The Future of Double Trouble?

As I'd mentioned ad nauseum, Double Trouble 4 was my last event. I know a lot of you were disappointed by this and were hoping that someone would step into fill the void. Well I'm pleased to tell you that not one but two people are planning similar events in the future. I'll post more details of Ian Connolly's plans in another post but for now my friend Jamie Jackson has some news about his event Two's Company, Four Means War.

Some of you may have met me over the past 7 years at Alex’s various events. Unfortunately, number 15 was the final one as Alex has family commitments requiring more of his time going forward. I’m sure you will all agree that he’s done a fantastic job over the years and that it’s a shame they have now come to an end. Or have they....? 

Those of you who were at Double Trouble 4 may have met myself, Alex G (tall chap with salamanders, hard to miss) and Rich (there as a reserve with the shiny harlequins). On our road trip back to Cambridgeshire we were discussing how good the event was and between us we concluded we could attempt to run it ourselves. 

The more we discussed it, the more keen we all were and before we knew it we had investigated venues, dates, feasibility, etc. and were at a point where we were almost ready to proceed. This is where you guys come in. Hopefully we will get some local interest plus some guys from our club in Cambridgeshire interested, but what would really make things work would be if some of the Blog Wars/Double Trouble veterans continued to attend. 

In a nutshell, it will be the same format as Double Trouble, same points, almost the same scoring system and same cost of £17.50 including lunch. We will try to make the prize support (raffle will still be a thing) as generous as it always has been but that will depend on the level of support from the new venue, which is looking likely to be Imps Wargaming in Lincoln https://www.imps-gaming.com/

Why not Element you may ask. Quite simply, Element is a 4 hour drive for us which involves an overnight stay and has put a lot of people off in the past. Lincoln is a bit more central and the venue has 18 tables, 20% off GW and is geared up for the community. 

So what do you need to do? For now, nothing except comment below to express interest so we can get an idea of how popular it will be. Alex B will be in attendance as a guest of honour and has kindly agreed for us to both use his rules pack and to promote the event on From the Fang. As things progress I will also place updates on my own blog: http://indexastartes.blogspot.com

I appreciate any support and if the first one is a success we will look to continue running it 6 monthly as before. 

Cheers, Jamie. 

Thanks Jamie. Hopefully you agree it sounds exactly like the kind of event I was hoping would spring up to fill the void. I hope you'll all support Jamie. I'll hopefully be heading along to relax and play in the knowledge that someone else has to do the legwork!

Double Trouble 4 - The Aftermath

On Saturday I hosted my 15th and, sadly, final event. Double Trouble 4 was (not surprisingly) the fourth of the DT format. It hasn't really been that long since DT3 in June but I wanted to have one last event rather than ending abruptly. Unfortunately, I was limited on dates so I plumped for September 1st rather than a riskier date in November (close to my wife's due date). As a result a lot of the regulars were unable to attend as they were on holiday etc. Still, there were 28 players on the day who showed up with their 875pt armies eager to find out who'd they be partnered with and against in each round. I'm pleased to say my efforts on the "Helldoku" worked and every player managed to play with/against nine different people. Not only that but this time I made it so no-one had to play on the same table more than once! I'll not tell you how long that took me to figure out! Anyway, everyone showed up so that meant I was able to play in my final event too. More on my battles later.

I was flattered how many people came to tell me how sad they were that I was hanging up my TO hat. Even some of the first timers expressed their regret that they'd not discovered my events sooner. When I started this out, with the original Blog Wars, I had no idea that I'd be here seven years later talking about my 15th! I've learnt a huge amount over those seven years and as a result I think it's important to pass on some tips to would-be TOs out there. I've spoken to WH Community before about writing a post for them but I never got around to it. I think now is definitely the time so watch this space.

I once again had a fantastic time and as ever gave away an obscene amount in the raffle. This time there were two top prizes of the Kill Team starter set and Tooth and Claw. I'm not sure how Dave Weston is going to explain his latest acquisition to the missus though!

Results
As usual, I'll do a rundown of the painting competition later in the week but here are the tournament results:

Clicking on the image should make it easier to read. As with all Double Trouble events, the positions are pretty meaningless as they're ranked according to best total score. The prizes are given for most VPs (Master Tactician) and most BPs (Genocidal Maniac). Ian Plumpton somehow managed to accrue 61 VPs (including a whopping 29 in his first game which I assume went to seven turns?!) to take the Master Tactician Award. The competition couldn't have been closer either as Jason Roberts was just a point behind (he'd been Ian's partner in round one) and Dan Wellington was just a point behind him!

John Walton achieved a maximum BP score with three tablings for Genocidal Maniac. Perhaps his opponents were too busy admiring his stunning Renegade Knights to notice their models dying in swathes?

