Saturday 26 May 2018

Day 2 - Game 5 and Results - Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament Feb 2018 - Part 4

Sunday - Day 2 - Game 5
During dinner all we could do was sit in silence as we couldn't believe what had just happened in Game 4!! Now it really didn't matter whether we won or lost the last game as the one we just played had been so good!!

We slowly picked ourselves up and wondered if we could still do it though. Could we still win the tournament?

We were slightly delayed in starting our final game as our army was in the cabinets for best painted army and being voted on which didn't help as we were rushing around getting it sorted. Finally we realised we were on Table 14 against a team called 'Twelve inch assault' - so in the top 28 players - not bad!

Army
We found our opponents waiting for us and their army was Salamanders and Ultramarines. We introduced ourselves and had a very lukewarm reception - I'm not sure if this was because we were delayed in getting our army back or whether they were just tired or what but let's just say that the conversation didn't flow. Also when we asked about using the dice app it was a straight refusal with a hint of disgust for suggesting it - fair enough but the game was going to be a lot slower and we had already started late.

Looking at their army they had lots and lots of missiles from elite marines and tanks. They had a grav tank that had loads of missiles, 2 Lascannons and a Gatling Cannon, a Sicarian and a squad of Intercessors that had 39 flamer shots autohitting plus loads of missiles too!
In fact I would hazard a guess to say that once in range they would have more shooting than us. However, we looked at the army and both thought that we had the edge in this game as we outranged their guns and so could possibly do enough damage before they got close. A lot was also going to depend on who got the first turn as both armies could really cripple each other...

Mission
The mission rolled was Resupply Drop
This mission involved 6 objectives of which after the 3rd turn 4 randomly get taken off the table.
Rich and I both quite like this mission as it means that the game is effectively a shooting match with a last minute run for the two objectives - exactly how we like to play!!


Game Highlights
I have to say that we were really looking forward to this game - especially after the last one but unfortunately any fun that could be had got sucked out of this game completely by our opponents. There was no chatting, no smiling or joking and no interaction of any sort no matter how hard we tried. One guy just stood quietly while the other sat quietly for the whole game and both generally made the game quite uncomfortable. Because of this I never really took any pictures and there were very few highlights. In fact there was, in my opinion, quite a low light as the guy who was sitting down blatantly cheated at one point which I called him out on. I'll bullet point the important parts of the game...

- We both deployed in corners keeping as much distance between us as possible and keeping all objectives next to our deployment zones ready for when they disappear.
The Marines deployment

The Feth deployed

The view from the top of the tower
- 'The Fool' - see my last post - rolled off for who went first and lost AGAIN!!! This meant that we got absolutely destroyed on the first turn - losing a Manticore, lots of troops, a punisher and most of our Lascannons. Ouch! Typically on our first turn we also hit absolutely nothing - the manticores rolled really badly. This put us right under pressure from the off and we were always playing catch up.

- On turn 3 we rolled for objectives and luckily the one left was under a manticore so at least we should be able to hold that. They had already got First blood and would probably get at least one of our warlords so we knew we had to contest or take their objective which was out in front of their deployment zone so we had a slim chance.

- On turn 3 we were just holding them off on our objective and we managed to clear their objective by dropping our Scions in all around it. They hadn't realised that we had the Scions left still which caused a mass panic! They were getting quite cocky before this happened as they were in the process of destroying us and got lazy about defending their own objective - I have to say that this gave us a small amount of satisfaction. We knew that the Scions would get a hammering but hopefully some of them would be left to threaten the objective.

- On turn 4 they managed to just wipe out both squads of scions but they still had no-one on the objective and so we used our orders to run all of our infantry models that were left on the table (we really didn't have much left at this point) out into the middle of the board. Again they couldn't believe that we might still be able to turn the game against them and were really panicking. From my point of view I couldn't see us pulling it off as we just had very few models left but you never know what the dice might bring. At the end of turn 4 we did hold both objectives and they were really hurrying us as there was only about 10 minutes left. Well if they would have let us use the dice app...

- We could have really slow played at this point but that's not what we do so we said that we'd probably get 2 more turns in the 10 mins left as there really wasn't a lot for us to do. Effectively this would lose us the game but at least they stopped bothering us about time!

- In their turn 5 they managed to clear our infantry and in return we managed to kill the squad of marines that had retaken their objective which, bizarrely still left us hanging on...

- Then in turn 6 was the moment of cheating. In reaching the objective to take it and win the game a space marine squad would need to move and then run a certain amount (I think it was probably about 3") to get in range of it. With a command re-roll it shouldn't be an issue. However, they were on top of a building and had to move down off it and then on to the objective. The guy who was sat down 'loosely' measured 6" in a straight line from the top of the building rather than across and down (an easy mistake) but then, checking if I was looking, moved them way past where he had measured to within range of the objective for about an 11" move!!!
Of course I was looking and, politely, called him out on it by asking how far his model could move and then measuring it for him. He then rolled for the run move, failed it and then command re-rolled to make it. This was fine with me as I expected this to happen but the whole extra movement thing was out of order - he was going to win anyway so why cheat?!

Game Summary
It was a shame that our last game ended up being a fairly un-enjoyable game to finish such a fantastic tournament. Still I blame 'the fool' for our eventual loss because he yet again lost the roll off to go first and ended our dreams of winning the tournament...ha ha!!

'Twelve inch assault' finished the tournament with 3 wins a loss and a draw and came in 56th out of 85 in the tournament.


Tournament Summary
So we finished with 3 wins out of 5 in the end, one of which we probably would have won if we had played to time and one which we realistically never had a chance of turning around from a loss. On the flip side, out of our three wins we won two on the last dice roll of the game!!

I have to say that 8th edition 40k is totally epic and literally anything can happen no matter what the situation. The games hall, tables, terrain and the organisation of the event with presentations, rules, introduction and food were all brilliant too and everything ran to time perfectly. It has to be said that you may think that it's a fairly expensive event but it runs like clockwork and is well worth the money.

Results
So how did we do? We went to win the tournament and seriously thought we could even though we had barely played our army because we knew that we could still pick up points from, not only winning games but favourite army votes and best painted votes too. We knew we would lose at least one game but we'd also pick up a few of the extra points as well.

We came in 5th in the end!!

This was fantastic!! We literally couldn't believe it and when we looked at the final scoreboard we only finished 3 tournament points behind the eventual winners!! If only we had played to time on the 3rd game and won - we'd have won the whole tournament!
So although we only won 3/5 games we picked up extra points from 3/5 favourite game votes and 5/5 favourite army votes (which we were most proud of).
Also we managed 3/10 slay the warlord points, 2/5 linebreaker points and 2/5 first blood points (Thanks 'fool' for making us go second nearly every game!!).

All in all a fantastic weekend where we met loads of people, played some amazing games and, of course, spent the whole weekend at Warhammer World!!!

There will be another 2 shorter posts showcasing the best painted army competition and some of my favourite 'scenes' from the Warhammer World museum. Look out for these soon...

James

fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads

No comments:

Post a Comment