Games Corps Tournament 4-9-2011

As the grots keep thinking if they have to charge and capture the Leman russ in the Looterz web comic, the Invulnerable Blog ventured to Games Corps in Halandri for yet another tournament report, the first one for the new season, included in this one - as for the rest of the tournaments for now on - with your request too from the Poll that we have in the previous months are some interviews - what the players have to say about their matches and even more some commentary on the matches from the organizer: John Parks Papadopoulos and the Invulnerable reporter.

First lets see who were the players in the tournament, eleven of them, two players with Grey knights and two players with Dark Eldar, no one brought Eldar or Imperial Guard Tyranids or Space Wolves.

From left:

Arion: A veteran player with experience from playing in tournaments abroad, came up first in the last tournament in Games Corps with his Grey knights, he brought Grey knights too in this tournament, and is obviously one of the main contesters for first place.


Gerasimos Georgopoulos: Brought his Space marines in the tournament, led by Vulkan.


Panayiotis Stathis: Came with his usual Dark Eldar force, Stathis usually finish in the first, second or third place in every tournament he participates so he is obviously also one of the strong players.


Christos Spirou: Finished 2nd in the last Games Corps tournament, he uses the orks and a very strong hard hitting-Nobz-filled-battlewagon force. since the tournament is 2000 points and not his usual 1750 points army Christos added some bikers.

Alexis Kostik: (i hope i get his name correctly) shows up for the first time in a tournament covered by the Invulnerable, Alex brought a fast hard hitting biker force led by Korsaro Khan and supported by a land raider reedemer filled with terminators.
Alexis made a complete battle report for this tournament in the 122nd Cadian blog, you can find it here: http://cadia122.blogspot.com/2011/09/game-corps-2000-point-tournament-report.html?spref=fb

Argiris Paltzoglou: Makes his debut as a player in a tournament with an army of his own - the Tau - he is more than willing to start fighting for the greater good.

Kostas Papaxeimonas: Suprised me since i was waiting from him to field his usual Dark Eldar he used the Black templar space marines.

Leonidas Frakgos - the Moskitokiller: He and his Dark Eldar return in the Greek Warhammer tournaments after his expirience in the ETC in switzerland, the newly accumulated expirience from the ETC is obviously an asset.

Lambros DIY182: Wakes up another Necron force to fight for him in this tournament while he waits for the much anticipated new Necrons codex.

Stefanos - the Lakaidemon: Brought, what else? his trusty sons of Baal - the Blood Angels. I don't know if he took that face when he discovered that apart from his opponents he had to deal with the ever annoying camera and its flash.

Yiannis Dimitropoulos: Brought a quite changed Grey knights list, contrary to the lately usual choice of 3 dreadnoughts filled with S8 twin linked autocannons Yiannis choosed to try something different and visited the zoo in Titan and bought a lot of Terminator-eyed imperial monkeys filled with guns.

As soon as all the players were in the shop John made the first matchups and the players started to put their models in the tables and discuss the details of the game, i found the time to comment the match ups with John and see if we could predict the results of round one.

Invulnerable Reporter: About the first game, Gerasimos Space Marines and Kostas Black Templars?.

John Parks: Look, the Black Templars can be the best space marines if someone know how to use them correctly, because after the FAQ they have the new equipment and some advantages from their codex that makes them stronger than vanilla space marines - for example: prefered enemy to everyone, two cyclone missile launcher with tank hunter ability in a 5 man terminator squad. Advantages like this can make the all the difference. 

IR: Panayiotis Stathis and Alexis Kostik?

JP: Alex has a problem, all of Stathis weapons that fire up close are poisoned so his T5 bikes wont save him, from another view then, Alex's army is very resilient who can also play very well in close combat with Stathis army, also Stathis dosent have any psychic defence so the Null zone will help Alex to reroll all the invulnerable saves and so win over the dark Eldar.

IR: Stefanos Blood Angels versus Argiris Tau?

JP: The Tau have generaly a big problem.

IR: My comment is that Stefanos has the upper hand in this game because of his expirience.

JP: Not only that, put down his expirience, and the also old Tau codex that lead them to not hold on the battlefield... there is little hope for Argiris on this round. 

IR: Christos Spirou and his Orks against Yiannis Dimitropoulos with Grey Knights, i guess this is the toughest game of the first round. 

JP: Yes, I think thought that the orks will have a problem since Spirou rely on his Nobz (2 wounds) to do the work, and when all of the opponent's army is armed with force weapons then there is the possibility that the game wont go too good for him.

