Empire in Flames (Results/ Thoughts/ Photos)

Well I just got back from the Fantasy half of the Melbourne in Flames tourney. Run by kick ass painter and general, Chris Cousins, on a tight time frame and with pro ease. The event ran smoothly and was held in very nice digs. It was run at the Realm of Legends shop/bunker in Croyden (spelling?). While the shop is fairly far from Melbourne (especially on public transport) it has more than 50 professional grade tables (many of which have come straight from GW). Every table I played on over the weekend was a work of art. I highly recommend heading out there for a game or three sometime.
(Here are a few pictures of my Rats in action)

Anyway. I took skaven. Since my list is generally built to 2000 points I had to do some reshuffling to get it up to the 2400 mark. I dropped my weapons teams and added 27 storm vermin and 6 rat ogres (more on these later). With a grey seer, a plague priest on furnace, warp lightning cannon, plague claw catapult, 2 units of 40 slaves and 2 units of 25 clanrats I think I generally deserved the comp of 4 out of ten. It was a hard list... Too bad I still haven't really gotten the hang of skaven. I had not played fantasy in so long that in my first game of the event my opponent and I reversed the order of shooting and magic in our turns... Oooppppss. and I played 30 models down as I had not counted how many models actually fit on my movement trays. Double oooopppss.. Despite these setbacks I think I did alright. I really should have prepared by playing a game or two which is my own fault. I won three games and lost three games... One of the losses was huge (I kicked the stuffing out of a bretonnian list and dropped his big busses to one model each BUT could not wipe them out). One of my wins was huge, I successfully cast plague three times on a high elf player in a game where my war machines didn't misfire once.

The skeven were lots of fun to play but I spent my whole weekend pulling models off of and returning models to their movement trays. I know it is fantasy but I have never played with so many models. I didn't get a break between games to eat or relax or anything else. it really ramped up the pressure. I tried putting casualties in groups for easy regrouping as they were pulled off the board and that helped but man, no breaks for the wicked.

(My "looted" Plague Claw Catapult)

My Grey Seer detonated himself with miscasts constantly the whole weekend (even when rolling with two or three dice).... It was crazy. In one game he miscast 5 times before killing himself in turn 4. Ouch! The warp lightning cannon was similarly cursed and blew itself up on the first shot of the game twice and killed itself in almost every game. The Catapult lasted far longer and killed a lot over the course of the weekend. Strength 2 is not so hot but ignoring armour saves is pure gold.

Rat ogres didn't do much over the weekend but I killed my own unit with death frenzy. :) Oooopppss.. Speaking of death frenzy. DF on stormvermin is the best way to kick people out of the watchtower with this list when I don't roll cracks call as a spell.

The furnace is pure gold as well. I really need to add more plague monks than 23 as they were too easy to target. Putting the plague banner on this unit is key and really helps in the first round of combat.

Anyway... Here are the results. As you can see I ended dead middle of the pack.

Rank Name Army Total
1 David Duriesmith Wood Elves 144
2 Chris Penwarden Orcs and Goblins 141
3 Ben Leopold Skaven 140
4 Greg Johnson Empire 134
5 Nick Hoen Warriors of Chaos 127
6 Peter Spiller High Elves 124
7 Sean Davis Warriors of Chaos 123
8 Brendan Slade Orcs and Goblins 120
9 Lachy Mulchay Dark Elves 120
10 Nick Cook Orcs and Goblins 120
11 Aaron Gruneklee Dwarves 119
12 Phil Tuck Wood Elves 119
13 Craig Cussans Vampire Counts 114
14 James Brett Empire 113
15 Brad (ME!) Skaven 109
16 Michael Blowfield Dwarves 106
17 Aaron Harrison Warriors of Chaos 105
18 Craig Dillon-Gibbons Daemons 103
19 Mark Skilton Empire 103
20 Jon-Hollis Hill High Elves 101
21 Brenton Shaw Dwarves 100
22 Shaun Hogan High Elves 99
23 Andrew Noakes Ogre Kingdoms 99
24 Leigh Callahan Brettonians 97
25 Chris Grace High Elves 97
26 Lachlan McKenzie Lizardmen 96
27 Trent Phelps Lizardmen 96
28 Adam Reynolds Dwarves 93
29 Kieran Blain Skaven 66
30 Andrew Williams Empire 60
31 Nick Gentile High Elves 55
32 Mark Brand Lizardmen 52
33 Josh Claridge High Elves 49
34 Baron von Gumby High Elves 39

Best Sports - Nick Gentile
2nd Best Sports - Aaron Gruneklee
3rd Best Sports - Andrew Noakes

Player's Choice - David Duriesmith
2nd Player's Choice - Greg Johnson
3rd Player's Choice - Nick Hoen
Best Unit - Andrew Noakes
Best Model - Greg Johnson

Best Newcomer - Lachy Mulchay
Best Newcomer's Army - Shaun Hogan
Runners Up Best Newcomer's Army - Chris Grace and Jon-Hollis Hill

Club Challenge Winner - Mark's Monday Night Crew

Tournament Report. One Dayer Number Two... (and some great Thunder wolves!)

