So I finally get the stars to align and I decided to enter a Grand Tournament. If only the world was so simple. First I had to make a trip out to GW Burnaby to get the White Dwarf then I had to express post my entry off to Ontario. With that done I was confident I was in.
I decided in order to make the weekend less hectic, to take two days off which would give me extra time to hang with Owen. So I email my boss to ask for two days off, the only two days I ask for all summer. Not only was I told I could not have those days off I was told I was not allowed to leave town on the weekend.
I had already sent off my registration and fully expected to be billed the $175 dollars. I was already looking into flights and reading the rules, which are no longer on GW's website but I may have the PDF somewhere on my laptop but 2002 was a long time ago. Needless to say I was less then pleased. For the record I don't work weekends, I work the standard 8:30 to 5:00pm most days. After much bitching I was finally able to go to Calgary thanks to Chuck Hill.
I liked my chances at least in army selection because Plague Marines count as troops so I always max that out. I also don't use any gimmicky war gear. I wrote out a rough army list. It consisted of:
Just before I came up with this list I played a 1500 pt game using a scenario out of Chapter Approved volume 1. I took nothing but infantry, not even rhinos. No Slim either I tried out my terminator lord, for the record he is way too expensive. Even Slim is a bit much for me, but he has a higher strength, initiative, and weapon skill then a Chaos Marine Lord. As soon as I roughed out this list I decided I couldn't go with no heavy weapons.
Due mainly to fluff the only heavy weapons I ever field are mounted on vehicles and since I don't like painting vehicles these are kept to a minimum. I started scheming of a two heavy weapon dreadnought. I had only used my other dread once and it did basically nothing so I was a little leary of relying on just one dreadnought. But dreads can move and fire plus defend themselves in H2H. I'd also have to build this contraption and do a little converting.
This preliminary list already required some more Plague Marines to be painted, plus I plan to touch up and embellish my existing models, plus convert another rhino too. All very do-able by September 14th but one shot would still remove all my heavy weapons from the board. Being paranoid I decided every one of my seven Plague Marines would be able to take out a tank if pressed to do so. I have plenty of power glove models painted but I don't care for them in 3rd edition so in addition to a healthy dose of Mealta guns I thought 5pts for Mealta bombs for my free aspiring champions seemed very reasonable.
Although I seem to be horrendously busy I still plan to make this a semi regular event leading up to 2002 GT Calgary. I thought of this all by myself but others have done this before me and they might have done a better job. Here is an example that I consulted before I put up my pages.
Already I think I'm behind, I went home to see my family. I've painted quite alot especially for me, but I had hoped to be already working on the rhino, it still isn't assembled and I had hoped to have this webpage up a week or two ago. Since a lot has happened I decided to put up part two at the same time, onward loyal readers!