Tournament 2011

This weekend saw the gaming clubs second tournament, I set off Saturday morning to help out. The lads who were attending started to arrive all keen and eager to set up and get on, I, on the other hand, was not at all prepared, since I wouldn’t be playing I didn’t bother to take along any models, this also meant that I didn’t have any templates, dice I had aplenty, but with out templates certain things would be a bit hard to work out. Oh well we just had to get on. The rules for the tourney were fairly simple, for day one each player would play two games using an army of 500 points. the games would be annihilation and the winner would be the player with models remaining on the table there would be no turn limit and play would continue until one clear winner was determined. this all went rather well until two players had a minor falling out when one claimed the other had been cheating. It was decided between the moderators that a third game would be played and that it would follow exactly the same rules but this time it would be supervised from the onset and the the moderators decision would be final. eventually a clear win resulted and the lad who initially claimed his opponent, and brother, had been cheating won the game. The other lad was given a good sportsman award for taking the whole thing really well. personally I don’t think that there had been any cheating, it was more a case of the lads not playing exactly to the rules and interpreting them how they saw fit and when it all went wrong for the other chap he got a bit upset. the thought of losing to his big brother irked him somewhat and he wasn’t happy, so there was probably a bit of sibling rivalry involved as well.

Sunday was the 1000 points event and the games were seize the objective with a minimum of 5 turns, these games went without a hitch and a clear winner and runner up were awarded, the winner was in fact the lad who received the good sportsman award an Saturday, and his win was well earned and deserved. the only upset from today was one of the lads who had two clear losses and claimed that it was unfair because both of his opponents were fielding metal models. I explained to the chap that I failed to see how the other players having metal models had an effect on his gaming, maybe the magnetic resonance of the metal had an influence on the dice! he argument was that metal models are heavier, again I saw no relevance on that and had to fight back the urge to tell him he was being ridiculous.

On the whole the lads taking part behaved brilliantly and I cannot fault the way they were with each other, aside from the two brothers and annoying whiney boy, they had fun and there was no malice toward any of the lads from each other. That’s one of the things I like about the hobby, the way that it generates a strong sense of camaraderie with the players, we share advice on painting and modelling and most of time we will point out if our opponent has missed something out or forgotten something tactical, I say most of the time as I tend to lose a lot and if I’m playing against a horde army like Tyranids I don’t tell my adversary that he’s forgotten to roll for reserves, especially when he’s just taken out half my army in two turns. you know who you are!

I’ve been told that I need to learn how Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I also need to paint the models, and that will be done by mid 2012 at the current rate I’m painting models. so over the next few weeks I need to have a major push on getting the Tau finished. Oh dear, this may be about to turn in to another moan about how much painting I’m not doing, so before it falls in to that pit of tedious monotony I’m going to close. In closing I would like to say well done to the lads that won in there categories and also to all the lads for their brilliant behaviour, as a club we could ask for a better group of members. you are all brilliant. most importantly, I would like to thank Sue, every week she hands over half of her shop floor space to a bunch of noisy lads who probably scare off customers and make a mess, but without Sue there wouldn’t be a Saturday gaming group or the monthly grown up day, so the biggest thank you is for that wonderful and fantastic person.

The Metal Menace rises victorious

you know how there are times when you think “stuff the rules and choose to completely ignore the Force Organisation Chart” well today was one of those days. Mike was desperate to play his Dark Eldar (P’tooie*) against either my Space Marines (Huzzah!) or the Necrons. I haven’t played in a while and I really fancied a chance to field the Nightbringer, especially as there’s rumours abound that hint at the loss of the C’tan from the Necron Codex. So we agreed on 1800 points and set about putting our models on the table. Since Mikey wanted to play test a DE character named Asdrubael Vect, apparently he’s rather nasty and would give the Necrons a hard time. Mike agreed that if I let him proxy this character he’d let me field three HQ choices rather than the standard two. So two lords, one on a destroyer body, The Nightbringer, 20 Warriors, six Destroyers, three Heavy Destroyers and a Monolith were placed on the table.

