BTW, Reece (and anyone else associated with Frontline Gaming), you guys should really add the URL to your site into your profile so that people can always easily find your site...for example Reece the URL button for your profile takes you to your personal blog, which probably now isn't as useful to have as a link to frontline. Or at least add the link into your sigs!
But anyways, as always, thanks again for running the event guys. I know it takes a lot of time and effort to do so, and I am super-grateful that you did (and do). While the venue may have not been ideal
IMHO, I think you did pretty much the very best you could given the circumstance and I did have an incredibly enjoyable experience overall.
In fact, although I know it doesn't have that much to do with from an organizational perspective, I do still have to say that the overall collection of games I played against 5 great people in this tournament was probably the best 5 game stretch ever in a tournament for me.
Here's my mini-tournament report:
My first game against Warboss_Russ was filled with crazy emotional swings...I know that heavy-Battlewagon Ork armies are really a tough match-up for my Kan wall, but when I got a lucky Loota shot through to wreck Ghaz's Battlewagon Russ gambled not using his Waaagh to auto-pass the pin test and of course proceeded to fail it! This led to Ghaz & his Nob squad being all bunched up in front of the wreck, and I was able to hit that unit with all 9 of my Grotzookas in my following turn, with 2 of the 3 Kan units scoring 27 and 28
wounds each! When the smoke cleared, only Ghaz was left and even he had suffered a couple of wounds. But Russ still had a couple of Battlewagons left filled with Slugga boyz and after a few Deff-Rolla rams in his next turn it still looked like he might roll through the rest of my army. But I was able to counter-charge the Battlewagons with my remaining Kans/Dread and was able to roll those magic '6's to hit them in combat and take them both out...so all I had left to do was finish off one of his two Slugga boyz mobs and I'd be up by 1 Kill Point. Of course, my Kans in combat hit like 5 times and I rolled something like three '1's to wound and when combat resolution was totaled up, his boyz mob still had 11 guys in it and was fearless...
one more casualty and he would have been taking a morale check at like -8 or something crazy. And then of course the roll to see if the game goes into turn 6 or not and Russ rolls the magical '1' to seal a well earned draw with each of us earning '8' kill points against the other.
It was an absolutely crazy roller-coaster ride of a game, and certainly some of the most fun I've had in a long time and I figured surely none of my other games would be nearly as much fun.
Game 2 was against a Chaos player (whose name escapes me because I have an absolutely terrible memory). It was capture & control and I think that he may have been a bit intimidated at the sight of all those Kans & Dreads, so it seemed to me like he was aiming to play for the draw, keeping everything in his army back on his objective except for an outflanking unit of Chosen in a Rhino and a Deep Striking 3-man Termie unit (which frankly was unlikely ever to be enough to even contest my objective unless I rolled really, really badly as I had both my Loota mobs, a mob of 20 Shoota boyz, a Grot mob, 1 Dread and 3 Kans held back to hold my objective).
I was able to deal with his two Deep Strike/outflanking units, so it really came down to whether or not I could swamp his objective in time, which as he failed to slow down my Battlewagon, it began to look pretty grim for him. But through the whole thing, this guy kept the most positive and fun-loving attitude going. Even after the game was over he still wanted to resolve a close combat that would have had literally not impact on the game...he just wanted to see if his guys could pull of a combat win (they didn't, sadly). I totally relate to that! Even when I'm getting my butt handed to me, if time in the round is permitting, I love to play the game out to the bitter end just to see if one of my units can pull of some heroic action, so the fact that this guy had that same positive attitude was amazingly refreshing and I think it would have been a pleasure to *lose* the game to him if the tables had been turned.
So with two absolutely phenomenal games under my belt, surely round 3 would have to be a letdown and I'd get stuck with a boring game against a bummer opponent, right? Well, I just happened to get paired against paintedpotato's sisters army. I had never gotten to play against a sisters army using the new
WD codex (and barely ever fought against the old Witch Hunters) but I had always felt that the new army list looked a lot more deadly then some people gave it credit for...and sure enough his army was literally packed to the brim with melta weaponry and that crazy-unkillable Saint Celestine, who is just such an amazing disruption force just by herself.
As the game wound on, paintedpotato's nearly legendary ability to roll his saving throws was only matched by his complete inability to destroy my Kans & Dreads with literally dozens of melta shots. My lack of experience with sisters meant that I wasn't really sure at any point
exactly what I should be doing and having the thread of Celestine popping back up in the middle of my deployment zone on any of his turns was amazingly nerve-wracking. The highlight of the game had to be when I fired a Loota mob at one of his twin-Melta Immolators and ended up doing two penetrating hit. He calmly picked up two dice and, as he did numerous times throughout the game he assured me that '[he had] faith' and then proceeded to roll for his 6+ invulnerable save. One dice plunked on the table as a '6' and the other careened off the table onto the floor. He picked it back up and rolled again...surely there was no way he could roll another '6', right? But I don't think I need to tell you what happened!
