Bolt action league results

So last night I won my bolt action league! Here is the proof: 

I went 7 wins with 1 draw and 2 losses over the last couple of months. Very pleased with the overall result obviously, but also since I've not really played bolt action prior to this term, exstatic to have a the juggernaughts trophy for a short while. 

You can watch my latest vlog about bolt action here:  

X-wing Nationals - Top 32 Cut and beyond! Darksun Life

So not only did I make the top 32 cut for the UK nationals of X-wing, I went almost as far as i could possibly go! I won't ruin the surprise for you (although, trust me id be shouting myself hoarse if i'd won the whole thing!) but I hope you enjoy the Vlog!

I know the blog side of things has been a little lacking lately, TBH I'm really enjoying vlogging and sharing my hobby in that fashion! Plus I don't think i've picked up my 40k stuff much in the past couple of months. Im planning to start seriously getting into my Bolt Action in September, so expect to see pictures and battle reports from that! I havent forgotten about my hobby season pledges, and in all honesty i think this bad boy gets the biggest, baddest completion stamp that i can find! So here it is:

Until next time,

X-wing Spring Kit Tourney Report - Wild Ways Newark. Darksun 26

So i went to Wild Ways at newark last weekend, and (spoilers) finally managed to get my hands on a spring kit challenge coin. I put together the video footage and its here for your viewing pleasure, just click the image of my face above :)

Sanctuary Games Tournament Battle Report - Darksun 24

Watch Out - Imperial Veterans is out!

Another weekend goes by, another vlog of me moving toy spaceships around a 3x3 mat. Back at Sanctuary Games in Sutton-in-Ashfield for this one, great fun as ever. Thanks to all my opponents, and to Richard for hosting us. Looking forwards to going back there soon!

Guest Blog: Yavin Open Battle Report by Jon Browne

So I wasn't able to attend the Battle of Yavin (at least I got sunburnt instead!) but several of my friends from Weekend Warlords in Loughborough (UK) were able to go. Jon Browne was kind enough to write a guest blog for me on his experience of the day, so without further preamble i'll let him take it away.............................. 

Hello everyone! I was lucky enough (read: masochistic enough) to be able to attend the Yavin Open on Saturday at the UK Games Expo. With Over 400 players, this was by far the largest ever X-Wing tournament!

I’ve been playing the game casually since around wave 3 but have only recently dipped my toes into the competitive scene in the last 12 months or so, attending just a few tourneys at my FLGS, the excellent Weekend Warlords.

The Yavin Open was my first tournament outside the cosy confines of my local scene; I had no expectations of doing well at all, particularly as I’ve been falling down the standings recently.

I set my aim low: avoid going 0-6.

The Chosen One

I always make a habit of choosing a list that’s quite different to my last, for each tournament I attend.

Back in February I settled on a list and decided I would run it exclusively up until the Expo – allowing plenty of time for practice. This is easily the most I’ve ever flown the same list – around 30 or so plays, although only two small tourneys.

I liked the idea of flying something totally out of my comfort zone and that meant fragile aces. Palp Aces was the obvious way to go, but I didn’t like the idea of ‘only’ 3 ships and I’ve loved Wampa ever since he was spoiled.

That led me to the now well known, 4 ship version of Palp Aces – simply known as 4-ship Imps or more aptly “Imperial Assholes”:

The general idea is that there’s no obvious targeting priority: go after the shuttle and get flanked by some aces, go after the aces and get flanked by the shuttle, or go after Wampa, and find that he’s only a TIE fighter worth 14 points.

Of course I had been running a skinny 31 point Vader (Title, ATC, VI), but he really missed Engine Upgrade and was promptly replaced by the Inquisitor as soon as he became available. For the same 31 points he’s got boost, and Autothrusters so is pretty much strictly better in this list.

Omega Leader is arguably the best endgame ship right now and great against other aces. She turns off so many tricks.

Everyone knows how good Palpatine is and in recent test games I was flying him more aggressively – it’s easy to forget that he’s on a 10 HP, 3 attack ship.