IR: So we won't predict a winner for this match.

JP: Ill' just say that Yiannis has the advantage.

IR: I also say that Yiannis has the advantage, we will see, fifth game for the round is Lampros DIY182 and his Necrons against Arions Grey Knights, i think that the Grey knights will take the match.

JP: Yes because the Grey Knights have the codex advantage (theirs is very new, the necrons very old) but this dosent mean that Lampros wont make the game difficult for Arion, the Necrons remain resilient, he has two Monoliths and the Deciever who will ignore all the invulnerable saves of the Paladins and take their two wounds with single hits since he will cause them instant death. 

So lets see what happened on round one.

On the first battle, Gerasimos space marines (left) face Papaxeimonas Black templars (right) the vehicles played chicken on each other, who had the most multi meltas won the match. the attack bike had one more.
 

In the end we need some help to find any units from the Black Templars, oh there it is, this red vindicator is actually from the Black templars.

A total victory for Gerasimos who holds his head, "what have i done! i have killed (exterminated) my brother space marines!" he actually mentioned that he eliminated quickly the opponent land raider and this was the most important thing in his victory, he actually said that he eated it, lets hope that he can digest it quickly enought for the next battle.

In the game between Stathis Dark Eldar and Alex Space Bikes... errr Space Marines the bikers are drawn like metal to magnet to their Dark Eldar targets in the center of the battlefield.

Stathis also commented on the Invulnerable: The game was played on the center of the battlefield, it was a hard game and i won just because i played second, i won by just 44 victory points! my opponent beated me on the assault and i got him on shooting, it was also one of my best games.

A quite... brave Predator tank faces off with its laser cannons and autocannon the Tau Hammerhead, in this game Stefanos Blood Angels won over the Tau but i bet the driver in this predator had smelly pants after his encounter with the Hammerhead, Stefanos commented in the game that he hates Railguns (and why shouldnt he? - he dosent have any on his Blood Angels) and Argiris hates the fact that most of his gunners have BS3.

There is a name for that, its Fortress Necron - it happens when you got the Grey Knights coming straight at you. 

Quite over... everything the dreadnight dwarfs the Necron immortals and their lord. the Grey knights won in the match against their Necron opponents.

Imagine the weapon entering a self destruct sequence and the orks trying to figure out what cable to cut to stop it - the blue one! no! the black one! the blue one! no the...

When you cant flat the grey knights under your gigantic roller (becaus of the building ahead) you need to stomp them with it!, even with those tactics thought Yiannis Dimitropoulos won the game with his grey knights (they look more like silver) over Christos Spirou Orks. Yiannis later commented that he was lucky, it was his lucky day as he said.

On the first round because the number of players was odd Leonidas Moskitokiller was left outside of the games, he would play on the second round and someone else would stay out this time Lampros and his Necrons would not play on the second round. As a rule players who would not play in a round were marked with a victory, but in the case of a tie in the end they would be under a player with the same amount of victories with them (and who would not be out of one of the rounds)

As the players started preparing their armies and discussing their game with their opponents, shouting war cries, blasphemous words and curses we managed to hold a small commentary with John again about the propable results of the second round.

IR: Yiannis Dimitropoulos with Knights and Kostas Papaxeimonas with Space marines.

JP: Look, Yiannis comes from a victory against an army that he didn't see in the past and Kostas played very bad in the first round, i see that Yiannis will continue in his victories, Yiannis also has won several tournaments in the past.

IR: I also see that Yiannis will win in this match, another match is Moskitokiller and his Dark Eldar and Gerasimos with his Marines, once i would say that Moskitokiller would take this game but now i think that its a very tough match because Gerasimos plays a lot.

JP: I havent seen Gerasimos playing but i know that Moskitokiller has a lot of expirience too and he went to the ETC.

IR: I think that it is match, anyway, next game is Arion Grey knights versus Spirou and his Orks, this is very strong match too, Arion has finished first and Spirou second in the last tournament we had here, plus Spirou faces Grey knights for the second time today so he has already some expirience against them in a very short time, i think this is a bonus for him now.
JP: It will be hard for Spirou to use this bonus because the grey knights army lists are very different from each other, Arion uses too many paladins, i think ten, while Yiannis dosent have not one terminator in his army list. 
IR: Then it is Alexis with his bikes and Argiris with his Tau, i think that Alex will get this game.

JP: Once again Argiris has to play against a very fast army, the same problem he had in the first round.

