Over the weekend I participated in a Warhammer 40k doubles tournament, Icon, held by the Ringwood Wargaming Club. I was invited to participate by a long time friend of mine who I have been playing Warhammer (and other games) on and off with for close to 13 years. Initially I was hesitant, I’m not the best tactician and I haven’t really been to any tournaments. However based on the assumption that as a team event it would probably be closer to the “Beer and Pretzels” end of wargaming and further from the “Hardcore Cheese Fest” of serious gamers I decided to go. Then came the grueling weeks of trying to make an army that was nicely balanced, effective and painted. But it was all worth the effort as I had a very enjoyable time.
Across the day we played four games, two individually and two as a team. Round one I fought a Space Marine player and so did Tristan. My game went very well mostly thanks to some really good luck on my part and my opponents inability to roll a hit on the scatter die. I took out his scout squad and Land Speeder Squadron taking almost no causalities in return. Tristan wasn’t so lucky losing to his opponent who was a tournament veteran with excellent luck.
My second game was against a Demon Hunters / Imperial Guard player. My stupidity turned what should have been a convincing victory into a draw. On turn five I had Crisis suits within easy range of the second unguarded objective. My opponent at this point had five models left on the table, 4 members of his platoon command squad and a Vindicare assassin. The platoon command was a good distance away and I didn’t want my commander, who had a single wound left, taken out by the Vindicare so I jumped back behind cover. Well the platoon command moved, used their “Move move move” order and ran landing themselves firmly on the objective. As luck would have it the game ended right then. Tristan fought a Space Wolf player and again didn’t fare so well, but with a clever maneuver he did manage to pull out a draw with his last few remaining models.
Our first team game was against a Space Marine and Chaos Daemons team. Our final result was a win but it could have go either way at one point. Thankfully the Chaos Daemons appeared one or two units at a time and we were able to take them out before they could cause too much damage. We could have improved our performance with a better deployment, but dice luck was average for both sides.
The final game of the day was against a Chaos Space Marine and Dark Eldar team. Another convincing victory, with perhaps a small chance of defeat, as we left our advance onto the objective a little too late. My small Firewarrior squad were defiantly the standouts in that round surviving not only a horrific volume of fire from Dark Eldar warriors and a chaos sorcerer but beating a Dark Eldar champion on a jet bike in hand to hand combat.
Overall we came 13th out of 42 teams which in my opinion was an excellent result. The two stand out things in my army were firstly my marker lights, they really made a big difference when used well. Also my Broadsides performed very well with most of my opponents underestimating the fire power they provided not viewing them with the same threat level as they would a tank.
There were a few detractors from the event, the hall was too small and had poor ventilation. They ran horribly behind time which was annoying, especially as they started 45 minutes late. On a positive note I thought it was an excellent idea to distribute the prizes across the whole field, even if we didn't get anything. Following this I will defiantly attend Icon again next year and will also try to get into some other tournaments in the interim.
Images were taken by myslef on the day and feature my own army and the amazing paint work Tristan completed on his Imperial Fist Captain.
Friday, November 27, 2009
][con Team Tournament
Friday, August 21, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Small and Fragile
Dryad - Photo and painting by yours truely
So when I was younger I played lots of miniture, card and other nerd games. For many years these games kinda sat on the side lines. I never got rid of my Imperial Guard army, my Escher gang, Battle Tech deck or Hero Clix. Recently I have had a resurgence of gaming desire. This has come in the form of starting to paint a Wood Elf Warhammer Fantasy Army and participating in a Dungeon's and Dragons game.
My intention is to try and post more pictures as Alassiel and I paint our way through the Wood Elf army and the characters my friends and I are using to play D&D. You can follow along with our D&D game at Ianis World.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Making Progress (Not Bacon)
This week we made some great progress into Ulduar downing Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis and Kulgan. We also made a couple of attempts at the Iron Council where I discovered I can still get one shot under the right circumstances. Five bosses is a good start and I think the Iron council will fall eventually, especially when I stop letting him stand in runes of DOOM!
A primarily guild group did get this far a few weeks back but I was off in an alternate (and distinctly more nerdy) fantasy world so much of this was new for me. If I may say so myself Alassiel and I made an excellent team taking out the adds on Ignis with the help of some great healing by Farex, Ianthe and Nums. It was also very rewarding to down Ignis after failing last week and several times this week.
The end of CoS as we know it
It is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I announce to you the disbanding of the Children of Stormwind. With the guild master due to become a father and the guild growing beyond control into something far less organized and close knit than we had planned the leadership group unanimously voted to disband COS and form a new smaller guild, Focus. Saturday night was the curtain call with many members new and old gathering in Stormwind for the final group photo. Some celebrated with Champaign, others spammed trade with “OMG my guild disbanded LF Guild!” But I believe our new guild ‘Focus’ will be a fantastic step forward, the intention is to keep the numbers down and work towards making some progression through raids. We are off to a great start with three Ulduar bosses falling on the Sunday evening! Beyond that I see at least two more as achievable so we should start to see some solid movement.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Moving foward
Many of you may have noticed my blog has been some what lacking again, additionally I haven’t giving Michelle over at Warcraft Outsiders for a couple of weeks. Firstly if you are an avid reader who checks this blog compulsively every day I apologise for disappointing you. There are a couple of reasons as to why my blog has lessened somewhat recently, mostly this is because I am moving jobs. A couple of weeks back a put in an application with another company and was very happy when it was successful. But aside from the turmoil involved in leaving one company and joining another I have found my enthusiasm for Warcraft somewhat lessened. Sure I have enjoyed logging on to do heroics and raids here and there but overall I am playing a lot less.
On a more positive note I have been thoroughly enjoying showing Ianthe (a friend of mine who just reached 80) through heroics and hopefully soon raids. We also finished off our 200 rate arena matches last night just in time for the cut off on Tuesday.
I think I will probably continue on this lessened play schedule until 3.1 comes out then it will be full steam ahead into Uldar!
Monday, March 16, 2009
For glory! For honor! For… a Murloc?
In a genius manoeuvre clearly designed to make Blizzard piles of easy money the current arena tournament features a unique, desirable and achievable prize. All players who participate in 200 rated matches in the arena tournament will receive an armoured murloc pet.
Subsequently a large number of players who would never step into arena have paid their US$20 and stepped into the arena tournament realms. Alassiel with her insatiable desire to collect pets is one of these people so joined by Sellia and I, Triptych was reformed.
Although we have certainly lost our fair share of matches we have also won many of them. Typically against teams such as “Nom nom nom Murloc”, “Strip or Win” and “Murloc or bust”
As a team we are defiantly improving and I am confident in saying we suck less! Did I happen to mention I am playing a Death Knight?
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