The More You Know - Nova Edition

This is going to be an article to cover the glaring mistakes I made in my games at the Nova that led to my 9-5 record this year over the Nova weekend. I had a great weekend and almost all of my games were great against fun opponents. I’m going to preface the following with the fact that it was my mistakes that cost me all of my losses and had nothing to do with dice. Every situation I had where my dice weren’t so hot could have been mitigated if I hadn’t oopsied before the dice needed to be rolled.

I’ll include a brief rundown of the game I lost as well as the minor and not so minor mistakes I made during the games. Here we go:

Game 2 of the Invitational:

Opponent: Spags (Aaron) from http://theback40k.blogspot.com/

My Opponents list can be found here: http://www.baldandscreaming.com/army-lists/nova-open-2011-invitational-tournament-renaissance-man-alex-aleong-space-wolves/

Well I was feeling good because my missile launcher heavy army had just manage to take down a solid 3 LR list and we’re going into a KP based game and my list run just 8 KP’s (Assuming I get the LW’s killed J). Aaron was an awesome opponent and I wish I had more dudes locally like him to play with. Aside from a judge jumping in sometimes when it wasn’t needed with incorrect rulings we had a great game J. It wound up being a close game up until the last couple turns where it started to turn into a route.4 Mistakes cost me the game:

1)     Didn’t read Aaron’s army list in enough detail and managed to not see one of his long fang units behind a rhino.

2)     Directly related to the above since I didn’t remember his list or see the models I place a single Terminator where his plasma cannons could draw a bead on Logans unit after he moved a few rhinos. This lead to the death of 4ish of my Terminators.

3)     Forgot when I knew he was going to be charging in his turn to declare Logans preferred enemy at the top of my opponents turn.  

4)     Finally, since Aaron had a TWC bomb I should have kept my Lone Wolves closer to my Terminator unit for support since he was pretty much guaranteed the charge.

These 4 things solely cost me the game. All relatively minor in and of themselves. All of them mistakes, even combined, that I could probably still recover from against most players. But this was the Invitational and small mistakes kill you.

Game 3 of the Invitational:

Opponent: Targetawg (Andrew) from Dakkadakka

His list included Karazmov(however you spell it), Coteaz, 5x5 Stormbolter Accolytes in Psybacks, 2 Ven. Psyfle Dreads, 3 Regular Psyfle Dreads, and a DCA/Crusader unit that Coteaz & Kara joined.

This was probably my favorite game of the weekend. Andrew and I had already both lost and were out of the 1k running for the Tourney Champ and I was 99% sure I was already out on the Ren. Man (though Andrew wasn’t) so we sat down to have a great game. This was a spearhead mission and like all the boards there was a large LoS blocking piece in the middle. This was was a full 12”x12” and due to the deployment Andrew was able to hide his entire army out of initial sight. Basically we spent the game circling the middle with him hammering any unit that showed its head. That’s ok, I got him during the Open J. The mistake that cost me the game:

1)     Fire Priority. I was so afraid of his angry deathstar that I shot Logans unit at them twice instead of picking off an extra dread two turns in a row. This allowed his to still have the shots once my dice headed south on saves on Logans unit. If I’d picked them off like I should have it’s likely it would still have been a win for me.

Game 4 of the Invitational:

Opponent: Stelek (Andrew) from http://yesthetruthhurts.com/

My opponents list can be found here: http://yesthetruthhurts.com/2011/09/whats-wrong-with-competitive-40k/

This was a fine game, pillow fighting TWC s. LW’s and all. And it really came down to a single oopsie on my part. Basically I was in position to run through his scoring units when:

1)     I failed 2 leadership checks in a row from shooting casualties (re-roll thanks to Logan) and failed to properly space the backstop unit behind the fleeing models. I was 9” from the table edge and rolled a 10. Had I properly spaced my troop unit so that the Termies would have to go around they would have rallied the next turn.

Game 6 of the Open:

Opponent: Dashofpepper (Justin) my blogmate

You guys should know his list by now J. This was a solid and intense game. In the end I had 4 models left (2 Lone Wolves and a single member of 2 different squads) and he had 10 of his units left. My inability to count due to exhaustion cost me the game. Outside of that I had three oopsies that affected the outcome of the game:

1)     I detached Logan from the Terminators before I charged into the middle scrum. This left Logan exposed as a target. If I hadn’t done this then my opponent probably would have killed off a Lonewolf since it would have been one of the only open shots he had.

2)     Deployment. I didn’t take enough advantage of my mobile missile launchers which caused me to be partially out of alignment for my first/second turn.

3)     Target priority again. Regardless of the whiffing I should have been killing the extra troop squad with one of my terminators instead of swinging at the damaged venom that I could have (and did) taken care of later.

Game 8 of the Open:

My opponent: The dude from the 11^th Company (I think) Podcast/Blog

His Army: 5 Dread GK Henchmen Spam w/Psybacks

This was a fun game. But I was exhausted, figured I was out of it, and just deployed for giggles. This, as well a multitude of other silly choices cost me the game. I can’t go into enough detail about my oopsies because I was simply too tired to pay attention during our game to what I was doing so I can’t even replay it in my mind right now. It was still a great game and my opponent was a damn solid player.

Well those were my mistakes I made that cost me games. It’s an interesting list and what it tells me is I have gotten a little out of shape since fleeing Cali. I just don’t play as much as I probably needed to before this event. That and I should probably start playing a list at minimum a month out to get a feel for it. Overall though I was impressed with how I did. I finished 17^th overall competitive (which will be changed to at least 16^th since they are going to rank by bracket in the final breakdown) and finished 16^th overall ren man which I was more proud of. All in all it was a great weekend and good time. Can’t wait for Adepticon to see most of those dudes again J