Winning a tournament by using all available means - Or, why do people hate tournament winners?

Warning! Rage and vitriol in the following text. Read at your own risk. Apologies if I have offended anyone but I myself have been offended and need to vent.

I read today some responses to the tournament I played in and won in June. I was a bit miffed at the attitude towards me about the way I won. First off, I didn’t intend to win, I believed that it was impossible to plan for 4 way games as I’ve seen multiplayer games before and seen the way that players can be ganged up upon. That sort of game can be vicious so I decided I’d be the grey man and just gather a few points that I could, and hope for the best.

I think people don’t like it when they realise they didn’t play the mission properly and someone else did. The tournament had a lot of points available for bonus things, like bringing in units from reserve or having an MSU army. I was the ONLY player who used those fully to my advantage during the tournament. Did I abuse the rules? I don’t think I abused them anymore than people who brought nigh on unkillable units to a battlefield where everyone was limited to 1000 points. People just saw the mission as the Relic mission and thought: “if I get the relic I win”. Wrong. Whoever gets the most points wins. People claimed I had a “technical win”, I dispute this, nowhere in the rules did it say you must claim the relic to win, so a win is a win. I worked my arse off for 2 weeks painting my army to get just 2 bonus points, why don’t I deserve to win?

As has been repeated ad infinitum on the internet about how to win at 40k (or anything in life really); play the mission. The mission of the day was to get the most points to win the tournament. The relic was worth 20 points to whoever had it at the end. There were 2 games to play ergo 40 possible points. There were 3 other players all trying to get the relic too, making you a bit target if you tried to get it. 2 points were available for each kill point. Because of these facts I decided to plan my army around not claiming the relic and aiming to come somewhere near the high end of the middle, hopefully 3^rd if I was lucky. I planned to get lots of points for my army list as these were guaranteed points and I wanted the 3 bonus championship points for getting the most achievements for the day. To be honest I expected more people to see these as easy points. In fact people were blinded by the relic and decided to put in really tough big units instead. This lead to armies with few units, which meant few bonus points, which in turn put me at an advantage. I just turtled up in the corner while everyone was frothing over the relic.

Is maximising your points with your army list or by keeping things in reserve exploiting the rules? It’s a tournament! Tournaments are about maximising what you can. If you decided to ignore some obvious advantages for moral reasons then fair play to you but don’t expect to win. Tournaments are the peak of WAAC playing, its like that in every sport and most people congratulate the winner at the end and try to think what they could have done better. I try to think what I could have done better after a tournament and the bonus points are what I have seen used to win before…… by Ken. It was his example last year that lead me to use the bonus points myself. He played for all the little things like a bonus point for infiltrating, a bonus point for having allies, a bonus points for scout moves. People just dislike the fact that I gained lots more bonus points than anyone before. Maybe the rules should be changed to have more focus on the objective of the game but that doesn’t change the rules for the games already played.

At the end of it all it’s just a game of plastic men and nothing to get worked up about. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for getting worked up like this already but I had to vent. I mean no ill to the other players who play in the Guardians of Tyr tournaments, I enjoy the challenge, that’s why I keep going. I could complain about the cheesy armies that they use against me but I’m not going to, you expect that sort of thing at tournaments.

Lessons learnt:

• Play the mission – all of it, not just the main objective.
• Expect cheese at a tournament – it’s a tournament, not a fluffy/story-based scenario.
• If you post it on the internet it will be seen.
• If you were beaten by someone don’t complain about it unless they cheated. Just up your game next time.
• Ignore the orks at your peril!

GoT 4 way free for all 40k tournament!

Last Saturday was the www.guardiansoftyr.com 40k Mayhem tournament. 4 players, each with 1000 points, on a 4 foot x 6 foot board fighting over a relic and kill points. It was definitely mayhem. Alliances were formed, only to be broken the next turn. Backs were stabbed and bodies littered the battlefields at Wargames Workshop Milton Keynes.

The Format of the tournament was 2 games of 4 way or 3 way free for all. Each game to last a max of 3 hours. The objective was a relic in the centre of the board, this was worth 20 points. Kill points were worth 2 points each. There were bonus points for things like turbo boosting, reserves and scout moves. There were also pre-tournament achievement points for things like having a painted army (1pt), 1 point for each unit, 1 point for each troop choice, wearing a t-shirt in the colours of your army. The achievement points and points gained for both games counted towards a total that decided the winner at the end.

