It looks like it must have been quite a weekend! Congrats to Richard L for coming in first place. What I'm really looking forward to is the pics though. My twin brother was over there for the last nine days touring London with his daughters and he just got back here yesterday at around 4 p.m. The lucky git! If it had been me I would have stayed for a few more days and tried to see this GT you guys are attending over there. And maybe get a chance to play too! Ah well, I just hope you all had a great time!

_________________
Resident Squat Army Fanatic

As usual I had a great time, 5 cracking games against 5 fun and sporting opponents! thanks to AndyH, Blip, Consul Avenging Angel, Duncan and Nat for being great guys to play, thanks to Steve, Tim and the rest of EpicUK for organising a great year's worth of tournaments, and thanks to Battlefield Hobbies for their great venue and support!

v.quick game reports from me

Game 1 - AndyH (Iron Warriors)

At the time, this game represented 50 percent of the total games I'd played using black legion, and my inexperience showed, I won the strategy roll for spaceships and not realising I could spitefully pick turn 3 and bump Andy's battleship to turn 4 (and hopefully out of the game...) I picked turn 1, my podding chosen and their summoned daemons promptly bounced off an armoured company (the shame!) and then Andy critted a decimator, his CAP-ing hellblades destroyed my hell talons and he had me way behind the activation curve throughout, my terminators did assassinate his supreme commander scoring BTS in the process, but I was never really in the game, then a bunch of frenzied dreadnoughts podded in on my blitz and decimator #2 was hit by 3 pinpoints, I like to envision it doing that old scifi B-movie thing where it glowed green, then slowly disappeared... andy took it 2-1 turn 3

Game 2 - Blip (Black Legion)

This was almost a mirror match, yet again my chosen bounced off an armoured company (grrrr), and a few crucial engagements went Chris's way, turn 3 rolled around and I thought I could madly dash and grab blitz and t&h but forgot there were 3 preds contesting, Chris then dropped his retinue in 2 turns later than planned and found I had abandoned my objectives so he simply walked onto them to get an easy 2-0 win!

Game 3 - Consul Avenging Angel (1k sons)

After a pep talk from Steve (well more him flinging insults at me) I decided to play this game more like the black legion that has kicked my arse so many times, I kept close together and advanced my units as a wall of death, some lucky barrage sniping meant Tom lost all his sorcerers and couldn't summon daemons, while his units were hard to kill, I was able to keep him well broken and on the back foot and secure a 2-0 win on turn 3

Game 4 - Duncan (Dark Angels)

This is one of the strangest games I've ever played, Duncan took 8 formations of terminators, so I castled up on the blitz, he then teleported his terminators onto the objectives in his half and waited for me to come to him, him winning the rolloff on turn 2 meant both my mounted retinues were wiped out for little loss, my terminators whiffed their engagement thanks to overwatch shots, with the lone obliterator running to camp on Duncan's blitz, neither of us could push for the win although my havoks finally found their armour piercing ammo when they sniped the two stands of terminators in range of duncan's blitz which gave me 1-0 after 4 turns, I was unable to kill the single terminator stand in range of my objectives and denying me DTF so we went to points which turned out to be a difference of less than 100 for a 16-16 draw, a VERY fast and fun game!

Game 5 - Nat (Steel Legion)

This game really went my way, Horatio was knackered and left his deathstrikes exposed so I killed one and broke them before he could fire at my decimators, my barrage hit one of his infantry companies and did a lot of damage, and the pinpoint did a point of damage on a warhound, I won the strategy roll turn 2 and my terminators engaged and broke his tank company, while his rough riders and a supporting mech infantry company made short work of one of my mechanised retinues, this exposed him to sustain-firing decimators which both took huge bites out of his infantry companies, I'd largely stripped him of activations and was able to push forward to his blitz and a t&h objective, I then marched over to prevent his russes rallying for a 3-0 win turn 3 (Blitz, T&H, TSNP)

After that I finished a respectable 7th position and was surprised and humbled to recieve the player's choice best painted army award, thanks to all who voted for my red corsairs, there were lots of superb armies on display this year and I honestly didn't expect to win!