However, at the end of the day his amazing saves just couldn't stop my Kans and Dreads if his Meltas couldn't destroy them (which they didn't) and Celestine failed to get up right when he needed her the most and I ended up squeaking out the win.
While this game may not have had the crazy swings of emotion that my first game did, there were just so many crazy things that happened during this game that it felt like I was watching an epic blockbuster summer movie. When it was all over I felt like I would love to play that game again just to see how it might turn out differently! And if there isn't a better indication of a great game then that, I don't know what it would be.
So I entered day 2 with a 2-0-1 record and I knew that I had an outside chance for overall tournament victory and a decent chance at winning some sort of prize at the end of the day if I did well in my last two games. Unfortunately, as I walked to my table I recognized a very familiar face. It is an incredibly good Space Wolf player (Lee) who I have faced probably more times recently in tournaments than I have with any other player (which is still only probably about 4 times, I think).
He quickly reminded me that he had never won against me, which I knew was a bad sign from watching football that anytime the announcer says something about how the kicker has some sort of streak going it always means that the streak is going to immediately end.
Although we had both subtly tweaked our lists since we last fought (me adding a Battlewagon and him dropping his twin-linked Autocannon Dreads for some Grey Hunter squads and a Fenrisian Wolf Pack to run with his twin Wolf Lords) I still felt like I had a good idea of exactly how I needed to play against him. I won the roll to go first and after I deployed pretty standard for Spearhead, he deployed completely castled in the corner...it was pretty clear that he was going to try to stay out of range of my Lootas the whole game and plink off enough of my units as I came towards him to guarantee a Kill Point victory for him.
Of course, that also would have given me the option to pull back my army and play the waiting game with him (forcing him to come to me or just sit there with a draw) but sadly I never got the option to even consider that tactic as he promptly seized the Initiative and with some amazing rolls he got two penetrating hits...one against my Dread and another against a Kan, both of which of course came up as either 'wrecked' or 'explodes'!
So I was already down a Kill Point going into my turn 1, which meant one thing...I would have to advance into him without the support of my Lootas (which is never good). But even with that bad start, I was able to maneuver into position with all my forces ready to strike in one nasty blow, which is the worst thing you can let a Kan Wall army do (its always best to try to force it to hit combat in waves and deal with each chunk separately). So he sallied forth with all his units in a desperate attempt to stop my Battlewagon before it could roll through his army doing deff-rolla hits on everything. However, all his melta-armed guys who hopped out of his vehicles failed to damage my Battlewagon (love the
KFF!). Unfortunately, his Long Fangs had an absolutely amazing round of shooting and his damage rolls were totally on-point and one entire Kan mob that was poised to counter charge him was wiped out...but I still had my Battlewagon, perhaps. However, it was time for him to charge. He rolled for his Wolf Lord first, planning to nuke my wagon pretty easily...and failed to roll that elusive '6' to hit, huzzah for me! He then proceeded to roll for his Grey Hunters with Krak Grenades...rolling one '6' to hit, rolling another '6' to penetrate and then rolling a '3' (+1 for open-topped) to immobilize my precious Battlewagon. Of course, he then realized that he had done it wrong...the Krak Grenades technically went before the Powerfist attacks and therefore the Powerfist should automatically hit. Well, reluctantly I knew that the only fair course of action was to allow his Powerfist hits to auto-hit despite the fact that he had already rolled 'to hit' for them, and that naturally resulted in my Battlewagon exploding in a horrible fireball.
With one Kan mob and my Battlewagon wiped out in a single turn things were looking grim for me. But I had 1 1/2 Kan squadrons and a Dread left, along with nearly 60 shoota boyz all in position to try to wreak havoc on his units that were out of their transports now, so I knew I had a chance to at least make a game out of it. I shot and charged where I could and did some damage, taking his Powerfist Wolf Lord out and doing some serious damage to some of his Grey Hunters with the Grotzookas I had left. One of the combats lasted into his turn and he charged his remaining Wolf Lord and all of his Grey Hunters into it...meaning his entire army except for his transports and 2 Long Fang squads were now locked in combat in the middle of the table against 1 mob of Shoota Boyz and the remaining Powerklaw Nob from a 2nd mob. He naturally did
tremendous damage to me and all I had left was a single nob after the dust cleared. I had lost the combat by seventy-bazillion and wanted nothing more than for my Nob to fall back so that my remaining 4 Kans and 20 Shoota boyz could absolutely light up what he had left and then charge them into dust. I picked up the dice and naturally rolled
DOUBLE ONES.
