an interlude.

Whilst I write drafts of my AdeptiCon progress... whilst actually preping for the event... I've been playing in a couple of events.

On January 1st we had a tourney at our local store, titled "No Rest for the Weary". Yes, some people were hung over, but as a) I have kids, and b) I'm old, I was not one of them - I was in bed by 11pm!
It was a fun event with no soft scores, but some limitations on composition (no SH, LoW, smaller fortifications only...).
Some how I managed to go 3-0, and lost out on overall by one point (I tied my secondary objective in the final game and got zero battle points for it.... grrr..).
It was a really good event, and the turn out bodes well of a revitalization of year round, small, tourney events in the Metro Vancouver area.

Next up is Vancouver's first Highlander event, for which I suggested the name of "Toss Yer Caber" (it is being run by a Scot..) which stuck.

I have a hankering to play my Space Wolves - for the first time with the new codex.

Since 7e came out I've been somewhat skeptical about the psychic phase, hell I've historically avoided magic in Warhammer for many years. But with the Wolves I had an idea.

The HH books, in particular the Prospero arc, have hinted at the Wolves' belief that their powers are not warp driven but is "earth magic" from Fenris. This I can embrace. To this end I have been toying with the idea of the Malefic Powers, specifically the summoning of daemons; or in the case of Space Wolves "Spirits of Fenris".
The whole project took about 5 hours.

Here is my "Greater Daemon of Fenris". Built from a WE Treeman (obviously!). I'll run it as a Bloodthirster.

 

Pretty basic paint-job, using Minitaire paints, airbrushed and layered on. A wash of Army Painter strong tone added depth.

Snow, which is melting - done with Secret Weapon Miniatures product, represents the recent arrival from Fenris. The Snowy Owl... well, he is the psychic link!

And of course, where the big guy goes, little ones will too.

Hopefully I'll get to use these next month - but not against loyal space marines...
I'll post how it went.

World Wide Tournament - quick report

So the 40K Radio WWT wrapped up yesterday; 3 games in 1 day. The WCP Club organized the ONLY Canadian event - quite shocked about that. a) They are traditionally a FB club, and b) there are a hell of a lot of clubs across Canada!
Twelve players signed up - mostly locals, but Jeff Everitt made the 5 hour drive from Kelowna on Friday to play.
I took my usual Space Wolves army; Venerable Dreadnought, Wolf Priest, WG battle Leader, 58 Blood Claws, 6 Grey Hunters (bleh), Wolf Scouts and an Exterminator (I'm going to miss that...).

Game 1 (Punch In)
Jeff Everitt! Jeff bought Eldar, pretty much as that was all he had left after his house burnt down earlier this summer...
Well, this should be a fun game - a shooty army, vs an HtH army on what was a jungle table for all intents and purposes! Modified kill points were going to be bad for me - with 3 Hqs vs his one (which happened to be Eldrad) I was theoretically already 6 points behind.
I deployed aggressively, Jeff very defensively. Not much happened in turn 1 (no line of sight!), on turn 2 my scouts came in, and I decided to use them to tie up his best HtH unit, Striking Scorpions, hopefully for a couple of turns. They failed miserably in shooting, and managed to wiff with their power weapons just as spectacularly. They did weather most for the return hits and passed their leadership test.
With lots of dancing around terrain I really did not get to grips with his army; the only exception as when Jeff bought up a unit of fire dragons to take out my Ven Dread. They failed miserably to do anything in shooting, but each having a meltabomb they were able to take it down when I charged. That proved to be the turning point of the game.
Result:
Minor Loss for the Wolves (8 battle points gained)

Game 2 (Lost in the Ustream)
For this scenario I got to play a "new" player - Mark Wakeham, and his Necrons. Necrons seem quite popular in 5e, and they are a pretty solid army. Shame they are tough to get top painting scores on!
This scenario was a simple Capture and Control one, with a twist - you got bonus VPs for teleporting a unit, and a scenario point for doing if EVERY turn!
Predictably Mark castled his forces in one corner and kept the Monolith in reserve. He spent the next 4 turns backing up and shooting me... it was getting a bit boring! I did take out his Destroyer squad, but my Scouts failed to account for the Tomb Spider. Oh, I also tried teleporting a Blood Claws unit (of 12) close to his lines on the first turn. I lost them in a mishap! The Monolith came in turn 3, and by turn 5 had pushed my Grey Hunters off my objective. Not getting into combat until turn 5 really hurt me...
Result:
Major Loss for the Wolves (3 battle points gained)

