40k Rogue Trader, Syracuse, NY

[gamblerzer0]

Warhammer 40k "Rouge" Trader Event

When: February 19 - 11:30am

Where: Play the Game - Carousel Center Mall

Prize(s): Store Credit and Door Prizes

Entry Fee: $20

Details:
The Rouge Trader is back! Bring your best 2000 point army list and fight for battlefield supremacy! Prizes awarded to top finishers as well as Best Painted, Best Sportsman, and Best General. Door prizes!

[Dorian]

Where can I find the rules for this? (Missions, template ect.) Quick google search turned up nothing.

[professor]

I would love to go to this if there were more details.

Also, is there a night the 40k players tend to show up at PTG (always altered states to me)? I am moving into the area and every time I stop by I see a lot of Magic and not a lot of 40k.

[Timbo]

Is anyone planning on heading out for this?

[inzeos]

I want to go; however, it conflicts with the 16 person apoc event being hosted by Pair-A-Dice games that same day.

Would be interested to hear how the event went from those that might go from our area.

[grubnards]

I've gone to a few of their events last year and it was generally run with missions right out of the book. No special missions or rules.

I think they run their games a little longer with more time for lunch/bathroom breaks, etc... The only downside to that was for anyone coming out of Rochester you generally do not get home until 9-10pm as the event does not start until 11:30am.

As for the location itself, they moved down to a new store last year and they have tons of space in the back so that it does not feel like you are playing in a mall store. The food court and bathrooms are one level up and quick to get to.

Kevin runs a nice shop that sells games and comics and there generally is a wide range of armies being played such as Eldar, Tau, Daemons, etc... and for the most part the players run comp friendly armies.

Overall it's a fun trip out and you get to meet with different players but since I attended MG's tourney last week and with a forcast of crappy weather this weekend I will not be going to this event.

Good luck to anyone who goes.

[professor]

I am working in Rome now so I live in syracuse. I cannot make this tournament, but I will be playing at their store in the future. if anyone needs a place to crash after some post game drinking in the future I can probably accommodate.

[inzeos]

Did anyone go to the event?

How was it?

Any pictures to share?

[MajorSoB]

Just wanted to report in and let you know what happened yesterday. I took a drive out to Syracuse to play in this event. The weather sucked, I drove through several white outs in Geneva all the way to Syracuse, making my trip almost 3 hours. I called Kevin who was gracious enough to accommodate my late arrival and start the tournament at noon. Here are the highlights:

-I think we had a total of 18 players.
-The army represented were 4 Eldar, 1 BA, 1 SW, 2 Nids, 1 Ork, 2 CSM, 1 Necron (gasp!) with the remainder being SM including a Calgar list.
-The players were generally good guys who seemed to enjoy the hobby as well as the game. Oddly enough, Eldar looked like Eldar, Blood angles were red, Ultramarines blue, and Iron Hands were black and silver, wow! There were several work-in-progress armies but I would say they were much more completed than not and the players were generally attempting to finish them. There was only one abomination there that I was "lucky" enough to face last round ( more later!)
-As for the previous post of comp friendly armies, ummm no, it wasnt like that. I took my Nurgle list that everyone cries about but thank god I did because if I would have taken anything more balanced I would have gotten crushed miserably. There was a distinct tier 1 and tier 2 in army builds. I guess this is what the "new and balanced" rule set and codexes have pushed to direction of the game toward.
-The tables were pretty sparse, I would say terrain was much less than 25% probably around 10%. They had terrain available but this seems like the way they set and play their boards.

OK so here is what happened:

Game 1 (Objectives, Pitched Battle)

I draw an Eldar player. Your basic build featuring both Eldred and Maugan Ra. He played a Night Spinner that was interesting since I never faced on. Another falcon, some aspect warriors, transports with missile launchers, you know the drill. When I was setting up Kevin said to me "Now this is the match I want to see!". I found out what that meant at the end. I set up first , he stole the initiative, and I took a buttload of shooting first round. I recovered, advanced forward focusing my efforts on shaking his falcon and shooting up his squad of Reapers with Ra. He moved some skimmers, shot me, I closed the gap and started taking down skimmers with oblits and deamon princes. He pulled some shenanigans with "forgetting" to place Eldred in a combat and was very loose with his measurements, which gave me added incentive to beat him. At the end of the game I had taken out all his scoring units, most of his army, leaving Eldred hiding in the only skimmer he had left. I had two objectives to his none. Kevin told me afterwards that this was the player that won most often and showed up with the expectations of taking it all every time. I was glad I helped change that. Overall he was a nice guy and fun to play. His army was begrudgingly painted only because he knew that it factored into his overall score.

Game 2 (Diagonal Special Deployments, Kill Points)

Guess what I played? Yes another Eldar player! Much like the first, he had a Night Spinner as well, but also two Fire Prisms, no characters instead having an autarch and a farseer. I set up and got to go first. I focused on the fire prisms and blew the gun off of one, so he couldnt do the focused heavier blast thing on me. I moved forward using a castle wall for cover. Now here is where it got odd, He deployed came at me with half his army. I took some shooting that round but not enough to keep me from assault in my following turn. I popped his transports containing his banshees with autarch and fire dragons. I shot up the banshees the best I could while assaulting his fire dragons, then another transport. In his next turn he unloaded all his troops and shot the hell out of the two princes killing one while the other made his saves. He got in his scorpions but botched his fleet roll which left him well short of the oblits he tried to assault. What was left of his banshees and autarch engaged a squad of plague marines but drew them in combat. I reacted by assaulting d**n near everything, firing up the scorpions, turing the tide in my favor. We played the game through 7 turns. He scored 4 kill points while I scored 10 or 11, leaving only a shaken Night Spinner with no turret on the board. I can safely say that this was my most enjoyable game, not because of the results but because Eric was a great player, painted his army well and embraced the hobby. Even when the tide had turned against him he stepped up to the challenge. I voted for him as my favored opponent and he ended up winning a prize for best sportsman. It was nice to play a game against someone who embraced the hobby as a whole. Well done Eric!

