Pocket GT Report: DreadTober Style!

Last weekend, I went to a local "Pocket GT". 1000 Points, 5 Games, one day. Since I haven't been playing a whole lot lately, and I've wanted to run something like this for a while anyhow, and not least because it's DreadTober, I decided to take the following:

Company of the Great Wolf
HQ: Bjorn the Fell Handed, Hellfrost Cannon, Drop Pod
EL: Murderfang, Lucius Pattern Drop Pod
EL: Space Wolves Contemptor, Kheres Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Saga of the Black Cull, Drop Pod
EL: Venerable Dread, Fenrisian Greataxe and Blizzard Shield, Drop Pod
EL: Dread, Drop Pod

If I'd really been pushing to win, I would have taken Chaos Daemons, but I wanted something that was just more relaxed and fun, and that would hopefully be quick enough to play that I'd actually finish all my Games on time for once.

The Missions were mostly Annihilation-style Maelstrom (The re-roll tokens were dropped since that post, but otherwise pretty much the same), and I was a bit surprised to find that we were going to be playing on 4x6 tables, despite the low Points value. I forgot to take many pictures, and many of the ones I did take weren't very good, because I didn't have my proper camera, and I'm getting used to the camera on my new phone, but I got a couple of decent ones for most of the Games.

My first Game was against the new Stealer Cult, massively MSU and played by the store's ringer, since there was an odd number of Players, and I was the last to check in. They are very effective in this format, being able to bounce around to score Maelstrom with ease, and the large table gave them lots of room to stay away from my relatively slow Units. I was still almost able to pull a draw, but Murderfang took a Rending Claw to the knee while trying to use a CC to slingshot to an Objective and got Immobilized a couple of inches too far away. This one was also a bit of a disappointment, since I failed at my goal of finishing all of my Games ahead of the time limit, but in fairness, it totally wasn't my fault. Stealer Cult takes a lot of time to play, especially when someone's still a bit new to it (as everyone is right now). I did manage to pick up a point when he underestimated Bjorn's ability to carve through the Unit guarding his Warlord, but still a 9-1 loss.

The initial drop. Bjorn was trying to take the Objective on the lower left, but managed a 12" scatter directly away from it

Bjorn braces for the counter-attack after slaying the Cult's Magus

Murderfang, Immobilized only a couple of inches outside of claiming distance from the Objective I needed to win the Turn

Second Game was against an old-school Ork army. A bit of a mis-match for him, since he had a bunch of Units that could barely hurt my Dreads, and it was the one non-Maelstrom Mission: Kill Points. There were still some great moments, like Murderfang Charging through the wreckage of his Drop Pod to wipe out a Mob of Boyz, only to get taken out by the Nob's Klaw, and in turn take out half another Mob when he exploded, and the time when the Warboss managed to beat the odds and take out my Contemptor, only to fall to my Axe Dread. 9-1 win for me, he got a point for his Lobbaz slogging across the board to get Linebreaker, since they literally couldn't hurt any of my stuff.

Even with his PowerFist crushed into uselessness, the Contemptor battles against the Ork Warboss

Kvedulf Ironhand avenges the Contemptor

Bjorn oversees the destruction of the last enemy from the very center of their stronghold

Round three was another odd one, against a dude who I'm pretty sure was very, very stoned, with a mostly bare-bones Ultramarine Gladius Strike Force, with the Points spent on Sicarius and an Armoured Task force instead of Special Weapons for the Tacs or Bikes. Ended up being a much closer game than I expected, because his mass Obsec let him score a lot of Maelstrom points, even tho he couldn't do much damage to me. It could have been a draw if I'd failed a 7" Charge in the last Turn, but I pulled it out. He did drag down Bjorn as well, but I still got a 9-1 win. My stock Dread finally redeemed himself, rolling something other than a 1 to Hit with his Multi-Melta for the first time of the day, and single-handedly scoring me First Blood and enough Maelstrom to win Turn 1.

The only pic I got of this Game. Behind the regular Pod is the Multi-Melta Dread, who just redeemed himself by taking out the other Vindicator

Round 4 was against a RavenWing Player who had been on the next table in Round 2, and said at the time that he thought my Army was pretty cool, and he wanted to play against it. I was worried, going into this, because his mobility could be a big advantage, but he had a ton of his Points sunk into a Command Squad and HQs, and I was able to clear out all his MSU stuff, assisted by a Sabotaged Mysterious Objective that took out a lone Attack Bike for First Blood :D We volleyed back and forth, but once I cleared out his little stuff, he pretty much couldn't score more than one Point per Turn, and I was able to pull out another 9-1 win.

I was going for that Speeder for First Blood, but couldn't quite pull it off

Kvedulf bunkers in the ruins of the building where his Pod landed. If I had remembered the re-roll on the damage chart for Venerable, it might have been enough to save him

I scored most of my VPs over here. Murderfang wasn't very happy about that, as few of them involved The Murderin'

Going in to round 5, I was honestly kind of astonished to be at 3-1. As an even better surprise, my Opponent was a guy I used to play all the time back in the 90s, who had moved away for years, and just moved back to town. Great dude, always a blast to play against, and equally surprised to be at 3-1. Unfortunately for him, his fantastic-looking Tallarn Guard also had few answers to my Dreads, and I was able to wrap it up for an 8-1 win.

Bjorn tries to wipe out the Ratlings for First Strike, but one survives. In the background, the Contemptor is barely visible securing the center of the field

The Tallarn Deployment. Unfortunately for them, they didn't advance aggressively enough, and I was able to keep them penned in

So yeah, I took a joke list, and managed to submarine my way to something like 5-6th place out of 30-ish Players over the course of a very fun, if extremely draining day. My knees are still feeling it. As a side note, there were a ton of Draws among the top players in a couple of early rounds, so the winner (Stealer Cult!) was actually 4-0-1 after beating the only 4-0 Player (Orks!!!) in Round 5.