four.

I charge the Immortal, and I just absolutely biff it, only managing a single crit hit and everything else misses. In return, the Immortal brings me down to three wounds. I decide not to fight, in order to spare my life a little longer, but this is bad. Ivan activates his Immortal, who’s also garbage at fighting, and he only scores one crit out of all his rolls. Normally, this would still mean I’m toast, but thanks to my ploy Dirty Fighter I kick the Immortal in his robo-balls and parry out the crit. In an absolutely bizarre turn of events, the Visionary and the Immortal are still alive, each unable to kill the other, and firmly stuck in combat. This works out for me, as it means Ivan can’t finish off the Visionary and I’m able to use the Fearmonger to take out his Despotek threatening the objective in my territory. I score two more on loot, and thanks to Ivan’s bad luck that bailed me out of my own bad luck, I narrowly take the win.

Result: Victory, 12-10  

What an awesome game to end the first day of the event with. A narrow victory in a tough matchup that pushed my skills, and even in defeat Ivan tells me it’s the best game he’s played so far. As we chat about the game, Ivan notes that he’s pretty sure I’ve secured a spot in the top eight with this win. I check and sure enough, there I am at number seven. I’m now in the running for gold. 

Between top eight and getting into showcase, I honestly don’t think this day could’ve gone much better for me. When I find my name in the showcase area, scrawled on an index card, I have to suppress a big idiot grin. I worked hard to get these guys painted, I repeatedly worked long into the night and felt every minute of lost sleep the next day only to do it all over again. It’s a helluva reward to see someone look at my Nemesis Claw and take pictures with their phone because they think they look slick.

I catch up with Rob, and we heckle the folks still wrapping up their games with the high art of butt jokes while simultaneously trying to figure out where the hell we’re going to go eat. Rob says that we’re all going to the same place we went last year on Saturday, which I remember was pretty good. Folks wrap their games up, Rob and MasterSlowPoke put together a sickass combo display board, and we head on over to the restaurant.

As it turns out, the mystery restaurant is the Tipsy Oak. Again. Which, as it also turns out, also is 100% not the place we went last year. But, hey, what the hell. The food is (again) tasty, the beer is (again) good, and the company is (again) even better. So I can’t complain. After a lovely dinner, I swing back by the venue to pick up my team from showcase and head to bed 

Sunday

Another day, another Texas shaped waffle for good luck. I’m going to need it too, I’m in the top eight today and if I thought yesterday was going to have no easy games, than today certainly wont.

I arrive with maybe twenty minutes to spare before pairings, which is usually prime time to chat with friends. But Rob and Andrew, along with most of the other local folks I know, have all already bailed. So, I instead start chatting with Ben and Ivan, going over the highlights from our games. I also start chatting with Aiden, who I recognize as the Sanctifiers player who won the tournament I attended earlier this month and is also in top eight. We start talking about the team and the matchup, and how he absolutely clobbered the poor Nemesis Claw player in the game I watched. Aiden’s been having good success into Nemesis again today, even when one managed to briefly put his Confessor in danger. I ask Aiden if he thinks its smarter for for Nemesis Claw to play cagey into Sanctifiers, or to play aggressively. Before Aiden can answer, Ben cuts him off.

“Well, looks like you’re about to find out, because pairings are up!”

Oh. Oh no,

Game Five vs. Aiden’s Sanctifiers

The moment I asked whether to play aggressive or cagey, my heart knew the answer. If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging.

The mission is Intel, and we are playing on Volkus without a central Stronghold. I decide my plan is to get in his face on his home objective with most my team and try to overwhelm him with a wall of power armor, while my Fearmonger and Heavy Gunner hold down my home. With this in mind, I take Storm Objectives. I should have no problem scoring this, as long as I can keep him tied up.

At the start of the game, it looks like this plan is going well for me. I push forward hard with my Visionary and my Screecher, and use a smoke grenade to keep my exposed Visionary safe. Again, If I don’t win initiative, I withdraw one operative with Return to Darkness and then try to use Vox Scream to keep the other in play. Aiden hits the Screecher with a Sanctification Orb to set up some nasty seek shooting, but it also gives me an operative in charge range.

I win the roll off, which is huge for me, and open by having the Screecher charge his Cherub, pick it up, and then bounce off with Proclivity for Murder to engage a Preacher and a Conflagrator. He uses Declamation to shut down my second fight, but the Screecher is in an excellent spot. While Aiden can use Lead the Procession to attempt multiple fallbacks, I’ve got Chain Snares to potentially keep me locked in engagement and safe from shooting. Plus, I gave the Screecher my grisly trophy, so fighting him will be extra annoying.

Meanwhile, I Vox Scream his meltagun missionary to keep my own Visionary alive to take the point in his territory and score Storm. I can’t quite retaliate effectively against his Missionary, but I do take the objective and use a smoke grenade to make shooting me very annoying, especially since I can use a psychic brain point on foreboding and tank extra damage.

Aiden decides to make a mildly risky play by sending in his Persecutor to deal damage to my Screecher so the Preacher can clean him up. The odds are pretty good that Aiden can deal good damage here, but if Aiden whiffs then he has no access to rerolls to potentially try and salvage the combat. Unfortunately for me, he rolls two hits and a crit, and while I kill his Persecutor with little issue I also take 11 damage for my trouble. The Preacher activates next, and picks up the Screecher. 

Then Aiden sends some dorks with flamers to deal chip damage to my Visionary, and even with smoke I roll so badly on my saves that I’m forced to use my foreboding ability to negate a normal flamer to even remotely think about surviving a meltagun shot. Which, of course, I don’t, and the Missionary scores Aiden Storm Objectives for his trouble. 