Wampa is my favourite part of this list though. I just love that little guy. He’s such a great tool to have in your list. His ability coupled with Palpatine is bonkers and occasionally you’ll get a natural crit on his roll too. Being able to deal damage to anything, regardless of how many evades they have is so useful. This would be great on its own, but when you bring it to bear against a high evade, low hull target like Whisper, Corran, Fel, Poe or Red Ace, it’s amazing.

Of course, your opponent will know that, but you can still use him to herd people out of his firing arc. 

“You’ve taken your first step into a larger world”

 So, here we go, the largest ever X-Wing tournament – 414 players!

I was paired with Jonni, running Triple Jumps, with a slight variation of one Jumpmaster having a flechette torpedo in place of an Extra Munitions. This wasn’t going to end well. As we all know the Jumps are a pretty bad match up for everyone right now, and not having played many tournaments recently, I’m very inexperienced against them. In my few practice matches against them I never knew what to do against them.

I set up Palp in my left corner and he set up to joust him. I tried my best to slow roll in and keep my aces at the correct distance, wanting to flank the Jumps through the rocks. This kind of worked, as Palp got through the first salvo with 2-3 HP remaining, and by the time he was down, he’d soaked up all of the munitions, but for 1 Plasma and the Flechette.

I didn’t really push much damage through in the initial exchanges and by this point my aces were too close, Jonni managed some neat flying through the rocks, avoiding a couple by a whisker and blocked me up.

From then it was a pretty simple job of picking off my aces, and the Jump’s manoeuvrability meaning I had to split my fire and couldn’t get any half points.

So an expected, but bad start. I was also happy to tell Jonni that he could indeed use the target lock gained from R4 Aggromech in the same modify step. His list just got even better for him!

Result: 0-100

 “Ready, what know you of ready?”

Next up was Alex White, with a bit of an unusual list, though not without its dangers. Juno was well set up to outfly my aces and dish out some hurt to them. The Gamma could wreck stuff and after that he still had two decent Interceptors.

We lost around 10 mins at the beginning of the round, because unfortunately Alex was missing one of his Direct Hit cards. The TO said I wasn’t obliged to wait and could have a match win, but of course we waited for a replacement damage deck and got to gaming. (Great job there! - Luke)

He set up to joust Palpatine, with the Emperor creeping forward with a 1-Straight, staying out of range of the 4-speed bomber. Palp then speed up with a 3-Bank to the left, getting into range 1 and avoiding the torps. This also blocked some of the Interceptors.

Meanwhile I’d slow rolled in with the aces, with the use of 1-Turns to wiggle along. I wanted to flank around the rocks. Wampa had zoomed into the rocks, his obvious sniping target being Juno. Wampa did his ‘thang’ and the Inquisitor finished Juno off the following combat.

I got a bit lucky, one-shotting an Interceptor, the other following  soon after, with the Bomber picking away at stuff. Wampa and Omega Leader were lost in the exchange, with ‘Lockdown’ rolling a ton of fickle green dice to go down faster than expected.

Palp stayed out of the fight, whilst the Bomber and Inquisitor danced around, the game going to time with 2 damage on the Bomber.

Result: 76-55

 “Great kid, don’t get cocky!”

OK, so I had a win, and I wasn’t going to finish 0-6. Hurrah! In round 3 I was surprised to see someone ballsy enough to be running 5 naked Kihraxz – fair play Mike! (Unfortunately I didn’t get your surname…)

But I was also weary of 15+ attack dice being chucked at my aces, and knew they could just melt Palp.

He won, the initiative roll, but gave it to me, presumably to make me deploy Palp first, so he could joust it. But when it came to deployment he put 3 together in the corner diagonally opposite to Palp and 2 together in the middle of his edge. I tried to keep the rocks as tight as possible, hoping to either cause some bumps if he came through them, or to force him to the edges, giving me more time to position.

I went in slow, with Wampa deliberately getting in Palp’s way to slow him down. The group of 3 Kihraxz came down their edge fast and the group of 2 came through the middle of the board.

Wampa and Omega Leader then zoomed forward with some 5-Straights, dodging some arcs and the Inquisitor turtled up, leaving me unscathed in the first engagement and one Kihraxz badly wounded. I turned Palp into the fight ASAP; I knew I needed all of my guns against his 5 ships. 

