Round 1 - Lou Branco of the Warmongers and his awesome Eldar
My first game was against Lou who had just played at Adepticon. His army looked great and was something that I had never played before. Eldar is rare, but this wraithguard/wraithlord mix was totally outside my box. He had prince yeriel as well. His army had great synergy, giving extra toughness to the wraithguard from something. His spells were handy and that damn table-wide 3 d6 to get of a psychic power was a pain in the ass. My firepower was not enough to take out the guard with their high toughness and 3+ save. He pulled pretty far ahead of me by turn 3. I had a chance to recover and almost draw by turn 6 but it went to turn 7 and I lost scoring only 7 points! Great game though. Lou was alot of fun and I know what what all those pretty eldar models do.
Round 2 - Jeff Omundson with Triple Land Raider Blood Angels w/ Mephiston
Round 3 - Ashley Eaton and her Chaos Daemons
And so I found myself at the last table.... the good news was that there was beer and good company. I was playing next to Jim from the Stout Smurf and my opponent, Ashley was cool to. Turns out Ashley and her husband are from VA, which is right down the road from my gaming area.
Deamons usually mess me up bad, but this time I deployed better and my rolls got alot better. I was able to take out the Deamon Princes by turn 2 and the Keeper of Secrets by turn 3. My thunderfire did well against the groups of Deamons running my way, especially her super big squad of hounds led by karnak. In the end, I was able to score max mission points and most of the bonus points, i think it was like 30 something. A great game and Ashley was a good sport as her dice were not rolling so hot and mine were above average.
Round 4 - Bryan Kentner and his Blood Angels with....... Mephiston!
Okay, bitterness aside, Ben was really cool and fun to play against. He turbo boosted his stormravens at me turn 1 and I got lucky and wrecked them both. Managed to stun both the dreads so I was safe for turn 2. I stayed out of range of his devastators and had strong command of the battle until mephiston hit my lines. My idiot self stayed in combat for about 2 turns longer than I wanted to (though I think with his initiative he would of caught me and kept me in anyways) preventing me from killing mephiston. In the end, mephiston managed to kill my squad on my home objective and make me give up the primary objective. I still squeezed a victory out but I gave up alot of points to that mistake. Ben was alot of fun and it made up for the fact that he took Mephiston.
Round 5 - Ronen Yair of the Warmongers and his Blood Angels - Without Mephiston!!!!!!
Ronen brought a cool all infantry army with FNP out the wazzoo. I thought I had him as the first few turns I really did good, but when I baited him with my TH/SS termies, he not only took it, but committed his entire jump force which completely wiped them out and allowed him to consolidate onto the objectives. This wound up being what pushed me out of the lead and into a position that I just couldnt recover from. He got his sang. priests into a position such that I just couldnt get anymore than 1 or 2 guys out of a squad per round due to the FNP. In the end he would up scoring the needed 3 more KP's than me and 7 more VP's than the 300 he needed, which pushed me out and gave him the major victory. I dont remember what I scored on this mission but it didnt matter. Ronen played a great game and came back from an underdog position in my opinion.
The Verdict:
All of my opponents were pretty cool. I voted Lou as my favorite, though all of my opponents were cool and fun. The tables were set up great with good terrain and the missions were complicated enough that it forced everyone to be out of the box, which was nice. I made some big mistakes in my games, but that is how you learn and I still had a good time. I expected to go to the colonial and go 1-4, so 2-3 wasnt too bad for me, especially since I know 1 game was my own stupidity and 1 game was at the very least the worst dice ever. But what can you do.
It was interesting to see how many Blood Angels players were there. Mephiston is apparently an auto include. Props to Ronen for going against the grain. There were also an abundance of Storm Ravens and Valkyrie/Vendettas..... I guess everyone will be ready for this summer of fliers crap when it comes out.
The paint scoring was a joke and it is sad that at such a good event they pissed so many people off on that. The max score you could get was like 30 and the highest score was I believe 21. They had too many discretionary points that could just be given or taken on a whim with no rhyme or reason. I score 9 for the following reasons according to the head judge:
"my army didnt pop, space marines are not exciting, and were a basically drybrushed army"
"no theme, Crimson fists should have Pedro Kantor and Sternguard" forget the fluff I wrote and the fact that I have forgeworld and GW crimson fist iconography all over
These comments were just ignorant in my opinion, but what can you do. They gave best painted to a extreme highlighted/dipped army. Next stop..... craft store for some Pastells and varnish.
