I have returned from a tournament in Victoria BC at GottaCon 2013 and just got the rankings of how I did at the tournament. I played 5 games and won 3 of those games and placed 8th overall with only one win away from making first place pointswise. The tournament scored you lightly on painting, sportsmanship, and of course heavily on the results of our games. I won’t go into too much detail on each game as I didn’t have much time or wherewithal to take notes as I was playing, since this was my first actual tournament and I was just so excited, but I will give overall highlights.
You can see the list I used (the last post by me) here: http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=71424
Game 1: Dawn Attack VS Warriors of Chaos (old book)
He was a mixed god force, had some nurgle knights, a tzeentch lord on a disc, a war altar, a hellcannon, two units of marauder horsemen, and some warriors whose mark I can’t remember. My dark riders managed to team up with the shades to kill one of his horsemen units first turn, I then positioned the dark riders to flee towards the center of the board if they were charged by the warriors unit huddled in the corner, and then next turn moved towards the other unit of horsemen and killed them. Having my chaff kill his secured me the movement phase while my pendant hero on a peg charged his hellcannon and chipped it down one wound a turn. Most of the game was very smooth on my part; magic was great to me and really not so nice to my poor opponent who was a nice guy. The one combat that went his way was when his Tzeentch lord on disc successfully killed off my cauldron, but otherwise it was a fairly flawless victory for me.
Game 2: Meeting Engagement VS Empire
So first of all there was a variation where we had to deploy a character or unit champion as “the courier”. You got an extra 300 points for getting your courier unit off the opposite table edge, and your opponent got no victory points for the unit. I had happened to include a Dark Rider champion which I never do, just for this scenario. Hilariously enough he was generally the only DR who managed to hit/kill anything with his crossbow all tourney, so he may have earned a permanent spot in the unit. Anyhow, on to my opponent’s forces:
My opponent had brought 2 steam tanks, 2 large units of Demigryph Knights, and 3 units of Empire Knights (not sure what “type” specifically, they all die the same to a druchii
) a war altar, and some form of wizard. I can’t remember for sure because I essentially managed to shut down his magic for the entire game. My general/level 4 and the Hydra were the only two units I rolled a reserve result for, so they started the game not on the table. This actually ended up in my favour (at least with the Hydra). He moved forward with the steam tanks and the war altar in the center and the knights (demi and normal) on my right flank, and tried to keep my dark riders from b-lining it to the other end by blocking them with a unit of knights and a unit of demigryphs. My turn 1 saw my pendant hero charge one Stank and my Executioners charge the other. I then positioned my harpies in front of the demigryph’s on my right flank, brought the hydra in behind them, and whittled them down to two knights with his breath weapon. The crossbows did some damage to the other knight unit, basically securing my right flank. The combats were in my favour, but I was tarpitted by steam tanks. The left flank was me dancing around with dark riders just keeping two units of knights busy and forcing them to move through forests, again tag teamed with my shades to be as annoying as possible. His turn saw his war altar charge in to my executioners, and his demigryph’s charging my mindrazored harpies (hehehe) while his other knight unit on my flank charged my crossbows. My crossbows won the combat and reformed in a way that allowed my witch elves to charge the other knight unit. My executioners killed the priest on top of the altar and it fled, and chipped away at the tank, as did my pendant hero. The following turns all went my way as I got mindrazor on the witches and got them to overrun into the combat with the steam tank and the executioners before I started that combat, killing everything he had on the right flank. I also got my dark riders off the board then turned my army around to face what was left of his then proceeded to table him. As he put it when he described to a friend of mine “I made a few mistakes and he made sure to punish me for every single one”. My opponent was a grade A gentleman and normally I don’t have so much fun when the game is one sided but he managed to still keep a positive attitude which really made it feel like it was just a casual game between friends. He definitely got 100% sportsmanship marks from me that game!
Game 3: Watchtower vs Dwarfs. (Modified so the watchtower gave you 500VPs, not a victory).
This was probably the worst game of the tournament for me in every way. First of all he castled his whole army in a corner, as dwarves do which is fine. But then I made some glaring errors which he made me pay for dearly, killing off my pendant hero and wizard/general rather early on in by forcing a charge with his anvil of doom which I didn’t see coming. On the right flank my mindrazored witch elves nearly chewed through his large special unit, but after the dust was settled I had only killed a unit of miners and rangers completely as he hid is two surviving dwarves from each unit. I lost this game due to my own tactical missteps but what made it a truly horrible game was it was the third game in a long day where I basically was unable to have lunch. I was literally shaking, and it didn’t help that my opponent “seemed friendly”(I’m sure just to save his sportsmanship score) but was really being a rules lawyer, taking great liberties with his movement and such, and basically arguing/nitpicking with me over every little detail despite having a nonchalant attitude towards his own actions. Granted he proved me wrong on one issue, but it was not conducive to a fun game. By the end I had just given up trying to reason with him and kinda threw my hands up in the air. Not a good feeling to end an otherwise delightful day of wargaming.