Before the tournament had started I had tricks up my sleeve. I had engineered my army to get a ton of achievement points. 32 points to be exact. I had maxed out my force org chart and managed to fit in a fortification and 2 transports! This gave me a bit of a head start as the closest other person only had 23 achievement points. Having such a crazy army was very risky though as there was a lot of easy kill points in it.

My army list for the day:

Big Mek with Shokk attack gun and boss pole

Big Mek with boss pole (Warlord)

3x 10 Grots

3x 10 Ork Boyz

3x 5 Lootas

3x Kannons

2x Trukks

2x Deffkoptas with big shootas

1x buggie with rokkits

Aegis Defence line with Quad gun.

The plan was to simply hide behind the Aegis and shoot everything, once everything was dead hop out and grab the relic. Of course plans rarely survive contact with the enemy though.

Game 1

The tables for the first game were decided by order of achievement points from highest to lowest. This put me on a table with mech Dark Eldar in front of me, Dark Angels diagonally opposite me and Salamanders to my right. I deployed behind my Aegis and got to go first. The Dark Eldar deployed as far from everyone's guns as possible, the Dark Angels turtled up behind their Aegis and the Salamanders put a squad of terminators and a vindicator within spitting distance of my orks, ready to tear them up.

The Salamanders grabbed the relic and started hauling it back to their deployment zone. Bullets were flying in every direction except between myself and the Dark Angels. Forced started thinning out but the Salamanders still held the relic by turn 3. The Dark Eldar sent on their flyer, it dropped a bomb and promptly fell out of the sky due to a hail of fire from the Ork Quad Gun (hehe).

With the relic almost safely in the salamander hands all attention turned to him and his forces came under attack from all angles. He managed a rather cheeky manoeuvre though. The Dark Angels were sending their bikers to grab the relic once the remaining stragglers of salamanders were wiped out. The Salamanders had dragged the objective up a level in the ruins though. Bikes can't clime ladders!! Game ends and nobody has the objective......

Game 2

The tables for the second game were decided by how many points you got in the last game. On the top table were myself (Orks), Ken Chambers (my nemesis) (Tau), the pink Eldar and the Dark Eldar. 

This time I decided to play for second place. I deployed my Aegis further back from the edge of my deployment and stayed behind it hoping that everyone would forget about me.

The Eldar grabbed the relic before the game had even started. They infiltrated their rangers right on it. These were then reinforced with the help of jetbikes and then the wraithknight. The scouts died and the wraithknight picked it up.

Then the Dark Eldar swooped in, stabbing their brothers in the back. The wraithknight was toppled by the combined firepower of the Dark Eldar, Orks and Tau. Wracks got out of their venom and ambled over to the relic and picked it up.

As soon as the wracked picked up the relic they got shot out of existence by the Tau who send over their 2 riptides to pick it up. 2 riptides in 1000 points!!! Goddamit Ken!

The Eldar were wiped out by this point and the Orks and Dark Eldar set out to kill the Riptides. I gave up after a round of unsuccessful shooting and started picking of Tau infantry and Dark Eldar things.

The Riptides just laughed off the incoming fire with their 2+ saves and feel no pain. They went and hit in the corner away from my guns and waited for the end of the game. The end came and they still had the objective. Bodies lay everywhere..... except in the ork deployment zone! My plan to be ignored worked. I only lost 4 units, 2x deffcoptas, a buggy and a trukk. Everyone else was devestated. Ken had just his 2 riptides and his HQ suit thingy, the Deldar had a couple of venoms and a ravager and the Eldar were gone completely.

After the totals were added up I was expecting Ken to win as he had the relic and me (hopefully) get 2nd. Lo and behold! I beat him with a crap ton of bonus points and kill points. 44 points to 42! The trick was keeping 9 units in reserve as each one got me a point when it came on. Also sitting back and picking off stragglers with my lootas made a big difference. Sorry Ken.

End Result

After the end of the game I had no idea who would win as it was possible to get a huge amount of points if played right, Ken got  52 points in the first game. The results were announced in order from last to first. Making me wait to be put out of my misery. I came first!!! AAAAhhhh! I went into the tournament thinking it was impossible to plan and win in free for all games. I didn't even touch the relic in either game. Turns out that was the winning move. Let everyone duke it out for the relic and you just sit there killing them one by one.

YAY!

Thanks to Ian Wardle of Guardians of Tyr for organising the event and thanks to everyone who took part.

	Total
	Pts	T. ach	G. ach	Kp's	S.troops	Relic
Michael towers	116	32	40	34	10	0
Ken chambers 2	110	16	19	34	1	40
James hulance Taylor 1	81	21	17	22	1	20
Chris king 3	79	23	22	30	4	0
Dan burrows 1	69	22	13	14	0	20
David Stewart 1	69	14	18	16	1	20
Keaton James Callaghan 3	69	12	19	18	0	20
Jake trapnell 0	61	14	15	10	2	20
Michael Stewart 2	60	15	15	28	2	0
Steven almond 1	58	17	21	16	4	0
Dean Hankin 0	45	15	18	12	0	0
Tobias Barr 0	42	17	8	14	3	0
Tom van den end 0	41	16	14	10	1	0
	0		0	0	0	0
numbers after names indicate	0		0	0	0	0
warlord kills	0		0	0	0	0

Open War XVIII - Necrons take a beating - some nice pics of other armies too

What a busy 4 days of wargaming stuff I’ve just had. Friday was finishing my necron croissants and new destroyer lord, Saturday was Open War XVIII, Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 40k 1750 point tournament and Monday was the first club night of our WarmaHordes Journeyman league. My girlfriend is desperately hoping I've had my wargaming fix for a while.

I’ll do a post on these things separately but I’ll start with Open War first.

It was my first big tournament and there were some proper hardcore army lists there. The list I was using was hard I know but some of them were just mental!

There were some truly excellent armies on show there too and I took some pictures, not particularly good ones though as my camera is a cheapo thing.

That immense and amazing dude in the middle was a Trygon, his entire army was based on a tyranid warrior theme

A Full on Death Korps of Kreig army, holy crap. There were very well painted too.

Pre-heresy Blood Angels FTW.

The list I was using was:

HQ 

• Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops

• 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports 

• 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack

• 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

So Basically a scarab farm, a DLord+Wraith squad and a little bit of flyer spam. I cocked up on my list by thinking I could have the 12 man warrior squad in the ghost ark but it only has a capacity of 10 and the scythes have space for 15 so I had to bung them in the flyer instead. Having just 5 warriors in the ark made it pretty ineffective but it was surprising how much people wanted it dead just because it’s armour 13.

First game was against Nids with lots of monstrous creatures. It was a kill points game so my opponent had his tervigons ruined effectively as any gaunts they make would just be squishy kill points for me. His list was (copied and pasted from his own blog lol http://clawsandfists.blogspot.co.uk):

Flying Hive Tyrant w. 2x TL Devourers & Hive Commander

Tyranid Prime w. 2x Boneswords, Scything Talons & Regen

Zoanthrope

Zoanthrope

Tervigon w. Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

Tervigon w. Crushing Claws, Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

10 Termagants

10 Termagants

Mawloc

Trygon

2x Carnifexes w. 2x TL Devourers each

I can’t remember a great deal of this game as it was at the beginning of a very long weekend for me. We basically moved towards each other and duked it out in combat.

My wraiths and Dlord were in combat with a Trygon, Lots of Gaunts and eventually his Tyrant. The tyrant fell foul to my mindshackle scarabs in a challenge and smashed himself in the face. Eventually My lord and wraiths ground them all down to a gooey pulp without taking too much damage.

I generated a large scarab squad, somewhere in the region of 30 bases I think, and charged into his Carnifexes and slowy munched on them but was left with bugger all scarabs at the end and still in combat with 1 fex at the end. He was quite unfortunate with his rolling in this combat.

My flyers just flew around picking off easy targets like his lone zoanthropes and gaunts hiding at the back.

In the end I won 23-7 and I can’t for the life of me remember how that scoring works but I know I killed more and that’s what counted.

Game 2

Grey Knights with allied Blood Angels

He had 2 storm ravens, one from each army, Mephiston and a metric crap ton of shooting.

It was the mission where heavies can take objectives.

I was slaughtered. Grey Knights always seem to be the scissors to my paper in 40k. Nuff said.

Game 3

Grey Knights again :(

This was a really nicely painted and converted army. The entire army was a heresy/pre-heresy 1000 sons. 

Space Crusade Dreadnoughts!!

There were lots of plasma weapons which helpfully kept blowing up in the faces of the guys using them.

I lost this game but had a fun time loosing. I was pretty much slaughtered but not tabled this time. There was 1 truly epic turn where I had just 2 warriors left on the table and 2 of my flyers in reserve refusing to come on. The warriors were on an objective in ruins and the random ability it gave was a bonus to cover saves. My warriors went to ground and absorbed a round of shooting by everything that was in range without loosing either dude. They deserved a medal! My flyers then finally decided to arrive and saved me from being tabled.

