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Thanks to Conrad, Mark and Richard for three varied and fun games.
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I used a swarm/garrison style Steel Legion list:
Reg HQ with a Hydra
Infantry Co with a Hydra & a Sniper
Infantry Co
Hydra squadron
Basilisk squadron
Deathstrike squadron
Rough Rider squadron
Storm Troopers in Valkyries
Shadowsword
Thunderbolt squadron
Thunderbolt squadron
Warhound Titan
My basic strategy with this army is to garrison four formations, overturning the slowness of the foot infantry companies and put pressure on early / act as roadbumps while the artillery does its thing, and the faster formations maneuver into position for the breakout.
Game 1 - Ground-Pounding Codex Marines style list.
The prospect of lots of Overwatch fire from my infantry companies meant that Conrad didn't choose to drop pod, and switched to ground running.
I managed to avoid the spacecraft bombardment and sniped out some of his Rhinos with artillery to slow him down.
His two Terminator formations teleported in on turn two to score some quick successes, but with so many infantry units to chew through I wore them down eventually, after which I was able to control the board enough to secure a comfortable 2-0 win.
Twice in the game I hit a Warhound with my Shadowsword to strip its shields, then retained to follow up with a single Deathstrike, killing both. Although the first Warhound required a Critical Hit to do it as I only rolled 2 points of damage from the missile.
Game 2 - Speed Freaks
This was a meatgrinder of a game.
I'd not played against Speed Freaks in probably a decade, so I wasn't immediately familiar with how to fight them. Mark played canny with his activation advantage for the first turn, moving his big hitters last so I didn't get a shot at them, so I largely played whack-a-mole with what I could see for turn 1.
I mostly held the line, only significantly losing my Reg HQ (bar the fearless commissar/Commander unit) when I doubled to attack an enemy big biker/skorcha mob at the end of turn one and fluffed my attack dice (and crumbled to an engagement retort at the start of turn 2), and a Warhound Titan.
In return, I was breaking formations or rendering them combat-ineffective (forcing a withdrawal to regroup) consistently. My Deathstrikes failed to activate at the end of turn 2, when I wanted to kill a single Nob unit with one of them. Aww.
I scored a lucky Critical on a Landa full of bikers with my CAP at the end of turn 3. Then I failed to nuke the other Landa (empty, holding an objective) when my Deathstrikes this time rolled a double 1 to activate. Naughty Deathstrike crew, go have a short conversation with the Commissar.
The dust settled with nobody holding any objectives so we went to points, which I'd won on (especially as my HQ stand rallied).
Game 3 - Krieg
Some great luck on dice, especially at 3-4 important moments, plus perhaps some sort of a plan, meant I took the Krieg apart systematically, with little difficulty. I picked corner deployment.
Highlight of the game was his last surviving Shadowsword Doubling to miss my Shadowsword (which only had a single DC remaining, so a single TK hit would have killed it), and then he retained to engage my Shadowsword with a full twenty stand infantry company with two Gorgons.
He only brought half his company into range while the rest spread out to get near some objectives. He caused 4 hits, which I promptly saved. In return the Shadowsword cause a point of damage to a Gorgon, and then won a combat resolution roll-off where his victory margin of 3 was overturned by a 6 from me and a 2 from him!
To add insult to injury, the Gorgon suffered a critical hit from the post-resolution hackdown hit, became immobilized, couldn't get outside of 15cm from me, and thus was destroyed. This was the third Gorgon to suffer this fate in our game.
With no active mainline formations following this engagement, I tried for a 4-0 but his broken HQ survived my army's attention long enough for me to run out of activations.
He had the remains of the unlucky infantry company in my table half, but it failed to rally, so it ended 3-0 to me.
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I was pretty happy with how this list style performed overall - my main worry was that it doesn't have a great deal of anti-tank firepower, but careful management of line-of-sight (and some significant degree of luck) in my third game meant I was able to overturn his advantage in number of WE's, and games 1&2 didn't involve many tough AV's.
2nd place is my best ever tournament placement, I normally bimble around the mid-table or lower.
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Tally of Deathstrike kills for the day:
Game 1 - 2x Warhounds
Game 2 - Failed to activate on turn 2 and 3. Crew sent to the wood shed.
Game 3 - 2x Shadowswords
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