Finally, Nathaniel Gibbs took home the "Nobody Loves Me Award" for lowest combined score. I take a small amount of responsibility for this since I played him in the second game.

Look out for more posts later in the week with the painting competition results and my battle reports. I'd like to finish with a huge thank you to all of the guys who were at DT4 and to anyone who's been to my events over the last seven years. You lot have continued to prove that you don't have to be a tool at a tournament and that everyone can have fun whilst killing each others' armies! Friendly 40K tournaments are possible and I only hope someone will continue to run events in a similar spirit. Thank you again to Element Games for providing what I'm convinced is the best venue in the country (though I confess I've not sampled many).

Normally at this point I'd be telling you when the next event will be but there isn't one. It's up to you guys to pick up the baton!

Double Trouble 3 - The Aftermath

Yesterday I hosted my third Double Trouble event (DT3: Double Harder). This was my 14th time hosting a tournament but only my second in 8th edition. Since all of the pairings are random in each round I'd decided to keep the mission the same in all three games and army selection as straightforward as possible. Players showed up with their 875pt force (in a single Battle Forged detachment) and we paired up with a new partner and two new opponents in each round. Once again the "helldoku" that I work through, to make sure no one meets the same players again, paid off giving everyone nine different people to throw dice with. A total of 30 people showed up with me standing in as the 31st and 32nd player to make sure no one had a bye.

Those of you with long enough memories will remember that DT1 got confined to the dungeon under the newly refurbished NWGC but we had no such trouble at DT2 and once again got the NWGC in it's glory yesterday. Even though we were sharing the venue with an Imperial Assault championship it felt like we had the place to ourselves and there was plenty of space around the tables. I've not exactly toured the land but I really thing that Element Games have worked hard and invested significant capital to make it an excellent place to play whatever game you're into.

Hopefully those guys who came along won't tell me otherwise but I don't think the event could've gone much better. It ran pretty much perfectly to time, everyone showed up who I was expecting and I barely had any rules queries at all. It was a pretty relaxed day for all and despite being a touch on the warm side I can't complain about anything from my end. Please do let me know if you disagree though.

I'd upped the points to 875 each (so 1750pts total) to allow for a bit more space in the lists to bring some fun toys but I think most people were getting through their games in 2.5 hours. My first game only went to four turns but the other two went to the end. I'll report my games later in the week.

Results
As ever, come back tomorrow and Tuesday for the painting competition roundup but here are the results from the tournament:

Clicking on the image should make it more legible. The positions are pretty meaningless as I separate out the awards for most VPs (Master Tactician) and most BPs (Genocidal Maniac). Jeremy Morris and his T'au winning the former and David Irving and his Ad Mech winning the latter. Propping up the table was Luke Capper who took home the "Nobody Loves Me Award" and a tenner in Element credit as compensation!

Jeremy put in a strong performance in both categories as did Thomas Douch who finished third on VPs and second on BPs with his Necrons. Mark Crombleholme as just two points short of the VP crown too. Special mention to Rob Nathan who managed to jump up from bottom at DT2 to just below mid-table.

As ever, there were far bigger prizes to be won in the raffle with Tom Capper (apologies if it was Luke) taking away a Imperial Knight Valiant worth £100 RRP and further prizes of Armiger Helverins, Sacristan Forgeshrine, Webway Gate, Munitorum Containers and the new IK codex handed out to people just for showing up. Finally, I decided to add a bonus prizes of a Start Collecting kit of the winner's choice to the winner of a mass roll off!

Look out for more round up posts later in the week but to finish I'd like to once again say a massive thank you to all of the guys who show up to my events and really enter into the spirit. This game, and it's tournament scene in particular, often gets a bad rep for the attitude of the players and I think we consistently prove that it doesn't have to be like that. My original vision for friendly events where everyone enjoys themselves is only achieved because the guys who attend want the same thing. I'd also like to again thank Element Games for such an excellent venue with friendly staff. Table service should be standard at these things! I only wish my FLGS shared their philosophy for making a top class venue instead of worrying about the cost. Remember you can support From The Fang by buying your miniatures from them. It doesn't cost you any extra and in fact they'll save you a good chunk off RRP.

Finally, my next and final (dum dum durrrrr) event will be held at the NWGC on September 1st. I've not decided on the format yet so keep an eye on this blog and the Double Trouble 40K group on Facebook for more news.

The Double Trouble 3 Pie Charts Post!

Unbelievably we're already heading into June and yet this is just my sixth post of the year. "What could bring me out of hiding to post again?" I hear you ask. Well pie charts of course! For those of you not familiar with this little bit of silliness, the pie chart post is a bit of a tradition for my tournaments. After I've received all of the lists I put together some meaningless statistics into some, even more meaningless pie charts. My wife points out that "no one uses pie charts anymore" but I've never been a dedicated follower of fashion!