The block was on for the group of 3 Kihraxz if they all 2-Turned to their right, through the rocks (which they did do!) and Inquisitor was in a bad place with not many options. He did a 3 bank to his left and a boost to the right, which got around the rocks and just dodged all 3 arcs. Tasty.

After that it was pretty simple dogfighting to pick off the Kihraxz one by one. I felt like this was definitely my best flying all day, but I was pretty lucky to not lose a single ship, with Mike’s dice rolls seemingly always being cold.

Result: 100-0

  

“I’m not afraid.”

“Oh, you will be. You will be.”

I was feeling a bit better after that and going 2-1, but then came the dreaded announcement: “Jonathan Browne, please report to the streaming table”.

To be fair I was excited and terrified in equal measure! And I was definitely a bit spooked in the first 15 minutes or so of the round. I just kept visualising the chat log on the stream bemoaning my mistakes! “Don’t make a mistake, don’t make a mistake” became my internal mantra.

If you’re interested in watching any of it, you can find it here (https://www.twitch.tv/firstearth/v/70448779) from 6hrs 45mins – 8hrs 05mins.

(Alternatively, here is a timelapse GIF that Jon's put together - Luke)

View post on imgur.com

I wasn’t too happy to see the swarm, not only was it a bad match up – all those guns and crack shots could chew through Palp and/or all my defensive tokens, but I had gotten hardly any practice in against them.

I camped out in the corner diagonally opposite the swarm and slowed right down, as he wiggled across the map with 1-Turns. I managed to delay the engagement, keeping just out of range. Next the Inquisitor could have 1-Turned to his left around a rock and had a range 1 shot at range 3 with his ability, but I didn’t want him taking 6 guns to the face. So instead he did a 3-Straight away from the swarm and a boost towards the TIEs, getting an approach that would allow him to flank. At the time I thought this was a mistake, but having watched the game back, it was actually a good move, that could have been even better with a 3-Bank instead, followed by Boost and Barrel Roll to improve the angle. Without that, it left him with a worse approach.

I then made the biggest mistake of the match, and 2-Turned Palp into the fray, rather than staying put. The turn put him into Range 1 of pretty much the entire swarm, and he dropped in 1 round of shooting. I was hoping to block him, but the turn just wasn’t anywhere near big enough. The stop would have kept him out of range 1, he probably would have lived, had some return shots and then been able to get behind the swarm. D’oh!

I felt compensated when I rolled triple crit at Howlrunner that combat round and she rolled all blanks. One crit went on the FO with Draw Their Fire, but I still had hope of a one-shot, when the first crit was Major Explosion, but unfortunately Howlrunner lived, to give her re-rolls to the swarm, helping to kill Palp.

From this point I knew my only chance was to arc dodge and plink away at whatever I could get in my sights. The Inquisitors poor approach from early meant he missed a combat round, and Omega Leader got blocked up and almost took down. Wampa got a neat range one shot with a K-Turn that just made it past the swarm, but got all blanks. Wampa went down soon after.

The game was poised at 22-43. I had another great shot with the Inquisitor getting triple crit for the second time, against a tokenless TIE, and Mishary pulled out 3 natural evades matching it. I had no option but to offer a begrudging fist-bump. That was a blow. Eventually a TIE finally went down, as Omega Leader has zoomed out of the fight and then K-Turned to come back in. In the final round Mishary missed out on a full win, as Omega Leader survived two shots from some TIEs. Losing just under 10 minutes to the stream didn’t help (although it also cost him his full win), but Mishary played a faultless game and the best man definitely won.

Result: 37-43

“They’re coming in too fast!”

Oh deary me! This didn’t look good at all. I’ve always had trouble against Decimators with my list, all that HP to chew through with my low damage output aces, and to compound things Steve’s particular loadout was tailor made to take out aces.

Steve set up his whole list to joust with Palp, and I put my aces off in the other corner. Palp turned in to run away, along my table edge, and the aces tried to come through the rocks. I managed to one-shot a Blackcrack and Steve’s Wampa went down soon after too, Palp taking some heavy damage from the Deci.

After Palp was gone, it was left to the little guys, who didn’t fare well. Omega Leader and Wampa pushed a bit more damage onto Chirpy before they went down themselves and soon it was a full health Inquisitor vs a 2 HP Blackcrack and the 10HP Deci.

