So this past weekend I played in the Frederick All Inclusive League Gamers (FAIL Gamers) tournament for their second Birthday. The Fail Gamers have been a great place for me to meet good people, get in a bunch of games, enjoy the forums and have an all around good time with some wargaming. I haven't totally taken advantage of all they do (40k, WFB, Flames of War, Warmachine, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars, Dark Heresy and more) but I've still really enjoyed my time here.
So the tournament was primarily done for the club members as a thankyou for all the support and time they gave to make the club run as well as it did. To this end the club folks got a small advantage. Each player received a ticket for: Painted army, well-painted and based army, WYSIWYG, then one for each 3 months of club dues paid. You could redeem tickets for special wargear, battlefield conditions or unit rules, only once per game.
The rules were mostly balanced. I took one that let my deffkoptas call down a S6 AP3 ordnance blast that always scattered 2D6 and that was reasonable. Only one rule seemed truly broken to me and it was only broken for one army. Mow Em Down let a unit make normal ranged attacks when assaulted by a unit prior to assault instead of normal assault attacks. The guy with a Farsight bomb bought this for each of his games, making his unit nearly untouchable. Thankfully I didn't play him and so I was good overall.
Of three games I won 2 and lost 1. The first and third games were great fun (not just because I won) and game 2 was meh. I ran my 1850 ork list from the last tournament minus the grots and 20pts of wargear.
Game 1
Drop pod and stormraven blood angels here. 5 objectives which we placed in the table centre, agreeing we'd prefer a punch up ;-) He got turn 1 and dropped down into my backfield with 2 Blood Talon Furioso's, then managed a turn 1 fleeting Death Company dread (also blood talons) into my ork boyz. The lootas were flamed out of cover and ran, one battlewagon was magna-grappled and shaken then the boys got hacked up by the DC dread (blood talons hurt!). In my turn I punched back with the nobz and deffkoptas, slaughtering marines left and right. It turned into a glorious brawl across the field where the power of diversified nobz prevailed over the power of blood angels who reroll everything (so it seemed). By the end of the game I held 4 objectives and contested the 5th. He had one drop pod and an immobilised Furioso on the table, phew. Great game and a friendly opponent.
Game 2
I knew this was going to go badly from the start. It was about surviving, with each unit over 50% strength gaining you 2 VPs, under 50% 1 VP and 0 for dead units. My opponent brought razor/dread/dakka pred/tempest speeder spam marines with MSU and a counter assault of 10 TH/SS terminators. He had 34 possible VPs vs my 22 possible, so I would have to kill 6.5 of his units with no losses just to draw. The deployment rules let you go anywhere on the table more than 18" from your opponent, turn 1 the entire table was difficult terrain. My opponent put his two min tac squads far forward to push me back then castled up on a hill on his board edge. He then used a ticket to buy a rule that stopped me getting scout moves then siezed initiative on a 4+ because of the same ticket.
That was pretty much the game. I got alpha-striked, then shot up every turn while trying to move through difficult terrain and rhino blocks. The nobz were wrecked by the terminators, led by a Librarian who'd cast null zone. All in all, I got tabled badly. Not much fun. My opponent didn't cheat and wasn't rude, but brought a mean list, gamed every advantage of the special rules and didn't crack a smile at all. Two upsides were that I got tabled quickly and went down the road with the GF to have a free wine tasting from a winery where my other friend works before game 3 and that my opponwnr got sulky when he won 3rd place, despite tabling two opponents. Length of time as a club member was the tie breaker for the tournament top winners, hehehe ;-)
Game 3
Game 3 was against Blood Angels again. Deployment was spearhead and you gained VPs for each unit in your opponent's deployment zone on turn 6 (all games had defined end turns). My opponent brought a few assault marines, 2 flamestorm Baals, the Sanguinor, a Furioso Librarian Dread and Mephiston. HEROHAMMER!!! :-D
It was a fantastic game and, though I tabled him, I was nearly tabled. The pic is from the very end of the game. The Baals rushed forward in their scouting moves, flamed the boys then got klawed/glanced to death. Sanguinor was mangled by a first turn nobz assault, the marines folded, the lib dread killed one nobz unit then got rokkited by the deffkoptas. Mephiston just rolled through so much of my army with his jump pack/Strength 10/Preferred enemy trio of psychic powers then came undone when we had a showdown between him and nobz. My last turn of the game let me kill off his last assault marine and claim a narrow victory due to tabling.
Great tournament and I had a bunch of fun.
PS: I killed the titan on day 2 with broadsides but it took 5 turns because of the void shield repairing every time and them making cover saves. Another tau player I loaned broadsides to killed it on turn 2 and won the knight titan model. It was fun seeing all the ways people used to kill it (Deep strike fusion crisis, Broadsides, Jetbike seer council, DS zoanthropes etc.)
PPS: If anybody is interested in a knight titan model, one of the club members has set up moulds and is thinking it will be ~$85-100 to cast them up depending on number of interested people. Let me know if you are interested and I will pass on contact details.