Game 3 (That's a Wrap)
For this game I drew Adam Sarophim, who I have played MANY times in the past. However, I've never played against his Tau army, which he has been running for the past couple of years.
This was a straight up objectives battle. I won the roll, and let Adam set up. His army was pretty balanced, the only annoying unit was going to be the Sniper Drones. My counter deployment was quite good, but I knew, again, I was going to have to slog it across a killing field...
I managed to take out the Hammerhead quite early in the game, and then it just came down to the slog. Have a couple of units pinned over the first couple of turns was tough to deal with, but a few units got in Adam's face, making them priority targets. Once I did get into combat (turn 4) results were predictable. At the end of turn 5 we were holding two objectives each, with the middle one contested by Adam.
Sadly I did not get a turn 6 (how often have I lost games on turn 7?!). The game was at the tipping point and one more turn would have given it to me - my Exterminator would have wiped one unit off an objective, and a almost full strength Blood Claws unit with Wolf Priest was 8" away from another... I probably could have taken the middle if it had gone to turn 7!
Result:
Tied game - 10 battle points gained.

Summary:
Not my best showing, but still lots of fun! The terrain was a bit sparse/homogeneous for a HtH army.
So my Wolves are now in semi-retirement; once Codex: Flavor-of-the-Month is out next year I'll probably bring them back - in the mean time I'll be adding some Terminators, a Land Raider, and reworking my Blood Claw units to fit the new Codex: Space Wolves out in weeks!
Of course the Exterminator is out of the army (::tears::), but it will find a new home (and new armour/guns!) in my Guard Army. I'll most likely make it a character/command tank.

Thanks to Dan Miner for putting on the event!


edit - haha , I forgot - I won Best Painted...

a brief distraction

Yesterday I headed down to the GW Surrey battle bunker. They were holding the final Hall of Heroes tournament for the 2008/09 season. I was looking forward to catching up with a few friends that I'd not seen in a while and battling with 2000 points of my Wolves.

I took a Wolf Priest, Wolf Lord, Ven Dread, two full size units of Blood Claws, one small unit in a Rhino, minimum Grey Hunters, Wolf Scouts, Exterminator, a three-Las Predator and two Land Speeders with Assault Cannon/Heavy bolter. Terrain as a bit sparse, so I was concerned about my vulnerability to mass fire.

Game 1
Opponent - Kyle – Imperial Guard
Mission – Annihilation (Primary), Breakthrough (Secondary), Deployment - Pitched Battle

Well this table bought my fears to life... not only was I facing guard with THREE Leman Russ Battle Tanks, and THREE Hellhounds, there was almost NO cover down the middle of the table! Kyle got to set up (and go) first - I wanted to see what he was going to do with his troops on the back board edge. He pretty much kept them forward, and left me a few gaps for my scouts to come in. Hopefully I would be able to exploit and/or widen those gaps. The first three turns were bloody for me... I did very little damage, on the other hand Kyle ripped both my blood claw squads to pieces with battle cannon fire, and very cleverly managed to kill my scouts by blocking their deployment as they came in from reserve on turn 2.
Turn 4 I started to get stuck in - an immobilized speeder, that ended up surviving 3 rounds of Hellhound pounding, forced his mortars to go to ground, and then on turn 4 made them flee from the table. A unit of annoying lascannons was finally dealt with by the Exterminator, one Leman Russ was destroyed, and other one stunned. I also got to clear out a couple of his smaller "sacrificial" units.
After turn 5 Kyle rolled for the end of game... done!

Result - Space Wolves Victory! 11 battle points gained.
I won the primary objective (7KPs to 6), and the secondary was tied (neither of us was able to get to the other's deployment zone). A 6th turn could have spelled doom for me, so I was pretty happy to pull the win out. I found the use of 3 LRBTs and 3 Hellhounds a bit excessive, but with the current Guard codex they really need to bump up the armour at 2000 points!

Game 2
Opponent - Adrian – Necrons
Mission – Capture and Control (Primary), Sharpshooters (Secondary), Deployment - Spearhead.

