Post-Britcon 2010

Afternoon all,

It's extremely quiet today, so I thought I'd use the time to post up my results and cover the aftermath of Britcon 2010. It's taken a fair bit of energy to actually get around to writing this up and I've not got my trusty notebook with me, so a lot of it will be from memory and what I can work out on the Results page of the BHGS website.

Round 1 - Space Wolves
So after a fair bit of family issues on the Friday night, combined with doing practically nothing all day, we headed off to the venue and got our gaming mode kicked in. I got paired up with a bloke called Tim who was sporting a Space Wolf army based heavily on Drop Pods and other Deep Striking Units.

The mission was Kill Points, with a twist that Elites and HQs were worth 2 Kill Points.

We played on a heavy jungle themed table, with lots of big LOS blocking objects. This was the first time I've played against Space Wolves with my Orks and I really struggled with killing off the units. I could weaken them, just not manage to finish it off.

Idiot Moment of the Game: Deff Rolla on a Dreadnaught and it getting blown up, whilst forgetting I did 2D6 if he attempts to Death or Glory.

All in all, was a good game and a really sound bloke to play against, just a rough game for the Orks. It ended up 13 - 9 on Kill Points, in favour of the Space Wolves.

Result: 0 Points*
* On reflection, the points may be incorrect since the first round was Umpire-less due to an emergency issue. I was happy to play it as this though, so were unable to clarify between results sheet standings and the rulespack standings.

Round 2 - Dark Eldar
I was REALLY looking forward to playing against the Dark Eldar, but unfortunately, I had mega problems on Saturday morning with my car. Ended up having to walk about 2 miles after dropping it off at the Garage before I could find the nearest source of public transport.

Thankfully, the guy I was due to play was really good about the situation and offered to call it a draw. With the frame of mind I was in, I was happy to get 0 points. It is a shame, since I can only ever remember playing against Dark Eldar once in what feels so long ago, it was a previous life.

Result: 16 Points.

Round 3 - Tyranids
So, after putting up with Angryman's Tyranid army every other week or so, I come up against a pretty similar looking list against one of the 5 Tyranid armies present at Britcon.

This list focused around Tyrant with Guard, Tervigons, Hive Guard, Doom, Trygon and Zoanthropes. So, the usual... We played a 5 Objective mission, with a massive Canal down the middle which split the board in 2, counting as Difficult Terrain, which immediately left me on the back foot.

In all, I just couldn't deal with the units coming in from reserve, on top of crossing over the Canal to get to the 3 objectives there. 4 Objectives held by the Tyranids, 1 they couldn't capture. I only managed to even hang on from being tabled from Turn 5, was because of some awesome LD rolling from a shoota Boyz squad beind harassed by the Doom.

Result: 0 Points

Round 4 - Imperial Guard
By this time, I'd slipped down the rankings away from the people who'd had a win and a loss and started playing some people who'd lost a few in a row. I was playing a guy called Richie, who had come down with the Space Wolf player from Game 1.

In his list he had a Valkyrie, Ogryns, Mortars and a few Leman Russes. Something a bit similar to my usual Imperial Guard army lists. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, but it was a really, really nicely painted force. Always something good to see on a Guard army.

The mission was 5 Objectives (again) but with a twist from the Battle Missions book, where buildings were rolled for to see if they were burning (dangerous terrain) or smoking (block LOS and +1 Cover save to units inside).

The Guard seemed to thunder on and shifted the Orks from holding most of the objectives, managing to whittle it down to the Guard holding 1 objective and the Orks holding 2. It was a really fun game, and glad we managed to get 7 turns of chaotic and ridiculous action in there.

Result: 20 points.

Game 5 - Slaanesh Daemons
I'd played against an extremely similar list on the Monday prior to Britcon. Keeper of Secrets, Herald on a Chariot, Herald on a Mount, Daemonettes, Fiends, big Seeker units, a Daemon Prince and 2 Soul Grinders.

The mission was a really interesting twist. For every unit destroyed by shooting (if you were within 18") you got a Slave token, along with if you WON an assault, plus a bonus one if you destroyed the Enemy. HQ units were worth D6 slave tokens.

I managed to pick off most units, thanks a lot to the Burna wagon going insane on Daemonette and Seeker units, but then slipped from a 32-0 winning position by sending Killa Kans into assault with a Soul Grinder. The Grinder kept doing 1 minor damage result on the Kans, meaning 1 Slave token. SO in all, I lost about 4 or 5 tokens just to this, before I could get anything near to help out.

Result: 24 Points.

Round 6 - Space Wolves (Wolf Harder!)
Considering I'd never played against Space Wolves with my Ork list, I ended up playing them twice within the space of a Weekend. This time the list was more heavy hitting than deep-striking orientated. It included dreaded Thundewolves (although really well painted), Wolf Guard in a Raider, 3 Grey Hunter Packs and a Long Fang missile launcher pack.

The mission was based off the Impacable Advance mission in the Battle Missions book. The twist being we played left to right on the board, so my footsloggers were having to a loooooong way to get to his home objective. Each unit was allowed to plant a flag, then move off and only other troops could remove that flag, with 3 objectives across the length of the middle of the board.

It was a really hard fought game, where I managed to forget you could Cap a Flag and then move on. It took the combined weight of a 20ish boy Slugga Mob (post-charge) and a charging Nob Biker unit with Warboss, to finally kill off the Thunderwolves, shifting them from the middle objective.

The Warbikers then zoomed off to destroy the Long Fangs holding my opponent's base, whilst any and all Ork infantry secured my home objective.

3 Points to me for capturing my opponents base, 1 point for holding my own, and 2 points to him for capturing the middle objective.

Result: 24 points.

Conclusion
9th Place overall. Not as good as I was expecting based on later year, but I got nilled twice, so it went pretty well and I didn't show up for a game. Behind Sanguinius by 4pts who had some really good results early on.

Again, it's made me need a break from playing Orks and 40k for a while, so I think I'll focus on building up my Squats and painting my Imperial Guard for the next month or so! Really enjoyed it (aside from the Car stress) and played some good, fun and action-packed games. I had more fun being in the bottom half of the table.

Top 6 was made up of Imperial Guard 1st and then Tyranid armies 2nd through 6th... so yeah... go figure. Either way, was good fun and it's made me think that maybe next year, I should actually think about a list, rather than go "That list did OK last year, let's do this, do that and leave it as it is!".

You can find the full results table HERE

Well done to those who won, and roll on Britcon 2011!

SB.