fortress!

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finished as much as I am going to - see you all tomorrow

Update
Rd1 dptdexys bts Nat, edgarsan bts miket, ginger on vps over tiny-tim

Rd2 top table dptdexys vs richardl

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NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Wish I'd been able to make it. Hoping someone posts results or even batreps up.

Your wish is my command:-:)

Having finished painting up the required bits into the early hours, I set off slightly late - and got lost within 1 mile of the venue, so had to be 'talked in' by one of the locals. Consequently I arrived slightly flustered, 5 mins after the start of the game, to be met by Tim who greeted me with a cheery "get your stuff out, your fighting me; I have picked a quick play army" - never a good sign!

Following my usual trend of taking 'unusual' armies, I decided to play a slightly different game and take a lot of Storm Serpents and AA, but no artillery;

Biel Tan
400 Aspects - 3x S Scorpions; 3x D Avengers, 2x F Dragons (Aut & Ex)
350 Warp Spiders + 2x Ex
300 Guardians + Wraithguard
750 3x Storm Serpent
750 3x Falcons (with 2x Firestorm each)
300 Night Wings
100 Rangers
50 Gate

Game #1 Vs Tiny Tim (Dark Angels Marines)
We grouped the 4x T&H objectives on the right side of the table and I turned the more central one into a 'gate. To deflect the unwelcome attention of teleporting Terminators, I garrisoned the Rangers in a line from my Blitz, behind which I put one set of Falcons around one Storm Serpent and the other Falcons around the other two Serpents.
The Terminators duly teleported in on my right flank, and my usual luck saw me fail to put the Night wings on CAP. Tim used his initial activations to try to contain the Eldar in their deployment zone and pick away at the Falcons to reduce their AA capability. However two formations survived and by marshalling, I managed to un-suppress 3x Firestorms which managed to critical a THawk full of Assault Marines.
@ Hena - Tim was muttering dark threats at you, because you 'guarantee' that THawks "always survive heavy flak" . . . )

After that both sides traded blows and pushed slowly forwards into the opposing table halves with the Eldar slowly gaining the upper hand, until the end of turn #3. At that point, some clever moves and my poor dice roles saw the Marines reduce the objectives to 1-1. After Turn #4 the scores were still level, and at 1550 to 1700, the Eldar gained a winning draw.
A really close fought game that swung both ways several times.

Game #2 Mike Thomas (Ultra Marines)
Objectives were again placed on one side of the table (where I hoped to keep my infantry in several sets of ruins).
Mike used the 'standard' UK tournament army with 2x THawks, Terminators and 2x Warhounds; using a Spaceship to planetfall his troops. I managed to avoid the space-bombardment and planetfalling troops by deploying away from the Blitz, and was then able to destroy the isolated Tacticals and Devastators with strong assaults. The Night wings did get on CAP this game, and Mike was a bit unlucky to lose a THawk carrying his BTS (Terminators) to them.

Thereafter, my bad luck deserted me for a change and I threw better than average dice, while the Eldar were able to concentrate on killing off the smaller formations, giving me a 4-1 victory.

The score does not properly reflect the valiant fight Mike put up against mounting odds and rampant dice!

So this catapulted me to the top table to meet - - - Richard Laking, the current 'No1' and man to beat; rarefied atmosphere indeed!

Game #3 Richard Laking (Imperial Guard)
While I put the T&H objectives together on the same side as his Blitz, Richard adopted a different strategy, spreading his T&H objectives on either table side. He then garrisoned his two Sentinel formations to make a wide screen in front of his Blitz behind which he deployed the rest of his army.

We were both very cagey in turn #1, both sides creeping 20cm - 30cm forwards trying to exploit cover as much as possible during which the IG artillery and Warhounds inflicted some damage on the Falcons. To break the deadlock and try to entice the IG forwards, I tried to set up a combined assault with the Warp Spiders and Guardians on my extreme left. The Eldar Warp Spiders assaulted and destroyed the left-hand Sentinels that were screening his BTS and a Storm Serpent advanced into position, only for the Guardians to fail to activate. The IG duly repulsed the Warp Spiders and the Wave Serpent

In Turn #2 I tried to set up a rolling assault by getting two Storm Serpents into position in front of the IG BTS (Tank Company), but at every turn Richard interposed another formation, marshalled or shot my formations away. Although I did eventually kill a Warhound and lay quite a lot of BMs, I lost most of the Eldar army in doing so.

In the end, I made some mistakes which Richard exploited leaving me with no Storm Serpents. Richard then tried to be really sneaky declaring his intention to block the ‘gate, thereby stranding my BTS off-table. Although that formation failed to activate (the IG do not stoop to the level of ‘sneaky’ Eldar! ),there was nothing that could be done to avoid a 3-0 defeat.