Yes, it was that kind of game for me! Lee could only shake his head and apologize for my bad luck. So I lost out on firing those 4 Grotzooka shots (8 blasts) and 20 Shootas (34 shoota shots & 6 big shoota shots) and had to just charge into the combat. I can't even remember whether I won that round by a little or he did, but regardless, I didn't wipe out any more of his units and he promptly rolled to end the game on turn '5'. In the end, I only managed to get that single Kill Point (one of his Wolf Lords). I had whittled his Fenrisian Wolfs down to 1 model (which he had promptly hid behind a Rhino) and I had whittled down another Grey Hunter squad to 1 model (which he was able to run and embark into one of his Rhinos with) and with the game ending on turn '5' I lost any chance to kill his other Wolf Lord (who would have been instant-killed by my Kans most likely as that one didn't have the Eternal Warrior saga) and his other two Grey Hunter squads.
So it ended up being a 5 to 1 Kill Point loss for me. A sound beating, yet still a very enjoyable game despite any frustrations with wacky luck. You can tell that Lee is a very smart tactical player and the times I have managed to beat him or get a draw I've felt extremely lucky to do so. So I knew that it wouldn't be easy to beat him and a little swing of luck one way or another had a really strong chance of being the deciding factor because its highly unlikely for him to make a critical mistake or allow me to surprise him with a tactic that he's not expecting.
But as always, I have a great time playing against Lee and is another great example of someone who I respect and feel 'good' (as much as you can) about losing to. But with that loss I knew that I was totally out of the running for any kind of overall prize and likely out of the range of any prize at all. Luckily, my only real goal is ever to have a bunch of fun playing games (and try to win where I can, of course) and on that goal, I was now 4 for 4!
Recently I had been musing about how interesting it would be to field an Ork army with the max of 15 Deff Koptas, as it had occurred to me that having them in bigger squadrons would actually allow them to overcome some of their deficiencies (like not being able to successfully assault anything besides a tiny enemy units). Well, lo and behold for my final game up walks Mario (who has a Dakka handle, but I sadly don't remember what it is if he told me...and an even bigger apology if I've somehow misremembered your first name, I do literally have a HORRIBLE memory for those types of things) who is playing a horde Ork army that has 15 Koptas in it! I was really excited.
Of course, if there's one thing that really puts a kabosh on 15 Koptas, its 9 Kans and 2 Dreads protected by Kustom Force Fields. His Koptas were his main source of anti-vehicle attack power and my
KFFs meant that his Rokkits would probably have a hard time shooting them to death and their
CC abilities would absolutely tear his Koptas to pieces if he tried to charge me.
So he did his best and used his Koptas to harrass and slow me down while his hordes of boyz swarmed over most of the objectives, but once I whittled his Koptas down to nearly nothing (despite having a HELL of a time getting my Lootas to hit anything) he really had no answer for my wall of walking armor and I was able to pull all his boyz into combats against my walkers while I captured enough objectives to win the day.
So unfortunately while I got to see my dream of so many Koptas in action, the particular match-up of my army vs. his army was probably the worst setting possible to see how it should work, but he's local so we'll probably try to set up another game sometime with me fielding something different.
Amazingly, as with every single one of my opponents, he was incredibly friendly and gracious even when he realized that my army was going to be a really tough nut for his army to crack. And that meant I went 5 for 5 in getting fantastic people and having fantastically fun games.
While I ended up finishing out of any of the prizes, I did end up 3-1-1 overall and would not have changed a single thing about any of my games, because they were all so much damn fun. Although I didn't 'naturally' finish every single one of my games (the Sister of Battle and Ork games, both of which require a lot of rolling and moving ended up having to be called at turn 5 without rolling) the 1,50 point limit along with a fairly generous 2
hrs and 15 minutes meant that for the most part I was able to enjoy the games without having to completely rush and combined with 5 fantastic opponents meant that this tournament totally reaffirmed exactly why I enjoy
40K as much as I do.
So I'd like to thank each and every one of my opponents for just being great players, great sports and generally fun people to play against.
4000 pts, 
4000pts, 
4000pts, 
2000pts,
1500pts, 
(daemons)2000pts, 
4500pts, 
3170pts, 
1500pts, 
2500pts, 
1850pts
unless, of course, it was his 21st birthday, in which case, welcome to the fold...