The situation was virtually impossible. Pursued by the Rear Admiral, I also had the choice of going after the TIE, which was made for me when I pushed a Blinded Pilot crit through onto the big guy. This was my chance to get the TIE off the board, whilst the Decimator couldn’t fire. Steve didn’t anticipate my change of targeting priority and so I got a range 1 shot on the TIE, but alas, I didn’t get any damage through.

From there, Steve simply got Inquisitor in range and killed him with the Gunner/Vader combo.

Result: 57-100

“You can't win. But there are alternatives to fighting”

I was amazed to be paired with Sim in the final round, he’s a great player from my local area, but unfortunately he’d had a bit of a bad day, hence why he was playing schmucks like me on the bottom tables!

You might think with that quote up there, that we ID’d, but we didn’t. That quote just sums up our feelings by this point. Both being 2-3 and after a long day, to say our heart and soul wasn’t in the game is a massive understatement. I was fed up of Triple Jumps, Sim himself was fed up of playing them.

We went through the motions with this one. They came in Alpha-striked, I kept targeting shield tokens and ended up with half points before I lost.

Result: 64-100

In Summary

So all in all, I had an absolute blast! I avoided going 0-6, won a few games, was privileged to get on the stream and all of my opponents were true gents.

I didn’t hear any bad stories about other players and the event was run incredibly smoothly considering the scale of it. Thanks to Vince, Alec, Frank and Zach for a brilliant tournament. 

And well done to my round 1 opponent, Jonni Reeks, who finished 16^th – bet those extra target locks helped!

The chance to briefly chat with and thank Frank Brooks, Christian Petersen, and Steve Horvath was awesome, and I also got to meet Paul Dean and Quintin Smith from Shut Up & Sit Down too!

Finally a massive shout out to our Weekend Warlords group, with George and Kevin making day two and both finishing in the top 100!

Thanks for reading and Fly Casual!

Wow. Thanks Jon. A great read and actually really engaging story of the day - I really related to your highs and lows! A BIG thank you for writing that up and getting all the images sorted as well. X-wing is such a big part of my life and this blog that i'm glad Yavin featured on here in some way! 

Deathwatch Killteam review

Last week at club I played Deathwatch: Killteam. Read on to find out how I got on.....

Ian had brought Killteam with him, and I'll be honest the models are beautiful. As much as it pains me to say it, games workshop are doing an excellent job with the quality of thier miniatures, and the ruleset isn't that bad either. The game plays basically like how Soace Marines are in any of the books you read. Ian described them as being are superhuman "movie marines". 

The way that this is borne out in the basic game is that the marines go first, and shoot twice. So each turn looks roughly like this:

• Space marines move
• Genestealers move 
• Space marines shoot
• Genestealers shoot
• Space marines shoot again

This means that as a marine player you can wade through hordes of cultists and stealers as you achieve your objectives. Having only played the one game, I'm not going to go deep into the rules, but they are very simple. They've removed "to wound" rolls entirely, if you hit, that's a wounding hit. 

The game plays very fast, with the phases cycling through very quickly each turn. What's interesting for the tyranid player is that you get cards to lurk with every turn, similar to space hulk. You draw from a deck every turn and place those cards facedown, not revealing them until after the space marines have moved. It's tough to bring down a marine, and I found that they were taking out smaller groups of 6-7 cultists with ease. The cool thing is you can leave one card lurking for another round, especially as you can only place what models the game comes with. 

This creates a balancing element, as you can never have to many purestrain genestealers running around. It's nicely balanced though, as the marines are so tough you might cycle through the same models every round. 

The thing that I realised very early on was that I needed to swarm the marines to stand any chance of killing one. You need at least 5 or 6 to 1 to stand a chance of taking one down. And that's after thier attacks! So you probably need 8/9-1!  It feels very cinematic, games workshop have got that bit spot on. There is desperation on both sides and it really turns into a swirling blood bath!

Springing the trap is all important. The cards that give you cultists also give you abilities such as "attack twice" and combining these factors is the only way to take down a space marine. Even with that ability and all of these guys I was only able to take down 1 marine. They're tough!

