Well, I have returned to the much friendlier climate of
California and begun to thaw out (not to mention sober up). It is time to put thoughts to computer
screen, or whatever. I thought I would
start with general impressions/rundown of the tournament, following with a
brief description of each game and then close with the assessment of the army
itself.
The Tournament
My traveling companions for the weekend were Ld2’s Tony, Ed
and Justin along with Fred of West Coast Hammertime fame and Josh of
G&W. Que and his wife would join us
at the venue and fly under the Ld2 colors for the event. We landed in Milwaukee Thursday night and
immediately started bar hopping in subzero weather (see hinge’s Ramblings
#1). Breakfast Friday morning at Café
Benelux, I highly recommend btw (see Hinge’s Ramblings #2), pile into the
suburban and head north to Wau Paca and the venue.
All I can say about this tournament is holy crap is it
fun. It has to be up there as the best
time at a tournament I have ever attended.
Que owed me Friday nights bar ta due to losing a bet on the Niner-Green
Bay game and I was determined to rack it up.
The hard part is at $7 a 32 ounce microbrew that can be tough to
do. The shenanigans both Friday and
Saturday night were off the hook. Some
of my favorite moments were pool basketball with the Skull Bros Boys and Tomlin
of Black Sun Podcast called me the “Will Ferrell of the Warhammer World”
 |
| We are streaking in the Quad! smoking outside+shirtless+two fisting 32 ounce beers+Polar Vortex=Frost Bitten Nipples |
The Games
Round 1-Nabrolean (WoC)-
Dawn Attack
L4 of Tzzeetch on Disc w/ 3++, unkillable BSB on Demonic
mount, L1 of fire on Demonic mount, 2 units of hounds, 2 units of fast cav, 2
chariots, gorebeast, warshrine, and 4 skull crushers. Fast and mean.
The Skull Bros showed up to the Parade of Banners all
wearing Luchdore masks with Mike wearing a complete Red, White, and Blue
outfit. It was awesome and I even got a
pic of Mike.
 |
| Mike aka Nabrolean with an unidentified Skull Bros |
The scenario was Dawn Attack. Random deployment was a bit of a pain for me
but not that bad. I reach across the
table to shake Mike’s hand when RuinsBruins smashes me in the back of the head
with a chair, turning Mike picks up his chair and does the same. Sheesh, these Skull Bros are taking the
wrestling thing way too far. Well, if I
am one thing if not a veteran tournament player and I learned a lesson from a
wily southern gentlemen from Arkansas many years ago, always bringing a sack
full of doorknobs to a GT! Head butting
RuinsBruins to create some space, I reach under the table for the sack and
deliver a vicious blow to Mike, sending him flying. To my surprise, he not only gets up but has a
sack of door knobs as well! We stand there exchanging
blows for two hours until Roeder and Broeska tackle me. Just as I am about to extricate myself, Bruins regains consciousness and pile's on, allowing Mike to “count” up the
score and he declares himself the winner, but feels generous and allows it to be a
narrow victory. They then turn in the
results and declare it cannot be changed before letting me up.
All kidding aside, it was an awesome game characterized by
some wild dice rolling on both our parts and super clean play. Mike made zero mistakes while I made a couple
of small ones that Mike capitalized. He
would have been my favorite opponent except tourney rules do not allow it for
grudge matches. I look forward to a
rematch someday. Mike would go on to
smash all before him to take a second consecutive Paca Best Overall.
Round 2- Dennis (WoC) – Meeting engagement.
Nurgle DP of Death, BSB, 2 units of hounds, 2 big blocks of
Nurgle Warriors, big block of Nurgle knights, amazing paint!
I deployed deep.
Scenario rules allowed me to deploy one of his units and I choose one of
the warrior blocks and put as far away as possible. This had the effect that each unit was coming
at me one at a time. I had a scary
moment with P sun but was able to scroll it before taking the DP off. After that, smash each unit in detail for a
nice win to salve my bruised ego.
Round 3- Grant (woC) – Blood and Glory (hinge Ramblings #3)
Khorne DP of flying destruction, Khorne BSB on demonic
mount, throgg, 3 units of forsaken, chariot, fast cav unit, 2 big blocks of
khorne ogres.