I got shots of most of the armies, Apologies to AndyH and Blip... for some reason the shots of your armies came out blurred

_________________
Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

pics:

MikeT's knights:


Tiny-Tim's Nids:


SteveKCole's Squats:


RichardL's Black Legion:


Reedar's Speed Freeks:


IJW Wartrader's Death Guard:


MephistonAG's Tyranids:


Duncan's Dark Angels:


Steve54's Ulthwe:


Consul Avenging Angel's Thousand Sons:


Kyussinchains' Red Corsairs:

_________________
Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

Thanks to everyone at the GT, the EpicUK team and especially my opponents, Mike, KiC, Redar, Wartrader and CAA - great games but too tired to write descriptions atm - sorry :-) Great work by Battlefield Hobbies too, very welcoming and professional venue. See you all next year!

Another great GT The new venue Battlefield Hobbies in Daventry was excellent, with some solid tables (and importantly a decent amount of room around them), warm (important at this time of year!), a decent lunch, good shop, and as a big bonus, as much tea as you could drink in a day for £2. The central location made it a reasonable trip up too

Going into the GT it was tight at the top for the championship, with Tim in the lead by 3 points, followed by me close behind, and mike another 3 points behind me, so it was all to play for. Unsurprisingly we all took new armies for the event to maximise potential points (and more importantly not fall behind) and in my case after 3 weeks of busy painting i had my new Black Legion ready to go. I went for an assault-centric build, using 3 retinues, bikes, chosen, terminators, double death wheels, and 2 flights of fighers given my only ground based AA was a single obliterator in the foot based bts retinue.

Game 1: Duncan (Dark Angels)
So this surprised me somewhat, i'd mentally geared up for Skitarii, and suddenly i found myself up against an army that consisted of 8 units of terminators, so bit of a change of pace from the expected! I castled up on turn 1, and Duncan dropped his BTS terminators and one other unit on an objective in his half to presumably bait me out. I sent in the planes against his BTS a bit, and sent out a death wheel cautiously outside the castle, and the bikes went hairing off towards his bts. Turn 2 the hammer came down, with 3 stands of terminators on each flank. Duncan really needed to win this activation, and then rolled a 1 for strategy roll off. Thankfully for him, so did i, and after hitting with all the macro (literally all of it), my two flanking retinues disappeared in a pair of messy assaults. I then managed to fail the chosen activation, and Duncan had a go at the further death wheel. Finally things started turning around though, and it managed to fend off the marines (thanks in no small part to the 4+ reinforced save) and then things kinda fell apart for Duncan, and by the end of turn 2 i'd killed his BTS with my bikes and summoned daemons, and either broken or killed all but a few out of the way formations. Turn 3 was a bit of a mopping up exercise, and i managed to pull a 4-0 win out.

Game 2: Darren (Speed Freeks)
So many models... The yellow tide was a pretty impressive sight across the table, and scary quick to boot! Things didn't really go according to plan turn 1 after some activation issues, but i did at least manage to get into some reasonable positions. The tables had some big buildings on them, and i was able to use this to restrict access to my BTS (the Orks would first have to get through the Death Wheels). Darren had been a bit keen with his BTS though, especially given he won activation turn 1, and was sitting a bit too close to one of my retinues. terminators got dropped, and i won the rolloff for turn 2, and his BTS melted from the combined retinue and terminator assault, although thanks to some pretty awful saves on the terminators, they managed to break themselves in the process. Darren's retaliation went a bit pear shaped however, as he got 1 blitz brigade in place for support and then went in with his second on a Death Wheel. Both of us had support though, as my bikes were nearby, and Darren didn't have much luck with his saves, and the assaulting unit bounced. hard. I was then able to take out the second unit, and at that point had stripped out his ground based AA. Things got really bloody by the end of turn 2 and the start of 3, and by the end of it Darren had one big kult of speed left hurrying back to cover his blitz, while i then made a bit of a mistake in hindsight, rallying a deathwheel that was almost broken rather than trying to finish off the last remnants of his BTS, expecting the planes to do the job (hint, they didn't). Darren made a solid play to go to turn 4 using a landa to contest objectives and sit in my table half, but i was able to assault and kill it, giving me a 2-0 win in turn 3.