Ah Necrons... only the 4th time I'd ever faced them! Sharpshooters would make the game interesting; you receive a point for each time you cause 25% casualties from shooting, whether the unit pass/fail/is fearless.
Adrian bought two Lords with Res' Orbs, two full size Necron Warrior units, a unit of 5 Immortals, a unit of 3 Wraiths, unit of 3 destroyers... and two Monoliths. With four potential las cannon shots per turn I was hopeful I could take the 'liths down. This was raised when Adrian chose to keep one in reserve, along with one Warrior squad/Lord.
I managed to seize the initiative and with my first round of shooting took the wraiths, immortals and destroyers down enough to cause leadership checks. The WBB rolls would prove to be a disadvantage in this scenario for the Necrons. I was racking up secondary mission points fast! By turn 2 I had taken down the Destroyers, one Wraith and immobilized the Monolith on the table; I'd also racked up a few more "sniper" points and was about to take down the Immortals. I also got my scouts in close to his objective. They won combat, but could not break the unit; it would have been sweet to make them run off the board freeing up the objective! Damn Ld10.
Adrian got his second 'lith in and dumped it right onto my tanks! The warriors also arrived, but due to the scatter they came in through the immobilized 'lith in the middle of the table.
I managed to immobilize and wreck the deeps striking monolith with all four lascannons opening up on it. Apparently that messed with Adrian's plan a little! I also finally destroyed the Wraiths, which made it impossible for him to win the Primary objective. There were two rounds of HtH in the shadow of the Monolith, with the Necrons in both cases being pulled through the 'lith.

Result - Space Wolves Victory! 11 battle points gained.
The primary was tied, and I took the secondary 8-5. The game "winner" for the Necrons was the scouts battle, loosing a power weapon due to a shooting phase plasma pistol over heat (squad has not been reconfigured for the 5e casualty rules) hurt my HtH, and the Lord taking away all charge bonuses also cut down the attacks I could do. Also Ld 10 is not too shabby! The two monoliths were a bit annoying, but other than that the list was pretty soft.

Game 3
Opponent - Steve – Chaos Space Marines
Mission – Seize Ground (Primary), No Quarter Gained (secondary), Deployment - Pitched Battle (with Night Fight the whole game!).

I've played Steve before and he had a terrifying Eldar army back then, When I saw him pull out a winged Daemon Prince I immediately thought I was going to face a Daemon army... followed by "oh, crap...".
This time he had a nicely balanced force! CC Daemon Prince, two Autocannon/Lascannon Predators, two units of terminators, daemon pack, Chosen, 2 Obliterators and 3 units of CSM mounted in Rhinos.
I allowed Steve to set up first, hoping to seize turn 1... which of course I failed to do. We had set up the objective counters in such a way that we would be fighting a lot of HtH in the middle of the table.
Battle went pretty much to plan - Steve refused to charge my Wolves as my Counter Attack would give me more PW attacks that if I charged! He relied heavily of plasma and melta weapons to thin my numbers. His DP lasted all of one charge. The two squads of terminators about the same. The real thorn was the daemon pack and a late coming CSM unit. In the end Steve held one objective, two were contested and the final one was uncontested. Steve also held one table quarter.

Result - Space Wolves Loss. 5 battle points gained.

Pretty good day's gaming! Two wins is always a good thing.
I also walked away with Best Appearance. I may get high enough in the HoH rankings to get an invite to the GT...

beaten... and slightly down...

Well yesterday I returned from Seattle and the first ConQuestNW GT. The return of GT gaming to the Seattle area.

I have mixed feelings about the event itself, which I'll get to at the end of the batrep (this will be slightly truncated as I really did not take that many in-game pictures).

I took my Space Wolves, a reprise of the "Training Day" that made its debut in the same room 5 years ago. 53 Blood Claws... that got a few people's attention!

Game 1
Opponent - Russell Jordan – Eldar
Mission – Seize Ground, Deployment - Spearhead

[no picture; Avatar, Farseer, 2x 10 Pathfinders, 2x 6 Guardian Jet Bikes, 2x 20 Guardians, Wraithlord, 3 Warwalkers]

Result - Space Wolves Victory. 18 battle points gained.
Good game - Russell had an interesting mix of units that could have messed my army up badly, but being able to force one unit of this Pathfinders behind a terrain piece, and then getting to them on the first turn (rhino rush and shooting) was pretty big for me. Those Pathfinders can ruin your day rather quickly! On turn 2 my scouts came in, shot and assaulted his War Walkers and one of his units of guardians. I tied them up for the next few turns. After that it was a matter of shooting down the bikes (with my exterminator and land speeder), and getting stuck into the Avatar. In the end I think I held 3 objectives, and the other two were contested.