As ever, let me start (well start the second paragraph of the start) by thanking everyone for submitting their lists on time. I have to say this was by far the easiest list checking session I've ever had. Maybe that's because GW have got their house in order and made it easier or maybe it's just that it's pretty difficult to eff up an 875pt lists in a single detachment! Nevertheless, aside from a minor niggle based on the "Big FAQ" (more on that in a bit) I had no queries to speak of. I'm sure I'll have missed something but anyway, on with the pie! Oh but before you do, maybe refresh your memory with the DT2 and NMTBW pies.

The Pie Charts

Far be it for me to break with tradition so let's start with the Faction Breakdown pie:

Click to embiggen. Unless my pie chart for DT2 was wrong (seems unlikely), there were no Guard/AM players at DT2. Now though, they make up a fifth of the armies at DT3. Tyranids also weren't present at DT2 but there are another two lists on top of mine. Some notable absences are Space Wolves (presumably because they're without a codex?!), Grey Knights, Dark Angels and perhaps most surprisingly, Eldar although I'm pleased to see their dark brethren are in attendance. I think we've now had every faction at my tournaments with the possible exception of Sisters of Silence but they're without a codex. Pleased to see GS cults even if Dave says he's never used them before! 

There's an interesting shift though which we can see beautifully demonstrated in our next pie:

Only half of the armies are defending the Imperium of Man. That still sounds like a lot but I'll wait while you go and look at the same pie DT2 where over a third were Imperial. Interestingly it's a pretty similar looking pie to the one at NMTBW except Chaos have lost out a bit to Xenos. Does this mean that despite GW's best efforts those plucky Adeptus Astartes are falling in popularity compared to the Xenos "scum"? Probably not to be honest, not exactly a statistically significant result!! From my perspective though I find Xenos to be far more interesting which is one of the reasons my Dark Angels headed over to San Diego following their eBay sale. You might remember at DT2 that 18 of the 28 armies were Space Marines of one flavour or another. This time around it drops to 11 of 30 with very few Primaris marines to be seen.

Right let's start taking a look at army composition at DT3. I decided in the end to place as few restrictions on the lists as I could. My main stipulation was a single Battle Forged detachment. You can see which ones people chose here:

Hardly surprising that the Battalion is a run-away favourite since it offers the most CP and is pretty easy for most armies to fill. There's not really much to say here but you'll notice the single Super Heavy detachment. No prizes for guessing that's the single Imperial Knights list. Speaking of which:

Completely pointless pie chart but considering I was thinking of banning the TITANIC keyword I think it's worth highlighting that next to no-one bothered anyway! Similarly FW wasn't exactly popular:

Of the two armies with FW units (both of which contain just a single FW unit), one is mostly for fluff reasons and the other, well, I'll let you find out for yourselves if you face it! As someone who has little interest in FW units, largely because of their prohibitive pricing, I wonder why they aren't more popular. Obviously this is a small sample but last time 8 of the 28 lists used FW models. Are they too expensive for this points level? Are they just no good in 8th? You tell me.

Another thing I bothered to restrict last time was the number of each unit you could take and how many models you could have in a unit. I didn't bother limiting these this time so let's look at what effect that's had:

Bear in mind the first chart includes troop units that were spammed. Still, just over half of the lists inadvertently stuck to my old comp of "no more than two of anything". This would jump up even higher if I ignored troops and transports but I can't be arsed to go back and run those numbers! Anyway, we'll see how much of an issue it is. GW obviously think it is as in the "Big FAQ" they limit the number of times each datasheet can be used. This is where I had some minor problems with list checking: 

Given that these lists are under 1,000pts then they should only have two of each datasheet right? Well, what about if you consider they're actually half of an, as yet undiscovered, 1750 pt army. Should three of each be allowed? Anyway, it didn't make much difference as only one list had to be changed dramatically as a result. The irony is that the list actually became more "spammy" despite having more variety in the units. Not sure that's what GW intended!!

Right, that wraps up the pie charts I could be bothered to create for you! I find this process quite interesting, especially as someone who's only played in one tournament (that I wasn't running) in 8th. I'm struggling to motivate myself to participate in one but I'll save that discussion for another post. For now let me leave you with the attendance figures updated to reflect DT3.

Assuming these were all unique individuals that'd be 446 people. Obviously there haven't been that many as a large amount of my participants are repeat or even serial offenders. Still, it's a sobering thought that I've checked that many lists over the years!!! 

At some point I plan on doing a bit of a stats deep dive on all of the data I've got from these 14 events that I've run over the past 7 years. There's something to look forward to eh? 

