Kill Count 2010

Well 1st off what an experience!

For an Introduction to what a 40k Tournament is all about I must say wow, and not in a bad way let it be said.  More so in terms of the sense of community, the amazing group of people and the sheer artistic  talent that exists out there.

The Tournament was clearly set up with the person who not just played to win but also played to have fun, that took time with their hobby, thought not just about the power combo's but the theme and the design of the army.

The organizers have to be very happy with the overall outcome and I'd say that overall I had a fairly positive experience in my 6 games and I stress the "fairly" and will get to that later.

So how did i fair?  well lets say I hoped to win one game and won 2 and really dropped the ball on 2 and was  really owned in 2.  I made what can only be said to be a huge swath of mistakes that saw me lose brilliant advantages to mistimed attacks and poor choices.  I have to say I learned allot more from those 6 games than any of the games I had before then, and at the same time confirmed allot of thoughts about how to proceed with the army in general.

On the 1st day I faced Imperial Guard twice with very distinctive differences for both, one being a very nicely themed Valk list with guys all in blue representing bio soldiers drawn from an old 2000ad coming which i loved.  The other guard list while not sporting any Special characters was basically from what I could see a leaf blower light list, a mass of templates and high impact weapons, purely designed to win games, theme was very stock standard and showed in my opinion very little imagination or thought.

I also played a chaos word bearers army and way back in the depths of 2001 I once started painted word bearers with the old codex, and I have to say it has inspired me again, its just a shame that so much of the rich tapestry that is the traitor legions was lost in the poor excuse for a codex "chaos space marines".

Day One saw 1 win and two losses.

Day two started off well playing a fantastic Nurgle Choas space marine army, with what I have to say was the nicest guy I played all tournament.  I had the upper hand till turn 3 and then saw it all fall apart from one gut wrenching mistake that while the lad offered to let me rethink it ( I refused on the grounds of principle) saw the entire match fall apart.  I then faced a fairly simple eldar army but I made a host of mistakes and saw myself again lose the early advantage.  Game 6 I was certain not to make the same mistake and with concentrated fire and host of good roles tabled a very gracious and well spirited player by turn 3.

Day 2 again saw 1 win and two losses.

So 2 guard 2 chaos Marines and 2 Eldar is what I faced, not one other codex marine army, which considering the number of marine armies out there was interesting.

Out of 66 players with comp and sportsmanship and etc worked in I finished 29th and came 3rd overall for theme and composition which took me by surprise completely.

The only experience that was negative was against that type of player I read about and thought that I would have to deal with after a few comps.  But there I was with a person who would snatch things out of your hand, refused to explain rules, didn't explain what he was doing, and was very aggressive and negative in his style.

It brought day one to a sudden and startling halt in terms of enjoyment. I was just shocked how horrid this guy was and clearly only interested in winning and not having a fun competitive game.  Suffice to say his army was hardly inspiring and represented a whole heap of min maxing to make it hard to beat.  For a 'ard boyz tournament I would suspect this would be fine but Australian tournaments I get a sense that winning is good but having good composition, good presentation and sportsmanship is equally important.

Anyway suffice to say I was very very happy to see him down lower on the lists which I felt vindicated his poor attitude to the game, and It was clear others thought the same.

So as to lessons learnt.

Ragnar was good but a waste in terms of points.  For fluff he works for Haldor but he represented a massive sink where I could have used a few more troops or another option for long range fire.  So Eastcon is now coming up in 4 weeks and I'm going to try something different with a wolf priest some downgraded wolf guard and a vindicator worked into the list.

Ill post it up in a few days with some additional fluff.  Lord Haldor will receive his dues in a glorious death (as happened this weekend) when he took on a Nurgle Sorcerer and felled him but took a mortal blow from a force weapon.


Ill have some shots up of the new units Im working on soon,

Cheers

JP