Game 2
Opponent - Wesley Knutsen – Space Marines (Salamanders)
Mission – Annihilation, Deployment - Spearhead

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 8 battle points gained.
Well, I was pretty convinced I was going to get tabled by turn 3! I'd looked at Wesley's army earlier in the day and it gave me chills... Vulcan's ability to have all flamer and melta weapons count as twin-linked is huge. Luckily the Firestorm cannons are not included in that. Wes decided to deep strike his Land Speeders - I'm not sure if he was crazy, or being nice to me (when they came in they deviated, and were destroyed on the Mishap Table...). I managed to destroy one of the Land Raiders with my small Blood Claw unit, and take out the Attack Bikes with my scouts. My dreadnought took an ungodly amount of fire from Land Raiders and various other weapon systems, but after loosing both weapons and being immobilized it was still alive at the end of the game! We ended up with the Kill Points being 7-5. Pretty close for what I was up against. Wes told me the next day that I had given him his toughest fight of the event. If there has been a Favorite Player ballot (they took it out this year) Wes would have got my vote.

Game 3
Opponent - Ivan Neering – Orks
Mission – Seize Ground, Deployment - Pitched Battle

[no pictures; 8 nob bikers, 5 meganobs, truck, 30 shoota boyz, 30 slugga boyz, Ghazghkull, Warboss, 15 lootas 3 Zzap guns]

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 9 battle points gained.
So this looked ugly from the get go... I was able to get the first turn and wreck Ghazghkull's Truck with my first shot; luckily, due to Ivan's deployment, they had to come out the back of the truck and pretty much started on the back edge. I could ignore them for the next couple of turns... Using my Exterminator I concentrated on the Lootas, slowly picking them apart. The bikes were going to be the BIG problem. 8 Nob bikers, with Cyborg bodies, 4 power klaws, and a painboy (that is 530 points if your were wondering), where going to be hard to kill. Well, I figured 30 blood claws and 2 HQs could do the job. Man was I wrong! I think I managed to kill 3 out of the unit, and with Ghazghkull running across the table as fas as his fat legs could take him, he was in combat pretty quickly. That turned the game for Ivan. His orks boyz were pretty much not part of the game - I broke one unit, and tied up another for a couple of turns. At the end of the game I think we had 2 objectives each. We had to go to Victory Points to decide the winner. Ivan had MANY more than I did!
Whilst I enjoyed the game, this is where my doubts about the tourney started to creep in. I thought Ivan's list was rather "un-orky"; too much dependence upon the big units and really not that many ork boyz.

Game 4
Opponent - Zen Zheng – Space Marines
Mission – Capture and Control, Deployment - Pitched Battle

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 8 battle points gained.
So here was a marine army - with only 2 troops choices... one tactical and one scout unit. This was also my first chance to see the Thunderfire Cannon in action. Zen threw me from turn one - he only deployed the Landraider, the Thunderfire Cannon and the terminators across the back board edge, presumably protecting them from my scouts. I got to go first and immobilized and stunned his Landraider with my first shots. His Ironclad Dreadnought dropped in near my objective on his first turn, but did very little. I managed to destroying a couple of turn later. My scouts came in and went after his terminators - pretty suicidal, but I wanted to try to tie them up for a while; this they succeeded in doing, but they could not last too long. Pretty much took the termies out of the game though. The real pain in my a$$ was the Thunderfire Cannon - it's accuracy is scary and 4 blast shots at Str 6 can do a lot of damage. It won the game for Zen - knocking 2 of my units off the objective in my deployment zone. With his Vanguard dropping in on turn 3, and tying up one of my squads for a turn, this allowed his command squad to get into my deployment zone and take the objective. The homing beacon on the dreadnought drop pod also allowed his Land Speeders to come in on my side with out deviation - these ended up helping him immensely. Zen used his sniper (!) scouts to outflank and attempt to take his own objective. I was able to contest it with a rather thinned down Blood Claw unit that had weathered some long range shots from the terminators.

