Hey Guys,
I wrote up a short battle report for de IWC challenge in Brussels at the end of January.
Disclaimer: I hope I got all my opponents names right, because I am horrible at remembering names. Feel free to correct me!

Also, Due to the cheapness of beer, I largely forgot to take photos or make notes, so the whole account is from my rapidly decaying brain.

The tournament was played using the French armylists, so I started by studying all the lists and running the special rules through the google gibberish convertor.
Ill spare you the details of the French lists for now, but they sure made some imperial choices less viable.
So this is what I came up with:

Super heavy company, hydra (BTS) (2x shadow, 1x bane)
Regimental HQ
Infantry, hydra
Infantry, fire support
Sentinel
Sentinel
Manticore battery
Hydra battery
Thunderbolts
Warhound
Warhound

In the end there were 10 players (I was hoping for more!) 4 Space marine, 1 Ork , 1 Eldar, 1 Latd and 3 Guard.

On Friday we (me and my friend Bastiaan) went by train to Brussels. Already quite intoxicated from the long train ride and beers, we decided we needed more beer first and hit the pubs. We then to get something to eat and drink more beers. We then went to our sleeping accommodation to finish painting some of the models in Bastiaans army . Around 1:00 in the morning we hit the sack, knowing alarms would be ringing around 7:00 AM. Early in the morning we took a Taxi to the venue, were we were warmly welcomed by coffee and breakfast. After some more coffee, it was time to start.

Game 1 – vs Orks (Guillaume David)
Since I am new here on the board, I have to explain I have a rather bad track record when facing Orks. My regular opponent often uses either speed freaks or an infantry based Ork army. I often lose. So when one of the French guys told me my opponent was tipped to be the tournament winner, I was starting to worry . A lot.

Guillaume’s army was something like this:
Gargant
Big unit of boyz
Big blitz brigade (2 superzapp, flak)
Big blitz brigade (2 superzapp, flak)
Blitz brigade (deffkoptas)
Kult of speed
Kult of speed
Big Kult of speed
6 fighta bombas
It’s missing a couple of points, so to some units some models were added.

Right form the start, thing didn’t go my way. I made a stupid deployment mistake by putting my regimental HQ troops in the chimeras, thinking I would shoot down the bomba’s with my flak. 5 dead chimeras and 10 dead guardsmen later, the HQ broke and my central defense was in ruins. After this, I was tried desperately to gain back some ground, but smart shooting and moving from the blitz brigades made sure I didn’t get back in the game.
There was one bright spot on the table though. One unit of sentinels withstood a amazing amount of firepower in the third turn, contesting an objective on his side and refusing his “they shall not pass”.
The combined firepower of a blitz brigade, the boyz mob and the fighterbombers resulted in 5 saves of 6, no casualties on the sentinels and only 3 blast markers.
In the end, he had my blitz and take and hold.
Guillaume was a nice chap and a good sport, although at one point I though he was going to explode due to the incredible luck on my sentinels. By then he already had the game in his pocket, so we had some good laughs about it.

0-2 loss for me.


Game 2 – vs eldar (Pierre Largillet )
Having been royally kicked in the behind by the orks, I decided it was time for more radical measures. 3 beers later round 2 started and I found out that I was going up against Eldar.
Pierre had a beautifully painted army (my favorite of the tournament) and looked like this:

Aspect warriors, exarch, autarch (in vampire)
Guardians with wraith guard and lords (in stormserpent)
Guardians with 3 support and 3 heavy platforms (in webway)
4 rangers
Avatar
Storm serpent
Void spinner
2 Falcons, 2 prisms, 2 firestorm
3 Falcons, 2 prism, 1 firestorm
Night wings
Vampire
A webway portal

Eleven activations for him and me, told me I had a good chance to pull this off.
We were playing on a very nice table, with a city on one side (2/3 of the board) and a flax plain with almost no cover on the other 1/3. The choices for my objectives were clear. Both objectives would be placed on the open part, so I could capitalize on the Eldars poor armor.

First turn:
Eldar won imitative and take the first move
Sustained voidspinner on hydra. Result 1 hydra dead, unit broken.
Retain for a ground attack by nightwings on manticores. 1 manticore dead, unit broken.

Imperial: double move Warhound, shoot on rangers, 3 dead, unit broken.

Storm serpent doubles to deploy the wraith guardian.

Imperial: double move Reg HQ: shoot at the wraith guardians, kill 2
Warhouds come under fire from de falcon units, but do no substantial damage. A Warhound in return put pressure on the void spinner, 1 hit, no save, critical.
Later in the turn, the vampire refused to make bombing run.
Super heavies shoot at a couple of wraithlords, killing 2

Turn 2.
Avatar assaults reg hq, only to get blasted to bits later.
The vampire was going to make a ground assault only to be shot down in flight (1 hit, critical, killing its precious cargo.
One farseer unit is shot to bits and the other falcon unit also breaks under pressure from a warhound.
The city part of the table in now almost completely under imperial rule, and on the plains, the Eldar are struggling to keep their ground.
Again Super heavies shoot at a couple of wraith guardian unit , killing 3 and breaking them

At the end of turn 2, there were only have 3 unbroken Eldar units on the field and 3 nightwings left.

