Adepticon – Results!

Opponent's Army - I can confess I've never played against a Brettonian army quite like this before.  My opponent had three large blocks of 15 Knights of the Realm, 2 Trebuchets, and no less than 6 characters (The Green Knight, a Level 2 Lady, Lord, BSB, and 3 paladins.  That's it.

Game Highlights - Between cannon fire, warp fire throwers, and magic I destroyed one knight unit that eventually broke and was rundown by slaves.  This unit contained the BSB and Lord.  I managed to kill all the knights of another unit but not before it chewed through an HPA and some slaves.  I killed one trebuchet and the other blew up in a misfire.  End of the game all that was left on the Bretonnian side were 4 Knights and 3 paladins.

Game Results - I won this game by roughly 300 victory points.  The overall points for the match were 21-7 in my favor.

Lessons Learned - Knights are very effective at chewing up an HPA and spitting it out.  The hidden flaming lance certainly didn't help but I'm pretty sure they would have chewed through it pretty quickly.  Otherwise the Green Knight is a pain in the ass.

Opponent's Army - This list really shows how versatile a Warriors of Chaos army can really be.  No one expects warriors to be fast but this list certainly flew across the board (literally).  The list consisted of 3 units of 5 vanguard warhounds with another unit of warhounds without vanguard.  In addition it had a unit of 10 marauders which my opponent stated he really didn't want couldn't figure out something better to spend the points on.  A giant block of nurgle chaos warriors rounded out the core selection.  For special/rare choices we saw two chimeras and 3 skullcrushers and for characters he had Festus, a BSB on a daemonic mount,  and a Nurgle daemon prince (with Lore of death).

Game Highlights - This scenario started off with us exchanging traitor models.  I gave him a slave and he gave me a non-vanguard warhound.  Turn one the daemon prince flew across the table, sniped both a cannon and the grey seer and panic ensued as a clanrat unit and warpfire thrower ran off the table.  600ish points gone at the TOP of turn 1.  The rest of the game went downhill.  The HPA died to the chaos warriors who were revealed to have the banner of eternal flame, the doomwheel died to death magic as did the other cannon, the chimeras accounted for almost everything else.

Game Results - This battle resulted in a crushing defeat for me.  I garnered only 400ish victory points and was almost tabled (I had my plague monks left).  This lead to me losing by a resounding 25-5, the worst distribution possible.

Lessons Learned - This is the only game where I feel my bad decisions really lost me the game.  No bad dice, no weird scenario rules that ultimately cost me the game.  Just a very bad and stupid decision that could have and should have been avoided.  Now, I'm not saying that I would have won the game, Filip, my opponent, was a very good general with a solid list, but the game was effectively over at the top of turn 1.  So Filip, if you are reading this, LESSON LEARNED!  Always dispel scroll death magic aimed at the general or throw all my dice against it.  Also, don't rely on terrain to help mitigate charges.

Opponent's Army - This army was very fun to play against and is the first time I've played against the new daemon book.  My opponent took a bloodthirster and 3 heralds for his characters.  He had a herald of slaneesh on a Slaneesh seeker thing, a khorne herald on a juggernaut, and a tzeentch herald on a disc.  For units he had units of 11 bloodletters, 20 bloodletters, and 20 horrors.  Other items included a skull cannon, 3 screamers, and 5 seekers.

Game Highlights - Blood and Glory scenario.  The HPA went beserk and bolted 17" across the board straight into the large unit of bloodletters and the juggernaut herald.  He killed quite a few but died after a couple combats.  My opponent concentrated his screamers and seekers on the doomwheel, caused a few wounds but lost a screamer and all the seekers quickly.  I lucked out and managed to ram the doomwheel into the bloodthirster, rolled a 10 for strength, and slowly rolled my dice one at a time.  First bolt wounded, failed his ward save, and I did one wound.  Second bolt, wash rinse, repeat, and the third bolt I managed to down the greater daemon.  In the same phase the plague monks unleashed on the juggernaut and remaining bloodletters and wiped the unit out (juggernaut herald died due to instability).  This ended the game as his fortitude dropped below 3.

Game Results - I won this game 25-6 essentially nullifying my previous massacre.

Lessons Learned - I think I learned more from my opponent than I did from my own actions.  When in doubt, ask your opponent questions!

Special Note -   I would like to point out that Peter, my opponent for this game, was my favorite opponent of the entire tournament.  I enjoyed the discussion in this game and the friendly banter.  I hope he and his son continue their foray into Fantasy and I hope to see them at Adepticon next year!  Also, thanks to Peter for giving me a great addition to an upcoming conversion project.

Opponent's Army - The army consisted of 3 units of chameleon skinks, three terradon riders, three blocks of 25 saurus warriors, two salamanders, a skink priest, two saurus oldbloods (or whatever the heroes are called) on cold ones, and the obligatory Slann.