Right, I'm off to look at my Tyranids in despair and decide whether I should do some frantic painting in the next couple of weeks or admit defeat and just use Scott's army which I have on loan. See you all in less than a fortnight!

Double Trouble 3 Tickets are Now Available!

Somehow another month has passed since I last posted but I need to post today to tell you all that tickets are now available for Double Trouble 3! They're still £17.50 and give you three games of 40K with 9 different people! More details and info on how to buy tickets can be found on the DT3 page here.

For those of you not familiar with the Double Trouble format, allow me to explain. Double Trouble is "doubles with a difference". Most doubles events have you finding a partner ahead of the tournament and working together on a combined army list. Well at DT3 you'll not need to find a partner because everyone gets a different partner in each round. All you need to do is bring an 875 pt list (more on that later). Each round you'll get a random partner and then play against another random pairing. That means you'll play with/against 9 different people over your three games.

I know this format might seem like a strange one to some people but there were good reasons for doing it. Firstly, doubles events are often a problem with people who don't have a regular gaming partner. They're also tricky for those who have an odd number in their group. A potential solution would be just to take all the players without a partner and assign them one. Trouble is, if you get paired with someone you don't like or with a list that doesn't work with yours then you're stuck with them for the day. At DT3 it'll change every round so you're never stuck with the same partner or indeed, opponents.

This high degree of randomness obviously makes for an event that is more social than competitive. I know lots of people who've been put off the tournament scene by the larger events where they might come across a filthy list in all three rounds (or even five rounds in a weekend). To me, the draw of the tournament scene is playing different people from across the country and share a common love of the game. I met people at my first ever event that I'm still in touch with today. Obviously I like playing to win too but I try to tailor my lists to the atmosphere of the event instead of trying to win at all costs.

I'd hope that anyone who's been to the previous two Double Trouble events or even any of  the eleven Blog Wars/NMTBW events will tell you that I believe in giving out a ton of prizes in the free to enter raffle. I'm a great believer in keeping tournament prizes to a minimum. It seems there was criticism of some of the ITC events in the States having large cash prizes that encouraged a higher proportion of filth. There's little stopping you bringing filth to one of my events but you're not going to win a huge prize as a result.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. I'll post some more details of the event (including the scenarios) in the coming weeks but you've got just over three months to get your armies ready. I'm hoping to have my Tyranid force ready too so I'll be posting updates on my progress.

The Double Trouble 2 Pie Charts Post!

It's that time again when I produce a series of pie charts to illustrate pretty meaningless statistics about the armies that will be competing at one of my tournaments. This time it's the Double Trouble 2 edition. Last year's Double Trouble (1) edition featured a bumper helping of pie. This year I've been pretty lazy and just updated the pie charts to reflect this year's offerings.

Once again, thanks to everyone for submitting the lists. Special thanks to the two guys who've joined in last minute to make up for a few unexpected dropouts. I have to say again that I'm glad I'm only looking at 750pt lists but at least this is the last time I'll be reviewing lists based on the bloated 7th edition rules. It's been nearly impossible to keep track of all the source material. I'm looking forward to everything coming from a much more limited set of books. Well, until we start getting the new codices that is. I'm also looking forward to what I hope will be my first events without significant comp. Reading through the rules for 8th I think that were I to run Double Trouble again in the new edition I'd probably just have to keep the single detachment and everything else will be fine. I'm sure people will find ways to break the game again though so my joy will probably be short lived.

Right, onto the pie!

The Pie Charts
As ever we begin with the faction breakdown pie:

Look at all the pretty colours! Once again you guys have, without any input from me, managed to represent nearly every faction in the game. Sadly no Tyranids this time which is always a big disappointment for me. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing Dave Weston's Ravenwing in the "flesh" so I'll forgive him. Again no love for Guard but hopefully the new edition will make them more viable again. At least we've got some Chaos Space Marines and Necrons this time around. One thing we certainly aren't going to be short of are Space Marines:

Bear in mind the blue bit includes some Legiones Astartes armies, CSM, vanilla SM and all those chapters worthy of their own book e.g. Wolves. Proportionally there's a pretty big jump there though from last year's 50:50 split. I feel vindicated in making that pie chart last year now as it makes it more obvious that they've increased! Screw you again if you internally mocked me for making it! You have to wonder how 8th edition will affect their popularity. Of course, you don't really have to wonder because I'll quite literally "chart" their rise or fall in the next pie chart post.

I guess you're wondering what chapters these multitude of marines represent? Well whether you are or not here it is:

The biggest change here is that Blood Angels (boooo!) have swapped places with Space Wolves (woooo!). There's just one player representin' for Fenris this time compared to three last time. So "what will these many marines be up against?" I hear you cry. Well let me show you:

Despite successes at Cadia, Chaos isn't looking like it's in the ascendancy here. Again, I really hope 8th will go some way to fix this. I may not be a fan of Daemons but I'd love CSM to feel a lot more like they do in the fluff.