Game 4: Blood and Glory VS Lizardmen
I had played this opponent before in my local GW a year ago. I remember he was a great player who didn’t pull any punches. This game was a great reminder of that. For blood and glory I don’t remember the exact fortitude’s we started off with but all I remember is that I couldn’t lose much without losing the game, and I needed to either kill his slann that was his general AND BSB or kill both his big blocks of saurus. His army consisted of two slann’s, one lvl 4 death and one lvl 4 shadow, three cold one mounted scar-vets, two big blocks of Saurus, 3 units of skinks, two salamanders, and a two units of chameleon skinks. It was a very competitive list, and his first response upon seeing my army was “YES, I love a good competitive game”. The fact that I was severely hung over softened the blow I was about to take a little…
I got first turn but was generally ineffective, and this was all a blur (see: hungover) but his magic phase and shooting phase saw the following units massacred: my pendant hero, Cauldron, dark riders, and both harpy units. It was pretty brutal and I thought that I had definitely lost the game clearly at this point, but didn’t wanna take away from his victory (because despite the fact that his list has the two most hardcore lores on lvl 4s, he is a great general and a good guy, not to mention had the best looking army in the tourney) so I played on. I pushed through and ended up with mindrazored witch elves killing one of the saurus units and making the remainder flee (meaning I got the flag) but they were held up by a separate character that held and killed them in the following rounds. My execs didn’t do much, my Hydra almost killed the saurus down to the point where they would have lost steadfast. Literally I needed to kill ONE MORE, and because I used my breathe weapon combat would have been HEAVILY skewed in my favour. He would have needed double ones, and if they fled that would have been a victory for me. Unfortunately I wounded one too few and he killed my general in the subsequent turn, ending the game. This was SUCH a fun game despite the rough start, I really like that I ALMOST got a win out of what looked to be certain doom. My opponent ended up getting 3rd place but had I won I would have gotten 2nd or 1st (can’t remember off the top of my head) overall, but c’est la vie!
Game 5: Battleline VS Gobbos (200vp for killing the enemy general instead of 100)
This was the perfect game to end a great tourney with. My opponent (those of you who are on warseer will know him as Jind_Singh) was hands down my favorite person I played against all weekend (and not surprisingly he won best sportsmanship!). His list was fluffy, all goblins, and a lot of character in the army. For example, he had two spear chukkas, one was crewed by some competent looking goblins (that one always hits) and the other one was crewed by “itchibum” who was a goblin, literally scratching his arse.
The game itself was a good one. I drew his fanatics out early and had my harpies dive on the grenade known as a mangler squig turn one. His giant was fell by my crossbow bolts after a withering, one unit of night goblins was held up on the left flank while the other with the wizard ended up on my right flank and a unit of gobbos in the middle with an arachnarock and a unit of squig herders. The gobo unit had all his characters (general, bsb, skulkers, etc). The large unit promptly failed its animosity and charged headfirst into my executioners. I saw Jind’s heart sink, he tried his best to get supporting units in there (squigs) but failed that charge. The spider charged the executioners in the flank though to even things up a touch. That magic phase was pivotal but my opponent forgot to cast the spell that would have made my executioners reroll 6s, meaning fewer KB’s…he brain farted and casted 5+ poison on the spider though, and later when we discussed we realized this was the turning point of the game. My executioners slaughtered every single character in that front rank and whittled the unit down something fierce, as well as put a couple wounds on the ol spider. I won combat but all the gobbos and spider were steadfast/stubborn so combat remained. My turn, witch elves charged his gobbos with his wizard but they fled, allowing me to redirect into the flank of the gobbos fighting my executioners. The gobbos ended up all dead as did the spider. After that it was more or less clean up duty (such as DR killing off both spearchukkas) for my army while feeding my chaff to the units he had on the left hand flank. The game wound down to an end, and I just had to shake his hand as it was a really fun game not because of anything that happened on the table, but 100% because of the guy across the table.
All in all I had a great time at GottaCon 2013 and my first actual tournament performance was a success in my mind as I didn’t really expect to place as high as I did. Thank you to all who submit feedback to me on my original list, it really did help!
