*let me preface this by saying I'll be uploading this from my phone, with no chance to fix the layout until sunday or monday. So if blogger app eats my layout again, don't say I didn't warn you!*
Welcome to today's episode of Game Night! I'm all about tomorrow's tournament this week so everything that comes up in this post will be on that as well.
I'll start things of with a preview of the tournament, looking at the different scenarios we'll be playing, including how I think my army will do, and how victory will be determined. Next I have a battle review of my Ogres vs my mate Balephon's Tomb Kings, both of us using our tourney armies. Finally, a quick word on my painting and how I think I'll paint score-wise.
Off we go!
The Tournament and the Way to Victory
This is a pretty bog standard, Dutch, one day Fantasy tournament. Three battles, a different scenario for each battle, and enough Soft Score points to compensate for average play.
There's 100 points to earn overall. 25 max for each of the three battles, plus 20 for painting, and 5 for handing in your army list 2 weeks prior. Which I did.
Now, before we continue, a little info on me as a torunament player. I go to quite a few tournaments, but I'm not particularly good at them. You see, for whatever reason I can never bring myself to going all-out competitive (nothing wrong with that, btw) and almost always end up somewhere in the middle of the pack. Or sometimes lower. And I'm absolutely cool with that. So, over the years this has let me to develop the following target to aim for in tournaments: if I can score, on average, slightly above a draw for each of my battles, I'll be a happy camper.
Obviously I've put that little caveat in to make sure expectations won't be too high from my audience :p
Now, let's take a look at the missions.
As mentioned, there's three. One is a standard Battleline, two are tournament specific.
We start off with one called "Intercept the Messengers". Each side will have three single infantry models to use a Messengers. For every Messenger you can get off the opposite table edge, you earn points. The more to the centre of the board the messenger goes off, the more points you get. So the aim is to get the messengers off in the middle 24" of the opponent's board edge and get maximum points.
I think this is actually a fun mission, different enough to make it interesting. Since normal victory points will probably play a bigger role in final victory, the Messengers are a nice addition, but not absolutely essential. Of course, to score max points for this mission you'll need max victory points and all your messengers off the table. So, note to self: if all else fails, kill opposing messengers and I'll earn some Battle Points even if I do get wiped. Not that I expect that to happen, obviously, but just saying...
The other scenario is more or less an adaption of a 40k scenario, and I don't mean that in a good way.
For this scenario, three objectives are placed, parallel to the long table edge, in the middle of the table, with 18" between each, and between the outer two and the short board edge. Might sound complicated, but it's not really.
Winner is determined by victory points, with the distribution of objectives determining final score. Only Core units eligible to count for the minimum 25% can claim an objective. No enemies can be within range of an objective (6"), or noone will earn the bonus.
So this scenario will probably be about who can plonk the biggest unit on top of an objective, and stay there. I see Undead doing well in this scenario, with summoning back models and such. I will not do as well, since I only have two Core units, and things will really have to go my way for one of them to claim two objectives an the other the final one. Luckily, most of the victory is still determined by straight up VP, so I'll just gor for that and worry about how many objectives I can claim later.
Overall, I think the tournament is well thought out. While it imposes quite a few limits (no special characters, max on duplicate choices, etc), I do not see how these limits will favour one army over another too badly. So kudoes there. We'll see what I think tomorrow :p
On to the Battle Review!
I'll keep this short and sweet because a) it's late and b) I don't have Balephon's list here, so can't go into precise details here.
Suffice to say we played the Messengers scenario, and I won.
Here's what I learned from the battle:
> I do not have enough units to devote to messenger-chasing. It my Sabretusks don't kill them, and my maneaters don't shoot them, they will most likely survive. Oh well. I'll have to focus on killing the enemy instead. As a last resort I can use my Messengers to shoot my opponent's, but only if all else failed.
> I switchex my Maneaters' Stobborn rule for Poisoned Attacks, and boy, did that pay off. Both a Necrosphinx and a unit of six sepulchral knights died by my Maneaters' hand. Good stuuf.
> I wonder hoe many people will complain about Hellheart. As far as I can see there is only one other OK player, so not too many people will face a Hellheart. Should be fun if people aren't used to facing it :p
> Pay attention while deploying! Important!
> Btw, I predict rolling a 1 for Hellheart at least once.
Painting - What's the Score
For this tournament players can earn 'soft' points for painting. 25 points can be accrued, with a max of 20 of those counting towards your final score. The criteria of when you get how many points is clearly outlined in the Rulespack. The way I see it, my army should receive 12 points for painting. And just so we're clear. My army only has the most basic of base colours, and, to be honest, it looks abysmal :p So it'll be fun to see if I've managed to 'cheat the system' and will be awarded 12 out of 20 points for basically 2 half days of painting.
I can be evil like that :p
Alright, that's it. I'm off to bed! Good luck to me, Balephon, and Shalen tomorrow. I'll try and post some updates during the day! Wish us luck!
