For those with a passing interest in epic who don't frequent the tactical command forum....
on the weekend of 30-31st of May, EpicUK hosted the second annual European Epic Championship tournament at the UK games expo in Birmingham
Teams attended from the UK, France, Germany and a "Viking" team consisting of Swedes and a Dane (and a UK ringer replacing a dropout
)
I've written a bit of an event diary:
I finished my last minute painting, packed the trusty Imperial Fists and arrived at the venue on the saturday morning to the bad news that due to a cancelled flight, the french team would need to leave at lunchtime on the sunday and we would be playing 4 rounds on the saturday.... great.....
As the draw for the first round had already been done, I knew I would be facing Tim Hunt and his feral orks, Tim is one of the top UK players, and his army is just plain *nasty* with hordes of boarboyz, backed up with junka trukk brigades and a trio of massive orkeosarus, 3 steam gargants rounded out the force as his BTS formation. I forced corners to condense him into a smaller area and hope my orbital assets could thin out the numbers, I got lucky with my barrage hitting six formations and placing blast markers all over the place, my drop pod added to the pain, and the devs inside spannered a junka brigade. I sent my warhounds away to wipe out the madboyz on a T&H objective which ended up being the saving grace that kept me in the game, especially after my thunderhawk went down at a crucial moment with all hands! ended up with a losing draw
Round 2 was facing a lovely French chap called Remy and his Ghazghkull orks, I forced corners again and we played a brutal game. My orbital strike hit him hard, and my solitary hunter managed a steady strike rate of 2 ork planes a turn.... he has never been so effective! Remy shot down my terminators (again!) but after 3 turns we ran out of time. On the countback he was 225 points ahead, 25 shy of the winning draw margin, which left us at a dead draw
Round 3 was against my good friend Matt from the UK 'south' team with his suspiciously khornate looking tzeentch black legion.... I kept him under pressure for the first turn, managing to blow up a decimator with the terminators then recycle them with the second thunderhawk. Turn 2 saw his terminators teleport in then fail to engage, a HUGE melee erupted around them with yellow marine formation after formation piling in and carnage all around, in the end I was able to sneak the win by grabbing T&H and blitz
Round 4 started at something like 7pm and was against a German fellow called Christopher, he had a stunningly painted Steel Legion army, similar to the one I use. My orbital strike was less effective in this game, and as he won the initiative he was able to hit my BTS with manticores (ouch!) and fire a deathstrike missile at a warhound, fortunately it was stopped by the sheild! After pounding his tank company with warhounds and the orbital strike, I decided to go after them right away with the terminators before they could marshall.... Unfortunately the thunderhawk was shot down by a lucky critical, and I couldn't stop him slowly bulldozing my formations back and losing 3-0
After a bit of a chat, we went back to our hotel, had a beer and hit the hay, I knew I would be facing Per from team Viking and his extremely unconventional Thousand sonds force on Sunday morning.... Things started well with my orbital strike damaging every formation in his army and luckily sniping the sorcerer from his BTS, stripping them of the ability to summon daemons. My devastators blasted a silver tower formation and broke them, the rest of the turn went my way and I was able to destroy his disc riders and break the second formation of silver towers. On the second turn however, I foolishly went for his BTS formation with the terminators, although I reduced it to three models, I left the terminators in engage range of his retinue with their summoned lord of change and they were engaged and reduced to a single stand.... I should have gone directly for the retinue instead and it probably would have won me the game.... as I knew neither of us could win the game in the 2 minutes we had left, I tried to do as much damage as possible, on the countback I was only 43 points ahead so again it ended as a flat draw... fortunately my teammates had managed to score 4 more points than team viking which meant we edged ahead of the germans and into 3rd place
the final results were
1. TeamUK
2. TeamUK 'South'
3. TeamUK 'North'
4. Team Viking
5. Team Germany
6. Team France
the EEC2016 will be held in Stockholm Sweden, I hope to see you there!!
here are a selection of pics:
