Happy Tuesday every one! Or not, I'm not going to tell you how to live your lives...
Last weekend was the date for Blog Wars 5 - Vengeance, ran by Alex from From the Fang. Despite a major setback in the form of the booked venue closing unexpectedly, he managed to pull off a cracking tournament with the help of The North West Gaming Centre. Despite being the 5th running of the event, this was my first time attending; I was welcomed into the fold very willingly and had a blast, particularly in my first two games. Now, with a name like 'Blog Wars' you would be right in assuming that there were a lot of bloggers there. As such, I don't think I really need to cover the general tournament standings or the winners of the painting competition in detail. Alex has done a great job of that (though he forgot to take a couple of important pictures...) so instead I will focus on my experience; as a tournament compared to others I have been to and my first time going to a tournament as a Blogger.
So let me walk you though my weekend! Well it all started Friday afternoon, the unfortunate closure of Maelstrom moving the event further North to Stockport meaning I needed to do an overnight stay ideally, rather than two and a half hours' driving on both ends of the day. Now, Blog Wars can hardly be blamed for that, but it really did make it a weekend event for me rather than a day. Still, it was a good drive and gave me an excuse to see my sister and her boyfriend, break out Settlers of Catan and have a play with her sweet little cat. I can't compare Maelstrom to North West Gaming, as I've only been to the latter, but the venue seemed perfectly suited to our needs. The staff were wonderfully friendly, provided excellent service and seemed genuinely excited to have us there which can really make a difference at an event (having been on both sides of that line in the past.)
There was a well stocked bar and table service provided by a very sweet waitress. I cannot tell you how much of a difference that makes to keeping games running smoothly, particularly stopping everyone rushing to the bar between rounds. There was also a decent variety of snack options available to keep us going. All the food and drink was extremely well priced as well, not to mention served in glass bottles (well, the drinks at least) which really adds to the quality feel. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an issue with the lunch provided; the main fryer apparently broke, leaving the kitchen staff only able to prepare two meals at a time. Having worked in a hotel myself and been in a similar situation, I can only say that the staff handled the situation very well. They did their level best to get the food out to us to get us going on time again. It did put a few minutes delay on the afternoon sessions, but I have had far worse at other tournaments when the catering hasn't had those problems. They also provided us all with a free chocolate bar by way of apology during our second game. As I said, they were doing everything within their power to make sure we all had a good time. I think they succeeded there!
So what of the tournament itself? My first game was excellent. I was player one, coincidentally on the top table, and had a great opponent in Jamie Jackson of Index Astartes. His army list was a fairly vanilla Space Marines list, but with a great twist; The first founding chapters.
Each unit was a different chapter, though with Iron Hands represented in both the bikers and Predator (which was a great combination of old metal Predator parts and the newer Rhino chassis). All of the individual schemes were really well painted. As Jamie himself said, the mix of schemes, particularly the different basing on each unit, more or less counted him out of the best painted; he did however get third place, and narrowly missed out on the Special Character painting competition with Lysander, the NMM on which was quite spectacular.
Jaime himself was more than affable chap and, despite his slight worries about facing off against a pair of Fast Blood Angels Vindicators, put up a great, aggressive fight. Lysander and the unit of Ultramarines Sternguard Drop Podding in so close quickly enabled them to deal with one of them and forced me to redeploy to deal with them. I also more or less handed him my bike squad as a kill point, being over eager to get their Melta weapons up close to his Predator. Still, they held up the Blood Angels Assault squad and Iron Hands bikers for a turn, and took at least some toll themselves, which I'm sure helped me later on.
Kor'Sarro Khan outflanked at the wrong end of the table, stopping him from being really effective for the game. He did however bring my Stormtalon on in the side armour arc of Jamie's Predator, allowing it to shred the battle tank in a single salvo. Unfortunately, in an effort to bring all of the gunship's weapons in to range, I left it exposed to his Raven Guard scouts pulling the same tactic with their own escorting White Scar Stormtalon. The dog fight wasn't quite as effective though, with me managing to jink the few shots that did manage to damage the flyer.
Jamie's implacable advance left his Space Wolf Tactical squad a little left out, only able to take some less than effective pot-shots at the aforementioned Stormtalon. On my lines however, his assault squad, bikers, Sternguard and Lysander pushed up to my vehicles whilst Deep Striking Salamander Terminators narrowly avoided landing on my Tactical squad and Librarian. Mirroring the plan for my bikers, the Iron Hands slammed into the side of my Vindicator;
Last weekend was the date for Blog Wars 5 - Vengeance, ran by Alex from From the Fang. Despite a major setback in the form of the booked venue closing unexpectedly, he managed to pull off a cracking tournament with the help of The North West Gaming Centre. Despite being the 5th running of the event, this was my first time attending; I was welcomed into the fold very willingly and had a blast, particularly in my first two games. Now, with a name like 'Blog Wars' you would be right in assuming that there were a lot of bloggers there. As such, I don't think I really need to cover the general tournament standings or the winners of the painting competition in detail. Alex has done a great job of that (though he forgot to take a couple of important pictures...) so instead I will focus on my experience; as a tournament compared to others I have been to and my first time going to a tournament as a Blogger.