Again, a very hard fought game in which I was unable to defeat the IG strategy and then got sucked into a battle of attrition, which was only going to have one conclusion.

===

As always, it was a great pleasure to meet other players, and it was good to see a lot of new faces among the grizzled veterans.

Thanks for the report Ginger, I'll try and get the summary of the results up today.

One think to remember Ginger I was a 2+ away from winning the game though

Good to hear it went well

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And equally I was ahead for other parts of the game; I really enjoyed the way that it swung with virtually every throw of the dice. Fortunately your dice were not much better than mine (eg the loss of the THawk to a critical), which at least meant we were both in with a fighting chance for most of the game, and hence why it went right down to the wire.

I might add that in the UK-Tourneys, a draw is awarded for point differences from 0-149, while a winning draw is awarded for 150 point upwards; so in practice I got a 'winning draw' by just 1 point - you don't get much closer than that.

excited to find out the full results...

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Good time had by me :-)

I'll post a tourney report in the morning :-)
R>

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Chop chop!

;-)

Results for Counterattack 2012:

1 Richard 120
2 Dave 113
3 Robert 112
4 Ryan 111
5 Ben Edgar 99
6 Tim H 95
7 Gavin 94
8 Mike 81
9 Tim C 61
10 Horatio 55

Richard continues with his push for the championship, while two points separated second to fourth. One difference from the result announced at the event in that Gavin & I swop places as I'd added up my scores incorrectly.

Thank you to everyone who attended it was a lovely event to run with wonderful relaxed competitors and it made the 9.5 hours travelling well worth it, although I might plan a stop over next time

Thanks also to Triple Helix who have a brilliant venue, provide good hot food at the time requested, a great member of staff who was very helpful and all in a clean well lit environment.

Tim

Thanks for that Tim.

Absolutely gutted I couldn't make it - seriously shoddy planning on my behalf! Good to drop in and see everyone having a good time though.

I know what you mean about the travelling. I've found the drive (not to mention petrol costs!) much easier if you can lift share with others.

Cheers
Reedar

Data all entered onto the Epic-UK website, just 2 lists missing that will be caught up later today all being well.

"

I needed sleep! No rest for the wicked it would seem...


Yep, I would concur with Tim and everyone else; Triple Helix are great hosts and if we can keep the numbers up (we did have two people pull out due to commitments...) then I'm sure that Counter Attack can and will become a well worthwhile regular in the Epic Tourney Calendar. Thanks to Tim and the rest of the Epic UK team for organising the event

MoK's Tourney Report

Wow! A mere 1pt from 3rd place? I was pretty chuffed to come 4th but that's my best tournament placing yet :-)! However, things could have been very different as I'm sure you'll all see!

My List:
-Warband +2 Nobz
-Warband +2 Boyz + 2 Grotz +1 Nobz w/Warlord
-Warband +1 Nobz + Battlefortress + Flakwagon
-Stormboyz
-Blitz (4 Flak)
-Blitz (2 Gun 2 Flak) + Oddboy
-Blitz (2 Gun 2 Flak) + Oddboy
-Stompas + Supa Stompa + Flak
-Stompas + Supa Stompa
-Big Gunz + Oddboy
-Landa

Game 1: Rich L's Steel Legion

I've been playing with my Brace of Supa Stompa list for a little while now and have just about got the hang of it, but pulling current reigning tournament champion Rich in my first game was bound to hurt!

Rich's list involved 2 Mechanised Infantry Companies (1SC), a BTS Leman Russ Company, Hydras, Manticores, 2 sets of sentinels, some thunderbolts and 2 Warhounds, he set up with the mech companies on either side of the Leman russ's, and the sentinels on overwatch forming a ring around a couple of important areas. And then I got first turn!

I've been using the Sooeycide Skwad (SS), in all my ork lists and they're pretty brutal: lacking the finesse of a lot of my fellow epic players I simply use them to take a massive bite out of my opponent as soon as I can! In this I decided to swoop down straight away before Rich could put fighters on CAP or any other formations on overwatch and attempted to hit his SC's formation hard: A landa and a Warband with 4 NOBZ fell from the sky and attempted to smash one of his mobile formations: The SS came out ahead and the broke the formation but later on died horribly themselves although it took a fair few activations for Rich to acheive this: One flank had been effectively stalled for turn 1!

Despite Rich's best attempts (and worst dice rolls), the rest of his army also ground to a halt: formations such as his Sentinels and Manticores suffered Blast markers from lending supporting fire in the SS assault and his LR Company took a lot of 6's from my MW equipped Supa Stompa's. By the end of turn 1 I felt that I could at least turn the game into a draw...

