Day one is over and I'm sitting like a ballerina at two-two. See what I did there? Tutu? Two-two? Two and two? 2-2... yep.
It was a long day and I can say that my nerves only felt a little fried in the middle of game 3. With a solid game in round 4, I felt like rejuvenated. I went home, got a great night sleep and caught a ride with Jeff in the morning to start day 2. That night I had did some deep thinking and came to the conclusion that I probably am not going to place in the high tables. And that was okay. So day two was going to be about having a great time, loosening up and trying to make some new friends.
 |
| A picture from my game with Kevin on day one. |
Coffee: Check.
...
Nothing else on the check list.
GAME 5!
Greg Sparks
Chaos Space Marines
...
This would make five games in a row playing against Chaos of some sort. Insane. Greg had a beautiful custom Legion of Chaos Marines led by none-other-than Abbadon the Despoiler. Greg ended up winning best painted Traitor army. Good for him! His list:
AbbadonDaemon Prince
Chaos Marines x 10
Chaos Marines x 10
Chaos Marines x 5
Chosen x 8 with 4 meltas
Oblits x 2
Oblits x 2
Chaos Land Raider
Bikers x 4
A well rounded list, some mobility, can handle all sorts of threats and has a good number of power armored bodies on the table.
Right off the bat, I could tell Greg valued a good game. He didn't want me to pull any punches and seemed as if wouldn't be either. A few times in the game I attempted to let him go back to do forgotten things, but he wouldn't allow it. I put on my game face and prepared for a competitive game. And it was!
My pregame rolls went well, giving me one of my favorite spells on Fateweaver: Molten Beam. He also got Scryer's Gaze, Dominate and Warpspeed. Goreguts got Iron Arm, Enfeeble and Warp Speed, the Grimoire and armorbane/fleshbane. The DP got Smite, Hemorrhage, and Life Leech, armorbane/fleshbane and the portalglyph... perhaps the worst DP setup I got all weekend. My Lord got +1 wound for his gift roll, which did come into play.
I ended up going first after losing the roll, in a generic dawn of war deployment with the scouring as primary, kill points as secondary and a trio of tie breakers. Greg wanted last say on objectives.
The caveat in the scouring was ELITES scored instead of fast, making my terminators AWESOME! We revealed objective values and Greg had the coveted 4pt objective in his backfield.
I rolled out my starting powers and soared forward with my two flyers... and of course, Fateweaver was in "melta range" of the Land Raider with the Molten Beam. Successful tests and rolls later, the Land Raider had exploded. Greg was clearly flustered with his mistake of leaving his Land Raider in range of the beam, and he proceeded to leave his Chosen and Abbadon bunched up in the space where the Land Raider had been. In turn, the Oblits dropped a couple of plasma-cannon shots onto his expensive models. I believe 5 dudes went down in the super-hot death.
From there, Greg did his best to survive and even threatened to hold out for the win, considering I had to get him off of the 4 pointer to ensure victory. Abbadon slew my DP in single combat, then he flew his Daemon Prince after turn 2 (he was hiding behind LOS blocking terrain) to my deployment zone and next turn assaulted my objective holding Plague Bearers. Luckily (it was on my side this game), I had rolled +1 invulnerable saves for my warpstorm that turn, and proceeded to bog down his Prince for 4 player turns. Otherwise, Heldrake did his thing frying power armored bodies, Goreguts made it across the board and assaulted some guys, my Lord deep struck and fried some scoring units and the game ended with me winning Primary, Secondary and two of the three tie breakers.
That game, I feel Fateweaver finally gave me a glimpse of what he was capable of in a game. His rerolls were critical, his powers we unstoppable and I actually rolled good things on the Warpstorm table.
Greg was a great guy and I was glad to play him. He was extremely skilled and made an incredible game out of some early mistakes and good luck on my part. Doing it over again, it could have went either way.
MVP: Tetanus the Heldrake. He cleaned up the backfield and even *gasp* entered hover mode to ensure the win. If he isn't stopped, he just wins the game. He did!
MVP Opponent: Daemon Prince. Greg held him back and then sling shot'd him past my guys into my backfield and nearly drew out the primary.
Running tally: 3-2
In between rounds, Jerren, Jesse, James and I went to a Greek place and grabbed lunch. Man, my burger sure was good. In discussion, it turns out Jesse is in the running for winning the whole thing. He's playing Grey Knights and is 4-1 but is just killing it.
Round 6!
Opponent: Kramer Doyle
Tau / Grey Knights!
