24 Participants.
48 Games.
Nine and a half hours of mayhem. Hello all,
I'm hoping this report will turn into a full blown run down of the tournament from every participant's perspective and as I am the primary organiser I thought I would get the ball rolling. The thread we discuss and organise this tournament malarkey in is:
http://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=190885.0This is the first year I have fully taken on the responsabilities for this tournament, as the other organisers from the forum (Erriond, Oink, etc) have increasingly had real life get in the way and have to take a step back in getting involved. Thanks still goes to Oink for managing the thread and other various gribbly bits that needed doing.
Being the egotistical bastard I am, this obviously meant I had to make sure this was the best one run yet. I'll let everyone else decide whether I managed it or not.
The rules pack I wrote for the event can be found here:
http://www.bfgclub.org.uk/9th%2040KONLINE%20UK%20TOURNAMENT.pdf The event is a community event and it's always been about getting together and putting names to faces, and I really wanted to embody that fact just from the rules pack. What I neglected to tell every participant until they dragged themselves to our 8:30 start is that I had written up an achievement system, inspired by a thread in the General 40k forum:
Off the Chart: Scoring over 1750 Victory Points in a single battle.
Money-Maker: Your first shot of the game destroys their most expensive unit.
Fire Truck: A vehicle you explode does over 75 Victory Points worth of damage in the blast.
Traction Control: Destroying twelve or more vehicles over the course of the tournament.
Unleash the Fury: One of your HQ units causes an unsaved wound with ALL their attacks in one round of combat.
Cavalry Horn: Reverse a turn five loss into a turn seven win.
Red versus Blue: Participate in a combat that ends with the engaged units simultaneously destroying each other.
My Name is Bruce: One of your units survives all four battles.
Glorious Glory: Destroy a vehicle in a Death or Glory attempt.
The Worf: One of your vehicles makes a Strength 10 ram attack.
Cooking by the book: One of your psyker units doesn’t suffer a Perils of the Warp attack throughout the tournament.
GMT + 15: In a single battle all your reserves don’t show up until turn five or later (including not arriving at all): a mishap back into reserve counts for this purpose.
Spare Change: If at any point in a game one of your multiple wound units are all down to their last wound but have suffered no casualties.
History is written by the survivors: Destroy a unit which is already falling back.
“Never tell me the odds!” A unit passes a morale test when only Insane Heroism will do.
Dishonour before Death: If you manage to end a close combat outside the Assault Phase.
Behemoth Party: If three or more of your Monstrous Creatures survive a battle.
Weighted Dice: If all your Deep Striking units hit and your outflanking units arrive where you want them to throughout the entire tournament.
Good Posture: If you have the first turn in every game of the tournament.
Universally Gifted: If a unit with: Acute Senses spots a unit with its reroll; Eternal Warrior survives an attack due to its immunity to Instant Death; Move Through Cover reaches combat due to the extra dice (mark out the third dice in a different colour when rolling); Preferred Enemy destroys its preferred enemy in close combat; Skilled Rider avoids death with its reroll; Stubborn passes a morale check they would not have normally; Tank Hunter destroys an enemy tank, which would otherwise survive without the modifier.
When I get a chance I'll try and upload the document somewhere which everybody was given, as I drew some quite amusing badges to accompany each achievement.Each achievement could only be achieved once throughout the tournament, some of them were impossible for some armies, most were very hard. To give some incentive to perform them each one was worth 50 Victory Points and added to your running total at the end of each game.
Scoring was done by Battle Points primarily, followed by Victory Points. 3 Battle Points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss and between 1 - 3 for the amount of effort gone into the presentation of your army.
With that out of the way, on to the games!
g00gle5's Tournament Report:Army: Tau Farsight Enclave: Farsight, 4 Burst Cannon/Missile Pod Bodyguards, Shas'el and 2 Bodyguard for deep strike insertion equipped to deal with anything, 9 Fireknife suits (2 Teamleaders had Fusion Blasters, the Shas'vre had a Positional Relay). Three 6-man Fire Warrior squads (2 with Fish) and 2 Stabilised Broadsides.
Game 1: Spearhead, 3 Objectives -- Opponent: Denny (666_Vrykokolas_666)GRUDGE MATCH (Last tournament my Chaos army met with Denny's daemons. The dice gods were cruel to me and favourable to Denny, after he mishapped at least 3 or 4 times each one of his units went back into reserve and we finished with him tabling me -- we had a score to settle).
Denny brought his Drop Podding Space Wolves. Roughly, he had a Rune Priest (Jaws, Hurricane) 8 Grey Hunters w/ Pod, 10 Grey Hunters w/Pod, 10 Grey Hunters w/Pod, Three double H. Bolter Speeders, (2x) double M. Melta Speeders, Long Fangs w/ 3 H. Bolters and 2 Launchers, an Assault Cannon Drop Pod that fires like wildfire, a Whirlwind Drop Pod, Double TL Autocannon Dread and, the real bane to my existence 2 Drop Podding Dreadnoughts
with Drop Pods that they can Assault out of the turn they land.I knew this would be an uphill battle from the start so I gave him first turn and reserved everything except the Broadsides that started in the very corner of the board.