From there, things only get worse. The first disaster is my own fault, I use the Ventrilokar to reduce the AP of his Missionary to try and keep the other bozos on my team safe, but I make a mistake in my positioning and my Ventrilokar gets vaporized in holy light. What isn’t my fault though is that I cannot make a goddamn save to, well, save my life. It turns out hand flamers hit like a freight train if you just can’t roll a 3+. I lose the initiative, which I badly needed to try and keep up the pressure after a bloody turning point two, and my team is just promptly picked apart. I’m tabled before the end of the third turning point, with only two kill grade and two tac op points to show for it.

Result: Loss, 4-21

Its a pretty steep loss, but I’m honestly unsure if I played it incorrectly. Looking back, I actually think I just should’ve been more aggressive if that was going to be my plan. I initially was going to use the Skinthief and Ventrilokar as a second wave after the Screecher and Visionary, but if my plan was to just overwhelm Aiden quickly then I should’ve just immediately gone for the turn one full send. Use the smokes to make shooting me really annoying unless he gets right up on me, and then just try to tear into him, hoping that I can pick enough of his operatives up to cripple him before he cripples me. If I’d done so in this game, I could’ve capitalized on that brief moment in turning point 2 where I had Aiden on the backfoot. Instead, He had a chance to regain his momentum and kick my ass.

 Also, making saves would help.

Aiden’s a great opponent though, and we make some more jokes before parting ways for lunch. I partake in the finest of dining, a concession stand hot dog, before prepping for round six.

Game Six vs. Charle’s Legionary

I’m back on Gallowdark, and we’re playing Secure Objective.

I’ve read through Legionary a few times, I’m fairly familiar with what they do and how they operate. The problem though is that I’ve never actually played against Legionary, so I only knew the theory of how they worked, and not the practical application. It’s a mistake I don’t really realize until I’ve already stepped directly on the rake in this game.

My initial plan is pretty straightforward: fight him on the middle objective and the objective in the big open room, while leaving the objective in his territory alone, and then setting up operatives to make big plays with Champion. On turning point one, I feel like I set up fairly well, but I’m already thrown off my groove when the second turning point comes around and Charles has left me with no easy kills. I select my Champ to be my Heavy Gunner, who moves up with a guard order hoping to pick up something, but instead has some bad dice and gets picked up by a missile launcher. Shit. 

Meanwhile, in the central room, things are actually going worse. We both set up meltaguns on guard to try and punish the first person to walk into the objective, and I toss a smoke grenade into the room with my Visionary so my Screecher can dart in and perform a safe secure. Importantly, I’ve also skipped an activation with my Visionary to give me an activation advantage against Charles. As it turns out, this literally blows up in my face when Charles realizes I’ve given him an extraordinarily tasty counteract shot with his fireball on three targets. While my Screecher is fine, I still cannot roll saves and my gunner is brought down to four wounds left and my Visionary down to six. This is a disaster.

From here, my groove is in shambles. I tap the point with my Ventrilokar, instead of playing safe and tossing a smoke, which means I eat another missile to the face and lose the operative. I kill his Anointed with my Screecher, which is good, but he reduces my APL with the Slaanesh ploy and walks his Chosen into engagement. I try to kill the Chosen with the Skinthief, and then get owned instead. The Screecher tries to finish the job, but gets picked up instead. The Visionary finally ends the Chosen’s reign of terror with a plasma pistol shot, but not before I eat four damage from a bad hot roll. Turning point four, I’m down to two operatives, both injured and scared shitless.

In the end, I do manage to at least score Champion again when my gunner gets a shot into his Shrivetalon, but it’s way too little, way too late and I’m tabled again for good measure. Ouch.

Result: Loss, 11-19

It looks like more of a game on paper than the Sanctifiers game, but this feels much less like one. I don’t ever think I had Charles on the backfoot here, and I’m annoyed with myself that I played such a sloppy game. I should’ve respected his shooting more, positioned smarter, and played the long game instead of just falling apart like a house of sticks. 

But it does little to hurt my mood, I’ve had a great weekend and I’m in good spirits. All six of my opponents so far have been great dudes that I would be happy to see again at an event, and I would eagerly recommend playing against any of them if you have the chance.

That just leaves my round seven opponent. What will my final matchup be?

Game Seven vs. The Federal Government’s Interstate Highway 45

Well, as it turns out, due to one of the top eight players dropping early, I’ve got a bye round for my last match. To be honest, I’m relieved to see this. I’ve got a long drive home, and leaving now means I get to actually do the whole thing in the daylight. Best of all, the bye counts as a win, and we take that W any day of the week.

Result: Victory, 15-0

Post-Event Thoughts

Thanks to the bye, which does count, shut up, it absolutely counts, I’ve got a positive record for the weekend, ending my run at Dallas 4-3. Considering I doubled the number of wins I expected to get, this record rocks. Even if I remove the bye, I’m 3-3, and my wins were hard fought. Plus, I can’t really beat myself up over my Sunday losses, knowing I was in the top eight. I knew I was going to be playing the best that the event had to offer in that bracket, and learned great lessons to boot.

I’ve gone to a few of these Warhammer Opens for the larger game systems GW has, and it’s nice to see that the quality of those events still applies to Kill Team. The fact there was a drop in the top eight is a little weird, but it’s a minor complaint compared to the excellent venue, helpful event staff, and overall quality of the event. I’m happy to report that the same thing that I tell people about for 40k and the Warhammer Open applies to Kill Team: if you can only make it out to one big Warhammer event, you can’t go wrong with a Warhammer Open.

After a drive home that’s even longer and annoying than the drive up, I make it home safe and sound to help put my infant son to bed. One day, when he’s older, I’ll tell him all about my triumphs from this weekend. For now, though, it’s time to take a well-earned nap and dream a happy dream of Night Lords.   

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