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So, amid much fanfare and celebratory exhortations from the local populace, our errant hero boarded a Continental Embraer Expressjet to Memphis. Leaving Houston and arriving without incident.
Of course it wasn?t totally without incident, after all, we are living in post- 9/11 times, so as my army of valiant and faithful soldierS slid down the X-ray machine?s belt, a friendly TSA staff person, escorted me to the frisk section to see what he could see.
Upon opening my carrying case, I said, ?Their toy soldiers. I?m going to go play in a gaming tournament.?. He smiled and rotated his head to his left and yelled at the top of his lungs, ?THEY?RE TOY SOLDIERS!?
Now I suppose that if I was truly proud of my hobby, I would have been wearing a camo t-shirt with bright orange letters stating, ?I play with toy soldiers, do you?? Instead I was wearing subdued tones, accented with camouflage. Although I remained cool as a cucumber on the outside, internally I winced at the exclamation. When the TSA person sitting at the analysis screen yelled back ?WHAT?? (apparently good hearing is not a requirement for employment), my handler then shouted back at an even higher decibel rating, ?I SAID THEY WERE TOY SOLDIERS!? (true story). Then he said we ought to look into transformers because they were the hot thing right now.
Suitably enlightened, I grabbed my stuff and noticed a majority of my fellow travelers looking in my direction with that, ?there?s something not quite right with you? look that we?ve all come to know and love. Ah well, c?est le guerre!
Not really bothered by this, I proudly picked up my toy soldiers and walked to my gate.
Upon claiming my baggage (my toy soldiers always travel in my hand), I was met by Greg Lane (my host for this weekend) and off we went to acquire and consume some Memphis BBQ. Now I shall leave for another time, what the correct definition of BBQ is and who makes the best, since there are strongly felt opinions for the various perspectives, However, I will say that what I experienced was a culinary delight and truly enhances any Memphis gaming adventure.
So, wanting to get a good test game in before the next day?s tournament, I quickly unloaded my space marines (the previously identified toy soldiers), we stuck out some terrain (a good bunch) and let slip the Dogs of War.
I played straight out of the book space marines, no mods as they haven?t been approved yet, so I figured I was in for a series of very tough fights and that I would need to surplant some of the SM limitations with guts, savvy, and perhaps a little guile.
My list for all the games I played in:
350 Landing Craft
500 1 x Tac, 3 x Rzrbacks, 2 x Rhino, 1 x Hunter
650 2 x Terminators
200 Strike Cruiser
400 1 x Tacticals, 2 x Dreads
350 1 x Tactical, 1 x Librarian
100 Supreme Commander
375 1 x Devastator, 1 x Dread, 1 x Captain
50 1 x Chaplain
So I was playing an all drop/air assault force and I expected to find myself swinging for all I was worth from the get go.
1st Game ? Vs. Tau (Greg Lane)
As is usual with this list, it all started off with a bang?from my orbital bombardment. I did a decent amount of damage on units, I teleported my terminators on the left, drop pods on the center near the Blitz and we were off to the races.
The drop pod force summarily wiped out Greg?s broadsides and were positioned for follow up work. Unfortunately, my terminators then suffered the wrath of a coordinated hail of fire from a hammerhead formation as well as a fire warrior formation. Which pretty much killed them for the rest of the game.
Still having a few tricks up my sleeve, I air assaulted my Razorback/Hunter/Tactical formation into the Hammerheads and wiped them out. Greg countered with moving some Pathfinder units to start fencing my forces in. I then countered with a Thunderhawk air assault carrying an Assault formation into his Scorpionfish, wiping it out.
So, we did some back and forth in the rest of the turns, and eventually worked out to a tie by the time the store closed, if I?m remembering correctly.
2nd Game ? Vs. Space Marines (Sgt. Mike)
I had never faced space marines with space marines before, so I was a little apprehensive, since Mike had a fairly balanced force, backed up with a formation of Warhounds. Mike opened up our little tete-a-tete with the comment, ?Those are my babies (pointing to his warhounds), if you do anything to them, I?ll hunt you down?. So, given additional motivation to excel, I opened up with my orbital bombardment, hammered one of his tactical formations, and clustered my drop pod troops near the center table group of objectives. That was a big mistake that I realized as soon as I put the last unit down and could see that a lot of bad stuff was looking my way. Needless to say, Mike capitalized on my mistake and hammered me with great passion.
Next we did the dueling terminator tango (he had two formations and so did I). He split his up, on to help protect his warhounds, another to assault my recently bloodied drop troops.
Why this game is such a great game: What ensued was two heroic struggles between two different groups of forces, of which songs will be sung for many centuries.
In the North, my two terminator detachments wiped out one of Mikes, weathered the storm of support fire from the Warhounds and moved to secure that flank. In the South, I assaulted his terminators with my Landing Craft, supported by a tactical formation and eventually finished them off with a remnant devastator formation. It was an extremely fun fight to watch, the Landing Craft holding three terminator stands to a tie, eventually succumbing, but only leaving Mike with two stands to hold that part of the table, which wasn?t enough. A very angry detachment of devastators scoured the country side hunting down a scout detachment and removed it from further play.
When it was all said and done, I pulled out a one goal victory over Mike and we were both feeling the exhilaration that comes from a hard fought game, regardless of the outcome. I?d play a game with Mike anytime.
3rd Game ? Vs. Orks (Memphis Mark)
Mark was a very pleasant chap who I got to meet on my last trip to Memphis and I was reminded of his intriguing smile, which seems to infer that he knows what you are thinking?in my case, this turned out to be true.
As is customary with a drop pod force, I plotted up my stuff and Mark set his units up. As is also customary, we kicked things off with a bang, the orbital barrage hammering two separate formations, one of which was a mob of boyz with jet packs waiting to ambush someone in a body suit. The drop pods came down, added a little icing to the cake, I deployed out of my drop pods and proceeded to apply the coup de main to a couple of Mark?s larger formations. With one big mechanized mob, and a battle wagon mob sent off with their tails between their legs, it looked like the space marines were on to something good.
Not so.
Mark had a Stompa mob with a Supa stompa that fired tactical nuclear weapons from its belly and before you could say, ?Shazaam!?, I had lost two tactical formation, one devastator formation, a chaplain and a librarian.
Somewhere off in the distance, a lone Ork stompa commanda was shouting, ?YOU WANT A PIECE OF THIS??
Needing to apply a severe readjustment to my battle plan, I dropped my terminators in behind the stompa mob and wiped out three stompas and put two DC on the big guy, but just missed wiping him out, so he waddled off a fair bit, turned around and reloaded. Not a good deal.
I air assaulted one of Marks Deth copta formations and wiped it out save one unit, but began to see a bit of a struggle ahead as I was out of activations and Mark was just getting started. Did I mention that he had two formations of 6 fighta bommas? He did and they were a pain in the neck.
Needless to say, by the end of turn two, the only thing I had left on the board was a single unit of terminators with my Supreme Commander. I don?t have to tell you how torqued off he is and that he can?t wait to pick a fight with some more Orks. Now, lest you think that all this damage went unanswered, it did not, but the reality is that Mark had enough units left over to score a rather commanding 5-0 win over the good guys.
A great game as well, very much akin to two contestants standing at arms reach, battering each other with 10 lb sledgehammers. I greatly look forward to the next Mark!
So, quite a memorable series of games that left me wanting to have played more.
Excellent time all you Memphonians and I look forward to next year!
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Honda
"Remember Taros? We do"
- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment
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