I apologize to Grant for my awful singing. By scenario rules, you could get a boost to
spells by singing. My 4 brothers all
have musical talent with 2 being professional’s, I cannot carry a tune! What the hell.
Grant pushes forward.
I use chaff to break up his lines.
Artillery remains el fuego and takes the DP off on the first turn. The squigs hold up the BSB and Throgg long
enough for my artillery to take out the fast cav and the Boyz to hunt down one
of the Ogre blocks and break Grant’s fortitude.
Super fun game with plenty of drinking and bad song selection. Grant got my favorite opponent.
Round 4-Chris-Dark Elves, Battle Line
Helbron on Cauldron, Death Hag BSB on Cauldron, L2 of death,
2 big blocks of Witch Elves, Big Block of Sisters 5 shades and 5 warlocks.
 |
| While memorized by boobies, these bitches will cut your balls off with power tools! |
Fortunately there is a river between us that
would significantly slow down Chris. I
use my artillery to quickly take out the Warlock and Shades so I can grab
dominance in the movement phase. I stop
Purple sun then ‘eadbutt the L2 into the next state, grabbing magic
dominance. Then it is hammering the
Sisters until they are gone while frenzy baiting the witch elves. I have a nice little victory wrapped up with
the bonus objective in hand when my night goblins fail animosity and charge the
rear of Helebron’s unit, who had been turned completely away from my battle
line. This allows her to turn around and
come back at my lines. While the witches
were severely depleted at this point and I could have taken the unit, I did not
want to risk disaster since I knew I had the victory in hand. I pull
the fast cav unit that was holding the objective back and double flee Helebron's
charge figuring they could rally and with 18” march grab the objective back. I of course fail to rally the unit. Ugh.
With that said, always take the win.
Round 5 Robert-OK-Battleline
Slaughter Master, BSB, Massively huge Irongut block, 4
mournfang, 3 scouting maneaters, 2 sabres, and an Ironblaster.
Tough list but one I knew I could grab the movement phase from. I take the sabres down quick, pull the
mournfang over fanatics/mangler and clean them up with a troll and chariot, the
squig herd eats the Maneaters. My
opponent ends up sucking his Slaughter Master down a rabbit hole and I immediately
get Foot off to smash up the Ironguts. I
then send in the Boyz who demolish the unit (with the help of ‘ere we go),
break it and run it down for the victory.
Of the 5 games, this is the only one magic dominated for me.
So 4-1 and enough soft scores to get me a 4th
place finish, a nice improvement from last year’s 9th. Paca was a blast and is now in my never miss category.
The army performed well.
With 8 units worth less than 70 points and highly mobile, I really out chaffed
my opponents and was able to pick every combat except a couple against
Mike. I played a much more castling game
then is my usual style this tournament.
I think this was forced on me by my opponents usually being much faster than
me. So it was castle the main units, spray
the chaff out, smash with artillery then come out swinging.
Magic was a disappointment and I really missed the L2
Gobbo. I felt there was really only one
spell to cast each turn, either Foot or ‘ere we go, leading to more of a six
dice monkey magic phase. It was useful
in taking out the L2 on Round 4 and did excellent work against the Ogres, but
was non-existent the other three games.
Black Orc General. I
was worried about this guy but he was a beast in combat. Mostly he went double choppas rather than
great weapon. He smashed a Gorebeast
Chariot in a single round (with a little help) and was generally awe inspiring. The Crown of Command was a total waste since
I could really determine what combats I was getting him in. I would have also been better served take the
standard of discipline since several failed leadership 9 rolls cost me throughout
the tournament. On the other hand, the
Razor Standard gave me confidence to go hunt down WoC heavy armor.
Artillery. Just awesome. Doom divers really just kick ass. It was the star of the tourney.
Well, up next is the US Masters and I will get my list up soon.
Late,
Hinge
Hinge's Ramblings #1
The cold slamming into us as we stepped out of the airport would be the start an endless stream of Hoth/Empire Strikes Back jokes. 941 by my count.
Hinge's Ramblings #2
Turns out every dish in Wisconsin is served with bacon on/in/around/or as a side. So delicious.
Hinge's Ramblings #3
Yeah, yeah. Three WoC in a row. I was starting to wonder if they play anything else in the mid west.
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