I played in a 2nd one day tournament last weekend. After taking first with wyche cult I decided to finally take out some of my new Blood Angels on day two. The 2nd tourney was held at Realm Of Legends outside of Melbourne. Their tables are beautiful and numerous. I highly recommend you check them out!

I took Blood Angels (1200 points). Chaplain with jump pack with 8 jump marines with a Sanguinary Priest with pack, 2 rhino mounted assault squads with fists (one with a flamer and the other with two melta guns), a tac squad with a las-cannon and a plasma gun in a razorback with twin linked las-cannons.

After sweating my terrible army the day before I was looking forward to the 2nd one-day event to determine the last golden ticket for Arc. There were two events on the day and I opted for the one for those who had a ticket (I was doing this for practice after all).

Day two has hosted by Realm of Legends. Game 1: Craig and his beautifully painted Space wolves (pictures littered throughout this post). I had only seconds to take shots of Craig’s army so they are not idea shots but WOW do they look good. Craig if you are reading this I would love to post more and better pictures if you have any!

Anyway: Craig had grey hunters in a pod, hunters in a rhino, hunters on foot, two speeders with rockets and multi-meltas, thunder wolf cavalry and a thunder wolf lord. The mission was modified kill point where you got to pick which units were worth more points. I deployed in one corner around a bunker. Craig set up across from me. Our game was played on only three feet out of the six feet wide our table was wide. It was brutal. I popped his rhino early and made him walk to me. He moved up and I got eager and sprung my trap too early (assault marines on foot and the jump marines combined charging his rhino squad and a speeder). What I needed to do was let him get closer with more so I could charge several squads a once. As it was his counter assault kicked my ass over several turns. My support units got held up when their rhinos were immobilized by terrain AND then got held up by poor terrain rolls. I set up a 2nd line to make Craig come to me but my initial wave held too well and these troops never got to strike. Game ended and Craig won handily.

Game2: Adam Jones and his sisters. Adam is one of my best mates. He stood with me as my best man when my wife and I renewed our wedding vows. He is an ace dude who won best sports the day before. As I said Adam brought nuns with guns. He had a jump canoness, two rhino sisters squads, two foot sister squads and 2 exorcists. We were playing a secret mission (I love these). You got your mission and had to choose which two objectives you were going for out of a list (objectives, kill points, assassinate the general, etc). You then had to tell your opponent your objectives except one of the objectives could be false. LOTS of fun. I chose capture the main objective and capture the 2nd objectives as my goals and I told Adam my actual missions as I thought he would figure I would be going for kill points.

I huddled around cover while he motored around the side of the table at me. Cover saved me from vicious exorcist fire until my general and his unit dropped in Adam’s backfield and tore stuff up. Adam’s dice really did leave him high and dry in this game. He was failing armour saves left right and centre. In the end I had what I needed and he did not. Should have been a much closer game. Adam as always was a champion gentleman. I would like to point out that if there had been a “best sports” trophy on the day Adam would have won it with a perfect score.

Game 3: The president of the Ringwood Club, Brenton and his Black Templars. My memory is starting to get funny here but he had a high marshal with lightning claws, the champion, two rhino squads, a tac squad to sit on the objective, a venerable dreadnought and a squad of terminators with tank hunter. He had to get my objective and I had to get his. I moved up but not too far while he come close. I made him get closer by shooting at him. He failed a crucial assault through cover roll leaving his marshal and squad to get triple charged by my jumpers, an assault squad and a combat squad. I wiped them out to a man. He tried to counter with his champion and squad BUT failed his charge through cover roll! I repeated the charge with the same results (but his champion ate my priest). My other assault squad took down his terminators with shooting support from my razorback and las-cannon combat squad. I tabled his army in turn 5. Had he made either of those charges it would have been a very different game.

Soooo with a loss and two wins I ended up in 2nd place. (I was shocked!) Nidzilla came first and thankfully I didn’t play that list or I would have been pasted early. My angels would have been a very bad match up against those bugs. I think that Blood angels are a good army as long as you don’t get silly with their special gear/ units/ characters. Meph is sick. While I have a huge BA army I refuse to use that guy in friendly play.

Anyway. Thanks for sticking around and reading this! ☺


P.S. Here are some great WIP shots of Craig's AWESOME wolf cav. Hope to get proper picts of the whole army for an army showcase soon. Hope that gives you an idea of how much work went into grinding out the Canis model so it could be rebuilt. Took something like 5 hours with a dremmel. OUCH! They look seemless on the board which is the highest complement I can give a conversion.

Battle for The GOLDEN TICKET (Tourney Report) (Wyche Cult)

Well I survived….

