The North Wexford Gamers run an annual 40k (and Fantasy) tournament in Gorey, but with a twist.  It’s a fully ranking tournament, but they move away from the standard Irish tournament format by pushing the points limit up to 2000, and allowing Forgeworld units (but not superheavies, gargantuans, strength D or the other Apocalypse scale stuff).

UPDATE: Photos from the tournament organiser available here

It messes with the usual meta, and you can’t rely on your normal approach.  The armies are bigger, and there’s a bunch of stuff that you’ve never seen before, for example a Kroot Mercenary Army,

Defenders of Vraks,

and a bunch of other cool stuff:

The atmosphere was great, and I think the unorthodox format lends itself to a more lighthearted approach to the games.  Rules arguments were generally settled in mere seconds with both parties jumping to be the bigger man (usually resulting in a 4+ roll to resolve things).

My list didn’t contain any funky forgeworld stuff (I don’t own any!), and was as follows:

ARMY: Chaos Marines
HQ1: Daemon Prince Mark of Slaanesh Wings Lash of Submission [155 Pts]
Elite1: 3 terminators 3x Combi-melta [105 Pts] in Transport 1
Elite2: 3 terminators 3x Combi-plasma [105 Pts] in Transport 2
Troop1: 5 chaos marines, Icon of chaos glory, melta gun [95 Pts]
Troop2: 10 Plague marines, personal icon, 2 flamers, champion, power fist [285 Pts]
Troop3: 5 chaos marines, Icon of Chaos Glory, melta gun [95 Pts] in Transport 3
Heavy1: 3 Obliterators [225 Pts]
Heavy2: 3 Obliterators [225 Pts]
Heavy3: 3 Obliterators [225 Pts]
Transport1 : Landraider, dozer blade [225 Pts] Carries Elite1
Transport2 : Landraider, dozer blade [225 Pts] Carries Elite2
Transport3 : Rhino [35 Pts] Carries Troop3
[2000pts]

ROUND 1

MISSION KillPoints, Spearhead

My first opponent was John O’Connor, who was running a beautiful Raven Guard army.

John was just returning to 40k after a bit of a hiatus, we had a great game, but the super shooty nature of my list was the undoing of his more balanced force.

RESULT 18-2 WIN

ROUND 2

MISSION Capture and Control, Dawn of War

Second opponent was Adam O’Connor, who was running a Death Guard army, with a Forgeworld Blight Drone and Plague Hulk.

After some aggressive deepstriking I thought I had the jump on Adam, but after a rake of 5+ invulnerable saves it was clear that Adam thought otherwise.  I hadn’t scratched him and had left a bunch of juicy targets right in his front garden.  I took some losses, nevertheless I pushed hard for his objective but couldn’t quite make it through his defenses by game end.

RESULT 10-10 DRAW

ROUND 3

MISSION 3 objectives, Pitch Battle

Third opponent was Ger O’Brien, who was running a Space Wolf army, with a Forgeworld Caestus Assault Ram.  Terrifying list – in particular a Caestus full of assault terminators with meltas; and a drop pod with Logan, Arjac, and multimelta longfangs (relentless thanks to Logan).  I tried all reserving to avoid my landraiders  (and other valuables) getting chewed up by the podfangs, but no such luck.

I thought the oblits would be the saving grace as they dropped on his objectives.  But after 6 plasma cannon shots all I did was a gets hot wound on an oblit, and the final plasma blast scattered onto my terminators.  So 450 points of oblits dropped in and did no wounds to my opponent, and did two wounds to my own army… blerg.  I took my kicking for several turns, but just managed to crawl some troops onto objectives to get the draw.

RESULT 8-12 DRAW

ROUND 4

MISSION Capture and Control, Pitched Battle

Fourth up was Eoin O’Mahony, who was running a Necron army.  Eoin had been shocked by how well his Necrons (and also John Stowe’s Necrons) had been doing in the tournament.

Eoin goes first, and one shots a LandRaider with his Monolith then glances all the weapons off the second (and stunned it for good measure).  My oblits try to lascannon the Deceiver to death, but only manage to do one wound – so FOUR left (cheesy broken Necrons!).

(incidentally, if you look closely below, you’ll see the Warhammer Tower that he had to use to proxy a monolith (picture is from a later game))

The shooting continues like this, but I keep throwing stuff at his objectives so he can’t put all his efforts into chasing mine.  My Daemon Prince just about makes it to the Necron lines (1 wound left) and manages to assault and run down a full squad of necrons.  But Eoin still has one left on his objective, and a squad with his lord on my objective.  Nurgle to the rescue, bottom of turn 7 my plague marines assault the necrons on my objective, and they break and get run down!  Clawed back a draw from what looked like imminent defeat.

RESULT 10-10 DRAW

ROUND 5

MISSION Killpoints, Dawn of War

Final Opponent was Colin Murray who had a 9 Oblit Chaos list quite similar to my own.  I won the roll for first turn, and having played several ‘mirror matches’ before, I knew that was a big advantage for me.  The game went extremely quickly, I had all my shooty stuff coming on turn 1, Colin reserved all his tough stuff.  His luck was average to poor, and mine was average to good, and combined with his forces coming in piecemeal meant it was a tough slog for Colin.  I’d been in that exact position before, and I knew it was not fun – but Colin was good humoured about it, and was a pleasure to play against.

RESULT 17-3 WIN

OVERALL RESULT: Two wins and three draws gets 3rd place for me.  Jan Karnowski comes in first with his (216) Orkses,

and second place for Paul Quigley and his Dark Eldar

More pictures are up on the WarHamSandwich Facebook page

So here it is, the last tournament of the Irish season.

Retcon 2011 will set the final ranking positions of Ireland’s Warhammer 40,000 players, and will be the decider in who makes the national team for the ETC. It’s an open field, so I expect some hard fought battles.

The only stats I’ll be running in this post are the game results from round to round. I’ll be updating this post on the fly, thanks to my shiny new iPhone.

Round One:
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Mission: Seize Ground. 5 objectives, 4 to be placed in the centre of each table quarter and one in the very centre of the table

RESULT: 17-3 victory vs Eric Duffy and his Imperial Guard

Round Two:
Deployment: Spearhead
Mission: Killpoints

RESULT: 16-4 victory vs Pearce Condren and his Blood Angels

Round Three:
Deployment: Dawn of War
Mission: Seize Ground (5 objectives)

RESULT: 5-15 loss vs John Stowe and his Space Wolves

Round Four:
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Mission: Capture and Control

RESULT: 17-3 victory vs Shane porter and his Black Templars

Round Five:
Deployment: Spearhead
Mission: Seize Ground. (3 Objectives)

RESULT: 12-8 draw vs Michael Tangney and his Dark Eldar

Final result: 4th place (out of 33 players)