The Escalation Tournament: Part 1

Hey all Kevin here and back again in the first part of Battle Reports from a recent Escalation tournament at my FLGS, veterans Gaming, in Warwick, RI. First let me explain the format of an escalation tournament in general and then the wierd rules behind the one I attended. An escalation tournament is a tournament where you take multiple lists and the first game you play you start at a low or atleast the lowest points level list and you increase the points allowed each game. Generally escalation tournaments I have seen start somewhere in the 1000-1500 point range and then do 1750 and 2000 points. It provides a level playing fround for armies that necessarilly do not do good at high levels but are better at lower levels and vice versa.


Now this tournament was a little different. There were four games and the first game started at 500 points with the only FOC mandatory slot to be used being a Fast Attack choice. The next game was a 1000 point game with not including any units from the first list, and 2 troops were mandatory. The third game was a 1500 point game that combined lists one and two. The final game was a 2000 point game which was your third list with an added 500 points.


Sounds confusing right? Not as much as you would think. Basically everyone made a 1500 point list and did thier best to divide it into two parts. It made you have to think about what made your list competitive in the first two games without sacraficing a decent list in the last two games. The interesting part was trying to do with with the Fast attack and troops restrictions. Since I am a huge fan of 1500 points and pretty much exclusively use my "Poor Man's"
Imperial Fist Army at this level I had to bring these boys to the table again.




Game 1: 500 Points, Fast attack Choice Mandatory, DOW/Killpoints.
*Bonus being getting your fast attack choice across your opponents table edge


Ok this was an interesting set up with killpoints being the objective and everyone packing only about two or three units a piece. The fluff behind it was that your 500 point list was trying to warn your main force of an enemy attack and met enemy scouts on the way. I do have to say the 500 point list got the essential "Flavorings" of my 1500 point list. Here is the army/list....

Imperial Fist Space Marines 500 Point List
Total- 500

Elites

1. Legion of the Damned x5- Plasma Cannon, flamer, combi-flamer - 205
2. Dreadnought- TL Lascannon, Dread. Close combat/flame - 145

Fast Attack

1.Bike Squad- melta gun, attack bike, multi melta- 150


Simple List Right? If you have not read my Poor Mans articles on my 1500 point list then go through my archive and it is one of my fir
st posts. Very simple set up. If I was going to win I would have to be lucky and make a lot of saves as well as my guys would have to kill A LOT of stuff fairly early.....especially with the fact that I only have 10 models in my list.....is this what playing the new Grey Knights would be like?.....My opponent was a Space Wolves player named Mike. He had a couple units of grey hunters and a razorback as well as a long fangs unit packing 4 missiles and 1 Lascannon. He finished up with some fenrision wolves and a rune priest.....

Anyway I won the roll to go first and here was my set up....



Ok so I set up my dread behind the middle of a ruin so depending on the side he deployed I could move it behind cover or even charge it up. I set my bikes up so they couldmove behind that Temple of skulls piece on the top left and move in to harass my opponent with bolter and melta fire. The game plan was to stall with the bikes till the legion arrived then rush everything in and have the legion wipe out a unit on the drop, then have everything fall in......I was set up for a decent game at this point....... Here is his set up...

He siezed the initiative.... !!!^%&%^&%^&%!!!! this was the 3rd game in a row that I elected to go first and this happened.....fml.....


So he preceded to open up on me, and with a grin on my face I watched how he failed to hit or wound on every single shot in his army except for one lucky heavy bolter round wounding my attack bike. He even rolled double sixes for his phsycic test for Jaws.....lol....Now this was tremendously lucky on my part so I moved in on the attack...

From the way he deployed in a fire base position based around that terrain piece with hsi Grey Hunters in a position of counter-attack I needed to move in and start popping his vehicles and kill some units. I had only 3 killpoints so I could basically kill his Razorback as well as pick a few other things off and then run like hell with my bikes and hide then win the game...


I moved in and basically wiffed on my shooting. My melta's missed and also failed to kill anything with my TL bolters on his fangs and my TL Lascannon failed to do anything as well against his RB. I was hopeing on weakening his LF's to make them too small to worry about and pop the RB.

He would not have as bad of shooting turn two....

My bikes were reduced to only a wounded attack bike and my Dread was stunned. I moved up and tried to do something with my bike against his RB but only obtained a weapon destroyed result...ugh

He moved his grey hunters in for the kill and it died to some bolter fire....Next turn would see my Legion of the Damned come down and completely wipe out the Grey Hunter unit you can see Mike moving right now

My last hope was for the Legion to sweep over a couple of units since we were looking at turn 4 at this point. unfortunatly he fired 6 bolt pistols, wounded tiwce and I failed to 3++ saves back to back......ugh...He would rush in with some Fenrission wolves and kill off two more legionairres
while making two 6+ armor saves on his wolves......super ugh....This game would sadly not be mine...

The game ended with him wiping me off the table with a 1-3 killpoint loss for me. He came off getting all points but the bonus for having his FA choice get into my zone. I was expecting not good results this round but this was dreadful....

Look for round 2 in tommorrows post!....more on this later.......