Tournament Recap

This weekend, two friends and I ran a tournament at the local shop.  We were blessed to have a long lead time and a lot of publicity going in, based mostly on the fact that the owner of the store put up a pretty substantial sum for the grand prize.  You can find an independent review of the tourney here.

Overall, things went extremely well.  We had a full house of 24 people, even with a $20 entry fee.  Between that, the grand prize, and some prize support donated by some sponsors, our total prize pool broke a thousand dollars.  That allowed us to put out some substantial awards, beyond just Best General/Painted, to the point where ten different people got to walk away with something to show for their efforts.  Of course, the downside to having a full house turns out to be that the game store just barely has the space to support twelve tables.  We were pretty much bumping back sides for most of the day.

The missions we ran were a variation of standard book missions.  We ran, in order, Big Guns Never Tire, The Scouring, and The Emperor's Will, all with slight variations.  Every mission included a Kill Point component added in, however, there was a cap to the number of points available depending on the mission.  Big Guns was fixed at four objectives.  Beyond that, it was fairly straightforward.  The second mission, The Scouring, saw more changes implemented.  Rather than random values, we went for a pair of four pointers, with four more two pointers.  That fixed my biggest gripe with the design of the mission. Finally, for The Emperor's Will, we doubled the value of the objectives.

This all seemed fairly simple to us, however, we ran into a pretty common problem for TO's.  No one read the $%&# missions.  Somehow, despite me explaining it to what felt like every table in the first round, I was still explaining how to score the mission in the third.  I have been in tournaments where the mission packet gives a whole page of instructions to a single mission.  In this case, there was never more than a paragraph.  So, as always, simpler is always better for players.  The one thing that keeps getting pounded into my head from tournament to tournament is that most people won't take the extra time to digest the words you write down.  Make it as simple as possible.

It's always interesting to look at a tournament and try to understand why people chose to take certain things like armies, units, etc... According to the web, only certain things are "good."  Yet, I can't remember a single codex being extremely well represented.  Looking back at my notes, there still isn't anything that makes an impression.  There are a dash of Space Marines, a pair of Necrons, some Imperial Guard.  The IG also showed up as allies in a number of forces, but not in more than two or three armies.  Really, the only thing that was common was the Aegis Defense Line, which was pretty much ubiquitous as a fixture throughout the top tables.

The armies that ended up on tables included Sisters of Battle, which ended up taking Best General, plus Chaos Marines and Space Marines, all of which went undefeated.  On those very same tables were Black Templars, Space Wolves, and Tyranids.  So, not much of a consistent thread there.  I chalk that up to a couple things.  First, a high percentage of the guys were just locals who showed up with their favorite things.  Second, the top players were top players.  Apparently, we had four of the top ten players in the country as per one of the national rankings sites.  A lot of them really seemed to want to win with something that would be a challenge, which led to armies that I would consider unique.

The Sisters absolutely brought the thunder, tabling all three of their opponents.  It turns out rending Heavy Bolters are nasty.  Who knew?   The Black Templars player ended up taking Best Overall.  Despite the one loss, he scored a ton of battle points, had the second highest paint score, and maxed out his sportsmanship.  He ended up with a score just two-tenths of a point higher overall then the undefeated Space Marines player.  Adding in the results after the final round was about as crazy as Excel can get. 

Overall, it was a great tournament.  Everybody had mostly good things to say, and I think everyone had a good time.  I know I did and would love to continue running tournaments given the chance.

Tournament Missions and Recap

Setting up for round one

This weekend, one of my buddies and I had the opportunity to run our first sixth edition tournament for 40K.  We had seventeen players, which is three less than our max capacity, so almost a full house.  Things seemed to go really well.  I say that because nearly every one of the players came up to me during or after the tournament and said things went really well.  A portion of that may simply be that we provided a reason to play games for eight hours, and who doesn't love that?  But we also had no real logistical issues, managed to produce pretty clear winners, and were able to answer all the rules queries with pretty minimal fuss.

We opened the day with Crusade (Seize Ground) and Dawn of War (Pitched Battle) as the mission and deployment type.  We figured this would make for a pretty easy first mission for the day.  Everybody has seen it before.  Everyone knows what to expect.  Theoretically, no rules questions to speak of.  It's also a good way to ensure that everyone has a chance to score an equal number of points, since we preset the number of objectives at five.  We were operating on wins to determine the Best General award, but because of the number of players, it was likely we would need victory points as a tie breaker.  This is what eventually pushed us away from using Purge the Alien (Killpoints) since second round match-ups would favor those that scored more victory points.

