alright, so been a busy few days! first up, i finished cutting and printing our singlets at about 2am the night before vicc. mad thanks to my man pete for drawing these up.
and off we go! so day one was singles, i was taking a particularly horrible 2k ong list;
blorc warboss with stubborn hat, 4++ armour, +1 to hit sword,
orc l4 with scroll,
blorc bsb with 4++,
sorc l1 with head,
spiderboss with dragonhelm and 2+as,
24 sorcbuns fc and ahw,
19 boys, fc,
5 spiders
3x1 trolls
2x1 wolf chariots,
2x dd
2x lobba
mangler.
as a team, we had nick and his 60 letters and thirster, greg with his usual tk for day one, and a fairly stink dwarf list - greg style stink dwarves, not internet - for day 2 (tk were our sub army), and james milner and his he, wasnt too stink as far as he go, some white lions, not 60 though.
we were playing kinda rulebook missions with twists. greg was captaining, and after each briefing with the t/o, we had the opportunity to decide which of our armies would play which mission. i got given a defender scenario for my first round, where it was battle for the pass, with a watchtower in the defender deployment zone. yeah, i know right. uphill battle for whoever would be the attacker.
now it just so happened we were lucky enough to draw hampton for the first round. was it fate? or a grudge match? i dont know. but it was extremely good we drew them in the singles rather than the doubles.
and blow me down, if i wasnt facing the fabulous mr dave j/s for my first game!
he knew he had been thrown under the bus in this match up, but once he saw my list, it was very much the case. i couldnt be happier, i had the odds in my favour, i was 'the bus' for the first time in my life, with the current oz no 1 getting thrown under? not to mention i had my honour to regain after the utter thrashing i got from dave after our last encounter.
hampton were rocking the 'chaos siege force', and dave himself was rocking a nurgle dp with various bells and whistles, a bsb on daemonic steed, festus, a big block of nurgle halberd warriors, 2x 5 hounds, a chim and a hellcannon. pretty sure that was it.
if you were following some of the banter prior to this tourney, i warned dave to fasten his dice cup to his hand, such was the force of shirts off warhammer. he didnt heed my warning, and lo, behold the ill omens as he slammed it on the table, only for the lining to come flying out. somewhere in the distance, a crow could be heard cawing.
so we set up, and i went first. the savages, and all the characters are in the building. booo-en. everything else set up as far away as possible. i believe dave may have scrolled my first foot, and shooting was largely ineffectual, although i burned his charmed shield on the dprince and did a wound
dave moves up aggresively with the dprince and chim on left flank. he casts the t test s5 hit nurgle spell on the sorcs in the building killing a couple, but if's the spell, falls down the hole, and panics the chim off the table. despite absolutely pasting me in our last encounter, i couldnt help but feel terrible for his t1 luck.
from here on, its basically a forgone conclusion. i chase his wolves off, get a mangler through the hc for little damage, and kill a few warriors
dave then makes a series of terrible rolls. fails stupidity on his bsb warrior unit, which is then pulped by feet, rocks and gobbos with spikey hats. fails a panic test, rallies them
but to no avail. i finish off the unit and bsb, while festus hides behind a wall, and the h/c continues to scatter onto my warmachines and kill them. i lose very little, and its a solid win to the ong!
daves a fantastic dude, but i cant help but be thankful for his terrible luck, as he is no 1 in oz after all. you may hear me offering my condolences on the next dwellers podcast. i tells you tho, that win felt gooooooood! im sure the next time we cross choppas, dave will have something 'salty' for me, and i am looking forward to it.
the rest of the shirts off team did well, greg went under the bus known as nick hoen's woc, james pulled out a win vs ben leopolds ogres, after panicking a sabertusk out of the watchtower in the last turn, and nick showed us all that a bloodthirster wins in combat vs chris cousin's nurgle dprince. go figure!
so an exceptionally good start against our no 1 biggest threat for the title. not to mention we now have a years worth of sledging on hampton now lol.
game two was vs another woc army, although i cant quite recall the mission, or the team we faced. i believe it was your most expensive unit was worth double vps if you killed it.
my opponent was roped in from the 40k team, and showed my some of his d/eldar after our game, he is an amazing painter! i forget his name - sorry dude! - but was a great opponent, and you can check out more of his work on wargamer.au, painting blog by the name of ormo, i believe. anyway, he was handed a list, army, and thrust my way.
he was rocking one of them nurgle dprinces - quite a few around, believe it or not - scyla angrimfimm(?), big unit of warriors with bsb and metal mage, 6 trolls, 6 drogres, chariot and a unit of hounds. my opponent goes first.
moves up, and brings dprince around the flank. as youd imagine, i throw all the waaghtillery on it, only doing one wound. most expensive unit too. put a mangler up in his grill
which goes through and kills a drogre and some warriors. now here, you'll see a horrible little knot of single trolls and a spider boss, all positioned to stop overruns. this little traffic jam really redeemed single troll redirectors to me. drogres kill one, and are stuck in front of a couple more. i hand the bunker to the flank and get an ere we go off.
