Waking Dead

It’s all over! I realise I’m a bit late with this and I haven’t posted a Conflict update in ages, but I was so busy getting my dudes ready for the tournament I didn’t have time to post. Anyway, I think you all deserve a shot of the finished army, so here it is:

We had a fantastic day, winning our first two games with solid victories. Our first match was against Traitor Guard and Thousand Sons, but I think they got their tactics a bit wrong. The points for the Thousand Sons force were spent on 12 Marines and a Predator, and although they are tough (2 wounds each), it was simply too small a unit to be very versatile. The Traitor Guard on the other hand were kitted out similar to mine, but for some reason he elected to drop his Heavy Weapons Platoons – and therefore lost the ability to shoot with them.

Our second game illicited a small amount of panic when we swapped army lists; 4 Land Speeder Tornados, a Dreadnaught, a Sentinel, and a Leman Russ! Having said that, the deployment didn’t really help our opponents, and the Escalation rule meant that their armour came on in dribs and drabs, so we could pick them off one at a time. In the end we won by a much larger victory margin than the first game, despite the initial scariness of the list!

And then we made it up to the second table – in our first tournament no less! For the third and final game we squared off against a couple of old pros playing Eldar. They had really statted out their army, designed every detail purely to win. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – it is a tournament after all – but it was a very inflexible army, and suffered a little in terms of fun because of the “eggs in one basket” approach. The main bulk of the force was made up of a Wraithlord and 6 Wraithguard, with a special character (can’t remember the name, need Si C’s knowledge on this!) leading them. This caused us a whole heap of trouble, and despite pretty much wiping everything else off the board barring a Viper, this single unit won them the game. Really, there’s not a lot you can do against T6 with 3+ saves and a re-roll. Meh.

So, my thoughts on the day? Very good fun, so much so that we’re signing up for the weekend doubles tournament in Nottingham next January. Overall I enjoyed the first two games more, not because we won, but because they were a lot more open and fun. Once you get to the top tables it seems that everyone is purely there to win; in fact, an argument broke out on the top table next to us whilst we were playing. Other than that, the event itself seemed a little lax in organisation, but I’ve been assured by my veteran friends that the Nottingham events are much better.

Roll on January!