Tau and CSM:  Surprisingly well represented

Round two pitted the high and low seeded winners against each other with Big Guns Never Tire and Vanguard Strike as mission and deployment type.  Again, we preset the objectives, this time at four.  This allowed for a little more variance in score, as Heavy Support choices gave away victory points, but the window for variation was only three points.  Things actually played out very cleanly for us, with one tie amongst the initial winners.  This ensured only four undefeateds going into the final round.  Even better, two of the players had a significant edge in battle points.  This was significant as they would be paired against each other for the title, barring a draw.

Our final mission was The Relic with Hammer and Anvil as deployment type.  We had judged this mission to be the most likely to produce a winner, while agreeing that we didn't want last editions "roll dice and tie" or The Scouring (because that most definitely is the worst designed mission, whether playing competitively or otherwise).  You may note that there are only six points available in this mission.  That was also an intentional decision.  The hope was that most of the points for establishing yourself as the top contender needed to be earned in rounds 1 and 2, while round 3 would be focused solely on winning.  Additionally, it meant that tanking your score to get an easier round three opponent was mighty risky.  Because of this, we felt like we could pair the best players of the day against each other with everything riding on just that one game.  Again, things turned out how we hoped, with one of the top table contenders winning his mission going away. 

Wolf on Wolf action.  Those on the left would take best painted.

At the end of the day, Tyranids (Tervigons and Gaunts) ended up beating Dark Eldar (hybrid gunline/Wyches) on the final table for the top spot.  It seemed to come down mostly to a few rolls, but that's how it goes in a dice game.  Chaos Space Marines also managed to go 3-0 with an interesting monster mash list, outlasting Eldrad with Eldar.  The Chaos Marine army won best overall, with some fantastic conversion work and paint. 

Interestingly, the field was incredibly diverse.  Seventeen players showed up with twelve different armies.  Miracle of all miracles, none of them were Grey Knights.  The most represented army was Tau (3), followed by Chaos Marines (2), Blood Angels (2), and Space Wolves (2).  Not counting Deathwing, only seven of the entrants were power armored armies.

Maybe interestingly, we tracked First Blood victory points against first turn.  The results may not be what you might have thought.  Out of eighteen games (we counted the first two rounds), ten of them resulted in the player with first turn getting first blood, and that figure includes a couple games where it was not earned on the first turn.  That is a majority, but hardly the runaway number some may have expected.  Granted, I would not consider this population normal, so I hesitate to say we've achieved a statistically significant figure, but it could be interesting if you're a stats nerd.

More pictures and such to come...

Tournament! Part Deux

The Tau, who won best painted.

Round two, thankfully, did not begin with a bang.  I was playing a Tau list with two Shas'o, alongside some Crisis Suits, Broadsides, a Skyray, and a few other things.  I won the roll for first turn and immediately painted a big, fat target on the Broadsides.  It was always going to be a matter of whether or not I could get into his lines fast enough, and their railguns were the biggest threat to knocking out my Land Raider at any kind of range.  My meltas only managed to get one because of the cover they were sheltering in, but that turned out to be enough, as my Raider survived to turn two and delivered Logan into the Crisis suits. 

From that point, it was mostly academic.  There were a few highlights though, mostly involving the apparently ultra-resilient Skyray.  By turn four, it was the only thing left on the board.  We ended up going to turn seven because I couldn't kill it.  My Land Raider shot at it from turn three onwards and failed to even score the paint.  Despite roughly 15 hits from the assault cannon, I failed to roll a six to get a penetrating hit.  The multimelta fired at it four times and when it did hit, I rolled a three each time.  In the final turn, I even charged my Wolf Lord in on the final turn.  Did he have flechette discharges?  Yes.  Did they wound?  Yup.  Did I fail my 2+ save on my final wound?  Darn right I did.  For some reason, I don't think that will be written on his saga.

The game ended and scored me all three points.  That put me on the second table, matched up against Eldar.  This list was interesting because it included a squadron of Hornets, a Forge World unit.  Apparently, they're toting two pulse lasers apiece, meaning 12 strength 8, AP 2 shots per turn.  Just as in the game before, they got a big target painted right on them.  It turned out pretty well, as I got the first turn again, dropping in the Terminator pod and immediately blowing up two of them.  The assault cannons also found their range, knocking out two of three War Walkers.  This was a pretty devastating blow, as it knocked out almost the entirety of his weapons that would deny me saves or could seriously threaten my Land Raider.

