Hello again, Scott Horras “Heresy” here with another tournament report! This time I’m covering my experiences as the much-discussed Atlanta Pro TableTop Open. I’m going to deviate a little bit from our normal routine and condense my games a little bit. Partly because Pro TableTop (henceforth PTT) was an awesome event for me and I want to talk about stuff that happened outside of the game a little bit… and partly because I wasn’t totally in love with my list. Don’t worry though, I’ll still put in plenty of pretty pictures.

For this recap, I’m gonna go ahead and break it up by day. The PTT was soooooo much more than 7 games of Warhammer for me and I want to do my best to capture the atmosphere of everything that went down that weekend. PTT suffered from its fair share of interwebs bashing and drama before it fired, and… I’m gonna say this up front: It didn’t deserve it. It was a great event and I’ll be going next year.

Day 0 Mood: Tentative

Unless you’re living under a rock or you’re like… a totally normal person who doesn’t really pay attention to competitive ‘hamm slammin’ you’d know that the PTT Atlanta Open made its debut onto the ‘hamm slammin’ scene the first weekend of December. The event was preceded by unprecedented amounts of interwebs drama for a number of reasons. First there was the $5,000 prize. Why would anyone introduce real life money in our beautiful hobby of plastic army mans?!?!?!? Then there was the streaming set-up. How dare anyone stream such undoubtedly embarrassing event?!?!?! And then it was the sponsors. Event sponsors not directly related to the hobby, extremely standardized terrain, professional Warhammer players, human sacrifice, DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER… MASS HYSTERIA!!!

Okay so honestly, I hadn’t really had a ton of time to pay attention to, or participate in, the vast majority of the drama that went down before the PTT Atlanta Open. I spent the VAST majority of my hobby time getting my army ready for the event. Anything I had heard about PTT before showing up the day of the event was… largely secondhand and unfortunately, largely negative. I knew a few folks heading to the event and I wanted to hang with them, but I didn’t know if they’d be busy or have their own cliques to hang out with. I had a fellow Goonhammer author that I knew I was going to hang with (Editor’s Note: Goonhammer Contributor Axis of Entropy was also at the event), but otherwise I was largely traveling to this event without an established crew to hang out with when I arrived (TheChirurgeon’s Note: This was my experience at NOVA 2018 and it sucked ass on Day 1. Also, it’s me. I’m the editor). I didn’t feel great packing up my stuff to fly out Thursday night. I felt like I was spending a lot of money and time off traveling to an event I had only heard negative things about with an army I knew I couldn’t win with. Worst of all, I felt like I was doing it all alone.

It’s going to sound cheesy, but I’m someone who can pretty much have a good time anywhere so long as there’s some friends to hang with. Between my team and my ‘hamm slammin’ fiancée I usually have a travel partner, so these lonely feels hit me pretty hard leading up to PTT.

I got to my hotel at around 1:30 AM on Friday morning and couldn’t really get to sleep. I went over my list a few times and cracked open my copy of Cadian Honour after that. I think I finally rolled over and conked out around 3:00 AM.

The Event Format

It’s clear that PTT was interested in creating a new Grand Slam event in the vein of LVO, Adepticon, and NOVA – The event ran three days, with the first six rounds using Swiss pairings (read: Record-matching), and players then placed into single-elimination brackets on Day 3, with better records leading to placement in higher brackets.

The PTT Atlanta Open had a few unique twists on the ITC format. I didn’t really know any of these details going into the event because I hadn’t taken the time to read over the packet — which was a huge mistake. Going into the event I had incorrectly assumed that we’d be playing the basic ITC format. I was wrong.

