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I was annoyed at not being able to go to the UKGT final this season, so was easily convinced to join a couple of my buddies at the EEGT held in Warsaw, Poland. It’s a 5 game 2000pt affair, 500pts more than I’m used to so it was going to be interesting how the meta panned out. I took my Tyranid AdMech with some hastily converted reinforcements:

Choppy flyrant with all the toys
Dakkarant with two guards

Boomfex
Boomfex
Dakkafex

15 WoN spinegaunts
15 WoN spinegaunts
8 WoN spinegaunts

6 Flying warriors with guns

Gunfex
Gunfex
3 Zoanthropes

My army is fairly lean at 1500pts, but for the extra 500pts I had to quickly come up with some new models. The flying warriors in particular where 303pts. Not great, but I made them to fit the visual theme and I reckon they look slick.


Game 1: Pitched battle Seize Ground vs Jaromir Waluszewski and his Space Marines (iron hands). We roll up five objectives, which are fairly evenly spaced over the board. I won the roll-off and made Jaromir choose/go first.

He had-
2 Masters of the Forge
2 Ironclads
2 Venerables with PCs
2 Regular dreads with las/missile
2 Full Tac squads with melta/las/fist and rhinos
3 Attack bikes w. MMs
Scouts in a LS storm.
Vindicator

Normally this list wouldn’t worry me at a tournament, but my nids struggle with av12 stuff, never mind dreads with damage table re-rolls. I also hadn’t played in a month or so, and almost never at 2000pts. This was to come back to bite me.

Early Turns
I set up my walking stuff on the right flank, flying stuff on my left flank and a couple of walking monstrous creatures in the middle. This proves to be a mistake as Jaromir kills off these middle guys in two turns with a multitude of heavy weapons, one of which is a much needed gunfex (They should have gone in behind the flying stuff on the left flank to gain cover saves and hiding ability behind LoS blocking terrain).

I advance up both flanks and the marines (Chicken marines as Jaromir renames them) move into the centre to stay away. I also hide a single synapse zoanthrope at the edge of my deployment zone to command any without number gaunts that make an appearance.

Middle Turns
Jaromir is using his ironclads as a screen to keep me away, but I reckon I can take them. One of his ironclads charges a squad of 15 gaunts and proceeds to whittle them down over the rest of the battle, until a boomfex charges the dread and blows it sky high. My shooting causes a lot of hits but next to no damage to his dreads- a single weapon destroyed on an ironclad is repaired by a MotF. I stick my walkrant with guards out in front to take on the dread screen, confident that lashwhips will stack things in my favour but it’s not to be. The walkrant squad gets gang banged by a venerable dread and an ironclad over several turns.

On the left flank the flyrant and the flying warriors are cleaning up. Killing off the attack bikes, a MotF on bike and killing off the heavy/special from a tac combat squad. The flyrant won’t let me down!

Late Turns
It’s the last turn because we are running out of time- we have a guaranteed objective each and 5 tac marines are sitting on a contested objective smack bang in the middle. My remaining broods surround the objective and the flyrant flies over from the left. I let rip at the tac squad with everything I have left, but one bod is left. The Ld dice come up with an 8 and my opponent starts to laugh…but then I point out the two zoanthropes with psychic scream. So long tac squad. Oddjob wins 2-1. So very close.


Game 2: Spearhead Annihilation vs Artur Szyndler,Jr and his Orks
Artur has a lot of trucks with (22!) mega armoured nobs and some truck boys. Trucks are top trumped by venom cannons/barbed stranglers, MANZ are top trumped by implant attack. Nothing clever occurred and I won by 16-2. You can only play whats in front of you.

Game 3: Dawn of War Capture and Control vs Alexandru Balint and his Chaos
Alexandru had (along with impeccable English):

Lash prince
Lord with terminator armour and deamon weapon

6 Mega tooled terminators with mark of khorne and lightning claws
Choppy Dreadnought
Choppy Dreadnought

Decent sized squad of berzerkers
2 x 10 bod las/plas marine squads

Defiler
Vindicator
Three obliterators

Alexandru chose to go first and deployed both las plas squads and the lash prince. His objective is out on the right flank in a ruin, so one squad hides behind the ruin, the other squad goes near the middle of his board edge in another ruin (quite bunched up) and the prince somewhere in the middle.