Bridge over the river Sludge?

My turn two was equally productive.  He tried to block my path across one of the board's bridges with a Wave Serpent, but the Raider's firepower downed it and exposed the Dire Avengers inside to the Thunderwolves charge.   Over the next two turn's the Wolves ate that squad and another Dire Avenger squad, while the drop Terminators punched the last Hornet to death, and the back line Terminators shot down the last War Walker.  With all that damage, my opponent decided to concede.  While he might have been able to deny me an objective or two, I don't really blame him for his decision, as getting any result other than 3-0 was improbable. 


With eight of a possible nine points, I was in the running for Best General.  The top table was a Dark Eldar vs. Grey Knights match-up.  On turns five and six, it was 1-0, but unfortunately, on turn seven, the Knights finished off the last of the Dark Eldar, putting the Knights player on nine points and bumping me to second.  That was disappointing, but I felt a lot better when I found out that I had won Best Sportsman.  It's important to me that my opponent's enjoy their games, and if they can do so even in a competitive environment with me going as hard as I can, then mission accomplished.  Going into the tourney, my goal was to finish in the top three in every category.  Once I find out my paint score, I'll know if it's mission accomplished. 

As a bonus, here are a few shots of some of the other armies on the field.

The aforementioned top table Dark Eldar.

The eventual overall winner.  Gorgeous army.

The Best General Grey Knights.

Tournament!

Saturday, At Ease Games held a 2000 point tournament.  Obviously, I mention this because I was in attendance. 

After playing so many games at 1850 points, the extra 150 felt a little weird when I was trying to come up with a list.  I had just finished the Land Raider, so that had to be part of the list.  That meant Logan wouldn't be coming out of a pod, so I dropped two of them, plus a Lone Wolf and Dreadnought.  That meant I had points for a Thunderwolf to provide a running mate for the Thunderwolf Lord, providing him with just a little more protection and squeezing a strength ten Power Fist into a very fast unit. 

It really doesn't look like much at first.  And then it punches you in the face.

Going into the tournament, the thing I was most worried about was my general lack of experience with the list.  I've been playing my castling drop pods list for quite a while, and this was a pretty big departure.  I thought the theory was sound.  I wanted to alpha strike something significant with the drop pod, while the Thunderwolves and Land Raider raced forward to provide support.  It's always nice to have a theory, but putting it into practice can be interesting.

The missions were Bay Area Open style, meaning we'd be playing Seize Ground, Capture and Control, and Killpoints every game, with whoever fulfilled the most of these claiming the win.  After giving these a run, I have to say it's not incredible, but definitely plays pretty simply.  I guess my biggest gripe would be that it's not the most interesting way to play over the course of three games.  At the same time, not having to read the mission pack intently before every game to determine exactly what I need to do, then think through how to accomplish it while trying to deploy, is a big positive.

Evil St. Celestine

For my first game, I drew my favorite opponent, Chaos Daemons.  It was the same opponent as my first league game, though he was running a pretty different list.  Essentially, he tried to squeeze a bunch of Pavane's of Slaanesh on a Keeper of Secrets and three Daemon Princes into a list with a couple units of Flamers, plus some Horrors and Bloodletters.

He won the initial roll for turn order and elected for me to go first.  I dropped my Terminator pod deep in his end to put pressure on his Capture and Control objective.  My intent was to force him to defend that end with some of his heavy hitters, because most of the Seize Ground objectives were in my end.  If he didn't respond with enough resources, he'd be conceding one of the three win conditions and I liked my chances.  He ended up dropping all three units of Horrors nearby to try and shoot the Terminators to death.  Twenty straight saves later, I think he knew he was in trouble. 

I assaulted two of the units and did enough damage over two turns to kill all of them, then wiped out the third in the following turn.  At the same time, his Bloodletters came in on my end.  I put all my shooting into them, then charged in my Thunderwolves.  I cut them down to three, but they put three wounds on my regular Thunderwolf and he failed two saves, which really hurt.  He piled in with his Keeper of Secrets and finished off the Lord.  In the following turn, I had a choice to finish the Bloodletters or shoot the Flamers.  Despite the Flamer's potential damage output, I targeted the Bloodletters so I could pick up another killpoint and wipe out his last troop choice.  This ended up really costing me because the Masque and the Keeper of Secrets funneled two of my terminator units into one cone of death with the Pavane and Flamers put so many wounds on the terminators with Breath of Chaos, that it left just the Rune Priest and one Assault Cannon alive. 

