Gamesday Baltimore 2009 Banner Contest: Jawaballs For The Win!

My favorite part was the little nurgling posing with the banner after! This is why I love this game. :)

Warhammer 40k Gamesday Baltimore Footage

Here is the first of some videos showing Gamesday Baltimoer 2009 footage. Enjoy!

Jawa-Loot!

So, this year at Gamesday 2009 I scored some more Jawa-Loot to add to the collection. I got a cool trophy for winning the Banner Contest, and a sweet pin for being a finalist in the Golden Daemon competition! Those along with my score at Brothers Grim last week and I am having a good month! Pictured are the pin, trophy and golden squig from Brothers grim. (trophy for winning the entire tournament out of 36 guys.)

I love that loot! :)

Jawaballs

Battle Report: Blood Angels vs Imperial Guard Deep Strike army

I went to the Glen Burnie battle bunker after Gamesday to try to get a chance to take on any one who may want to come play. A reader was supposed to, but sadly Ryan fell asleep and failed to make it. But luckily there was a guy there willing to play! Doug had also traveled down to the area for Gamesday. He had an IG army made using the older codex and asked me if I cared that he use that one. I did not and we started rolling.

1750
Blood Angels standard Jawaballs mech list
Imperial Guard 2 basilisks, inquisitor and retinue, calidus assassin, and a LOT of deep striking infantry bristling with melta and plasma guns.

3 loot counters
12" deployment zone



My opponent had some Inquisitor fun that allowed him a +1 to win the die roll to go first. He used it and won the roll. In his triumph, he claimed the honor of going first. (Which I would have given to him any way.) My standard procedure for a deep strike army is to take second turn and reserve every thing. He deployed his 2 basilisks and inquisitor/retinue and I reserved it all much to his chagrin. The 3 loot counters were in easy range for my rhinos and troops to get to.

Turn 1:
Nothing happens. Every thing was in reserves.

Turn 2:
A good portion of his infantry deep strike into the center of the table. He then runs them into a large terrain piece in the center. Right around here he confidently announced that he has not lost a game in over 2 years...

On my turn, only Dante and a Baal come in. Again, my legendary ability to roll 1s. So, the pred lights up a squad causing them to fall back, and Dante jumps in to assault a squad, killing it.

Turn 3:
A lot more of his stuff came in. Dante found himself surrounded by at least a planets worth of Guardsmen. The Baal exploded to melta fire from some veterans, and Dante would go down in a hail of Las and Plas shots. The remaining troops that did not fire, ran to spread out and receive my charge. His assassin came in and simply deployed in the center. He also lost a squad that deep striked to close to Dante and then failed on the mishap table.

On my turn, about half of my remaining forces came in. I spread out my Rhinos to get into position to take objectives, and rammed my Death company and corbs right down the middle. They moved in and finished off some squads and the Baal preds cut down droves.

Turn 4:
All of his forces came in. He began to see my plans, and started to make moves to prevent them... It was at this point that he realized that unless he got extremely lucky, I was probably going to take the win. He shot up my Death Company, then using direct fire from this Basilisks, destroyed a rhino and a Baal. Thats ok, I have more. :)

On my turn, the rest of my stuff was in play and the game was on. I put my tanks in position to move fast on turn 5 and take objectives. I cut down a lot of guardsmen trying to hold objectives on my side and made shored up my troops to withstand Basilisk shots on turn 5 by spreading them out and arranging the rhinos to block plasma fire.

Turn 5:
He mad his move to claim objectives and took two. But it was too late. On my turn, I simply tank shocked the crap out of him, losing one rhino, but successfully rolling over and pushing away 4 squads from my path towards the objectives. One rhino, that I was using to hold an objective, stormed away 18" to actually claim another one, while an assault squad who lost their rhino moved over to claim the first. I used a rhino to skillfully push him off the last objective. At the end of turn 5, I held all three objectives and there was little he could do to stop it. I rolled the die to end the game... and of course... a 1 popped up. Game ends... Jawaballs wins!

He had a sick army. He was sort of sharking me... He knew what he had, and had a chance to see my army before agreeing to play. Every squad was decked out with maximum plasma and melta shots. He thought he was going to roll over me and had I deployed my army like he was expecting, I would have been run off the table turn 3. However, he was a perfect example of a good player being "Behind the 5th edition curve". He was trying to play 4th edition tactics with a 4th edition army. The game is NOT about overwhelming fire power, which he definitely had. A lot of players are slow to change with the times, and their old stand byes no longer work. This guy who had been crushing people with this army for 2 years finally came up against some one who thinks in the 3rd dimension (credit to Fritz for coining that term) and epic failed. I feel badly for him because his army was strong and nice looking. But now it is totally illegal. He is going to have to rebuild the entire thing according to the new codex, and hopefully got a taste of what it means to play 5th edition. Video to come soon.

Holy Emails Batman!

