Monday Morning Gamer - 14/11

Look, I made a crappy Paint picture!

Good day to all, and welcome to the renamed Monday post on my blog. My usual sequence of weekly posts would mean today I would be talking about gaming background stuff, theory and overarching things like campaigns, but since I just came back from a tournament this Saturday, I thought I'd switch today's post with Friday's Game Night! post, and give you my tournament recap now. And not just because I think I'll have forgotten some stuff by then I might still remember now either. Honest.

As I explained here, I went to a tournament this saturday. This post will be all about how it went, what I saw and what I should do differently next time, if anything.

Off we go!


Not to give too much away, but the tournament really had two highlights for me. The first one was being told that I was actually the player who'd won the tournament when the staff ran their software through a test run the previous day. So yeah for virtual Thalenchar doing well and taking first place. Whatever else happens, I'll tell people I won the tournament at least once. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Secondly, remember when I told you I thought I could get around 12 points for painting, even though I had only painted the very basic of basecoats on all my models? Just paying attention to the criteria the tournament uses to award painting points I thought I'd just about manage to gain 12 out of a possible 25 points, with a max of 20 of those points counting for your final total.
As it turned out, I was wrong.

I got 18!

Don't ask me how or why, but all I can think of is that the judge was even more lenient than I anticipated. Honestly, I would never have given myself that many points. Soft score points like that are all good and well, and they do stimulate you somewhat to bring nicely painted armies (well, usually), but it still feels somewhat wrong to have this many points count towards determining the overal winner.
But the painting judge was very lenient in awarding these points. My mate Balephon, who is currently working on a Spider themed Tomb Kings army, had decided to just not bother with painting at all and just bring his unpainted army. He's still in the converting stage of his army assembling process, you see. He got awarded 6 points for painting. 3 For conversions (which was totally deserved), and a further 3 for army cohesiveness. Apparently since all his models were unpainted, his army as a whole fit together nicely, and that got him 3 more points. Err, ok...

Now on the actual battles.

First and foremost, once again I found myself facing three very nice and friendly opponents. I go to tournaments a lot and I have hardly ever squared off against someone I did not enjoying playing against. That's probably the main reason I keep going to the darn things; it's certainly not because of my record! But thanks to each of my opponents for fun games. I'd play each of them again in a heart beat.

First battle was the Messengers mission and I faced off against a HE army. This was always going to be a tough mission for me, regardless of the opposing army, and it was. He managed to get 2 messengers off my board edge, while I got 0. In my defence we only managed to play 4 turns instead of 6, but if he managed it, why couldn't I, right? This was an evenly matched game up until about turn 4. That's when he managed to kill my BSB, panic my Ironguts with SM, and panic my Maneaters. That's about 1000 vp right there, with me not having a chance to rally them since we were out of time. Not saying he would not have won otherwise, because he still might have, but victory would not have been so lobsided. Oh well. At least I have had the crazy unlucky battle out of the way, I thought.
Famous last words...

Next up was a game vs Beastmen. This one started off great as I managed to get one of his flanks cleared completely in T1. Killing 5 harpies with my Leadbelchers meant the other three units on that flank all had to take a panic test, which they all failed. So that was one less chariot, one small unit ungor, and, most notably, one unit minotaurs w Gorebull for me to worry about. Finally, luck changing, I thought!
Yeah right.
Basically my army got slaughtered by the Doombull from Hell on Steroids. Darn thing charged my Ironguts, proceeded to kill about 4 or 5 Ironguts in one turn, which meant I fled, which in turn caused my unit Bulls to flee, which caused my Ironblaster to flee, which left me with nothing but my leadbelchers and half a unit of maneaters by the end of T2. All because I couldn't pass a panic test.
The rest of the battle was him moping up my units. Good thing I managed to kill most of his core units so he couldn't claim all three objectives. At least that got me some Battle Points.
Looking back, I really could not have done anything differently to kill the Doombull. My opponent agreed, while his Doombull is usually really good, rarely does it beat a complete army by itself.
So, two losses and one game left. Surely I couldn't be unlucky three games in a row, right?

Final game was against another HE army, different from the first. A normal battleline scenario, so no gimmicky extra victory points to earn. Good, straight up bashing, just up my Ogres' alley.
T1 and 2 were all for my. A slight oversight on my opponent's part left his unit of spearmen open to a flank charge by my maneaters, who proceeded to kill all but 3 of the 20 orso spearmen. Leadbelchers managed to shoot about 15 Sea guard and 12 Swordmasters. That was about half the HE army gone, and I was in control. Or so I thought.
Again my luck turned drastically, and I couldn't do a thing right. My Ironblaster misfired and exploded, my Bulls were run down by 5 Dragon Princes, my Ironguts w BSB and SM panicked when a sabretusk got killed by an Eagle and were wiped out in the subsequent HE turn. And the cherry on top of all that sweet goodness: My maneaters, with brace of pistols and poisoned attacks, had in their sights, for 2 turns straight, a lone HE archmage, yet failed to do ANY wounds on it. None! 4s to hit (just turning to get the thing in my front arch both turns), 6s auto wound, with a 3+ to wound, yet nothing...
A fitting end to the tournament.

So, all in all, this is probably the most bad luck I have had in a tournament, ever. Oh well. Next time, Gadget, and all that.... At least I had fun opponents to play against and a good day was had by all.

Overall I felt my army wasn't ideally suited for this tournament. I probably need to see about including a Stonehorn. I'll do a more in depth post on what I need to change in my army at a later stage though.

Thanks to the staff for organising and I'll definitely try to make it back next year!
And then my luck just stopped.

And finally, here are some pictures of one of the coolest Ogre armies I have seen. Enjoy!