How have people organised their armies though? Well here's how:

A CAD remains the most popular detachment for obvious reasons. Firstly that Objective Secured isn't hurting anyone in Maelstrom games but also because 750pts doesn't really allow you much scope for anything else (it's like I planned in that way.....). This pie chart will look significantly different in 8th I'm sure with the 27,000 (or thereabouts) different detachments that feature in the rulebook. Speaking of which. I will, of course, be dropping a review of the new book once Double Trouble 2 (and a super secret post) are out of the way.

What's again somewhat surprising is the lack of formations:

We aren't seeing any more than we did at DT1. Obviously the reasons remain the same in that a lot of them are impossible to field in the Double Trouble comp (again, it's like I planned it or something). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised/amused by the formations that do feature though but I won't spoil that for you (how's that for a cliffhanger!!).

Last, but not least, Forge World usage. You might remember DT1 was the first time I've allowed Forge World at my events for a while. The general consensus was they weren't too bad so I've allowed them again:

Ever so slightly higher proportion of FW units/armies than last time. Exactly the same number of armies include a single unit (or more) and there's still three Heresy era armies in attendance. Same numbers then but a slightly higher percentage as we're down by 4 people compared to DT1.

That's it for the pies. I'm hoping the slight downturn in attendance is a result of the impending arrival of 8th edition. I really hope the new edition will be a positive for the game and bring people back and get attendances up. GW has really gone a long way to supporting independent events in the last year or so. They've still got a long way to go in my opinion but we're in a much better place than we were when I was first motivated to run Blog Wars.

Right, we've all gorged ourselves on pies now so it's time for me to make sure I've printed all the bits and pieces for Saturday. I might get chance to showcase my DT2 list (although I'm just a stand-in at the moment). Not long now for any of you still painting. Apologies for not giving you the same support I did last year but I'll endeavour to do better next time!

Less Than Week Left to Buy Your Ticket for Double Trouble 2

The title of the post says it all really but ticket sales for Double Trouble 2 will close at midnight this Saturday (27th May). If you'd like to come along you need to get your ticket soon then. You can find all the information for the event on the DT2 page. 

In case you haven't read about the event already, it's a 1,500 pt (2 x 750) doubles event but with a bit of a difference. Instead of picking an army in collaboration with your partner you simply pick a 750pt army of your own and show up. You'll then be paired up with a random partner and matched against another random pairing. In the subsequent games (there's three in total) you get another new partner and another random pair to play against. The idea is that you meet and play with 9 new people over the course of the day.

With a new edition of 40K fast approaching (DT2 will use 7th edition rules), it's a great time to meet some new gaming buddies to give you a variety of opponents to test out the new rules with once they're released.

Since you're only picking 750 pts there's also the opportunity to use a new army that you're fancying starting for the new edition or to dust off some old models than you think will get a new lease on life with the new rules. 

The last Double Trouble was a lot of fun and I was lucky enough to play in it too (I only play if the numbers allow) and I really enjoyed the experience of playing against a wide variety of opponents and having to quickly decide on tactics with my partner in each round. It's a great insight into how other people play the game and one that you can't really get from playing against them.

Please note the actual venue we're playing in is different for DT2

Did I mention there's also a generous raffle (entry to which is included in your ticket)? Last time the top prize was a Deathwatch: Overkill set and there were five other prizes to be won for a total RRP value of £350! The prize fund is based on the number of tickets sold so the more I sell I'll either add prizes or make them more generous.

Anyway, I really hope I'll see some of you there. If you've got any questions, ask me in the comments below or email me using the "Contact Me" link on the right. 

Tournament Report - Doubles at Warhammer World - Ynnari

It's been a long time since we've managed to attend a doubles event at Warhammer World. In fact, looking back through the blog posts it was July 2014!! That sounds far too long ago but thinking about it, it's probably true. With the refurb of WHW there were no events for a while and then all the subsequent doubles fell on weekends that weren't suitable for us. The doubles events were the ones that really got Matt and I hooked on tournament play so we've been to quite a few now. The game is just better with four people I think. Having someone to discuss tactics with and watching your opponents do the same is really interesting. **SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING** If you'd like to try out doubles gaming for yourself, why not buy a ticket for Double Trouble 2 on June 10th. Details can be found by clicking on the DT2 logo on the right!

