Veni, Vidi, Vici?

I came, I saw, I conquered. Well, okay, I came, I saw, I had a really good time. I went 1-2-3, in battles, so I didn't exactly conquer! The Battle in Seattle has come and gone and it was great! There were 6 games over 2 days, with a couple of battles in Jungle terrain and a couple in cityfight terrain, plus some neat looking other terrain (the Necron themes spring to mind) that didn't have specific rules, but looked great regardless. I got the chance to play a variety of very fun opponents with vastly different armies, plus use some unusual scenarios in the bargain. Did I mention what a great time I had? I also got the chance to learn a few things, which is something I'm always interested in.

One thing that I learned is that my painting needs work. Okay, duh, I knew going in to the tournament that my Dark Eldar (most of which I painted over two years ago) have a very basic paint scheme and wouldn't score highly. I didn't think they'd score quite as low as they did, but there were some pretty amazing paintjobs out there. As my Deathwing has proved, I can paint pretty well when I try, I just need to make the effort and spend some time on it. Given my normal feelings of preparing for things, not spending the time to paint well (and thus improve my Appearance score and hence my Overall score) seems like shooting myself in the foot. For the future, I intend on spending a bit more time and effort painting, though I'll still be looking for techniques that let me make the figures look good fairly quickly, such as washes and drybrushing. Of course that's big talk from someone starting a Fantasy Orcs and Goblins army, but that's my plan, even if I will have a single unit that is bigger than almost any army I've played in 40k.

Another thing that I learned is that I rock when it comes to sportsmanship. As I understand the scoring, you could get up to 12 points from each opponent over the 6 games. In addition, if an opponent picked you as their favorite opponent (of the 6 they played) you would get a bonus 2 points. I ended up with 76 points in the sportsmanship category. There were another one or two people with about this score and one person who got 80pts. (Reid Gustafson, my IG opponent from Game 2!) Ultimately, this means that either I got full points from every opponent and 2 of the 6 chose me as their favorite opponent, or one person gave me the next level down of Sportsmanship and 4 of the remaining 5 chose me as their favorite. Not too shabby! I make a point of playing for fun, and I try to make sure my opponent has a good time too. I would much prefer to lose a fun game and have a good time than win a game and have a grumpy opponent. Sure, I like to win, but we are talking about toy soldiers here. When I play, I eyeball things. If it's pretty close, but I'm not sure I have the range or line of sight to get to my target, I don't bother. On the other hand, if it's pretty close, but I'm not sure if my opponent does, I give it to them. It's not worth hassling over. In my final game (against Tau) Thomas was trying to move some Gun Drones from the roof of one building to the next, zipping over my Raiders and Warriors below. He measured it off, then said he couldn't do it, since the move ended with the last member or two of the unit hanging in the air by an inch. I told him to go ahead. It was too cool a move not to do it. Did that move ultimately have an impact on the game? Probably not, but even if it had, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I also learned about speed of play. In a tournament setting, you've got a lot of games to play and a lot of people to keep organized. If they didn't limit the time of games, you could be there all night. They allowed 2 ½ hours per game, which seems like a good limit. However, it does give an advantage to certain armies. Assault armies are at a disadvantage since they require as many turns as possible to damage the opponent's army. (If it takes only 2 turns to run over to the enemy lines, you've still only got 4 turns to make back all your points before the game runs out. If you only have 3 turns because the game ends early, that means you have to get 1/3 more out of everything in your army. In addition, because of all the rules governing it and because it is so important, assault slows down the game, leaving you less time. Large armies are also at a disadvantage, since they take longer to set up and to move, so they'll tend to have fewer turns to do their damage in. Since I play a good sized assault army, this did leave me at a disadvantage, but that's something I either need to learn to improve my speed with (Orc and Gobbos in Fantasy) or adjust to (Deathwing army leaves me with a lot fewer models, meaning faster games.)

Alright, enough about the overall tournament, let's talk individual games here. Each game has a title, but it's not the title of the scenario (except Planetfall) but more a quick description of the game.

Game 1: Aggression in the Jungle. As I was finishing getting my table assignment the first morning, I ran into an old friend, Mark Auld. He's a great tactician and used to be part of the regular group at Ludicrous Games. I haven't had a chance to play him in a long time, and I've never played his Necrons with my Dark Eldar before, so this looked like it would be a great first game. We set up on a Jungle table, meaning that there were 3 or 4 hills which were clear, but everything else was treated as forest. (Difficult terrain, 5+ cover save, line of sight limited to 6 inches. This is pretty treacherous for skimmers, but they could end their move hovering over the terrain, if they were willing to have Line of Sight to them from any of the hills or clearings. The scenario involved finding objective markers, of which, only one could be the right one, but it wasn't guaranteed to exist. I moved too aggressively against the Necrons, shooting my skimmers 24 inches to hover above the jungle near to Mark's Warriors. He, ever the canny tactician, managed to use what little mobility he had to surround 2 of them and blow them up, leaving no survivors from the crashes. I fought back hard, but we were both concentrated in one area and I was already down two squads (plus mini-me, who had gotten stuck in difficult terrain, then got spooked. I think I moved about 6 inches the whole game.) A well-deserved win for Mark, and a good all-around game.

