Two days and 6 games in the Valley

Well I knew I was taking a risk taking a goof-ball army to a 40K competition but I thought 'what the hell it'll be a laugh'. With this as my guiding principal I took an army configured to do well in those scenarios that allowed deep strike (hey I wanted to field my really cute looking Plague Terminators OK). In the end that was 2 games out of the 6 (oops). The army I used was a Chaos Space Marine cult of Nurgle (the Plague God). I had...

The army scored well for composition. Having all my units in 7s and having 7 units in total really helped with this. For the non-40K-literate seven is Nurgles sacred number. The troop choices I took were limited by the necessity to only field Nurgle aligned troops.

I also scored well on painting. This was something I was particularly pleased by as I don't regard myself as the worlds best painter (curse you Rachel Lewis!!! ). My painting score was the 4th highest out of a total field of 18. In fact I got quite a few comments from passers by on the attractiveness of my mostly scratch built Plague terminators which was quite nice.

Well anyway on to the games. I'm afraid I don't recall the names of most of the people I played (does that make me a bad person?) but have recorded some details, thoughts, and observations. Actually maybe leaving names off would be a good idea - protecting the innocent (or guilty) and all that.

Game 1 - Cleanse Vs Dark Eldar - Don't worry little lady I'll fix your wagon.

As soon as I saw my opponent's army I knew I was in trouble. I had an infantry army and my opponent had a vehicle based army. To make matters worse I had precious few weapons that could bring down their Raiders. The first few turns the Eldar drove round and round my army sniping at us and making woo-woo-woo-woo noises while I formed the wagons in a circle. Then my opponent made a fateful mistake. He got out of his raiders and engaged my troops in hand to hand. This effectively gave away his greatest advantage and handed me the opportunity to try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In the end I managed to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat (but a good scoring one owing to nailing the enemies HQ and largest unit) by holding enough sectors to avoid losing.

Lesson: Anti-vehicle firepower. It's compulsory.
Lesson II: Always remember the mission. In this case it was about holding the most sectors.

Game 2 - Night Fight Vs Dark Angels It's all dark and horrible in there!

A game of manoeuvre where my opponent built a great big U shaped killing ground for me to walk into AND which I went around. Commit suicide? No thanks. The new night fighting rules were a major hindrance to my opponent but not to me. Being either Demons, Fearless, or having a high leadership my lads just didn't care. The game was won on sectors 1-0 to me.

Lesson: If you build a clobbering machine don't be surprised if your opponents avoid it.
LessonII: Boy do the new Nightfight rules suck.

Game 3 - Recon Vs Bloody Blood Angels So this is it?! We're all going to die?!

Have I mentioned recently how much I hate playing Bloody Blood Angels. It's the third time I've played Tim and each time it's the same damn army. Basically a mini-maxed to the hilt monster of a close combat army. Again because of the lack of ant-vehicle firepower I was pushing it pretty steeply up hill. The fact that Recon was a good mission for Blood Angels didn't help either. I attempted to push as much of my army up one flank into his deployment zone (where the VPs were to be found) but the Blood Angels used their extreme mobility to catch up with me. Despite having to make well in excess of 15 difficult terrain tests Tim only failed once and that was with a Predator Annihilator with a pretty good position anyway. Curses. Final result? Crushed like an insect.

Lesson: Anti-vehicle firepower? What kind of idiot doesn't have any? Umm… me it appears.
LessonII: I am very, very glad that the new fire point and transport rules widdle all over the Rhino bunker tactic.

Game 4 - Dawn Assault Vs Jason Reynolds Space Wolves When last we meet I was but a Student and you the Master. Now I AM the Master!

This game should have been a walk in the park. Dawn Assault is one scenario that my lads are supposed to excel at. That and of course Jason's a great bloke but had so far not exactly proven to be amongst my deadliest of foes. Notice all those qualifiers? Give you any clue as to the result? Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Both armies got within 5 models of breaking and I did kill his army commander BUT Jason had some incredible dice that lasted for a very significant two turn period where be couldn't roll less then a 5 and I couldn't roll more then a 2. In DBM that ain't pretty and it's much the same for 40K. Don't get me wrong though. It was a fun game. I mean after a while dice like that are so off the scale bad they just get funny. Anyway…. Well done Jason.

Lesson: What lesson? I had the right troops, in the right place, versus the right enemy units, at the right time, and I got hosed by the far end of an improbability curve. Bugger J.

Game 5 - Take and Hold - Aliatoc Eldar When you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise.

This game got off to a very rocky start when my opponent tried a piece of applied gittishness the like of which Eldar players are justly famous for. Without boring people with the details lets just say that while it 'might' have been 'legal' most observers comments were along the lines of 'Oh you have got to be kidding me!'.In the end I let him have it as the mission was one that the Eldar as defenders were going to be in trouble with from the get go and it just wasn;t worth the agro. Oddly enough this game (despite the really tense start) was one of the most enjoyable at the entire competition and my opponent was a great guy to play. Go figure J

Lesson: Gimmicks don't win wars. This particular Eldar army had loads of toys. What it lacked badly though was troops on the ground that could hold an objective in the face of an enemy attack. Eldar are so very very fragile.

Game 6 - Rescue Mission - Kenny Rongonui's Dark Eldar Oh my god Kenny killed me! The bastard!

As soon as I saw the draw I knew I was in trouble. Kenny is no slouch and the Dark Eldar were practically the ideal army for this mission whereas it is hard to think of an army that could be worse for this mission than the one I had. Still you make do with what you have. In the end the game was reasonably close. Kenny had 3 objectives to my 2 but the unclaimed one was very much up for grabs and one of the ones he had was almost within my grasp. Who knows what would have happened if we'd had a turn 6? Still a good fun game against someone I enjoy playing and despite losing I had another high scoring loss.

Lesson: An autocannon is much more use for Terminators then a heavy flamer. If I'd had one of those instead the Flamer this game and a number of others at the competition would have been a little bit closer.

Overall result

From this day forward until the end of the earth the ranking of sixth shall be renamed Geoff in my honour. I mean honestly sometimes it seems that way because in the last four 40K competitions (regardless of size) I have come sixth. This time 6th from 18. Not bad considering that that was 2 wins 3 loses and a draw. Still two of the loses were sufficiently bloody that I managed to get the equivalent of a draw in terms of game play points. When I had a look at my final results I noted that the composition, painting, sportsmanship, and the quiz made the difference between 9th place and 6th place for me. Think I might be a believer in the GW formula now. In the end an enjoyable weekend. Thanks to Mike for running a fun competition and the Hutt boys for hosting it. Next time I'll bring a proper army so Alan can have a real challenge J

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