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Full Scale Report:
This was my first Epic tournament, and having been to a few other tournaments for Warhammer Fantasy, also my most pleasant tourney experience.
Opponents were universally skilled (If not all blessed with the same quantity of luck) and there were many different styles of army on display with very few 'cookie cutter' lists as has been my general experience at other tournaments (For example there were six different IG armies, each of which had a distinctly unique theme).
My first game was against a chap called Nathan with a War Engine heavy Black Legion list (Two Feral Titans and two Death Wheels). He went with one objective on each side of the board on the centreline, whilst I went for a couple in the centre.
With an above average number of his armour saves passed, Nathan won on turn 3.
He had my blitz goal, and two in my half, plus 'hold the line'.
I can't remember accurately as I was quite tired, but I think he only had those three points ( He hadn't killed my BTS, and I don't *think* he had three in his own half), yet the tournament scores show him winning the match 4-0, so there might be a minor mistake in the tourney scores (Or more likely I'm probably remembering wrongly as I had woken up at 5:30am for the two and three-quaters hour drive to Mansfield).
My second game was against Gavin (Ginger/Biggles) from my neck of the woods (London) with his Eldar.
We deployed for a quick meatgrinder game, armies face-to-face using perhaps half of the board's width... we began the game and Gavin's forces... stumbled.
I have never seen so many failed activation rolls (We reckoned ~75% of his rolls, most needing only a 2+... even when a formation would need a 1+ to activate he would still roll a 1 as his army did its damndest to try to fail the order!).
We called the game at the start of turn 3, as Gavin had only a single unit left on the board willing to take his orders (A Revenant Titan with 1DC remaining), whilst I had lost only nine units from my entire army (Two Valkyries, Two Hellhounds, Two Sentinels and Three Storm Trooper units). Gavin activated the Revenant (Which rolled a 1) moved it to shoot at a formation of mine and failed to cause any casualties.
I had everything unbroken and could easily have claimed a 5-0 win on turn 3 at that point, so we called the game early.
Sorry for the poor game Gavin!
My third game was against a chap named Bill with an Ork army.
This battle was the most fun I had all day, despite utter exhaustion setting in (Sorry to Bill for getting a couple of rules wrong and stopping to look them up too!).
Bill garrisoned a decent chunk of his army near to my Blitz, so I deployed my entire army on the other side of the table intending to undertake a grand sweep, to slowly turn the flank of his army over the game whilst using my mechanised infantry companies to hold the line against his advance.
Many skirmishes later, I somehow claimed a 3-0 victory at the end of turn 3; By the end of the game I felt like a bone-tired general surveying his battlefield after a long and hard day of battle.
I had his BTS, two in his half, and his blitz.
After the tourney the prizes were given out... I found that I had placed 6th overall (Additionally I was the highest-placing IG player), and far more importantly I won the participants' vote for 'best painted' for my Cadian-themed IG army, which was awesome!
Overall, it was a great tournament and I look forwards to attending a few more in the future.
PS: I was left with my opinion as to the strength of the two Chaos army lists unchanged. I only played against one of the three chaos armies on the day, but all three of them finished in the top 5, two of them placing in the top 3, and with one of them being the overall winner; Under the 'handbook' rules (Which were not used) the Black Legion list in particular only gets stronger, due to the change to the way MW barrages are handled.
Nathan (The BL player I faced) was also undoubtedly a very skilled opponent.
I've no idea as to how the Chaos lists have fared at previous tournaments.
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