Game 3: Steve (Ulthwe)
I kinda messed up deployment here a bit, Steve won the rolloff for turn 1, and his space ship hit a retinue on my flank, which was unfortunately intermingled with a death wheel thanks to lack of deployment space (as i was trying to minimise the bombardment effects.) Steve then followed up with aspects in a vampire, and pretty much annihilated the retinue and broke the wheel. However, going ham so early on cost him the vampire and the aspects, so i'm not certain it was actually worth it in the long game. Steve did however then have a reasonable activation advantage on me, and decided to go all out for turn 2, with the winner of the strategy roll-off likely winning the game. I gambled and put the terminators down, so it really was now all of nothing for both of us. Steve rolled a 1, and unlike against Duncan i didn't fluff it up this time and got to go first. I then proceeded to strip off 2 of his assault units, break the avatar, and get a very important blast marker on his bts guardian formation. Steve then compounded his woes by failing to activate the BTS, which then had to sit there and take a beating (which didn't go well for it in the slightest). Past this point it was pretty much a rout, and i was able to take a 3-0 win in turn 3.

Game 4: Mike (Knights)
The pressure was on now! the winner of this game would likely take the championship, as if Mike could hammer me he'd be in a strong position going into the last game. Unfortunately this was my first time against Knights, and they're a lot better than i thought they looked when i'd last idly been looking through their book! Things really went pretty terrible for the first couple of turns, i lost a death wheel in an assault (supported by another death wheel) on some lancers when mike first managed an ungodly number of hits (something like 7 out of 9 on 5's) and i then followed it up with failing all but 1 of my reinforced 4+ saves. I was not a happy bunny. One clipping assault i'd set up however did come off, and i was able to break his BTS paladin unit (with baron), but it was only by a small margin, so they were still pretty much intact, and i had a puntload of knights looking for payback looming over my army. I decided to take a risk though, and marched my intact retinue around to within 30 of his bts in the hope that i'd be able to stop him rallying, and then assault either them, or the horrible melta knights that were nearby. Mike managed a solid rallying phase (sadly i did not), and the baron was back in business. I did manage to win the rolloff though, so he got promptly broken again. Mike went for an assault on my bikes in retaliation with his melta knights, and his dice started to falter a bit, giving us a straight roll-off, although this time he did win it and the bikes ran off. My terminators had come down this time as well, and i'd made a start on his blitz-chaff, taking down his earthshakers. Meanwhile Mike made a pretty fateful decision and decided to pull back the other big paladin unit to help deal with the retinue that had taken his bts down to just the fearless Baron. This effectively conceded the win, as my blitz and bts were now safe, although allowed him to take out the threat to his own BTS. Finishing the turn i had a LOT of stuff broken. And managed 2 successful rally rolls out of 5 (on 3 or 4+ with a re-roll). Mike at least failed his baron one, and thanks to taking out one of his lancer formations and a fair bit of chaff by this point, the activation count wasn't too bad. However, i had 1 daemon left in the pool (out of a starting 12), so that wasn't ideal. I won the rolloff though, and used my freshly rallied terminators to kill his AA battery and surround the blitz, with a Daemon summoned for extra numbers. Nothing could assault them, so it was just a question of whether he could get enough shots in to break them. I then gambled a retain with my chosen (before they got broken again) and marched them onto one of Mikes objectives in the far corner. I think Mike kinda made a bit of an order of activation error here, and went at the terminators with his thudd guns, hoping to break them from the blitz, this however gave me the opportunity to get a unit of planes on cap, so when he tried to then send T-Bolts in against my chosen, they got gunned down on the way in. I managed to then take down his little siegfried tanks, and rolled my remaining death wheel onto his other objective (the bts was holding the other 2) meaning he had the choice of either coming off that with his melta knights and risking a 3-0 loss, or potentially going to turn 4 if he mananged to kill a terminator with 1 shot on a 6. Mike decided to end it there for the smaller loss, although rashly then decided to roll 'just to see what would have happened'. Sods law at this point of course kicked in, and he made the roll. I'd finally had some decent saves though, and to get to that desparate point for Mike my Terminators had made 7 saves in a row. Go terminators! (2-0 win in 3).