Game 2: Splitting up in the City. The scenario was something akin to the standard Recon Mission, but I was playing on a Cityfight board against Reid Gustafson's Imperial Guard. His models were a mix of Tallarns, Steel Legion and Valhallans, but his excellent paintjobs made them look like they were all the same force. (I thought they were all Tallarns until he mentioned the others to somebody and I took a closer look.) I split up my army into 3 or 4 groups and each one was promptly shot down and shredded. He had excellent fire discipline and I underestimated how much all those cover saves would help his Guardsmen. He had a pretty overwhelming win, though I eventually managed to do some damage to his army. He was a great sport (winning Best Sportsman in the end) and a great player as well. I need to get more familiar with Cityfight rules and remember to concentrate my forces instead of spreading out. I had some minor bad luck with trying to damage his Demolisher, but I'm not sure the extra points would have been enough to get me within range of a tie, so it's not like it mattered anyway.

Game 3: Kinstrife. This was a modified corner deployment mission with reserve rules that pitted me against one of the 5(!) Dark Eldar players that registered for the tournament. (Ultimately, one was a no show, and Benjamin, my opponent here had to leave early due to a family emergency, but the rest of us got together for a picture at the end, since we were used to being the only Dark Eldar at most events.) Well, he was playing a Webway Portal assault army and I was playing a Raider borne assault army, so it was fast and bloody. We each started with 2 Troop squads on the board, and everything else would reserve in. I used my fast transports to gang up on one side of his deployment, but after adding a single unit to his other Warrior squad, he used his portal to do the same thing, so we ended up with a massive swirling melee in one end of his deployment zone. We ended up with a tie, but I had a slight point advantage. If I'd gotten about 50 more points, I might have won it. This was a great game and a lot of fun.

Game 4: Planetfall. After staying out late and not getting much sleep, I started out the day with a bizarre mission. In this scenario, BOTH sides deploy by Deepstrike, then count as having deepstruck for their first turn. (Meaning no additional movement or assaulting.) I was up against an unusual Dark Angel force. There was a Grand Master, A chaplain, 2 units of Assault Marines, 2 Dreadnaughts and a Vindicator, plus a Tactical squad and a Scout squad. With that few bodies on the board, I expected I'd have a cakewalk in this game. His leaders and Dreadnaughts proved strikingly resilient, however, so it was much tougher than I expected, though I still pulled out the win. (For the record, I had a hard time damaging vehicles throughout the tournament, I'm very disappointed in my Dark Lances and Blasters. Next time I'll have to take some Haywire Grenades or something.)

Game 5: Shooting in the Jungle. I found myself on another Jungle table, this one with only flat clearings and a river, no hills, so line of sight was generally only 6 inches. I looked across the board and found my Kabal up against a very well painted walking Nurgle Assault force. Ryan had some cool conversions and a really nice (can you use that word when talking about Nurgle?) paint scheme. He also had a bunch of hand to hand nastiness and a tricked out Predator, in addition to his Daemon Prince. All of a sudden, I became a shooty army. My Raiders Hovered above the Terrain and shot at the Predator (no effect) and took out a few Terminators. After that, the Terminators moved into the jungle to hide, and his Predator wiped out one of my Raiders. That's the way the game went for the first three turns. I'd shoot at his Predator, doing nothing, then the Predator would shoot down a Raider. On the third turn, I finally blew it up. (Only 15 or so Dark Lance shots required, did I mention I was having a hard time with vehicles?) Ryan had been moving his forces forward the whole time. Once he got a squad within sight of the River, I moved my Raiders to shoot at them, managing to cut them down to half strength. We ended with a tie, in a very short game. (Games without assaults really don't take long to play.) I think that if I'd managed to kill another Terminator I would have gotten it to half strength so I could have gotten points for it and won, but I didn't. Perhaps if I'd zipped over and charged in on the last turn, I might have done it. Ah well, next time.

Game 6: Overcrowding in the City. Once again I was on a Cityfight board, against a large, shooty army. This time it was Tau, fielded by Thomas Dill, an Air Force guy who'd just flown over from Germany. Most of his army was well painted, but apparently the airline had lost half of his army, so he'd had to rush to put the rest together. Given the shootiness of my opponent, and my earlier mistake of splitting up too much, I ended up concentrating on one end of the board, hoping to take his flank and roll him up from there. Great idea, but I ended up creating a choke point with Warriors and Raiders becoming tangled in a mess as he shot them down. Another great game, even though I lost. Thomas was my choice for favorite opponent, as he made jokes and had a great time while we played. It was a hard choice, though, since I had a lot of really fun opponents in this tournament.

Well, I had a great time and great opponents. I'm looking forward to next year, though it's possible I'll be helping run it next time! For the next tournament, I'm hoping to improve my painting score and the speed of my army. (Hey, at least I'll get movement trays for my Orcs and Gobbos. Hmm, maybe I should get some for my Dark Eldar.) Hopefully too, I will continue improving my tactics and win another game or two.

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