Cheers, all updated - so that's everyone's lists in and checked. Good stuff!

Interesting! i'll be interested to see how it gets on, haven't seen an Ork list quite like that before!

I've had 2 practice games for this so far, and won one of them 1-0 and the other lost 2-0 on the 4th turn but could have won on the 3rd if I hadn't made a small mistake (and that was against Eldar, too). I don't think it's an uncompetitive list, just that for it to work on the GT scenario it can only be played one way.

My list:
2 Tyranid Warrior, 9 Termagant, 4 Hormaguant, Hierodule
2 Tyranid Warrior, 6 Termagant, 2 Hormaguant, Hierodule
2 Tyranid Warrior, 6 Termagant, 2 Hormaguant, Hierodule
6 Genestealer
6 Genestealer
1 Harridan and 4 Gargoyles
1 Harridan and 4 Gargoyles
4 Lictor

My beef w/ the Epic UK nid list is that it heavily favours lists like the one above (check the ones used so far in the championship) in detriment of the AV (Tyrants and carnis) list which is pretty slow and will never get in base contact w/ anything. And there are a few annoying things like lictors not being able to capture objectives*, bio-titans being seriously overpriced compared to harridans, some units being LV (biovores for instance) which makes them hard to hide and finally having some pretty useless choices in the list, like hive nodes.

* - I can understand how somebody could exploit them being scout teleporters and able to capture objectives, though! But the nids really need some help in capturing stuff that's far away from them.

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my list

warband
warband
big blitz + 2 oddboy(zzap)
big blitz + 2 oddboy(supa)
big warband + 3 boys and grotz + big gun with oddboy(zzap)
landa
landa

Mine's the boring Biel Tan list:

Avatar
Mounted FF aspects + autarch
Mounted guardians
Rangers
Jetbikes
Falcons
Night spinners
Nightwings

Wanted to stick with a single transport method, other than that no plan except "try to win some assaults".

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Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

Good luck everyone

^^^ What Tim said ^^^

Gutted I can't be there with you, just too much RL going on at the mo.

Looking forward to seeing the outcomes from this and maybe some photos...!

Cheers

Reedar

Amazing tourney, thanks to Richard, my opponents and everybody else.

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Hey Guys

A big thankyou to everyone who took part - hopefully everyone enjoyed themselves!

Here's the full results:

1. Richard Laking - Iyanden - 77pts
2. Carlos Ferrao - Tyanids - 75pts
3. Rohan Misthry - Black Legion - 71pts
4. Andrew Jenkinson - Biel Tan - 63pts
5. Mark Webster - Biel Tan - 53pts
6. Clive Kershaw - Steel Legion - 52pts
7. Matt Arnold - Orks - 47pts
8. Radek Niemiec - Space Marines - 45pts
9. Chris Tamplin - Space Marines - 43pts
10. Willard Foxton - Steel Legion - 40pts
11. Ben Williams - Space Marines - 34pts
12. Alan Saunders - Orcs - 29pts
13. Rob Hutson - Biel Tan - 28pts
14. Les Newsom - Dark Angels - 15pts

Best Painted went to Radek Niemiec, and while there wasn't a sporting trophy, honours were shared between Alan Saunders and Andrew Jenkinson.

Hopefully i'll get some pics up on Monday morning, sadly i don't have the cable needed to transfer pics from the phone at home!

Finally a big thanks to all 3 of my opponents, Radek, Matt, and Rohan for some excellent games Hopefully i'll get a chance to put some musings down at some point over the next few days!

Thanks for organising a great tournie, and thanks to my opponents who all gave me very enjoyable games. Whilst it's fresh in my mind I thought I would report my perspective on how my games went.

First up for my Eldar were Les and his Dark Angels. I decided to try an aggressive "divide and conquer" strategy, advancing my assault units up the flanks in an effort to keep the marines on the back foot. I'd like to say my astute leadership won through, but I'm not sure I can take all the credit. Early on, Les saw his air assault and then an assault by his Ravenwing both repelled by a formation of jetbikes thanks to some poor dice rolls. The Dark Angels never really recovered, and found themselves stuck in their own half defending against impending assaults. Some of Les's luck returned later in the game in the form of saves, but by then it was too late. For my part, I did make a mistake at the last activation. I tried to shift some assault marines off the Blitz for 5-0, but if I'd been on the ball I'd have realised moving onto the T&H would have given me 4-0 anyway. End result: a 3-0 win in the 3rd which I thought was flattering enough. Considering Les had only been playing for a few weeks I don't really think he made too many mistakes apart from perhaps allowing me to dictate where the action was and not enough mutual support. With luck on his side it could have been a very different result.

