2nd tournament game

Ben Blythe and I were the only ones to score max points in the first round do we squared off in round two in a tactically interesting but mostly uneventful game.  His army had a couple of melta vet squads in chimeras with a lord commissar, a squadron of devil dog melta tanks, and even some outflanking scout sentinels.  This battle had four objectives, one in each quarter, and used spearhead-like deployment.  The two objectives NOT in deployment zones were worth double.  Knowing we were at the top of the heap battle points wise made both of us play super cagey, because game two at a thousand point twelve person 40k tournament is a big gorram deal.  Niether of us wanted to rush into the other's melta guns so we took some pot shots at each other for the first couple turns until his sentinels showed up.  Ben wisely kept them out of range of Pardak's response bubble (Inquisitor Coteaz grants him and his squad an out of sequence shooting attack at anything that arrives from reserve within a foot of him.)  The sentinels shot some hunter killer missiles and a krak missile at the side of the slayers chimera and blue off the turret.  After confirming they were armor ten scout sentinels I gleefully charged my slayers into them, and those two squads proceed to ineffectively battle each other until the end of the game with no real winner.

Best thing that happened this game was the next turn when the slayers' chimera got all squirrely and tried to ram one of  Ben's vet squads, but the strength seven hit it managed to get was insufficient.  Nothing much interesting happened besides me spreading out to grab some objectives and one of Ben's squads failing a leadership test from 25% shooting casualties and fleeing off the board...and consequently the objective that would have made the game a tie.  In the end it was a minor victory for me, it would have been a major but one of my chimera's immobilized itself trying to get to an objective that I'd just vacated to shoot Ben's squad off the board.

It was a fun tactical game, if not overly exciting.  This marked the first game Ben and I have played of a miniature war game in like eight years, and it was pleasant.  Really the only reason I think this game went my way instead of Ben's was because he fielded the devil dogs in a squadron instead of as singletons.  It let me just mass my firepower on one unit and let the hits carry over.  In fact of the six vehicles of his I killed during the game I believe three or four of them were due to immobilization kills.  I realize he had six fast attack vehicles so some squadroning was needed, but as it always has, squadroning seems like too big of a disadvantage to me.