Tournament Report:

Tournament Report: Battleground Gaming

So I drove out to Massachusetts not long ago for a little 40k action!  On the reccomendation of Alex Fennel, I made the drive out to Battle Ground Games and Hobbies in Plainview MA for an 1850 tournament. The venue was not the easiest to find at first, it was sort of tucked away in a nondescript mini mall of sorts, but the store was surprising to walk into!  

Row after row of beautiful gaming tables took up most of the floor space. The terrain was top quality and the place was packed with guys ready to play! There were at least 40 in the tournament. I have been to GTs with less!  I didn't get a lot of content because my card was almost full but I did score a few pics and some videos I will get loaded up to youtube shortly.  

Simon Lean's Blood Angels (Sisters of Battle counts as)

Bill McFadden makes an appearance. Enjoying a tasty beverage.

Bill's Grey Knights. (I think)

On with the show.  First of all, painting was not a requirement to play which allows some weekend warriors to get in some action without having a painted army.  I personally would always prefer a mandatory painted army as I put a lot of effort into mine and would like to face opponents who at least make an attempt, plus it would cut down on some of the craziness since guys have to be committed to a list in order to paint it. Painted armies hopefully encourage at least a little bit higher level of playing, in my opinion for what it's worth.

One thing I can say though, is that none of my opponents had a problem with painting, in fact, I would say I played against some of the nicest armies in the room!

How did I do over all?  Terrible.  Here are some brief batreps, mostly because I don't want to relive the nightmare.

Game One:
I found myself up against one of the members of Team Bastard. Damn guys haunt me.  Jim and I first encountered them at Templecon last year, then landed against them at Nova and got spanked. Thus the name Team Bastard was coined. Let me say that it is a fond moniker. The guys are nothing but gentlemen and play hard, but nice armies.

This army was a nasty Demon army with Fateweaver, a few princes, about a dozen Blood Crushers, some fiends, and a few squads of Plague Bearers for troops.  I was in pretty good shape because the table was covered with little houses that could be only used as impassable terrain. Really pretty terrain that is impractical to play on.  I figured at least a couple of his nasty squads would scatter upon landing in wave one and mishap. No luck.

Oh, I brought my Nova Blood Angels. The Grey Knights, while assembled, were mostly just grey plastic, and I cannot allow myself to play them in a tournament.

So on turn one, he does not get his preferred choice of drops. Fateweaver is does not come down. He has an icon in a large Blood Crusher squad, and it lands in the middle of the table. He lands a prince on my right. The prince is in my land raider assault range, but the blood crushers are not because he manages to run them just out.  This pretty much sunk me.  I needed to kill that crusher squad to have a chance at winning, as then I could spread out and force mishaps on him.  Instead, I sent my termies after his prince and killed it.  My plan at this point after considering it for a few was to simply ignore his beef and kill his squishy troops. I sent my termis to the right to try to squash that side of the battle and sent an assault squad to support them. Mephiston and another RAS and scouts were on my left. I made a small feint with Mephiston, forcing him to drop the rest of his stuff in the middle of the table, then I skirted up the left side where with luck I could sweep through his plague bearers before he could get to me.

But then Mephiston started rolling perils. Four to be exact. Thats right. He did four wounds to himself. It was going to be that sort of day.

By about turn three, my opponent knew what was at stake, and knew what I was trying to do. There was little I could do and I was going to try to force a draw.  My termies slaughtered the prince on the right, but took heavy losses when his fiends countered. My assault squad then finished off the fiends clearing the right side of the table and leaving me with two troops choices there. Not bad position.

But the left side was where I was in trouble.  I killed two of his troops but not fast enough.  I was left with a decision. He had two left, and I had to reach one of them with both Meph and my RAS. It was extreme assault range at best. But I had to get the ras in there because I had to bubble wrap meph with them. My plan was to slaughter them, them wrap meph with the ras leaving only the troops to be assaulted by his crushers and princes. Then Meph would be free to jump over the impassable terrain and wipe out another troop squad. Then he would be able to chase down the last since the enemy nasties would not be able to reach meph over the impassable terrain, and the plague bearers would not be able to escape.

Well my ras got slaughtered by his counter, but meph was free. The vampire then jumped over and slaughtered the plagers. I had a chance! At this point I had only rolled three perils I think. Two snakes and a box car. On my next turn though, I went to assault his last plague squad and box carred again. No preferred enemy. I didn't kill any and the perils counted as a wound in close combat so I lost by one. Not being fearless, I rolled my dice, and broke... Mephiston ran.  He then got assaulted by some nasties and died.