Overall, I'd reccomend playing this game if you get the chance. It's fun, fast and cinematic. I don't know that I'd buy it, as £118/$160 is quite a lot, and I don't play tyranids. But if you have always planned to do a cultist army, then the models are amazing, and if you've got a group together you could play through the missions quite nicely. If you can, give it a go!

Sanctuary Games X-wing Store Championship Battle Reports

Dear reader, please accept my humble apologies for the delay in the compilation of this set of battle reports. I have been, and still am struck down with a virus that has made all forms of narcissism such as blogging and vlogging difficult.

Anyways… on the 5^th of March I attended the Sanctuary Games X-wing Store Championships in Sutton in Ashfield. And on this jaunt I had a driving buddy! Shane from Weekend Warlords in Loughborough was along for the ride, with his triple YV-666 list, which drew a lot of admiring looks (plus a sizeable amount of wins) over the course of the day. The Sanctuary “store” is actually a reasonably sized de-commissioned church, lovingly kitted out with a lot of gaming tables (there were 16 games of x-wing going on, and we weren’t using more than a ¼ of the space!), a kitchen to buy coffee and pizza, and some decent toilets. Being a Christian, it is not unusual for me to spend hours in a church praying, but attending a tournament there would require a weirdly different kind of prayers. I would deffo recommend the venue, it’s got a certain sense of grandeur. 

formation flying!

For this second store championships in succession I took my 4 Scum Y-Wings with Twin Laser Turrets (TLTs) and Unhinged Astromechs (all speed 3 moves are green). This is partly because I really like flying the list, but there were a couple of other serious reasons. Firstly, whilst I’m sure wave 8 will shake up the meta I may well take some version of this list to regionals in May so I wanted more practice against different lists. Secondly, with only 1 game night in-between to prepare I would have effectively been flying a new list cold at a tournament.

My first game was against a very friendly chap called Paul who was flying the following:

Commander Alozen (free target locks at range 1)

Lieutentant Colzet (spend a target lock to flip a damage card face up)

PS4 Tie Advanced

(these three all had the title, and the advanced targeting computer which allows you add a crit if you have a target lock)

Omega Leader with Juke and Comm relay for un-blockable shots

I have to confess, I completely underestimated this list. Nothing special I thought. I mean I know Omega Leader is a pain, but even so I thought “this should be a walked in the park”. What a n00b I was. And more importantly, what a disservice I did to my opponent. I deployed in the bottom right, with Paul in the top left. I went straight up the flank, and we engaged ¾ of the way up the star field.  In the first engagement, I think managed to maul one of the Tie Advanced’s, but in return one of the y-wings started to eat crits, and became ps0. I then completely forgot that this meant he’d be moving first, and this poor chap bumped, instead of masterfully dodging out the way. Then Paul burnt him down.

We then had a very close range dogfight in the top right hand corner of the map, where I tried to get cute and double or even triple guess my opponent. This worked about 50% of the time, but trying to block with the y-wings means that they don’t really get shots. I eventually ran for it, with my 2 remaining ships, hotly pursed by Omega Leader and Alozen. I traded Omega Leader for a y-wing, but began triple or quadruple guessing myself in an effort to take the last point of health off Alozen. So much so, that instead of head on jousting with him I turned towards the board edge, and left myself with nothing to do but fly off the edge of the board. This of course, cost me the game.

Result: Loss 74 – 100

they do not have 1 sharp turns.

My second opponent was a chap called Alex, fielding my favourite B-wing Keyan Farlander and Han Solo, both fairly heavily tricked out. This time I went bottom left hand corner, and he went opposite in the top right. I sped up the flank, not wanting to get caught in the side by his heavy firepower, and he swooped in, boosting with both ships. We engaged ¾ of the way up the board, with his targeting computers locking onto the engine glow of my y-wings. The combination of a B-Wing and a Millennium Falcon at short range began to make short work of my fleet. However! They both only have 1 evade dice, so my turrets sliced through the b-wing in just over a turn, leaving me with a very angry Han Solo against 3 y-wings.

this is Alex, wondering why the hell im taking a video of him

I have to confess, I got somewhat lucky here as I correctly guessed so of Alex’s moves and was able to block the Falcon with the y-wing he was trying to kill (if they’re touching they can’t shoot each other). That meant he couldn’t focus his fire down, and I was able to keep chipping away at him. After a few turns of this, Alex tried to break out of my trap, and it nearly left him in a perfect position to even the odds somewhat, but the dice failed him. I wrapped this one up with a win.

