Despite my frantic efforts in the past week, I was unable to get everything painted in time, I finished my last stand of ogryns at 6:30am on the morning of the tournament.... I had to make do with my 3 unpainted basilisks for objective markers after a frantic search yielded no suitable items to use
I picked MikeT up, who loaned me a couple of thunderbolts to use (mine never made it off the sprue...) and we made our way to Maelstrom
My list was as follows:
REGIMENTAL HQ [550]
Supreme Commander, 12 Infantry, 7 Chimera, Hydra
SUPER-HEAVY TANK COMPANY [600]
3 Baneblade, 2 Ogryns, Hydra
SUPER-HEAVY TANK COMPANY [550]
3 Shadowsword, Hydra
STORM TROOPER PLATOON [200]
8 Storm Troopers
ARTILLERY BATTERY [250]
3 Basilisks
FLAK BATTERY [150]
3 Hydra
THUNDERBOLT FIGHTERS [150]
2 Thunderbolts
WARHOUND TITAN [275]
WARHOUND TITAN [275]
Game 1 - Chris Steel and his vanaheim
Chris has an awesome looking army, with 3 formations of flyers (marauder destroyers, lightnings and thunderbolts) I especially loved his black and gold commissar valkyrie model, we set up and Chris won the dice off, his first act being to obliterate my hydra company with his vultures.... my baneblades shot a couple down in return and broke them (they spent the rest of the game cowering and refusing to rally) I found myself being very quickly outflanked by the rapid skimmers, and the disrupting valkyrie rocket pods broke most of my formations, one of my warhounds found itself on the wrong end of the marauders who blew it to pieces.
Chris was very sharp at avoiding my remaining ground flak, a few failed attempts to assault with my superheavies let me down and after I managed to double my remaining warhound onto his blitz, we moved to a 4th turn, my warhound ended up broken and Chris took the game 2-0, netting himself 23 points in the process, it was an excellent game and I look forward to facing him again in future, he was very patient with my ignorance of some of the finer points of the game and even provided some advice on how to prevent him winning 3-0....
Game 2 - Simon 'PAR' Patridge and his feral orks
Simon had a fantastic army with lots of big gribbly monsters (squiggoths??) and a fantastic steam gargant made out of a kinder egg and lots of bits, his themed objectives and paint jobs made him a very worthy winner of the judges best painted award
Things started off well enough with my superheavies and artillery shooting up his big junk trukk formations, although there were so many of them they kept on steaming towards my blitz.... my shadowswords assaulted one with the stormtroopers in support, which broke it and caused a good number of casualties, the baneblades and ogryns waded into the other one and wiped it out, but left themselves in the way of one of the squiggoths, the beast charged and took out one tank, but the support fire from the others caused a couple of damage and swung the combat in my favour, so the squiggoth ran away. Simon then went for my blitz with his boarboyz, assaulting the lone basilisks guarding it, then my luck saved me, I rolled triple six for my armour saves, killed a boarboy and won the rolloff, which meant they fled. The artillery then dropped a barrage on Simon's BTS squiggoth, caused a critical and the thing ran into a neaby wood and killed itself...
Meanwhile, my infantry company had been on the recieving end of a steam gargant and were broken for their troubles, withdrawing onto Simon's table edge, they rallied and managed to grab the blitz on the 4th turn for my first ever win.
All credit to Simon, he was a great opponent and I nominated him for most sporting as he was such a great guy to play
Game 3 - Mike Mee and his Biel-Tan eldar
I've come up against Eldar twice before, and both times Dave Thomas gave me a raking over the coals with them... Mike's army was amazingly well painted and I especially loved his high-flying Vampire model.
As usual, my unpainted warhound was blown apart, this time by the standard firestorm/falcon formation, in short order (maybe it was the lack of a decent paint-job, maybe I subconsciously wanted it to die...) and Mike dropped a disrupting barrage from his void spinner which hit my basilisks AND hydra battery, even though I saved both hydras and a basilik, the disrupt hits broke them, for what would turn out to be the rest of the game.... His vampire air-assaulted my baneblades and managed to break them at the end of his first turn, he then pressed and assaulted them again, only to not damage either remaining tank and have his banshees and reapers gunned down in short order!
I managed to blow up one of his revenants with my shadowswords (probably their best shot of the game) and my t-bolts took his void spinner out with a lucky critical. By the end of the game however, I had lost most of my fast formations and instead of marching my shadowswords to contest one of my objectives, I decided to blast his avatar into tiny bits instead.... my heaviest defeat of the tournament (3-0 on the third turn) but a fun game nonetheless!
my thanks go out to all three of my opponents, I look forward to our next games with anticipation!
see you all back at Maelstrom in April!
-Simon