This weekend, we were out of town for a Warhammer 40k tournament. We were staying at Nick’s house, so we spent Thursday night learning one of his new games, Tzolk’in. It was an interesting game with plenty to track and plan for. The main part of the game is an ingenious gear mechanism that moves the players’ workers around each turn. You need to plan ahead to make sure that your workers were in the right place to get their actions done. The game was close as we all tried to figure out the best way to go. Nick ended up winning, thanks to a strong monument purchased on the last turn.
Then on Saturday, Nick and I played in a Warhammer 40k charity event. It was a fun tournament setup using a 500 point list for one game and a 2000 point list for the other two games. There were six other there playing Chaos, Tyranids (two of them), Tau and Imperial Knights, Dark Angels, and Imperial Guard. I was playing Eldar and Nick had his Orks.
My first game was 500 points against Chase and his Tyranids. My Warp Spiders were the MVPs, destroying his Zoathorpes and generally being a nuisance as he failed to kill them in assault and then watched them jump out of combat just to shoot more into the bugs. I had two units of jetbikes that didn’t do much. They were protecting some objectives, but one group, including my Farseer got tied up by his Mawloc and perished. The other squad survived the game, but I ended up losing by a couple points.
I played against Nick next, which is always fun. I was doing well early, destroying the majority of his vehicles within the first couple turns. The highlight was my Wraithlord destroying a Battlewagon with a single well placed bright lance shot. After four turns, the game ended in a draw. I just couldn’t kill off enough of his orks since they were actually armored, and he wasn’t able to get close enough to get into assault. Things would have been really interesting on turn five, but we were out of time.
My final game was against John’s Tyranids. He had a lot more big bugs than Chase, but there were plenty of smaller things too. I was able to destroy a squad of gaunts and his warlord on the first turn with some nice shooting. On the second turn, he had a huge squad of guants outflank to my left and a Mawloc appear near my Avengers. The guants killed all but one of my Warp Spiders, and that Spider managed to survive the rest of the game in some ruins. The Mawloc missed on his entrance and couldn’t do anything on his turn, so I was able to put a ton of fire into it and then assaulted it with a Wraithlord, killing it. The Guants were shot up by Dire Avengers and jetbikes, and then wiped out in assault. At this point it was mostly clean up for the Eldar. I just had to avoid the worst of the big bugs and finish out the last two turns for the victory.
The Tau ended up with the tournament victory. I did end up winning a gift certificate, which I used on a new game, and ultimately the 8 of us raised over $120 for Sanford Children’s Hospital.
That evening, Nick, Gina, and I learned my new game, Lords of Xidit. It was another game with lots of planning. This time the planning involved deciding on your next six actions before each round. Then the actions were carried out in order to move around recruiting warriors and defeating monsters. The pre-planning aspect made things somewhat relaxing as we weren’t working out every move with excruciating detail. You had to plan ahead and try to guess what the others were doing, but once those moves were set, it was just a matter of executing. Nick won again, just barely beating me with the tie-breaker.
Until next time, happy gaming!
