Tournament Report: The Imperiad GT, Durham, NC Aug 26th, 27th.

Tournament Report: The Imperiad GT Durham, NC


Location: Atomic Empire Comics and Games 3700 Westgate Dr. Durham, NC 27707 http://www.atomicempire.com/index.aspx
Format: 1850 pts, 5 round GT, 28 players, 3 hour rounds. No Forgeworld, Lords of War, Unbound. Unlimited CAD, Formations.
Tournament Organizer: Dale Payne

I travelled 247 miles from my home in Waynesville, NC to Durham to play in this GT I heard about during a Forge the Narrative podcast. It would be a 3-4 hour drive for me but for a two day GT it was worth it. I got a cheap room at the Red Roof Inn just a few miles away for $57 a night. Pro Tip: When booking your rooms always try to use travel sites like Expedia and Orbitz because you can often snatch up discount rooms they have allocated with the hotel.

I arrived Friday afternoon looking for a practice game but unfortunately couldn't find one as it wasn't the normal night for 40k at AE. Lucky for me all the terrain was set up already for tomorrow's rounds and it was spectacular. Every table was themed, functional with line of sight blockers, area terrain, and most of all gorgeous. It was really impressive. There was plenty of food options with a Mexican place, a sports bar, and a fast food joint all within walking distance from the store. The store itself was very large, about half dedicated to product and the other half to gaming tables. The GT tables only took up half of the gaming space which tells you how much space they had for gaming. Most importantly they had a huge selection of beers on tap and in cans/bottles including my favorite: Oskar Blues Momma's Yella Pils on tap. Needless to say I was going to be having quite a few of those bad boys.

I was able to do quite a bit of play testing for this GT thanks to my friends at Asheville Wargamers so I had a pretty good handle on my list and thought I was prepared for a good portion of the meta. I decided to take a Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum primary CAD with Ultramarine and Inquisition Allies. My list was as follows:

Commissar Yarrick
Priest*(I will discuss this little mistake later)
Infantry Platoon with PCS 4xFlamers, 5x Infantry Squads w/5x lascannons
Vet Squad with Forward Sentries and Lascannon
Vendetta
Manticore
Wyvern
Wyvern
Ultramarine allies:
Tigerius
5x Scouts with Land Speeder Storm w/ Heavy Flamer
Devastator Centurions w/ Grav Cannons and Omni Scope.
Inquisition:
Coteaz
Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor w/ ML 1, 3x Servo Skulls, and Psyocculum*( the second part of my mistake in this list)


My list is designed to take advantage of psychic buffs Invisiblity, Prescience, and orders from Yarrick to create an extremely durable Blob that can pump out a ton of Ignores Cover firepower. It can take down wave serpents and other jinking skimmers while bubble wrapping my artillery tanks and it stands up to death stars fairly well. However it does not feature a lot of skyfire outside the vendetta and I have a lot of points sunk into psykers while only getting 6 Warp Charge a turn. On the plus side I have a ton of first turn fire power to gain First Blood and can severely outrange most armies.

The GT started at a leisurely 10:30 and with 3 hour rounds it meant we could socialize plenty and still have games finish at a natural conclusion. Dale Payne the T.O., had player packs ready made up for all attendees with copies of your army list, Mission and Score sheets, and nametags (a really nice touch). Dale was very good about keeping to the posted schedule and had a running clock highly conspicuous so you always knew how much time you had in your round. The one criticism is that your accumulated score was not easily available from round to round nor was player rankings. Dale was available to personally give you your ranking if you asked.

The Imperiad featured a mission pack that had 4 battle point missions consisting of a primary mission taken straight from the Eternal War missions in the BRB, which would net you 10 points for winning (including all secondary's and tertiary). The Secondary's and Tertiary's varied each game ranging from issuing challenges, killing units from a battlefield role, table quarters, etc. The secondary and tertiary in some instances were very detrimental to some armies (Tau issuing challenges, killing psykers in armies that don't include any, etc...) This allowed some armies to really rack up points over others depending on army composition, not a mechanic I am overly fond of. The fifth mission was a primary Malestrom of War mission taken straight out of the BRB ( It did not go well, but we'll elaborate on that later.)

The Tournament began on time and my first opponent was 6th edition staple army with some new 7th ed flair, Necron Wraithwing with CCB Lord! We'll do an in-depth batrep in the next post!