Blog Wars - Game 3 - Webway DE vs. Space Wolves

In the final game of the tournament I found myself in the rather unexpected position of being on table 3. My opponent would be none other than Frank Marsh. Over the past year or so Matt and I have played Frank on various occasions. The last time I played him was at Blog Wars 2 where my Space Wolves were held to a draw by some last minute KP grabbing from Frank including ramming my drop pod with a wave serpent! Frank has a pretty decent tournament record and seems to always place pretty near the top. I knew this was going to be a tough game and having webway Dark Eldar wasn't going to make it any easier.

The final game would be Seize Ground with 5 fixed objectives and Dawn of War deployment. I was relieved to see Frank looking confused as he read my army list. Sure enough he said that he hadn't played Dark Eldar much and certainly wasn't familiar with webways. Frank's list consisted of a rune priest and a large grey hunter pack in a rhino, a wolf priest on a bike with a squad of swiftclaw bikers, a small grey hunter pack in a razorback, Arjac Rockfist and 8 grey hunters in a drop pod, two lone wolves and two packs of long fangs (one with a razorback).

In my previous two games I'd won the roll offs easily even without Baron's +1. For this game however it really came in handy with Frank rolling a 2 and me rolling a 1(2) followed by a 4 and a 3(4) and then finally I won the third roll off. Electing to go first I stuck one of my venoms in a ruined building with only the haemonculus on board (as the trueborn are elites and can't be deployed in DoW). I'd then bring on my second venom with trueborn this time on the first turn. Frank deployed a rhino near the centre with the rune priest and a squad of grey hunters inside. This time I rolled +1 WS on my combat drugs.

Unfortunately for me Frank stole the initiative and slammed Arjac's drop pod right next to the otherwise hidden venom. The rest of his army advanced on towards the middle with his long fangs running into positions on each flank. Arjac and his grey hunters made short work of the venom but the haemonculus was hidden from the rest of his army so would get to deploy his webway. In my first turn I dropped both webways down and then the trueborn managed a lucky shot to explode the rune priest's rhino. The venom fired at the bikes killing one and wounding the attack bike.

Frank used his bikers and Arjac to easily cut down the two haemonculi but luckily for me the combination of cover and FNP kept all the trueborn alive. The bikers moved further into the middle but could only immobilise the remaining venom. In my turn 2 I had another successful set of reserve rolls getting everything but a squad of wyches and the cronos. The reavers turbo-boosted out of the portals and used their bladevanes to strike at the long fangs. Thanks to some jammy rolls on my part and some poor armour saves from Frank each squad was reduced to a single missile launcher. The immobilised venom easily finished off one of the lonely long fangs.

The hellions came out and charged into the rune priest's squad and by some miracle they were able to kill off a large number of them. The talos and one squad of wyches set up to charge the bikes but a combination of fire from the trueborn, wyches and talos meant only the wolf priest and one biker remained. This mean the wyches were out of charge range but the talos easily finished off the priest and swiftclaw but took a wound in the process. The other wych squad charged into Arjac's grey hunters but with help from their wolf standard their counter attack won the combat and forced the wyches to flee. The wracks simply ran on from the board edge and hugged an objective.

The lone wolves charged into the hellions in order to try and save the grey hunters. The hellions forced the grey hunters to run but one of the lone wolves struck Baron with his chainfist. Baron's shadow field caused the first blow to miss but the second ripped through the field and he was hacked to pieces (failing it on the second roll sucks!). The hellions broke from the combat and pursued the fleeing grey hunters. Arjac and co. rapid fired the second squad of wyches and severely thinned them out. One of the razorbacks took a pot shot at the wracks in cover and killed one but they held their nerve. The smaller grey hunter pack jumped out and rapid fired the reavers killing a couple off.

In my third turn the cronos and another squad of wyches appeared. The cronos incinerated some of Arjac's squad and the wyches then charged in and were able to finish the job. The lone wolves were cut down by a combination of shots from all directions. The long fangs weren't far behind them with bladevane attacks causing serious hurt. To be honest the next few turns all merged into one so I'll sum up what happened but not necessarily in the correct order.

The reavers moved in on the razorback and gunned it down with their heat lances, protecting the wracks (who'd moved deeper into cover to be completely hidden anyway). The hellions shepherded the rune priest's squad from the board and then turned their attention to the smaller grey hunter pack. By some minor miracle they were able to hold on in the combat long enough to force the grey hunters to run again.

At this stage Frank didn't have much hope of victory but I needed to table him if I wanted to finish in the top three. The cronos moved over and with help from the wyches was able to destroy the drop pod. That left the razorback on my left hand side but it took a combination of trueborn fire, haywire grenades and a lonely hellion charging it to bring it down the hard way (weapon destroyed, immobilised, wrecked) and that sealed the game at the end of turn 6. This gave me the maximum 25 points and saw me leapfrog Matt and Steve Henderson and take 2nd place.

Shortly after I remembered that I hadn't deployed my second squad of trueborn (as I'd forgotten they weren't in the venom). That almost certainly would've meant the razorback would've gone down a lot sooner!

Conclusion
It's a shame I can't remember it better (it is Thursday now and I've slept a lot since then) but suffice to say it was an amazing game for my Dark Eldar. There's no doubt I was very lucky. I think Frank got a bit sick of me saying "they never do that well" about each unit in turn. Seriously though, the hellions managed to take down a squad of grey hunters, the reavers claimed the best part of a long fang pack each and then took down a razorback. The talos finished off the bikers and the trueborn took out a rhino with their first shots of the game! When you're rolling well any army can feel unstoppable.

The other significant factor in this victory was that Frank had no idea about Dark Eldar and webway. If he had then all he'd have needed to do was keep his army on the back line and gun me down as I tried to get close. This would've almost certainly resulted in the opposite result. To be perfectly honest this is true of all three of the games. When I tested the list against Matt his first reaction was to try and close in on the portals and either surround them or deal with my army piecemeal. When this failed he resorted to sitting back a lot more and hence I didn't win many games with them in practice!

When your army relies on your opponent to make a mistake to win it's always going to be limited. Don't get me wrong I thoroughly enjoyed all 3 games but I don't think I'd take it to a tournament again. It definitely lacks anti-tank fire and I was lucky to kill the vehicles that I did. One thing I certainly love is your opponent's face when over half of your army appears in their face on turn 2, seemingly from out of nowhere!

Thanks to all of my opponents for three excellent games. For those of you who've been asking about Blog Wars 4, I should be posting about it tomorrow or Saturday so keep your eyes on the blog for that.

Blog Wars 3 - Game 2 - Webway DE vs. Tyranids

My opponent for round two was Phil Waghorn who Matt and I had met at the GW Doubles when our Bloody Wolves had hammered their Tyranids. From practice games against Scott's Tyranids I knew that if I got the units I want when I want them I can make a mess of a Tyranid army as I usually have the initiative advantage. It would still be a hard slog and the Cleanse mission is difficult to take many points from without tabling your opponent. The advantage of this mission for my list is that the deployment really lends itself to webways as you can easily position them right near the centre. This coupled with the fact that nids list needs to come towards me to be effective meant I felt pretty confident. I again rolled a 4 for combat drugs which helped!