Result: Win 100 – 25

following game 1, i couldnt believe this

Game three then. And I end facing the guy that Alex travelled with, called Joseph. He had the other B-wing Pilot (Ten Numb) with a Mangler cannon, Blount with Ion Pulse missiles and Corran Horn with all the normal stuff. This game was a matter of honour for Joseph, who wanted to prove that he had the better b-wing than Alex. I set up in the bottom right, and he chose to joust me. So I immediately ran away, and in his haste to catch me, the angle meant that his ships got drawn into a line and when we did engage in the bottom centre Ten Numb was out of range for the first round of shooting.

This meant that I lit Corran Horn up like the Death Star on a Friday night. However, he’s a tricksy one and came through, with one or two hull left. At least for that turn. I sent him downtown the next turn, but this had allowed Ten Numb to close and prove his worth, whilst Blount had used his auto hitting Ion Missiles to stall a y-wing in the middle of my line astern formation. So I starbursted, flying my y-wings every-which-way in an effort to land his remaining pilots in a kill box. They helpfully obliged and whilst unblockable Critical Hits were very painful, being in the middle of TLT kill box was a deciding factor. I rolled of the winner.

Result: Win 100 – 50 (giving Joseph bragging rights over Alex)

 

thats me! left middle, with Shane next one down

In my 4^th game of Swiss, I played a friendly chap called Richard. (on reflection I noticed that he was the one who gave me parking advice, so thanks!). Richard had two Tie Phantoms - Echo and Whisper and a named Tie Fighter (im really sorry but I cant remember which one!) The most significant thing on the Phantoms was sensor jammer over fire control system. This was actually a bit of pain for me tactically speaking because I was shooting twice with each ship, but only had 1 focus. So I had to think really smart about that.

I tried to position the rocks to make it hard for him to hit me in the flank as I came up the left side of the board, and I think It probably did a bit. Crucially, I bottled trying to block echo’s decloak quite early on, Id forgotten how manoeuvrable phantoms were! Instead of protecting the other 3 wings, I allowed both phantoms into range  1 and they started having a lot of fun. So I sped up, turned back into the board and starbursted. In the process I took the Tie Fighter out, and also got rid of Echo. This left me with 2 y-wings against Whisper. I was winning on modified points, but knew that wouldn’t be good enough to make the cut, not with a loss first round. So I turned around near my board edge and came back for another pass. I decided to bank right, on the assumption that was the unpredictable thing to do. Whisper then decloaked in the same direction and I was gutted, I assumed id blown it. I moved my ships, and then Richard revealed a hard 1 away from my y-wing, meaning he didn’t have a shot! Despair turned to elation, and I was fortunate enough to take Whisper down that turn.

Result: Win 100 – 50

Shane's YV-666 conga line of doom

In the final game of Swiss I faced a double Scum Firespray list, Kath Scarlet and Boba Fett run by Jamie (I think, only name I forgot to write down sorry!). I set up on the left, and he jousted me with Kath, whilst sending Boba to flank me. I remembered my rule of 11 here, and blocked Kath out in the second engagement, meaning she had no actions and she died that turn. Boba was more of a problem, and he chased me around a bit. I starbursted to try and make sure I was always getting 1 shot, and this helped a great deal. In what was to be the last turn, I actually blocked Boba and would have forced him off the board if it wasn’t for inertial dampeners. I was still able to just shoot him with another y-wing, killing him and winning me the game.

Result: Win 100 – 25.

my y-wings hunting down and blocking boba fett

Top 4 Cut

I squeaked into the top 4 in 4^th place, getting another challenge coin (man I love those!) and facing Darren, who had gone 5-0. Happily, Shane also made the top 4 cut. That meant that neither of us was waiting around for the other person, or at least not yet! Darren was playing a list that had a YV-666 (bossk crew, tactician and Gunner), 3x ps1 Binayre Pirates in z-95s,  and a ps2 scum y-wing with a TLT and unhinged astromech. Id noticed Darren from across the tables as he had a very cunning fortress that meant he set up in a corner. I think people had been having trouble because it forced them into a joust, and he could just sit there as long as he wanted. Shane had faced him in the final round of swiss and lost, and shared some wisdom with me.

it was something like this. although not completely like this.

