Golden Marine XII

On Saturday the 12th Golden Marine Tournament, aka GMXII, was held at the Battle Bunker St. Laurent store. Fourteen players from Deep Space showed up and the battles commenced.

Game 1 - Versus Jason (An00bis) and his Tau

I made a crucial error at the beginning. I ignored the fact of the night fighting first turn and deployed on the flank with cover in my deployment zone and no where else, and then turned first turn to my opponent so when I came out of cover, I would get smacked. And that is exactly what happened.

Jason made no errors and lit up everything to poke its head out with markerlights and then promptly reduced it to slag. My tanks when down with a whimper of protest and I was pretty much wiped out before turn 5. Ok, completely wiped out. In exchange, I killed one unit of Kroot.
Ouch.

Game 2 - Versus Adam (spooninurface) and his Space Marines

Adam was inexperienced, and the board was small and we classified the craters as smoking area terrain to add some blockage of lines of sight which in hindsight created too much cover. I wish I had changed that because the end result was me moving with impunity and his devestators and scouts being completely blocked off. Adam, if you're reading this, I owe you a rematch with a better table setup.

As it was, my army's superior mobility proved to be deciding and I knew the game was well in hand when my damaged wave serpent tank shocked a full squad of ten marines off the board. Lesson: Don't stay near the board edge unless you are fearless.

Game 3 - Versus Max (Lostknight) and his Tau

Tau again? I vowed to redeem myself.

Unfortunately, my tanks didn't make the same vow.

Losing the guardians and their wave serpent was disappointing but not unexpected. They are my suicide squad. But having the rangers assaulted by a damaged drone squad and losing the fight (they needed the Farseer to bail them out), and then the Fire Prism coming on and missing the hammerhead only to get stunned then destroyed by it in return, well, my fate was sealed.

Another loss.

Game 4 - Versus Rob (Dark Scythe) and his Dark Eldar

Being the only two Eldar players at the tournament, the organizers thought it would be cool to see us fight each other. Our armies were eerily similar. Archon/Farseer in transport with bodyguard (Incubi/Scorpions), unit in transport (Warriors/Guardians), jetbikes, heavy support tank (Ravager/Fire Prism). Instead of a second unit of guardians in wave serpent I had two vypers, and instead of a large unit of warriors on foot I had my rangers.

Very similar armies, except I had better armour, weapons, and range. Yeah, Dark Eldar need a rewrite, stat!

All those years of fighting Andrew's Kabal of Fractured Shadow, I knew exactly how to deal with the Dark Kin and ripped up his army in due course. I used my Vypers to suicide attack the Ravager early on, while his corrseponding suicide attack by his Jetbikes failed and I moved on to roll up the rest of his army.

A solid victory.

End Results:
9th Generalship
4th Presentation
3rd Sportsmanship
8th Army List
6th Overall

Pictures can be found in this thread.

Analysis:
Tau have always given me trouble, but I think part of the problem on Saturday was that I haven't played them enough lately and I made some mistakes, combined with bad luck, and it threw me some losses. The game against Rob was almost an exclamation point in highlighting how out of date the Dark Eldar are in the new rules. Mechanized Eldar have the speed and the firepower to make mincemeat out of them. And the game against Adam was an example of an old pro taking advantage of a player not that familiar with the game and a total newb to fighting Eldar.

Interesting note: The squad of scorpions never made it into close combat in four games, unheard of for me. In the games against Tau they never got close enough (although I was one bad difficult terrain roll from assaulting Max's commander) and against the Space Marines and Dark Eldar the grav tanks performed exceptionally that I didn't need to assault.

Conclusion:
The tournament was excellent, decent missions, well-organized, and lots of fun to be had. The venue was awesome, kudos to GW for hosting and providing some gift certificates that we randomly drew to award (yay me for getting one!).

One of the best Golden Marine's ever.