What would turn out to be the deciding objective marker

As the game wound down, Logan and his bodyguard finally got involved killing a Daemon Prince and a unit of Flamers, putting me up by two killpoints.  On the final turn, the Keeper charged Logan's unit, while one of his Daemon Princes charged my immobilized Land Raider.  The Keeper put all his attacks on Logan and just barely managed to kill him, while my unit swung back and couldn't quite finish the job.  Then his Prince swung at my tank with the game on the line and managed to whiff three times out of five and failed to do anything significant on the damage rolls.  

We counted up the killpoints twice, but I had one more, and I also had my drop Terminators on a capture and control objective, netting me the win, 2-0.  I drew a Tau player next, which I'll cover in depth with my next post...

DUNDRACON!

Road tripping all the way to the bay area and back in less than 48 hours means about 16 hours of total time in the car. 

Totally worth it.

I drove up with some friends who had committed to helping run the 40K tournament.  They were asked to do some of the judging and to help make sure things ran smoothly.  They asked if I wanted to come along, and while I hesitated at first, I'm glad I did.  Geoff, who ran the tournament, did a great job.  Rounds started on time.  The missions and explanations were clear.  Everything just seemed like it came off with zero hitches without too much fuss, which can certainly be a lot harder than it seems.

Nice venue and definitely an interesting Con

In round one, I got paired against Nick who was playing a Daemons army.  The mission had three objectives with one in the middle and one in the center of each deployment zone.  They were weighted so that the objective in your opponents end was worth three, the one in the center was two, and your ends was worth one.  We had a pretty close game, but a few mistakes and few lucky breaks ended up deciding things.  I cast Murderous Hurricane on the wrong unit of Fiends.  He managed to immobilize my Dreadnought, which would have tied up his Bloodletters in the next turn.  I didn't support some of my units enough.  I whiffed a lot with my Thunderwolf Lord and had a few rough turns of saves.  In the end, he held the center and my end, while I was on his end's objective, but it was contested by the second Great Unclean One who had decided to wander over there.  Logan did manage to handle the first one which was pretty awesome.

I hate Daemons so much!

Game two was against Mark and his Eldar army.  The mission was kill points, but added a number of bonus kill points for killing things like tanks and HQ's.  Unfortunately, this meant that my list jumped from thirteen kill points to twenty one.  This weakness came to the fore by the end of his second turn, when two fire prisms and Eldrad's ten man wraithguard unit opened up on the squad with the Rune Priest and Wolf Priest and he picked up a quick seven kill points.  Just like that, I knew I pretty much had to table him to win.  The Thunderwolf Lord went into the Wraithguard by himself.  Logan's unit was just out of range and got counter-charged by Asurmen and a squad of Dire Avengers after eating a full turn of fire.  Logan and the Thunderwolf went to work, while the remaining storm shields tried really hard to just not die.  Eventually, Asurmen would finally make it to Logan, who was on his last wound, but by that time the Lone Wolf had arrived and he doubled out the Phoenix Lord.  Meanwhile, once Eldrad and the warlock went down, the Wraithguard dropped pretty quickly.  I did end up tabling him, but Mark was a lot of fun to play and he had a great attitude whichever way things were going.

The final game of the afternoon was against Jon and his Blood Angels with multiple win conditions.  I lost Logan early, and things were looking pretty grim.  He fulfilled the kill point portion of the win condition early by nuking drop pods and independent characters, then had his scouts show up in my table quarter to further complicate things.  The game turned when the Thunderwolf Lord made a pair of Belt of Russ saves and killed Mephiston.  He then assaulted a pair of assault squads that had teamed up with a Furioso Dreadnought to whittle one squad down to a single Wolf Priest.  The Lord went crazy, killing seven marines.  Both squads failed morale and the still intact squad fell all the way back off the table.  That swung the game.  I still needed until turn six and some good shooting to pull off the win, but I did it.

So 2-1 for my first tournament of the year.  I had a great time.  I played well.  You can't really ask for much more.

Hobby Accomplishments!
-Won tournament games!  Finished in the top half. 
-Finished the menhir and a Daemon Prince.  Did some work on the Land Raider.
-Mocked up Space Hulk bases.