Game 5: Steve (Squats)
With nary an overlord or mole mortar in sight, Steve was nontheless here fighting it out for the tournament with the stunties in the last game. Things did not go hugely well for Steve early on, and as you'd expect with a 2+ activation army, a few failed here and there. Unfortunately it was mainly his war engines that were doing the failing... Turn 1 was pretty cagey on both sides, with me going for an encircling plan to keep him boxed up around his blitz. I'd managed to take out a gyrocopter near the end of the turn, which had allowed me a way in to the Cyclops with my terminators, and i took the chance to take it down. Things went pretty well really, as i was able to both break and almost kill the Cyclops (1 wound left), break a gyro unit, prep 2 other units, and also get his thunderfires off overwatch. All in all a huge activation. Steve struggled to get any momentum going after this, and i was able to get my bikes and doom wheels in to start ripping a lot of his smaller activations to shreads. Turn 3 saw a small glimmer of hope for Steve as he managed to rally his Cyclops (despite being on a 5), and then also won the rolloff to go first. And then promptly failed to activate the Cyclops. On the positive, at least it was facing a retinue, which really didn't enjoy being shot at. I was able to use them to take down another unit, but they were then rapidly broken. From there the encirclement continued, and Steve failed another key activation that would have allowed him to get thunderfires into my half of the board. After this he pushed a warrior unit forward off his blitz to get a unit into my half and contest an objective, but this left the blitz open, and i was able to march a deathwheel on to it after plinking the remaining broken gyro defenders to give me a 2-0 win in 3.

Overall a big thanks to my opponents, and apologies to Mike for having deal with grumpy Richard after 2 pretty abysmal turns in our game Overall 5 great games, and i was pretty lucky in games 2 and 3 especially to win the key initiative rolls.

Looking forward to next year for more Epic gaming!

Thanks for the pics and the bat reps read. Awesome stuff! I really enjoyed reading them and admiring everyone's armies.

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Resident Squat Army Fanatic

Oh, talking of the E-UK championship - big props to Mike this year, being in contention while 2 tournaments down is a big achievement. I suspect next year will be just as tight!

Blip and I drove up from distant Devon on Friday night and were greeted by a lovely frosty morning on Saturday!




My list:

Epic UK GT v2 Tower, 3000 POINTS
Death Guard (Epic UK v070414)
==================================================

DEATH GUARD RETINUE [475]
Sorcerer Lord, 4 Plague Marines, 3 Havocs, Death Guard Defiler, Contagion Engine

DEATH GUARD RETINUE [525]
Chaos Warlord (Supreme Commander), 4 Plague Marines, 3 Havocs, Death Guard Defiler, Contagion Engine

DEATH GUARD DEFILER PACK [275]
4 Defilers

PLAGUE ENGINES [725]
4 Contagion Engines, Plague Tower, Death Guard Defiler

PLAGUE ZOMBIE INFESTATION [175]
3+2D6 Plague Zombies

PLAGUE REAPERS [275]
Plaguereaper, Contagion Engine

PLAGUEHOUND TITAN [275]

PLAGUEHOUND TITAN [275]


Game 1 vs Darren's Speed Freaks, who I'd played before but only at Minigeddon size.

Apart from being a good player anyway, Darren and Duncan had apparently spent the journey up from Bristol discussing tactics for dealing with Death Guard...

The objectives on my half of the table were placed on the extreme flanks, and due to the 122cm depth of the tables there was nothing I could have done about it - even placing my own right on the table edge wouldn't have prevented this. Unfortunately I took the bait and split my forces too widely. Although having a garrisoned Contagion Engine on each flank did mean that it took Darren a good twenty minutes to completely fill his deployment zone with evenly-distributed Orky gubbins.



Being substantially out-activated (as was expected) I made several activation sequence mistakes - for example having the Retinues Sustain with 1BP into the Ork DZ instead of activating into Overwatch again. I also forgot to bring on the Zombies as a first-turn roadblock, I'd planned to plug the gap between the two ruin areas on the right flank to help keep the Retinue safe from getting Engaged.

By the end of the first turn my left flank around the Blitz had evaporated, with only a Plaguehound unbroken.



While on the right flank the Contagions and Tower Doubled up and blew apart some Warbikes.



Turn 2 went horribly wrong. The right flank Retinue, Plaguehound and Plague Tower were facing two big Kults and a Gunwagon formation, and I lost the Strategy roll. So instead of the Plaguehound Sustaining into one of the Kults and the Retinue pulling a clipping assault on that Kult and the intermingled Gunwagons, instead what happened was that massed Scorchers Sustained into the Retinue and everything got broken in the following assaults - with the Plague Tower never managing to rally - but also being simply too tough to actually kill.



Moral victory of the game - having broken Darren's BTS Kult on the left flank, a Plaguehound managed to Sustain into the remaining eleven units getting eight Disrupt hits. Three failed saves later and the remaining eight units took 9BMs of unsaveable hits, wiping the lot in a single activation of firing. Woo!

