Yep, good event - if a little cold in there! Congrats to Tim and Steve, and looking forward to next year

Oh, one thought i had after the AGM: As far as tournaments go, perhaps a 'seeding' system to sort matchups after the first random draw when there are people on the same points? Takes some of the 'lucky draw' element out of matchups, and would only apply of course when two people are on the same points - just seems a bit fairer than random or picked. People may disagree with me though mind you!

I think we would still have played in the second game anyway.

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NetEA Ork + Feral Ork + Speed Freak Champion

Which in fairness is what should have happened anyway if you see what i mean...

Great weekend of gaming, thanks to DaveT, Horatio, Gavin, Richard and Andy for 5 fun games. Nids' went 2-2-1 which is .500 in anyone's book

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Thanks to everybody who turned up for a chilly GT, I really enjoyed the weekend even the long wait for the curry. As TO everything went really smoothly with everybody playing in a great spirit and to time as well with only 2/50 games timing out.

Schedule for 2014 will be up soon as discussed at the AGM, details of the Xmas big game, photos from the GT and full results

Provisional rankings are
1 Steve54 Biel tan
2 Dptdexys Dark Angels
3 Tiny-Tim Thousand Sons
4 Reedar Orks
5 Yme-Loc Tau
6 RichardL AMTL
7 Mephiston Tyranids
8 Andy Codex SM
9 Ginger Biel tan
10 MikeT Orks
11 Kyussinchains CodexSM
12 Evil+Chaos Codex SM
13 Consul Death Guard
14 Nat Steel Legion
15 Tom C Tyranids
16 Rob Saim Hann

Congratulations to Dave Bartley for winning a dice-off for most Sporting player, Darren Reeks and Simon Holyoake for winning best armies with their Orks and Imperial Fists (narrowly beating Tom Sanders Death Guard) and Tim for winning the 2013 Championship

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Thanks for running it steve

Looking forward to seeing pics!!

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quick report from me

Game 1 - Reedar (orks)

this started out quite cagey, I put my planes on CAP early, anticipating a landa dropping in somewhere, then strung out a couple of scout screens, there was some tit-for-tat shooting, and I dopped some termies in and killed off a couple of his kults of speed, as his BTS was bristling with Macro and TK weapons it was too big a risk to go after with the termies, in the end I very stupidly gave the game to darren on turn 3 by overwatching with my scouts to place a blast marker and suppress one of two soopaguns, they were then unable to move to screen my blitz and Darren dropped a landa full of orks on it, textbook!

Game 2 - MikeT (orks)

Mike had a very similar list to Reedar, although with smaller blitz brigades and a second landa, yet again the BTS was a cc stompamob so I avoided it.... I didn't do a huge amount wrong here, trying to smash mike's ground activations, but his landas were superb, taking out my BTS (and supreme commander) quite handily and splatting a warhound, coupled with some obscene armour saves on mike's part and some dodgy rolling from me, mike ended up with a 4-0 win on turn 3

Game 3 - Nat (Steel Legion)

I've never played Nat before, but was pretty familiar with Steel Legion, he deployed two shadowswords back to back, covering his deployment zone in TK death and ruling out a T1 air assault! Again the game was cagey with lots of shooting, my preds were outstanding, blowing up two fully shielded warhounds in quick succession, then blasting a bunch of chimeras to bits from his BTS, an air assault from my termies gave me BTS, but then he gunned down my own BTS, as we pushed in to turn 4, Nat rushed his other mech infantry into my half, grabbing blitz and another objective, thanks to two sustaining warhounds and a thawk landing, they didn't remain unbroken for long, but at the end of the turn, they rallied, denying me TSNP and a 2-1 win, in the end I claimed a winning VPs draw

Game 4 - Monkeyboy (Saim-Hann)

A cagey game again, I had some very good results on T1, blatting several formations, but then on T2 Rob won the initiative, killing one warhound and breaking the other, if I'd gone first, it might well have been BTS broken and a falcon formation destroyed! I managed to grab his blitz with my BTS, and destroy 3 units in an assault, but I couldn't stop Rob stringing out to contest all the objectives, as we were short on time, we called it a flat draw in T3

Game 5 - Hel Tanner (Tyranids)

I went into this game having never won against tyranids... HT began by teleporting in 3 formations of lictors on my right flank, I won the initiative and blatted one with a withdrawing warhound, then retained and shot another up with my BTS, he then engaged and destroyed the warhound with the 3rd formation, and advanced at great speed with his big swarms. I was fortunate that my preds blew up 5 of his big beasties with the tyrant, I also pounced on his remaining lictors with my 2nd warhound, wiping them out, and one of my thawks gunned down the broken survivors, my TBolts doing the same with the stragglers from the other warband. He invested quite a lot in attacking my speeders which I was fine with, but I ignored his genestealers and paid the price! they rampaged through my predators, then hit the BTS, I was lucky that I got some shots back, which meant 2 stands of marines survived and were quickly surrounded by a protective scout screen! I shot up his big swarms as best as I could, then engaged with thawks and termies to make sure the warriors took the hits, this worked really well, wiping one swarm out. The other ended up bottlenecked and out of engage range of anything tasty, and out of march range of my blitz. My warhound grabbed his blitz and my scouts nabbed another objective. As he was out of activations and I couldn't grab all my own objectives, I sent my termies in against his dominatrix to try and nab a cheeky BTS, suffice to say they died and were eaten for their troubles! so the game ended 2-0 to me on turn 3. The fact that tom seemed to enjoy watching swarms of nids mown down more than me and had a smile on his face throughout earned him my most sporting nomination there and then!

5 excellent games all-round!

