Tides of Chaos

It's been a while since I've made a post but I've not had much opportunity to paint or play of late. So when I saw there was a tournament just 40 minutes away in Reading run by Spiky Club I thought it would be a good idea to jump back into the tournament scene, write a new list, take a few chances and try to get a decent finish. TOC was billed as an 80 player tournament and although I hadn't been to a Spiky event before but I knew Borland and Perriss were going so I knew I'd have at least two people to talk to :P

The Event
Overall the event was very well run, in a great location and had plenty of space to move around in the venue. The food was simple and effective  with players having a choice of baguettes with a selection of dips and salads and all that jazz. The bar was opened at 11am on Saturday and 12 on the Sunday. Opening the bar on the Sunday was a bit of a pain as me and Matt P were gagging for something to drink, in the end resorting to the rest of a bottle of red wine Matt had shared with some bird the night before :D The draws were up quickly which was great, there were a few problems with the draws mainly that players drew the same opponents on more than one occasion but these glitches were quickly rectified. There were very few rules disputes but from my experience Andy dealt with them fine. The prizes were fine although I always like to see trophies for best in race rather than certificates. Overall it was one of the better tournaments I have been too, well organized, efficient and with a nice comp pack. Well done guys!

My List
 I had been taking a fair few different lists to the last tournaments I went to and with my 23/82 at slaughter I really felt like I could get a decent finish at a competitive tournament, I had finished 7th at Maul last year and that had been my best result to date but I do think that being in the fluffy dozen there had helped me win my first two games.

My lists had been a mix of forest spirits and glade guard but for this one I decided to make loads of changes. I dropped life in favour of beasts, I dropped the dryads in favour of a noble on an eagle, dropped my branchwraith (which I absolutely swear by) in favour of another noble on an eagle and I dropped the treeman for more waywatchers. Dealing with the large amount of armour in the warhammer world these days has become a chore to say the least but I felt with the nobles on eagles packing a great weapon on one and the biting blade on the other along with the bow of loren/arcane bodkins lord, beasts magic and waywatchers I could really cause some damage to warriors lists.

Games Overview
I won't go into a great deal of depth with regard to the games just a brief overview.

Game 1 - Matt Watkinson (Orcs n Goblins)
I don't know what it is about ONG but I have terrible trouble beating them, the mix of artillery and hordes is a real ball ache for me. I was greated by 2 doom divers, 2 rock lobbers, a horde of savage orc big uns with bows and all the usual chaff. I struggled so much running around all over the board trying to kill things yet avoid the savages. I shot off 8 trolls and killed some war machines with my eagle nobles but Matt took off a large amount of my units with doom divers alone and the 2d6 str 3 hits spell. Taking off the waywatchers an eagle noble, some glade guard but fortunately not my general. He managed to get my lvl 4 when I failed to dispel hand of gork and he caught up with his unit. Good game really but I missed that extra dispel dice and the wand of wych elm that I normally have. I don't think it helped that from 11am Matt Perriss was bringing drink after drink over and mine were racking up faster than I could drink them. Lost 14-6

Game 2 - Mark Saunders (High Elves)
I'm 99% sure I played mark in game 2 and it was the first time I had played against the High Elves with their new book. He had 2 Phoenix, 30 White Lions (eurgh) 45 Spearmen and 2 small units of swordmasters (which for the first time my noble on eagle would be going fist against) The game went ok with me shooting off some reavers and killing the swordmasters with my Eagle noble. I killed both Pheonix one with shooting and the other with the amber spear :D and I cursed the spearmen so they couldn't advance very quickly. I redirected the White Lions for most of the game and feed them my chaff. I could have won with a greater margin but after shooting the 40+ spearmen off the board my 9 waywatchers couldn't kill the remaining 2 characters that were stood in the open all alone. I lost Waywatchers to magic and one of my eagle nobles also to magic. I really enjoyed playing mark he was a true gent and we had a good laugh about his bad dice dice rolling 4/5 sixes for his saves (the bastard) along with discussing the ins and outs of the new HE book Won 15-5

Game 3 - Jon Mcgough (Ogre Kingdoms)
It just goes to show how quickly things change in the world of WFB because I actually want to play ogres these days but 2 years ago when they just came out (was it 2? feels longer) I felt like I could do nothing against mournfang, yet these days you don't see may mournfang really. He had a gutstar, 2 units of man eaters, 2 ironblasters (yes thats right 2) and some other chaffy stuff. I like Jon hes a good bloke, nice to play against and generally sound. So this game went really well for me, I shot off the gutstar, his characters had no armour saves and the general only a 4+ ward so they all got shot off too, I killed a unit of maneates with my 3+ward against none magical attacks noble, I killed an iron blaster in the last turn in combat with 13 glade guard after he had flanked my bunker with it...and I took the final wound of the other ironblaster with 5 waywatchers (it lost 3 to flock of doom and 1 to shooting before that) Really good game for me this one.
Won 16-4