Next I found myself on table 1 facing Carlos and his Nids. I've never played against them before so didn't really have a plan, especially since I had quite an assault-orientated ground-based list. After some time I decided it was best for me to stay out of his way, kill the fast Harridans and try as best as I could to ensure assaults were on my terms. But that all went out the window when, after most of the first turn was cagey, I decided to keep the bugs busy by zooming my BTS aspects down the flank and into Carlos's corner of the board next to his BTS. I calculated that he'd only be able to get 4 gaunts into CC with my wave serpents, and thus a) I had a reasonable chance of winning and b) if I did lose I could probably escape whilst keeping his units tied down in the corner. However I forgot that infiltrators ignore ZoC (d'oh!) and my FF aspects, trying to whack scary bugs with their guns, got pasted in the ensuing assault. The aspects did escape however, and 2 nid formations had wasted a turn in the corner of the board. The nids never really got their teeth into any decent assaults, not getting far enough and with all the Eldar being skimmers. After 3 turns neither side could secure any victory conditions and we had no time for a 4th, so the game ended in a winning draw for the Eldar.

My third match was Mark, pitching Biel Tan vs Biel Tan. Mark had 3 formations of Falcons and I found the potential threat they posed quite difficult to plan around, especially because I was out-activated. I'm not used to facing tricksy Eldar! As a result I made a bad call at the beginning, seeing my jetbikes and guardians mauled from the off and forced to hide. With 4 of my activations all having failed in turn 1 (there were lots of failed activations throughout the game, on both sides) it felt like the beginning of the end since I had planned to have everything higher up the field dictating the play. However, later in the game I managed to combine my Night Spinners with an intermingling assault by my aspects which resulted in 3 broken formations. The aspects met a bloody end eventually but by this point I was sure I was going to lose so was really just trying to have an entertaining game by charging them into the fray. But with lots of broken formations on the field, by the end of turn 3 things were actually very close. Unable to play another turn, we called the game as a dead draw.

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Preparation for the tourney saw me facing an IG army and winning 2-0, and then losing on the 4th turn 2-0 against Biel-tan. Pretty much par for the course for the 'nids but it taught me some important lessons about this list at 2k. As I said previously in these boards, each army must have a game plan in terms of which of the 5 objectives it can realistically go for. For the 'nids at 2k:
- BTS: very hard to get as it needs the opponent to move the BTS close to the nids otherwise we can't catch it. Also, even after beating it in assault, it's very hard due to lack of artillery and planes to finish off the surviving units (if any)
- Blitz: also very hard to get, as only the harridans can get there early enough. Trygon swarms can do it but at 2k there aren't enough 33% points to also get a trygon. Lictors of course can't claim objectives.
- Take and Hold and Defend the flag: very doable as the 'nids main strength is taking over board areas and not breaking even under extreme pressure. Also, if the enemy wants to grab these objectives themselves, they need to get close and that's what the nids want.
- TSNP: see above for controlling areas. In 2k this is easier for the nids as they can control all of the 'midfield'.

On to the games:

#1 Clive w/ Steel Legion including 2 infantry comps (1 w/ chimeras), 2 shadowswords (I had 5 WEs w/out shields!), sentinels, 2 warhounds, roughriders.
Clive overwatched A LOT in this game, setting up these corridors of death which blocked my paths to him. There was a remarkable lack of fighting in this game. I slowly moved up the board, shot up the sentinels who had moved up too and avoided getting blasted to pieces (if I had brought inf-only swarms I could have ignored the shadowswords). At some point a warhound rushed to my blitz but got assaulted and broken by a harridan - it's very hard to do that kind of move against nids without smashing them up a bit first. By the time the legion was ready to cross the board and contest something, there were so many bugs in his face he couldn't move.

