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2001 Baltimore Grand Tournament Reports by John Swann

The GT's coming up and once again, I'm taking my Order of the Sacred Rose. The rules changed a bit this year over last, so this army list may not make a whole lot of sense. Basically the HQ, HS, and top half of the Troops are my "core" army of 1200pts. The bottom half of the Troops are my primary Sideboard, and the Seraphim are my secondary Sideboard.

HQ
Canoness Alethea (42), Rosarius (25), Master-Crafted Bolter-Melta 
Combi Weapon (30), Power Fist (15), Purity Seals (5)

Total Points Spent on HQ:  117pts
Percentage of Total Points:  5.3%

Troops
Battle Sisters Squad of 10 (100), Heavy Flamer (15), Meltagun (10), 
Rhino APC (45), Smoke Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
178pts

Battle Sisters Squad of 10 (100), Heavy Flamer (15), Meltagun (10), 
Veteran Sister Superior Nediva (10), Plasma Pistol (15), Power Weapon (10), 
Rhino APC (45), Smoke Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
213pts

Battle Sisters Squad of 5 (50), Multimelta (25)
75pts

Battle Sisters Squad of 10 (100), Heavy Flamer (15), Meltagun (10), 
Veteran Sister Superior Odelia (10), Power Fist (15), Purity Seals (5), Bolt 
Pistol, Rhino APC (45), Smoke Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
208pts

Battle Sisters Squad of 10 (100), Heavy Flamer (15), Meltagun (10), 
Veteran Sister Superior Chanda (10), Plasma Pistol (15), Axe of Retribution 
(10), Rhino APC (45), Smoke Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
213pts

Battle Sisters Squad of 5 (50), Multimelta (25)
75pts

Total Points Spent on Troops:  962pts
Percentage of Total Points: 43.9%

Fast Attack
Seraphim, squad of 10 (160), Twin Hand Flamers (6), Meltabombs (40), 
Veteran Sister Superior Mylene (10), Power Fist (15), Brazier of Holy Fire 
(15), Purity Seals (5)
252pts

Seraphim, squad of 10 (160), Twin Hand Flamers (6), Meltabombs (40), 
Veteran Sister Superior Leilani (10), Plasma Pistol (15), Power Sword (10)
247pts

Total Points Spent on Fast Attack:  499pts
Percentage of Total Points:  22.8%


Heavy Support
Retributors, squad of 8 (88), Four Heavy Flamers (60), Veteran Sister 
Superior Ianthe (10), Bolt Pistol, Flail of Chastisement (8), Rhino 
APC (45), Smoke Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
216pts

Retributors, squad of 8 (88), Four Heavy Flamers (60), Veteran Sister 
Superior Nakita (10), Plasma Pistol (15), Rhino APC (45), Smoke 
Launchers (3), Extra Armour (5)
226pts

Retributors, squad of 5 (55), Four Heavy Bolters (40), Immolator 
(70), Smoke Launchers (3)
168pts

Total Points Spent on Heavy Support: 613pts
Percentage of Total Points:  27.9%

HQ Points: 117pts
Elite Points: 0pts
Troops Points: 962pts
Fast Attack Points: 499pts
Heavy Support Points: 613pts
Total Points Spent on "Armory" Page: 279pts
Total Points: 2191pts

Game One (vice Ultramarines in Dawn Raid): This one looked grim from the start when my opponent showed me his list… Three Land Raiders (although only two would be fielded in the 1700pt game) one of which, of course, was a Land Raider Crusader with full assault squad with Chaplain in tow… Anyway, the board as sufficiently clogged with terrain and we began. I won't do a turn-by-turn breakdown, but basically he advanced from his quadrant along my left flank and I maneuvered right while trying to set a trap for his incoming forces. In the course of the game I managed to Immobilize one 'Raider, but couldn't touch the other one. The assault squad hit one of my multimelta units, but then I unloaded 7 Heavy Flamer templates on it (the "trap" part) and, with a Rhino in their fall-back corridor, wiped out the lot. He teleported a squad of termies into my quadrant for support, but I managed to whittle them down to 1 remaining model by the end of the game. Of course that one model would be key… That was all on my left and center. On the right, I moved two full Sisters squads into the flank and set up to dig in for the long haul. Belatedly, my opponent swung two full tactical squads in Rhinos their way. By the end of the game, those two squads had managed to kill or drive off all my forces. Sucks that vanilla Marine tactical squads with no wargear can so easily chase off Sisters even with a VSS with wargear, but what are you gonna do? So at the end of the game both wing quadrants were contested. His backfield was clean of my forces and I'd just moved a Rhino 12" back into my own quadrant and popped smoke with it to claim that one (all the existing units left in my quadrant were under 50% or Imobilized. In his final turn, the only thing that can get that Rhino with is that damned lone terminator. The Termie missed or failed to damage with his Assault Cannon, so he charges in. 3 attacks, needing 6's since I moved 12". Of course he gets a hit with his Chainfist and Boom! No more Rhino. With that the game ended 0-1. Pity really, it was a damned close game and I tried everything I could to kill that last damned Termie, but to no avail. Probably the low point of the game, though, was my Canoness hitting the LRC at <6" range with her Master-crafted Combi-Melta and rolling snake-eyes for Penetration… Sigh…Anyway, a close loss that (because of the points system) REALLY hurt my overall score.