Game 5
Opponent - Ben Hanner – Black Templars
Mission – Annihilation, Deployment - Dawn of War

Result - Space Wolves Major Loss. 3 battle points gained.
This looked like it was going to be a good match up - Ben had bought four 10-man squads. Sure the two Vindicators would potentially be a pain in the ass, but I figured my scout would deal with at least one of them. Well, two things went wrong; firstly I thought I would be clever and assault BOTH of the Vindicators at the same time. I could not damage them! I really should have concentrated on blowing up one of them... The other issue was 15 Blood Claws could not take down 10 Crusaders; at all... I ended up loosing 7-2.


So why am I "slightly down"?
Well it is not from the "beating", I'm used to that. It is from the nature of the beating, and a few peripheral things.

• of my 5 opponents 3 had incorrect or illegal lists... three...mathematical errors... geez...
• the organizers published the results as "preliminary". Good job too... the data sheet was riddled with errors - right now the guy in second place has one more point than the Overall winner. Hmm... I think that needs fixing - but how to do it without being accused of shenanigans?!
• "cheese" seemed to be the number one rule of the day. Given the richness of the background of 40K one would expect more story-driven army designs (and in the past these seemed to be the norm, especially in Seattle). But no, it was almost as though WAAC was a requirement. I blame GW. The 'Ard Boyz events have thrown out any semblance of composition. The current soft scoring system really does not give any latitude for rating the composition of your opponents army.

Not all armies were bad, this one for example was really cool, and did well in battle points - an example of how a themed army can succeed:
this one was VERY themed:

then you start to get into the ones that were obviously built to win:

5 10-man Khorne berserker units, and two Slaanesh Sorcerer Lords with Lash... pretty blatant! At least he had a 2CCW dreadnought... and the 'zerks were painted red...

Then you get to the creme-de-la-creme of fromage...




So this army won best painted - sweet... I thought the highlighting was rather rough, but it was still excellent. Let's look at the Composition...
Two Winged Daemon Princes with Lash of Submission
Two Vindicators
Two dreadnoughts, with Plasma Cannon and Missile Launcher
Two five man Noise Marine squads.
Five terminators in a Landraider
Defiler (Soul Grinder proxied)

This is a Slaanesh army? With 5 man units? Well at least he got the Lash in there.... and they are pink/purple...

Now we get to something that I find VERY offensive. Apparently the army above, was not the one the player used in his battles. He dropped the two dreadnoughts and slotted something else in. What that "something else" is has been debated; one would assume it was the same for all games...

[update; there is a picture on the GW Community website of the army in action, that shows a LOT more than 10 Noise Marines on the table! I also thought there was a ban on GW taking pictures of 40k/FB models with LotR parts on them...]

Really? Shouldn't you display the army you play? I think the rest of us did!

on the road

I'll shortly be heading down to Seattle, to what I hope will be the Renaissance of the Seattle GT. ConQuestNW is putting on the first event of the GW Independent Tournament Circuit 2009.
Seattle is near and dear to my heart for 40K gaming; almost 10 year ago to the weekend I attended my first (and it was Seattle's first too) GT there. The second event was the year of my triumph in the Painting category, the third year was the closest I've come to winning overall (loosing the final game put an end to that!). Looking forward to 5 games of fun 40K gaming, catching up with old friends and hopefully making a few new ones.
I'll blog my experience on my return Monday afternoon; wish me luck!

Victory in the City

Well after the farce of trying to put on the Cities of Death event for the gen-pop, Mighty Miniatures offered the event up to the members of A-Club. Last Friday night 8 of us battled it out in the City.
I took 1250 point of Space Wolves; the obligatory 6 Grey Hunters (blah!), 6 Wolf Scouts, a Venerable Dreadnought (TL-Las/ML), a Wolf Priest, 2 Land Speeders (HB/AC) and 3 units of Blood Claws.

