We took video footage from the event which we will edit and get up later this week.
Da Grand WAAGH! wrapped up yesterday, a 2 day, 5 game GT held on the USS Hornet, an old Aircraft Carrier, which was pretty damn cool.
The tournament is old-school style. Battle points, sportsmanship, comp and painting all go into your total score to determine the winner.
The Zero Comp team came with 7 players, and 2 more teammates who shot some film and just hung out. We also had a bunch of friends come who we play all the time. I believe there were about 55 players total, but I am not certain.
The terrain for the event was amazing. I would go so far as to say it may even be better than Adepticon’s in terms of variety, quality and coverage. Really top notch.
The missions ranged from good to bad. Some of them were straight book missions from either 4th or 5th ed, some were totally made up with all kinds of funky rules. I know it is fun to make scenarios for tournaments, but they are invariably unbalanced, and not play-tested enough. IMO, a tournament is the wrong place to play funky, home brew missions as it will nearly always result in a situation where a certain army has no chance of winning. That just isn’t fun, and no one wants to take an entire weekend, pay for a ticket and travel to an event where something like that happens.
The event was very well run though, and began and ended on time, which is always great. The prize support was really light though, considering the ticket prize was $65. The overall champ for 40K got a $150 gift voucher for GW and a hand made plaque (the plaque was awesome though, I must admit). I believe the reason for this was that holding the tournament on an aircraft carrier costs them so much money. It is cool to play on an Aircraft Carrier for sure, but I personally would rather play in a less cool venue and have more money to give back to players in the form of better prize support. That is just me though, and I am sure a lot of people think playing on an Aircraft Carrier is worth the cost.
Anyway, on to the reports!
My list, which most of you are familiar with at this point:
Bjorn Wolves 1850 Points
Unit Description Size Cost
HQ
Bjorn P.Cannon 1 270
Rune Priest JotWW, Storm Caller 1 100
Troops
Grey Hunters Flamer 5 75
Grey Hunters Flamer 5 75
Grey Hunters Flamer, Razorback, A.Cannon 6 150
Grey Hunters Melta, Razorback, A.Cannon 6 155
Elites
Dreadnought L.Cannon, H.Flamer 1 145
Fast Attack
Land Speeder Typhoon 1 90
Land Speeder Typhoon 1 90
Land Speeder Typhoon 1 90
Heavy Support
Long Fangs M.Launcher x 5, Razorback, L.Cannon 7 215
Long Fangs M.Launcher x 5, Razorback, L.Cannon 7 215
Long Fangs M.Launcher x 5, Razorback 7 180
Totals 49 1850
Good old Bjorn Wolves. I know this army so well now that I feel like I can play it blind-folded.
Game 1
Opponent: Tau
Mission: 4 Objectives, Table Quarters[/b]
List from memory:
Shas’0: Fusion, Plasma, shield drones
Retinue x 2: Fusion, Plasma
Fire Warriors x 12, marker light
Fire Warriors x 12, marker light
Fire Warriors x 12, marker light, Devilfish, Seeker Missiles, D.Pod
Fire Warriors x 12, marker light, Devilfish, Seeker Missiles, D.Pod
Crisis x 3: Fusion, Plasma
Crisis x 3: Fusion, Plasma
Drones x 12
Broadsides x 3: Shield Drones, Multi-Trackers
Ionhead: D.Pods
A 4th ed list. Missile Wolves dominate most Tau lists. Plus, my opponent hadn’t been playing much lately.
The game honestly was over before it started, baring crazy dice. I went first, my army was faster, out-shot, and out-assaulted his. Plus, his dice were bad. For example, first shot of the game, two missiles hit and wound two broadsides, and he rolls 2 ones for his 2+ armor saves. Ouch. I ended up taking all 4 objectives and we called it turn 4. He was a great guy though, and I was giving him some pointers on rules and such. Despite the lop-sided game, we enjoyed ourselves and I would happily play him again. This was a really bad draw for him as Tau are meant to be the premier shooty army and even assault armies out-shoot them, these days. I can’t wait for them to get updated.