The Grey Hunters all came in on objectives, the Rune Priest pod mishapped and I got to place it instead, putting it in the furthest corner from my Broadsides. The Assault Cannon pod protected the two left flank objectives and the first Podded Dread hit square in front of the Broadsides; they were assaulted and wasted immediately.
My turn one sees nothing. Denny gets into position.
O-Shovah and Pals turn up and one Fireknife team, going right flank, ready to attack Denny's objective. The Deep Striking HQ squad go for the backfield and nuke the Autocannon dread and fail to scratch the Long Fangs. I destroy one and shake the other H.Bolter Speeders with the rest of my shooting. A passable turn two arrival.
Denny responds by killing the HQ team -- I was absolutely mortified to find out that Space Wolf Speeders can have TWO Multi-meltas each. Admittedly, I had completely forgotten about them as they hid behind one of his Drop Pods so I hadn't moved into cover with my assault jump. The rest of his shooting did very little.
A Fireknife team, a Devilfish and the 6-Man Foot Warriors turned up. Fireknife and Devilfish supported O'Shovah and pals, Foot Warriors came in where the Broadsides were, taking cover from the Dread's Drop Pod. Shooting saw casualties here and there. Not good enough.
Denny's retribution was swift and it looked like he easily had this in the bag. Murderous Hurricane was hampering me severely and despite a 9" Scatter, his Podding Dread found an assault on a Fireknife team, killed two members and I stuck around in combat. O'Shovah had to jump in to bail him out but, in typical g00gle5 fashion, I failed two dangerous terrain rolls charging into combat due to Hurricane (with 4 models) and after O'Shovah lucked out and just managed to destroy the Dread after a dismal hitting and penetration round the consolidation cost me another two wound model. I lost two bodyguards in an assault phase where my opponent didn't even swing.
Denny's fifth saw him peppering casualties to suits here and there but the rag tag remains still had a fair few units left standing. The last Fire Knife turned up in my fifth and supported the Foot Warriors on the far left. O'Shovah led the remaining right flank suits and a Fish on an assault to Denny's objective while the middling Fireknife team with detached gun drones started piling on the casualties to Denny's middle objective.
At turn five Denny had won.
Popsical, just being tabled by Bezerek in short order on the neighbouring table, rolled the dice and supplied us with an extra turn. Denny realised he had the fire power but not enough units to engage the remains of my army to stop me contesting all three objectives, in fact, if O'Shovah and his band of heroes could muster a decent assault I could win the game, it was desperate times. The Rune Priest detached and challenged the severely bruised and battered O'Shovah and his last, wounded bodyguard to single combat. O'Shovah, worn out from the battle so far only managed a single wound on the Priest, the Priest dispatched the bodyguard and despite the Tau General would lop off his head in the next combat, the Priest had delayed him from clearing his breathern's objective.
It was down to six Fire Warriors and a Fire Knife suit to kill four Space Wolves. I killed one. Enough for a morale.
Denny passed it.
I asked Tarrin, a fellow Tau player to help a brother out and end this torture for us. He gladly obliged as if we had another turn Denny surely would have won.
DRAW.Denny was in stitches at some of my luck in this game but I think he was truly baffled by how I turned it into a draw. A great game and I will gladly take another grudge match next time to get my well-deserved win from him.
Highlight: Fish Gun Drones flying around all game dealing casaulties, contesting an objective and Denny miffed at where to find the fire power to get rid of them.
Lowlight: O'Shovah unable to turn his four strength five attacks into a measly two wounds on the Rune Priest, too many others to elaborate on properly.
What I could have done better?: Noticed the DOUBLE Multi-melta Land Speeders and make them work for their kills. Deep Strike more units so I could divide and conquer Denny's army more and lastly, not rolled so badly.
Middling the scoreboard, as me and Denny were the only players to draw that round. Look at how Mike Murray (the lovely GlauG) not only tabled his opponent, he got four achievements AND only conceeded 128 victory points to Mike Sutcliffe. While Joel Duguid, with his beautiful Dark Angel army beat Ian Doherty's (Angel of Inquisition) Guard with only scoring 365 victory points against Ian's incredibly destructive 1,327, that must have been an amazing game.Game 2: Pitched Battle, 2 Objectives -- Opponent: Rob Uter (Rathstar)Rob had his faithful Tau with him: Shas-el w/ Missiles, Plasma and Drones, 2 Fireknife, 3 Missile/Burst and a Team Leader with Drones, 6 Foot Warriors, 10 Kroot, 11 Kroot w/ 6 Hounds, some more Kroot, 8 Pathfinders w/Fish, 3 Broadsides w/Stabiliser and a Team Leader with Drones, 2 Rail/Burst heads.