Turn 3 saw me moping up some leftovers and claiming objectives.
3-0 for me. (take and hold, they shall not pass, defend the flag)

Pierre was an extremely nice guy and a pretty good player. His luck thoroughly let him down after his initial success in turn one, the Vampire being his biggest let down.


Game 3 – vs Space marines (reanud van Lersberghe)
He used:
Terminators in landraiders + librarian
Vindicators.
Tacticals with chaplain and dreadnought
Tacticals with supcom, hunter, razorback
Scouts
Devastators, hunter
Bikes
Land speeders ( 4 tycoon)
T-hawk
Thunderbolts

Not your usual space marine list, and not a very usual game. I think both my opponent and me had consumed a good amount of beer before we begun and that led to some odd choices. The first turn was not too eventful, but start of the second turn saw Reanud engaging my reg-HQ and super heavies (poor placement on my side) with his terminators and Supcom unit. Obviously, the odd were in his favor. He scored 3 kills, I did 5. I win by 4 in total in the dice off. This was the only important combat in the game, as the rest saw me moping up his forces.
Cudos to Reanud because he had such a strange turn of events. In hindsight, It was a big gamble and it didn’t pay off. He probably should have planted a blast marker on the HQ first and then just engage with the terminators.
2-0 for me again

In the evening we went to a nice restaurant with Yann and Pierre, had some more beer and went to bed around 1:30 / 2:00

The next day
Game 4 – vs imperial guard (Pierre Cothenet)
Imperial guard vs guard is not at all a good matchup.
His list.
Reg HQ + fire support
Leman russ company + 3 leman russ
Super heavy (baneblades)
Shadowsword
Shadowsword
Hydra’s
Hydra’s
Vultures

This guy was a great laugh. We had such a good time, we almost forgot to play from time to time. This was my first game guard against guard. The only way I figured I could win was to get his BTS. Not easy with 13 leman russes. Fortunately, the end part of the first turn saw my opponent fail 3 activations on his right flank, giving me a lot of room to manoeuvre and concentrate fire on the russes. They broke on the start of turn one and were gone whipped out at the star of turn 3.
All my opponent could do, was damage control but to no avail.
A 4-0 win for me


Game 5 – vs eldar (Pierre Largillet )
This was just a game for fun and I was glad to be paired up with Pierre again, if only to see what he can do when his dice aren’t against him.

It was nice to see him fare a lot better than Saturday. Clever set up (corner) and some good maneuvering on his side saw me defending a lot of the time. I was able to hang on to the special objective (an extra objective which whan held could be activated in the end turn for some special effects. Our just did a blast template on the nearest enemy unit, but on some of the other templates, they shot orbital barrages at other tables. Really funny.)

Due to time constraints it ended in a 1-1, but with a clear upper hand for Pierre.


To my big surprise this somehow put me in 2nd place for the tourney. I didn’t expect that at all.

I would like to thank all my opponents and also the other player. All of the great guys and most of them took great effort in trying to speak English. It was a great weekend and well worth doing again.

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- No plan survives contact with the enemy -

Imperial Guard
Space Marines
Eldar

Thanks for the report. Its good to hear that IWC is still going strong.

Cool report, nice to spot some familiar names from the french forum. :-)

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Some Pics from the Tournament. Hope this works, not to smart with computer stuff

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- No plan survives contact with the enemy -

Imperial Guard
Space Marines
Eldar

Hi there, thanks Kai for your Report and to play with us.
Thanks to Bastiaan too.

Lack of time actualy to translate and post there the report of French speaking guys so if you have time, you can read it there : http://epic-fr.niceboard.com/t3150-iwc-2011-debriefing

Hope to see you soon, and more people for 2012 !!

Yann

Hi Yann!

Thank you again for organising and translating and everything! I'll do my best to bring more guys next year and Kai knows a few as well so it should be fun.

I could start a new topic I guess but I think Spawn won't mind if I tack my report on here. So watch this space.

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Chaos LatD
Squats
Imperial fists
Steel Legion
Black Legion

Hi,

Like Spawn said we caught a train to Brussels on friday evening. Belgium always seems to cojure up images of beer for me so we started off on the right note in the train. Arriving in Brussels we obviously had to switch to the superior (and stronger) Belgian beer, and dinner had to be washed down by more of the same. I was already exhausted btw 'cause of a busy week and a company party (free beer!) on thursday...

Ofcourse I hadn't completly finished my army yet so after watching me struggle for a few hours at my sisters house where we were staying Kai graciously offerd to help me paint the last few subjugators. Anyway I had nowhere near enough sleep because of that (need a solid 8 hrs) so I was feeling a little at a disadvantage the next morning! Spawn was his usual cheerful self of course...