Anyway, this time around we toyed with various different lists. We needed two 900pt armies to make a combined 1,800pt force. I think that's the highest points limit we've ever had. We toyed with various horrendous combinations of Imperial Knights, wraithknights, dreadknights, Ta'unar, etc but decided to give the recently released Ynnari a spin. We only managed to a get a couple of test games in but it's a good job we did as using the Soulburst effectively is key to success with them. The list we settled on was:

899pts of Ynnari
Maugan Ra
2x 5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
Venom (for Maugan Ra)
3 Reavers
6 Swooping Hawks (incl. Exarch)
Yncarne

899pts of Ynnari
Farseer Skyrunner (Spirit Stone of Anath'lan)
5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
3 Windriders
3 Reavers (incl. cluster caltrops)
2x 5 Scourges (4 Haywire in each)
Wraithknight (wraithcannons, scatter laser)

Nothing too filthy I don't think. Obviously Ynnari are powerful but there's no scatter windriders, no wraithguard in raiders, etc. A fairly mixed list that should be fun to play with and against we hoped. I'll try to keep the battle reports brief for a change. Here goes!

Game One - Ynnari vs. CSM/Daemons
Our first game was Cloak and Shadows against Fateweaver, some heralds with screamers (2++ re-rollable saves), some blue horrors, some CSM, a terminator sorcerer, firestorm redoubt with lascannons and a land raider.

Fateweaver headed straight down the middle of the board and was frankly pretty lucky to survive two turns of shooting from pretty much all of the Dark Eldar. He passed a ton of 3+ saves and all his grounding tests to cling on with a single wound remaining to fly off the board to return in turn 4. Elsewhere their Wraithknight used a Soulburst to kill the land raider in their first turn with a D shot when some nearby Reavers perished. The land raider turned into the Yncarne and between them they slowly worked his way through everything else in the army whilst the Dark Eldar were mostly out of range thanks to the deployment.

Ultimately, the Yncarne ended up in combat with the 2++ re-rollable screamers for the rest of the game whilst we tried to rack up the VPs. It wasn't until later that we realised we'd brought the Swooping Hawks in on T2 only to forget about them for the rest of the game. They could've been attacking Fateweaver and claiming objectives but they were lost in their dead pile which they kept to the edge of the table. The game ended in a narrow victory of 14-12 helped in no small part by me rolling 3 for all three of the D3 point objectives we scored!

Unfortunately, one of our two opponents was pretty miserable throughout the game because he took an instant dislike to us for running Ynnari. It's a shame as this was our closest game so could've been a lot more fun.

Game Two - Ynnari vs. DA/Tyranids
Not your most likely of combinations and something you'd be more likely to find at Double Trouble with its random pairings (hint hint). Anyway, basically it was 60 hormagaunts, 30 termagants, three zoanthropes and an exocrine. The DA portion wasw two rhinos with tactical squads, two predators, DW knights in a pod and Ezekiel. The mission was Spoils of War. They won the roll-off but we Seized!

The Venoms lay waste to the Tyranids early on with the Exocrine and two of the Zoanthropes gone in the first turn. The Wraighknight struggled to kill the predators and the Scourges didn't give much help leaving both on a single hull point. That spelled doom for the Wraightknight who ended up dying to overwatch having lost all but one wound in their shooting phase. Meanwhile, the Yncarne got tied up fighting some Hormagaunts until the other Zoanthrope died to remove their Fearless. The DE continued to chew through the Tyranids and the Yncarne eventually turned her attention to the DA with the Scourges helping by finishing off the predators. Other than killing the Wraithknight the only highlight for our opponents came from the Deathwing Knights who soaked up a lot of fire and killed Maugan Ra in combat before eventually being whittled down to end the game.

By the time the dust settled we'd managed to find 21 VPs from the objectives and our opponents hadn't scored at all. A pretty one-sided affair throughout and I felt for the Tyranid player who was a spectator from quite an early stage.

Game Three - Ynnari vs. Cult Mech./Wolves
The last game of Saturday would be Tactical Escalation. Our opponents had two units of four breachers, a unit of four destroyers and a dominus. The wolves had WG in a drop pod, WG terminators, a lord on thunderwolf and a squad of TWC. They won the roll off but, to our surprise, gave us the first turn.

The venoms and concentrated on the destroyers early on to try to protect the wraithknight. The dominus went down and in came the Yncarne who somehow find herself in a charge from the TWC as we'd not thought about them when we brought her in (despite carefully placing everything else in our list out of charge range during turn one). The rest of our army was able to focus on everything else though including the drop pod of WG and terminators who arrived on successive turns. The breachers were eventually whittled down by the rest of the firepower and the wraithknight waded into the combat hoping to save the Yncarne and end the game. We'd also thrown in some sacrificial Reavers to die to try to get some wounds back for her.