Game Two (vice Blood Angels in Feud Fight): Another one that looked grim from the very start. The mission required that your commander move closer to the enemy commander each turn. Yeah… Just what I want to do against Blood Angels! Anyway, he had a fairly typical BA force, with the one oddity a LRC (there were a LOT of LRC's at the GT. I wonder why…) The mission was straight up VP's with a bonus for you commander killing his. He took the first turn and it just got ugly. The Death Company on the right flank AND a Rhino-borne tactical squad on the left BOTH made big 'ole Supercharged engine moves and hit me with first turn assaults on each flank, while the LRC rumbled up the middle. I did what I could to get away from the DC, but it was a lost cause. With my long-range firepower tied up before it fired a shot, it was pretty grim. I managed to kill one of his two commanders while he slaughtered the Canoness in HtH. Other than that it was a pretty solid rout. I killed a squad of Scouts who were foolish enough to get within HF range, as well as his LRC-mounted Assault squad, but that was about it. By the end of turn 5 I had a couple of dribs and drabs left on the table, but that was about it. One Rhino squad was totally intact, and running around his DZ, but there really wasn't much for it to do other than to deny him an extra tourney point. The high point (to try and find the silver lining) was the turn my Canoness charged his assault squad… His commander wounded her 3 times with a power weapon and I made all three Rosarius saves, then in my attack back, I completely failed to wound him with my 4 PF attacks… Gallows humor I guess, but you take what you can get…

Game Three (vice Orks in Battle in the Eye of Terror): Weird scenario where each turn you can move a unit just like the Necron's Veil of Darkness allows. This was an odd one in general. My opponent had a ton of boyz, a warboss on a trukk, 6 Killer Kans, and a Dread. I knew that if (a big "if" mind you) I could get past the walkers, my flamers would have a field day. The first three turns were pretty desultory with my Sisters trading MM and HB fire with his Kans' Rokkits and Big Shootas. Nothing much on either side died. Over on the far left, I tried the Seraphim's one good trick (IMHO). I moved the unit so that just a couple of ork models were within 12" and then opened up. The theory for those of you taking notes, is that you'll kill enough models to force him to remove all the models within 12" so that he can't charge, leaving you free to double-tap or flee next turn. Well, it's great in theory, but it failed in the face of sub-par rolling. Two Orks (including the Nob) remained within charge range and that was about that… With the Seraphim getting nailed, I knew that I had to step up the pressure. I nailed a unit of Orks winding their way through the woods, knowing full-well that the unit doing the nailing was in trouble. And so it happened…. I used the "Veil" ability a couple of times (although my opponent didn't since he had them huge orky mobz) to get out of HtH. And in the last instance, I took the remnants of one unit, and put them right in the fallback corridor of a unit of Orks that I Immolated. The fellback and got wiped out… But it wasn't quite enough. It was a close game, but in the end I lost by something like 345VP. Just shy of the 300pt "draw" threshhold. So at the midpoint, I was 0-3 with one resounding loss and two close run games. On to the second half…

Game Four (vice Imperial Guard in Trickle Down scenario) Another oddish GT scenario. This was the 2200pt game. You started with all troops and HQ on the table and the rest come in as reserves. Game was VP's, but you also gained 100vp per quadrant you controlled. This was the battle I'd been waiting for! No Dreads. No Land Raiders. No HtH elites. Just lots of guardsmen, with their HS coming on late. Plus I haven't lost to a guard player in over a year… By the second turn, I had three units flaming and assaulting his lines. It got grim after that… I chopped his Colonel down with the Axe of Retribution and Inquisitor Hand fell to a flurry of bolter butts and a Power Sword. By the time his reinforcements had started to arrive, the battle was lost. His Ratlings moved on the table just in time to get tank-shocked right back off and one Leman Russ Executioner arrived in time to get off one las-cannon shot before getting nailed by 8 meltabombs from my Seraphim. In the end, it was a resounding 1500+vp victory and a happy way to finish off the first day.