What I decided to was head towards him on that flank, and see if he’d take the bait and come out of his fortress. Either way, I wasn’t going to let myself get blocked up, id just turn into the board regardless of whether he followed me or not. If he didn’t, id circle back around and try again. And then again. Thankfully, he took the bait. I think he knew that I didn’t need to face him conventionally what with my turrets and all. On my first pass, after id turned in just outside range 3 of his fortress, he broke the following turn and came after me.

However, the way he broke from the formation meant that I was able to chew off the ps1 corners of his fleet, bringing the entirety of my firepower to bear against half his fleet on more than one occasion. He was very unlucky to land the yv-666 on a rock (one of the big ones that id brought I think!) on a turn when it was in range one of a nearly dead y-wing, which helped me out, and im not convinced that his yv-666 dodged anything I threw at it, so I definitely had my fair share of luck. It ended up with me taking down his y-wing with 3 of mine, sealing me a place in the final.

Result: Win 100-25

Final

And in the final I faced Shane! Which was good for both of us in a way, as neither of us would be hanging around for the other person. However, I was sure to make several thinly (read not at all) veiled threats about his lift home. He didn’t listen to those, in fact he was way to busy getting completely inside my head for the first 30 minutes of our game, and it nearly ruined me! I had to start ignoring him completely. I felt a bit rude, but I couldn’t handle it at all! It was like the whole of basketball in a 3^rd of the time. As a reminder, Shane had the following:  3x ps2 YV-666, all with ion projectors and feedback arrays. This loadout also gave him a small initiative bid.

 

great film. great film.

As per my standard tactics, I set up some rocks to cover 1 flank, giving me the option to creep up my left if I felt like it. I knew that Shane’s list was designed to try and trap you, slapping ion tokens on you every which way and not allowing you to break away. For some reason, I did nothing to stop this happening. I let him box me into a corner, ioning 3 of my ships over various turns. I eventually broke away with 2 y-wings, leaving the other 2 hulks behind. I had by this point killed 1 and a half of his ships, and wasn’t fancying my chances. I regrouped on my top right and this time skirted the top corner of his ships as they came back around, managing to trade a y-wing for a yv-666.

No you idiot! dont get trapped there!

I was suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic. Pulling around back down my left flank, having him chase me meant that he couldn’t trap me, and I was able to keep chipping away at the final YV-666 until it blew up. And with that, I won my second store championships!

Some, from a situation 2 weeks ago where I’d never won a wargames tourney, I’ve now won 2 x-wing store championships in 2 weeks! Sanctuary Games is a really amazing location, being in an old church gives it a grand, imposing atmosphere. The facilities are great, and the staff really friendly. It does get a bit chilly, so make sure you take a jumper and a coat though! 

Do come back later in the week, as i'm hoping to have vlogged this experience. I've got it all ready, i've just been way to ill to do any post production. 

with a fancy glass trophy

Battle report: Double Trouble Practice Game

Last week, we played our first practice game for double trouble. I know I know, it's still 5 months away, but hey! Practice makes me less incompetent.

We randomised the pairings and they came out as follows:

Team 2

Me (imperial guard - Leman Russ eradicate, standard Leman Russ, 35 guardsmen including a command platoon with 4 Flamers)  & Dan (Eldar shenanigans - 3 squads of guardians/ dire avengers, a farseer and a tank with a d-flamer.)

Vs

Team 1

Topher (tyranids - flyrant, 2 tervigons and a big swarm of gaunts) & Matt (HH blood angels- contemptor dread, big unit of marines with a captain and a stormraven)

We played the 3rd mission, which for those in the know means that you set up in all four corners. For those wanting more information, we set up like this:

The Tyranids were 1A, Eldar 2A, Blood Angels 1B and I was 2B. I managed to grab a warlord traight that allowed 3 units to outflank, so we outflanked most of the Eldar army, leaving only a farseer and a d-strength tank in 2B. All of the objectives were in the right 2/3 of the map. 

pew pew pew

Our oppenants went first, and didn't have much to do but run towards me! The flyrant swooped over to try and alpha strike Dan's tank, and one of the tervigons spawned some gaunts onto a central objective. The other tervigon, plus a squad of 30 gaunts, went as fast as they could towards me. meanwhile, on my other flank, the Blood Angels began to close in, slightly slower than the space bugs. Between them, I believe they registered either 4 or six victory points in the first turn as they were mostly claim objective ones. we also lost most of an autocannon team and most of a squad of guardsmen. Whilst I say "we" I of course mean me. Dan's tank jinked and got glanced but lived on. This did mean that they didn't get first strike.