Game 2
Opponent: Space Wolves
Mission: Victory Points, Triangle Deployment[/b]
List from memory:
Lord: TW, Frost Blade, Runic Armor, WTT, WTN, Storm Shield, Saga of the Warrior Born
Lord: TW, Hammer, Runic, Saga of the Bear, WTN, Storm Shield, Saga of the Bear
Rune Priest
Grey Hunters x 5: Melta, Lazorback
Grey Hunters x 5: Melta, Lazorback
Grey Hunters x 5: Melta, Rhino
TWC x 3: Storm Shields x 3, First, Melta
Long Fangs x 5: Missiles x 4
Long Fangs x 5: Missiles x 4
Long Fangs x 6: Missiles x 5
An excellent Space Wolf list. This would be a very challenging game as my army can really struggle with TWC. I knew in order to beat him, I would have to contain the TWC some how, or get smashed in combat.
Bjorn got me first turn which was huge for this game. It allowed me to take the most advantageous firing position for my Long Fangs. I placed them all above ground level where he could not assault them with his TWC, but they were in a huge clump as I wanted to maximize their overlapping threat radii. This did mean though, that if my Alpha Strike flubbed, or he stole the initiative, I was in a very vulnerable position.
Luckily, neither of those happened. I alpha struck hard, taking out all but 3 Long Fangs, and popping a Lazerback and nuking the squad inside. I also threw out a bait unit (my Razorback) hoping to lure him into a charge with the TWC. I guesstimated that they would be just in charge range, and they were. My opponent took the bait and came in and smashed the Razorback, but left himself open to my counter attack.
I hit his Wolfstar with everything and managed to drop a wound from each model, but killed none. I then charged it with Bjorn and the other Dread to tie them up. Bjorn did his job and held up the Wolfstar for 5 turns! He managed to kill off all the TWC before the Hammer Lord finally clubbed him to death. Luckily, he killed Bjorn in his turn, leaving me free to shoot the last two Wolf Lords to death in my turn, which was the tabling, and a max point win for me.
The game was a lot closer than it ended up looking. Bjorn won me the game, as had the Wolfstar killed him early, he could have split off the Lords from the TWC and just smashed me in assault. The Old Man did his duty though, and just sat there taking a beating but refusing to die as he so often does. Everything else I threw into that meat grinder got eaten alive by the Lords but I had to feed him units to keep him tied up while I focused on the rest of his army.
Had I gone second, this would have been a much tougher fight, very likely ending in a loss for me. But, my army is designed to go first and it did, which gave me the edge.
Great game against a great opponent. Joel was good fun and he did very well in the rest of the tournament.
Game 3
Opponent: IG (The Zero Comp team all played other Zero Comp teammates in round 3! This always happens to us, I have never been to a tournament where I didn’t play at least one of my teammates)
Mission: Kill Points, Pitched Battle with a special Envoy character you had to escort off the board to get 2 kill points, and kill of the other player’s to get 2 KPs.[/b]
List from memory.
CCS: Chimera, HHF, Melta x 4
PBS x 8
PBS x 8
Vets: Chimera, Melta x 3
Vets: Chimera, Melta x 3
Vets: Chimera, Plasma x 3
Vets: Chimera, Plasma x 3
Vendetta: HBs
Vendetta: HBs
Vendetta: HBs
Hydras x 2
Hydras x 2
Hydras x 2
A brutal IG list that would shoot me to bits if it went first. ChristianA is my teammate, and a top notch player, so I knew this would be a tough game. I won the roll to go first, but there was a HUGE LOS blocking piece of terrain mid field, which pretty much bisected the board into two halves.