Game 1: 3-1 to Darren

Summary - losing the turn two Strategy roll sped things up, but Darren had placed the objectives well and fully exploited any mistakes I made.


At lunchtime the armies were left out:
















More to come later...

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Game 2 vs Duncan's Dark Angel Deathwing

Duncan had eight formations of Deathwing. Which was going to make for a fast game, one way or the other...

Having played against multiple Terminator formations before (but not as extreme as this) I had some idea what to expect and castles up - but not as much as I should have!

In turn one three 'pairs' of Deathwing formations teleported in - one next to the Plague Tower on my left flank, one on the right by the Defilers and two Plaguehounds and one behind the buildings my forward Retinue were in.

The first activation of the game saw two Deathwing formations to a combined assault into the Plague Tower. The Retinue garrisoning off my Blitz managed to get some Overwatch fire off against them on the way in, reverse-prepping the Deathwing! This was the point where it became obvious that I hadn't castles up enough, as the Retinue only had two units close enough to give supporting fire. Unfortunately the combat res was a draw and the second round of combat saw the Deathwing put some serious dents in the Plague Tower and there be nobody in range for supporting fire. This left the Plague Tower on one DC and broken, but also left both Deathwing formations broken due to casualties and BMs from the Overwatch fire on the way in, with three units having died in total.

In a stunning reprise of game one, the Plague Tower stayed broken for the rest of the game, in total failing five rally rolls across four turns and a re-roll.

The second activation of the game saw the two Deathwing formations on my right flank assault one of the Plaguehounds and pull in the Defilers which I thought I'd safely deployed more than 5cm away. A bunch of Macro hits and some poor saves wiped both the defending formations before the other Plaguehound had a chance to add in any supporting fire.





I can't remember the details of the mid-game apart from the Zombies coming in to block off areas from the Deathwing, but I managed to keep Duncan from winning in turn three, and turn four saw the remaining Plaguehound gloop over his broken BTS (more repetition of the first game) and the still-broken Plague Tower all the way over by the enemy Blitz, being chased by a single stand of Deathwing.

Game 2: 2-1 to me on turn four.


Meanwhile, there was a Bolt Action tournament taking place up on the mezzanine floor, with some lovely tables:






Plus the Knights that I'd forgotten to photograph earlier.

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Game 3 vs Andy's Iron Warriors

What CSM unit do Death Guard hate? Decimators.
What unit did Andy have two of? Decimators.

Joy.

Unfortunately it was getting late in the day and I forgot to take any photos, and as a result I can't remember the overall flow of the game.

Notable moments included:

• Seven (7) activations spent by Andy's forces on those darn Plague Zombies sitting in front of his lines.
• Those darn Plague Zombies actually getting to activate (and go into Overwatch to count as being in cover).
• One of those darn Plague Zombies surviving the entire game.
• 'Sacrificing' a Retinue in order to tempt a Decimator forwards into range of the Plague Tower that was thundering down the highway at 'high' speed.
• Having the unmarked Plague Tower formation roll a 1 to activate, and then roll another 1 with the SC re-roll, and still manage to break the Iron Warriors BTS with the barrage.
• Getting a Plaguehound up next to the Iron Warriors Blitz, all lined up to fire on the BTS, and then get broken by a pinpoint attack from the spaceship before activating.
• Having a formation of Siege Dreadnoughts then pile out of a Dreadclaw onto my Blitz objective, only to find that the built up area my Retinue was in was within 5cm of the table edge, so the Retinue had someone within 15cm of the Blitz to contest it, but without being within 10cm of the edge of the terrain to be visible to the Dreads.

Game 3: winning draw to me, but I've a horrible feeling that Andy and I messed up the scoring and it should have been a 2-1 win to me. Oh well.

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Game 4 vs Chris/Blip's Black Legion

What CSM unit do Death Guard hate? Decimators.
What unit did Chris have two of? Decimators.

Joy.

As it was now Sunday morning I was alert enough to not just play a game but take photos too!

Knowing there was a unit of Terminators plus a beefy unit in a Dreadclaw I made an effort to keep stuff close enough to support each other, and worry about the Decimators when they got close.