Overall I ended up coming about 13^th or 14^th out of 18 but I had a good time. The venue was great, it had loads of tables and there were tournaments going on at the same time for Warmahordes, Epic and Warhammer Fantasy. Lunch was provided, a mixture of sandwiches, pizza, chicken nuggets etc. Chocolate cake was provided too in the afternoon. At the end there was a raffle and trophy ceremony. I didn’t win anything in the raffle even though there seemed to be enough prizes for half the participants.

The top 3 armies for the tournament were all Daemons.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the Guardians of Tyr tournament. I did better at that one…….

A busy tournament weekend ahead

I've got a busy 3 days ahead of me. On Saturday I'm going to Open War XVIII in Mansfield, its the 1st company vets tournament, i.e. the guys who play at Warhammer World. It will be my first big tourny, not sure exactly what to expect. After that I have the Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament in Northampton on Sunday. I'm currently top in the year long league there and I need to acquire more points to stay out in front even if I don't get a podium spot in the event.

The only problem is, my army isn't even finished yet! AAAHHH! No big worry though, I'm just finishing off some bases, painting my HQ and probably touching up some damage to some models. Should all be sorted by the end of the day.

I expect to take lots of pictures and post about both events next week. I'm really hoping that Mephiston appears again at the Northampton tournament so that I can smash him this time instead of him annihilating my army pretty much by himself (was my own fault, Orks are quite squishy to him).

Guardians of Tyr 1500 pt 40k tournament today

After a gap in my posts due to a holiday in Croatia I'm back!

Today I took part in the GoT 1500 point tournament in Northampton. There was a good turn out for this one and quite a few new players and armies. I took my bikerz and dakkajets from my previous post, basically: Warboss on bike, 7 nob bikers, Wazdakka, 11 bikers, 3 dakkajets. Its quite a hard list but not impossible to beat by any stretch.One thing I've learnt is that the dakkajets look nice but die quickly and rarely kill much but I just like them too much.

1st game was 2 hidden objectives and I was pitched against a Blood Angel player with Mephiston leading a seemingly random assortment of units. His random assortment proved very capable though. I cocked up on this mission by overestimating the strength of his sanguinary guard and got scared into hiding my nob bikers to claim an objective. Big mistake! My hardest hitting unit hiding like cowards while the rest of my army got slaughtered. In the end I had 1 contested objective and he had 2 uncontested objectives. He also scored a crap ton of bonus points for killing Wazdakka with Mephiston too.

The marines that he had painted were really nice, shame there was so few.

Mephiston next to sanguinary priest! Cheese I cried! Its the sort of thing I'd do though....

2nd game was 5 objectives and I was against my old opponent Mark Pagett and he was using Guard with allied Grey Knights. A spawny army with 2 vendettas and a stormraven! lol. It was a fun game and there were many dead guardsmen. It was a draw in the end with both of us claiming 2 objectives each, he held one with 3 guards men and another held by a commissar lord with one wound (any infantry could hold in this tourny), I held one with some bikes and one with Wazdakka. My dakkajets were actually useful in this game, killing a vendetta and quite a few guardsmen. My nob bikers absorbed his entire army's firepower for pretty much the entire game and slaughtered 2 squads of grey knights, an inquisitor and a squad of guard vets in combat. A fun game.

3rd game was annihilation. I was against Glenn Few, who I played against in the last tournament. He was using his Red Scorpion marines. I felt bad at the end because I know he's still learning and my army just splatted everything. I tabled his army without loosing a unit. I'm sure once he's got used to 6th edition and starts working out some shenanigans to pull with his marines he'll do a lot better.

I didn't play against these nids but they looked really cool so I had to fit them in here somewhere.

The standings at the end are below:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
82	Mike Stewart	4	31	21	26	blood angels
64	Jon Ellam	8	15	13	28	marines
59	Dave Stewart	7	21	6	25	daemons
56	Mike Towers	6	8	13	29	orks
49	Ashley Taylor	4	23	12	10	guard
47	Ken Chambers	8	2	25	12	marines
45	Alex Jarosz	8	16	18	3	marines
41	Mark Perry	9	10	12	10	tyranids
41	Mark Pagett	5	12	11	13	Grey knights
14	Glenn Few	6	1	6	1	marines

A bit of a random mix and not entirely in line with the meta that the internet claims. Not even any Necron players but that's probably my fault as I'm normally the one with them.

I had great fun today and I'm looking forward to the next one already. I don't feel so bad about loosing so terribly to Mike Stewarts Blood Angels in the first game now because he slaughtered everyone else too. I might use guard next time, I have some sneaky ideas for them.