Onyx at Adepticon!

Well I made it back from my second Adepticon adventure! This event was a bit extra in significance, since it saw me wrapping up my full year of playing Onyx in the ITS. To get ready for the event however, I needed to crank out a few more members of the army, the Sphinx for the Biotechvore Showdown, and the Obsidon Medchanoid for Highly Classified in the Joint Operations tournament.

300 Point Joint Operations ITS

The only multiple-round tournament I played in the weekend was the four-round Joint Operations event, which also included going to the Infinity seminar. I was pretty pumped for the event, though as always, cautiously optimistic. The tables had a wide variety of terrain density, some being super dense, making me glad I wasn't using my USAriadna bikes, while some others were a bit more spartan. The general feel of the tables though was pretty solid, and many were very nice looking. I snapped a quick picture of 3 of them to give an idea of what the "average" table at the event felt like for future reference (some of the few pictures I remembered to take):

Game 1 - Safe Area

My first game of the event was against Andrew Muir, a really fun player with a spectacular Haqqislam army. Our mission was Safe Area, and we took turns bashing each other. I managed to move up the right side of the board, while he moved up the left. Unfortunately, since this was the first game I played all weekend I don't have much memory of the game itself, but I really had a great time with Andrew, and we talked quite a bit about painting, specifically basing. The game ended in a 5-5 tie, and I had 284 victory points remaining to his 248.

Game 2 - Highly Classified

My second game was against Dave Nguyen, with a beautifully painted Nomad army. For Highly Classified I had taken a list that loses my beloved E-drone, but gives me the Obsidon Medchanoid, a critical model for Onyx in this scenario. Our objectives (I think) were Experimental Drug, Data Scan, HVT Inoculation, HVT Retro-Engineering, and I drew Test Run. Dave was a really fun player and had a couple nasty surprises in store for me, especially when his Intruder HMG that I totally thought was a Bandit got a triple crit against my own Rodok HMG. Most of the game was a punching match on my right-hand side of the table, though other than the Rodok, not much else died on my side. In the end though, I managed to kill all of his specialists capable of accomplishing the objectives, while I achieved every single one. 10-0 victory for the Combined with 310 victory points remaining (yay baggage)

Game 3 - Antenna Field

I had never played against Military Orders before this game (on the table with the train, in the pics above), so had little idea what to expect. We do however have a new PanO player in my local meta, so I've become more familiar with their units after looking through them all to help him. Timmoth Schmidt was running a deathstar of Joan, Gabriele de Fersen, and 3 Hospitaliers with HMG and two Doctors, the rest of his list included a couple baggage bots, a Warcor, and a pair of TO Order Sergeants. Being intimidated by the Hospitalier link, I set up heavily to take it head on with Rodoks and my hidden Noctifer Missile Launcher. Early in the game I managed to surprise his link with a missile as two models rounded a corner, taking one out. After getting rid of the BS bonus, my Rodoks were able to dissect the rest of the link as they struggled to move up the board. By my second turn it wasn't looking good for him, as I had only lost my Q-Drone, and his link was heavily damaged. Between the relentless hammering of missiles from the Noctifer, the HMGs and eventually burst-4 light shotguns, nothing was left standing at the end of Turn 2, giving me the win, 8-0 (couldn't get to 10 since it ended on turn 2), and I had 314 victory points left. I do have to say, that between the streak of bad luck and mistakes with deployment, Tim took the game very well and kept a pleasant attitude all game, he was a fantastic sport and I'm glad to have had a chance to play him (hopefully it will be a closer game next time we meet).

Game 4 - Supplies

My final game was against none other than Obadiah! Since moving away from the Bay Area, we haven't played as many games against each-other as we used to, so it was pretty great to get a chance to play him at the tournament. By this point I was sitting on two major victories and a tie, while Obi was holding two majors and a minor, we were essentially battling for second or third place at the tournament. We rolled off and I got to go first and Obi picked sides. He deployed his two powerful ARO pieces, a Gao Rael sniper and Sukeul Commando with missile launcher, both with symbio-mates, to cover a majority of the field, and during my turn 1, I was able to take them out with my Q-drone, using a combination of Assisted Fire and White-Noise, to pick them off individually, though it cost me 6 orders to accomplish. I was able to make an early gain with my Umbra Legate hacker, snagging the middle Supply Crate and running it off to safety. Obi fought hard to gain the Supply Crate to my left, but after spending a ton of orders, he was able to finally secure the crate.

The game came down to my E-drone against a Kerail with inactive Symbiont armor. The E-drone gave himself Marksmanship and started taking on the Kerail face to face, shooting as I advanced onto the objective, winning my first two face to face rolls, but he kept passing armor and ducking slightly further back, only to shoot me on each advance. With my third order, I made it into contact with the objective and shot again, I had two orders after this to grab the objective and run 16" away with it, which would make it incredibly difficult for him to secure a victory. My luck however was spent and Obi's decided to kick in, the Kerail crit my E-drone, and I had no other means to stop him from grabbing the Supply Crate.

It finished 7-3 in Obi's favor, sine I had accomplished both of my classified objectives. Obadiah killed more points than I had lost in my previous 3 games combined.

My only loss of the weekend, but an incredibly fun game, against one of my favorite opponents, so I have no complaints, and it helped propel him to third, so at least one of us took home a prize. I finished 10th place out of 42, and had a shot for second or third with that last game, so I'm pretty satisfied with my results.

Biotechvore Showdown

First of all, let me say I love this scenario! This was a single-round Showdown style tournament, meaning every single point mattered. I was facing down a Tohaa list, which was making heavy use of Symbio-mates. It was a slug fest, but it wasn't looking good for me. The terrain was deceptively open, giving the Tohaa player some amazing firing corridors that I just couldn't counter. I made a desperate gambit, getting my Sphinx far behind his lines where I could hit no fewer than 5 of his models, all of which have had their Symbio-mates stripped, and all of which were facing the wrong way. That's when he proceeded to pass every single dodge attempt, even with the -3. During his last turn his Gorgos moved in to engage the Sphinx (who had it's TO burnt off), and even with 3 free heavy flame thrower hits on Keesan, he passed every one of her saves. Today was not my day, though thanks to accomplishing my classified objectives, I again ended in a 5-5 tie.