Phil's list had a hive tyrant, 2 zoanthropes, the deathleaper, a tervigon with termagants, 5 warriors with boneswords, a carnifex, mawloc and trygon. He kept the deathleaper in reserve and deployed the rest of his army spread across his quarter with the zoanthropes in the centre supported by the trygon and followed by the tyrant. Phil stole the initiative and advanced his army forwards. The trygon spawned 16 termagants but would produce no more. The zoanthropes failed one of their psychic tests and missed with their warp blast with their lance out of range. The mawloc burrowed to emerge next turn.

The haemos hopped out and dropped their webways as the venoms retreated to range with their trueborn still inside. The combination of the venoms and trueborn was enough to put wounds on the trygon and bring the carnifex down to a single wound which it only just held onto thanks to poor dice rolls from the splinter cannons. The tyranids responded with the carnifex trying to shoot down the venom but when that failed it ripped into it with it's massive claws. The zoanthropes again found themselves unable to use their warp lance as the venom's Night Shields protected it. The trygon made short work of the haemonculus whilst the other haemo was gunned down by some termagants. The mawloc emerged on top of the trueborn's venom but scattered off target.

A squad of reavers emerged from the portal and turbo boosted over the termagants who'd killed the haemonculus reducing them to a single lonely tyranid. The talos positioned itself to try and charge the recently emerged mawloc. The cronos incinerated some of the hormagaunts giving the wyches a pain token and then charged in to combat with the remaining gaunts resulting in a stalemate. The wyches decided to charge the trygon which had been reduced to a single wound by the trueborn/venom and finished it off with their agoniser giving the zoanthropes a reprieve. The other trueborn gunned down the carnifex but having to travel around the wreckage of the venom meant the talos couldn't prevent the mawloc from burrowing again.

The hive tyrant moved forward and used his paroxysm on the wyches that had slain the trygon. The warriors fired at the reavers and gunned a few down. The deathleaper appeared on the ledge above the venom and managed to immobilise it with its fire.

With everything but a single wych squad arriving in turn 3 I hoped this turn would tip the battle in my favour. The hellions screamed out of the portal and slammed into combat with the spawned termagants killing most off and losing a single one of their own. The newly emerged wyches went into combat with the hive tyrant after the venoms and trueborn had softened it up. They also engaged the hormagaunts to save the cronos (since the gaunts had toxin sacs and I5). The talos found itself with no targets so moved back towards the action. The trueborn hopped out of their immobilised venom and tried to instant kill the deathleaper who used it's stealth to keep it alive. The wyches managed to kill off the hive tyrant and the cronos killed off the remaining gaunt. The WS/BS 1 wyches killed off the zoanthropes despite their handicap (with help from the reavers' bladevanes). Meanwhile the wracks walked on from the board edge into cover to simply hold onto a quarter.

The mawloc emerged on top the reavers killing them all off with a perfectly timed appearance. The warriors tried to gun down some wyches but thanks to FNP they struggled. The trygon waded in on the hellion combat and despite surviving the hellions couldn't make their hit and run roll (rolling 6 twice in a row!) but it was too late for the termagants anyway.

The mawloc met a similar fate (in a similar spot) to the trygon with a combination of poisoned fire and agoniser blows easily toppling it. The wyches and wounded cronos headed in the direction of the warriors. The tervigon killed off the hellions who'd failed to get away. However, with the game reaching it's end Phil had only the deathleaper, trygon and warriors to stop me. The last squad of wyches came on from the board edge and with help from the reavers they killed off the trygon. The warriors eventually met the same fate shortly after the deathleaper giving me a tabling and maximum points. Thanks to the spawned termagants I even scored 1,830 VPs!

Conclusion

Phil didn't make a single regeneration roll for the entire game and this really hampered his monstrous creatures. With the volume of 4+ poisoned and dark light fire the big stuff wasn't hard to bring down and the tyranids reliance on CC was, once again, their undoing. Phil was pretty unlucky with his dice rolls and conversely I had more luck than I probably deserved.

The hellions were far from spectacular here with them struggling to kill termagants before the tervigon waded in. Granted FNP from the tervigon didn't help matters but they should've hit and run! The agonisers proved to be just as deadly as you'd expect with most of the combats being decided by the hekatrixes. The talos struggled to get involved in the game having come out too far from the action and being left high and dry when the mawloc burrowed.

The whole army worked well together but Dark Eldar vs Tyranids isn't really a fair fight so I can hardly claim any tactical superiority here!

With Frank Marsh and Andy Pattison holding each other to a draw on the top table after scoring 25pts each in their first game, I knew I'd be playing either Frank's wolves or Andy's IG. Neither of which would be an easy game for me.....

Blog Wars 3 - Game 1 - Webway DE vs. Iron Hands

Despite it being a random draw I somehow found myself facing Jamie and his Iron Hands. He's got quite a lot of vehicles in there and I simply don't have much anti-tank in my list... at all! So we were all set up for a tough game.

For anyone wanting a reminder of the dual webway list I was fielding you can find it here. As per the scenarios we'd be playing Pitched Battle with the Annihilation mission. The difference being that the commander SC was worth 2 points (Cassius for Jamie and Baron for me).

Jamie was fielding Chaplain Cassius with a master of the forge and some assault terminators in a land raider. These were joined by 3 tactical squads (2 in rhinos, 1 on foot), a small bike squad with attack bike, a predator and a whirlwind. As with most Dark Eldar lists I've got a much better chance if I get first turn. Fortunately that's what I got and I deployed by two venoms where I wanted them. The thing I like about this list is that you don't show your hand too early. There's very little on the board for the first turn so your opponent doesn't know what to expect. From turn 2 onwards everything appears right in his face (hopefully) and it has the desired effect of shock and awe.

Jamie responded by deploying his footbound tactical squad in the centre in cover with a rhino on either side of the terrain. The bikes were tucked in behind one of the rhinos with the land raider far over on his left flank, whirlwind round the back and predator on the other flank. I rolled a 4 for my combat drugs giving me a re-roll to wound - nice! I was convinced Jamie was going to seize so I breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't. The two venoms pushed forward and dropped off their passengers. The two haemonculi did their only job and dropped the webways. One squad of trueborn penetrated the front armour of the predator but could only stun it whilst the other squad immobilised one of the rhinos.  The venoms fired at the bikes and the tactical squad in cover killing a biker and a couple of marines.

At this point I have no option but to sit and watch my opponent give everything he's got to destroy the venoms and their newly disembarked cargo. Unfortunately for Jamie he didn't manage to take out either venom thanks to some poor luck on his part and a jammy flickerfield save on mine. Each trueborn squad lost two members and both haemonculi took a wound despite FNP saves absorbing most of the damage.

I've got 9 units to come on through the webways and even though it's 50:50 chance of getting what I want I've hopefully put enough redundancy in there so that I at least get something useful in turn 2. In this case I got the wracks, both reavers and the talos. The wracks moved on and into one of the venoms along with the haemo. The venom then moved them in the direction of the tactical squad to attempt to assault them next time with their Furious Charge (thanks to 2 pain tokens). One lot of reavers headed in the direction of the land raider hoping to find themselves within 9" the other used their bladevanes on the tactical squad, killing a handful of marines. Finally, the talos moved in the direction of the other rhino taking a shot with it's heat lance as it went. What it failed to do with shooting it managed with it's fists, blowing up the rhino and killing a marine in the process.

