Well, it’s been a week since our first tournament at Warhammer World; time to reflect…
Duncan emptying his desk now that Citadel Contrast is being released…
We completely failed to comment on our first night…the highlight, other than buying things, was seening Duncan in the flesh! Albeit from a distance, and walking away from us….he was holding a bag…maybe contrast has indeed ended the reign of Two thin coats.
We also spotted a minion crossing from the main building to the office carrying a stack of older GW texts, including the 54mm Inquisitor source book….what on earth could that mean….
First off, any mild/minor sourness about lists/tactics/competitiveness has dissolved. (Brother Handro: Speak for yourself!) I enjoyed all the games, and on reflection I wish I’d enjoyed the last game more. I feel that the sudden appearance of two Primarchs and their terminator fan boy squads made me dread the game and that carried on. But the Heresy is all about hordes of guys, and their badass Primarchs. The chance to fight two of them on the table, see the awesome power of Magnus, and to see first-hand the power they bring to their legions is epic! Hell, Der H even got the chance to go one on one with Magnus with a Delegatus and STRIKE FIRST thanks to the epic IIIrd legion Initiative buffs.
Secondly, the opportunity to play against some competitive lists highlighted the bits that are missing in our own Legion forces. Our lack of anti-psyker, anti-air, army-wide buffs, (Brother Handro: Is that all?) and failing to play to strengths were all punished - hard.
For Der H, the fact that initiative bonuses to the IIIrd can mean even a lowly, non-combat ready Delegatus could go toe-to-toe with Magnus (Brother Handro: He did get mulched though, right…) is awesome. By this point Magnus was on one wound. The guy we were playing could have hidden him, denied the challenge, avoided the fight, but even in a competitive event there is that little voice in our (heresy players’) heads that says…..do it, it’d be epic….two hits, could easily have made one wound, and a lucky rend could force an invulnerable save. (Der H: I mean, it didn’t…. but hey!). In my next event, I’m going to try and utilise the initiative buff to better effect. I usually have a unit of Phoenix terminators or Palatine Blades to do my cutting, I think I’ll go back to that and see what else they can do. The Kakophoni as troops in a IIIrd company elite RoW are a thing of beauty, but with my next list planning including an Army of Dark Compliance I’m not sure I’ll get the chance!
For Brother Handro the main highlight was the event itself. Good people, good games, good atmosphere, and some beautiful armies. Equally, having an event to attend usually generates vast amounts of progress. Nearly 1200 points’ worth this time! As a not particularly competitive player (Der H: you do surprise me!) I was pleasantly relieved to find games played for the most part in great spirit, and equally pleasantly surprised to find that our lists were vaguely competitive. We were in with a shout approaching the final turn in all bar the last game. The revelation that we came mid-table in our first ever competitive event, and that people actually liked our armies, and us as players, was really heartening. With a bit of luck, list-tinkering and experience (Der H: so not much then…) we might even challenge the top half of the scorecard one day!…
In the end the event was fun, not as gamey as anticipated, and was a good opportunity to meet people. We had the joy of meeting the awesome couple that are Wrights Adventure Guild with their nomination for best army (Der H: They were robbed in my opinion…) with an Emperors Children/Alpha Legion combo. Great army, and James’ IIIrd put my guys to shame! Lucy won Icon of Legend with her Alpha Legion Contemptor and James’ Storm Eagle is my new favourite thing ever….(Brother Handro: Is that why you bought one?) We were also privileged to play against the tournament’s most popular duo, Iron Talon. These guys won more events than sin with at least 3 awards including a new one just for them having won a best game and best army vote from every opponent they faced - this put them 3rd with a gaming score of ‘only’ 12! Great guys, great army, great fun!
Speaking of results…. we weren’t as shit as we thought! With the results published on the Facebook Warhammer World page, we can see our team The Bolter Wanderers placing 37th out of 65, 6 points for wins (Brother Handro: That’ll be 1 then….) with 3 favourite game and 4 favourite army votes! This means that of our opponents, only one didn’t vote for our army, and 3/5 thought we were a fun game!
Invigorated by this news, and the feeling that we aren’t completely shit, we shall push on toward our next event, The Purging of Melos, in July…..how many thousand points shall we paint in order to do this…..well, let’s find out!
Brother Handro & Der H
