Waking Dead

(This is a long post with a bunch of pictures – you have been warned!)

We arrived in Nottingham at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Friday and, after we’d dropped our bags off at the hotel, we headed into town for a pint and something to eat. The mood was jovial, positive even. We joked about the three teams’ final positions and myself and Mark made a prediction – we’d finish in the top half of the table.

We couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. Facing a double Tau Empire army that on paper looked very good, we ended up completely annihilating them in what was a very one-sided battle. They didn’t do anything wrong per se, we just did everything right. The one-two punch of the Exorcists was just too much for their Infantry-reliant army to cope with. Final score? 1800 to us, 113 to them. With such a massive victory margin we were giddy with excitement about getting on the top tables. In fact, when we came to look at the next round’s fixtures, we were on table one!

When you’re on the top tables, the mood is very different. Most people are there to win, and win at all costs. We were there to win of course, but we were more interested in having a good time. Our opponents weren’t quite as serious as some I’ve faced in the past, but fielding Tau Empire and Eldar was setting your stall out, and there was a definite edge to the game. What really threw us though was when our opponents declared that we had an illegal list…

After checking and double-checking, they were right. Whilst the rest of the games were getting underway, we were busy re-writing our list to make it legal. Having already lost 10 VPs for playing with it in the first game (taking our total of 32 down to 22), we were well and truly rattled. The battle eventually underway, we were put to the sword almost immediately. After three turns things were looking bleak. Then, after a few lucky shots with the Hammerhead, we started to turn it around. By this point it was too late, but we clawed back enough points to not fall victim to a massacre. The final scores put a distance of 400 points between us, but at least we’d avoided getting butchered.

Now on 23 VPs, we were back down the tables to face our next opponents. Who just so happened to be the Chaos and Traitor Guard of our friends and practice bitches, Mike and Chris. This then would be a grudge match, as we’d only beaten them once before in our practice games. On the day, however, they were the ones to bottle it. Mark and myself played a tight game, knowing their tactics inside out, and exploiting the scenery. Despite not destroying their Demon Prince, we still finished with 1157 to their 828. That victory put us on 54 points and carried us back up the leaderboard for Sunday’s opening game.

Day two started us back up in the top 25% on table fourteen . Our game was to be against a double-Eldar list that featured a whole bunch of Jetbikes. After completely forgetting about the Instant Kill rules on turn one after assigning a wound to my Inquisitor and consequently losing his whole retinue, I realised it was going to be one of those games. Too many bikes, too little time to deal with them all. The final score made it 1249 to our 741 – another loss.

Taking only a single VP from our last game dropped us back down to the mid-twenties. The army we were to face looked like it had been clawing its way up the tables since Saturday morning, being a very odd mix of Imperial Guard and Ultramarines. The Marines were fine, but the Guard were using a very odd setup, despite the inclusion of a Leman Russ. Despite them getting unlucky with a few rolls on the first few turns, our superior firepower really paid off, although the Russ only got popped on the very last turn. In the end it was a massacre – 1180 to 452 – and put us on 85 points going into the final game of the weekend.

Once again, it was double-Eldar, but at least they had some infantry on the table. By this point both me and Mark were knackered, either through lack of sleep, alcohol consumption, or just too many rules-headaches. Our opponents weren’t faring much better, but neither of us was really concentrating in this game. In the end they won fairly comfortably, but it was close until turn five. After losing an Exorcist and the Hammerhead in one turn, we didn’t really have much left to claw it back. I didn’t bother writing the points down, suffice to say it was a solid win to them. Our final VPs for the weekend, then, were 86.

Grabbing our friends after the game, we chatted about where we’d all ended up: our predictions from Friday night seemed to be about right. Without the 10 point penalty on Saturday we would have been on the same points as Chris and Mike, but they just edged it. Si and Jamie also finished about 10 points behind us, so we all ended up in roughly the same position. The official results will be posted in the week, so until then I have no idea of our final finishing position. Top half and I’ll be happy.

You can find all of Mark’s pictures of the event here.