In the early game Chris's Chosen kept taking a battering in Disrupt hits and then Marshalled all the BMs off, but later on when the Plague Tower and Contagions got to fire at full effect, hitting one of the Decimators and clipping the Chosen with a horrifying 9BP Disrupt barrage that broke everything it touched.





Also the early game saw the Dreadclaw formation come out, assault my Warlord's Retinue guarding my blitz and bounce off broken.

At the end of turn one we had multiple broken formations on both sides, but all mine rallied and none of Chris's did. Which kind of set the tone for the rest of the game.

The Terminators also arrived, but Chris lost the Strategy Roll that turn, leading to the Plague Tower backing up a bit and breaking them with Disrupt hits, followed by the Plaguehound on the blitz glooping them to death with yet more Disrupt hits.



Chris had Marched his BTS Retinue up my left flank at the end of turn 2 and assaulted the Plaguehound off my blitz.



While the Plague Tower formation Advanced up to help hold the two near objectives in Chris's half and break an Armoured Company guarding his Blitz so that the forward Plaguehound could Double up and hold his blitz.



A series of messy engagements in the mid-field saw the Warlord's Retinue bounce a formation of Decimators without breaking (again!) and shuffle back to contest my Blitz.



Other notable moments included Chris getting greedy with his aircraft and going for the Contagion Engine in my forward-deployed Retinue, which resulted in the aircraft then attempting to fly across ten shots of AA fire from massed DG Defilers. Note to Chris and myself - as the Defilers had moved they should have been hitting on 6+ not 5+, but I'm not sure it would have made much difference.

Game 4: 2-0 to me (enemy blitz, two objectives in the enemy half).

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

A brilliant tournament. Thanks to Steve G, Tim and Dave B for organising and to Dave B, Richard, and Mark W for various lifts, and to Tim, Tom, Dave B, Horatio and Richard for 5 games which were all equal parts fun, alarming, and super challenging.

I went for something of a 'controversial' Squat list with no mole mortars, and no overlords instead there were various infantry and bezerker cos with warlords, aa, gyros, a cyclops (with license to roam) and a colossus as BTS.

Game 1 was Tim's all AV tyranid army which I had no idea how to handle or what to expect. The game was pretty cagey with both of us failing a number of activations in the first two turns. Tim managed to destroy the cyclops by assaulting it with a Ravenor which then fought 3 rounds of combat (I just wanted to lose and run away) with my poor war engine. However, a few bungee assaults by mounted warrior formations managed to clear out almost all of Tim's chaff and one of his bigger AV unit. His carnifaxes failed a pretty crucial activation and ended up to deep to push on and batter my centre and in the end it was a straight draw (think Tim was 90 points up). Considering I had the hangover from hell I was delighted.

Next up was Tom/Consul's all conquering Thousand Sons. We were neck a neck with in the race for the plate and whoever won this would almost certainly pick up the 'best of the rest' prize. I think we were both relieved and slightly nervous about this match up (well at least I was) Tom's a much cooler customer than me. It was a really tight game. Turn one was mostly jockeying for position with the cyclops knocking out a defiler pack, a few of Tom's rhinos going down and him plinking a couple of gyros. The colossus stayed bunkered up to avoid a terminator bashing. Tom's orbital barrage was well plotted but his dice betrayed him and it only killed a single warrior. Turn 2 saw Tom's terminators destroy the cyclops which he'd mistaken for my BTS before being broken and losing almost all the daemons by the return attack of the colossus. It was very tightly set up going into turn 3 in which I (thankfully went first) this led to a bezerker co close assaulting and destroying the armoured co before consolidating back to allow a unit of gyros to crossfire and break a retinue. That left me a sizeable activation advantage and I was able to close out a tight 2-0

Game 3 was against Dave B/Meph's nids (if you're gonna play squats this is kind of a grudge match). I managed to place the objectives right out in the open which meant the nid infantry, without the benefit of cover got pounded by the colossus and the gyros before the infantry mopped up. Not a good match up for Dave. The highlight was the cyclops making it all the way to Dave's blitz to snipe out the BTS dominatrix. 3-0 to the squats on turn 4.

Game 4 was Horatio's guard. We'd played an incredibly tight game in London earlier this year and this was no different. Crucially the death strikes only stripped the void shield from my BTS. The cyclops went to town knocking out both warhounds while the rest of my army concentrate on knocking out the smaller activations. Horatio got his tank and mech cos into great defensive positions and on overwatch. I kept trying to bait the tank co so I could then close assault it with a mounted up infantry co hiding behind a hill but Horatio sensibly refused to bite. In the end it came down to a failed 5+ rally role (with no SC reroll) for a single broken commissar (after I'd assaulted and destroyed a broken mech co) to give me 2-0 turn 4.