PTT had made a number of modifications to the standard ITC packets and introduced a few nifty features like deployment style selection and slightly modified objective placement. Here’s a link to the event page if you want to check it out for yourself, but a few of the key highlights are:

All of the terrain was 100% standardized, so every single board was identical and extremely well defined

All objectives had been moved such that you could never control them from the opposite side of a terrain feature

Players negotiate their deployment style rather than randomizing them

Every mission used the Chapter Approved 2018 deployment style, i.e. entire army deployment, with the player deploying first having the first turn unless the other player could seize

The PTT Atlanta Open Table Layout

My List

I brought my brand-new Space Marines to the event. I was completely unpracticed with my list, only having managed to make it to a single 6-person RTT with it the week before to desperately try and work out some of the kinks. It wasn’t optimized, and had some glaring weaknesses like not having any board control to speak of, having a very low skill ceiling, including a Chapter Master, and not having an invulnerable save for my Repulsors. I was aware of the list’s deficiencies, but I didn’t really think I had time to adjust my painting schedule before the Atlanta Open to make anything better. Considering that it was effectively THE boogeyman Iron Hands list that got ruthlessly demolished by the FAQ on the Supplement two weeks prior to list submissions, I figured that maybe most players had moved on to consider scarier un-nerfed marine threats like Centurion-heavy builds you see running around, or much higher skill ceiling Iron Hands lists like the one Nick Nanavati ran.

Anyways. The general game plan for this list is to get 2 Repulsors and my planes, or all 3 Repulsors past turn 1 and take it from there. Obviously, all I can really try and do with this list is attempt to table my opponent or simply power wash them off of objectives on the bottom of the turn. So ideally I’m playing someone who can’t kill more than a single Repulsor on the first turn if they go first, or someone who I can sufficiently cripple in my opening salvo if I have to go first. To be honest, I’d prefer to play the games where I’m going second and not losing a whole lot of my firepower. I have almost no board control, so going second is really nice so long as I’m not losing like 600 points of my army for doing so.

This list is absolutely not a take all comers list. It’s a hard skew so be prepared to take big wins or big loses, but not much in between. Use with caution… That being said, I’ve come to love my Iron Hams

My Atlanta Open Army

Iron Hands Battallion

Primaris Chapter Master – Stalker Bolt Rifle

Primaris Librarian

Primaris Lieutenant – Stalker Bolt Rifle

5x Infiltrators (2 Squads)

5x Intercessors – Stalker Bolt Rifle

2xStormhawk Interceptor – Icarus Stormcannon, Typhoon Missile Lawn Chair

Iron Hands Spearhead

Irondaddi Guy Fierros

3xRepulsor Executioner – Heavy Laser Destroyer, Ironhail Heavy Stubber

Tactics

For each round we’ll cover the following:

The Plan – My opponent’s army, the mission, and how I aimed to play out the game and target priorities.

– My opponent’s army, the mission, and how I aimed to play out the game and target priorities. The Highlights – how the game played out at a high level

– how the game played out at a high level The Takeaways – points of interest and things I learnt from the game

Day 1 Mood: Doin’ OK

Considering that I maybe slept for… 4 hours the night before? I woke up feeling alright heading into Day 1 of ATL Open. Still feeling those worries from the night before… I pounded down some crummy hotel breakfast and headed out to arrive at Axis Replay at 8AM sharp. As soon as I walked into Axis Replay, everything I had worried about fell away.

This venue was awesome! First off, I had never been to a gaming lounge that was as clean and well furnished as Axis Replay was. I’m not going to pretend like I’m a regular at any places like that, but I don’t think I had been to a gaming lounge since I was in middle school. My impression of them was that they were super grimy and smelled like a McDonald’s ball pit. Axis Replay was totally the opposite. They had plenty of space to hang if you weren’t actively gaming, everything was clean, and I quickly learned that they had obtained an event liquor license and were serving beer all day. That settles my two largest concerns: I’ve got beer and I’ve got ‘hamms. this weekend is gonna be just fine.

To top it all off, I got some sweet swag. The standard FLG Mat used for the event and a pack of those mouse pad objective markers. I already have some from my team, but honestly… I think I like these ones better.

Round 1 – T’au

The Plan

Opponent: Allen Yepez

Modified ITC Champion’s: Scenario 1 – Seize Ground

Deployment: Dawn of War