As I stated in an earlier post, this last weekend was home to two one day tournaments to determine the last two “Golden Tickets” to the largest tourney in the southern hemisphere: Arcanacon. I should be clear as I had regular readers of this blog asking me on the weekend. As a former champion of Arc I had an automatic ticket in the first place. While I think that Arc is the best run tourney in the world hands down I stopped going three years ago for a variety of reasons. 1200 points did my head in, etc etc… The main reason is that I let the pressure get to me. After winning arc the first two times and after being the first person to win it twice the pressure got to be a bit much. The last time I won I spent 6 months constantly thinking about how to outdo last time. I also had people asking about my plans and if I was going to win again… blah blah… It stopped being fun. So I stopped going. If you can get a ticket though Mark and the boys run the best tourney going around. YOU should go if you can.

That being said I am SUPER proud of my two Arc champion skulls.


Anyway. Two different stores held two separate events to play off for the remaining Arc tickets this weekend.

Day 1: Battle Bunker: 1200 points: One day event.
I took a stupidly soft, themed wyche cult list. 4 wyche squads of nine (a few with agonizers and 1 with power weapon), 7 blood brides with haywire grenades (and a power weapon), a ravager with 3 dark lances, and a succubus bare except for an agonizer. All the wyches were mounted in raiders.

Nothing but wyches, no beastmasters, reavers, or hellions, and no shadow field.

(Click to enlarge pictures)

Game 1: Chris Cousins with his Thousand Sons. Ironically the first game I played with the wyches was against the guy who helped me finish them. It was a single objective each mission where I had to get his objective and keep him off of mine. I rolled a pain token for each of my squads with my combat drugs. This was huge for me as most of Chris’s army was firing AP 3 bolters all the time but now I got feel no pain against them. I got into combat in turn two and bounced a wyche squad off his wounded daemon prince who caught and killed the lot. Whoops. Maybe I was in trouble. It turned into a massive tarpit combat in the middle with shooting around the sides. In the end I was able to overcome his inv saves and widdled him down to three marines. Sadly two of those marines were next to his objective so the game ended in a draw. I contested his objective and he did not take mine. I did make up the 2ndary objective though so Victory to me.

Game 2: A different Chris. Eldar with Eldrad. Modified kill points. This game was a haze of pain. My dark lances couldn’t hit a thing and I deployed badly. Chris kicked the stuffing out of me the whole game. I got 75% of a wyche squad into eldrad’s squad and made them run off the table. Overwise I got pounded for no real return. Eldrad was worth 5 kill points though so I won by one point ONLY because the game ended after 5 turns. Chris deserved to win this. I did not!


Game 3: Harley and his Crimson Fists. Harley had a thunderfire cannon, a pred, a vindi, a razorback with heavy bolters, assault termies with librarian. I was screwed. I got turn 1 and Harley bunkered in the corner. After my last game I didn’t expect anything from my dark lances. In turn 1 I destroyed the cannon, blew the turret off the razorback, and stopped the vindi and the pred from firing. In fact the pred never got to fire and the vindi only got one shot off all game. I got reroll to wound for my combat drugs that made my agonizers vicious. I rolled well to boot. It was ugly. I won.

At the end of the day I pulled the win overall and walked away with another ticket to Arc. Ok I didn’t. I passed it to the next player down and got an army’s worth of back-2-basix bases for my Sons of Helvis.

A few words here. Don’t EVER do wyche cult unless you want to loose. I fluked my way through this. To be done properly beast masters, a proper archon with shadow field, a void raven, and other goodies should be used to make this list work. I will be experimenting soon. We will discuss. Anyway.


Here is a shot of what my night shielded raiders looked like. I was going for a dark cloud covering things up "look." Even though they do look a bit like penguins... (Thanks Chris for the mental image.) I do like how they turned out.

A Bretonnian Tourney Report (Guest Post)

Toady we have a guest poster. My good buddy Drew whose ogres have been seen here on a number of occasions took Bretonnians to a one dayer on the weekend. Here is what he had to write about the weekend.

So I'm pretty settled in 8th ed, and I've given the ogres a fair shake of late so decided to shelve them for a bit. I gave the deamons a whirl, onyl to remember that everyone plays daemons, and they were quickly re-shelved. The greekskins didn't have the numbers to play 8th yet, which left me with Brets.

I used to play a bit of a deathstar in 6th, but that quickly didn't work and I haven't used them again since early 7th. They've had some good use from my club-mates, which was great. I dusted them off and looked at what I could put together.

