The Road To 6-0 (Week 2-4)
Written By: Andrew Lebedin
Hello folks, and welcome back to “The Road to 6-0”!
I missed a few weeks due to some scheduling constraints, but me and my ego are back full force and swinging for an update on the past few weeks!
Since the last update, I have played 12 games of 40k, 3 of which were played at 1500 points.
Of these 12 games, 9 were wins, and 3 were losses. (Nothing like Kylee and her sisters to keep my ego in check)
Looking back, I can definitely see myself improving, even winning into matchups that I would otherwise consider to be a total loss.
I’m gonna touch on only a few of these games here, The first one being a devastating loss to Kylee and her Sisters of Battle (Huge surprise, I know)
As always, this was a fantastic game.
We played linchpin with search and destroy for deployment. Already off to a bad start, with search and destroy not providing as many opportunities to deploy my knights as I would like, I had the misfortune of rolling to go first.
Kylee took fixed bring it down and assassinate. An easy set to score into my mostly big knight list. I took tactical, as one does.
What started off as a very decent match, with me scoring a solid amount on primary during the second and third battle rounds, as well as a respectable amount of secondary, quickly made a turn for the worse, as some bad positioning and unsound tactical maneuvers left me extremely susceptible to 3 blobs of sacresants, with no real answer to the threat.
While I did get creamed, (51-89) I still managed to do better than I thought I would, and earned some valuable insights into a matchup that does not favour my knights. I have another game against Kylee in a week, where I will apply what I have learned to hopefully turn the tides.
Another notable match was Matt and his Thousand Sons. Matt is one of my teammates for WCTC, so this was valuable practice for both of us.
During this matchup, I tried to use a Cerastus Knight Castigator, which I quickly realized was SHIT after losing it on turn 2 to a very aggressive focus fire. Other than the disgusting misplay with my poor Castigator (never again) I like to think I played relatively well. I managed to keep the score pretty close, only losing with 70-81.
Another instance of me learning some valuable insights. I didn’t have anything to effectively deal with an especially scary 10 man brick of terminators, as well as all of his other stuff, so my Knights were spread relatively thin. Rather than trying to pick off the terminators, I think my resources could have been better spent playing a little more conservatively around them rather than trying to push through them. Still, a respectable loss that I can confidently say made me a better player.
These past few weeks haven’t all been doom and gloom though!
I had an especially exciting win into Curtis and his Subterranean Assault Tyranids. Curtis has been a personal “bogey man” of mine since I joined GUTI, and this was the first time I have ever faced him.
His list consisted of a lot of big monster bugs, which was great for my Atrapos and 2 Lancers. With some effective screening of my back line with 3 helverins, I was able to minimize the amount of scary bugs he was sticking in my deployment zone, forcing him to throw things into the meatgrinder, or so to speak. While I do owe a lot of my victory to some great dice rolls for myself, as well as Curtis taking fixed behind enemy lines as one of his secondaries, I still managed to pull off a 71-44 victory, which I count as a huge milestone. Being able to win into someone who I consider to be at a higher skill level than I am serves not only as a testament to my improvement, but also as a reminder that such improvement is not possible without being willing to throw myself into increasingly more difficult matchups.
Included in my handful of practice games, I traveled out to Arctic Board Games in Steinbach for a 1500 pt RTT. I took my knights solely for the purpose of getting some reps in, and had 3 fantastic games.
It was a great opportunity to meet some people who I wouldn’t have otherwise, as well as spread the good word of GUTI to all of the fine folks out there.
A special shoutout to Braden and his T’au, who put up a great fight, and our friendly banter and jokes throughout the game made me feel like I was right back at home at one of our Icehammer Throwdown RTTs, as well as a surprise matchup into one of our Winnipeg locals Josh, who continues to be the BANE-blade of my existence (and I’m not entirely sure he didn’t follow me out there)
I ended up taking home first place, best sportsman, and a ton of great memories.
I hope to end up back in Steinbach for more games very soon, and potentially even an GUTI partnered event with Arctic if all the stars align.
Overall, it’s been a busy few weeks of practicing. I can definitely feel myself improving, but as we get closer to WCTC, I realize more and more that I still have a long distance to go.
Hopefully you will all hear back from me again next week, as Sebastien has organized a practice team scrimmage for our team. I hope to take some more valuable insights as I continue on my journey on the Road to 6-0!
