Some Call it Luck...: Western Smash

Not going to write a full blown review of this event as I'm conscious of the fact that I never did finish that NZTC report, which is unfortunate. Maybe I will get to it. This event was also much lower key, and not really as interesting as the NZTC.

Format was 5 games over two days, 2400pts with panel comp. The comp was a little bit all over the place, but this owed more to the implementation of the scores provided by the panel rather than poor marking. Scenarios were pretty normal, the player pack was a bit weird in parts (hills blocked LoS, but you got half points for fleeing units and strangely got points if you killed one part of a ridden monster, something that didn't really effect me due to a distinct lack of ridden monsters. That old Egg Chris Cousens was not quite so lucky, he tallied up that he lost about 1200 points over the weekend because of "Ivan's stupid player pack" as he so aptly put it. Pretty big impact if you consider that to be about 6 battle points, but its not really a valid point because:

A) Everyone knew what the pack was going into the event
B) Cousens is shit.

I used a fairly mid strength (I think) Lizard list. I had Psuedo'Echo which dialled up the raw power of my list a little, but chose a fairly inoffensive lore (Metal) to make up for it. The rest of my list included an Old Blood and two Scar Veterans on cold ones, 2 skink skirmisher units, 2 skink cohorts, a skink kroxigor unit, 22 movement banner temple guard, an ancient stegadon and a salamander. Nothing too over the top, but not a particularly weak list either. I was probably pitching at about a 3 or a 4 for comp, got a 4 so in the range I thought it would fall.

Game 1 I got to play "Joanne" Scherpenderwerpenwerpen with his wood elves. Same comp, great match up. Killed 3 treemen in 2 turns (shockingly only one with searing doom, the other two broke from combat) and was looking good for a big win. Treekin wouldn't die though and started killing my stuff, taking out a scar vet and (more disappointingly) my old blood. Got a break bottom of the six when his lvl 4 miscast and took a wound, then got killed by one temple guard in the final combat of the game. Skizzles. 15-5 up, solid start.

This was just before all the treemen died.

Round 2 brought Lachy Mulcahy to the table with his blatant attempt at stealth cheese. Pretty strong dark elf gunline with 700 points spent on Sisters of Slaughter and Black Guard to try and slip it past the panel. Comp 3 probably about right despite Lachy's attempts to convince everyone otherwise, probably could have gone to a 4. This was set up to be pretty cagey, I thought Lachy had left his black guard a bit isolated so pushed hard at them. I failed an easy dispel on a comet though which was then placed directly between our armies, so I just stopped moving for two turns waiting for the damn thing to land. I did close the gap between us by dropping a comet of my own inside Lachy's army, which meant he had to push towards me. I got lucky early with a failed panic netting me some points, but I misplayed my Stegadon and got it killed. 10-10 in the end, so a crushing 10.5-9.5 once comp was factored in.

Someone remarked that it looked like we were playing battle for the pass. I blame Lachy and his stupid comet.

Joanne got to play Sam Morgan and watch all three of his treemen get shot off by a skullcannon or metal magic, which I'm sure was fun for him.

Game 3 I was up against that old egg the Crack'n. Interesting list, mixed arms HE with a cav bus, a lvl 4 on metal, some archers, a dragon mage, a frostie and then the obligatory 4 bolt throwers. Battle for the pass, I sat in a building. Chris likes to play an aggressive game so I didn't let him and he didn't know what to do. Comet wrecked a bunch of his shit, and I brought down the thunder on the frostie to take that out. Not a lot went on, and I got a 12-8 when it was all said and done.

The Stegadon tried to rush the bolt throwers, perhaps unsurprisingly it just got shot.

Pew pew pew motherfucker!!!

Day 1 over and everyone was grumpy and tired and went home. I'm not going to question the orga's or their budgeting or anything like that because they put the effort in to run the event so they can do what they want. But from my perspective if I'm paying $50 (a cost I would normally associate with a premium event) to play at a tourney I really do expect a chair to sit on. Standing up for 9 hours playing warhammer is not fun, particularly in a two day event where you have to come back and do it again the next day. Yes I'm having a massive whinge, but my legs hurt and it made me enjoy my warhammer less.

Missing presumed forgotten.

First game day two I had Greg Greenfield with Dark Elves. Another fairly mixed list, double dreadlord, 2 lvl 2's and a unit of warlocks for magic, a bsb, two units of dark riders, some knights, crossbowmen, 10 shades and bolt throwers. Could be dangerous because of its speed, and those dreadlords could cause problems. I vanguarded a sally central to pressure the shooting, and Greg was nice to me and vanguarded up his Warlocks into range of 2 skink cohorts, so I just shot them off turn 1. Salamander went nuts in its advanced roll, killing a bolt thrower and the majority of 10 dark riders, a mage and almost panicking the crossbowmen off the table. Highlights from this game include shades fleeing into a blood forest, getting hit by a thunderbolt from 46 inches away and being taken down to below 25% by the forest. Also psuedo'echo going nuts and miscasting 4 times in 5 turns, eventually killing himself with a two dice iceshard blizzard. I think Greg got too close to my army, he had the range on me but was pushing within 12 with his dark riders to get better shots. This meant I could return fire, and where he had 20 dark rider models I had 80 skinks to trade wounds with. Got one of the dreadlords in the last turn, didn't lost a lot of stuff so got a decent 15-5 win which had me in a good position.

The warlocks didn't last all that long... Pew pew pew.

This Salamander wrecked up the joint.

Gentile had the lead going into the last game, with Ivan and I 4 or 5 points behind him. Gentile had the misfortune of playing Ivan's boring gamey empire army, I got to play Chris Penwarden with his "Khorne" daemons.

The stakes were high in round 5 between Bubbles and Ivan.

Chris made two key mistakes which invoked the disfavour of Khorne. Firstly he took the blue scribes in an otherwise all khorne army, secondly he deployed his whole army in a ~~corne~~ Khorner. This was a good match up, and it got better when my Stegadon ran over his Bloodthirster. Turns out Chris hadn't played the new lizards and didn't know what sharpened horns did. Potentially it was slightly negligent of me not to have told him, but he didn't ask or mention he hadn't played the new lizards, so it never really occurred to me. Too little too late for the thirster though. Tetto'ekko miscast twice in successive turns and killed himself again casting iceshard on very few dice. I was up early and kept pushing as I expected a fairly big result from the top table and had to play catch up. In the end I tabled Chris, lost a bit of stuff doing it but pretty happy with the 17-3.

I'm really glad Chris had to deploy first, because I legitimately thought that I would be the one cornerhammering rather than the other way around.

Ivan is a jammy git and wrecked Gentile's hobby. He just didn't do it enough and ended up losing top spot by half a point. Suck it.

I got the win, can't be unhappy with that. Mulcahy did pretty well to take out third. Would have been good if I could have wailed on Ivan myself, but he managed to dodge me.

This was Ivan when he thought he'd won the event. He did not.

Good fun for the weekend, enjoyed all my games but would have liked a goddamn chair. We hit the city after the event and sang some amazing songs, both at the Karaoke joint and then later on at the bar. Amazeballs. Random american guy singing a heavily mexican accented rendition of You've Lost That Loving Feeling was probably the highlight of the night. Respect.