Lord
Barded Warhorse
Virtue of Heorism (Heroic Killing Blow- GOLD!!!!!!!!)
Gromril Great Helm (+1 save, re-rollable)
Beserker Sword (Gain frenzy, never lose it)
Dragonbane Gem (2+ war against fire)
Potion of Quicknes (OuO, +3 initiative)

Prophetess
Barded Warhorse
Dispell Scroll
Ruby Chalice (After the phase in which she or her unit first take a wound, the unit can't be wounded on better than a 3+ from non-magical sources)

Battle Standard Bearer
Barded Warhorse
Virtue of Duty (+1 CR)
Banner of the Lady of The Lake (Enemies in B2B don't get rank bonus)

Damsel
Barded Warhorse
Chalice of Malfleur (At the start of each enemy magic phase, roll a D6. 1 Take a wound, no saves. 2-6 gain an extra dispell dice)

Knights of the Realm "The Star"
15 Knights
Full Command
Flaming attacks

Knights of the Realm
6 Knights
Champ, Muso

Knights of the Realm
6 Knights
Champ, Muso

Bowmen
16 Bowmen
Full Command
Braizers (Flamig Arrows)

Mounted Squires
5 Squires
Standard, Muso

Mounted Squires
5 Squires
Standard, Muso

Pegasus Knights
6 Knights
Full Command

The original lineup had the lord decked out to re-roll in challenges, but was persuaded to go for HKB, now that you can use it with a magical weapon. The berserk Sword was probably more of a liability than the 5 points it saved me on the sword of battle, but there was only one situation that I would have been better off not persuing in, and at the time I thought it would work.

In case it's not clear, ALL 4 characters would be joining The Star, bumping them up to 19 models (and 6 ranks to boot- hooray lance!)

Game 1
Opponent: Eric W (Sorry, can't remember what W was)
Army: High Elves
Scenario: Meeting engagement
I had played with my army once before, against high elves. Both times my opponent seemed not to want to take eagles, which I was quite happy to go with. Eric deployed on the line, and I opposite, a little back to keep my options open. Eric had lots of hard-hitting stuff (2x10 Swordmasters, 2*6 Dragon Princes, A lvl 4, lvl 2 and a bunch of shooting), so I didn't want to get overcommitted with the star.

I rashly decided to hit his spearmen in the building, hoping to assassinate the BSB and lvl 4 hiding with them. Trowing caution to the wind, as well as not reading the building rules properly (or not remebering them anyway), The Star hit the building. Firstly, I lost my lances (sad), and secondly, the lvl 4 didn't have to fight. Woops. However, the BSB stepped up and took aim with my HKB. Warded. Darn. My unit bounced and the elves expectedly held. I was now surrounded by a SM unit, DP unit and lion chariot.

They hit me, but I'd managed to get flesh to stone off last turn so I wasn't too upset. I lost abotu 1 knight to the charge, and managed to win combat due to my static CR of 6.

I countered with 6 knights in the chariot's flank, and that sealed the deal.
Meanwhile, the peg knights (who had started off-board), came on at my narrow flank and landed right next to the bolt-thrower battery. Not much else needs to be said there (:.

Game ended with a 20-0 my way, and I was quite pleased with how The Star had done. Even after a stupid mistake, they'd come good. Great game Eric, look forward to another!

Game 2
Opponent: Mark "The Skilled Man" Skilton
Army: Dark Elves
Scenario: Battle Line
Mark is a club-mate and I have played him on numerous occasions. The outcome can usually be determined by what army he is using. If it's something soft (like Dogs of War, or Beastmen) I will win. If it is something hard (like Dark Elves) I will lose. My army, and our skills are irrelevant. Mark took Dark Elves today. Sigh.

The army boasted 8 levels of maic (4,2,2), a slightly combat BSB, 10 xbows, 16 xbows, three bolt throwers, 2x5 shades, 6 harpies, 5 dark riders and a hydra. Oh, and he had some shooting too.

Mark did in deed concentrate all fire power on The Star, and had it limping my turn 2. A lucky magic phase on that turn allowed it to limp a little further than it should have really. His A-Wing came in the form of a hydra, who did manage to destroy The Star, but was blown up the process (on the receiving end of a HKB). My right flank managed to advance on him and get through, eating some bolt throwers and killing a mage with a throw-away spell. The peg knights hit his Lvl 4's power dice bunker square in the front, and managed to eat their way through it. The Lvl 4 had the pendant, but ran with the rest of the spearmen once I was through with them.

One rules issue cropped up (Discussion here) that resulted in the demise of my prophetess. The game is over and I don't care about the result, but I would like to know for future reference! Outside of that, the game resulted in a draw, which I was more than happy with considering the line-up!

Game 3
Opponent: Big Dave Durie
Army: Wood Elves
Scenario: Blood and Glory
I met David at Axemaster, and have always found games against him to be a pleasure. He didn't look happy at the prospect trying to stop my bus (which he would have to do if he was going to win the scenario). My army had lots of expendable peasant-banners, so I had a fortitude (?) level of 8. 4 of those were in The Star. David had 6, spread out over 3 units of glade guard and a BSB.