#2 Andrew w/ Biel-tan
See above. That first assault between both of our BTS fms took some time to resolve. The rest was cagey and as usual against Eldar I'm happy to not lose against them w/ nids. Too many skimmers, too fast. The gameplan is just to not lose activations so I can draw.

#3 Ben w/ Ultras
He had perhaps one of the worst types of marine armies to face nids: ground-pounder w/ relatively low mobility and not a lot of shooting. Tac on rhinos, 2* scouts, termies, 2 warhounds, whirlwinds.
He starts off by dropping the termies in my deployment zone and then promptly failing their activation. This meant I could ignore them until the end of the turn as they are so slow once grounded. So I set about taking over the board and setting up my army to fight in the right areas. For the termies I pounded them w/ shooting from 2 swarms and 1 harridan, all set up so that even if he wanted to assault the next turn he'd die a horrible death. On that flank, the termies eventually retreated unbroken into their own half... bad mistake as that exposed the scouts in that side and allowed me to gobble up both fms and take over the flank. On the other flank he was a bit cavalier w/ his BTS tac and a squad of tacs. He got enveloped and when he tried to retreat he failed the scout's activation. They went back leaving the tac BTS alone. It got crossfired by a harridan and then assaulted by my own BTS. I won by 9 difference but still a rhino survived. It ran away into the flank which later got exposed by the retreating termies and was shot up by a harridan. With the BTS dead, the nids took over that flank. The warhounds were the only things left and pinned to their side of the board. I could have won 5-0 but had no activations left to go grab the blitz so settled for 4-0 which is 32 tourney points as well.

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Like to say thank you to everyone I played yesterday for great games and especially to Richard for organising an excellent tournament.

Just quickly share some points from the games I played.

First game against Alan was very interesting as I had not played Orks before. I was quite scared of the Blitz brigades as all their oddboy macro weapons were very threatening to my deathwheels so I decided to prioritise taking them out first. There was one point early in the first turn however where I doubled one of my formations (retinue or defilers I cant remember) too far up the centre which left it very vulnerable to being assaulted by Alan's massive BTS warband with supporting fire from his Blitz brigade to its right. I couldn't tell if it was in range or not and didn't want to start measuring in case it gave my opponent ideas! Fortunately for me Alan didnt assault it but I think if he had then I would have been dealt a very serious blow early on that I most likely wouldnt have recovered from.

My second game pit me against Chris's Imperial Fists. In the first turn my Chosen got annihilated and I put a few blast markers down on units and advanced slowly with my infantry in the centre. I believe the turning point in the game came when the marine land raiders doubled to deal with one of my retinues. Chris retained and air assaulted with his terminators. The supporting fire of the land raiders and the terminators wiped out the retinue but my marines managed to kill a stand of terminators and more importantly the thunderhawk was left intermingled with the landraiders in the centre of the battle... My death wheel and BTS broke the terminators. My defilers then assaulted the thunderhawk with the landraiders intermingled. I rolled well and wiped both formations out. This really gutted the marines and gave my deathwheels free reign.

My last game against Richard was an absolute bloodbath. My chosen got picked off early on once again and whilst i didnt manage to do much damage to start i put a good amount of blast markers on units whcih really helped in the next turn as richard failed a lot his activations. In the second turn I tried to keep my BTS retinue alive as well I could against the fearless wraithguard and repositioned my other retinue towards the end to dobule my AA cover over the BTS. However this left itself without the necessary AA cover and it then got air assaulted and wiped out to the obliterator. I then foolishly intermingled it with my BTS as it retreated... Though it rallied I lost the initiative roll on the third turn, my BTS got assaulted by the wraithguard. By this point apart these were the only units save my death wheels that i had alive and they were now left broken! My deathwheels however performed amazingly throughout this game, routing a number of the eldar units and managing to break the remaining unbroken wraithguard and their mobility allowed me to secure a draw.

Thoughts overall:

Intermingling is really, really bad, avoid it like the plague.

My deathwheels were never really prioritised as significant targets by my opponents from early on and so were allowed to scoot around and do horrible things. I was however quite lucky that I didnt come up against any of the imperial guard lists. i think their shadow swords and warhounds combined would have quite easily taken the death wheels out early on.

