WESTMAN GAMING EXPO TEAM TOURNAMENT

Another tournament in the bag, this one being the first annual Westman Gaming Expo Warhammer 40K Doubles Tournament.  It took place at the Keystone Centre in Brandon and they had 13 teams enter.

Before we get into the games and such, I want to talk about the facilities.  We had a ridiculous amount of space.  Not once did I feel crowded or felt like I was crowding someone else.  This is particularly awesome in events like this where you have 4 players around a 6x4 table with army trays and books all over the place.  They had more than enough tables set up to accommodate for at least 5 MORE teams and more than enough terrain per table as you will see in the pics.

Supplier of terrain and prizes

This club is going places, and I can see them putting on some pretty big tournaments in the future.  Also, the entry fee was $10 per player.  Yeah, only $10, that is a pretty damn good price for a day of gaming.  Finally, they had a nearby pizzeria provide order forms for pizzas.  The pizzas showed up a little late so I did have to eat during my second game, but I didn't have to go anywhere or do anything other than check 2 boxes.  It was $20 for a 13" pizza and a canned drink, which is not a bad price.

Ok, enough of that, let get to our armies.  I was playing Death Guard and having never played a Poxwalker farm before, I thought a tournament was the perfect place to practice.  I had...

Daemon Prince with Supporating Plate
Typhus
20 Cultists
20 Cultists
10 Poxwalkers
10 Poxwalkers
Tallyman
Bloat Drone with flesh mower
Bloat Drone with flesh mower
35 extra Poxwalkers

I think in the future, I will take one unit of 20 poxwalkers instead of 2 units of 10.  Trying to find a spot where both units of poxwalkers are in range of both units of cultists was starting to get tricky.  I will also use this as a focus in larger games.  While my opponent is focused on making sure the horde doesn't develop the rest of my army can move up and blight grenade the shit out of him.


My team mate, Garth, has an obsession with terminators so he brought his Deathwing army...

Belial
5 Terminators assault cannon
5 Terminators assault cannon
5 Terminators plasma cannon
5 Terminators plasma cannon

So, there are a couple things wrong with Garth's list that I didn't notice until after we played with it a couple times, and this is partially my fault because we discussed his list at length before making the final decision.  We should have traded Belial for a Master in Terminator armour, then dropped the plasma cannons and taken the missile racks the terminators can take instead.  OR, again traded Belial for a Master, then taken one 10 man terminator squad with 2 plasma cannons, then we could have combat squadded them and put both plasma cannons in the same unit to take advantage of Weapons of the Dark age.  Belial was good for his re-rolls, but re-rolling those 2's would not have made much of difference if we had better weapon options while still re-rolling 1's.  Also, heavy weapons on terminators suck, especially plasma cannons, being able to put multiple of them in one unit is a good idea so it can stay still while rest can move and punch.  Hind sight is 20-20.

The tournament used the standard Maelstrom mission(draw cards til you have 3) as the primary, with a few changes.  Faction specific cards were not used, they just revered to the standard ones, card 66 was removed, and any D3 was changed to 2, and D6 was changed to 3.  Deployment was a bit strange too, each player deployed a unit per team.  So if we deployed first, both me and my team mate would deploy a unit, then each of the other players would deploy a unit.  The deployment zones and secondary changed each game, and I will discuss those, but the tertiaries all stayed the same.  First strike, which each team could score, slay the warlord, and line breaker.  Each player had a warlord, so you could actually score that one twice per game and each player could score line breaker for 2 points.  The primary was worth 5, the secondary 3, and each tertiary 1 for a max possible score of 13.

GAME 1

This game used the Dawn of War deployment and the secondary mission was to accumulate points equal to the Power Level of each unit you had in the enemies deployment zone at the end of each turn.

Our opponents, I have forgotten their names, were playing Eldar and Thousand Sons.  These guys were NEW, this was their first tournament, and they did not know the rules very well.  They explained that right up front and I totally understood, you don't get better unless you play more.  They were really nice guys, and I hope they leaned a lot from our game and enjoyed the rest of the event.

The Eldar list was Wraith heavy with 2 units of Wratihguard and a unit of Wraith blades with axes.  He also had 2 Farseers, one on a bike(his warlord) and the other with a relic that was basically a jump pack, he also had a Waveserpent that he put one of the unit of Wraithguard in.

The Thousand Sons player had a Daemon Prince, a Sorcerer in terminator armour, a small unit of Rubrics with flamers, a unit of Tzangor, a unit of cultists, 2 unit of disc Tznagors, a Helbrute with missile launcher and plasma cannon, and a Heldrake.

This game really went exactly how it was supposed to go on our end.  Like I said, our opponents were new, so they did not know about the Poxwalker farm and proceed to kill a ton of the cultists growing the mob.  I slowly ambled forward and my Prince and Drones took cover from a large piece of terrain in the middle of the table.

Turn 2 is when Garth brought in his army dropping the whole thing right in the middle of the table, he was able to shoot the Warlord Farseer off the table and assault and kill the Rubrics getting into their deployment zone.

The Heldrake came out to play and burned off a wound from a Drone, but failed a pretty easy charge to get stuck on top of the central coffee can.  Their Prince jumped on the terminators, but thanks to some luck a couple managed to survive the onslaught.  Things are pretty even right now in the primary department, and we jumped way ahead on the secondary with those terminators surviving.

This is the turn that breaks the bank, my Drones jump up and smack the Heldrake out of the sky while my Prince jumps up and beats down his prince.  Garth assaults the other Farseer and the Wraithguard while Typhus turns around and deals 9 wounds to the Sorcerer who dropped down in our deployment zone and assaulted the straggling unit of poxwalkers.  We scored a bunch of points and denied them a couple putting us way up in the primary as well as getting us the other warlord kill and double line breaker.