Embarrassing.

This quick mopping up of Meph allowed him to send princes over to the right to deal with what I had left.  With my heavy hitters dead, it was just a matter of rolling dice. I still had a chance to force a draw, but the dice favored him this day and my small chances were unfruitful.

In the end, the game went to the demons in fantastic fashion. Full points for him, zero for me.  My opponent was a great gentleman and his army was beautiful.  Great stuff.

Game Two:
Orks... ugh.

I found myself against shooty orks. He had lobbas, ork cannons of some sort, lots of lootas, and a few truks. It should have been a fairly simple game for me. But I decided to get pretty.  It was table corner deployment, and most of his stuff was at it's closest possible range to me. I should have simply deployed likewise with all of mine, taken a round of shooting, then assaulted the crap out of him. I believe the game would have been over in three turns. Instead I reserve every thing except meph. Then I combat squad the first squad that came down for me, and only squad, on turn 2.  By the end of two, Meph and that entire squad was dead.  Next turn did not get much better. My termies were unable to assault much from my edge, and then the raider was killed.  Soon, every thing was dead.  Yup, that's right. Tabled. By shooty orks. Only goes to show, never underestimate orks.

I felt a little bad because my opponent, maybe in an attempt to make me feel better, was saying how he got lucky. But I responded by telling him that I played like a noob and that was my loss! There was no luck involved.  That was poor sports on my part, but I was mad at myself for playing like an idiot.  Sorry man!  I think his name was Nate.

Any way, game two was done, and I still had zero points.

Game Three:
Orks... again... UGH.

This time I was playing against Tim Nolan who has a very nicely painted Mech ork army.  I found a bit of nostalgia as most of his stuff was painted red using the same noob tutorials that I found when I started. He has not been in the game long but fancies himself a painter and wants to compete with the top tier painters.  We shared some nice convo about painting and had a great game.

Mephiston leads the charge against some nasty orks.

Oh, the game. It turned out to be a center field slug fest. How else could it be with BA vs Orks.  In the end, I won the last assault and could have probably massacred onto the objective for the win, but as punishment to myself I chose not to and to take the loss. Might as well take the shame of smoking boots!  But I ended up scoring ten points any way, and got second to last. I could not even lose right!

Yup, there you have it. Second to Last. So much for taking that army out of retirement!  In hindsight I should have just taken the objective and let Tim have the smokin boots.  :)

Lots of pictures that Tim took can be found HERE.

Tim has a new blog following his 40k adventures that you can find HERE. Take a look his stuff is beautiful. It will be fun to watch a budding great painter grow a career.  On his blog you can see the results of this tournament and more pics as well.  Nice game and nice work Tim!

So that wraps this one up.  I have some video coming up shortly that I will make another post on.

I ended up winning Best Appearance for the tournament which scored me 50 bucks of Store Credit. I will use it to buy paints next time I go.  As for the winners, well, all of the entry fees came back at the player pool. I think first got like 300 bucks!  Certainly worth traveling to Plainview for.

The staff was friendly and fun to talk to. I had a great time hanging out with the boys, and even signed an autograph!  I really do appreciate when guys thank me for inspiring them.  That is the greatest compliment of all.  It was humbling, both on the tables, and to be awarded best painted with so many great armies.  I wish I had pics of them all.  Your compliments are always welcome, and appreciated.

Plainview was just over two hours from my house in Fairfield CT.  That puts it at about 2:45 from White Plains NY.  It was run efficiently and professionally. They had us out the door on time, and I got home at 10pm on the dot.  Important stuff for you family guys!  I have been to other, closer tournaments, and not gotten home til after 1am. Talk about wife agro!  It is a small thing, but she appreciates being able to say good night to me and snuggle for a bit before bed.  And I appreciate a road trip tournament that allows me to do it.

Oh, last thing.  They had a nice sportsman scoring system. There was 25 maximum points per game.  You basicly had to answer a series of questions covering a bunch of categories. Against the best opponents, it was difficult to answer them all.  I appreciate the honest and accurate sportsman scoring that this provoked. Much better than the basic five points for not being a dick, causing a 38 out of 40 way tie for first being decided by painting tie breaker.  That just doesnt work, especially since even painting is not a good tie breaker as the guy who has the best painted army is winning BP and is not allowed to win BS.  Any way, you get the point. Nice job Battle Ground Games!

I will definitely come to the next one.

Jawaballs