My objective is away in the left flank, as far from alexandru’s as possible. This is to force a decision on him- if he comes after mine it is going to be a long unsupported walk to get there. To really force the issue I place my walkrant and two gaunt squads as close to his objective as possible on the right flank.

Early Turns
The terminators, the lord and the oblits go into reserve, I assume to have a shot at contesting my objective. Everything else marches on in a defensive posture around Alex’s objective. I bring on a strong contingent on my left to protect my objective- dakkafex, gunfex, synapse thrope, flying warriors and the last gaunt squad. These guys are tasked with scaring off the deepstriking enemy and so run/spread out to cover as much of the board as possible. The flyrant, other gunfex and two boomfexs charge up the right flank to threaten Alex’s objective Night fight is not in effect (tournament special rules) but the long range prevents either of us causing any significant casualties in the early turns. The sole exception is the walkrant that gets a clear shot at the objective squad on the second turn. He kills off four of them including the plasma gunner. Blammo.

Middle Turns
Both dreadnoughts go mental and banzai towards the walkrant and friends. Alex attempts to lash my walkrant into their charge range, but is surprised when he can’t be moved anywhere- I’ve surrounded him with gaunts for just such a situation. It turns out that the dreads are both just out of charge range. Lascannons and the battle cannon cause some miscellaneous damage.

The flying warriors get a chance to really strut their stuff and let rip at the bunched up CSM squad. Some good scatters (and a few wounds from other sources) later and the enemy squad is left as a couple of smoking boots. Le ouch. They then continue to kill off the vindicator in cc and cause some wounds on the berserkers that are trying frantically to get involved in the game. The flyrant charges one of the dreads and tears one of it’s arms off, takes a wound then finishes it in the next turn. It’s a good job too since the oblits deep strike onto this flank to try and stem the tide, kill some gaunts then get eaten by the flyrant (implant attack and acid maw- yum yum). The walkrant tries to have a go at the prince, but only causes one wound. Other shots are directed his way but bounce off. The prince lashes the gaunts out of the way and charges them. The dread charges the walkrant, and gets torn a new one before it can strike. The gaunts succumb over a couple of combat phases, until the walkrant gets involved and settles matters.

Late Turns
By now I have a gaunt squad on both objectives, haven’t taken much damage and have a flyrant running rampant in my opponent’s backfield. It’s all over bar the shouting. The terminators and Lord arrive late and DS into the middle of my deployment zone. All I have to do is walk away from they to keep them out of the game and I do so while chopping them down with dakka fire from both sides.

Win 2-0


Game 4: Pitched Battle Annihilation vs James Esland and his Space Marines
We (I) always do this- the beer was cheap, the vodka even cheaper and the clubs open until silly o’clock in the morning. My buddy and I were hungover and very late, but thankfully the organisers let us play each other to make up game four.

Amusing story time: Es and I travelled from Edinburgh on the Friday. On Friday night in the hotel I cracked open his carry case to have a look at his new fantasy deamon army that he was going to pwn with the next day:

“Es?”
“Yup”
“Fantasy?
“Yup”
“Deamons?”
“Yup”
“So why have you brought your space marines?”
“……….”

The friendly locals loaned him a couple of land raiders so he was able to play in the 40k tournament. He ended up with:

Vulkan
2 x 10 tacs w. las flamer, combi flamer
2 x las plas razorbacks
7 TH, SS terminators
3 MM attack bikes
2 Redeemers
1 Crusader

Games with Es are generally very tense and tactical affairs. We have about a 50:50 win ratio with each other. However, on Sunday morning neither of us were capable of anything clever so we charged straight at each other, rolled some dice and I narrowly came out on top. Sweet. Win 9-7 (ish). If you can’t be good, be lucky.

Game 5: Spearhead Seize Ground vs Filippo Cipriani and his Tyranids

After game four I was able to catch a few minutes sleep under the table so I’m feeling relatively fresh and confident. I have the pleasure of playing against fellow traveller Filippo (lives in London) and his Tyranids. He had:

Dakka Walkrant with two guards
Dakka Walkrant with two guards

Dakkafex
Boomfex
6 Warriors (all different gear) with deathspitters and barbed strangler

7 Genestealers with scuttlers and feeder tendrils
7 Genestealers with scuttlers and feeder tendrils
7 Genestealers with scuttlers and feeder tendrils
20 Spine gaunts
20 Spine gaunts
8 Spinegaunts w. without number

Gunfex
Gunfex
2 Zoanthropes with warp blast

Filippo frequents these boards so hopefully he will correct my mistakes.

