It was one of the most enjoyable, if knackering events I've been to. Gamewise:
Game 1 - James H - Gaz Orks - Scotland vs Birmingham
So, if I'd gone with my original plan of bringing eldar this could have been very nasty. However, Jame's Gargant and 2 supa stompas really struggled against the cyclops which went crazy putting 7 wounds on the gargant with my 2nd activation in the game (my first had sniped his supreme commander with a barrage). James struggled to shift my big infantry cos (not helped by failing to activate to close assault one with a stompa mob on turn 3) and it was a comfortable win for the squats.
Scotland romped through this round with two brummie marine lists struggling to compete with the 20+ reinforced armour units in Dan's Thousand sons and my brother's hoard of orkeasuaus. 3 wins to Scotland
Game 2 - Darren R - Ghaz Orks - Scotland vs South West
More orks, it's almost as if there was some enmity between Squats and Orks? Turn 1 went near perfectly with my shooting knocking out the supa stompa, big blitz brigade and some chaff while my infantry moved into good positions on objectives. However, my complete inability to finish off Darren's BTS (once through stupidly close assaulting the remaining broken stompas with bikes - forgot about the MW the second them outrageously beating a full strength infantry co in a ff) meant the game went to turn 4 where I was able to close it out for 3-0.
Again, Scotland picked up a clean sweep. The Skitarri war engines struggled against the bigger, tougher feral war engines while the Thousand Sons took down Nat's Steel Legion.
Game 3 - John C - Ferals (civil war games)
Orks, Orks, Orks. A fourth consecutive tournament game against orks. My opponent was a jerk, constantly shouting to the whole room that I was cheating, picking fault with every move I made and even insulting my apperance! He then marked me down on sportsmanship
![:{[]](./images/smilies/headbang.gif "Headbang")
Given he's my brother I thought I got off lightly
This was a hilarous game with distinct echos of the warhammer games we used to play as kids. John basically hid all of his dinos and gargants from the cyclops (which also failed to activate twice) and locked down the objectives. My mopping of his chaff gave me a draw in my favour.
In the other game - Dan's tactical experiment regarding repeatedly failing DT tests as a way to deal with Tim's warlock ended in predictable fashion.
Game 4 - Mike T - Tyranids (Scotland vs North of England)
Eeek, hordes and hordes of tyranids did not bring back good memories for the squats. Turn 1 was a damp squib, my war engines doing hardly any damage to the nid hordes (not that I was complaining after my first 2 games) so I decided to put everything on overwatch and wait. This turned out to be a good move as the nids went first on turn 2. Mike pounded the cyclops by assaulting it with 5 units worth of support fire. It survived on 2 wounds though. Notable assault anomalies were the thunderfires + rhinos beating genestealers in close assault, the overlord actually winning an assault and then my big infantry co losing a huge rolling assault to Mike's BTS which despite losing 3/4 of it's models took only a single BM. In the end the cyclops, overlord, infantry co, and colossus finally got their act together to stall Mike's drive on my blitz. The game came down to a backtracking harridan plinking a model from the bezerker unit I'd snuck onto his blitz. Game ended a points draw for the squats.
John, who'd done his back in the night and couldn't walk at 8am completed a miracle walking wounded recovery to grind out a draw against Tom's thousand sons but Dan's sons couldn't cope with Chris's revenants and the North took the round and moved clear at the top.
Game 5 - Richard L - Marines (Scotland vs London)
As Richard mentioned his dice were atrocious in this game. I kept things very tight pushing his aircraft with my aa and ensuring any assaults would be hit by a tonne of support fire. I thought I played very well in this cagey game until I over-excitedly killed a unit of assault marines (thinking about setting up turn 4) instead of marching an infantry co onto one of Richard's T&H objectives (it had been a long weekend) meant he snuck it 2-0 with the orbital barrage drop pod combo catching my blitz. Bloody marines.
Meanwhile, John and Rob's Ork off resulted in a straight draw with basically hordes of speed freaks swarming around an island of orkeasaurus and steam gargants. Dan, got his revenge against the eldar by taking a 2-0 win against Charles, apparently a last minute rally denied him 3-0 which would have given us first place - however such are the fates!
Overall, we were delighted with second (given our objective was not to finish last it was waaaaaaaaaaaay above expectations).
Thanks to Steve G, Tim, and David for their fantastic organisational skills. All the Scotland team had a great time and we'll be back next year. If the euros were to drop to 3 man teams we might even have a crack at that!
PS - I had no issues with seeing lots of Skorchas - though imagine Darren will have nightmares about what the colossus did to them.