Game  Highlights - I hate blaming losses on dice as I dislike minimizing my opponent's skill and Austin was certainly a skillfill opponent.  However, the dice killed me early in the game.  Twice my doomwheel failed to make it into combat with units and those units ended up either shooting/wounding the doomwheel (chamleon skinks) or roasting entire units of slaves (salamanders).  It died a before it could try and move a third time.  Continuing the trend of bad dice all of my warmachines misfired and blew up at various points with some of them taking other models/units with them.  To add to my misery (and further explanation on how my dice killed me) the scenario had a special rule where after winds of magic and channels generated power dice, roll all the power/dispel dice and on a result of 6 your opponent gains an extra die.  Well, typically this resulted in me rolling low Winds of magic and pumping my opponent up to equal (or more) dispel dice or my opponent rolling high and me capping out his dice with nothing in return.  Nothing like giving a Slann MORE dice to screw with me during the magic phase.  The only highlights were the HPA almost removing an entire skink/kroxigor unit on his own (until being flank charged) and the gutter runners charging and killing a salamander late in the game to grab me an objective point.

Game Results -  This ended up with me almost being tabled.  I lost VP by a huge amount but managed to sneak away with a couple extra battle points for a 23-8 loss.

Lessons Learned - Skaven love being random and that can hinder my list at times since I rely on a lot of random elements (cannons, warpfire thrower, doomwheel, HPA).  Lore of Shadow with a Slann is absurd given the free power dice, etc.  He effectively had my plague monks down to WS1, S2, T2, I1 for most of the game.

Opponent's Army - I wasn't expecting this one.  Despite its small size the army had no less than 4 cannons on the table in the shape of 2 cannons, a steam tank, and a LANDSHIP.  He also had a unit of 20 manaan's blades, the special knight unit (10 models), the nuln ironsides, an engineer character, a captain on foot, and Elspeth Von Draken.  Small army but very powerful.

Game Highlights - This game was also enjoyable and held many sights I've never seen before and probably never will.  In my opponent's first turn he put three wounds on the Doomwheel and destroyed a cannon.  On my first turn I killed Elspeth's dragon.  On turn 2 I charged a unit of giant rats into the side of the landship hoping to tie it up in combat for awhile.  Three combat rounds later the giant rats were still there and even managed to win the first of those rounds of combat!  The steam tank rolled my right flank while Elspeth continued on foot and ultimately ended up sniping my Grey Seer because I just couldn't bring anything to bear on her.  Curse of the Horned rat killed off almost all of manaan's blades in a single casting and ultimately the slaves would finish them off.  

Game Result - Victory points went 1474 -573 but are closer than at first glance.  Had I managed to kill Elspeth on foot I would have been at almost 1200 points but unfortunately for me, none of my mages had offensive spells except Curse of the Horned Rat.  So I lost but the final score was only 18-10 for battle points.

Lessons Learned - I need better fire alleys for my warpfire throwers.  I need to chase down unmounted characters with everything I can.  Landships aren't scary but steam tanks can still mess you up.  I hate death magic with a passion now.  That about sums it up other than it was an enjoyable game that reminded me how much I love to see units on the table I don't usually see.

General Impressions
Overall the tournament possessed a breadth of armies.  Wood Elves were the only army that lacked any real presence but there was at least one WE army present.  I was surprised at how many Bretonnian and Tomb Kings lists were found in the pack.

The atmosphere itself was pretty good with solid camaraderie about the hall and the judges roaming about were quick to resolve any rules debates.  The paint judging was atrocious though.  The guy who judged my army literally spent about 1 minute judging the whole army and, apparently, had never judged fantasy painting before.  Why might I think that?  Well he picked up one character (the grey seer) and on rank-and-file figure FROM THE BACK OF THE UNIT.  Umm, hello?  He never really paid much attention to the cannons, the HPA, or the doomwheel and I don't think he even noticed the freehand on the banners at all.

The scenarios were a bizarre mix of boring and ridiculous.  The first scenario was a pretty standard game except you scored extra points for killing the character that held the most expensive magic item or daemonic gift.  Scenario two saw us swap an individual model from our core choices.  This model was a traitor and you scored bonus points if you were able to kill your opponents traitor or get yours into their deployment zone.  While this one didn't cause me or my opponent any problems, I could see this being one complained about.  Scenario three was pretty close to a standard Blood and Glory game.  Scenario four was the big one that irritated a lot of people.  It was meeting engagement so you had to roll to see who would deploy on the board as standard, but, it also had a magic "flux" rule.  This meant that in every magic phase after power/dispel dice were generated and channels were accounted for you had to role all of those dice.  Any results of "6" meant your opponent was granted an extra power/dispel dice.  As someone who went up against a Slann in this turn with loremaster, extra power dice per casting, becalming, etc.  This scenario killed me.  The last scenario was the standard Adepticon one of "get as much fortitude into the 18" box in the center of the playing field as possible.

My opponents were all stellar.  Hats off to Miles, Filip, Peter, Austin, and Andre as all of you remained in good humor throughout our respective matchups.  Filip, thanks for the beer, bud.  After the trouncing you gave me I certainly needed it.  I want all of you to know that while Peter was my favorite matchup, all of you showed great character and played enjoyable games.

I definitely need to work on my list.  Here are a few things I know I need to try and fix or add/remove.

So as the week progresses I'm going to try and break down each match as much as possible.  I also plan to write a detailed analysis of how each unit performed across the entire span of the tournament.  Lastly, I'll post a few pictures.  I actually have very few pictures though since I left my camera at home.