prince goes into the flank of savages, and takes 2 more wounds. drogres roll into next troll
bunker charges in, breaks the drogres, and runs em down. savage kill the dprince, and last troll holds up his trolls. savages go in, break em, but dont catch, and its another win to the ong!
the rest of shirts off fared well, with james and greg getting wins, and nick running into a pure khainate delf army, with some special character that made welves core. suffice to say, there were a LOT of witch elves on the table. must of cost him an army and a leg. but yeah, nick had a hard time of it, and may have underestimated a horde of cauldron buffed welves. fair enough tho.
for the final game of the singles, we drew monash, another team we had picked as tough competition. this mission was quite different, attacker and defender, attacker tries getting units off the board, defender stops em. units off the board are worth double pts.
i was the defender, and my opponent was rocking doc. he had poppa nurgle, khorne herald, letter horde, fiends, furies, small unit of horrors, tz herald, and 2x5 hounds. we were in another room too, with not so great lighting, so apologies for the photos.
i get first turn and shoot everything at poppa. scenario rules means
1st turn everyone gets a 4++ against shooting and magic. my opponents
plan was to put poppa and letters on one extreme flank, and run them off
the table. i deployed as centrally as i could, but in a nutshell,
couldnt get to them. i dont think i rolled hand, else i would have
monkeyd it.
so basically what happens is i get pelted with chaff, while his two super expensive units ran
down the corner off the board. i did monkey a particularly foul foot,
dont know how many times it went off - something of a motif this weekend
lol, more on that later - but it decimated the letters, despite their
mr1 and 5++, killing 2/3rds.
super frustrating game. not my opponents fault, he had a plan, played to the mission, and it worked.
i
was impressed and mystified by his poppa tho, who stopped for a quick
photo on his way off the board. when aksed where it was from, apparently
it had come off the base, and the owner discovered it was made from tin
foil and greenstuff. impressive. i thought i recognised the right hand
from an old metal dprince.
i kill chaff, but his points are all safely off the board.
this ended up being the
round that shirts off didnt do so well, greg got tabled trying to get
off the edge by helves, james fought chris penwardens double giant ong
to a draw, but nick stomped all kinds of beard and gromril vs a dwarf
army, leaving us with two loses, a draw and a win.
so despite the last game, not a bad day 1 result. 7w 1d and 4losses - 2 for greg, boo greg :p. but more importantly, we had fought the two teams that concerned us in singles, that we wouldnt have to fight as doubles. we were doing ok, but needed hampton to beat monash, and for us to win all the other games. wed all had a few looks around the armies that were left, and felt pretty confident for day two match ups.
given that hamptons doubles teams consisted of double woc - 4 hellcannons, 2 dprinces, 2 chims, etc - and chaos dwarves and woc/ogres, there was a reason we didnt want to face them in doubles lol.
also, heres a photo that dave graciously let me snap of his K'daii, a mcfarlane toy with a scratch built throne/toilet. i thought it was pretty mean
like sand through the hourglass, we're on to day two. shirts off warhammer! form unholy unions! *insert transformers noises* no surprises here, but it was ong & doc, and he & dwarves.
nick and i were up against a empire/vc team, containing your usual vamplord of doom!, and karl franz wielding ghal maraz. i would have loved to have read their fluff lol. no ethereal units or stanks, and only 1 cannon. - attention all nz gamers, cannons are scarce here? comped pretty hard apparently. i know, right?
they had 6 horrors, 25ish gg in bus, 40 skellies, zomb bunker, vlord, l4 in the bunker, and a baby vamp. empire had 12ish icknights, 5 regular knights, heavens l4, bsb, medium greatsword unit with priest, small handgunners, and a 4 piece quarter pack.
mission was battleline, but units of 5 or more in the 24" centre line were worth pts at the end of the game, and stubborn throughout. did we steal first turn? nick did.
are we castled in the corner? somewhat... thirster hides behind some impassable while fiend gets in the cannons grill. searing doom some of the smaller knight unit - hidden behind a hill, while divers kill a couple from the big unit. no foot
our opponents move up, with the crypt horrors having a bit of a slog ahead of them. chooks go for furies and overrun off the board. remaining 3 knights make a beeline for a lobba.
what happens with them remains out of shot, but they are held up for most of the game by spiders in the rear, losing two more till the last one is killed by the lobba hes trying to assassinate.
cannon kills a chariot. our opponents fail to cast comet, but raise zombies in front of right letters.
think ive missed a photo here, but i if a foot, halve the big knights, wounds a few ghouls, then in the next turn if it again, decimating the greatswords. no idea how many times it went off, but a lot. mangler goes through the raised zombies, as spiderboss goes into the flank. he kills the last, and overruns enough to get into depleted ghouls, stopping them from blocking letters.
chooks charge chariot on the left, and we're here:
chooks go through the chaffline, and into the waiting thirster. our opponents fail to cast comet, or are scrolled till t5. waaghtillery doesnt do too much yet.
now heres the tickling. both letter units are engaged, one with franz, other with last gswords + bsb. thirster is having a great time eating kfc and turns into a guo, so much so that he cant catch them when they flee. i if another foot, hoping i could try snipe the vlord
which i couldnt do, but i did kill 36 skellies. notice how theres not enough for a los?