The decimator is great combined with chaos infantry and really comes into its own after the first turn.

I think I need to work on how I use the chosen a bit more. They got picked off really easily and didnt seem to do much aside from use up a couple of my opponents activations early on.

I'd be interested to hear other people's analysis of their games.

Well, here's how i got on:

Game 1: Radek (Marines)
Radek had taken a ground pounding marine list, with just the terminators able to push in and strike at a distance. However, he did have 2 warhounds - which are always a struggle. Turn 1 saw me take the initative, and destroy a scout formation, a warhound and his assault marines, although Radek did a good job breaking my BTS, and the jetbikes while winning an assault, broke themselves in the process. Finally, the vampire went in on a run against his dev squad guarding the blitz, which got wiped out as well. Sadly neither of my units rallied, which did push us back towards parity activations wise. Radek then surprisingly put the terminators down near the wraithguard near his blitz (Rather than next to my BTS) then won initiative and did something i've not seen many people do with terminators before - he shot me. Well, first off the surviving warhound crossfired me with the terminators, and then the terminators returned the favour. This was actually pretty effective, and he'd soon killed 3 out of 6 stands, and they were heading for the hills. However, this did give me the opportunity to break his Landspeeders, and by the end of turn 2 the scouts were broken too. Going into turn 3 i finally rallied the BTS, but the other two failed to get back into the game. Radek made a few slipups turn 3 though, and failed to get anyone near my objectives, and after baiting out his terminators, i managed to draw him away from his blitz as well to secure a 3-0 win in turn 3.

Game 2: Matt Arnold (Orks)
Matt had taken an unusual list and i was looking forward to see how it would do. He'd had an equally good first game, so i was expecting a tough match here. He did make a minor mistake though in leaving an objective close to the centre of the board, which gave me my wraithgate in a prime position. Matt decided to take a run at my back units early on, and after a cheeky critical managed to take down the stormserpent in short order with a Landa - he then sent in a second one to go after one of the falcon units, and did something rather unexpected - he didn't assault, but rolled his bikes out of the Landa and shot me instead! Needless to say i wasn't anticipating this, and it worked pretty well in the circumstances. After this i felt somewhat on the back foot, so decided to respond as agressively as possible and see if i could regain the initiative. The BTS came powering out of the wraithgate, and engaged his gunmob, which was intermingled with his huge stompa mob. After breaking the unit and taking position on the hill overlooking his blitz, the vampire came in with the other wraithguard unit and polished off the stompas and pretty much secured his blitz as well. Matt decided to then keep one landa grounded (they'd both taken wounds on the way in) and the one that flew off got shot down by the rest of my AA.

Turn 2 and Matt decided to advance on my blitz, and push forward with his own troops, however i managed to wreck his commandos with my jetbikes, and then push them on back to my blitz, where eventually i took down the stormboyz as well. Turn 3 ended up being somewhat cleanup, with me securing his blitz and a few other bits for a full 32-0 by the end of the game. The Landa tactic is one i fully intend to use myself at some point though! The idea of just shooting rather than assaulting after landing does open up some interesting possibilities

Game 3 and i was up against Rohan and his Black Legion for the final round!
A great game this, i made a mistake by not focussing on his doomwheels early on, and Rohan certainly make good use of this, with them causing me no end of trouble. I made a strong push on his flank, which went fairly well, but consistantly failing to activate did take the wind out of my assault somewhat. By the end of it after some rather terrible firefights (including missing all 5 macro 4+'s in the key one) the BTS got broken, and didn't rally till the end of turn 4, and while the other wraithguard unit then flew on and smashed the other flank, it was short lived, after a doomwheel and other remaining assets came over and broke them with massed firing. Turn 4 was a bit of a quick one, as Rohan had his 2 doomwheels active, and i had a battered unit of falcons and the stormserpent. Unfortunately neither of us now had a way of getting a win, other than 1 last desparate attempt my me to take down the doomwheel guarding his blitz, which predictably ended badly for me. We finished with a dead draw, with me 148pts ahead - 2 tantalising points away from a winning draw, but Rohan played it very well and the draw was well deserved. I was very impressed with the doomwheels, and certainly won't be underestimating them again!