Onto the top table and Richard. We'd played a warm up game a couple of weeks ago and my dice had been great which is always an ill omen before a tournament. They went the opposite way here. I failed something like 5 of my 6 war engine activations this game. However, I did make a crucial mistake which was moving gyros to screen my cyclops as my second last activation of turn 1 (rather than my last) which allowed Richard to plink one and get a toe hold for a terminator assault which then broke the gyros (who had failed to martial off any bms) and prepped a load of other stuff. From then on Richard just picked on my weaker activations and backed me into a corner. I managed to knock out a couple of units but not enough and with a glimmer of hope on turn 3 when I won strategy with a juicy deathwheel and retinue targets for a cyclops snipe infantry co assault I promptly failed to activate the cyclops despite supreme commander. I was frustrated not to give Richard a tighter game but I'd got lucky against Horatio so swings and roundabouts. Plus a couple of mistakes let me down meaning I ended up 4th (which was comfortably above expectations).

The list worked really well with the punch of the war engines backed up by some decent (though not brilliant) assault units and the gyros fantastic objective grabbing plus serious shooting power. I got a bit lucky not to face a full air assault army where they lack of a 3rd unit with aa (usually provided by an overlord) may have told a bit more. My move to make the colossus BTS rather than the cyclops was a decent one as I didn't concede BTS once and the cyclops essentially won me the games in which it didn't get its ass kicked. Did I miss the overlord, not really (and apparently Mark's single overlord got nuked in every game), did I miss the mole mortars - did I buggery.

I was delighted to win the plate which hilariously Kev still has so there's now a photograph of Tim awarding my a proxy ceremonial paper plate which I intend to have framed! As Dan1314 and my brother insisted that the runners up trophy from the team tournament earlier this year had to go back to Scotland it seems I'm destined never to actually physically hold any trophies I win!

My target for the year was 20 points so to end up on over 30 and finishing above players like Tom, Darren, and Simon for the plate is a great result and one I'm still pinching myself about. Thanks to everyone for a great year of epic with splendid, hilarious, and devious opponents and some utterly fantastic games. Having been 4th twice, 3rd twice and 2nd once this year, maybe next next year I'll actually get over the line and win a tournie! See you all then when, painting allowed, the short fellas might take a little holiday to allow some new armies out to play.

_________________

Game 5 vs Steve54's Ulthwe

Oh my. Now it was serious!

I've done OK at tournaments in the last year or two, but I've never been paired against any of the 'top rank' players like Steve or Richard, so facing both Darren and Steven in this event was an experience...

Again there were no photos during the game and my memory of some of the details is a little hazy.

With Eldar having been my first love back in SM1 and 2 days, I had some idea what to expect, and having learned from the earlier games I castled up even more drastically, effectively leaving 3/4 of the table to Steve's vastly more manoeuvrable force of mounted troops, skimmers and Vampires.

The first turn saw me trying to advance stuff up without leaving anything too exposed and clearing out both formations of Rangers. A notable mistake at this point was to advance the Defiler formation too far forwards and leave it too clumped up - with Steve's Nightspinners getting three Disrupt hits against four of them under the template, the Defilers were broken, leaving me with much-reduced AA cover - but still enough overlapped that one of the Vampires didn't bother to activate. Another mistake at this point was to move both a Plaguehound and the Plague Tower formation within 15cm of the Wraithgate in front of 'my' bit of table, as the expected Guardian/Wraithguard/Support Weapon formation came out and shot, but fortunately didn't do a lot.

The start of turn two saw Zombies and the Avatar turn up. And the Avatar turning up was thanks to a grave error on my part - I placed the initial Zombie behind the Guardian formation with the idea of using them for Crossfire, but then got 14 of them! Change of plan - completely surround the Guardians so that there would be nowhere for the Avatar to land that wouldn't be in an enemy ZoC - and I messed up measurements by a few millimetres, leaving a tiny gap near the Plague Tower. With Steve winning the Strategy roll, the results were much what you'd expect - the Avatar brought along the Guardians and made a big mess of the Plague Tower formation. Although the surrounding Zombies did manage to keep the Guardians bunched up enough that when I started throwing templates around, the barrage template covered every single unit in the formation!