Game 4 - Warren Brewster (lizardmen)
Well I showed up on Sunday morning with a horrific hangover and saw I was up against double slann lizardmen and nearly cried. Lvl 4 on death and a Lvl 4 on metal (not so bad really) 2 Scar Vets, loads of chaff and some Temple Guard and Saurus. I won the first turn and kicked off with lots of shooting onto the skinks, clearing loads of them away, a lucky roll on the flock of doom saw me kill 8/10 skinks hiding behind a wood. The Eagle Nobles flew around picking up chaff units left right and centre throughout the game. In turn 2 though... Warren moved the death slaan within 24" of my lvl and smashed out loads of dath snipes on whim...I dispelled them and scrolled one in the hope I could kill this presumably ethereal Slaan in turn 3. Now Warren admitted he had no knowledge of what the Wood Elf army could do and this was obvious as he moved the slaan forward presuming I had no magical attacks...I did tell him I could take magic bows and magic arrows not to mention the amber spear but he fancied his chances anyway. Turn 3 and I amber spear his Slaan but he dispel scrolls it...I savage beasts of horros my lord and he lets it go...I then proceed to take 2 wounds off the Death Slaan with the bow of loren to which Warren says "that was close I could of lost him there" yeah...."hail of doom" and that was the end of the death slaan...I gave him the usual runaround after this and cleaned up as much as I could. Warren's lack of WE knowledge cost him the game and we discussed what he would do differently next time, he was a nice lad and was happy enough with his game apart from the Slaan mistake. He had also lost 2 Scar Vets to killing blow on the Waywatchers, he knew they had KB but risked the charges anyway. Unlucky. Nice guy, great game.
Won 16-4

Game 5 - Tim Bohknecht (Lizardmen)
Another Lizardmen army!!! FFS I took anti armour lists expecting to face Ogres and Warriors all weekend and in reality my old list would have been far superior against the matchups I had this weekend. This time it was a lord on carnosaur 2x40 saurus, 1x20 Saurus and a few units of chaff. My free forest was a fucking D6 str 4 hits forest! (important later) So basically my plan was to curse the big unit with his 2 Scar vets in and shoot off the other one, I also wanted to kill the carnasaur but wasnt bothered about killing the lord on top, once he was down to M4 I would be safe. This is exactly what happened basically but not as you would expect...the carnosau had 2 wounds left and it charged my eagle that was there to redirect it...2 5s followed by 2 6's and the eagle killed the carnosaur, the general drops into the large cursed unit and is moving 4 a turn for the rest of teh game. I fed him some cheap units and he managed to kill a lot of my stuff using the lore of heavens, really hurting my flyers...right at the end though a Salamander moves into my free wood to shoot my generals unit in order to make it panic and run off the board...at the end of the movement phase the salamander takes 6 str 4 hits and dies (it only had 1 wound left anyway) but he agreess this is game and we call it on turn 5 adding up the VP.s  Genuinely nice guy and another fun game.
Won 12-8

Game 6 - Tom Uden (Dark Elves)
By Games 6 I was completely pissed off my face after Matt Perriss kept racking pints up in front of me, I was going to the toilet every 5 minutes and couldn't think straight at all. Tom had Double Hydra lots of Corsairs :( a bunker of spearmen, a 2 heroes on pegs and 2 units shades and crossbowmen. His genral was a lvl 4 on death. This was an interesting game to say the least. I shot off both Hydras using the flaming banner and then the second one went down to flock of doom and the hail of doom. He was taking my units out left right and centre with withering and shooting though, I managed to take the hits and reply by lessening his shooting. I killed one peg with killing blow (yes we both realised after that's no longer allowed with the new faq) however the arcane bodkins lord was about to fire 7 shots into him and he had 1 wound left so we agreed it probably wouldn't have changed the outcome. I Moonstoned over to the flank of his lvl 4 and got ready to charge + savage beasts next turn with all my characters in one unit...I didn't need to in the end because in turn 5 he cascaded his lvl 4 after Tom Richards showed up to see how I was getting on and cursed udens dice (thanks tom) So I just shot the rest of them off and all of a sudden the game swung massively in my favour. Waywatchers vs Shades was fun with the Waywatchers winning out in the end.
Was lovely to play again Tom and we had a nice match which at one point it really ooked like he would do me over.
Won - 15-5

Summary
Overall I enjoyed every single game and met some really nice people, only had one dispute which was quickly resolved...the only thing that could have ruined it was Matt Perriss feeding me alcohol like a true gent :p I tried to wind Mark Borland up about Wood Elves in a bid to get him to bring them out to play again but he was having none of it. He's a monster mash man nowadays. I reckon no 1 can win a tournament without some luck and in the same respect you cant win one with only luck. I had some luck but I played really well in nearly every game. I fucked up in game one saving dispell dice for foot of gork and letting hand go...Hand is a far superior spell and I really am angry with myself there cus if I hadn't lost those 600pts in the last turn then I would have been in the top 3 at this tournament. FUCK. oh well I wanted top 20 and I got top 10.

You can see all the results here:
http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=115646

Cheers
Jay