The shooting was underwhelming. The reavers found themselves just out of half range, the venoms killed a few more troops but crucially the trueborn failed to crack open the other rhino or stop the predator shooting.
Jamie responded by taking down the wrack's newly acquired venom and cutting down all but one of the reavers. The talos was shot to pieces by the predator and the bikes whilst the other reavers took a couple of casualties from the tactical squad turning around to rapid fire at them.

In the next turn I got Baron and his hellions and one squad of wyches who set up ready to assault the occupants of the immobilised rhino should I be able to crack it open with shooting. When that plan failed the wyches were forced to charge in on the rhino and wreck it with their haywires. Baron had more success charging the tactical squad that had rapid fired the reavers killing a decent number. The reavers meanwhile blasted away and hit the bikes with some bladevane attacks. The wracks moved towards the other tactical squad in cover but snake eyes on the charge roll meant they sat impotently. The lonely reaver on my right struck lucky and blew up the land raider with his heat lance before ducking behind cover in the hopes of getting a shot at the whirlwind next turn.

With the tactical squad in cover having little left they couldn't do much damage to the wrack and elected to shoot down the remaining venom instead. The bikes now joined in on the hellion combat but despite losing some of his squad Baron was able to hit and run and get clear of the melee but not before making the tactical squad run from the board. The wracks took a hit from the whirlwind which killed one wrack and took the haemonculus' remaining wound. Cassius and the MotF moved in the direction of the wych squad and solo reaver that were nicely clustered around the rhino wreck and their flamers killed all but the hekatrix.

The remaining units now emerged from the portal. Both squads of wyches headed in direction of the command squad and the cronos moved towards the remaining full strength tactical squad hoping to hit it with it's spirit vortex. The hellions went in the direction of this squad and I hoped with help from the hekatrix they'd be able to kill them off quickly and keep away from the terminators. Brilliantly the spirit vortex scattered off the squad and straight on top of the hekatrix killing her! Nice one!

Baron was able to bring down the entire tactical squad with help from his hellions. The reavers tried to bring down the predator from nearby cover but without success. The wracks finally got to charge what was left of the tactical squad and finally brought them down. A quick tot up of the scores showed Jamie had a slight advantage of a couple of KPs. I'd need to take out a few more of his units without losing a single one of mine. The MoTF split off from cassius and went after one of the wych squads. The attack bike went after the trueborn and killed off the haemonculi in combat with shooting but couldn't finish the job in combat.

The next turn was crucial for me. I lined myself up to either shoot down the predator or have Baron charge it to finish the job. The wyches would need to kill off the MoTF. The wracks played keep away with the terminators knowing they'd have no chance even with Furious Charge. The unengaged wyches swung across to kill off the attack bike before it finished off the trueborn. All three units did their job, Baron killed the predator, the wyches got the attack bike and the other wyches finished off the MoTF.

What followed was a turn 5 where Jamie tried to chase me down and get his terminators into combat with something and failing. The whirlwind tried to kill off one of the two solo trueborn but scattered off. In turn 6 I moved my units even further away (cowardly I know) and hoped I could hold on to my slim 9-8 lead. It wasn't to be as right at the end of turn 6 (and as it turned out the game) the whirlwind finally hit it's mark and took out one of the trueborn to draw things level. That gave us 10pts each and a 200pt advantage to me in kill points.

Conclusion

Jamie was the first to acknowledge that he should've kept his army away from mine a little better. The speed of the bikes couldn't let them pop a venom without much danger and the long range of the predator should've kept it safe. Knowing I didn't have much I could've done against the terminators I was quite pleased when Jamie was cautious with them allowing me to deal with the rest of his army before they waded in.

The trueborn were as underwhelming as usual with an immobilised rhino their only achievement. The reavers were incredibly lucky to kill the land raider with a single shot but otherwise didn't add much. I was stupid with the wracks who could've moved close to the marines and been able to charge. The venoms were reasonably effective and helped me deal with the higher toughness of the bikes. It's shame the talos got taken down so early without having chance to get it's teeth into the tactical squad.

The runaway stars of the show were the hellions. They took down two tactical squads and even when on his own Baron was able to bring down the predator by taking advantage of his S7 (thanks to those two tactical squads). I've never had them do so well in a game and it think it was obviously down to the fact that they came straight out of the webway and into combat.

Overall it was an excellent game that came right down to the wire. As Andy Pattison observed that's probably the first and last time that a whirlwind played a crucial role in a tournament game!

Blog Wars 3 Painting Competition

As ever, alongside the dice rolling was the hobby side of things. This time around there were three prizes on offer: Best Painted Army, Best Painted Special Character and Best Army Theme. The first two would be voted for by all of the competitors but the army theme award was decided by yours truly. Before I get to the results I wanted to say that unlike the first two Blog Wars there was a disappointing number of votes cast with only just over half of people voting. This is probably partly down to people not knowing where the voting slips were (though I did say!).

Anyway, here's a selection of the armies on display. Apologies to their owners for the crappy pictures but it was a case of rushing round with the camera in between other things I had to do! If anyone else has better pictures feel free to post them up and then link them in the comments.

The winner of the Best Painted Army was my good friend Jamie (I'd like to point out I'm not eligible to vote). His army was a beautiful Iron Hands force with Cassius and a Master of the Forge. There were some well executed conversions including an attack bike, full track land raider amongst others. Overall it was a very cohesive force and I think the precise line highlighting and details were what made it stand out despite it being black! More pictures of the conversions are over on his blog.

The Best Painted Special Character award went to Chris Benstead (WeeMen) with his Swarmlord. He won the best painted army at Blog Wars 2 and that's where this image comes from since I didn't have chance to get a shot myself.

Finally, a new addition this time around the Best Army Theme went to Ian Connolly (Need More Tanks) for his Star Wars themed Imperial Guard. You can find more pictures of it over on his blog. The reason I chose thise for the best theme was the sheer attention to detail that went into it. It would be simple to make an army full of white stormtroopers and call it a Star Wars army but to create AT-STs, an AT-AT, C3PO/R2D2, Han Solo frozen in carbonite and pretty much every major character from the series really sets this arm apart. A well deserved prize.

There were some excellent ideas for army theme. I'd like to give special mention to a few of the runners up. The simean Grey Knights army from James Lamb with everyone represented as a monkey, the catachan force from John Holland and the Rebel Alliance/sci-fi list with massive x-wing vendettas from Luke Fogg.

Congratulations to all of the winners. As I've alluded to in the results post things will be a bit different for Blog Wars 4 so keep an eye on the blog for details of that.

Blog Wars 3 Results - Webways work!

The third Blog Wars tournament took place yesterday at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Blog Wars is a twice-annual, friendly, 1,750pt 40K tournament with a slight comp in that all armies must contain a Special Character. The missions are all centred around this theme giving the special character more significance in each battle.
Without further ado here's this years results:

So the most obvious thing to notice is that as a group we all failed miserably to stop Andy Humphris from retaining his title. Fair play to Andy, he only dropped 3 points out of a possible 75 over the three games. Suffice to say he got plenty of stick from everyone involved. I'm sure Andy will be posting a typically humble account of how he secured victory. Andy played Daniel Lane's horde Orks in the first round, Gary Hoptroff's Grey Knights featuring Mordrak and finally James Winsor's Relictors.