I made a large deployment error, choosing to castle in a corner. Normally, I always deploy centrally when I go first to counter any deployment shenanigans on my opponent’s part. Also, since Hydras can out range me, it would have been very foolish to allow my opponent to simply deploy out of my range and shoot me to death. The large rock mid field though, made me feel that I could force the flank where I had a great piece of terrain in my deployment zone to deploy around, and force him to come to me if he wanted to engage, or to use the rock as cover while I advanced and Alpha struck from around it.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. Christian deployed in the opposite flank, taking most of my units out of play due to being out of range.
As the game proceeded, we both jockeyed for the best firing positions. I manged to kill his Envoy before it could get off the board with units that I had reserved for just that purpose, and managed to get mine off the board but I had to sacrifice 3 units to do it. It was a bit of a Pyrrhic victory but it kept me in the game.
Despite Christian deploying more intelligently than I had, me getting all the bonus points for the envoys had me in the lead and winning the game up until turn 4. Due to a minor positioning error on Christian’s part, it looked as if he would not be able to get his Melta squads into range of Bjorn. So, I made the error that would cost me the game of deciding to go for the throat and sending Bjorn into Christian’s lines unsupported. I felt that he would be safe from destruction and be able to smash through most of the vehicles in his range which could either not hurt him or only glance him.
Well, I was wrong. Christian pulled some risky repositioning, exposing a lot of his army, but going for a game winning move. He sent his Melta command squad on a suicide run to take out Bjorn….and succeeded.
Damn! Bjorn gives up extra KPs if I don’t have a unit touching him at game’s end, so this could potentially cost me the game.
I was now scrambling to get a unit to him while Christian scrambled to stop me. When the dust settled, Four things went wrong that cost me. A unit of long fangs took two casualties, broke and ran off the board. Bjorn had failed to destroy a Chimera in assault, reducing it to nothing more than a box but leaving it still alive. With his last shot of the game, Christian destroyed the unit touching Bjorn to prevent him giving up extra KPs, and, a PBS that was broken and fleeing at the beginning of turn 5, 4″ from the table edge, rolled to see how far it would fall back and up came snake eyes!
*&%&*^$^$*!!
He then used “get back in the fight” on them to prevent them from giving up a KP.
The game ended and Christian got me by 3 KP’s, exactly enough to win. 2 or less and it would have been a tie game.
That was a bummer as I thought I had it locked up, but got a bit too bold with the Old Man and failed to see the move that cost me the game.
Oh well. Christian out-played me and deserved to win. Well done to him!
Game 4
Opponent: Shrike Marines
Mission: 3 Objectives, deploy long ways, table divided into thirds, reserves come in on turn 3 from the long edge, 5 turn game.[/b]
List from memory
Shrike
Chappy: Jump Pack
Riflemen Dread
Riflemen Dread
Scouts x 10: Fist, M.Bombs
Scouts x 10: Tellion, M.Launcher, Snipers
Scouts x 10: Cloaks, M.Launcher, Snipers
Scouts x 5: Snipers, H.Bolter
Vanguard x 10: Shiels, Fists, and bombs, oh my! A super squad that would split me in two if it made it into combat.
Typhoon
Typhoon
I didn’t care for this mission so much as the game isn’t designed to be played long ways on a table. That wasn’t so bad as it can be fun to mix it up, but having reserves not come in until turn 3, and the game ending on turn 5 meant that you could have units never participate in the game, which is not fun. Some armies HAVE to reserve, or are designed to reserve so this was a pretty big design flaw, IMO.
I was playing Bill from the Imperial Vox Caster. Cool! He brought an Alpha Strike, Shrike Marine army. It is a very cool concept revolving around infiltrating, and using scouts and fleet to get a first turn assault off. It catches a lot of people off guard and can be devastating to a vehicle heavy army that doesn’t know what’s coming. Fortunately for Bill, he won the roll to go first. Unfortunately for him, I also play this army and know exactly what it can do.
I deployed with a sacrificial wall of vehicles to force his infiltrators back so that he wouldn’t be able to take out my vital units on the first turn.