yep. direct hit with a lobba, fails ward, 6 wounds. sheeeeeit. one left after the crumble lol
the letters also manage to killing blow literally everything. then, just to rub it in, the comet that they spent 5 turns unable to cast then failed to come down in t6. so thats a win to shirts off warhammer!
to say we had good luck in this game is a bit of an understatement. stealing first turn, if-ing foot 3 turns of 5 without losing a mage, gork alone knows how many times it came down in this game..
mm, good times. and our opponents were good sports about it too, thankfully.
the beards and skirts part of shirts off doubles pulled a nice win too, cant remember what they were fighting though. vc and something else i think.
last round, my brain is starting to melt, although i did know hampton had a pair of wins against monash, giving us the chance of a podium spot if we kept up the momentum.
the next mission however, was not to soothe my poor melting brain at all. dawn attack deployment, but watchtower AND blood and glory victory conditions. given we were fortitude 10 to our opponents 12, that was kinda out the question, so we just decided on the watchtower. problem is the savages wound up on the right flank. alright, plan b-loodletters.
im a bit shaky on what was in the bret list, but a big grail bus with various characters, no trebs, 3 pegs, some archers, couple more knight units, dwarves had an anvil, 20ish hammerers, couple smaller tunderers, 20 warriors, and 2 s4 grudgers. there were many runes about it, im sure. we go first
move the letters an inch away from the building, and surround them with chaff. we are desperate to get in there before the lances can connect. not much to report, shooting or magic wise. move up the thirster aggressively after both grudgers misfire for 2 turns on t1. to say matt had some appalling dice this game is an understatement. 3 1's in a row for the anvil, although it doesnt blow up
they charge all the chaff, but cant connect into letters as fiends dont die, and hammerers overrun an inch short. they are however parallel to the building, blocking us from entering.
after a brief mumble to nick, i if a hand, and move the letters into the building. both teams read the spell and there were no disputes about whether this is possible, until hampton wandered over in t5. regardless, i couldnt see it in the ong faq, but for the record, its a moot point, as you can see we could have simply moved to the other side of the building out of los and walked in next turn.
the centre knight unit is then halved by divers, and the thirster makes short work of a grudger. our other combat units reform and move around uselessly. you'll note the troll line, being launched out of a forest, ready to be jerks. i throw a chariot into the flank of the hammerers, and kill 2/3rds for no wounds in return
knights go into troll, and i underestimate the mobility of brets. all my useless reforming now put us in trouble, while at the bottom, the spiders fail to kill any mounted yeoman, but the mangler does.
the peg knights get through a chariot and 2 warmachines, the champ surviving on 1 wound. i send another troll into the knights, and spew em all to death. i then evacuate all my characters into the sorcs, and if another hand 16 inches elsewhere. see you later boys. nick understandibly mishears my mumbling and leaves his herald in the unit, but ah well, my bad. thirster is happy killing dwarves, but letters keep failing charges
they get in though, eventually. i hit a grudger with a lobba and leave it on a wound. i also fire at the anvil, hit, wound on 4, and yep, he fails the 2++. only do 2 wounds, but still. cheeky bugger. all the trolls move around to be jerks elsewhere, and a fiend takes out the grudger, before heading towards anvi.
yep, they kill a lobba, and overrun into boys. kill em and reform. get a troll in the mush, and thrister goes into other unit. gets challenged out till the game ends, but holds em up and doesnt die. trolls die, but there always more and the grail bus gets nowhere. dice down are called and its another win, thanks to the watchtower and 2 very important hands of gork.
skirts and beards get a big win against a double woc army and we're looking good.
so not bad we thought. we go sit down in the main hall, clap and yawn through the warmahordes prizegiving, and pull faces at hampton. then its fantasy prizegiving.
best sports; shirts off warhammer
1st place, vicc fantasy team 2013; shirts off warhammer.
thats right. witness the power of shirts off warhammer, creating a vortex in shirts off/time/vic fantasy continuum.
hampton and monash were the other podium spots, so well done to them both.
we took home a mighty swag too, ive never been to tourney that was that well run with that many people, fully catered, and spacious. thanks guys! and sheeit, thanks to the sponsors too, ive never seen that kind of prize support before, it was ridiculous. we are such good sports, that we got a best sports trophy that says 2nd best sports lol.
one of our prizes for 1st was a tables worth of custom made terrain from realm of legends. stoked! you read my blog, you know me and greg have fuck all terrain, what an awesome prize!
oh yeah, a hell of a warhammer weekend. restoring my w/h honor against dave, smashing hampton, killing so so many things with foot, sniping a vlord we couldnt fight, coming first and best sports, couldnt have imagined a better result.
so next time you move to a new spot, dont try to find the best warhammer club around, just get your nerd net out and make your own. ha-HA!
ok, thats enough of that, i promise. had to say it
coming up ive got a 2250pt 4 game one dayer this weekend, so as always, more soon.
and: take your shirt off
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