Turn 2 saw the Guard push finally start in earnest although I did manage to keep enough Blast Markers on some of his formations to see several failed activations and the LR company continued to be hit hard by MW barrages whilst my ZZap gunz went Warhound Hunting (failing to hit I seem to recall...). My mechanised Mob made a bad call assualting his now moving second set of mechanised Guard and at the beggining of turn 3 it looked like we had all to play for.

In the end though despite his continual cursing of failed activations Rich had been quietly concentrating on reducing my activation count: making sure to hit the 3 Blitz Brigades where possible and with the SS and Landa blown to smithereens I was left with only 6 activations, maybe 5 which were actually operational! Some last minute messing around on both our halves trying to deny objectives to each other saw Rich come out with a 29-3 well deserved win for all his frustrations!

In a quick post game chat with Rich and EdgarSan we knew that the Landa had come down way too early this time: Overwatch wouldn't have been a problem as Rich's bulk of the army is based upon mobility, I'd have been better off waiting for a chance to contest an objective or halt an incoming assualt: but there's always next time to learn from my mistakes...

Game 2: Horatio's Steel Legion

...aaaand...that time came very soon!

Poor Horatio had almost exactly the same build as Rich, replacing the Leman Russ with a very nice looking Werewolfian Baneblade Company, the two warhounds with Shadowswords and mixing it up with an infantry company and rough riders into the mix. His infantry company set up RIGHT NEXT to my Zzap guns on overwatch in the middle of the table and first part of the game involved my scoutsscreening and other formations (2 whole SUPA STOMPA'S) attempting to pound the living crap out of them before they could do anything nasty to my precious Zzap gun (which was holding off his Baneblades), eventually I managed to break them but it took quite an effort.

Horatio played his army almost exactly as he should of done: it lacked as much Flak as would have been useful but in the end the fact that I'd been playing for a few months with my list and this time deciding to save the SS for an oppurtune moment meant that I was able to run circles around him. This time the Zzap Guns managed to hit quite a few targets (felling two shadowswords) and as soon as the Baneblade company rolled forwards unsupported I knew it was time to strike. Suffice to say, scoring a critical hit on his Commisar Equipped Baneblade and another one of them failing all 3 RA rolls meant that the poor things were ripped apart in seconds with the 3rd Super Heavy falling to hack down hits...in turn 2 my Supa Stompa's made short work of his SC's formation forcing it to break to the rear of the table and his 2nd mechanised formation bounced off on the other flank too.

Come turn 3 things looked grim for the guard and I managed to sneak a 32-0 win in by destroying the SC and chums who weren't quite well hidden enough...his pesky artillery did manage to keep hold of the blitz though!

Game 3: Tim's Ulthwe Eldar

It seems that Rich smashing me in round 1 may well have contributed to my placing so unusually high at this tournament: if I hadn't of been on the bottoms table for game 2 I doubt I'd have managed such a victory against a more experienced player which in turn would have left me now facing Tim's Eldar List, which was, unfortunately for him, almost the perfect match up for me.

Tim Took:

Avatar
Wraithgate
Guardians+Support weapons+Wraithguard
Guardians+Support weapons+Wraithlord
Guardians
Falcons(2 Firestorms)+Spirit Stones
War Walkers
Engines of Vaul -Storm Serpent+Cobra+Spirit Stones
Revenants
Vampire
Wraithship

And this being only his 7th or so game of epic and his second tournament the matchup proved a tad one sided. The Guardians all came out of Wraithgates far too early instead of waiting for an oppurtune moment to assualt and the vampire landed offloaded it's guardians into cover instead of Air Assualting also. His Wraithship's barrage only managed to clip one of my flanks, his summoned avatar's advance was stopped by a stormboy scout screen and the revenants suffred a critical hit in turn 1 before being eaten alive by the SS whilst stuck mid table without any support...all in all...it was a bit of a wipe out and I must apologise to Tim for rushing the game at times: I had my eyes set on a tournament placing and, although I won 29-3 Tim would have been even worse off if we'd have made turn 4: it almost certainly would have gone to 32-0 which would have placed me second!

Tim: see my PM and if you're around and we'll organise a nice friendly game :-)

Finale

Well...you've all seen the results and you all know that I had a great time and played 2 new and exciting opponents (I've played Horatio before...might even have played Rich?!) I was chuffed to be awared Best Army Award too:


(not quite the right army: no deth kopta's)

Which made me happy as I've been working on my red orks quite dilligently! With the prize I ordered myself some Vultures for my IG force whicih will be making a showing next year I reckon :-)

So, thanks again to the organisers, Look forwards to doing battle with every one again next time!
R>

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