I then compounded the error with the Plague Tower and Zombies and sent the Tower (on 2DC and with the rest of the formation dead) forwards instead of bringing it back near my other troopers. This led to a formation of Falcons getting a Crossfire on it, leaving Steve as the only player across the tournament to have destroyed my BTS!

The other main notable event of the game was Steve's mounted Guardian BTS coming in to assault one of my Plaguereapers and bouncing off for no damage to the Plaguereaper, I'm not sure they even took any Void Shields down. This was followed by the usual 'I sustain with some indirect Disrupt barrage and kill your BTS through BMs'. He he he.

However that was the only high note for the rest of the game...

Game 5: 5-1 to Steve


So, in summary...

Thanks to Darren, Duncan, Andy, Chris and Steve for the games, the Epic UK commitee for organising the tournament and Battlefield Hobbies for a great venue with helpful staff.

I went into the event knowing I'd chosen to use a list that was... not the most optimal. The 'proper' list had more activations, even more AA cover and could have a proper unit of artillery garrisoning behind a bunch of Death Guard. However I wanted to test out the Contagions plus Plague Tower formation for the purposes of the NetEA list, so went with the silly option - and did OK anyway.

The Plague Tower formation did pretty much as expected - it was an incredibly resilient BTS, but also a very inefficient one because the Contagions and the Plague Tower fight against each other in their capabilities. The Plague Tower wants to be moving up to take 'near' objectives in the enemy half (and providing supporting fire) while the Contagions want to be sitting back and Sustaining to get indirect fire. Across five games I only got to fire the Plague Tower and the Contagions at the same time in 2-3 activations, I think once against Andy and twice against Chris.

If I were to take a Plague Tower to an Epic UK event again, it would probably be as a transport to a fairly bare-bones DG Retinue as the different components of the formation work better together and Initiative 1+ instead of 2+ is a big thing. There's just that darn critical effect of losing d3 transported units at random...

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Game 1 - IJW Death Guard

When the lists for the GT were announced the only one that I wanted to avoid was the Death Guard. As my Freaks list has a lot of models on the table, it is nigh on impossible to avoid getting spannered by large amounts of Disrupt BP. Unfortunately that is exactly what I got in the first round!

I knew from our only previous encounter that IJW was a fan of garrisoning his Retinues up the table and, once on Overwatch, I would have to take losses trying to shift them. So for this game I placed my objectives just over the halfway line, but at the extreme ends of the table.
The plan being to let IJW garrison if he wanted, but it would mean that a) he would potentially be splitting his forces, b) be further away from the immediate support of his normally deployed stuff, and c) potentially be within engage range of my Kult of Speeds on T1.

The early game started with IJW firing his Retinues on units within my deployment zone, which wasn't ideal but was better for me than them going on overwatch as it meant I could subsequently advance on him without copping the entire formations OW fire.

I got (very) lucky with some shooting, noticeably some bikes knocking out two Defilers, breaking them in the process, which also opened up a large hole in IJWs AA bubble.
The bikes subsequently got broken after the Plague Tower BTS battered them with BP, although this brought it into the middle of the table and I was able to knock out 3 Contagion Engines and a Defiler with return fire (amazing for Orks) and shortly after break the unit with BMs.
IJW chose to move the unit forwards instead of withdraw backwards and, crucially, this meant it didn't rally at the end of the turn.

By the time T2 started I had managed to move everything up, and encircled much of the DG.
We both held our breath when rolling for Strategy... which mercifully I won!



This allowed me to Sustain fire with a Kult of Speed (love that AP3!) on a crossfired Retinue, before engaging a second formation to give me control of my left flank.

After this Ian was at an activation disadvantage and did extremely well using his remaining formations to prevent being overrun. Clever use of the Zombies made it awkward getting near the Blitz and formations still protecting it.

I was happy I could see out a 2-0 win based on controlling my table half. But seeing my BTS get vaporized but Disrupt BP meant I had to change tack and aggressively go after the Blitz and units protecting it.

Eventually managed to take a 3-1 win, which far exceeded my expectations when the draw was made.

A great enjoyable game, continuing an ongoing SW derby!!

Yeah, that was the moment when I really really needed to have won the Strategy roll...

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion