once again, great event, well worth getting up at 4am to tackle the trip down (Much respect to Reedar, Jon and the other bristol-based guys who make the same effort multiple times a year!)
Game 1 - BrokenBaynet (Biel-Tan)
When Tim set up his army, with a single falcon formation, and no fire prisms or void spinners it felt like all my christmasses had come at once! he admitted to being quite rusty as his last tournament was a year ago, but with a pair of revenants stomping around and a formation of shining spears lurking in the webway I knew it wasn't going to be a pushover!
I chose to deploy the devs on the ground, and to teleport the terminators in (still getting to grips with the marine air-assault and perhaps being too cautious....) I was quite fortunate, winning the initiative every turn, and I set to work trying to knock out his AA and reduce his activations, I was very lucky with my dice and thanks to my land speeders blocking his gate, kept him from bringing anything out of the webway on turn 1. An air assault took out his jetbikes and a broken nightspinner nearby, although his revenants gunned down the survivors and put a few blast markers on my thunderhawk as it flew off. I elected to land the empty thawk next to his phoenix bombers and managed to shoot one down as they flew off. Turn 2 saw my terminators teleport in, fortunately getting no blast markers, I was able to double the land speeders into support range, prep and then engage one titan with the terminators, hiding from the second, I managed to damage it twice (although didn't knock the shield out) and took a single casualty in return, winning the combat and breaking the titans. Tim then engaged the terminators with the shining spears out of the gate, unfortunately, the dice were against him, and he only felled a single stand, losing 4 in return to the termies, and then before we could roll off, the support-firing landspeeders rolled 4 hits and gunned the rest of the formation down. Turn 3 was spent mopping stuff up, the devs finished off the second reaver and I managed to wipe all his other stuff on the table out, all that was left was for him to march a guardian formation out of the gate to contest an objective in my half, denying me TSNP and DTF, I attempted to break them for the chance at a 4-0 win on turn 3, but couldn't quite kill enough, and had to settle with 3-0 (T&H, BTS, Blitz)
Game 2 - MikeT (Thousand sons)
After game 1, I found myself on the top table against my 'primary coloured marine bro-pact' buddy Mike.... this was a bit of a bloodbath to be honest, I managed to break his defilers (and keep them broken throughout) but didn't capitalise on it with strong air assaults, ground pounding the devs and teleporting the terminators, I lost the initiative 2 turns in a row, including the crucual teleporting turn, the terminators were righteously butchered, and my thawk with assault marines was pretty ineffective (although the small amount of damage they did enabled me to nab a crossfire and wipe one retinue out) this was coupled with my warhound refusing to rally 2 turns in a row and hiding in the corner, as well as some quite shocking rally roles in turn 2 (needing 2's to rally, I rolled 3 1's in a row, leaving me at a huge disadvantage) Mike did go on to win the whole tournament, which says much less about his skill as a player, and more about how ridiculously broken the thousand sons are
Game 3 - Reedar (orks)
Before this game, Steve had hinted that I may well end up facing Jon and his horrible Iyanden force, Richard kindly gave me a pep talk and some sage advice for dealing with Iyanden, I then found myself playing against Darren's fantastic ork army instead.....
This time I went all out air assault, with assaults and devs in one thawk, and terminators in the other, we had some tit-for-tat shooting, with me trying to kill his fast formations and reduce his activations, a timely air assault with the assaults and devs broke one of his zzap brigades and left that side of his force looking thin on the ground, however he had massed on the other side and swarmed quickly towards my blitz, blowing my land speeders up in the process.... I lost a warhound to his second zzap brigade by foolishly parking it 30 cm from them and generously allowing them to sustain fire on it!
He then bought on his landa to engage my air-assaulters, but thanks to CAP-ing planes bravely flying through and surviving a hail of flak, and the thunderhawk, I got a lucky crit on the landa which went down with all hands (phew) I then did a stupid move and engaged his big mob holding the blitz with the terminators.... this went as you would expect really, and ended with all the terminators very dead (even with Darren forgetting his overwatch shots!) in retrospect I should have gone after the supa stompa BTS as it had no TK weapon.... but such is life!
We went into turn 3 with Darren swarming towards my table edge, held by my BTS, he fired at them and the supreme commander decided to stick his head in the way of the first bullet....
losing my re-roll was crucial at this point as my thawk with assaults had 2 blast markers on it, they tried to engage Darren's zzap brigade but failed, he was then able to move his stompas to grab one of my objectives and in true orky fashion, marched his zzap brigade to contest my blitz, giving him a 2-0 victory, I'm not sure but I may have been able to engage his gunwagons and drag the stompas in, which would definitely have taken it to a 4th turn if I'd broken them!
Just like my last game against Darren it was a brutal bloodbath, and I had a smile on my face the whole time
I think only losing 2-0 meant that I came in 9th, just shy of the points, but walked away with the award for players choice Best painted, which I am super pleased with, and very grateful to everyone who voted for me, I'm very humbled as the overall standard of painting was amongst the highest I have seen at an event I've attended and I genuinely didn't expect to win! (although I'm glad I did
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I can't make britcon this year, but will hopefully make it to the cambridge skirmish, or failing that whatever happens with the replacement for Open War (maybe with some orks..... I've been inspired!)