The squad leader for the TWC had other ideas though. The wolf lord had long since died to the Yncarne but he decided to avenge his brother by smashing down the Yncarne. He also put some wounds on the Wraithknight who'd stomped the rest of the squad away. That put the Wraithknight on initiative 1 thanks to Concussive (which I don't think I've ever actually managed to use!) meaning they'd strike simultaneously. In an epic end to an otherwise pretty one-sided game, the heroic Space Wolf took out the Wraithknight but died in the process. He'll certainly make it into the sagas!!

Whilst all that was going on we managed to take a 17-3 win on VPs to give us a healthy 52-15 scoreline for the day.

Game Four - Ynnari vs. Astra Militarum
We knew our list would struggle with heavily mechanised lists and that's exactly what we found ourselves against on Sunday morning for the Deadlock mission. Five Taurox, two Wyverns, a Vanquisher, some rough riders, two lots of armoured sentinels and two Vendettas. Our opponents won the roll off for first turn (I don't think we won one all day!).

Their first turn was unbelievable, pretty much everything they tried to do worked. Three of the venoms went down, two of which to single autocannons on the Taurox which hit, pen'd and rolled 6s to explode after I failed the cover saves! That did give the Wraithknight a free shooting phase but he missed with one gun and the other pinged off the trees hiding the Wyvern. That would be the story of the game. We'd really need the D shots to be hot but Matt fired 11 shots (i.e. 6 lots of shooting) before we managed to kill the Wyverns who'd been the targets every time! That's just insanely unlikely to happen! The Wyverns took full advantage and their barrages lay waste to big chunks of our army. We did at least manage to take out a Taurox to bring in the Yncarne....

Well, that didn't go great either. They drew the Kingslayer card so unloaded a pile of guardsmen to fire at her. Matt failed an ungodly number of 3+ saves and she perished without moving an inch! Granted we'd missed an opportunity to get her into combat with a Soulburst but still, gutted. Eventually the Wraithknight started to wade through their army in combat but by that point their VP total was well out of reach.

I don't think we've ever had a game where our luck was quite so abysmal. Our opponents must've felt invincible because pretty much everything they tried to do worked out. Part of the problem was that a big chunk of our army (i.e. the Venoms) was either dead early on or impotent because there were no non-vehicles on the table for most of the game. We were perhaps foolish to bring the Yncarne in on our turn but it felt like the right place and time. It basically came down to all those failed D shots. If even a couple of the early ones had worked it would've changed the face of the game. The final result was a 10-18 loss.

Game Five - Ynnari vs. Orks/Unbound
We were grateful not to have to play another Vanguard Strike game and instead we got Contact Lost. The opposing army consisted of grot tanks, killa kans, a Shadowsword, leman russ, Chaos Terminators, grots and a mek gun.

Another mismatch that proves that random pairings often don't make for fun games for everyone. The opposing army was certainly nice to look at though and eventually scooped three of the painting awards (I was a little suspicious about the number of people from their gaming group who might've voted for them though). They went first and killed off one of the Venoms with the Shadowsword. It proved costly though as the Wraithknight found his form again and stripped 8 hull points from him in response before finishing the job in our turn and charging the Leman Russ to kill that too. It was then The Scourges chewed through the killa kans and with help from Maugan Ra the Grot Megatank went down to give the Yncarne her entrance.

Nothing particularly dramatic happened in the game from this point on. We slowly chewed through their army and, despite losing some Scourges for a lone Killa Kan charge, they had a pretty miserable time of it. We managed to pick up a 13-4 win and probably could've dragged it out for more if the Scourges had stayed in combat with the kan rather than running off the board! It was a shame to end the day with such a one-sided affair that I don't think either of us really enjoyed.

Conclusion
You might be thinking that 4:1 win/loss ratio would place us pretty high in the standings but, since we didn't pick up a single favourite game vote, it was only good enough for 67th out of 89 teams! Had it been scored purely on VPs we'd have been 16th mind you. We knew going in that they were scoring it on fave games though so we weren't too worried. Incidentally, our vote went to our third game for the epic antics of that TWC squad leader. They were also really nice guys who we'd have loved to play again some time. Shame they're from Kent so that's perhaps unlikely!

Looking around there didn't seem to be that many insanely broken lists. It seemed from talking to people like there was a lot of Ynnari but probably the daftest thing we saw was this:

The main thing was that the event delivered on what we hoped. It was a great atmosphere (if a little warm) and we had a great time in most of our games. They stopped proceedings to play the 8th edition announcement video which didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. It'll be interesting to see how tournament play changes though. I'm cautiously optimistic about it but I hope I'll be able to get a post up with some of my wishlisting for the new version of the game.

I think our list delivered on being fun to play, if perhaps not to play against. It's interesting to try to figure out the best way to get the most from Soulburst. Clearly a nonsense though really. The sort of thing I hope gets fixed with the new rules.

