A new award for my wall
It seems that I am getting better at this wargaming thing.
This past Saturday I participated in a Rogue Trader tournament and I did pretty well.
In wargaming, the term "cheese" refers to something that is worth more than the points it is assigned. Ultramarines don't have a lot of cheese. They are the baseline that everyone else is referenced to. A lot of other Space Marine chapters are a lot more powerful than the Ultramarines, but they have drawbacks to balance out the advantages. Sometimes it works.
Anyway, I brought Chief Librarian Tigurius, a rather powerful psycher. He is the only thing that can be considered "cheese" for the Ultramarines. Tigurius can select two psychic powers out of the available powers before the game begins. Other psychers have to buy them when you make the list. He also doubles the range of the power. My favorite power for him is "Fear of the Darkness" which forces all enemy units on foot within 24" of him to take a leadership check at -2 or fall back. Space Marines usually have a Leadership of 8-10. When you subtract 2 (6-8) on 2 six sided dice, it becomes easy to make units fall back.
My first game was against a new player who plays Tyranids. Think Alien. Despite the fearless nature of these creatures, I managed to get a Crushing Victory, which is second only to Victorious Slaughter.
My second game was against Chaos Space Marines, which are SM's that went over to the Dark Side. Despite some spectacularly bad dice rolls, I managed to eke out a tie. These guys are also fearless, so I didn't get to play my cheese.
The third game was against a fellow Ultramarines player. We called it "paintball" because it would be impossible for the same chapter to turn its weapons on each other. This time, I was able to use FotD. I used it in the first and second turns, each time scaring a major unit right off the table. In the middle of turn two, my opponent shook my hand and gave up. He said there was no way he could overcome the 700 point deficit out of a 2000 point force that he was in by losing those two units. I effectively killed a third of his army without losing a single model. It was a most unsatisfying win, despite it being a Crushing Victory.
After all of the points were tallied, I ended up in second place and won Best General. It's one step below Overall Champion, and now that trophy is in reach. I feel that I have a good chance to take the OC in a tournament soon.
This now makes 4 Best Sportsman and a Best General for RTT's, and an Overall Champion for SpecialistCon I. The trophies are starting to pile up. Good.