Congratulations to Steve Henderson (Andy's mate) for his 3rd place. Steve and I approach tournaments in the same way. If we go in with confidence we'll perform badly but if we think we've got no chance then we'll exceed our expectations.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed that embarassingly (for me and everyone else involved!) I managed to achieve 2nd place overall and also scored more VPs than anyone else! This is surprising for several reasons. Firstly in all the practice games my Dark Eldar dual-webway list was utter crap but also because I'm frankly not that good a player! I was as surprised as anyone that I managed to pull it off but suffice to say I was pretty lucky with the armies I faced. There were some lists out there that I simply couldn't have dealt with no matter how good my dice rolls were! I'm planning on writing a whole post about the amount of luck involved in tournament success at a later date.

Over the rest of the week I'll be posting up battle reports from my three games to try and explain how I managed to pull off such an unlikely result! I'll also have a brief look at the painting competition (I didn't get chance to take many photos!) and finally talk about what's going to change for Blog Wars 4.

Once again there was a nice mix of veterans and new players (both in terms of Blog Wars and tournaments in general). It's a shame that some of the usual suspects couldn't make it this time around but there's always BW4!

Finally, once again, I'd like to thank everyone that attended this time around. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there were some fantastic games. Sadly all of my games took a while to play so I didn't get much chance to wander around. I hope I'll see everyone again at Blog Wars 4. The next tournament for me is the GW 40K Doubles with Matt at WHW at the end of the month. We're hoping to squeeze in a doubles practice game against the lads from Sons so stay tuned for a report of that.

Special Characters at Blog Wars 3

As promised here's a rundown of the special characters that will be in attendance for Blog Wars 3 on Saturday. Let's start with the Emperor's Finest, for the mighty Space Wolves their only representatitve, Frank Marsh, has opted to bring along Grimnar's Champion, Arjac Rockfist. It's no secret that he's my personal favourite SW character thanks to his impressive "bang per buck" ratio and the fact that he can't be targetted separately. Oh and when you do hit him he gets a 2+/3++ save and Eternal Warrior, nasty.

Those shiny men of the moment the Grey Knights will be represented by two lots of Inquisitor Coteaz, Castellan Crowe and Grand Master Mordrak. I'm sure people are familiar with Crowe and Coteaz but I'm keen to see how Mordrak performs. Surprisingly no-one opted to bring along Draigo. We've lost a couple of Blood Angels players but Paul O'Boyle who stepped in last minute will be bringing Commander Dante and my mate Scott will be fielding the walking tank himself, Mephiston.

The other space marine chapters will include a 'counts as' Chaplain Cassius for the Iron Hands from Jamie Jackson, Kayvaan Shrike for the Raven Guard, Vulkan Hestan joining the Relictors and Pedro Kantor of the Crimson Fists. What I like about most of the Codex: Space Marines characters is that they allow you to theme an army to a chapter's particular style of play so I'll be interested to see how well these players pull it off.

Rounding up the Imperial offerings we've got Commisar "he just won't fecking die" Yarrick, the ever faithful 'Iron Hands' Straken (amongst others in John Holland's list), Sergeant Harker and the bargain Guardsman Marbo. This time around however, Marbo will in fact be "Marbo Fett" as he's part of a Star Wars themed army.

Onto the xenos scum then, the two Necron entries will have Trazyn the Infinite and reigning champion Andy Humphris will be bringing Anrakyr the Traveller (or Anorak the Gypsy if you prefer). The strong Tyranid contingent features a couple of Swarmlords, a sneaky Deathleaper and Graham Sanders' ever faithful Doom of Malan'tai. I remember facing the Doom for the first time at End Times and was a little surprised when Graham said it now had 10 wounds after just arriving from reserve and killing some grey hunters!!

The only Ork force will feature Boss Snikrot and his kommandos who'll no doubt be wreaking havoc on their enemies back lines. Dave Halfpenny (WeeMen) has Karanak in his Chaos Daemons force. His list is strongly themed towards the worship of Khorne but we'll have to wait and see how much blood he manages to spill for the Blood God.

Last but not least the Dark Eldar players, myself included, have shown a stunning lack of imagination and all brought Baron Sathonyx!! Now I can't pretend he isn't the best choice, which is why I've brought him, but it's a little bit of a shame that we won't see some of the other excellent characters from the book. I'll be interested to see everyone else's conversions. Mine is still a bit of a work in progress because I've not created his cloak yet and I'm not happy with his head at the moment!

That's your lot then. As you'll know from reading the scenarios, shrewd use of your special character could be crucial in all 3 missions. The last two tournaments have seen some great showdowns between special characters such as my Arjac Rockfist taking out Prince Yriel and a classic battle between Yarrick and Ghazghkull on the table behind me in Blog Wars 2.

Finally, just to confirm the prizes that are on offer this weekend:

1st Place - £50 Maelstrom Games voucher
2nd Place - £30 Maelstrom Games voucher
3rd Place - £20 Maelstrom Games voucher
Last Place - £10 Maelstrom Games voucher and limited edition Wooden Spoon
Best Painted Army - £25 Maelstrom Games voucher
Best Painted Special Character - £15 Maelstrom Games Voucher
Best Army Theme - Battleforce of the winner's choice

I've spent all the money from the entries then. As I've mentioned in earlier posts I'm considering revising the prize structure for future events so look out for information on that after this event.

Problem Solved - At least for now!

Thanks for the responses to Sunday's appeal post. Things got worse before they got better though! Firstly, I got to work on Monday and was speaking to Dave (who was bringing Blood Angels). Thanks to the unique and wonderful way our rota works he's now got to work Saturday and no-one is able to cover it for him. Sad as I am that he's not coming along (and making it full attendance from my little gaming group), it did kind of solve the problem, back to even numbers I thought.

So then I get home and find I've had a few emails with people offering to either show up themselves or post about in on their blog/facebook/twitter for me. Firstly, thanks very much for all your help in what was essentially a selfish endeavour since basically it's so I can play at my own tournament! Anyway, amongst these emails was one from Andy Lane of Claws and Fists saying that family commitments mean he also can't make it. Again, I'm gutted because Andy was one of the first people I met on the tournament scene and seems to be a constant presence at the events I attend but, of course, family comes first and I can't argue with that.

So that's me back to odd numbers again so I reply to Paul O'Boyle from Faulty Dice who's now at the bottom of the list of competitors. Please note the player numbers should've stayed the same. I've sent off an email to Tim King at Maelstrom (the guy who ran Summer Skirmish there last year is now Events Manager!). He's generously agreed to let me drop the food order to 26 despite having invoiced me. This means that at least I won't be charged for food we don't eat (although I suspect we'd still manage to eat enough for 28). However, it does mean that there won't be any additional prizes as I'd budgeted them based on 28 people coming and with the additional army theme prize I'm spent up. Mind you, I know temptation will get the better of me and I'll throw something else in.....