His army was an unkillable lord on eagle, BSB with HoD, Lvl 4 with scroll, three units of GG (one scouting), 2x10 dryads, 6 treekin, an eagle and a treeman.

I was set-up for an unfavourable overrun by a giant eagle, and I went in way too quickly. I managed to aim the overrun up with the flank of the tree kin, but I didn't get up to check how far they were. Naturally, they were more than 12" away, which had sealed the game to me. I took dryads and treekin in one flank, treeman in the other. Miraculously, I took no wound of the treekin (two had to fight my lord), two from the dryads and a couple froum the treeman. I killed a treekin in return and because they lost their ranks, I got mine back and won the combat. Only the dryads broke. After one more round I shrugged off the treekin too.

I managed to get a small Knight unit to charge his BSB's unit, which got it to run toward the board edge. Then some squires made it run again and they were off.

My peg knights snuck along the flank, but in turn three took all thre glad gaurd units shooting and ran off the board. Cowards!

In the final turn, I managed to blow the treeman and that freed The Star up to go hunting glade guard. The day was mine, despite my hammering at the hands of tree-spirits.

17-0.


So two wins and a draw, not to mention favourable comp (7/10, 6/10 and 6/10 for each game), put me into my first ever podium place! I even had a draw overall with Ben Leopold (the overall winner), but he took the prize on countback. I spent my winnings on the spot, and bought myself a copy of Settlers of Catan (a great game if you're curious).

Great day was had by all, and I look forward to some of the other events the Battle Bunker Boys are going to run. The only complaint on the day was about byes (which the TO was fully aware of but unable to avoid). Annoying, but sometimes unavoidable. Didn't sour the day in my eyes, nor in the eyes of those affected that I spoke to.

Cheers again!

Eastcon Tournament Report

Eastcon tournament report: Some of you might have noticed that I seem to have fallen off the face of the planet last week. The reason: surgery. I went in for elective surgery on Tuesday morning and came out with 4 inches of stiches and a pile of drugs. I had hoped to get some painting done during the week since I was confined to my couch. That was not really to be. Between the drugs and the recovering I slept like a drugged koala for most of the week. My wife bought me Harry Potter Lego that I enjoyed a great deal when I was amongst the land of the living (I highly recommend it if you are fan of the books/ movies). I am glad that I had a majority of my nids done before I went in because I got very little done after.



By Friday I was off the codine and I was going through life with the slow and purposeful rule for real. I gave it a go and called my buddy Rojo for a ride for Saturday morning.

Got up tired and sore on Saturday morning and got stuck into Eastcon 2010. Due to a variety of factors Eastcon’s numbers were hit hard this year but 40 players still made the trip including a few interstaters, notably the winner of a major Sydney event called High Lords of Terra.

Round one: Mitch Wragg’s Tyranids. My buddy Mitch had been talking smack since the last time I played him forever ago and smashed him with my tzeentch daemons. As part of this he grudged me in the first round. I obliged. Mitch had a scary list with two trygons, a tervigon, a tyrant, lots of gaunts and lots of genestealers. I honestly though I would not be able to pull this off. The mission was an objective grab with two objectives. I deployed to the front of my deployment zone with all of my army in cover (Mitch didn’t have grenades) and played the waiting game. Mitch moved. I shot…. Blah… blah… first couple of rounds were fairly boring. Then The Doom dropped right in front of Mitch’s army. It syphoned off some gaunts and then more notably it sucked the life out of the Tyrant. SCORE! Same turn Mitch’s Ymgar Stealers were destroyed when they appeared in a set of trees my stealers were waiting in. Game on. I sprung my trap at this point and everything pounded across the board. By the end I had both objectives and more importantly I had not lost to Mitch. Sorry Mitch. I am always game for a rematch matey.

(My Doom of Malantai...)



Round two: Mark Morrison’s Deathguard. Mark Morrison is known for two things. One: he has been playing only Deathguard since his 2nd ed models were new and two: He is the TO of the largest tourney in the southern hemisphere. He is amazingly cool and I have been trying to play him for years. I was very excited. The mission involved a giant volcano in the centre of the board that never “went off” so I will not be mentioning it again. I played fleet the tyranid army around the volcano on both sides and chased a semi mechanized list. Mark brought his guns to bear and brought down my distractions (the Mowloc and the doom) before they did too much. The rest of my army got the job done and I moved on with two wins. As a side note warptime DP’s usually annoy me to tears but with shadow of the warp I was pleased to see one hurt itself by overheating its brain. Happy note number two… Trygons are hideous! I realised after this game that they get to reroll all of their misses because they have two sets of scything talons. YIKES!!