Objectives deployed opposite sides of the board. My army was split into two detachments: Both Fish, O'Shovah, a Fireknife team and the Broadsides attacking his objective. And the other two Fireknife teams defending mine with the Foot Warriors in reserve ready to take it. HQ Deep Strikers kept in reserve.
Rob responded with his Broadsides taking up residence in the middle of the board. The empty Fish ready to transport the 10 man Kroot and the two Railheads attacking my objective. Everything else but the reserved foot warriors and kroot squad protected his own objective, with a huge Kroot screen in cover stretching about a quarter of a way across the board.
I took first turn, Rob failed to seize. I fired every Crisis Suit I had at his Pathfinders hiding behind a wall; that is 32 strength 7 Missiles. I killed one Pathfinder. He didn't even go to ground. The Broadsides opened up on his Fireknife suits but he passed both their cover saves, too. My Fish provided mobile cover for the attack on his objective.
Rob's shooting back wasn't overly impressive but his Pathfinders did their job fine, lighting up my Broadsides in cover, making them easy prey for his own Broadsides. It is worth pointing out that around 2500 points of Tau shooting in the first turn of the game killed 1 Pathfinder and 2 Broadsides.
To set the tone for the game my HQ unit mishapped back into reserve then proceeded to roll 1s to be called in from the Positional Relay. When they finally automatically showed up in turn five they mishapped back into reserve again. I got the GMT+15 achievement that game.
Summed up, it quickly turned into a massacre after O'Shovah's unit took a pounding then when left to fend for himself (but not too worried as he could join the Fireknife team hanging about by him) he failed four out of the next six 3+ saves he had to make. That Fireknife team then did some spectacular maneuvering to get a great charge against Rob's Kroot screen but needed to win the combat by one more for them to have chased down the Kroot with attached Commander.
WIN FOR ROB. Tabled as HQ suits were still in reserve when the game ended.
Highlight: When Rob got one lucky Missile through to one of my Fish in his turn, wrecking it, I responded in his turn getting one lucky Missile through to his Kroot Fish, exploding it and killing most the passengers.Debt repaid in full.
Lowlight: Over the course of the game approximately 60 Strength 5+ shots could only kill five Pathfinders/O'Shovah failing four out of six armour saves when it was most needed/The HQ rescue team failing to show up and when they did manage it twice they mishapped both times.
What I could have done better: In hindsight,
maybe deploy the Broadsides better or play really boring and just accepted a draw, otherwise nothing, played how I should have but got out-played and out-diced.
I dropped a lot lower here but I still hadn't lost both my games so still stood a chance at top 10. Mike Murray (GlauG) once again truly murdered his opponent (Adam Wilkins), tabling him again and scoring another Achievement. GlauG's Blood Angel army had... 26 models I believe? Denny (Vrykokolas), again, was involved in the only match to end as a draw, which is remarkable in a mission that is commonly referred to as DRAW!
Lunchtime and I had to run around and do all the painting scores, which are the numbers on the right in this image (ignore them for all the other images as they don't move with the competitors [I forgot to make a seperate column for them]). I made a mistake on first inspection: GlauG's Blood Angels were fully painted and scored 3 Battle Points (not 2).
Armies that deserve a mention and things to check out (I apologise if I miss worthy mentions out as I was very limited in time to check all the armies out, please feel free to bring attention to more:
GlauG's Blood Angels: his two Storm Ravens alone were amazing conversions and had a superb magnetizing system to actually hold his Dreadnoughts on the rear -- he was very modest and said he got the idea from someone else but the nonetheless very impressive.
Changeyname's fantastic Orks: Battlewagons made from Tau Devilfish and Ork Commandos dressed in stolen Stealthsuit gear.
Rathstar's Tau: A lovely paintjob and conversions that clearly had a lot of love and attention devoted to them that blended seamlessly into the army.
Joel Duguid's entire Dark Angel's army: everything about them screamed top-notch quality.
Popsical's glow-in-the-dark luminous green Tyranids: I could quite literally easily see them from the other side of the hall they had such a striking colour scheme.
Michael Mitchell's Tyranids: An army I've seen many a year and always could easily win Best Army from what I've seen.
Tarrin's Arbites: Despite not using them, he got them out and somehow I missed them despite I was so deseperate to see them personally -- easily the lowlight of my day that I missed that. I'm definitely not playing next time I organise so I don't have to miss out on treats like these.
James' Orks: These won best army at the end of the day. I was fortunate enough to play them in my next game and I could really really feel the love and devotion that went into this army. It must have taken an ungodly amount of time and patience with a bright yellow colour scheme, conversions from just about every kit in the citadel range and was an outright spectacle to behold.