At first glance I reckoned that I had a slight advantage- my flyrant/walkrant would pretty much decimate his MCs (including the walkrants) due to me having implant attack/ cc upgrades as well as the shooting. Without them his synapse would be in trouble. Turns out I way forgetting my own synapse issues…

For the most part the terrain at the tournament was excellent- apart from this one table. Lots of low bunkers meant that everything had a cover save, but no LoS was blocked. When people originally complained about 5th ed it was because of terrain like this. Filippo has some photographs which he wants to post so I’ll leave it to him. An inability to hide makes manoeuvre pointless.

I win the roll and get Filippo to choose/go first.

Early Turns
Filippo advances en-mass from his corner- gaunts leading the way with monstrous creatures behind and a rearguard of genestealers and gaunts. He concentrates on my flying warriors and in two turns has them down to one model. They were so pretty too…sniff. I retaliate, and in my first turn use my walkrant and dakka fex to gun down his dakka fex before it gets a shot off. I position my flyrant to run amok in turn two, but Filippo’s walkrants have other ideas and gun him down in one turn. I may have had a bit of a tantrum at this stage after loosing my favourite toy to a plethora of 1’s.

Middle Turns
Filippos advance continues deep into my quarter. With the loss of my trump card I need to try something desperate. I try to tie up Filippos tyrants with large gaunt squads but they both get smacked down in one turn meaning that the dakka keeps coming. Without number brings them back into the fight and they manage to charge one of the walkrants again and hang in the fight.

Late Turns
It’s turn five and I’m in trouble. Filippo daisy chains a genestealer squad from an objective to his walkrant to give it preferred enemy. Nice move and the gaunts are wiped out. They come back on and try to charge the genestealers to pull them off the objective thus earning a draw if the game ends this turn… I pick up the dice for the fleet move needing a 4+ to make it….a one. Doh. The game does end this turn and Philippo wins 2-1. Aw well.

Conclusions/Thoughts to follow (along with a ton of editing no doubt).

I ended up in third place. This is the second GT in a row that I was in pole position going into the last game then end up third (UKGT heat 3 was the other one), but I did end up with best army so I'm a happy camper.

The tournament was exceptionally well run, with a superb web site and a good venue (in a school hall so no beers- thank God). In fact, it puts the significantly larger and more prominant UKGTs to shame. The EEGT is obviously run by gamers for gamers, a feeling that you don't often get with the UK setup.

As you can probably tell from my opponents armies, most lists wearn't really optimised, but then again, neither was mine. Talking to some of the organisers on the Saturday night it seems that most of the best players from the area are involved in running the tournament rather than playing in it which is an shame (but understandable). I've tried my best to get them interested in coming across to dear old blighty for our GTs.

Peace.

Great battle report. Fun to read and to the point.

Was a pleasure meeting you, and I hope to play you soon again!

Man, I am jealous you were able to go into a tournament where everyone isn't running super-optimised interwebs army lists. That would be a fun change of pace.

Nice report.

- Blackbone

OddJob. wrote:The tournament was exceptionally well run, with a superb web site and a good venue (in a school hall so no beers- thank God).

Smite!

Seriously, good job and thanks for the report.

You did great. Everything has to go your way to win a GT. Pulling another nid army going into the last round meant to a certain extent it came down to some luck.... Obviously you were up against another top player. I'm sure you'll get your GT best overall sooner than later.

G

Haha I appreciate that you set up with qualifiers like "I usually play 500 pts less" and then proceed to own face.
Sounds like a great tournament. Shame I'm stuck in the Midwest, wasteland of America. Congrats on 3rd place and best army though, I enjoyed reading your account of the experience.

Mad Rabbit wrote:Haha I appreciate that you set up with qualifiers like "I usually play 500 pts less" and then proceed to own face.
Sounds like a great tournament. Shame I'm stuck in the Midwest, wasteland of America. Congrats on 3rd place and best army though, I enjoyed reading your account of the experience.

Chicago isn't so ba-... Who am I kidding, sucks to be you . But seriously, it isn't so bad, except that it's hella cold (I live in Cali).

Good showing at that tourney though Oddjob, and it's nice that there were no hardcore tourney lists there, which was IMO surprising for a big tourney.