IR: Then it is Stathis and his Dark Eldar against Stefanos and his Blood Angels, i think i would vote that Stathis will get this game (he has quite the expirience against my Blood Angels).

JP: I would say that the Blood Angels will get the game because of the "feel no pain" rule, if we speak about the advantages of the two armies: they are both fast and they both have FNP but the Armor stefanos has will not let Stathis use his poison weapons. 

So lets see what happened in round two.

In the deserts of Games Corps Christos Spirou prepares his Battlewagons to cross Dead mans land and face Arions Grey knights.

Christos is puzzled from the way the battle goes. 

While some orks manage to break throught in grey knight line the The Ork Nobz smash into the paladins and meet their doom.

You can't have enough firepower against the incoming orks, if you find some firepower in the terrain pieces, consider using it...

As Stefanos gets his Blood Angels vehicles close to the center of the battlefield Stathis measures how wide the ruins in front of his army should be to be able to hide all of them behind it!.

And when the Blood Angels come closer the Eldar come out to unleash death!

And even assault an assault squad!.

In the end Stathis took the game and gained his second victory in the tournament.

A Mosquitto has landed on the battlefield! let me crush it with the hand!.
Leonidas: I told you - its Moskito-killer! not Mosquitto!
I didn't ment you!

 
Gerasimos manages to do fitness exercises - stretching, as he plays in the same time, so he is always in shape. That and lots of gaming i guess made him won over Leonidas and so he accumulated his second victory in the tournament. 

Dont know about the rest of the paintjob on the model, but this raider has an amazing floor-job it's almost like a persian carpet!.

Alex manages to cover half the battlefield with his bikes under fire from the Tau and he still has an army, thats a reason to be happy about!

 I point to the target for them to shoot at... and they miss! how can they?

The result for the game is a victory for Alex yet as is usual in the tournaments we participate in, both players have fun no matter what the result is.

 

I guess that this is the reason why the Tau lost in this game, the space marines riding their bikes are a breath away from the Tau vehicles in this photo and they look largely unharmed.

Once they counted the dead with helmets, dogtags, now they use calculators...

In the game between Kostas Black Templar space marines and Yiannis Dimitropoulos Grey knights, Kostas attacks the flanks of the grey knights with his land raider and terminators.

Quite a good move that leaves a part of the Grey knights quite away from the assault, in the end this game came to a draw between the two players. Kostas and Yiannis Comments themselves their game:

Kostas: I lost my two vindicators in the first shooting phase, obviously they didnt helped but anyway vindicators are usually just to fire once in the game, my opponent had deployed his squads widely and i did a concetrated charge to his flank where most of his troops were and in the end i didn't had any troops and so he didn't had any either, so we came to a draw.

Yiannis: The terminators managed to survive from my shooting, and i expected to destroy more easily some immobilized vehicles with the thunder hammers.

This also ends the second round and leaves three players Arion, Stathis and Georgopoulos with two victories, the three contesters for the third, second and first place in the tournament.

After seeing that the next mission will be the last remaining of the three: Kill points and the deployment: Spearhead i asked John who he thinks will take the tournament.

JP: Arion has a huge advantage in kill points, he has a very defensive army and he has a unit that gives his most weak unit a 3+ cover save and a big 10 man paladin death star squad that is very difficult to kill down to the last man, so its gonna be difficult for Gerasimos (Arion's next opponent) to take kill points from his army controversly Gerasimos has many small units such as attack bike and the rhino that will make it hard for him to keep ahead in the kill points. 

Panayiotis Stathis is the third player with two victories also and is playing Yiannis with one win and one draw and i think he's gonna have a difficult game, Yiannis gonna have a lot of S5 Stormbolters that means that everything that Yiannis has in his army can take out the heaviest unit in Stathis army, that's already a huge disadvantage in a kill points mission, add to that Stathis plays with two or three Venoms and small squads of trueborn, very easy to kill from just a few stormbolter shots - i don't see how he can come up from this. 

The players went to their tables and started gaming.

Argiris possitioned his Tau vehicles in one corner of the battlefield since he didnt had to worry about claiming objectives - and moving actually and Leonidas as seen on the photo followed his usual attacking tactic.

Leonidas many light vehicles that carry his army led the Greater good forces of Argiris on a victory since he earned a lot of kill points from taking them out, his first victory on a single player tournament.

