Saturday, I brought my updated list to an RTT in Phoenixville at Palladium Games. To start: great venue, and even better players.

My list faired well, despite going 1 and 2. I won my first game against Eldar. Be’lakor annihilated a Wraith Knight turn 1, and the keepers kept up the pressure for the entire game. It was an unfortunate matchup for the space elves, but fun for both players nonetheless (85-35).

Game 2 I played the eventual tournament winner. His Grey Knights were a tough match for my list, and he won 62 to 30. The game felt closer than that, and a lot of the swing was the GK specific daemon secondary which was a guaranteed 15 points, and my mistake in not putting more units to grab the middle objective (the LoC was stuck in combat with one of the big GK dreadnoughts, but couldn’t kill it). I don’t think the game would have ended in any circumstances in my favor, but I was still in it despite GK being a codex army.

Game 3 I ran into another codex army: Deathguard. The list was beautiful, and the army was played to near perfection (if not perfection). Even still, I had a great turn 1 to start the game and was in position to win it, except I didn’t. I made some serious errors including skipping an entire psychic phase, and forgetting to cast fight again in the preceding phase. I also kept forgetting the extra mortal wounds my KoS do in combat. It mattered a lot. The game ended 70-62.

Lessons learned: The biggest was a reminder to take care of myself. I snacked all morning and ate a light lunch between the 1st and 2nd rounds. That was it. I forgot to snack, and I believe it contributed to my lack of focus in game 3. It was a really tough match, and I needed to be focused and not make any mistakes. Unfortunately, I failed in that. It was fun anyway, and a great reminder. I did tweak my list afterwards to continue to fine tune it. I’ll keep you posted on the changes and how I feel that will impact my future games.