GAME ONE: Horatio's Steel LegionAfter the overload of the day, I can't remember many specific details of this game, apart from a particularly tasty retain by a Chimera formation and Warhound that wiped out one of my Plaguehound Scout Titans in a very decisive manner.
As tends to be the case when our forces meet, this went to a draw, with me getting 975pt of kills and him getting 1140.
GAME TWO: Dan's Thousand SonsThe in-universe grudge match of the tournament! With two incredibly resilient forces on the table this one was going to be a hard slog one way or the other.
As Dan mentioned, the Zombies came down on my left flank and had a bunch of activations thrown at them to clear the way, including a formation that summoned up
nine Flamers. Unable to resist, I retaliated by drowning the formation in Disrupt barrages and finished them off by sacrificing the leftmost Plaguehound to break the formation and auto-kill the vast bulk of Dan's Daemon Pool before they could safely return to the warp at the end of the turn. Unfortunately, although I did a good job of breaking formations, I did a much less good job of playing to the objectives while Dan concentrated on the objectives wonderfully.
Probably the turning point of the game was when I moved my Retinue and Daemon Prince up the middle of the table but forgot to move anyone within 15cm of the enemy objective, allowing Dan to send his big formation all the way round to
my near-side objective as the memory effect of the objectives would still get him points for his one!
Going into turn 3 with the points being 17:5 to Dan the best I could possibly get was a draw and that was going to be near-impossible, but some valiant efforts got the eventual score 'down' to 20:14 to Dan.
GAME THREE: Mark's Biel-TanNot that i was terrified of the Warlock titan, oh no, definitely not...
With no aircraft on either side, we had a lot less to worry about than in previous games, which freed up a bit of head-space.
I deployed with one garrisoning Contagion formation on each side and the Daemon Prince Retinue guarding the left flank Contagions. My blitz was on the right, protected by a Plaguereaper super-heavy.
A mighty five! Plague Zombies arrived in front of the Warlock Titan and proceeded to get two Blast Markers simply for arriving, while Mark's Swooping Hawks landed behind a hill on my right flank. Critically, Mark won the Strategy Roll, prepped the Contagions with some Falcons and then did a clipping assault with the Hawks before retreating into the big built-up area.
On the left flank I was pretty much unopposed apart from Rangers and a very cowardly set of Vypers who spent the entire game in the far corner in Overwatch, just out of range of my garrisoned Contagions.
On the right flank the Defilers moved up and shot some of the Hawks in the city, followed by the Plaguehound loping up the road and pouring a Disrupt template and several other Disrupt shots into the back of the Hawks. With most of the hits having to hit the only unit within 10cm of the city edge. Which happened to be the Autarch. Whoops.
It was at this point, with the Warlock and a mounted Guardian formation having ploughed through the Defilers and Plaguereaper, that I gave up any hope of getting my Blitz objective back.
Other notable moments included:
A Guardian formation coming out of the Webway Portal to attack my mounted Retinue and getting wiped out to a man, with the exception of the Farseer who later got caught by a barrage at some Rangers.
One of my Plaguehounds getting all the way up to the Eldar blitz objective, and having a critical hit make him
stagger back out of range of the objective. In turn three.
Having got bored of waiting for the Vypers to do something, one of the other Plaguehounds hunted them down and got enough Disrupt hits to break them even if nobody had died.
The early-broken Zombies rallied with a Supreme Commander re-roll and ended the game with four out of the original five still alive, and unbroken with no BMs thanks to a Marshall action.
Although Mark didn't run out of Blast Markers (as Steve famously did the first time he faced me), he did at one point have
seven broken formations on the table.
With the critical on the Plaguehound having prevented me getting the Eldar blitz and not having enough time for a fourth turn (probably good thing for the Eldar!), we tallied up the kills to find out what type of draw it was. 1100 to 1150. Oh my, talk about close.
Thanks to my opponents for some nail-bitingly tense games, and to everyone who came to the event!