In our first turn, we drew reasonably unreachable objectives, given that they were all claim this or that number objective. We did score our first maelstrom points as a squad of guardsmen heroically ran towards the Tyranids to claim objective #3. In the psychic and shooting phase, Dan's Farseer single handely took down a Tervigon through a combination of Mind war (I think) and a Singing Spear. Im hazy on the details because I wasnt 100% paying attention. I was way to busy watch the 18 inch gap between the Tyranids and what increasingly looked like lunch close down. So i opened fire to devastating effect. It felt very dramatic having two lines of ten men shooting at an oncoming hordes whilst the tanks lobbed shells overhead. all in all, I killed 15-20 gaunts. I felt more like a man than I had done all day.

Before

After

That meant at the end of turn 1 we had 2 points - one for first strike and 1 for claiming an objective but not having an ally on another objective.

In turn 2, things started to go downhill for us. Suffice to say, the Farseer died to a drive/fly by from the flyrant, Blood angels marched further towards me (although they were put off by the battlecannon a bit I think), and most scarily, the Tyranids moved in very close. You know its going badly when you're trying to help your men die so that the Tervigon is out of combat so you can shoot it. Luckily for us the Stormraven didn't turn up, but unluckily for us i believe they achieved another 2 objectives, whilst also smashing most of my army in. so they were up something like 9-2.


In our second turn, 2 units of dire avengers showed up as well as my Platoon Command Squad, which had four flamers. I'd decided to put them in normal reserve, since I figured they'd come on from my board edge. Which mean I could jump on what was left of the small space bugs. I did. They burnt to death. True story. The dire avengers that showed up on my right flank totally wiffed, leaving it to both my Leman Russ tanks to bring down the lumbering behemoth before it reached them. And unfortunately on the other side, they were too far away to do anything. This meant we didn't scire any VPS in turn two. 

The stormraven appears!

In turn three, matts gunship flew on in fine style, and began doing things. The rest of his army advanced towards the centre of the board, holding the middle ground. Apart from the contemptor dreadnought, which was lagging behind a bit. He'd been bugging the cover and claiming an objective, doing a worthy job of stacking up VPs over the previous turns. 



dead blood angels. everywhere.

Suffice to say, over the course of the next couple of tens things didn't go well for us. I loose track of the turns, but it was 1-sided enough that we stopped recording maelstrom points! In fact, we only achieved 3 over the whole game - our third coming in the 4th turn when both leman russ tanks opened fire into the big unit of Blood Angels. Many of them died, but significantly so did their warlord, with Matt opting to catch Battlecannon shots with his Captain guy. Plus, the remaining marines marched relentlessly into the squishy elder from what I remember.



a failed late game objective grab from the leman russ



Overall, on blood points we probably were a lot closer, there weren't many space bugs left at the end of the game, and we gave the Blood angels a bit of a mauling as they moved towards the centre of the board. But by that point we were already behind significantly on both areas, so it was a tough ride.

these Dire avengers did nothing

After game thoughts

• The deployment corners makes a massive difference in this game. we went into it thinking our triple outflank was going to be great, and it proved to be our complete undoing, allowing for our opponents to focus on my army almost exclusively. When they did turn up, everything was to near the middle and the surprise was lost.
• Normal reserve however, is awesome. I may need to check with Alex, but our interpretation of coming on the long board edge allows you to just jump your opponent.
• Guardsmen may be to squishy for this deployment. My build didn't have any staying power, and I ended feeling a bit trapped.
• Objective Placement. Basic, but important. they need to be spread out, especially since they are occurring 50% of the time!

I think next time I might be tempted to try a infiltrating list, or something that doesn't need to deploy normally. Anything that has the power to break the deployment restrictions basically!