Game By Game Recap
Game One
This was versus Jeff Ireland and his Iron Warriors. So Chaos versus Chaos with the new rules, guess who' actually played with em before? This was the only game we didn't exchange army lists before. The GW Staff didn't say it was necessary as scoring is done after I figured we'd exchange after. This was a mistake on my part.
I thought I knew Chaos, I saw Iron Warriors I figured I had to advance. So I did, Jeff had three rhinos and they bid their time. But when H2H was joined I got stomped. My lord and retinue were whipped by his lord and his dread. Ouzo the Unsettling was particularly incompetent and not worth his point cost. This is a theme that will run throughout all my games.
Jeff had two very efficient H2H characters, since I have his list, I'll list what they had all I knew at the time was they were killing my stuff right quick. Jeff got the charge bonus I wasn't as patient I guess.
Chaos Lieutenant "Esch" (45) - deamon strength (10), demon resilience (10), demaon mutation (15), lightning claws (30), mark of undivided (5), frag grenades (1). 116pts
Aspiring Champion "Audemer" (27) - bolt pistol, mark of undivided (1), power weapon (10), furious charge (3), demon mutation (10), demon strength (5), frag grenades (1). 57pts
We played Never ending Carnage which wasn't really a factor. The best thing that happened to me was routing "Audemer's squad" twice but not before it had carved up one of my squads. My Nurglings ran them down the second time, but of course they came right back to life... I got massacred I think, but in the simplified scoring I only "lost". Oh yeah, Furious Charge rocks, I think my Nurgle 3.0 army will take more advantage of the veteran ability rules.
Game Two
Game two was against Damien Brown's Sisters army. We played the FUBAR mission which made things very chaotic. I like playing Sisters, they aren't boring. Sure they have Power Armor, but they aren't genetically altered super soldiers. I don't know their special rules, I just have fun smiling watching the Sister's player trying to pull off crazy stuff. Their rules just don't bother me.
Damien had a never ending supply of mealta guns, or so it seemed to me. Both Boris and TWAIN were done in by Mealtguns. He had two twin heavy flamer tanks which were tough. And then cause it was FUBAR, he could drive up behind me and unload four Sisters with Heavy Flamers, crazy stuff like that kept happening and this was why I voted it my best game.
I had bad luck in the first game, but it got worse. Lupus kept rolling ones with his powerfist. Damien called it, he said double ones in the first round of H2H and I obliged. A gazillion rounds of H2H later I must have rolled half ones to wound.
Though Damien took his sweet time calculating the final score. I ended up winning by 100 some odd points. I would have been happy with a tie. We were the last people to tally up our score which to me was a bit embarrassing. I try to play quickly, but except when I was getting massacred I had trouble finishing games. One more turn in Game Five would have been huge.
We never made six turns, but we played one final turn and Damien killed my landraider and I thought it was over. I tried fiercely to rally, but I thought I hadn't done enough. Earlier Leperous had killed his commander with a single blow, thus fulfilling my dream of instant killing someone in H2H, his commander and command squad was very expensive, so much so, that it helped me win.
Game Three
Next was Carson Graham's Tau. We played in the desert and he had a special character. This put me off though it was legal. He ended up forgetting half the rules and I managed to kill him with my rank and file squad. We played the Advance by Starlight mission so at least three rounds of night fighting.
We both had set up then some overlyhelpful people next door mentioned that reserves were in effect. As we'd just played FUBAR we got confused and though stuff could only be deployed on a 4+ after rolling for all our stuff, I had two squads on the board, the infiltrators who still hadn't infiltrated and my Lord and Retinue.
I got real depressed when I learned we set up correctly the first time. My Lord huddled behind rocks fearing the Rail Guns. My other squad bravely advanced and I summoned my Plaguebarers. He opened up on the deamons with a gazillion shots, one lived. I then decided despite everything I was going to win. Carson hadn't been playing long but he had way more of his troops on the board.