Also, this army is VERY susceptible to being seized on. As it requires units to be in the open in order to make the first turn assault, if the other guys seizes, you are left with your dingy in the breeze and your boys get shot to pieces.
I have never stolen the initiative in a tournament game before. Ever. I tossed the die and…..up came that 6!
Bad, bad news for Bill. I wasted two squads of scouts, his Vanguards and a Chappy, plus Reduced Shrike to 1 wound left on the first turn. It looked ugly.
He then managed to fight his way back into the game, destroying nearly all of my vehicles with his long range shooting. After that first turn of me kicking his army square in the nuts, I couldn’t roll above a 2 on the damage table, and his scouts were making saves all over the place. By turn 4 we each held one objective and the middle was contested. I was starting to get worried when a scout Sargent nearly killed Bjorn with his fist, but venerable reduced it to a weapon destroyed. Whew! Bjorn then head butted and kicked the impudent little sarge to death!
Bill was positioned to contest the middle objective with two speeders on the last turn. I had one turn left to stop him so I sent my speeder onto his objective to contest it, and opened fire on his and all of a sudden, my dice went hot. I destroyed both speeders and a Riflemen dread. Finally, I rolled above a 2!
This meant the best Bill could hope for was to destroy my speeder and pick up some bonus points but my speeder was blessed by Russ and survived, giving me the win 2 objectives to 0.
Great game and had I not stolen the initiative, I would have been hard pressed to win that one. Luck was with me in a big way and that was a tough break for Bill who was set to thrash a good chunk of my army turn 1.
Game 5
Opponent: IG
Mission: 16″ deployment zones, have more scoring units in the other player’s deployment zone at game’s end to win.
List from memory
CCS: Chimera, Plasma x 4, Astropath, OoF
PBS x 10: Chimera
PCS: Flamer x 4, Chimera
Platoon squad 1: Chimera, Las Cannon
Platoon squad 1: Chimera, Las Cannon
HWS: L.Cannon x 3
HWS: L.Cannon x 3
Vets: Melta x 3, Chimera
Valkyrie
Valkyrie
Manticore
Manticore
Hydra x 2
So, another well built IG list, with plenty of scoring power. This could be a tough match if it had not been IG I drew. Normally, my army doesn’t want to go at you, but with IG I would be doing that anyway. IG doesn’t want to come at me at all but was forced to. Good draw for me. However, if he went first, he had the firepower to really hit me hard. My army was purpose built to destroy IG, though, so I felt good about it. There was no huge LOS blocking piece of terrain on this board, so I was going to go with my usual strategy to deploy centrally if I won the roll to go first….which I did thanks to Bjorn. Woot!
My opponent failed to seize on me and my army did was it is designed to do. Alpha strike hard, and reduce the other guy’s ability to hit me back. We then entered into a war of attrition where I had more guns firing and each turn he had less to hit me back with.
I advanced all of my scoring units up-field while he was forced to play defensively, keeping his in place to shoot at me. He managed to kill one of the Grey Hunter units, but the other three made it into his deployment zone and hid behind vehicle wrecks until game’s end.
This was a text book example of how my army is meant to perform against IG. My opponent played smart and had all the tools, doing his best to take out my fragile units where possible, but was fighting an uphill battle from the word go. Had he gone first, it could very easily have been the same thing, but with me on the defensive and trying to fight him off. I kept his Manticore and Hydras suppressed most of the game and he had to make tough choices as to what to shoot at.
I ended up with the win though, as at game’s end I had 3 scoring units in his deployment zone, to his none in mine.
So, that ended the tournament.
I ended up with second most battle points behind Christian who went 5-0 but ended up winning Best Overall as my paint, sports and comp (ironically enough) scores were higher than his which gave me the edge. Christian got Best general.
So Team Zero Comp takes 5 of the top 10 spots! Woot!
My Bjorn Wolves have been on a serious hot streak. That is 3 major tournament wins this month for me. I guess September was my good luck month :thumbsup:
Thanks for reading!