Game three: Steven’s Slaneeshi Daemons. Steve and I had been going to alternate tournies for a while so while he was a regular and had done well in many events, I had never so much as seen him before. He ran a Slaneeshi daemon list with two princes, a KOS, and lots of little fast irritating daemons. To be fair my meds from my surgery had run out during this game and I was miserable. My hands were shaking, I was apparently ashen, and I felt just horrible… Adding to this was an army that robbed me of my assault attacks, was faster than me in and out of cover, and had buckets of attacks with rending. This game was a haze of pain but as the dust cleared at the end of turn 7 I had my trygon with three wounds, two zoenthropes, and three genestealers… (and my very wounded prime). He had the masque. In my last turn I killed three units of daemonettes to take the win. I even charged with zoenthropes out of desperation and succeeded in killing two daemonettes. Hero of this game was the prime with its lash whip and the trygon that ate everything in sight.

I went home… ate… took meds… crashed…

Day 2: Game 4: Cam Auty’s Imperial Fists… AKA Thunderfire cannon spam led my Lysander..

I saw the draw and expected to loose. Marine gunline with 2 thunderfire cannons… OUCH! No cover of any kind to those cannons… Four shots each. Dawn of War, night fire turn one. I got my tervigon and a unit of hormigaunts in his face turn one when I seized the initiative… I never roll that! The rest of my army streamed on. The doom and Mawloc diverted lots of shooting and in the end I held the table. I even took down Lysander in the bottom of my last turn with you guessed it: the trygon. Now I see why people take two! That being said I should have been toasted eleven times to Sunday. Cam was a champ and should have won the game. Sorry man.


Game 5: Dennis’s bike marines. So I get the High Lord himself in game 5. This was over almost before it began. He killed my badly deployed trygon before I even went (holy crap he had a lot of multi-meltas in 27 models) and ran away from me the whole game.
I lost by one kill point but was in his deployment having killed his general and having him crammed in the back of his deployment zone. Null zone was annoying. Dennis was a pro and totally outplayed me. I almost pulled it back but it was not to be… NEXT TIME GADGET!!!

Game 6: Game 6: David’s Marine’s. Played David in my last game at Grots earlier this year and I think he beat my space wolves handily or we tied… either way I wanted a piece of his mech marines. He had Lysander in a pod with sternguard vets, a drop clad, tac marines in razorbacks, two preds, a vindi, sniper scouts, and a pile of landspeeder typhoons. The first couple of rounds sucked as he blasted my nids again and again. (we were playing to kill 75% of the enemy’s models) I pulled back on one side of the board and ran around the far side. A unit of genestealers somehow survived with four models to eat a vindi. The doom ate some tac marines and ate up a HUGE amount of shooting allowing my gaunts and trygon to get stuck in. My Trygon regenerated for the first time all tourney and healed 6 wounds over the course of the game. Best points ever! Hero of the match: One last genestealer who ate two tanks by himself before going down in turn 6. I broke David’s army and went on to win…. I never seem to get to 100 battle points in tournies and was shocked to discover that I had finished on 103 out of 120.
(Here I am figuring out how to stop getting shot)


I was even more surprised when I won… 1st place… Best General (my first ever!) and T.O.’s choice army painting.

Happy kid… Rojo thanks again for the ride man!

B

P.S. I just found out that the Doom works in my opponents turn and as well as mine... That would have been just abusive...



A marine scout has a bad day. :)

Kill Count

After weeks of preparation Kill Count was upon us. Last Saturday morning I pack up my army (no small feat with 7 Valkyries) and headed off to a local suburb (Moonee Ponds) for a weekend of beer, warhammer, and general shenanigans. As I have posted my list earlier and many pictures of my army I will straight into the nitty gritty.

Game 1: Despite the TO declaring a week before the tourney that there would be no grudges for Kill Count I ended up playing my mate Liam (the guy who I was trying to grudge). As I had never played Liam and I really hadn’t played against Tau in 5th ed I was really excited about this game.

Liam won the roll off with a Dawn of War deployment. Two objectives were on one side of the board and one was on the other. Mission. Have more objectives than your opponent. As Liam had a lot of scary guns in his list I outflanked my whole army. In his deployment and first two turns Liam castled his forces in the centre of the board so he could shoot me and then move on to claim the objectives later in the game. My turn two: It all comes on and with the astropath’s rerolls with outflank I was able to put my whole army on the side with two objectives. To some up. I rolled one flank and kept going. At the end of the game I had three objectives and Liam had none. Marbo was a star in this game. He threw his demo charge and killed most of a pathfinder squad and a broadside. Because he went to ground the other broadside didn’t fire turn three. A huge advantage to me. Liam was a great opponent and I look forward to a rematch soon.

Game 2: A few weeks back some of you will recall I played in a 1000 point tourney using Space Wolves. I played Dan’s orks there in round two. Once again round two rolls around and there were Dan’s orks. This game is fuzzy. I got first turn and lined up against his vehicle heavy orks. Rolled his multiple units of koptas and a truck with its contents. I had really hoped to do more with my alpha strike and this would come back to hurt me later.

