EpicUK Grand Tournament 2015

[kyussinchains]

Just a bit of feedback and some pics from the EpicUK grand tournament this weekend, I had five of the highest quality, enjoyable games I've ever had, against friendly and sporting opponents

thanks to Steve for his hard work herding the cats and organising the event, Slayer Gaming for hosting, and of course Darren, Kev, Robin, Andy H and Steve for 5 fun and memorable games!

very quick reports

Game 1 - Darren (orks)

Darren had taken a bit of a toybox list comprising less-used but much loved models, he had a great gargant and supa stompa mob, bulked out by (in his words) "lots of chaff" my orbital strike landed in the big hole in the centre and did very little, but my aircraft had a field day strafing all his light vehicles for 3 turns, the gargant rumbled forwards then ended up heading back to Darren's Blitz it went to four turns but some canny moves by Darren meant I couldn't push for the win and ended up way ahead on the countback for an 18-14 winning draw

Game 2 - Kev (AMTL)

Kev castled up and put everything on overwatch on turn 1, on turn two I waited until everything had activated, then tried to kill a warhound with terminators, confident they would kill the thing outright and avoid the supporting fire from the nearby warlord, my dice failed me (5 dice needing 3's to hit and I rolled a trio of 1's and a pair of 2's!) and the terminators ended up very dead.... I decided to finish the job with my assault marines, who failed to do the single point of damage required to the stupid wolf-bot and were similarly mashed by the warlord titan.... I stupidly landed on the wrong objective with my landing craft turn 3, giving kev a 3-0 win

Game 3 - Robin (Nids)

Robin had taken lots of big gribblies but only had 8 activations, when my orbital strike landed and blew a massive hole in the BTS formation, I comfortably picked him apart, knowing my huge activation advantage would lend me the edge, I took it 2-0 on turn 3

Game 4 - Andy H (Iron Warriors)

I'd never played Andy before, and after my orbital strike killed precisely zero stuff, I watched as Andy castled up on overwatch Turn 1, there was some back and forth but no real action until later in turn 2, we had a few fights, then Andy engaged my assault marines sitting on an objective in my half, he moved his BTS formation into support range, but unwittingly allowed two assault marines to counter charge into BTB, dragging the two blast markers into the assault, the assault marines ended up winning and breaking the BTS who eventually fell to the weight of blast markers, turn 3 came round and a thawk failing to activate to break a decimator cost me the game and I could only hold on for the draw after turn 4, the countback was 500 in my favour so another 18-14 result

Game 5 - Steve (Thousand Sons)

Turn 1 went my way for sure, I de-meched two retinues, killed a warphound and broke a second, however on turn 2 and 3 Steve won the strategy roll (a first for me for the entire weekend) and gained a big advantage, I managed to drag it to turn 4, with successive aircraft engaging and defeating his warphound on my blitz, but I ran out of stuff on the ground and couldn't stop a 2-0 defeat

I managed to finish 10th out of 14, not my best result, I had two games in the bag but struggled to turn them into victories, however I thoroughly enjoyed every game, win or lose, and it was a great honour to win the players choice for Best Painted, many thanks to all who voted, I'm truly humbled, what a way to close out the 2015 season!

[kyussinchains]

Pics:

Reedar's Orks


Steve54's Thousand Sons


Tiny-Tim's Knights


Dptdexys "Black" Templars


Kyussinchains "Black" Templars


Andy H's Iron Warriors


Kev101's AMTL


MikeT's Dark Eldar


Yme-Loc's Biel-Tan


MephistonAG's Codex Marines


And a special shot of Darren claiming his well deserved Most Sporting award (watching dptdexys and Kev101 trying to figure out how to work Darren's camera was akin to the obelisk+ape scene from 2001:A space odessey so I snapped one myself for the inevitable lenscap/finger mishap )


Games in progress:

[Aquahog]

Nice report and pics!

[Irisado]

Thanks for posting the report here.

There were a good variety of armies on show there, and some well painted models too.  The Ork army, in particular, made me feel nostalgic for the days when I fielded my second edition Ork force.

It's great to see so many second edition buildings on display.  Had I been playing, I'd have wanted a bit more terrain on the tables, especially given how good it looked.

As an aside, it looks as though someone forgot to turn the heating on .

[kyussinchains]

They did indeed forget, it was freezing cold both days and I spent 4 games in very close proximity to the door so had to deal with assorted drafts and general coldness!

Terrain wise, we use area terrain so the entire base blocks LoS rather than individual buildings, I'd say nearly 1/3 of the table is covered which works pretty well

[Irisado]

Terrain wise, we use area terrain so the entire base blocks LoS rather than individual buildings, I'd say nearly 1/3 of the table is covered which works pretty well

That makes all the difference.  In that case, there looks to have been sufficient terrain on all of those boards.

[Stormwind]

Gorgeous looking armies, I'm in love with the Bad Moonz Orks especially = )

[David Wasilewski]

Lovely armies. Thanks for sharing.
What's with all the non Black Templar Black Templar armies? Is it a rules advantage thing to be Black Templars?

Dave

[kyussinchains]

there's no advantage, but the black templars list favours a very aggressive, drop pod, air assault playstyle, it also includes storm talons instead of thunderbolts, has the emperor's champion (one per army, basically a chaplain with fearless, but for a mere 25 points, who can be added to a formation which already has a character) and although not used in the lists above, the land raider crusader which gives up some ranged shooting for deadly firefight capability

what happened in actuality was that I am bored of vanilla codex marines, having played them almost non-stop for the past 2-3 years, dptdexys showed up to a club night with the army he took and it inspired me to try something out which ended up being nearly identical to his army

and finally, the black templars are descendants of the imperial fists so it's okay for my IF to play black templars style once in a while