Hobby Goals
-Finish all the red on the Land Raider.
-Varnish the Daemon Prince and the Menhir.
-Do some work on the Vargheists.

40K Tournament Review

Despite the premonitions of doom, I managed to run what I would consider to be a pretty successful tournament.

Initially, we had 10 sign-ups, but one dropped out. It’s honestly pretty good to get 5 tables filled up at the FLGS. Fantasy has a bit of a critical mass, so while we have a lot of people that enjoy playing 40K, it’s just easier to get Fantasy games. It was nice to see that when they got a chance to break out the round bases, the guys responded.

Things kicked off at the crack of 11 and managed to stay pretty much on time throughout the day. We had a pretty interesting distribution of armies. Players brought two Guard, one Blood Angel, one Ork, one Tyranid, one Chaos Marine, and three Daemon armies. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what the metagame looks like at the uber-competitive events. It did make for some unique match-ups though.

Missions were intended to be fairly simple, with the primary win conditions being the same or similar to standard 5^th edition missions. Secondary win conditions were somewhat similar to old-school 3^rd edition missions, but with a more comparative element intended to break ties and ensure that even if a player was losing, they’d be scoring something. I think that was successful, as none of the 15 games had to go to victory points to determine a winner.

The missions can be summarized this way:

Round 1, Primary: 4 Objectives. Secondary: Get units to the opponents deployment zone

Round 2, Primary: Kill Points. Secondary: Rescue (I.e. find the secret number and carry it to your end)

Round 3, Primary: 2 major objectives, 4 minor objectives. Secondary: Victory points with bonuses

Because of the tournament length and the number of players, we had two players, one of the IG’s and the Nids player, go undefeated. The Nids managed to get the edge in battle points. Chaos Marines finished third.

As I said, we had nine players come to play. I had made a few inquiries about finding a ringer, but no one could commit to playing all day. I asked a couple other guys that came to hang out if they wanted to play a game, but no one brought an army. That meant that I ended up having to both play a game in the tournament and try to answer questions. Thankfully, my first two rounds were matches against guys that I’ve played before and have been playing the game for quite some time. On the other hand, I’m getting ready to move soon, so the only army I have available for play is my all Terminator army, which, while not the most competitive, is still difficult for some armies to handle, no matter how inefficiently it gets built.

There weren’t a lot of rules questions. Honestly the most frequently asked question was, “Is there random game length?” There was also confusion when scoring mission 3. People tended to not look at the bonuses and just score straight VP’s. Though it might just have been because it was the end of the day, I probably need to do a better job of outlining things like that in the packet. I also want to use scoresheets next time, which I think will help simplify things.

Other than that, I really think things went well, and honestly, I am looking forward to the opportunity to run something again.

Additionally, thanks are due to one of the local guys for taking all the pictures.

40K Tournament Prep

I'm running a tournament on Saturday. Things are pretty much set. I have all the missions written, I have objectives, and I have enough players. I'm still very nervous. This is gonna be the first time I try running something like this, and while I know the guys and plenty of them have experience running tournaments, I still imagine things going so badly that the building somehow burns down and it's my fault. Hopefully things go well, and if not, well, I'm headed across the country in a month.

I got in a game on Tuesday. I played a Meeting Engagement against a Beastmen Doombull bus with a big Minotaur unit. To say the game was going to lack subtlety is an understatement. We deployed a little over the 12" apart. He had 3 units, including the Minotaurs with a Doombull and 2 Gorebulls, plus two units of Gors and a level 4 Shaman. Essentially that amounts to about 1500 points in the big deathstar, meaning that if I get that unit, I win. He went after one of my units with his big scary one, smashed it, but didn't go far enough to get out of my counter-charge arcs. I hit his flanks with 10 knights, a Lord, and about 20 Halberdiers. I lost a lot of guys from the Warrior unit, but the knights cleaned up and with a ranked unit of heavy cav in the flank, he was disrupted, so he wasn't steadfast, and at that point, the game was pretty much over. I still don't understand the Deathstar philosophy. I really believe that you need enough units on the board to be able to exercise a measure of control over it. I can see the value of points denial, but I really think over the course of a game, it's not that hard to get the whole thing if you have the counter for it.

Hobby Update

It’s been an interesting couple weeks as far as my hobby. To begin with, I am closing the gap on finishing the Wargs. I know I’ve talked about them getting done, but I’m down to the last one, so hopefully the next post is the full unit, painted and photographed in whatever makeshift light box I spontaneously assemble.

