Well, I’m back home from a weekend of Warhammer 40000 at Triple Helix Wargames in Westbury. For those who have not been playing attention I have been using my Grey Knights at Compliance 2 for the past two days, and in summary, they did OK.
Having had a lot of personal and work stuff going on at the moment, getting this weekend off was fantastic, so firstly I’m going to publicly say a big thank you to my wonderful wife Ruth for letting me get out and play with toy soldiers.
Right, now that’s out of the way, how did the games go?
Game one was a kill point mission against Rob Burton’s Imperial Guard, including an Vendetta, Manticore, and lots of meltaguns. Thankfully I managed to survive his outflanking veterans and managed to cut down everything except his artillery (which was painful).
The highlight of my shooting came in the final turn with one dreadnought killing two Hydras in one volley. In the end, I had a solid win to start the tournament.
Game two was an objective based mission against Davey’s footslogging Orks led by Ghazghkull. I deployed everything, stole the initiative and proceeded to shoot as much as possible before the greenskins reached my lines.
Unfortunately Davey immobilised my Stormraven (carrying the Purifiers) rather screwing up my counter-assault plans.
Then I made a mistake not moving the Purifiers into the Land Raider immediately which meant by the time they reached Ghazghkull in turn six (slaughtering his attached unit through shooting), our game ran out of time giving Davey the win.
Game three was another kill point based scenario, this time with an interesting twist where fast attack units could outflank. In this game I faced Tom Watts’ mechcanised eldar. This was Tom’s first tournament and I have to say he was a really great opponent! Unfortunately for Tom, I know the eldar codex inside out (even after not playing them for six months).
For anyone thinking only three death cult assassins in a unit is not enough, my three assassins happily ate a unit of ten dire avengers.
Luckily, my Stormraven arrived (via outflanking) in exactly the right place, destroying a wave serpent (pinning its contents in the process), shooting and breaking a Guardian unit; and then the Purifiers from on-board walked through Tom’s jetbikes.
In the end Tom was wiped out but he had a big smile on his face so that was cool!
Day two, game four and this time I had to face a fellow muppet, ex-President Daniel Cave. This game was guaranteed to be a giggle as Dan is one of the most fun guys I know. He was using a Black Templar list and we were playing an objective mission with a total of eight objective markers on the table.
The game used the Dawn of War deployment so in the first turn I charged by Stormraven half way across the table, dropping a dreadnought along the way. In Dan’s turn, he used a searchlight to light it up and shot EVERYTHING at it. A number of quite frankly appalling dice rolls later, the Stormraven was still flying.
The payback was horrible as the Purifiers ate unit after unit, helped by the Emperor’s Champion’s unit getting pinned. By turn four, Dan had no scoring units or units to contest objectives.
This was another big win and Dan took it really well, because it is not nice when your dice abandon you, although he did blame Les from club for looking at his dice funnily…
Game five and a scenario entitled ‘Home Time’. In this final game I played Gareth and his three Blood Angel Land Raider army of doom!
In theory this scenario was simple enough, if you (or more precisely, an infantry unit) started your movement phase next to an objective marker, both the unit and the marker disappeared (indicating your unit escaping the exploding planet, or something).
Anyway, Gareth managed to blow up lots of my stuff up, lose a unit of assault terminators against three death cult assassins (yes, just three), and accidentally beam up a certain Blood Angel Chief Librarian.
In the end the result was surprisingly close with Gareth wining by a mere one kill point and 31 victory points. Still, a win is a win and this secured third place for the man from Dudley.
In the end I finished 10 out of 22 with 3 wins which wasn’t too bad. On the plus side, Dave (Chief Muppet) Driver got a well deserved Best Sportsman award. On the minus side, Dave OJ (ex-Chief Muppet and my driver) got a pack of Skaven magic card for coming last with his Necrons.
Overall I must say it was a fantastically run event so a big thankyou should go to everyone involved in running it!
Jolly good show!
Anything Worth Doing... 