Hey Guys, I just got home from Gamesday and finally had a chance to start going through some emails and almost fell over when I was greeted with over 800 comments and questions. Thank you all for you support and questions but sadly I will not get to respond to them all. I will work my way through as many as I can, but if I do not answer them, it is probably because I already answered it in a different post or in my youtube video comments. I know, that means you will have to read through hundreds of comments, but I have found myself answering some of the same questions over and over and simply cant do that when I have 800 to dig through! I have 6 gigs of content to sort through from gamesday and will be posting battle reports and videos this week, so check back often for new stuff!

For those who are curious, I made final cut with my Honor Guard but not with my Predator. I got a nice little pin and hopefully will get pictures of my squad up on the GW site or in White Dwarf!

I also won Best Banner for my Blood Angels 2nd company banner. A cool little trophy and I will post that too.

The highlight of the weekend was going to the Glen Burnie battle bunker and playing a guy there. After the game began... he announced to me "Oh, by the way, I have not lost a game in two years." I simply snickered and thought to myself that he has never played Jawaballs... That batrep soon! :)

More to come. Jawaballs!

The Baltimore 2009 Gamesday is here.

And I am leaving tomorrow! I have finally finished... well... for now... my honor guard and Baal Pred. Now I can work on some other projects again.. finally! I will be posting up a lot of pics of them soon. I have no dillusions of my chances for victory, but I am proud of what I have done and am happy I managed to complete them. Once it loads, I will embed a youtube vid showing them off and that will have to hold you over for now.

In the future:

I have accepted my first commission! I am painting a Blood Angels army for a customer. It is upon this army that I will judge my painting commission prices thereafter.

I am working out a new Blood Angels build. It will have many similar elements to my current list, but will focus on a Land Raider Crusader and its passengers.

I am building a new Tau army.

I am continueing to work on my Imperial Guard and Iyanden Eldar armies.

How to Paint space marine and warhammer 40k or Warhammer FB! I will be doing several new video sets:
Tau Fire Warrior
Black Templar Neophyte
Iyanden Wraitguard
Iyanden Gardian
Harlequin
Detailing and finishing
Khorne Berzerker
Other Chaos
Daemons
Grey Knight

In no particular order...

Fritz and I are working on several ideas. Be on the watch for those as we intend to raise the production value of our stuff to new levels.

Important dates:

May 30th Battle For Salvation 40k tournament in White Plains NY. This is gonna be a good one. 40 guys will be playing and it was already maxed out over a month before the date. I suspect this will be one of the stiffest competitions of the year in the greater New York City area. Some of the best players around will be there!

June 30th, Brothers Grim. They have a tournament every other month. And I love going there. The guys there are great and the tournament is always fun. Dave, the guy who runs their tournaments, will be participating in the BFS tournament in may. Looking forward to getting you in front of my Baals man! :)

I will run my first Painting Conmpetition in July. I don't know just what I will do yet, but I can tell you it will be somehow Blood Angels related... so practice up your red! At any rate, the entries will have to be painted for the competition... sorry, no reaching into your box of models and pulling out some old dusty thing.

More Zombies! My little post on the Zombie Apocalypse was a huge hit. I will make that a regular series on my blog. A lot of guys sent me links or offered to give me that zombie book... Thanks for the tips and offers... but I have to say I want to wait on reading that. I have a lot of stuff in my head, and I want to put it to word before it gets influenced by some other authors work. I'm sure a lot of it will already be written in the book, but that is the fun in it! We will have to see how spot on my ramblings are to this guys book. So please, dont quote the book here. Feel free to offer up your own ideas though. I want to try to keep my writing as pure as possible. Look for more of those coming up in the next few days after Gamesday since I am now free from the Golden Daemo competition.

More Battle Reports! I intend to add greater production to my batreps. I have been kicking some serious butt lately and feel my Bloods deserve a lot more attention then I have been giving them.

Huge Success!!! My giveaway is a HUGE success. I want to thank and welcome all of my new subscribers. You guys are the reason I do this blog so I am glad you are here and hope most of you will stick around and become frequent readers. Bookmark me and come back often!

Ok, thats about it for now. Once the vid uploads, I will embed it here. Maybe I will do a post on Saturday night giving you a little Gamesday sneak peak. Enjoy!

Come meet Jawaballs and Fritz at Gamesday!

Thats right! Ever wanted to know what we look like? Want to see our tactics first hand? Want to look us in the eye and tell us you think we are full of poo? Now is your chance. Come meet us at gamesday! Fritz and I will be running a Club Table at Gamesday Baltimore. You will be able to come and challenge us to games, or ask any burning question you may have! Look for painting seminars, tactical presentations, and other cool stuff offered by Jawaballs and Fritz for 40k, and The Brothers Grim for WFB. Look for my Blood Angels banner and you will find us! We are looking forward to getting a chance to meet readers and enthusiasts and have a great day of 40k fun. Also, if you cannot make Gamesday but are still in the Baltimore area, Fritz and I will be at the Baltimore Battle Bunker on Sunday to take on all challengers. If you could not get some game time against us at Gamesday, come on out and throw down! Or challenge us both to a team up with a buddy. So there you go! Looking forward to seeing you all. Jawaballs