I also randomly participated in my local ‘Ard Boyz tournament. I showed up at my FLGS hoping there would be an extra random table open and one or two other Fantasy guys would show up. Well, it worked out better than expected. Due to a lack of publicity/local interest/whatever, two other people showed up for the tourney. I threw my own hat in the ring, figuring I wouldn’t mind partaking in the prize support. I took the first round bye, since only one fantasy guy showed up. I wanted to make sure he got a game in, though I forgot to print out a list, so I ran one of the older lists that I’m now less than fond of. When I matched that up against Dwarfs, albeit not even the nastiest of lists, it didn’t end up spelling much of a game for him unfortunately.

Rolling back to 40K, I ended up with sixty bucks in prize support which I promptly spent on an entirely different system. Actually, I spent it on one fantasy system to convert and play with a different fantasy system if you want to be really technical. I have thought about converting a Fell Beast into a Chaos Dragon for a while now. The model comes with two heads, so with a little bit of green stuff work and some extra bits, I thought I could turn out something reasonably impressive. The other options were the new Dark Elf Dragon or the Chaos Manticore, but they didn’t have the latter, and the former is sweet, but I can probably talk myself into getting it later, plus it wouldn’t dare to try and convert a second head.

So this is how it turned out:

I greenstuffed the second neck underneath the first so I could pin one in the normal position, then pin the other to the first and to the body. Then I filled in around it.

I got a chain from Michael’s to wrap around the neck. This will provide a place for a pendant of some kind for a visual focal point, while also covering some of the larger greenstuff patches.

I did my standard scenic base with the flying stand, but I flipped the stand upside down, sawed off the tip and replaced it with a magnet to make transport not just easier, but plausible.

Hobby Goals

-One last Warg

-Continue reading Caledor

-Resume work on the second Drop Pod

-Prime the Blood Wing Land Raider

Hobby Progress

-Finished most of the Wargs

-Bothered showing up at the local 'Ard Boyz and got a prize for it

-Converted a Nazgul on a Winged Fellbeast into a Chaos Dragon

Tournament Post #2, Gaming Side

For the weeks leading up over the tournament, I had spent a decent portion of my unengaged free time thinking about what I was going to bring to the tournament. I wouldn’t say agonizing because I was on vacation for a bit and I spend about two hours a day commuting. I had a lot of time that I could have been thinking about lists because it was just the easiest thing to do. I thought about running a pretty hefty cavalry block, because they really scare folks, but I decided I wanted more board control. I sacrificed half the unit, dropped the champion and switched their role over to monster hunting. I ended up with a list that looks like this:

Chaos Lord of Khorne, Sword of Swift Slaying, Charmed Shield, Favour of the Gods, Talisman of Preservation

Exalted Battle Standard Bearer of Khorne, Necrotic Phylactery, Shield

Sorcerer of Tzeentch on Disc, Level 2, Third Eye, Infernal Puppet, Talisman of Protection

18 Warriors of Khorne, Halberds, Standard of Discipline, Musician

24 Warriors of Khorne, Extra Hand Weapons, Full Command, Razor Standard

5 Knights of Khorne, Flaming Banner, Musician

6 Trolls

Chariot of Khorne

Warshrine of Khorne

Scyla Afingrim

Nothing on the list outside of the infantry blocks and the characters are so expensive that I would really mind losing it. The knights and the Trolls are getting close to there, but not quite. I would also always hesitate to take a frenzied chariot. Nine times out of ten, I’d say it’s a bad idea because it’s so limited in where it can go and it was one bad roll from costing me in that regard, but I really got tempted by the 10 attacks it puts out per turn outside of any impact hits.

Strategically, the list is pretty straightforward. The infantry blocks try to dominate the center of the board, which will usually be achievable for them. The trolls and the warshrine take positions in the line next to the general’s block. The knights and chariot are set up on either flank. They can usually deal with anything that gets put out there, and they act as a pretty nasty pincer if my opponent castles up. Scyla is usually one of the last pieces deployed. He gets stacked up as the bait, or alternatively to hold up something nasty.

