next time then I'm claiming to be on whatever team dave bartley and mike thomas are on: this has become somekind of crazy grudge match now

April in the Championship season, and I'm determined to pull further ahead of Flame On's Simon in the Epic UK Championship.

I set myself the challenge of avoiding the normal Marine crutch units - <strong>Warhound Titans</strong>, Thunderbolts and Terminators. I wanted to see if I could compete with a non-standard list. I still went Thunderhawk heavy though, I love Thunderhawks.

I also tried Scouts with Razorbacks - as I liked the idea of garrisoned twin-linked Lascannons. This necessitated lots of conversions using Ork battlewagon turrets glued together, as the classic SM2 era Razorbacks are super-rare.



Assault Marines - Supreme Commander
Assault Marines - Chaplain
Assault Marines - Chaplain

Devastators
Devastators
Devastators

Thunderhawk Gunship
Thunderhawk Gunship
Thunderhawk Gunship

Scouts - 4 Lascannon Razorbacks
Scouts - 4 Lascannon Razorbacks
Scouts - 3 Lascannon Razorbacks, 1 Rhino

Land Speeders


To battle!

With the tournament registration starting in Mansfield at 8:30am, we set off from Manchester at 8:29am thanks to Simon's insistence on a heavy night out on Canal Street.



[em]"These drinks are called bombs Simon! They're 3BP each!"[/em]


Game 1 - Steve Gullick's Biel-tan Eldar

Steve had a fairly similar strategy to me - with two sets of Aspects in Vampires that would aerially assault, while his ground formations sat around on overwatch on objectives. We romped through turns one and two in under ten minutes - which was fortunate as our late departure meant we were pushed for time.



The flying transports (each containing our BTSs) both landed turn 3, with the exception of my first laden Thunderhawk that was shot down in flames with no survivors.

I forced it to a Turn 4, but Steve obliterated my measly four-strong Assault Marines BTS and had a set of Aspects on my Blitz I was unable to approach let alone shift. 0-2 turn 4.


Game 2 - Jez Lock's Codex Astartes Space Marines

Aha! A rematch against Jez's Marines with a pair of Warhounds as its BTS. I'd played this last tournament - where I'd pounced on his Titanly BTS with all my Thunderhawks Turn 1, leaving one on 1DC. The hall had then witnessed howls of frustration as everything else I had fired at it hoping to finish it off only to watch it pass every 5+ reinforced save ever.



This game I forced corners, and attempted a similar Thunderhawk trick. At the critical moment Jez had advanced the bulk of his army up the board leaving the Warhounds behind unsupported. My first Thunderhawk approached this pair of cursed dogbots - only to be shot down on the approach. Again. Twice in two games.

I elected not to retain, and Jez doubled the Warhounds back to the safety of the main bulk of his force.

However, I still had two Thunderhawks left, and they did the classic one-two with the first dropping off its formations within 15cm to lay blast markers and add supporting fire for the engagement from the second. This wiped all the DC off both of them, and I got revenge.

However, this was a case of Captain Ahab getting his whale, as my obsession with the Warhounds meant the bulk of my army was in the open against Jez's Marines. He won the initiative Turn 2 and destroyed all my Titan-hunters in turn, and went on for a 2-1 win Turn 3.

Game 3 - Tim Hunt's Steel Legion Imperial Guard

Two losses under my belt, and the alleged swissing system now drew me against gaming supremo Tim Hunt. Argh! I've already faced one premier league player, I can't manage two.

Tim expertly pulled my forces apart in short order, with my only real good tactical moves limited to onion-skinning my Blitz with formations from Thunderhawks to force a Turn 4. At least none of them were shot down on the approach.

Tim managed to assault some Razorbacks with his Deathstrikes, proving their worth as a front-line battletank.





So, three losses. Dismal outing for the experimental Warhoundless Marines.

Simon did similarly badly. However, he was using the same list to a previous tournament - and I was using a different Marine list to last tike (Codex Astartes and not White Scars) so I qualified for a bonus championship point - and pulled further ahead of him in the Championship. Epic win!

Chris you missed the final part of the symmetry as our game also had my one critical roll of the tournament to take out your first air assaulting Thunderhawk.