Green Blow Fly wrote:You did great. Everything has to go your way to win a GT. Pulling another nid army going into the last round meant to a certain extent it came down to some luck.... Obviously you were up against another top player. I'm sure you'll get your GT best overall sooner than later.

G

Na, I just got outplayed in the last game. I kept doing silly things like telling my opponent that I planned to charge a big squad of gaunts to suck them out of synapse, then shooting them to kill off the only one in assault range. If you are relying on two 4+ rolls to draw the game you probably don't deserve it. Basically I played like a chump and Filippo deserved the win.

Lesson learned- know when to stop drinking on the Saturday night (05.00 is ok, 05.30 is too much).

HE also let me in on a little secret- it's cheaper and less hassle for us to get to Las Vegas than Warsaw. It's a shame the yankie GT's are kaput as that trip would have been AWESOME. Heres hoping they make a comeback.

p.s. The Polish meta- There were Landraiders everywhere! My buddy Es played with three, and played against five in his first game. That game lasted about 20 minutes.

Nice reports,sounded like a cool GT to be at.And you even walked away with best army,so thats a plus.

There were only about 40 players for the 40k tourney according to the EEGT website?

Doesn't seem to be too large for a GT. I guess Eastern Europe is not that into 40k ... yet.

Also, from reading the oddjob and sarryn's reports on EEGT the players from the UK basically crushed face with rock hard lists (backed with skill of course!!) and the meta is also SM heavy.

I am a newbie and looking to join the tourney scene - looks like the EEGT is a good place to start as it looks quite friendly compared to comments I have read/heard on the UK GT!

augfubuoy wrote:

Mad Rabbit wrote:Haha I appreciate that you set up with qualifiers like "I usually play 500 pts less" and then proceed to own face.
Sounds like a great tournament. Shame I'm stuck in the Midwest, wasteland of America. Congrats on 3rd place and best army though, I enjoyed reading your account of the experience.

Chicago isn't so ba-... Who am I kidding, sucks to be you . But seriously, it isn't so bad, except that it's hella cold (I live in Cali).

Good showing at that tourney though Oddjob, and it's nice that there were no hardcore tourney lists there, which was IMO surprising for a big tourney.

Chicago is great. It's just an island of awesomeness in a sea of terrible boredom. If you live in Boston, you can go easily to NY or DC for a day or two and have fun. I'd imagine the trip from LA to San Diego or San Francisco isn't all that bad either. But here it's like, great, I could go to Iowa! Awesome!

Besides. I'd rather live in Scandinavia. I like the cold.

Populatore1 wrote:I am a newbie and looking to join the tourney scene - looks like the EEGT is a good place to start as it looks quite friendly compared to comments I have read/heard on the UK GT!

Don't believe the negative hype. The tinterwebz has a nasty habbit of amplifying whining and diminishing praise. A lot of the tears I read about are from people are used to being the big dog in their gaming group and subsequently getting smashed on the mid tables of the GT.

Bottom line, GT gaming is a step up so don't expect to win the thing on your first go. Instead, aim to qualify for the final (top 40 placing) and get into the swing of the tournaments. To do this you will need a couple of like minded individuals to practice against and discuss lists with. If you have a better than 60% win record going into the tournament you probably didn't have good enough opponents to practice with.

Mad Rabbit wrote:

augfubuoy wrote:

Mad Rabbit wrote:Haha I appreciate that you set up with qualifiers like "I usually play 500 pts less" and then proceed to own face.
Sounds like a great tournament. Shame I'm stuck in the Midwest, wasteland of America. Congrats on 3rd place and best army though, I enjoyed reading your account of the experience.

Chicago isn't so ba-... Who am I kidding, sucks to be you . But seriously, it isn't so bad, except that it's hella cold (I live in Cali).

Good showing at that tourney though Oddjob, and it's nice that there were no hardcore tourney lists there, which was IMO surprising for a big tourney.

Chicago is great. It's just an island of awesomeness in a sea of terrible boredom. If you live in Boston, you can go easily to NY or DC for a day or two and have fun. I'd imagine the trip from LA to San Diego or San Francisco isn't all that bad either. But here it's like, great, I could go to Iowa! Awesome!

Besides. I'd rather live in Scandinavia. I like the cold.

Yeah it great to live here,but there is one downside. There aren't many tourneys in here,but it isn't that hard to get to the 'lower' Europe to go to some tourneys.
btw I liked your battle report of the tourney and your friends oops moment was totally hilarius.