The Escalation Tournament Part 2: The Clock Strikes Back!

Round 2: Two Troops mandatory, Spearhead, Capture and Control, 1 Hour time limit.
*Bonus for troops in enemy deployment as well as killing the enemy HQ

Ok on to round two. Now before our lunch break I foundout my opponent was the only other Wolves player in the tournament.....I dont like Wolves... I got to meet my opponent and eat some chinese with him and his buddy with which he came with, Matt, who played his beautifully painted Necrons at my Meat Grinder Event at TempleCon and I already knew. Regardless of the Wolves chasing me down I was fairly confident with a some what better list containing my two core elements in my Marines army, the Hammer and anvil. The mission was capture and control with the set up being Spearhead. Here was my list.....

Imperial Fist Space Marines- 1000 Point Tournament List
Total-1000 pts

HQ

1.Librarian- Plasma Pistol, The Avenger, Gate of Infinity -115

Elites

1. x5 Terminators- heavy flamer- 205

Troops

1. Tactical Squad-+5 marines, Missile Launcher, melta gun - 175
2. Tactical Squad- +5 Marines, Missile Launcher, plasma gun -180

Dedicated Transports

1.Razorback (Tac. squad 1)- TL Lascannon -75
2.Land Raider Crusader (Terminators)- TL Assault Cannon- 250

Anyone familiar with my 1500 point list will recognise this as the main half of it.....Anyway here is his deployment ...

He won the roll to go first and castled up on his objective in the 2nd floor of a ruined building with the typical low points set up of grey hunters nearby and his wolf Lord in front (Giant wolf in picture below). His list contained the Wolf Lord, a Squad of Long Fangs, two grey hunter units in razorbacks, one with a TL Ass. Cannon and another with a TL Lascannon. This was all summed up with a unit of scouts outflanking.....


Now here below I show my deployment



I like C&C with this list because I do my typical set up with combat squading all of my Tac. Marines and leaving the two Missile Launcher halves as well as the plasma gun half surrounding my objective with leaving the melta gun half in the razorback. This firebase is extremely potent at this low of points because my opponent would have to remove 3 scoring units from my objective in terrain with limited firepower. I also deployed my Land Raider with Termies and Librarian in the middle of the board to hit anything that comes at me as well as make a move on his objective.

Here below I show my opponents first turn...

Now my opponent moved up his Wolf Lord as well as moved his Razorbacks out to try and keep out of my line of fire. He managed to stun my Razorback but was limited to just that....Below is my first turn...



A rather uneventful turn. I moved my Raider up to threaten his Ass. Cannon RB while I managed to shake his tank in the back. Things looked good as I was threatening him with a unit he couldn't deal with and he did not have enough fire power to get rid of the units on my objective.... I did manage to imobolize my Raider on a piece of terrain, but atleast it was facing towards units attacking my base that were in rapid fire range so I was not worried...

His turn saw his wolf lord assault and blow up my Razorback, he managed to kill one marine with one of my missile squads in the explosion, He also moved up his Ass. Cannon razorback in an attempt to push my 20 marines off my objective.... I then gated my librarian and termies into his objective building and just let loose killing all but one Long Fang. I also used every single shot in my army to kill his wolf lord...but he would counter....
In a last ditch effort to win his scouts came on behind my objective and assaulted the missile launcher unit. He also disembarked his grey hunters and made a move on my squd in the crater. as well as moved his grey hunters from his other razorback back towards his objective.. He also moved his Ass. Cannon RB back to my termies to try and kill some ..His game plan was to obvously contest my objective and try to atleast get rid of my termies with rapid fire weapons....It was a long shot but it was baals-2-the-waals (lol)...

Above are his scouts (with sniper rifles not WYSIWIG fyi) and below is the view from his razorback trying to get rid of some termies....

Now here is when things kind of got dicey and I got a little angry...

Above was the view of the battlefield on the bottom of turn 4 when I was about to go. This game was suppose to last 6 rounds and I was setup for the possible massacre. I managed to kill off everything over near his objective easily and decided to focus fire all of my stuff on his grey hunters while my missile launcher unit kept his scouts tied down. This all happened while my opponent kept quiet and smiled.....I was wondering why this was happening since I was about to table him. Below is the look as I jsut entered my assault phase.

As soon as we started this phase tim called time on the game and my oppenent sayed thats a tie......I immediatly looked at my objective and saw one scout had snuck into contesting range during pile in moves when I was finished.....now this sort of thing happened to me a tournament a year ago and this is the sort of thing that shouldn't happen in these types of games. Now first off let me say I should have kept better track of time in this game since this had happened to me before. Is it bad sportsmanship not to mention the fact that there is 5 minutes left until you finished shooting? Is the fault on the tournament organizer for not giving a time warning through out the game? If I saw this coming I would have blitzed everything at his scouts and probably won combat, or atleast kept him from sneaking into contesting range. I got pretty angry since this was the 2nd time that I was going to table someone in a tournament with the game ending early and leaving me with a tie or a loss.

Now trick me once shame on you, trick me twice shame on me....I told myself before the last tournament to keep better track of time and I let it slip with the sights of an easy victory ahead of me. I take the blame for letting this be a tie. This did basically put me in the position of needing back to back massacres to win the tournament that I had gone into with the objective of winning. But there is no need to cry over spilled peanuts. I went into the next round determined to win at my favorate points level with my best record...1500 points with my favorate 1500 point army up and I was primed for the challenge. A rematch from TempleCon in a game I won with my Guard.......more on this tommorrow.....

Two be continued with Part 3: Revenge of the Fists......more on this later....