Game Five (vice Codex Tyranids in Suicide): One look at my opponent's list (and after he explained what all his mutants and what not were) and I knew this would be a toughie. He had two Tyrants with wings (12" move…), two Carnifexes, 3 Lictors, and 3 troops units that really seemed (to me) to be little more than "I have to take some troops, so I guess I'll take these…" kinda units. As with against the ork player, I knew that I could wreak havoc on his little bugs, but doing so would leave me open to assault by the big ones. Because I had so many flamers (and there was really only one good place to put them), he popped his Lictors out of hiding early, to almost no effect. They appeared in a nice tight cluster and I flambéed them with 6 Heavy Flamers. The sole survivor (with one wound remaining) was skewed by the charge of one of my squads, but not before rolling 3 6's (no kidding) to massively overkill the VSS and her Axe of Retribution. Still, losing a VSS for 3 Lictors is a fair trade in my book! With those points in hand, I started to think about how I could pull a win or at least a draw. And the answer was, of course, stunningly simple… Keep away from the big bugs! The rest of the battle was more or less me trying to stay out of charge range while his two tyrants tried to kill Rhinos with their warp blast. Sadly, they were pretty good at it… I wiped out two of his three troops slots and then watched every unit that got its Rhino shot up get munched. In the end, we drew as he only had two units that could keep up with my Rhinos or hurt them with shooting. I know his army would have REALLY struggled against some others, but in this game it was just about the worst thing I could have faced since there's really no way for the Sisters to inflict 24 wounds on T6 things, half of which have a 12" move… Oh, and all the Big Bugs had that "extended carapace" upgrade so they were all saving on 2+… An army with lots of lascannon or plasmacannon would have given him a REAL rough ride, but that wasn't my army.

Game Six (vice Chaos Space Marines in Never Ending Carnage): This was nominally a 2200pt game, as you could "replace" any destroyed unit with a Troops unit out of your unused Sideboard, but in practice, it was simply a 1700pt game. Tactically, this was the game I'm most proud of, but that was also based a bit on some early luck. On the second turn, his Dreadnought Fire-frenzied and shot the tracks off of the Rhino that, with it's occupants, were moving up to attack my right flank. That Immobilization gave me the freedom to maneuver right to avoid the big ole can of whup @$$ that was coming from the left… To wit, a squad of Raptors, his Commander with Retinue in a Rhino, and a squad of Bikers. In the middle of the table the Dreadnought summoned some Khorne Dogs which charged my center, but did surprisingly little. In my turn I managed to kill the Puppies, blow up the dread (with a different unit, 'natch), and get into position to shoot up the CSM squad that bailed out of the immobilized Rhino. Those marines came up about an inch short on their charge leaving me the opportunity to do that rarest of things, double tap with two full squads! After the dust settled, the 2 plasma pistols, 1 Heavy Flamer, 1 Meltagun, 7 bolters, and 4 TL bolt pistols left nothing but an icky Chaos slime. On the other flank, I managed to kill the Warlord's Rhino well out of charge range leaving the Khorne big cheese with little to do other than take his frustrations out on an Immolator that had lost it's gun. I shot up and charged the bikers leaving them tied up for the rest of the game. The raptors assaulted the MM team that had killed their lord's Rhino, wiped them all out and decided (I suspect since he knew that he'd likely have already lost) to sweep into a full unit of Seraphim. In addition to the Seraphim, the squad that had JUST double-tapped into those CSM, spun on their heels and double-tapped again. The 6 Raptors survived about the first half of the fire before all falling, leaving very little left of the Chaos army at the end of the game. Not quite as one-sided as the IG battle, I won this one by a handy 555vp. But like I said, had that Dread not fire-frenzied on that on CSM unit, things might have gone gravely different. With that threat gone, I was free to pull back in the face of the Khorne Lord and leave him with few options to get a good blow in. As it was, two of my units never fired a shot and only a couple of units were even seriously damaged.

So the Sisters from the Order of the Sacred Rose finished 2-1-3. Not too far off last year's 2-2-2 mark and with two of those battles being within a hair being draws, I'm reasonably happy with how they did.

I think I did reasonably well against the targets that I could hurt. It's been a LONG time since I've lost to the Guard and I'm happy that I kept that streak alive. I think, in the past year, I'm 6-0 against Guard. The armies that I though I'd have trouble against I did.

As usual the GT was a load of fun. Not being in the running for any realistic prize left me entirely free to play for the fun of it. I'll admit that the three losses (esp the BA one) left me a bit more down that I'd've expected going in, but the strong finish more than made up for it.

A couple of notes and observations:

First, expect to see a LOT of LRC's at events like this. They're just too damned good and there's really little reason to take a regular LR unless you REALLY like the way it looks… Just about every SM army I saw had one and that ought to tell you how effective people perceive them to be!

Second, the GT-specific scenarios are really slanted towards HtH and charging at the enemy. The Battle in the Eye of Terror was the one exception and was a nice change of pace, but still, you need to have HtH units to really do well in the GT environment.

Vale,

JohnS