NOVA tournament Report and Game 1

So I’m back from the NOVA, and I must say that it is the best tournament I have attended to date.  The atmosphere was great and I played 7 good games (one was a little contentious).  I ended up going 4-4 (1-3 the first day and 3-1 the second day) all my losses were extremely close and mostly due to mistakes on my part, and well timed plays by my opponent.

My list

2k Grey Knights

HQ

Crowe

OM Inquisitor in terminator armor w/ Psycannon and 1 servo skull.

Elites

5 Paladins (3 Halberds, Hammer, Sword, 1 Psycannon,, 1 MC Psycannon)

Troops

2 x 10 Purifiers (5 Halberds, Hammer, 4 Psycannons) in Rhino (one squad had psybolts)

2 x 5 Strikes (Psycannon, Hammer) in Razorback with Psybolts and search lights.

Heavy

3 x Dread with 2 TL auto-cannons and psybolts.

The list functioned well all tournament and the shooting power was quite devastating at times.  Most games I worked around trying to take center table and pushing my opponent back.  I also made use of the terrain to keep my opponent from being able to shoot with large portions of their army.

Game 1: Vs Space Wolves (Hulksmash)

Mission was Objectives, Quarters, Killpoints.  Deployment was Pitched Battle.

My opponents list was foot Logan wing and was sporting 24 missiles per turn.

He won the roll to go first and deployed his army across his table edge with a large Squad of 10 Wolf Guard (8 termies) and Logan in the Center of the table.  I deployed in the left corner of the board using the terrain to hide my army from view.  At this point I joked that now that I went through all the trouble to hide my army that I would probably seize….and then I did.

Turn 1:  I moved up which exposed my army to some shooting, and shot one Wolf guard squad down to 1 PA wolf guard, and did a wound or 2 to another.  On his turn he weapon destroyed and immobilized my 2 Razorbacks, which rendered them useless.

Turns 2 -4 We Traded shots but really not much damage was done (I killed a second wolf guard squad and a few of logans squad) His scouts came in and killed a couple of Paladins. 

ON Turn 5 I was moving up the left side with my Purifiers trying to kill a couple more of his units and getting set up to take objectives on turn 6 (and here was my first mistake of the tournament, I though all games were at least 6 turns, because that was the case in the NOVA primers).  His turn 5 he contests one of my 2 objectives and Moves on to a second objective and then we roll and the game ends in my loss. Really not much had been killed I think I was up maybe 2 Killpoints, and we had each killed about 600 points of the others army.  But not realizing it was the last turn cost me the chance to win.  I say chance, because there was no Guarantee that I would have been able to win with another turn, but I certainly had none when I did not grab for objectives on turn 5 ( I could have tried to contest the center objective turn 5 and I certainly would have moved more quickly toward the center if I had know I had fewer turns.