Anyway, thanks to all the people who offered help. Until you've tried it you have no idea how problematic it can be to organise a tournament, even a friendly one. I'm thinking that in future, I might set out not to play and only jump in if on the day itself we have an odd number to prevent people sitting out. That's if I ever do this again!!!

Fingers crossed that everyone else on the list shows up and I get to open up a few webways!

Blog Wars 3 - An Appeal (again!)

It's seems to be becoming a tradition that in the week leading up to Blog Wars I find myself in the position of having an odd number of competitors. At Blog Wars 1 I didn't find out until the day itself and a hasty text to Darren (TheBaron at C&F) lead to him throwing together an ork list and showing up just in time. Blog Wars 2 and no-one dropped out but with a week to go I was still looking at an odd number of players and the prospect of not playing. It seems Blog Wars 3 will be no exception. Unfortunately one of the competitors has had to pull out which means at this point I won't be playing. No hard feelings to the guy who's pulled out, these things happen, but I've been frantically painting up my Dark Eldar to get 3 colours on in time for Saturday, I'm putting the finishing touches on them as we speak. If the situation stays as it is I'll have wasted my time.

So to cut to the chase, if you would like to come along at the last minute (or know someone who might) then please get in touch with me using the link on the right ASAP. It'd really help me out and mean that the rushed painting wasn't for nothing. I know it's short notice and people can't necessarily arrange things this quickly but if you can please let me know.

Don't get me wrong I've known at each event so far that there's the possibility of me not playing right up until the day but I'd really like to join in with what should be an awesome event. Keep your eyes on the blog for more build up to the tournament including the final confirmation of prizes, an update on my army painting progress and a run-down of the special characters that will be appearing. Whether I'm playing or not I'll see you all on Saturday!

Blog Wars 3 - Build Up Around the Blogosphere

As promised here's my run-down of everyone's build-up to Blog Wars 3. With less than a week to go now people are either ramping up their painting to get things finished or sitting pretty knowing they've had the army finished for weeks. I'm certainly in the former category but my new approach of sod-it-let's-get-three-colours-on-and-leave-it-at-that is working out nicely.

Here's some coverage from the blogosphere which should hopefully give you an idea of the armies you'll face at the rapidly approaching Blog Wars 3 tournament. It's always good to know your enemy so I advise taking some time to get a feel for what you can expect.

Phil over at Armoured Sentinel has been taking us through the selection of his Tyranids list and talks about a couple of his games playtesting them before the day. I met Phil at one of the GW Doubles days and unfortunately he learnt the hard way about what JotWW can do to a tervigon list! Hopefully with only one Space Wolves list at BW3 he'll have a better time of it. It's certainly nice to see 'nids so well represented at Blog Wars 3 and I hope they can prove they can be a force to be reckoned with.

After toying with the idea of bringing Eldar, Graham Sanders from Rogue Trader/Claws and Fists eventually opted for his trusty Tyranids list. I often end up playing Graham in a tournament and it's always a friendly game. Highlight for me was playing him at the End Times which saw two games of SW vs Tyranids running side by side. After a punishing start Graham pulled back well only to be denied victory by a disgustingly good performance from the otherwise hit and miss thunderlord. Nothing yet (that I've noticed) from Andy Lane who's also from C&F but he'll no doubt post something up soon or failing that some AARs from the event.

As ever there's been a lot of coverage of Blog Wars 3 build up over on Sons of Sanguinius. Defending champ Andy Humphris has published several posts with him debating whether to be competitive or not. As I've previously mentioned he's also thrown up a post talking about how to beat the Necron list he eventually settled on. Elsewhere Bully has talked about what he would've taken if he hadn't had to pull out and I expect some stuff soon from Atreides and Kabalite about their offerings.

With three members attending this time around, Blog Wars 1 & 2 veterans the Weemen will be hoping to put in a strong showing this time around. With Chris (the6thdegree) winning Best Painted Army last time around it's certainly worth having a look through the blog for pictures of his Tyranids. Having missed out on BW2, Siph returns with his Relictors for some more Blog Wars action. I love the colour scheme of this army and he's put together a strong force for next weekend's event. Finally, pornstarjedi will be our only Daemons player so keep an eye on him to see how the ageing codex performs.

Ken Morley over at Ignatum placed 3rd in the first Blog Wars with his Tau list. Let's see if he can pull off a similar feat with Tyranids this time around. He's in good company for Tyranid players but confesses to being less experienced than others. Maybe bringing a different angle to the army will pay off. Look out also for Ken's friend Jon Cox who'll be bringing Crimson Fists along to BW3.

One of the armies I'm most looking forward to seeing in the flesh at BW3 is Ian Connolly's "Empire Strikes Back" IG list. There are some excellent conversions in there and some fantastic "counts as" offerings that should still work out great on the tabletop. You can check out his blog Need More Tanks for more pictures.

It seems only right to give a mention to my good friend Jamie and his Index Astartes blog. He's bringing along an Iron Hands SM army with some interesting conversions. Jamie always puts my poxy "conversions" to shame so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's come up with for BW3.

John Holland (MC Tic Tac) from Blood Claw has taken a different tack for Blog Wars 3. Last time around I have a very difficult Wolves vs Wolves game against him which saw him come out on top. Whilst his list for BW2 was very much a competitive list he's opted for a very strong theme this time around basing it on the old Catachans codex applied to the current IG book. I'm looking forward to seeing this army on the table too.

There'll be a strong competitive presence at Blog Wars 3 from the guys at the newly created Generation 40K site. Frank Marsh is somewhat of a nemesis to Matt and I as we've played him at various events across the tournament scene. His friends Rob and Gary will be joining him this time around and I'm sure I'll end up playing one of them at some point. Whilst the site is a bit sparse at the moment keep an eye on in it in the run up to the event and hopefully we'll find a bit more out. If not I'm sure there'll be some aftermath stuff on there.

Last but not least in the this round-up is James Lamb from Sheep of War who's bringing a Grey Knights list with a difference. There's a distinctly simian feel to the army with an abundance of Jokaeros. He's used some third party models to represent them and I'm looking forward to seeing how it's worked out.

So that's it for now. Of course I'll create a similar post for the after action stuff across the blogs. If you're coming along to BW3 and you think I've missed you out then get in touch and I'll make sure to include you. All in all I think it's shaping up to be the best event yet with a great mix of competitive lists and interesting army themes. Stay tuned for more build up over the coming week. Not long to go!

He Must Be Stopped!!

See what I did there?

As most of you who are coming to Blog Wars 3 will know. The first two tournaments were won by none other than Venerable Brother from the  Sons of Sanguinius blog (also known as Andy). Now I put this down to 3 things (in descending order of importance):

1. He brings competitive tournament lists to a tournament with a lot of fluffy lists (shame on him!)
2. He gets drawn against the right lists for his army (jammy get!)
3. He's not that bad a player actually (that's as generous as I'm willing to get Andy!)

Joking aside, it's very difficult to organise a 40K tournament to be purely friendly. Short of severely restricting army selection to the point where no-one will show up, you can't really make everyone bring something fluffy. Not to mention it's a tournament after all so therefore there are prizes and hence there has to be some competition. What you tend to find is that after round one the big boys go off and play on the top tables and look all serious whilst the rest of us enjoy ourselves in relaxed games at the bottom end. The problem is that first game where some poor bastard (i.e. yours truly) finds himself up against a list he hasn't a hope in hell of dealing with his "fun" list.