So let me walk you though my weekend! Well it all started Friday afternoon, the unfortunate closure of Maelstrom moving the event further North to Stockport meaning I needed to do an overnight stay ideally, rather than two and a half hours' driving on both ends of the day. Now, Blog Wars can hardly be blamed for that, but it really did make it a weekend event for me rather than a day. Still, it was a good drive and gave me an excuse to see my sister and her boyfriend, break out Settlers of Catan and have a play with her sweet little cat. I can't compare Maelstrom to North West Gaming, as I've only been to the latter, but the venue seemed perfectly suited to our needs. The staff were wonderfully friendly, provided excellent service and seemed genuinely excited to have us there which can really make a difference at an event (having been on both sides of that line in the past.)
There was a well stocked bar and table service provided by a very sweet waitress. I cannot tell you how much of a difference that makes to keeping games running smoothly, particularly stopping everyone rushing to the bar between rounds. There was also a decent variety of snack options available to keep us going. All the food and drink was extremely well priced as well, not to mention served in glass bottles (well, the drinks at least) which really adds to the quality feel. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an issue with the lunch provided; the main fryer apparently broke, leaving the kitchen staff only able to prepare two meals at a time. Having worked in a hotel myself and been in a similar situation, I can only say that the staff handled the situation very well. They did their level best to get the food out to us to get us going on time again. It did put a few minutes delay on the afternoon sessions, but I have had far worse at other tournaments when the catering hasn't had those problems. They also provided us all with a free chocolate bar by way of apology during our second game. As I said, they were doing everything within their power to make sure we all had a good time. I think they succeeded there!
So what of the tournament itself? My first game was excellent. I was player one, coincidentally on the top table, and had a great opponent in Jamie Jackson of Index Astartes. His army list was a fairly vanilla Space Marines list, but with a great twist; The first founding chapters.
Jaime himself was more than affable chap and, despite his slight worries about facing off against a pair of Fast Blood Angels Vindicators, put up a great, aggressive fight. Lysander and the unit of Ultramarines Sternguard Drop Podding in so close quickly enabled them to deal with one of them and forced me to redeploy to deal with them. I also more or less handed him my bike squad as a kill point, being over eager to get their Melta weapons up close to his Predator. Still, they held up the Blood Angels Assault squad and Iron Hands bikers for a turn, and took at least some toll themselves, which I'm sure helped me later on.
Kor'Sarro Khan outflanked at the wrong end of the table, stopping him from being really effective for the game. He did however bring my Stormtalon on in the side armour arc of Jamie's Predator, allowing it to shred the battle tank in a single salvo. Unfortunately, in an effort to bring all of the gunship's weapons in to range, I left it exposed to his Raven Guard scouts pulling the same tactic with their own escorting White Scar Stormtalon. The dog fight wasn't quite as effective though, with me managing to jink the few shots that did manage to damage the flyer.
Jamie's implacable advance left his Space Wolf Tactical squad a little left out, only able to take some less than effective pot-shots at the aforementioned Stormtalon. On my lines however, his assault squad, bikers, Sternguard and Lysander pushed up to my vehicles whilst Deep Striking Salamander Terminators narrowly avoided landing on my Tactical squad and Librarian. Mirroring the plan for my bikers, the Iron Hands slammed into the side of my Vindicator;
Despite an awesome penetration roll, all the Melta and Multi-melta managed to do was wreck the Vindicator (having all ready lost a hull point earlier in the game). Still, by this point my army was seriously lacking in fire power. Lysander and the remaining Sternguard dealt with both the Contemptor and second Vindicator in short order as well. The ongoing dogfight continued, with my Stormtalon attempting to heap revenge upon the Iron Hand bikers and bag all the Iron Hands into the bargain, but failed spectacularly. The enemy Stormtalon fared better though, blasting my aircraft out
of the air very thoroughly.
Well, if Jamie hadn't managed it, I'm sure the pilot would have hit the building anyway. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Ahem...
Khan managed to decimate the Scouts chasing him on to the board in combat (completely unsurprisingly) and my Tactical squad in the woods took on the Assault Terminators. Although they were quite heavily beaten, they did manage to take out a few of the better armoured veterans in the process. They didn't run; they performed a tactical retreat to shoot their erstwhile murderers. Well, apart from the fact that the Dark Angel tactical squad managed to get some shots of first, bringing them down to the last three men.
The last turns consisted of Lysander and the Assault Marines launching in to my Tactical squad and Librarian Warlord. Having tanked a lot of the wounds for the Sternguard, particularly against the Vindicators and Predator, Lysander succumbed to the Force Staff of the Epistolary smashing in his skull and taking off his final wound. The Assault Marines faired little better, killing a few of the Tactical Marines, but taking heavy damage in return. My guys narrowly lost out but held. On the far side of the table, Khan slammed into the Dark Angels, winning the combat but failing to kill of the unit. The remaining Terminators also took the fight to the last of the Tactical Marines. Proving their worth, the Tacticals downed the Terminators, leaving just the Assault Sergeant alive, who failed to hit anyone with his Thunder Hammer.
And on that cliffhanger, the game ended. My Predator was standing off against the Stormtalon, a couple of my units were holding on by the skin of their teeth and what remained of the First Founding's units were mostly severely depleted (though fully in control of their individual fights), or too far from the action to really have an effect on the ensuing battle. Final tally; my 5 primary victory points to Jamie's 7, with 2 secondaries for me to his 1. A surprisingly close game all things considered. I have no doubt that further turns would have seen my guys lucky to survive, and a solid victory going to Jamie, but them's the luck of the dice.
On that long winded note, I'll finish this blog entry. Cliffhanger followed by a cliffhanger. You'll just have to come back next Friday to see how I did in my subsequent games. That or check out From the Fang for the results, but I assure you the numbers don't tell the whole story.
Matt
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