In game one, I was matched up against Tomb Kings. I had played them once before, so I had a general idea of how the book worked. I liked my chances, if I could just get past the chariots and Tomb Guard. Scyla bounded forwards, angled in front of the chariots and forcing a decision. If my opponent charged Scyla, he’d end up trapped between the trolls and knights. If not, he’d get boxed in to his deployment zone. He charged and accepted Scyla’s challenge with his Tomb King. Even with impact hits, it took two rounds of combat to kill Scyla, who rolled a pair of sixes for his attacks and managed to take the Tomb King with him. The knights and the Trolls also arrived in that time, and that was just too much to stand up to. On the opposite flank, a failed charge on my sorcerer exposed his cavalry’s flank to my chariot. From there, the tide of battle kept going my way, as the Warriors did what they do best in the centre. Turn six came around and I moved various units onto objectives and picked up a full twenty battle points.

This landed me on the top table, which was both a blessing and a curse, because it was right next to the wall that butts up against the restaurant next door’s kitchen. I also got stacked up against Chaos Dwarfs, which is definitely a match-up that I don’t like. My opponent had two cannons, 3 blocks of Dwarfs with blunderbusses, a Colossus, Obsidian Guard, and a level four wizard with Shadow. I usually prefer to dance around a little and try setting up a favorable match up, but between him being able to lower my toughness and a barrage of Earthshaker shells, I decided to sprint across the field and take what I could get. My right flank was denied by the Colossus and I knew it would take some time for the knights to get past it. I thought I’d try to take a few wounds off of it, so my sorcerer cast Infernal Gateway on turn two. Naturally, I rolled double sixes for the strength, sucking the monster into the warp, and suddenly the flank was wide open. It was one of the more memorable moments of the tournament, but I do hate to see how disheartening that can be. To my opponent’s credit, he looked on the bright side and proceeded to snipe my wizard with his bolt thrower the next turn. He blocked off my infantry with two hobgoblin meat shields, meaning I was grinding my way through about a hundred victory points with my two hardest hitting units. He ended up getting my trolls and my chariot, but not before they had run off the Obsidian Guard. I ended up taking the game 17-3 and stayed at the top table.

My last game was against something of an MSU High Elf army with a big block of White Lions and Korhil, plus three mages. He had way more units to deploy than me, so his Sea Guard with the Flaming Banner got to deploy opposite my trolls, which pretty much doomed them from the start. Both they and the chariot, which charged the Swordmasters, ended up surviving longer than expected, which gave me the opportunity to get my Warriors into his softer archers and spearmen. Scyla apparently hates chariots, because he had two rounds of combat in which he managed to roll sixes again, smashing it to pieces. The biggest surprise of the game was my opponent’s inability to get spells off. I shrugged off a magic missile, and let a couple ward saves go up, but he either failed to cast Dwellers below, or I dispelled it. The match was eventually decided when my Warriors with extra hand weapons charged his White Lions. Their massive strength and re-rolls to hit meant they were chopping down a bunch of my guys, but my weight of attacks meant I was going through his even faster. He fled in his turn, the top of six, which allowed me to complete a charge and wipe them out as the game was ending. The game went to me 14-4.

In all, I had a great time. I think I played really well almost the entire time, with only a few mistakes. My dice were probably pretty close to average, with some timely rolling at memorable moments, and a few whiffs that could have been. I’m looking forward to the next opportunity I have to do this.

I’d also like to say thanks to the guys that said they were following my preparation. It encouraged me a lot to try and get better at this.

Tournament Post #1, Hobby Side

Saturday saw the occurrence of the aforementioned tournament. To say that it went well would be an understatement, and a significant one at that. My goal going in had been to win at least one game, have fun, and at least get a little consideration for player’s choice. I will be a little more optimistic heading into the next tournament I attend.

After three good games, the dust settled and I had managed to go undefeated. We’re still awaiting the final posting in terms of battle points, so I don’t know if I finished with the highest score, but if I did, that’s just extra gravy on an already awesome day. I also got a vote for player’s choice and a lot of praise for my work, so my ego is reaching a size where it has to cannibalize itself to survive.

I am really happy with the way my army turned out. I am a very slow painter, but I really feel like the tournament deadline helped me push myself to get things done. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience, but I don’t think that I’ll try to repeat it. The Warriors were getting done at a decent rate, by my standards at least. They weren’t anything incredibly intricate, but they’re the older kit, which didn’t have a lot of options as far as intricacy. Additionally, I decided I wanted to run the unit with extra hand weapons as a six wide by four deep block, which meant painting four more Warriors than I had originally intended. I didn’t really have the time, energy, or appropriate models for this, so I looked around at what was sitting around in my collection, grabbed a Bloodcrusher Juggernaut, and ended up with a pretty cool looking unit filler. This was the state they were in on Wednesday night:

Once the infantry were done, it was time to start working on the Wargs and the other peripheral units. The Warshirne was by far the easiest. I had an old corpse cart hanging out, and I had planned to put a charioteer with a whip in place of the necromancer. The feet were incorrectly positioned though, so I gave the necromancer a quick three shades of blood red on his outside cloak and swapped the zombies that I never liked out for some horses. I had some of the old chariots, but they had mostly fallen apart due to the incredibly poor basing system for chariots in the late 90’s. A little glue saw the model put back together, and I cut a new base using the spare parts from a movement tray.