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So, who games at Dreamlike regularly?

'Cos I managed to leave my army cases behind, and it's a four hour round trip.......

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I can get them Thursday

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If you could hang on to them for me, mayhaps I've got a wife-proof excuse to attend the Dec gaming day now. ;-)

Thanks Steve.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

So this past weekend saw the final tournament of the EpicUK 2013 season with the GT up in sunny Mansfield. I took Tau and would like to thank all my opponents - Richard, Rob, Steve, Dave and Darren for five excellent and tough games. Really enjoyed the weekend even if it was a little chilly in the venue and the curry on the Saturday took a little while to arrive.

My list

Battlesuit Cadre + 1 Crisis + Shas'o, Pts = 400
Mounted Fire Warrior Cadre + Skyray, Pts = 325
Mounted Fire Warrior Cadre + Skyray, Pts = 325
Mounted Fire Warrior Cadre + Skyray, Pts = 325

Broadside Group, Pts = 300
Broadside Group, Pts = 300

Pathfinder Group, Pts = 200
Recon Skimmer Group, Pts = 175
Recon Skimmer Group, Pts = 175
Recon Skimmer Group, Pts = 175

Barracuda Squadron, Pts = 150
Orca Dropship, Pts = 150

Game 1: vs Richard (AMTL) - Warlord + 2 Reavers + 2 Warhounds + Thunderbolts
Richard was using the brand new (at least to epicUK tournaments) Titan Legions army, I was certainly a bit wary going into the game as my list lacked a spaceship or AX-1-0's which are the standard Tau ways of dealing with large war engines, so I would probably struggle against all the heavily armoured Titans. But as it was the Broadsides were stars smashing the two Warhounds early and basically giving me an activation advantage that Richard could never recover from. After four turns of hard fighting I managed a winning draw on VPs when a Reaver went down to some poor armour save rolls having been shot for three turns with missiles, railguns and then tripping over some scouts.

Game 2: vs Rob (Saim Hann) - 2 Big Wild Riders + 3 Falcons + Shining Spears + Serpent + Prisms + Rangers + Spaceship + Hunter
Game started badly for the Tau with Rob basically hitting and running with his Falcons to good effect sniping out Recon formations and hammering my Pathfinders. But some air dropped Broadsides threw him when they landed and obliterated his Serpent stalling any last activation assaults and over the next few turns weight of seeker missiles and railgun shots wore the Eldar down. In the third turn the Mech Firewarriors obliterated the remaining Wild Rider formations in some deadly crossfires and I was able to get a 3-0 win with BTS, Take and Hold and Defend the Flag.

Game 3: vs Steve (Biel-Tan) - 2 Aspect Warhosts in Vampires + 2 Falcons + Prisms + 3 Rangers + 2 Spinners + Guardians
Played Steve at Britcon and he whooped me so I was worried about this one as he is very good with his Eldar and is also experienced with Tau. Started badly for the Tau again as Steve used Spinners and hit and running to good effect to disrupt the Tau position ready for the air assaults to finish up. But having learnt from our previous game I played initially very defensively and then hit back to knock out the forward Falcons using air dropped Broadsides and seeker missiles. This forced the Eldar air assaults onto non optimal targets without ground flak cover. I even got lucky with my Barracudas as they shot a loaded Vampire out of the sky. Despite heavy losses from the Eldar attacks I managed to sneak a 2-1 (Defend the Flag, Take and Hold vs BTS) win in the third turn when Firewarriors broke a number of Eldar formations disputing objectives.

Game 4: vs Dave T (Dark Angels) - 3 Devs + Terminators + 3 Scouts + 2 Thunderhawks + Assault + Speeders + Spaceship
Another really tough game but enjoyable to begin the Sunday morning. Dave is really good with Marines. I was thankful he was using Dark Angels though so I didn't have to face Warhounds. As it was the game began really badly as the Spaceship bombardment and drop podding Devs broke or destroyed three formations. I played again very defensively trying to stabilise my position for later turns. Slowly the Tau gained ground and fought back but Marines can be tough as they have good armour and are tough to break with shooting so Dave kept up the pressure. Feel I played very well and managed to fight off the attacks and to hold out for a losing draw on VPs in the fourth turn.

Game 5: vs Darren (Orks) - 2 Warbands + Landa + Bommers + Supa Stompa + 3 Big Blitz + 3 Kults
Game started well for the Tau as Darren's inexperience facing them saw his Warlord assassinated in a building by some garrisoned Pathfinders followed by Broadsides basically breaking Blitz brigades at will. But went downhill from there because of good play by Darren keeping his main forces compact and in cover while still attacking aggressively. Attempts by my Firewarriors to shift Orks from buildings proved disappointing thanks to some failed activations and then me throwing a formation stupidly under the wheels of an Ork Blitz brigade for no reason. These initial mistakes saw me commit the Crisis unnecessarily which got them blown to bits by the Supa Stompa. Thankfully the Broadsides held the centre together and battered anything that came near. But a final mistake in the fourth turn saw me lose 2-0 (BTS, Shall not Pass) when I got carried away shooting stuff and forgot to advance my Broadsides into the Ork table half.

Ended up fifth from sixteen which I was quite happy with after five very hard fought and extremely enjoyable games.

Congrats to Steve for winning, Dave T for coming second and Darren/Tim for third. Also congrats to Tim for winning the championship.

Thoughts on my list mainly revolve around Broadsides being great and the Crisis BTS still being a big weakness in the army I have been using. Just a little too fragile for a BTS and too useful not to get into dangerous positions. I will definately be moving to a large Firewarrior formation as BTS in the future even if it might force me to drop an activation.