Round 1 - High Ground (hold the tallest building). I drew Nick Daniels and his Ultramarines for this one. As I'd chosen Preliminary Bombardment and Tank traps I was able to a) corral his Razorbacks in his deployment zone, and b) stun a couple of them for the first turn. After that is was pretty straight forward; I took the tall building (intact!) on turn 2 with my GHs, the it was a matter of getting into HtH, weathering the heavy weapons and having my scouts lay the smack down on Telion and his scout unit!
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

Round 2 - "Take and Hold" (occupy buildings) vs. JP Silke and his Chaos Space Marine army. JP had a NASTY list with 2 Defilers, three units of Plague Marines, and small unit of CSM (all mounted in Rhinos) and a winged Daemon Prince. I goofed on my tanks traps and allowed a small space for him to deploy 2 of his rhinos... they dutifully drove up towards a building I was occupying, containing a BC unit with meltagun, and were popped and both units destroyed in HtH. I consolidated back into the building after each vehicle and unit was destroyed! In the end I held 2 buildings, JP 1 and one was contested.
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

Round 3 - Fire Sweep (plant flags in buildings) vs. Raj and his orks. Now, Raj has been playing for all of a week; he was gifted the orks from a few BBR box sets, so showed with 9 deffkoptas, about 80 boys and a unit of nobz in mega-armour. Ah, an ork on "ork" battle - lets face it Blood Claws are just better orks! Well Raj has some horrible DT rolls and I had some good luck with shooting his 'koptas down, making his nobs flee (I killed 2 with the preliminary bombardment), and destroying a few of his mobs with sweeping advances after winning combat. Knowing VERY little about the current orks I did not realize that he could Waaagh! (I thought you needed a special upgrade for that) - I think this would have made a huge difference in the game. In the end I lost 9 models and wiped him off the board (a first for me - sorry Raj!)., I held 3 of the 5 buildings, and Raj none.
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

So in the end I went 3-0, had the highest painting score and took Best Overall. Not that makes much difference for the Canadian Hall of Heroes, but I'm now sitting 37th... I doubt I'll make the GT!

Thanks to Nick, Thor and the A-Club guys for a fun evening.

Wolves at West Coast Mayhem!

The weekend of October 18 and 19 saw 42 players attend the GW-Canada Premier tournament events at West Coast Mayhem (held at BCIT). OK so 21 persons in each system is not exactly Las Vegas levels, but it pretty close to Chicago attendance!
I took my Space Wolves; at 2000 points I ended up with 5 Troops.

On arrival we were told that the Astronomi-Con composition system was in use. Well that was a surprise! I quickly changed by list to put the two Land Speeders together; this would reduce my hit on Composition to a -2 (5th troops choice). Frankly in hindsight I should have left them separately - but I'm a slave to composition - they would have been more effective as 2 units.

Game 1
Opponent - Bryce Jenson – Eldar
Mission – Primary - Seize Ground, Secondary - Assassination




Result - Primary Mission - Space Wolves Victory, Secondary Mission - Tie. 12 battle points gained.Really good game - Bryce is a bit of a veteran player, and I was flattered to find he was looking forward to our match up. His army was unbelievably stunning! Unsurprisingly he won the Best painted Award. the only unit that caused me problems was the Harlequins - they chewed through a LOT of my army. The scouts made short work of the Farseer and his bike units.

Game 2
Opponent - Dan Miner – Dark Eldar
Mission – Primary - Capture and Control, Secondary - Recon

[not pictured are the 4 Raiders he had in his army]

Result - Primary Mission - Space Wolves Victory, Secondary Mission - Space Wolves Victory. 15 battle points gained.Dan's dice sucked! Other than his wyches and archon I pretty much took this army apart. I don't think he inflicted any damage with a single Dark Lance all game - most certainly not in the first couple of rounds when it mattered most. This was sweet retribution, as the last time I played Dan he horrorfex-ed my Wolves into submission and slaughtered them in combat! Credit where credit is due, on turn 5 he had a tie for the primary - with his LONE warrior hiding from my fire power on my base's objective. Turn six the same... Turn seven - ah not so much luck - my lone Rhino had reversed after dropping some Blood Claws off the table edge to snipe the single warrior left. My best game of the weekend!

Game 3
Opponent - Adrien Schaeffer – Eldar (again!)
Mission – Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Vantage Point (hold high ground).

Result - Primary Mission - Eldar Victory, Secondary Mission - Eldar Victory. 4 battle points gained.
Well, this had to be my worst game of the weekend. Not because I lost (jeez, I'm used to that!), but because of the army and frankly the player. The army is the Uber-Eldar build as far as I'm concerned; all the best units, very few basics. Also we had issues of "measurement" somehow the Banshees moved ~14" in their first turn and were going to assault me.. then there was the issue of being told which order to do my shooting in.... the non-WYSIWYG units (that looks like a Bright lance on the Falcon, not the pulse laser listed)... I think we should just leave it at that! 
[edit - I ran this army list through AB3... it comes in at 35 points over... grrr]
And there endeth day one... pretty good as far as I was concerned; 2 wins and a trophy from the painting contest! I hung around to do a bit of clearing up for the WCM organizers, had a bite to eat and then watched a couple of board games going on.