At one point he called a Waaagghhh and his warboss and nob mob fleeted into my three valk unit needing 6’s to hit and wrecked all three. Some times squadrons suck.

I achieved my secret objective of kill points and being in his deployment zone. Sadly his charge allowed him to assassinate my commander and he held the centre of the board. Tie game.

Game 3: I had never played tourney regular Matt Mitchell before but I had played the nurgle daemon army he was using before and it rolled me in 4 turns. 4 monstrous creatures and epidemus… Nurgle daemons otherwise.

Matt made rings of daemons around the objective which was in an alley between two buildings. I pounded the stuffing out of the army and killed most of it (including most of the scary stuff) but I could not move within an inch of his models. Had there been one more turn I would have easily had it. As the game ended early. Not to be. Matt played brilliantly and I should have started on the board to get more shooting time in. Marbo did sweet F all for a 2nd game in a row.

Beer… Sleep… Public Transportation and I was back for day two.


Game 4: HOLY CRAP! I was facing a Wolf list with four HQ’s including two rune priests with the lightning that kills valkyries dead power and two units of long fangs with rocket launchers. CRAP! Had to figure this one out. Then the mission arrived. Kill points… Good, I am good at that. Then I find out the mission has special kill points where troops were one point. Elites and Fast two points each. Heavy Support count as 3 kills points and HQ 4. SWEET! Then my opponent gives me first turn… HAPPY!

I alpha strike massive amounts of his army off the board before his turn one. He could not recover and I spent the game eating the rest of his army as his reserves came on piecemeal. 23 kill points to 3. OUCH! Great guy. I felt super bad.

Game 5: Wolf Wing. If the last wolf list was scary this one was truly frightening (for me anyway). Logan. Lots of termies with combi-meltas and combi plasma. Dread with assault cannon, Vindi and Land Raider Redeemer.

My opponent got first turn and so I out flanked. Like Liam he castled in the middle of the board. I got three Valyries, Marbo and the Dettas behind his land raider on my turn two. I dismounted everything and fired. I wiped out Logan, his squad, his land raider, the vindi and a pile of termies. Holy crap my dice were hot and his were horrifyingly bad! I was killing termies in droves with lasguns. Throw enough mud at a wall and something will still so I was expecting a few… I was killing whole squads. Not supposed to happen. My opponent concedes two turns later with 5 termies from three squads left. Rematch Linsay?

Game 6: I played BBDave’s Valkyrie list. He had 5 valkyries to my 7 and he had marbo, straken, lots of demo charges, and tooled up everything. It was an interesting contrast to my list. He got first turn. I outflanked but came on piecemeal because of his advisor (who cancelled out mine). Grrr… Great game. He had me at the end of turn 5. I had him at turn 6. So it was natural that after turn 7 we were drawn. Great game. I learned a lot about my list as he had been playing it longer (I didn’t know valkyries had smoke launchers! AWESOME!).

Had a great weekend, playing great guys. Got comp hit a little but not as badly as I expected. Came 9th (out of 66) overall with 89 out of 120 battle points. Sam (the TO) did a fine job of setting up a great atmosphere and a smooth running tourney. I am seriously considering already what to take to Killcount next year.

Til next time gang…

Rumble aftermath

Last year I travelled to nearby Geelong, Australia for a great weekend of warhammers and hanging out with good mates. Despite it falling during report writing time (I am a teacher) I made the trip down with a relatively untested army and a mob of good mates hoping for the best. My weekend began with a pre-dawn wake up and a 6:30AM pick up on Saturday morning. Though tired and bleary eyed it turns out I had more sleep than most of my friends in the car. (Big thanks to Drew for arranging the accommodation and Nick for the lift!) After some McDonald’s drive through and a tall cup of coffee we hit the road and headed down to G-town.

Rego and setup was fairly straight forward since I had grudged last year’s TO (Tournament Organizer) Jason Murdoch (AKA Mouse). Ran into a slew of familiar faces including a few I normally only ever see playing 40K. The camaraderie and familiar smack talking that goes on between games is one of my favourite parts of being a tournament regular. The banter started early but the action didn’t start til Mouse and I rolled for deployment.


Mouse won the roll and chose terrain that best suited his newly painted (in two weeks no less) ogre kingdom list. He ran a very similar list to my friend Drew’s pirate ogres with a couple units of iron guts, leadbelchers, a couple of butchers and other assorted big gribbly things. His butchers shut down my magic pahse and his deployment kept my shooting from ruining his day. It was a close fought battle that had a few great moments including my dragon princes breaking and running down his general and a big unit of bulls on turn two. Of course turn two was also when his iron guts charged my white lions and due to my ability to miss with everything lead to a very messy end to my stubborn little lions. OUCH! I would like to say at this point that I did forget to use my Lion Standard that partially lead to this messy end. My fault. But I was learning. The game ended in a draw and I am keen for a rematch MOUSE!