At this point on Thursday night, I knew I wasn’t going to finish the job, so I chose to concentrate on the sorcerer. I wanted to keep him close to the overall color scheme of the army, but need some way to differentiate between his patronage to Tzeentch and the rest of the army’s loyalty to Khorne. The bloodletter mounted on him was going to provide plenty of the base blood red/chaos black/tin bitz colors, so I went with a pair of purples for his tunic and cloak. The Warlock Purple is straying towards warmer colors, and I think it does a nice job linking that part of the scheme to the cooler Liche Purple. I also used Chainmail on his armor, which in it of itself is not a shocking choice, but I’ve purposely avoided it throughout the rest of the force. I think individually it’s unnoticeable, but in the overall presentation of the force, it’s a small detail that subtly distinguishes him as different.

After a pretty bad SNAFU with the marble company, my marble didn’t ship until Wednesday night, so I was really sweating it out. Thankfully, it arrived Friday afternoon, so once I hit the door, I got to work basing. Doing the 25mm bases has never been easier. I’d glue down a section of tile, then paint the sides liberally with Scorched Brown. This contributes to the look of grout filling in the space between the bases as if it were a real temple. If I had left it unfinished or gone with black, I think it would have been a distraction from the base and the model. Both would have looked sloppy and hastily done. I also had to make some decisions on larger bases. The chariot sized bases and the 40mm squares actually had gaps between them on the bases themselves. I could have just painted them in, but instead I filled them with hard drying foam. It took a little while to set, but when it did, I just painted over it and I essentially had grout in between tiles. While it wasn’t necessarily the neatest job, it was relatively painless and unless you get close you can’t tell the difference.

Unfortunately, this work contributed to the demise of the Wargs and not being able to finish them. I got one done, but decided to go to bed around 4 a.m. I thought I’d get up at six. I was wrong. Nine o’clock rolled around and I had to scramble to find a tray. Then I drove as smoothly as possible to the game store. This involved making early decisions on running yellow lights and hoping so desperately that all the upraised metal bits directly behind my seat would not become projectiles in the case of a 65 mile per hour accident. I made it just fine, grabbed my table assignment, and things kicked off at 11:30.

That’s pretty much the extent of my hobby half of the tournament. I’ll delve into the game side of things tomorrow most likely. In the meantime, I want to thank Rush over at Warpstone Pile for putting on the tournament. He did a heck of a job. Things went smoothly and it seemed like everyone had a good time, mostly because everyone was talking about what a good time they had. Pairings were made quickly and adjusted so everyone go three games against different opponents, while still holding to the NOVA Open system that people are trying to prep for. So yeah, thanks Rush.

Tournament Prep Update

A quick update. I've finished 3 of the halberdiers, with some details on two to go, so that unit is almost done. It's a really slow pace, but I'm a really slow painter. I also justify it because I received the last bits of my army in the mail Wednesday, so naturally, I spent that night converting the 3 new Wargs and the Sorcerer. The Wargs only come in 3 poses, but with a few simple clips, you can swap out some of the weapons and heads and it at least makes you look twice before you declare them too monoposed. I like the way the sorcerer conversion came out. It was largely what I had pictured in my head, though I still need to iron out some details with the collar. Pics will follow soon.

Can I finish in time? Maybe. I need to finish the last two halberdiers Sunday night when I get back from my trip, then do the berzerkers on Monday, Tuesday, and into Wednesday. That leaves me some of Wednesday and Thursday for the Wargs and Friday for the sorcerer. If that happens, I can walk into the Tournament with a fully painted army.

The last hiccup beyond that, though, is the distinct possibility that the last of the marble doesn't show up in time. It's been ordered and has shipped, but it could arrive between Tuesday and Saturday, and if it's the latter, I'll be a sad panda. Oh well. I have to focus on what I can control.