So with half of the field bringing something a little different that they wouldn't dare show up at other tournaments with that's already an easy ride for some of the top players. This wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that we can't let the bastard win again (as Atreides from SoS so ably put it). Funnily enough, Andy shares this viewpoint and as such he's published an article on how to beat his Necron list. Now frankly my army relies heavily on a few lucky rolls so I can't hope to think much about actual tactics but for the rest of you it wouldn't hurt to go have a read of his article so that we can give him something to think about at least!

Now I know what you're thinking (and to a small extent so am I), "who does this guy think he is? He's not only convinced he's going to win again but now he's got the stones to tell us how to beat him to make it more of a challenge!". Andy, of course, protests this but as I say, head over to Sons and read for yourselves. For those of you who read this blog and aren't going to Blog Wars 3 it's still a decent article on how to beat those pesky Necrons.

After Matt gave up using Necrons and sold them all off I've actually been thinking about getting some. Not only are they pretty cheap to buy but also they don't exactly take much painting to get them to table-top standard. Not to mention they've got some really nice models. It's just a shame I didn't think to offer to buy Matt's from him! Mind you, my current plan is to wait and see what 6th edition brings before I invest in many more models.

My Dark Eldar List for Blog Wars 3

As promised, here's my army list for Blog Wars 3. I'm sure I've posted it up on here before but thought since I've now seen all of your lists it was only fair for you to be reminded of mine. Frankly, if you get drawn against me you're in luck because it really isn't competitive. Anyway, here it is:

1,747pts of Dark Eldar
Baron Sathonyx
2 Haemonculi w/ Webway Portals

3 Blaster Trueborn in Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
3 Blaster Trueborn in Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons

8 Hellions
4 Wracks
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser

6 Reavers with 2 Heat Lances
6 Reavers with 2 Heat Lances

Talos Pain Engine with Chain Flails and T-L Heat Lance
Cronos Parasite Engine with Spirit Probe and Spirit Vortex

So it doesn't take a genius to see that it's a dual webway list. The only vehicles are the two venoms which will transport the haemonculi and trueborn forwards to drop the portals. Everything else will come on from reserve. The beauty of a webway list is that you have the option of using the portals or bringing units on from reserve as normal. In my experience this often catches people out (though it might not now I've mentioned it here!). Opponents focus on the portals and forget that I can still deep strike or turbo boost on from the board edge.

Baron Sathonyx is a popular choice with regards to DE special characters. There's some great characters in the codex but frankly he's a no-brainer choice. Not only does he make the speedy hellions (fleeting jump infantry) but he also gives a +1 to the going first roll off. He comes with a Shadowfield which makes him difficult to kill if you don't roll a 1 for a while but otherwise he isn't really that impressive. High strength (S6) is nice but without ignoring armour saves he doesn't really worry many marine units. It's more about what he does for the hellions than anything else. As I've mentioned they're troops but also they gain stealth, re-roll dangerous terrain tests and re-roll hit & run rolls. This makes the already fast unit even better.

Whilst I love the look of the hellion models they never particularly blow me away on the table top. The combination of shooting and S4 attacks makes them decent but not all that exciting. If they get a decent combat drugs roll they're a little better but most of the time they don't do enough damage on the charge and with only a 5+ save they die pretty quickly. I think ideally I'd have a much bigger unit (think 20) to join Baron but I don't have the models or the time to paint them so maybe another day.

The haemonculi are just a webway delivery system. You're basically paying 85pts for the portals which is a bit steep but still the cheapest way. I originally gave one a shattershard and the other a liquifier gun but frankly they don't usually live into turn 2 so it seemed a waste. The trueborn should be in 18" of a tank so they can steal the pain token from the haemo and find nearby cover to take pot shots at vehicles. Should the enemy choose null deployment I'll keep them in the venoms and try to ride out some fire. As you can imagine, having an entire turn with essentially 2 units on the table usually means there's little left for turn 2 but by then they've hopefully done their job.

The wyches are pretty self explanatory. I'm quickly coming around to the idea of ditching the haywires in favour of a blast pistol because they have a nasty habit of blowing up vehicles and losing a lot of bodies in the explosion! Having said that it's always fun to blow up a dreadnought with a 12pt model! That 4++ save in combat really irritates dreadnoughts! The wracks serve two functions. Firstly, should one of the haemonculi survive that long then they'll join him and either charge something nearby or hug an objective with their FNP saves. If both haemos are dead they'll just walk on to an objective near my table edge and hold on for dear life. For 40pts they don't need to do much to be useful.

The pain engines can be really nasty but they're very slow. That's why I'd never consider taking them in any list that didn't have a webway. Well, that and the fact that they have to compete with ravagers and they normally lose that battle. The talos is probably the better of the two as it can be nasty in combat and with T7 is pretty durable. I've also given it a twin-linked heat lance so it can help with the de-meching. The cronos is great if you can catch a unit bunched up in the open and throw out 2-3 pain tokens to nearby units. On it's own it isn't deadly, it's a pure force multiplier.

The most obvious difference between this list and a normal DE list (aside from the webways of course) is that there are no ravagers! This means the rest of the army needs to be capable of de-meching things. This is where the reavers come in with their pair of heat lances. Their speed and the 18" range of the lances should mean they can blow something up when they emerge from the portal. In the unlikely event that there's no vehicles on the table they'll turbo-boost and hit things with their bladevanes. If they're still around late on their massive speed and 3++ save will allow them to contest objectives effectively.

Sounds pretty nasty right? Well the problem is that Dark Eldar have absolutely no way of modifying the reserve rolls. This is probably why we don't see webway lists.... ever. This means that success is in the hands of the dice gods. You can stack things in your favour by having plenty of redundancy but there have  been games when I just get things in totally the wrong order. For example, the wyches emerge on their own and can't demech anything to get stuck into in combat and by the time the anti-tank units emerge the wyches have taken heavy casualties. Ideally I want half of my army in turn 2 which I should  get but as you know with a 4+ save it never feels like 50:50!

So that's my army and my entire strategy laid out for you guys. Obviously there's the odd thing that I haven't mentioned but I don't feel like I lose anything by telling you about my list. Frankly it isn't going to do very well but when/if it does it will be huge fun! See you on the tables!

Blog Wars 3 - The Armies Assemble (and Scenario Updates)

Well that's it then. Ticket sales are closed for Blog Wars and at the last minute we have a record number of attendees. Now let's not get excited here it's only 2 more than the first Blog Wars but still I'm pleased that I'm keeping the numbers up. Interestingly, if everyone who'd been to the first two came along then we'd have easily hit the 40 mark. Ah well, maybe next time. It's probably because it's the start of the school holiday week.

Scenario Changes
Anyway, first off let me say that, for those of you who didn't check the attachments on the email, the scenarios have altered slightly to incorporate an Open War style scoring system. I'm hoping this will be both straightforward and decisive, in that there shouldn't be duplicate matchups. There's guaranteed to be a couple but hopefully they'll be at a minimum. Please note that in the KP mission a tabling doesn't give you maximum tournament points whilst in the objective games it does. At Open War they had a system where if you tabled your opponent without being on all 5 objectives you couldn't claim full points which just didn't sit right with me. I can see why they did it but seems a bit harsh for those who didn't realise.

