General photos.
Game 1 was against Jon's monstrous swarm of Shadowswords on table 3 which was surprisingly open. Given the Death Guard's reliance on Fearless and their 3+ armour saves, this was one of the worst possible combinations of matchup and table for me! I think the only tables that would have been scarier would have been the iceworld or lavaworld.
Anyway, in the face of an uphill struggle, I'm proud to have got a draw, largely helped by managing to break a whole bunch of the Shadowswords and them never rallying for the rest of the game. Moral victory - one of the Plaguehounds survived the game! On the other hand, Jon's BTS of Shadowswords and Ogryns made it all the way into my table half and most of the way to my blitz objective.
Notable moment - my garrisoning DG Retinue with a single attached Contagion Engine sustains to put BMs on the BTS and also manages to break the Deathstrikes, who I think never managed to rally.
Said Retinue plus some advancing Predators all cowering behind a slightly-too-small building from the massed ranks of Volcano Cannon.
Game 2 was against Ginger's Biel Tan. Given the rules for the Bocage terrain and my massed Disrupt Ignore Cover barrages on the Plaguehounds this was always going to be an uphill struggle, although I was terrified of the two Vampires full of Aspect Hosts.
The Plague Zombie Infestation did their usual sterling job of slowing down/distracting the enemy after getting massive numbers but few BMs on landing.
The most memorable moment would be the comedy of errors when the Aspect Hosts arrived - happily wiping out the Predators and then breaking my BTS Retinue (but failing to kill them during the game, due to darn Fearless), only to see the Warp Spider BTS get glooped by one of the Plaguehounds - catching
every single bleeping unit under the Ignore Cover Disrupt barrage (on AP5+ for Doubling) and then the 4 Disrupt shots from the secondary gun on to of that (on AP4+ for doubling), and getting ONE SINGLE HIT. Which saved. Net result, two BMs. Unfortunately for Ginger I then won the strategy roll for turn two - the same Plaguehound sustained, getting enough Disrupt hits to break the BTS even if no saves had been failed (it was a total of 12 Disrupt rolls on 3+ to hit), followed by retaining initiative with a second Plagouehound who doubled and wiped the Warp Spiders off the face of the earth with more Disrupt hits. My hard-learned lessons against Richard D in the practice games had paid off.
I believe this game eventually went 2-0 to me, with all three Plaguehounds up in front of the Eldar deployment zone at the end of the game.
Game 3 was against Steve's Squats masquerading as Imperial Guard. This was back on the Orky Settlement table from the first round and Steve started off with excellent placement of the objectives in my half, given my dependance on garrisoned DG Retinues - placing them on the extreme opposite flanks in very open areas.
Notable moments included a Mechanised Company successfully Marshalling
and still having nine BMs afterwards.
By this point I was forgetting to take notes or photos but overall it was a hilarious game of silliness, eventually ending in a draw due to time being called. It's likely that Steve would have got a 2-0 if we'd been able to finish the turn.
Thank you to Jon, Gavin and Steve for the games and Tim for organising, although both Gavin and I were tearing our hair out at each others' rolls at various points of the second game...
Lastly, a couple more photos of a test layout for the Siege of Exeter game in December:
