In game three its Novitiates vs Legionaries
This was round three of the US Tacoma Kill Team Grand Tournament(currently 2-0.)
When I saw I was going into legionaries, I got pretty excited. While I have only played around 40 games about 10 of them have been into legionaries. It’s a team I have an extensive plan for... with back up plans... and back up to those back up plans.
For this game me and my opponent across the table Joshua were excited to be playing on table 2 of the 32 table event. I think were both ecstatic to have such a good record the first day.
This might have been the first time Joshua had faced Novitiates, so I did my best to go over all of my rules in detail hopefully in a way that was easy to understand. I try to put on my best David impression from game 2, and be as helpful as I can when explaining the insane amount of rules my team has.

Map is Junction … random can mean the same map over and over it turns out.
Mission is Capture
The novitiates bring
Reconsecrate ground
Secure vantage
Recover item


Legionary tac ops
Eliminate guards
??
??


Attacker / Defender 
decision goes me and I choose my side of the board as defender… its an oldie but a goodie at this point.

Barricades get dropped, almost exact same place as game 2, but im refining the placement ever so much to ensure I get some open lines for my flamers to dash through the center of the board if needed.



Map thoughts
This is the 4th time in two days I’m playing on this map (practice game the day before the tournament). Some people wouldn’t have liked having the same map repeatedly, but for me this was nice as other details changed around me like mission and opponent team. This left me to get to focus on barricade placement, operative activation and style of play at a competitive event. It was probably the best learning opportunity I’ve ever had as a player.


Deployment

My opponent sets up the majority of their team behind heavy terrain and one hoping for some obscuring non-reciprocal shooting. To me this looks like a passive deployment, but I know the tendency of legionaries to rush up hopping for fights turn 2.
My deployment remains very similar to my other two games at the tournament.

Scouting
I select infiltration as I'm unsure how aggressive my opponent will be, and this allows me to threaten the center of the board with my two flamers on either side of the heavy terrain on conceal.
I think My opponent selects infiltration looking for a shot if the can find one.

Turning Point One
I chuck both reconsecrate ground and recover item on the left side of the board as I see an easy way for my militant to make it to that side of the board under cover.

I make take passing turns with all of my operatives ensuring the legionaries have to remain conceal this turn. 

the anointed below in conceal, pushing to far left of the board to stop my tac op plays:
Then I take note that my opponent has placed their shrive talon on their close right side objective, behind their barricade, but the operative is not obscured from my leader. I take the chance to pop up on my vantage and make a shot. 2 AP plasma is enough to remove the operative.

But this isn’t the only shot I get off this turn. My flamer on the left side of heavy cover is able to switch to engage and take 6 wounds off of the anointed on the far left on the board.
 and the penitent removes 8 wounds from the heavy gunning running up the middle of the board with a krak grenade. My opponent isn’t running any nurgle marines so these 2 injured operatives are going to be a problem… but there's an even larger problem for my opponent at the start of the next round.
Turning Point Two
I win initiative… this doesn’t stop me from playing Defenders of the Faith to get a free shoot action on both my flamer and penitent standing on separate objectives. With initiative the flamer is able to remove  anointed then activate and take down the legionary leader to 6 wounds.
Now, my opponent is put in a brutal spot down to 4 operatives he must decide either to charge my other flamer on the right side of the board to ensure the balefire doesn’t get burned or activate the injured heavy gunner to try and remove the penitent before the charge. But the heavy gunner is now faced with 2-3 more threats that might take them out.

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A rules interaction comes up here that makes me feel pretty bad, as my opponent is not playing nurgle I forget to inform them about the ability of the condemnor I moved up aggressively turn 1. Null Rod makes it so that an operative cannot have higher than a 2 APL. This is a rarely used ability that often doesn’t come up in this match up. In this activation is means that the balefire cannot both shoot the condemnor and charge + fight my flamer on the right side of the board.
At the start of the round I let Joshua know about this ability and how its interacting with the balefire this turn. Its my first tournament and for those who have not had the chance to play 3 games back to back I cannot stress enough how hard it is to communicate all the rules of a team to an opponent that may not be aware of them.
My team just on this board alone has 11 unique abilities and actions not counting ploys, weapon profiles, weapon special rules, acts of faith and more. I struggle very much to ensure my opponent knows all the rules on the team and part of that is doing my best to mention relevant information only, because offering all of these rules is just as bad as mentioning none of them its simply too much to remember.
That said I wish I had remembered to convey this info as it changes the flow of the next activation quite a bit. A lesson well marked by myself, there is always room for improvement.
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so the balefire charges into the flamer on the left side of the board and removes it from play. ​​​​​​​
The penitent charges and kills the heavy gunner. ​​​​​​​
The injured legionary leader removes the flamer on the left side of the board.
And the penitent is removed from shooting from the third operative.
My leader is able to remove the balefire with a plasma pistol shot.
At the end of the round there are 7 sister models to 2 legionary, one being the leader left on only 6 wounds and the other being so far back on the board moving up to score will be a difficult task.

Primary goes to 4-2 for novitiates this round.

Turning Point Three and Four
Crushingly I win initiative round three and am able to bring the board state to 7 models to 1. I score max on primary and secondaries based off this early model lead.

Our game ends 23 to 10 for the novitiates.

After Action Thoughts
Popular teams like legionaries can have a hard time at tournaments. In my local meta this is probably the most common team, so I’ve had many games into this match up and have a clear plan to deal with them. Understanding what trades, I want to look for and how damage break points work gives me a large advantage, that shows up in the final score here.
I think for many teams this is why even if they are over tuned a bit, the fact that every player is aware of them makes their tournament runs harder. This also makes me very warry of teams that are popular AND often podium at events.  
Overall I end the day 3-0 and take rank 1 at the event I was pretty amazed I think along with everyone else that a novitiate player was doing so well.

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