WHA??! Tau! All of that planning for months and months and I had planned on playing against 16 Riptides and 11 Wraithknights. And now I get my chance to play against... one. Just plan ol' one Riptide. Ho-hum.
His list:
Riptide
Fire Warriors
Fire Warriors
Kroot
Pathfinders
Pathfinders
Broadsides
DRAIGO!
Paladins x 10
Wow, this is a BRUTAL list. Just brutal. I feel it had all the tools to totally smash me. Force Weapons, check. Interceptor, check. Skyfire, check. Skyfire warlord trait, check. Draigo, check.
I rolled out my pregame stuff and got:... it doesn't matter. And here's why:
Fateweaver is ridiculous. At this event, I had 5 games so far where he really only shined in 1. In the other games, I would fail nearly every single reroll. My Warpstorm was ineffectual at best and harmful at worst. He periled probably 5 times over the 5 games, failed all sorts of other spells on 11's, was grounded multiple times and was generally not that awesome.
But ALL of that luck was saved for this game. And Fateweaver just took over.
It all started with me seizing. Kramer had won the roll off and wanted to go first because primary was Purge the Alien. Me seizing allowed me to get right in his face and avoid the alpha strike. I managed to grab first blood on first turn with Fateweaver using shooty powers and killing a squad of Pathfinders (if my memory serves me correctly). The problem was that I flew Fateweaver out of range of the Grimoire, and he was left with his lowly 4+ rerollable save (thanks to precog).
On the bottom of turn one, Kramer saw his opportunity and proceeded to point every gun at him and just unload. And I mean, unload. 30 Kroot sniper shots, 32 Firewarrior shots, 7 markerlight shots, infinite missiles from the broadsides and 10 Paladins with preferred enemy and psybolts.
After the dust had cleared, Fateweaver was grounded and had only taken 3 wounds. And. No one was in charge range. Holy shit. I just kept rolling fours. He scored 16 WOUNDS with the Broadsides and I proceeded to roll 12 4+'s and then 4 more 4+'s with the rerolls.
From there, it was bad. The Lord came in behind enemy lines and Burning Branded some Pathfinders, the Heldrake cooked some Kroot, the DP assaulted some Broadsides, the Great Unclean One loafed over towards Draigo and things died.
Kramer made a game of it though, Draigo killed the Unclean One, his Paladins made it in against the Prince and his Riptide megajumped towards my deployment zone. Alas, the Prince killed off the Paladins after they ran off of the board, then killed the Riptide... then Draigo. He was the best I had rolled all tourney with Enfeeble, Iron Arm and Endurance. Considering GUO and Fatey also had Enfeeble, an above average amount of DtW rolls weren't enough to keep his guys combat ready.
I know its very hard to stay in good spirits when things aren't going your way, but Kramer stayed friendly and he still had some fun. Its particularly hard to stay upbeat when you're making the right moves but they aren't working.
MVP: Fateweaver for his insane luck. The Daemon Prince was a close second based on his absurd kill count.
Opponent's MVP: Probably Draigo, due to his epic beatdown of Goreguts the Fattest.
Final tally: 4 - 2
Favorite Opponent: Jon Blowers and his awesomely converted Chaos Marines
I finished 17th overall, which is higher than I expected. I finished slightly lower in battle points. I also tied for Best Sportsman, with a perfect score and three of my opponents picked me as their favorite. I imagine I would have been in the running for Best Painted Chaos, but my partially finished Obliterator that I painted 11 minutes before the first dice were rolled AND my midnight washed/unbased Fateweaver knocked me out of contention.
My 6th round opponent, Kramer, ended up winning the Charity Raffle! Good for him. He said to me "I guess I'm playing Chaos now!" as he collected his prize. Hilarious.
About the event.
THE GOOD: Wow! Just about everything! Scoring and pairings went FAST due to the Torrent of Fire application. Prizes were INSANE. I mean, if you missed this thing and you lived in Michigan, you really missed out on a chance to win some awesome stuff. My opponents, everyone was so nice and friendly. The armies, as everyone brought out their best toys. The venue, spacious, close and just about perfect.
THE BAD: Really, nothing. I mean, little things, like I wish there was more "dead space" between the boards so we could keep our models on the table. That is literally it.
THE UGLY: Toddler/Kid Beauty Pageant going on in the hotel. I understand that everyone has their thing, but putting your kid in a beauty pageant? Isn't this world already fucked up enough?
Stay tuned!