So, I brief tournament report from me here:

Game 1 Vs Chris’ Orks
Honestly can’t remember much about this game except the general feeling of being roundly battered. We only managed to get about halfway through turn four so the game concluded in a draw. I’m pretty sure however that had we managed to finish the turn Chris would have been able to get a win. The difference in VPs bears testament to that with chris being 505 pts ahead of me

Game 2 Vs Jon’s Speed Freaks
On the surface this looked like a repeat matchup of a game me and Jon had last year:
Exactly the same army for me and similar army for jon with tons and tons of fightas.
At first I was rather confident, however:
The difference this time was his ground force makup, which was very different, and known exactly what to do with it (especially with regard to my army – he seemed to have learned lessons).
Looking at this army I was a rather more worried.
I felt like I was a puppet and he was pulling the strings. Actually I knew exactly what he was doing and rather let him (honestly): I wanted to see how it would pan out even though I knew I’d lose (not too badly I hoped). The climax of the game saw my normally indestructible warband wiped out by his huge kult with support from his big kult. And couple of mistakes right at the end saw me lose rather more badly than I had played for (3-0) worse still, to my horror we noted that for open war 3-0 in turn 3 gets you no points at all. Congrats to Jon

Game 3 Vs Ryan and yet more orks!
After the only a draw followed by a pounding taken by Jon. I was a little surprised to find myself some distance away from the bottom tables. I little surprised also (though pleased) to find myself facing my good epic chum Ryan. Had he done as badly as me? Surely Not!
Similar armies here. I had two landas to his one. He had two supa stomps to my one.
As Ryan noted in his report, my army make up is rather interesting. I should get no credit for that though. It's virtually identical to one Joe Jephson used a few years ago, with only the most 'superficial' difference.

Anyway, The battle was fought in two places. On my baseline and near an objective I’d placed on the far left of the table halway up.

We pissed around a bit then Ryan decided to land his warband ontop of one of my blitz brigades wiping it out. My ‘Uge and big warbands, along with my other blitzers with the zzaps where tasked with clearing ryans warband and landa off, which they did between them over turns one and two, with the warbands barely moving. Personally I felt Ryan had exchanged his Queen for one of my Bishops (if you see what I mean) leaving me still with two Queens – but there you go.

On the other front, once the Zzap brigade was free from it’s landa killing duties it joined my supa stompa heading towards the objective on my left. This was placed next to a large hill which blocked line of fire from most of Ryan's army, meaning the Ryan would have to move stuff over to a narrow front on the far side of the table to fight me. This was the plan! I draw as much stuff over there as possible, draining protection from his blitz and the objective on the far right.
Between them, the zzaps and the stompas concentrated fire on the smaller and faster formations (to stop them racing back to contest) leaving the bigger heavier stuff out of place. This even involved an engagement from my stomps on Ryan's Kommandos, attacking only a single stand! Eventually my Zzap bigade was overcome, but they’d done their job well enough for me.

Back to my rear line, one of Ryans stomp mobs made it to my two big mobs nastily intermingled with each other. A mechanised mob raced around to provide support fire and the stompas engaged. Unlike with the attack Jon made, my boyz proved much harder to shift, though it was a close call with three rounds of combat! I kept shuffling grotz to the font (I had a total of 11) and these, along with the ruins, surely, saved my bacon. After the third round of combat the stompas where repulsed, and then the ryans mechanised warband was assaulted in turn clearing them off.

We had only five mins left! I dropped a landa on the objective on the far right, denying they shall not pass to Ryan which he could have combined with take and hold to claim the win.

Had we the time to fight turn four, I think I’d have dropped them closer to the centre line to clear out a centrally placed blitz brigade so they couldn’t have contested, and then raced them back to the blitz in turn 4, landed the other mob on the far objective and moved one of my big mobs to moving out of the buldings to take, or at least contest the objectives placed just ‘up the road’ from there. Alas we’ll never find out.
So, instead, a draw with me winning in vps by rather a large margin.

3 Amazing games. 3 Amazing players. Fairly rubbish final placing but there you go. See you all next time!