Kostas and Lampros (Kostas in the photo) had the priviledge of playing on the single table that was waiting for the players actually in the back yard of the shop near a garden, if there is not enough cover in the table there is always some terrain "growing" quite near...

When one vindicator is enought to cause havoc in a unit that just deep striked from teleport, the lord and his immortal retinue you can always take two to make sure that the job will be done, on the other photo some necron warriors noticed the explosions and took refuge behind the Monolith.

The result for this battle is that the Necrons phased out after losing most of their units. A highlight in this battle was the attack of Black Templar terminators with their Marshal on the Deciever C'tan, he didnt managed to kill anyone with his attacks and they retaliated with their thunder hammers killing him, in doing so he exploded and killed 2 terminators.

Alex biker space marines faced Lakaidemon's Blood Angels. 

And Lakaidemon's Land raider faced Alex's Land raider! (the green one) the winner of this game was Alex. you can find more information on Alex's games on Cadia 122 blog where he gave a complete battle report from his games.
http://cadia122.blogspot.com/2011/09/game-corps-2000-point-tournament-report.html

In the game between Stathis and Dimitropoulos i noticed the quite intresting deployment of the dark Eldar force from Stathis, the man actually fitted 2000 points of Dark Eldar in a corner!

While Yiannis Dimitropoulos (right) spread out in a line his shiny Grey knights.

And quickly came to close combat with the Hellions. 

Stathis won in this match, here Yiannis looks down (dissapointed?) while Stathis measures the Dark Eldarish coffin for the dead Grey knights.

The battle that will decide the winner starts, Arion deploys his Grey knights in and around this piece of terrain to his left and Gerasimos gets ready for a charge led by his land raider.

Arion meditates for a bit and some time later the Land raider is nowhere to be found, i think it was the vindicare assassin's job in the ranks of Arion's army if im not mistaken.

Deployment of the Grey knights.

The rhino troop carriers are used as shields for the Attack bikes, one of the rhinos is so far away from the table - as out of range as possible from the grey knights shots that it risks a violent - over the table drop of death. 

Bravely enough some of the space marines actually managed to come close to the grey knights.

The Dreadnight hunted the big gun the space marines brought with them, hence the big sword the Dreadnight brought with him to cut it to pieces. Arion won the game in the end by 9-4 in kill points. This battle ended the tournament too.

The first tournament of this season had 11 players, one shop owner, one Invulnerable reporter and 15 battles in almost 8 hours of constant playing measuring and dicing and no less than 700 photos.  Here the players gather for the victory ceremony!

Stathis (center) is 2nd in ranking, he usually finishes in the top ranks of the tournaments and with his today's three victories he was bested only from...

...Arion and his Grey knights, who manages to conquer the second tournament in a row, congratulations to him and many congratulations to everyone for participating and having fun with an awesome attitude and sportsmanship in each and every game.

Arion's Grey knight army was also one if not the best painted army in the tournament, a photo of this army is the best way to close this report i guess, plus a short interview from Arion himself follows about what he believes to be the key for winning the tournament.

Arion: My list is pretty good, it was pretty solid, it was very survivable, i could survive a lot of beating, the six plasma cannons could do a lot of damage even if their target was in cover or not, anything that was in the open would die, then i had from the techmarine the bonus of the bolster defenses so i was safe in the area i was hiding, in my ruins. 

My paladins was my only close combat unit along with the dreadknight and i was basing my army around shooting a lot of things and then doing any close combat with the Paladins who i know can do what they can do since they are reliable in close combat. 

My last game was against Salamanders basic list, i managed to steal the initiative and the Vindicare managed to pop the land raider and then i just shot 6 plasma cannons into the terminators so stealing the first round was a major boost. 

IR: I want to make you another question, Stefanos Kapetanakis the ETC captain for Team Greece mentioned the importance of survivability in army lists, you also told us about survivability in a army list, you would like to comment that?

Arion: I think survivability is very important, in mobily is survivability i agree but i dont use a lot of vehicles in my army lists, i almost never use vehicles because i of that random shot that can take out a vehicle, just like i did with the vindicare - i took out a Land raider with just one shot, so i like survivability because at worst i can get a draw, if i survive then i can get a draw, if i cant then the other player is too good for me. 

IR: Okay so thank you and congratulations

Arion: Thank you. 

So this ends this tournament, and that was a long report too, too serious now that i think about it, we will have some more of Comics in the coming days and some more tournaments and reports too. so stay tuned on the Invulnerable blog, have fun, be well and take care!

For the Invulnerable
Panayiotis