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Thanks a lot to Gavin for organising this event, I had a brilliant time. The Epic scene goes from strength to strength. The atmosphere was great and there were some beautiful armies on show – Damien’s Seigers were very deserved winners of best painted I thought.
Anyway, this was the second tournament I’ve attended (first was Open War) and a theme is emerging – out of 6 tournament games so far I’ve played Space Marines 6 times! It’s getting weird. I took Imperial Guard.
First game was against Matt Otter and I really enjoyed it. You can tell Matt is a very experienced tournament player – he always seems to know what he wants to do, plays very quickly and makes few mistakes. I, on the other hand, tend to forget rules, blunder through the rulebook looking up stats, mull things over for a while, then often make a decision I immediately regret! Oh well.
Anyway, Matt was my first opponent at my previous tournament as well, where I managed to get a draw. Not so this time, as he won 3-0 on turn 4. I got across the board to threaten his blitz with my tank company, and I also destroyed a reasonable amount of stuff, but after the devastation of Turn 1 and then the piecemeal destruction of my HQ, I didn’t have enough left to really threaten him. I consoled myself with the fact that I managed to scramble about to deny a third turn win. This was worthwhile as the tournament scoring method rewards the loser with a few more points if it goes to a fourth turn.
Probably the most notable moment was a formation of Predators feeling the full weight of fire of a fresh Leman Russ company, but only losing a single tank!
Anyway, I really enjoyed the game, and Matt went on to finish second in the tournament, so I can’t feel too bad about losing that one.
My second game was against Chung, who was attending his first tournament. This was another fun game and I really enjoyed playing Chung. It started with an overwhelming assault of three Terminator detachments utterly destroying my Shadowsword company. After this, however, things got better as I was able to spend the rest of the first turn dealing with all the Terminators with my Warhounds, tank company and then an intermingled assault from my HQ.
After that I trundled forwards and was able to claim a 3-0 win on the third turn.
My last game was against Mark Preston, who had also been my third opponent at Open War. I enjoyed the game a lot last time and I enjoyed it a lot this time too. Mark is great fun to play against as he plays a tough game, but is very laidback about it, which creates a great atmosphere.
I’d won our last encounter, but this time things went less well. I was on the back foot from the first, when the Landing Craft made a right mess of my back lines – the Shadowsword company remained broken for the rest of the game.
There was a cool little passage of events on the right flank as my two Warhounds wounded and broke one of Mark’s, then chased it back through the ruined city streets to Mark’s blitz objective. Eventually I brought it down and claimed the blitz, but one Warhound was lost and the other battered. Mark’s empty Landing Craft promptly marred my glory by dropping right on top of the surviving Warhound and squashing it. It parked there for the rest of the game to make the blitz utterly secure.
The game was one of those really tight ones, where every activation counts - it went to points after a fourth turn and was a draw. Mark was 1-0 up on objectives (BTS), so moral victory to him I think, but I managed to do enough to stop him claiming actual victory.
A win, a draw and a loss. 8th place overall (I think), so not too bad. Thanks to all my opponents, and again to Gavin, it was a great weekend.
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