We rolled to see who would take first turn, I rolled 4 Mike rolled lower, he then announced that one of Asdrubael Vects' special rules was that an army he had joined could seize the initiative on a roll of 4+, so he re-rolled and got 2. I was definitely taking first turn. The destroyers and warriors advanced on the dark Eldar force, 18 shots from gauss cannon had no effect and of three heavy gauss cannon shots one destroyed the a Raiders Dark Lance. The Nightbringer silently made it’s way to Vects’ Dais of Destruction, but was out of range for any of its fire power to cause any damage to the vehicle. On Mikeys first turn his Reavers screamed across the battlefield, their blade vanes slicing through the metal hides of Necron Warriors and Destroyers, the Hellions moved in on a squad of Destroyers cutting two of them down. The Kabalite Warriors on-board the Raider unleashed 31 splinter rifle shots which felled a total of 8 warriors. At the start of my second turn I restored only three of the fallen Necron Warriors and only lost two of the Destroyers, 1 from each squad. One squad of Destroyers reduced five of the Hellions to dust and then the Heavy destroyers turned their weapons upon the Raider and Vects Dais of Destruction. Gauss fire tore through the hull of the Dais utterly destroying it, leaving only a pile of molten slag that hissed and bubbled as it melted the bodies of the handful of Wyches that were caught in the explosion, some of the Wyches and Vect himself had managed to jump clear of the devastation and braced themselves for more incoming fire. The Monolith, having completed the charging cycle for the gauss flux arc released the energy on the reavers that had felled the warriors, a total of 9 Reavers were struck, 5 of those were melted down to a boiling ooze of flesh and steel. The Nightbringer moved toward the hellions, as it gained ground it sliced through the air with its scythe sending ribbons of ancient energy into the squad, bringing down one of there number, the Hellions sky boards were swift and the ancient monsters attacks could not find purchase on any of them to inflict any damage, the same could not be said for the Hellions, they tore into the star god like wolves on fallen prey, a total of 4 wounds were caused on the Nightbringer. At this point I was worried, not only had I just rolled 5 1s for the Nightbringers attacks, but my rolls were so bad I also failed the four armour saves that I had to make. One of the Necron Lords fired upon the reavers with its Staff of light, failing to bring any of them down, the lord then motioned the remaining five warriors that had accompanied it to attack the Reavers in close assault. A foolhardy endeavour that would result in a stalemate.

The Kabalite Warriors fired again at the Squad of Necron that were close to them, another 31 shots that bought down another five warriors. Vect and his remaining Wyches made an effort to assault the Nightbringer, but even as they moved in a wall of force pushed the Wyches, Vect and the Hellions back from the Nightbringer. The Reavers struck back at the Warriors and the Lord, their assault bought down two of the warriors Their retaliation was harsh, three of the reavers were cut down, but, being made of stern stuff and as expected from a race that were bred to fight, they stood their ground.

On my third turn the fallen warriors were raised and fired on the Kabalites, bringing down three, the remaining destroyers fired upon the hellions, taking down another two, The Nightbringer posturing with it’s scythe bought another to the ground with an arc of lightning. The Warriors and Lord that were occupied with the reavers finally cut them down. the Kabalites moved in to assault the Destroyer lord, a bold move that fortunately had no effect, other than causing the lord to strike back bring down two of the Kabalites before vanishing from their sight only to reappear from the Monoliths portal.