Game 4
Opponent - Danny Hope – Witch Hunters
Mission – Primary - Seize Ground, Secondary - Pay Back (kill highest point unit).

Result - Primary Mission - Witch Hunter Victory, Secondary Mission - Tie. 4 battle points gained.OMG, will you look at all those tanks! I've known Danny for a few years now, and played him many times. He is a fine general and knows this army well. I think this force was well suited for the event. His Canoness and Celestians were the VPs for him - carving through a few units and helping run 2 more off the table. Blasted 2+ invulnerable save for the Canoness was a P.I.T.A.! She should have died 3 times over.

Game 5
Opponent - Mark Spaidal – Grey Hunters
Mission – Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Cleanse.

[sadly I don't have a picture of Mark's army; 2 Land Raiders, Dreadnought, 3 GK Squads, Grand Master and two GK Termie squads. Lots of psycannons!]

Result - Primary Mission - Grey Knight Victory, Secondary Mission - Space Wolves Victory. 7 battle points gained.This was a one sided shooting match. I could not get into HtH quick enough to negate his shooting. Once I did the units faired quite well, Mark was also smart enough not to charge me in cover with his Terminators!
I probably should have deployed in the open and forced him into the cover. Meh, you die and learn!

Summary

• U2KR put on a good show - they are experienced gamers all - good scenario mix (I like the addition of secondaries to the bland GW scenario options), not too many Kill Point games (!), good terrain (though a couple of tall towers were causing game imbalance issues). I also thought they did an excellent job with the scoring; the Sportsmanship points were well thought out, the composition "modifier" (for Best General) is ingenious. They also had player rated composition and painting scores done BEFORE the game - something I introduced a few years ago locally after experiencing it at the first Calgary GT.
• OK... time to get out the soap-box... Whilst I like the Astronomi-Con system for composition scoring I have a few issues; Firstly it is designed for 4th edition 1500 point games, currently you get docked points for having more than 4 troops (somewhat counter to 5e, unless you have Combat Squads of course!). We really should have been told in the rules that it was being used - to deny a player the opportunity to get soft score points seems unfair; I know of no other top-level tournament that would do this. Thirdly, if you are going to use it - use it correctly! The Overall winner's composition ranking was not scored correctly - and he won by one point, mine was also scored incorrectly.
• Army lists - my Game 3 opponent appears to have an illegal list! How can this be allowed? His list should have been checked during the day, and errors corrected ASAP (run it through Army Builder - it takes 5 minutes per army - there were at least 5 computers there - owned by the organizers). Should there be a post game correction if the army list does hold up as invalid? I think so - we need some form of discouragement for incorrect lists and encouragement for checking your own list and taking responsibility for errors; "rules" don't seem to be enough!
• Painting - the "rules" stated that GW/FW/Marauder etc models only, and that they should be fully painted. Well, one Orc army was bare plastic and metal (and still scored 7 for painting!), and there was a non-GW Character model in one army. So is this a rule or a "suggestion"? If an event was to allow unpainted armies (such as GW-USA's Ard Boyz - first 2 rounds anyway), I'm cool with that. Just let everyone know and don't piss us around with unnecessary "rules"!

Viva Las Vegas!

Ok... so I'm 10 days late...

Vegas was most excellent! had 5 good games, had fun catching up with old friends and had a hoot playing on the blackjack tables with some crazy b'stards (yes Corey you!)
I'll start the batreps soon...

Gearing up for Vegas

So only 2 more sleeps until I fly to Las Vegas for the GT!
Pretty excited about the trip.
Sure I'm still trying to get the OFCC Batrep finished (I'll work on it some more tonight), but Vegas is going to be SO cool!
Bought a new camera - Sanyo 7.3MPx, so my pictures should be a bit better quality.
Packing the army tonight.
Playing Space Wolves - pretty solid list with 40 Blood Claws, and I'm playing my Leman Russ Exterminator for S&Gs.