Armies in Attendance
The first two Blog Wars tournaments gave us a wide variety of armies to be pitted against. BW3 keeps up this fine tradition with a nice mixture of lists:

• 3 Blood Angels
• Chaos Daemons
• 4 Dark Eldar (!)
• 4 Grey Knights
• 4 Imperial Guard
• 2 Necrons
• Orks
• 4 Different flavours of Space Marines
• Space Wolves (just one!?!?)
• 4 Tyranids

It's really quite an interesting mix we've got for ourselves. I'm hugely surprised at the number of Tyranid and Dark Eldar lists. I thought I'd be the only one but looks like I was wrong. The fact that there's just a single Space Wolves army makes me wonder if I ought to switch but, since my DE army is pretty different from the rest (no-one else is stupid enough to use webways!), I'll stick to my guns. Unsurprisingly there's a big Grey Knights and Imperial Guard contingent but all the lists are varied and a couple are brilliantly themed. I've already got a shortlist in mind for the Best Army Theme award but I want to see them in the flesh before I make a final judgement.

In case you were wondering, the missing races are CSM, Eldar, Sisters and sadly Tau. Again there's a part of me tempted to bring my Tau but let's wait and see what 6th edition brings for them. Given the friendly nature of the event I'm tempted to bring in a system that other tournaments use whereby you get a bonus if you bring a race that isn't currently represented. Maybe next time.

At some point soon, possibly tomorrow, I'll post up a run-down of the Special Characters who will be making an appearance. For now let me say thanks to everyone who sent there list in and special thanks to those who entered into the spirit of the thing and brought something a little different. Now I'm sure we'll all regret it when Andy wins again but at least we didn't all sell out to competitiveness eh Andy?

My Blog Wars list is up on here somewhere but I'll repost it this week and give you a run through of how crappy it is! Just by looking at everyone's lists I can tell you that some cames could be absolutely awful for me and in the rest I might just be lucky!

So, still to come in the Blog Wars 3 build up we have:

• A Special Character Roll-Call
• Blog Wars 3 Preparations Around the Blogosphere
• My Blog Wars 3 List
• A Mystery Plan (which may or may not work out)
• Additional Prize Announcements

Not to mention a few updates on my vain attempts to get my army finished in time! At this point I've given up on it looking pretty and I'm just hoping it will be legal. It'd be embarrassing to have to give myself a points penalty for not getting it done!

Blog Wars 3 - The Clock's Ticking!

Blog Wars 3 is now less than 3 weeks away and frankly I've got no chance of getting my Dark Eldar to the point I wanted them to be. They'll be three colours but not to the standard I wanted. It seems I didn't learn my lesson from the frantic Tau painting earlier in the year! At least I can take my time after Blog Wars when I'll be painting the rest of the army up. Didn't really help that I've been away for 2 weeks but what can you do?

Anyway, this is just a quick post to remind people that the deadline for army list submission is this Saturday at midnight. For those wondering why I'm requiring lists to be submitted before the day, it's because, as I've mentioned I'll be taking part too which means that I won't have time to sit and check the army lists on the day. However, tickets will be available right up until the end of next week so the very late comers will have to get their list to me as soon as possible after they buy their ticket.

I'll get an email out to everyone this week at some point with the final rules pack and scenarios so you can review them before commiting to your army selection. Speaking of which, if you need to make any last minute changes to your army after submitting your list then get in touch and, providing it doesn't change your list drastically, I'll probably allow it. After all, this is meant to be a friendly tournament. The only reason I check the lists is so that it makes sure it's also a fair tournament.

Unless you contact me stating a different address I'll be using the email address associated with the PayPal account used to buy the tickets to send out the emails. For those of you who bought tickets for several people you can either pass on their address to me (preferably) or forward on the emails once you receive them.

Anyway, I'll be posting again, probably on Tuesday, with some details about the scoring system and prizes available. As mentioned in the tournament details every play over the 20 mark adds another £7.50 to the prize fund. Whilst the main prizes remain fixed, I'll use this extra cash to throw in a few smaller prizes along the way.

Being A Tournament Newbie

It's been a good couple of years now since Matt and I made our debut on the tournament scene. It was the Freebootaz doubles and rather miraculously we placed 3rd! Ever since then we've struggled to replicate that performance whether in singles or doubles play. However, the main thing for both of us is the joy of playing competitively.

I often meet people who are playing in their first tournament or even sometimes those who have come along to watch because "they don't feel like their ready for a tournament just yet". This article is aimed at those people in a bid to expand the UK tournament scene so that I don't just see the same old faces (you know who you are!). So what can you expect at a tournament then?

Well frankly it depends on what you expect from it. Personally I attend tournaments to play somebody different and make me really think about how to best use my army. For others it's the painting competition and some just like the banter. There's also that small group who attend with the intention of winning. Let's get something straight, they're most certainly the minority. I'm not talking about people like myself who'd love to win but just aren't that good/harsh/lucky. I'm talking about those who aren't interesting in anything but winning. These are often referred to as WAACers on internet forums meaning Win At All Costs. For the tournament newcomer these are the guys who are most likely to put you off the scene.

This is a massive shame because, as I've said, they're most certainly the minority. In the tournament games I've had I've only come across these guys on a couple of occasions. Therefore don't let this be the reason you don't go to a tournament. Similarly, if you don't think you're competitive enough don't let that stop you either. With the exception of the first game you're most likely going to be paired up with someone of a similar skill level (or someone that was lucky/unlucky). This means that if you're only coming along for a bit of a laugh and bringing a list that reflects that then you'll likely find yourself playing like minded people towards the end of the day.

As in most things in life there'll always be someone better than you and equally plenty of people a lot worse than you. Over the course of a few tournaments you'll probably play a mix of these people. This will only help to improve your game. When you play the top players you'll doubtless pick up a few things from them and when you play the other guys you'll see them doing something wrong that you know full well you've done in the past.

The other thing to consider is the rules. When I first went to a tournament I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the rules of the game. I was wrong. Every single time I've been to a tournament I've discovered something I'm doing wrong or a rule I'd misinterpreted. Sometimes there's a moment like this in every game! Ultimately, whether you choose to believe it or not, playing by the rules is important. Not just because you don't want to be cheating your way to victory but also because the armies are designed with the rules in mind. If you aren't playing it right then your army might be performing better or worse than it should.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and I'm meant to be getting to the airport so let me leave you with a few points in summary:

• Don't be put off by the WAACers. They aren't what the tournament scene is about
• Don't worry about how competitive your army is, there's a lot of luck in who you get drawn against
• Winning isn't everything. I've been to tournaments and lost nearly every game but still enjoyed it
• No one will judge you for not knowing the rules - half of the time they're probably just assuming something that turns out to be wrong

So with all this in mind now comes the shameless plug for my tournament, Blog Wars 3. For anyone who hasn't played in a tournament before or has been to one but was put off I'd say BW3 is an excellent place to start/pick back up. Despite people saying a friendly tournament couldn't exist and still have prizes the first two Blog Wars did just that. Grab yourself a ticket and come along. It's only £15 for a whole Saturday's entertainment. For more details click on the BW3 logo on the right, below the ticket link. I hope to see you there!