I actually took advantage of terrain and doggedly crawled forward in the dark. Eventually I got into hand to hand. Plus my army slowly turned up. Carson' must not have fought a Battlecannon before because despite after missing his Crisis suits and killing a few Tau's he kept shooting at my retinue not Boris. When the next battlecannon shot killed two multiwound Crisis suits he learned of his folly. I also slowly whittle down his two units of fire warriors in H2H. From there it was just mop up work. So after one day I had two wins and wasn't feeling too bad.
Bonus Game
Since Owen had stood me up, I played Chris's Khorne army, we played the table quarter occupying mission as I'd vowed to do better in them. This mission was used in Game Six and I ended up losing that game anyway.
I usually do better against H2H armies or at least they are more fun to play, so I told Chris I wouldn't set up in a corner, instead I set up as far forward as possible. Before the tournament I hypothesised that the 18" deployment zones would help Nids and Khorne armies and first and second overall in Vancouver were Khorne and Nids, am I prophet or what?
Our game was a lot of fun. With a really big H2H fight developing. All the H2H must have been noticed by Khorne on his brass throne as soon the Plague Marines and Bezerkers were joined by some Bloodletters and a Bloodthirster! There were a lot of Bloodthirsters in Vancouver at least three on the 40K side. I told Chris I would fight his other troops in H2H but the Thirster was eating Lascannons.
Needless to say I lost this flank, but not before I killed a pile of Bezerkers. Boris was also lost but not before he did some damage. My Landraider had a field day, as Chris only had one heavy weapon. I don't know if I've ever had more heavy weapons than an opponent before in third edition.
Chris wanted to avoid the Nurglings, which was fine by me. My Lord and Retinue got to advance and take on his Possessed. Chris, Bill and others seem to think the Possessed are where it is at, whereas I think all the options afforded the Chosen are cool. I took great pleasure in pointing out to Chris all the damage my retinue did first in shooting then in H2H.
We called the game after four turns as it was getting late and neither of us was fiercely competitive. Officially it was a tie, though somehow Chris thought I won. I think given another turned I could have taken three quarters, the Thirster was destined to eat Lascannons too. This was a great game and looked good on the table, check out the pictures, Chris's army did well in painting both in Vancouver and Calgary.
Game Four (Should have stayed in Bed)
Once again I got to the hotel early, I was like the second person to set up my army the day before. My opponent was agonisingly slow to show up as was my next opponent. When he handed my his army list I couldn't believe it. Although we were both 2-1 it was painfully obvious who had the better army list.
We played Supply Drop which is pretty harsh. I lost the roll to be the Defender which I never thought much of at the time and against his list probably was not a deciding factor. In this mission I got to set up my entire army first and use my infiltrators, woo hoo! But I had a limited supply of ammo and he got to set up the mission objectives.
He didn't bring mission objectives so I lent him mine. Despite professing to not knowing what he was doing, there is no way his list was just thrown together, maybe I should have got a sinking feeling when he got out a tape measure and put the objectives the minimum distance from his side of the table.
To make a long story short I suffered the beating of a life time. I ended up with a weaponless immobile dread, a plague marine, my defiler, and somehow I think two more models possibly Plaguebearers left. I killed one Wave Serpent, a few Fire Dragons, and a token Banshee.
Besides the fact he had three Wraithlords, all his weapons allowed no armor save. He had four Wave Serpents all with Spirit Stones, filled with either Fire Dragons or Banshees. He didn't even need half his army. The Banshees hid behind hills with mission objectives as did the Farseer.
I did my best to keep a smile on my face and not bitch, cause I didn't want to jeopardize my sportsmanship score, but I had no chance and I cringed at the speed my carefully painted army was killed off. I gave him a fair score in sportsmanship. But I gave him a one in army selection. I also wrote a comment, I was happy to see the addition of comment fields in Vancouver, they also removed the numbers. I was fairly upset and if it wasn't a GT I would have quit long before but I put up with all six turns as he was surprised how easily he killed my stuff off. I summed up my thoughts on the game officially as "Not worthing getting out of bed for."
Before anyone thinks I'm a sore loser, I'll point out that three people chose me as their best opponent of the tournament and I got 80% of the maximum score in sportsmanship and I wasn't shocked when I saw the final scores and he got the lowest army composition score in the entire 40K tournament.
Game Five: Run through the Jungle!
One of the big surprises of this GT was the addition of entire sixth of the tables being Jungle worlds. In case you didn't know the Jungle rules are in the Codex Catchecan. These rules are really harsh on some armies and likely contributed to Khorne and Nids winning overall. Supposedly people won games without firing a shot in the Jungle, they just set up the objectives from Game Four close to their side and waited for the game to end.
I wouldn't do something like that, or at least I didn't. I had to escort the emissary and I stuck him in the Rhino and advanced. This resulted in a big hoe down which I tried to drive around. Unfortunately I was a bit indecisive and ran out of time. The final score was less then 60 points apart, thus my opponent won. Things could have gone differently.
My retinue got decimated again, likely losing me the game. My Lord was beaten down by his Lord. It was an interesting game though because of the mission and the special jungle rules. One thing that should be noted is I killed both of David Wiegert's Landspeeders I mention this as an inability to kill a lowly 50 point speeder likely cost me game six amongst other factors.
Another factor in this game was not enough turns. We barely got in four, David was late to arrive and his wife and kids dropped by a couple times which slowed things down. I didn't make a big deal of it then and I'm not making a big deal of it now, but if I had another turn, all I had to do was walk forward four inches to claim another 150 bonus victory points. I was just happy to not be playing the Eldar anymore. I didn't play that smart so I didn't mind losing even though it was very close. Dave's army also was not painted completely not even close, but I bit my tongue on this too.
Game Six: And we both wanted to even out our record at 3-3
The final mission was the potentially never ending table quarter battle against Patrick Ng's Ultramarines. I'd been looking at his army as I noticed it had a pile of tanks. Tobin was with me he didn't think it was too fluffy I think he and another guy seemed critical of it for some reason. Having played three Wraithlords in the same army most anything looks better in comparison. What we didn't know then was this was a game between two of the highest scoring armies in appearance at the GT.
You've seen the pictures, didn't Chris and I's game look better on the table. Too bad Dirty Steve was busy documenting the adventures of Colonel Shaeffer's Last Chancers, I guess Patrick and I weren't loud enough to bother photographing.
Patrick didn't own the city fight rules but I'm no expert either. I had some bad luck in being just short of being in range a couple times. I failed to damage the land speeder despite hitting it with a Heavy Bolter, a couple of flamers and a bunch of regular bolters. This would prove significant. My Landraider, Lord plus Retinue, and Boris all got shot up, none the less after my fourth turn I was occupying three quarters of the board at least that is how it seemed to me.
The lone photo show's Patrick's force holed up in his original corner. My Landraider had only one road it could drive down and was still alive when I took this snap. However on Patrick's fourth turn, one Rhino speeded into my right flank. Five lowly scouts crawled forward to hide behind some different rocks on my left and the speeder flew into my deployment zone. He rolls the big red die, and it's cocked, he rolls again, a one, game over. We pull out tape measures he wins one quarter to none.
When he wrote the score down he marked down both sportsmanship and army list, giving me max in both. I knew this was not how things are supposed to be done, Patrick didn't care but I thought this put pressure on his opponent to do the same. Even though I didn't vote him my best opponent, (he knew this, he didn't choose me either) I gave him maximum sportsmanship whether he deserved it or not and told him so. I was trying to be objective so I gave him the regular four or whatever I give to normal armies for selection. Not knowing I just played the best painted army or I would have gotten more snaps for posterity. It is so hard to just finish the games in the time allowed without taking time out for photos, that's why Dirty Steve is there. I think Patrick maybe a local so perhaps a rematch at GW Burnaby or something.
In Closing
It showed I never practiced or playtested my army. I accomplished what I set out to do and improved my painting score. I still don't know what judges are looking for though, except that it takes a lot of work. My next army will hopefully be even nicer and be more effective on the table, still don't know how I'm suppose to beat an Eldar army that ignores my armor and high toughness, that's all I got going for my Nurgle army!