Game 2: In game 2 I faced Wayne Pollard’s speedy Dwarves. I have faced dwarves on a variety of occasions in the past and they generally all have the same things: lots of war machines, shooty units and hammerers. Wayne’s Dwarves had none of these. He had Ironbreakers, warriors, warriors, warriors and a gyro copter. Our table had a great big pyramid in the middle. I put my fast units on one side and my foot units of the other across from all of his ground troops. My plan was to wheel around one side of the pyramid and hit the rear of his units the same time my foot troops did. My magic was completely shut down by Wayne’s 6 dispel dice and my shooting was woooooefull. It came down to combat again. My cunning plan would have worked too but Wayne used the Rune of Challenge to pull my dragon princes out of formation. His uber unit of iron breakers broke AND ran the cav down. Dual charges from lion chariots did no better. Sigh… Minor loss to me.

Game 3: I faced my old opponent Nick Hoen who is an excellent player (Always in the top 5 kind of player). He had an army that was entirely composed khorne daemons. 100 bloodletters, 3 blood crushers and a bunch of heralds on juggers. I gambled a bit and my dice utterly failed. (most notably scoring 1 impact wound between TWO lion chariots). I was not impressed and lets just say that by the end of the game Khorne had a pile of high elf skulls added to his throne pile. Nick was great to play as always and is a real gentleman. Next time GADGET!


Soooo… a draw and two losses. Pretty sure this is the worst set of results in any game I have ever gotten. Had fun though. I think that high elves are not the army for me.

Got together with my mates. Had an awesome dinner and a few tasty beverages before heading back to the hotel to watch You Only Live Twice before bed. I would like to point out that I was really cold that night while we were sleeping. So much so that I put on my woolly hat and jumper under the covers AND took the sheets off the bed next to mine (which was free). I slept very poorly as a result. In the morning we discovered that the window was open in our room! I didn’t check because I assumed that windows would be closed IN THE WINTER!!!

Anyway. Cup of coffee number two and Game 4:
Andrew Thompson’s Orcs and gobbos. Andrew had annamosity problems allowing me to take his army as I pleased. My dragon princes were stellar as was my eagle (who should be renamed bolt thrower eater in “eagle”). I don’t remember much from the game other than Andrew was an ace dude who had a cool looking army. I did drop his giant down to one wound with some lucky bow fire only to kill him when he charged my sea guard. Spears on bowmen are GREAT! (here are a few of Andrew's units)


Game 5:
I lined up again Hieu and his naughty Dark Elves. Hmmm… No dagger, no hydra, no ASF banner, no black guard, no reverse ward… WOW! He had some spears, a big unit of knights, a chariot, two bolt throwers, some crossbows, and a big block of executioners. We deploy and I get first turn. In my turn 1 between my magic and shooting I destroy 1 bolt thrower and his crossbows (and 1 of two assassins). From this point on it all goes my way. I shoot and magic to my hearts content as I advance. My dragon princes take his cauldron down and run into everything else. His knights line up for the charge on my white lions only to fail stupidity and walk into charge range. I add the insult of two lion chariots to that charge and his knights were reduced to a fine red mist. I win a max 20 points and give up none. Sorry Hieu! Voted Hieu the best sport in the Tournament. I have never seen such bad dice taken with a smile.

Game 6:
Two big wins! I’ll take it I was rocketing up the ranks and ended up again Hannes’s Wood Elves. Before the game I discovered that he read this blog and I had never met him before (first time I met someone who followed my work online that I didn’t know). Cool. I played another autumn themed wood elf list on that same table in that same round at Rumble last year and was smashed off the board. Unfortunately history was about to repeat itself. My dice were fairly good the first two turns and I was feeling really good until the TO walked by and commented on how well I was going. My dice didn’t like my answer apparently as I failed EVERYTHING from that point on. Miscast magic. Missed shooting. Chariots wiped out to single units of bows. It all went wrong. It was a great game though and Hannes was a top bloke. I would grudge you for Convic Hannes but I am scared of your army! ☺



Overall I almost broke even at 60 battle points (shakes fist at Hannes’s Wood Elves). And ended up 1 place ahead of Drew and 1 place behind Pete who I drove up with. Got 21st place (my lucky number). Again I know I am not the best at fantasy and I will endeavour to improve before Convic (and to play test A LOT more!!!). Don’t think that High elves are my speed but they fun for a once off. I may pull them out again later depending on what 8th ed brings.

The group I went up with took 2nd, 3rd, 4th, best painted (Congrats Drew!), 2nd best painted, and best sport. Big ups to Noakes for taking Best Sport and 2nd Best Painted... While we didn’t take everything ala last year, we did give it the ol team try and had a blast doing so… Looking forward to next year already!

Here is a parting shot of Drew's Ogre Tyrant and Goblin Trappers... (sorry all the shots get blurry if you zoom in.. I'll fix that for next time).