Well after breakfast and coffe it was time to get started! After a long and hard look at the EpicUk Latd lists I had based mine on a list by David Thomas. I havn't got as many Land transporters so stuck with two mobile companies and buffed some of the companies here and there. Here's my list (garbled from French with a bit of help by Google Mutate(tm) and Tzeentch)


Lodge (Aspiring Champion, 2 Mutants 2 Mutants giants, 7 Zealots, 1 Hydra and 7 carriers)
Lodge (Aspiring Champion, 2 Mutants 2 Mutants giants, 7 Zealots, 1 Hydra and 7 carriers)
Lodge (Archérétique Aspiring Champion, 4 Mutants 2 Mutants giants, 5 Zealots, a Hydra and a dog of chaos)
Lodge (Aspiring Champion, 3 mutants, 3 fire support, 8 Zealots, 1 Hydra)
Lodge (Aspiring Champion, 3 mutants, 3 fire support, 8 Zealots, 1 Hydra)

Titan Light Slaanesh (1 Questor)
Titan Light Slaanesh (1 Subjugator)
Titan Light Slaanesh (2 Subjugator)
Demonic knights (4 Knights of Slaanesh demons)

Reconnaissance platoon (4 Sentinel)
(So strictly speaking it wasn't all Slaanesh 'cause of the sentinels)

The French Epic lists are different, but the list I made wasn't affected much by that. The cultists are however, the'yre the same as Baran Siege infantry which whilst removing their AT ability makes the unit as a whole much better at firefighting and way scarier in an engage.

My first battle was against Pierre and his beautiful Eldar army. I've always had trouble against Eldar armies unless I tailor my list against them, but you have no such luxury in a tournament! Luckily we got a nice table to play on with some intersting terrain for both of us.




Loads of ruins in the middle (perfect for my infantry), loads of crags in the upper left corner (the Eldar claimed these) and the right side of the table was mostly clear and hilly with some roads. All in all a lot of roads on the table which could help me counter the irritatingly maneuverable Eldar. Pierre had taken a gateway and the superheavy with a gateway so I wouldn't know where his reinforcements would pop up. I put my Blitz behind the ruins, one of my objectives near the craters and another in the open on the hills to the right. Pierre put his blitz next to the crags, one of his objectives right on the left edge of the table and one in the ruins.

I garrisoned about half my army with te sentinels screening my firesupport cultists on the left side. My mobile cultists were more or less centre and two subjugators and the knigts guarding my right flank. I also didn't want to put them in harms way too quickly 'cause Piere turned the crags into an Eldar fortress.

Piere's list btw
Portal-50pts
- Troupe aspect (4 + avengers autarchy, 4 Fire Dragons Exarch +) 400pt
- Troupe guardians + 3 + 3 guards ghosts ghost lords 475pts
- Troupe guardians, including 3 platforms support platforms + 3 heavy 200pts
Avatar-100pts
Storm-serpent 250pts
Void spinner-250pts
-4 Scouts 100pts
-4 falcons + 2 firestorms 330
-5 prisms fire + 1 firestorm 315
Nightwing-300pts
-Vampire 225pts

During the first turn my Titans stormed foreward to generally shoot thing to bits or get into position for an assault the next turn. I did some seroius damage to one of the falcon units preventing them from doing anything useful. The guardian unit with the wraithlords and other spirit stone powered scary dudes appeared near my lines only to be shot back into more stones (but htat might have been next turn)
I'd run out of space deploying and moving during the turn only made matters worse. I'd actually forgotton about the intermingled rule and with one carefully planned firefight Pierre managed to break two of my cultist companies. This cut a massive hole in my line and should have cost me the battle. Pierre tried to add insult to injury by noticing that one of my knights was within five centimeters of the cutists guarding my blitz! His Vampire swooped and dropped his direavengers and firedragons on the right flank. Everyone of them could firefight one of my Daemon knights. However they could only hit one so I refused to counter charge. The result was that the aspects lost the firefight and their vampire, and ran away to cower in the far right lower corner. As far as grabbing objectives they were effectively neutralised even if the did manage to rally, but hey might still be pesky though if they marched somewhere.
I managed to plu the holes with the mobile units and breathed a sigh of relief as the turn came to a close.

The rest of the battle can be summed up quite quickly actually. Pierre popped his other guardian unit out of the webway and into the craters. He also summoned the avatar there which in the French list stays on the table (though I did break him I think) I couldn't shift them from their cover and grab the objective. I did my best to eliminate the falcons which I saw as a major threat to my titans, and Pierre did his best to destroy them. In the end though we bogged down pretty much along the starting lines of the battle and though we bloodied each other quite a bit none of us recovered sufficiently from the carnage of the first turn to snatch the needed objectives from our opponents grasp. . My subjugators didn't get into close combat and only destoyed things with their battlecannon. My vulnerable break their spirit survived, but badly shot up. The aspects had rallied, so there were unbroken units on my half and I think it ended 0-0. So we had to resort to a tiebreak after turn three and to my relief I had won the war of attrition.

<to be continued!>

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Chaos LatD
Squats
Imperial fists
Steel Legion
Black Legion