The Necron Warriors made short work of what was left of the Kabalites, erasing them from the surface of the planet leaving only a cloud of acrid vapour where they once stood. The destroyers applied the same relentless devastation on the last remaining hellions and all that remained of them was shards of metal as the gauss energy all but evaporated them. Vect failed to notice the Monolith coming to bear and too late he saw a huge plume of gauss energy fall from the sky, turning the remaining Wyches to separated atoms that could do no more than drift away on the breeze. With the majority of his force dissolving around him, Asdrubael Vect saw no other option than to seek vengeance for his fallen brothers and sisters, he made to move toward the Nightbringer, the ancient monster gazed quizzically at the form that charged it. A leering grin split The C’tans face as it raised the scythe and sliced through the air, a strong sulphuric odour filled the air as lightning gripped the Dark Eldars' body, a new scent rose, that of burning flesh and hair until the aged body of the leader of the Kabal of the Black Heart exploded as the lightning boiled it from the inside. The Nightbringer, its hunger for death temporarily satiated vanished, leaving no trace but the charred remains of its victims. The remainder of the Necron force returned to the tomb from which they had been awakened, leaving only a small sentry unit active in the event that any Dark Eldar should be seeking revenge for the loss of one of their greatest warriors and leaders. Somewhere deep within the remnants of the intelligence that the Necrons once possessed, they knew that day would come. Let it come they thought as one, let them all come, the undying machines would show no mercy, any that stepped upon the tomb worlds soil would meet the same fate as the last fools that felt they had claim to the land.

 

*the noise that is made when people spit after hearing a name or word that they find distasteful!

Oops, I blew it!

Two shop days this weekend, Saturday was for the kids, as usual, but I did manage to get on game in, a “capture and control” Space Marine v Chaos Marines, through some careful shenanigans I managed a win but only just. To be honest I’m not sure that it’s a legal move if you string out one squad to capture two objectives, I’ll have to look into that.

Sunday was an adult gaming day, I’ve been asked to stop referring to our Sunday sessions as an adult session, apparently it sounds wrong. I played two games, the first was Necrons V Tyranids in a C&C. The beginning of the game was rather amusing. I started with just a monolith on the table, a fun tactic. four squads charged towards it, those four squads took hits from the gauss flux arc and they promptly ran away tactically withdrew. I managed to wound a trygon and a hive tyrant on my second turn, 40 warriors, 3 destroyers, 1 heavy destroyer and two lords appeared on the table and I planned to unleash a whole heap of unpleasantness on the nastiness that is Tyranids, but knowing my luck I knew from the start of the game that I was doomed. I may sound like a bit of a naysayer here, but I know when I’m in for an ass whoopin’ and this was it. After a couple of attempts my destroyers were bought down by genestealers, and they soon caught up with the heavy destroyer and tore into that, bringing it down. The warriors were troubled by hive tyrants and warriors. all I could really do was use the Monolith to pull any of my remaining force out of close combat and bring them through the portal, follow that with a bit of gauss fire in the vain hope that I could do some damage, this wasn’t going to work and the Necrons soon had no option other than to phase out.

My second game was a simple skirmish Space Marines v Grey Knights, oh dear! being limited to just 500 points I could only take one HQ and 2 Troop choices, and considering that the GKs can take Terminators as a troop choice I was pretty much done before I started (again). I did put up a bit more of a fight this time and managed to take out one squad of marines before the decimation of my force began.  Still both games were fun, which is the whole point of the game, although I suspect that my first opponent was a little miffed at the fact that I wasn’t at all bothered by the fact that I was losing units at every dice roll, I feel he wanted me to put up more of a fuss when his genestealers came at my warrior squads with 20+ attacks. My only real saving grace was a few lucky “we’ll be back” rolls. I’m a bit odd really as I don’t think I’m a particularly competitive player, I just enjoy a game. Although, if I’m honest, I don’t enjoy a game that only lasts two or three turns or playing against someone who takes delight in pointing out that he took out a five man squad with 40 attacks, but that’s where I’m lucky as none of the people I play 40k with are like that.

I’m looking forward to our next Sunday session as there’s a chance that at least one old friend is going to be along, even if only to see what it’s all about, it will be good to see them and catch up on days long past.

Until then, ta ta!