PS. I'm now away for a couple of weeks but hotel WiFi permitting I'll answer any emails I get. Not had chance to schedule any posts though so it'll be a bit quiet on here until I'm back. See you on the other side!

Painting Dark Eldar for Blog Wars 3

Not an actual picture of me but same reaction!

There's a feeling of deja vu here as I talk about trying to get my DE painted for a Blog Wars tournament. However, unlike last year, when I gave up and took wolves, I'm determined to get them done in time so I can make BW3 their first tournament.

There's only about a month and a half now until the big day and I've not exactly got much done! My wyches are 3 colours (but not very impressive) and my cronos is too a decent standard but very little else is ready! In a plan reminiscent of GCSE/A-Level revision I've decided to focus my efforts by drawing up a painting timetable. This should give me targets so that I actually get things done in time. Here goes:

B/H  Weekend: Haemonculi & Wracks    <--- nearly done, pictures soon
W/B 9th April: Venom
W/B 18th April: Talos
W/B 23rd April: Trueborn
-- TWO WEEKS HOLIDAY --
W/B 14th May: Reavers
W/B 21st May: Reavers
W/B 28th May: Baron & Hellions

I was feeling pretty confident I'd be done in time until I remembered we're going away for the first two weeks of May!! This gives me very little time to get everything done given that I work full time too! As I've said above the haemonculi/wracks are coming along nicely and I'll finish them today and post pictures later this week.

One of the two venoms is pretty much done but the other is just undercoated. I'm sure I can get them both done in a week (or at least 3 colours anyway). The cronos is finished and only took me a couple of evenings so I reckon the talos won't be much more work. There's only 6 trueborn so I can't seem them taking a long time.

The reavers will need a significant amount of work. I've still got 3 more to build once they arrive from eBay land and then they're pretty time consuming to paint up, especially with the riders too. It'll be a similar story for the hellions and Baron still needs converting. I'll be enlisting Jamie's help here since he's far better with greenstuff than I am!

Somewhere in all that I've got to find time to work on my PgCert stuff too!! Wish me luck!

Blog Wars 3 - Scenarios Posted

I've finally gotten round to finalising the scenarios for Blog Wars 3 and they can be found here. Those of you who played at BW2 will find very little has changed. The two level scoring system is still there but I've changed the points around a bit so that the primary objective is now worth twice as much as the secondary. This should prevent a draw occurring (though it will still be possible). The points breakdown is pretty straightforward to avoid any confusion.

Those of you who've never been to Blog Wars before should check out the details here. Please don't be put off by the title. The tournament was originally designed to be a battle between bloggers from across the community but anyone is welcome to come along.

The main difference between Blog Wars and other tournaments is that each army MUST contain a Special Character. This is unlike a lot of tournaments which forbid their use. In order to make the choice more than just arbitrary the Special Characters have an important role in the scenarios as follows:

Scenario 1 - this is a kill points game with the Commander (special character) of each side being worth 2 KP to his opponent upon his death
Scenario 2 - this is a battle for the control of table quarters but the Commanders are scoring units in their own right
Scenario 3 - this is an objective game but any objective controlled by a Commander is worth double.

As you can see the chosen Commander (Special Character) plays a vital part of your army's strategy so armies which make full use of them will be more likely to triumph. For more details about what counts as a Special Character and which codexes are exempt please look at the tournament details.


Tickets are £15 and are still available by clicking the link on the right of this page! I look forward to seeing you all there!

You can find coverage of last year's Blog Wars 2 event by following the links below:
Blog Wars 2 Results
Blog Wars 2 Painting Competition
My Blog Wars 2 Battles: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3
Coverage on other blogs
40K Podcast from the event

Blog Wars 3 Tickets Now Available!

I announced a little while ago that there'd be a third Blog Wars tournament in June with the imaginative title of Blog Wars 3 and a suspiciously similar logo to the previous tournaments. The tournament details can be found here. I'll be providing the event pack and scenarios as a pdf soon.

As I've already mentioned the compulsory special character rule is staying. The custom scenarios will be staying too but with some minor tweaks to hopefully make them a bit better. Nothing too drastic but I learnt a few lessons after BW2 and there's some ideas from other tournaments that I'd like to implement this time around. I'm considering increasing the points limit to 1,850 which isn't massively different but should make it a bit easier to shoe-horn in a special character (or two!). Not really decided on that yet since I've never really played games at 1,850pts. Since the games are already 2.5 hours long it shouldn't affect things though.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that although the tournament is called Blog Wars, and the idea is that most of the competitors are bloggers or friends of bloggers, I'm still happy for anyone else to attend that wants to. In short, I won't be turning anyone away because they don't have their own blog. The main thing for me is that it remains a friendly tournament focussed around special characters. That should be the difference between this and other tournaments rather than limiting the people who can come.

Tickets will be £15 again with a similar prize breakdown. Again, depending on how popular it is there'll be additional prizes for other things. Unlike the last couple of times I'm not going to set up a PayPal button to click to buy tickets since they charge me about 70p a transaction for that! Instead please send money to alexjbrown58@hotmail.com and specify the names of the people you're buying for.

Any questions about anything to do with the tournament including what counts as a special character, travel directions, special dietary requirements, etc. please feel free to contact me using the link on the right.

Blog Wars 3 - Saturday June 2nd 2012

As mentioned in previous posts I was pretty pleased with how Blog Wars 1 & 2 went so I thought it would be rude not to have a Blog Wars 3! The event will be held at Maelstrom Games on Saturday June 2nd 2012

The feedback I received from BW2 was that people liked the custom scenarios and so I'm keen to keep them for BW3 with some minor alterations. The scoring system needs a little tweaking so that the primary mission has a bit more weight than the secondary. The compulsory Special Character rule will be staying. I think it's one of the things that sets Blog Wars apart from other tournaments and I don't want to lose that. 

Feel free to disagree but I think the first two tournaments succeeded in the aim of creating a friendlier tournament atmosphere where there was still fierce competition but without the usual "issues" associated with it!

The packs will be released nice and early this time around (hopefully early next year) so that people have a lot more time to prepare. Similarly I don't see much harm in putting the tickets up for sale earlier this time so that people can plan their lives around it better. As ever I'm hoping for a decent turn out but I'm keen to keep things managable (so that I can still play mainly!) and therefore I'll be capping ticket sales at a suitable level (to be decided). Tickets will remain at the very reasonable price of £15 and there'll be the same guaranteed prizes with more depending on ticket sales.

I had toyed with the idea of making it a full weekend but decided against it for two main reasons. Firstly because I'd still like to play in it and a full weekend would probably be too much of a commitment. Secondly, I think that a friendly tournament needs to be a single day affair.

As ever I'm open to comments and criticisms. What was good about the first two tournaments? What would you like to see changed?

The most important thing is that we don't let Andy (Venerable) from Sons of Sanguinius win it again! Unfortunately, I have a conscience, which means I can't fix it so that he ends up playing a horrible list in his first game. Therefore it's down to you lot to make sure he doesn't manage it at Blog Wars 3!