That's pretty much how the game ends, unfortunately we only got in 3 turns, despite turn 1 going by really quick due to Garth not bringing in his army.  But once things got on the table there were a ton of questions and lots to explain which really dragged out turn 2.  The end score was 12-0 for us.

GAME 2

This one was Vanguard deployment and the secondary was just to hold the objectives at the end of the game.  We played against "Blood Angel" Mike and his son Mitchel.  I have played Mike before and have seen him at many tournaments.  He is a super nice guy and he has definitely rubbed off on his son.

Mike's list was something like this...

Priest

4 Golden boys

Golden boy with banner

Dreadnought

5 Scouts with sniper rifles

Stormraven

While Mitchel took...

Tyrant with wings and scything talons

Broodlord

3 Venomthropes

15ish Genestealers

2 x 20 gaunts with guns.

Big tentacle creepy monster thing.  Not sure what it was called, but I couldn't kill it which cost us the game...spoiler alert.

Our deployment was pretty much the same as last time, Garth put all this stuff in reserve and I deployed in a ball in the middle.  Mike's whole army was in his Stormraven, except for a unit of scouts who took an objective just off to my left.

Garth brought all his stuff in turn 1 this time, right in the face of the Stormraven full of super Killy blood angels.  He shot the 2 unit of Gaunts to bits with his bolters while his heavier guns went into the Stormraven not doing much.  I moved the Prince and Drones up toward the Scouts looking to get a charge on them.  I was able to snipe off the scouts and not have to charge them, leaving me pretty well covered behind a hill.

So, if you can see Belial there, on the rock with his line of terminators in front of him, you will notice that his "O-Line" is not doing it's job and Belial gets sacked, hard.

This is what it felt like...

This is what it looked like

Belial took 4 melta-pistols to the face and then the terminators got assaulted.  That is pretty much what happened to the angels portion of both armies for the rest of the battle.  As for the Tyranids, the Genestealers rushed forward to get turned into zombies and the Tyrant dropped in to get charged and cut up by the Prince and Drones.

The game came to an end with Them managing to scoop a couple critical points on the last turn and taking the win.  I was unable to kill the big tentacle thing with a Drone and the Prince, which felt a little disappointing since it was half dead already, but that would have tied the primary and given us the overall win.  Unfortunately it ended 5-8 for them.

GAME 3

For our final game we played some Chaos soup, Death Guard and Thousand Sons.

The Death Guard list looked like this:

Prince with Supporating Plate
Chaos Lord
Contemptor dread with double C-beamers
2 Plagueburst Crawler
Predator with autocannon - lascannons
20 Poxwalkers

Thousand Sons:
Prince with 3++
Prince
2 x 10 Tzangors
10 Rubrics
3 Flamers which he summoned in.

We deployed in the typical fashion, my stuff in a ball and Garth's not on the table.  They deployed with the Nurgle stuff int he backfield and the Tsons stuff in the forefront looking to push forward.

These guys knew that the Poxwalkers were the main target so they shot them up right away.  They managed to do a bunch of damage to one unit and wipe one of the Cultist squads before I could get the stratagems up since they got first turn.  W responded by wiping out their big squad of walkers when Garth's stuff came in all along the left side of the table.

My army and the Tsons army converged in the middle with the Defiler leading the way, charging into the Drones.  It gets blown up, which takes out a Drone, which also blows up, after it kills another Drone.  Mortal wounds were flying all over the place.

Points are getting scored on both sides and it is at this point I set up a blitz.  We drew Defend Objective 1, which is right in the middle of the table under the floating grey mountain.  I move up my remaining poxwalkers to secure it, but I assault the Defiler with my cultists and move one model to within 3" of the Objective.  They focus all their firepower on the poxwalkers, then assault them with the 2 Tsons Princes and wipe them out, but the cultists were untouched and hold the objective for 2 points.  This is what ties the primary objective for us.

The real kicker comes at the end of turn 3 when the "comet" arrives.  If you have played the Open War card mission you may know this.  The secondary objective arrives on the table at the end of turn 3, teams roll off and the winner rolls a D6 and places the objective in a location according to the picture on the card.  Basically, 1-4 it's placed in the centre of one of the table quarters, 5-6 it's placed in the centre of the table.  Well it just so happens to land right in the middle of the, nearly untouched, Dark Angel terminators.  After it's all said and done, that secondary objective tied the game for us 9-9.  We also only played 3 turns, so that was literally the last thing to happen in our game.  While that was lucky for us, I'm not a huge fan of winning that way.  It's too bad for our opponents the game didn't go another turn or so cause they really had us on the ropes and would have likely won the game.

So we end the tournament with 26 battle points and a final score of 45 for a second place finish!

I know the pictures is blurry AF, but that creeper over Garth's shoulder is Sean, the guy playing the Thousand Sons in game 3.  He is a buddy of mine and he would really want me to mention this one time we played a game, I was playing Death Guard and he was playing Grey Knights...and that's all I'll say.

That's all for this post, thanks for reading.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

Once again I have to mention my sponsor, who was actually also my partner in the tournament and donated a Forgebane box for the draw that took place on Sunday, I didn't win it.  Maxx Collectibles has their monthly painting seminar still going on, happening on the 3rd Saturday of every month.  They will supply you with paint, brushes, table space, everything you need to learn how to paint.  Dave Zimmer and Paul Morrisette from the Manitoba Model Soldier Society will be handing out advice and painting tips.  There is always a group that shows up to these events, a lot of them young kids soaking up information and painting tips.  Some of them are getting pretty good, and they are only 10-12 years old.  Talented little punks.