Game 3 (Table Quarters, Victory Points)

So I already played two Eldar armies, what do you think I played round 3? Yep, you guessed it another Space Fairies army! Let me tell you this was one of the worst games I played not because of the outcome but due to several factors. My opponent hands me his list, yep Jet Bike Seer Council (15 models strong) with all the trimmings. Rumor had it he took one guardian squad but it never hit the table staying embarked all game long. I never played this build before but knew the key to beating it. While I set my army I get a good look at his. It consisted of mostly unpainted or primed figures, nothing was WSIWIG, maybe a dot of paint here or there to symbolize a weapon or two but overall what most of us would find at the bottom of out bitz boxes. No table measure just a cut off whippy stick, etc. Yeah this was going to be fun. So we deploy, shooting both sides and rush forward and pop smoke, trying to keep my army consolidated. He closes with his seer council and I unload two squads of troops and five oblits into him, followed by assaults. Let me tell you chaos sucks ass against this army and if any of you "experts" that so love Eldar played a chaos army once in your life you would understand why. You see when it comes to psychic powers all chaos can do is bend over like the female dog that they are ( thanks Gav and Alessio) and take it in the butt. I shot the piss out of these bikes and rocked them in assault but thanks to my non existent psychic hood and his ability to reroll saves I hardly scratched the paint ( if he had any) on his models. Couple this with "creative movement", the "I forgot my codex" excuse when I questioned a rule, "forgetting" to allocate saves properly, and by the end of the game I was done! And please, don't ever whine to me about how Eldar need a new codex and isn't that powerful cause I might be tempted to tell you just how wrong you are!

So at the end of the day I got an award for runner up in painting. While I got max scores I didn't get enough favorite army votes which was no big deal. I was happy with the $30 award I was given. In addition Kevin handed out vouchers for $20 off a purchase of $55 dollars or more. While you couldn't combo the offer and voucher, it gave me a decent discount on a storm raven, razorback and chimera.

As for the other winners, the Seer Council guy won best general, Dan Pearson won overall (Paint a new @#$!ing army Dan, yes he played the only Eldar army I didn't have to play!), and an Ork Player won best painted due to his heavy conversions and his fun theme which centered around a police theme in his army.

After the tourney, I went out to Denny's with Dan, Kevin, his girlfriend ( who played his Nids in the tourney) and several other players. I ended up getting home at 2:30 in the morning. It was a good time and will be on my short list of tourneys to attend again.

[inzeos]

Sounds like there was a good selection of armies there.

Did you bring up the many issues to the TO about the seer council player? Seem if you can't model your guys correctly, don't show up with the basic tools for the game mechanics, don't have your army rules and fail to understand the game rules you surely should not win best general...

[MajorSoB]

We talked about his list afterwards but in all fairness he won all three of his games so like it or not he deserved best general. It isn't fair for a TO to manipulate scoring or anything else so that he would get the outcome he wants. That is what the Seer Council player likes about 40K and that is why he plays, we all don't like the same things or are drawn to this hobby for the same reasons. If you win all your games you should win best general, not overall which Dan Pearson won. There were prizes that awarded other aspects of the hobby. It was a well rounded tourney and worth the 5 1/2 hours of driving I spent.

[professor]

It is annoying when people show up with those red sticks for games - especially if it was 'cut off.' I never trust that they are the actual length and whenever someone has to shoot it is always the same "Can I borrow your tape measure?"

I plan to play in the next tournament they have there, the lack of cover is a real bummer. It might explain how the metagame is divided as well.

[travis]

So wait a minute you rolled two of the Eldar lists you play. Then Seer Council, that you have never played, with shenanigans, barely beats you. I am not sure that means that the Eldar don't need a new Codex. Every army can make one nasty list, that can do well in events, depending on your opponents. I think if you were to play that guy again you would probably win, now that you know what the army is trying to do.

Most of the people that I hear talk about wanting a new Eldar Dex are talking about wanting more diversity, not that you can't make a really tough list with what they have. Greg Sparks won Da Boyz GT two years straight with that Codex.

The same can be said about Chaos Space Marines. The Codices were made fairly close to each other so that both suffer from lack of competitive diversity. People would like more diversity. If player's take the best of the best in every slot of course they can win. Player's like to have the option to win with something outside the "platinum cookie cutter" build.

I am glad you had a good time at the event. It's nice to see the local community putting on great events for the games we love. Don't forget to send me the ideas that you have for the lock-in in a few months.

[fishboy]

I agree with Travis on this one. I think the only tweaking the Eldar need is more units with USR like outflank and cheaper vehicles. Other than that they are a pretty solid army with a lot of charactor and diversity.

Chaos space marines I think are still a very good army.