Battle Report - Imperium vs. Nurgle & Orks - 4,500pt Doubles

Matt, Jamie, Dan and I have been trying to get together reasonably regularly to play some big doubles games of 40K. The first saw 3,500pts of Jamie & Dan's Tyranids take on Space Marines & Space Wolves belonging to Matt and I. The second had 3,000pts of Chaos (Matt/Dan) take on Blood Angels/Dark Angels (Jamie/Me). That game was way back in March 2014 which shocks me a little! Can't believe it's taken us the better part of three years to get together again. We've planned to play again in April this time so at least the wait won't be as long again.

Anyway, on Sunday we headed down to the Sanctuary near Mansfield for the latest battle. The only pairing we haven't had so far was Dan and I taking on Jamie & Matt. We chose to up the points to 4,500 this time around to allow us to include a Stompa without limiting our options too much. We also decided that the two halves of the doubles teams didn't have to be equal so I had around 2,400 to Dan's 2,100 and Jamie/Matt did something similar. Apologies for the blurry pictures at times. It was freezing in there (it's an old church!) so my hands were probably pretty numb!

Dan's Nurgle force consisted of a couple of formations (in the form of a Plague Colony and a Helforged Warpack) and a few other bits. That meant a winged DP, Lord, some spawn, 4 rhinos of plague marines, defiler, 2 forgefiends and 2 maulerfiends. My Orks had a warboss, painboy, weirdboy, burnas, a morkanaut, stompa, some deffkoptas, a dakkajet, 3 trukks of boyz, a 20-boy mob and a 30-boy mob.

Facing us were Jamie's Iron Hands with chapter master on a bike, bike squad, a land raider full of assault terminators, cataphractii terminators, a predator, whirlwind, vindicator, sternguard in a pod, techmarine on bike with a conversion beamer and a contemptor dread. Matt's "half" consisted of a mixture of Imperials including a techpriest dominus with some kataphron breachers, an culexus assassin, librarian with custodes, inquisitor with GK terminators, a dreadknight, a handful of guardsmen squads, company command squad in a chimera, veterans in a chimera, a vendetta and an Imperial Knight.

The theme for the game was that the Orks were invading an Imperial world and the local PDF (represented by Matt's guard) had discovered that the horde's weirdboy had been messing with some things he shouldn't. That led to Nurgle daemons/CSM arriving. An Ordo Malleus inquisitor arrived to help fight off the Chaos forces and called in help from the Iron Hands and other nearby Imperial force. We'd be playing a standard game of Maelstrom but both the Weirdboy and Inquisitor would be worth 5 VPs each when killed. Whilst they were alive they'd be able to bring in plaguebearers and militarum tempestus scions each turn.

Battle Report

They won the roll off and spread their forces out across the full length of their deployment zone (we were playing Dawn of War on an 8' x 4' table). We toyed with deploying the Stompa on the opposite side of the field to the Imperial Knight to let it run riot for a couple of turns before the IK stepped in. However, in true Orky fashion we opted to deploy it directly opposite instead so they'd inevitably get into combat.

The brought down a chunk of their reserves in the first turn with the dreadknight arriving on our right flank. On the opposite side the sternguard podded in right in front of the Stompa hoping to bring it down with melta fire and the Inquistor brought his terminators and some scions in to support them. When I realised I'd also positioned the Stompa straight across from the kataphron breachers I was worried I'd lose him before he even moved. Fortunately some incredibly jammy invulnerable saves (thanks to the Morkanaut's KFF) allowed him to survive with just 4 HP lost. Elsewhere their armies went to town on my trukks destroying two of them and leaving a third damaged.

That left the GK terminators, scions and sternguard stranded right in front of our lines. One mob of Orks who'd lost their trukk dealt with half of the sternguard (who'd combat squadded) and the other half got eviscerated by the stompa's chainsword. The scions somehow survived the plague marines firing on them and wounded the deffkopta on overwatch allowing them to finish him in assault before he swung. The daemon prince and defiler charged into combat with the Inquisitor killing him and his squad. The burnas hopped out of the Morkanaut to allow their meks to try to repair the Stompa but they failed. On the opposite side of the field the maulerfiends and the only mob still with their trukk charged into combat with the dreadknight hoping to overwhelm him. We were lucky to keep everything alive but fluffed a lot of our rolls meaning that the dreadknight's sanctuary power kept him alive with two wounds remaining.

The stompa was now very vulnerable to a counter charge from the IK. Before that could happen though, the vendetta arrived and stripped a hull point and the breachers added another meaning it had half of its HP remaining when the IK charged. The land raider disgorged its terminators into the fight too. Despite all this the stompa managed to come out with two HP remaining but failed with it's own attacks only hitting the IK once and causing just a single HP of damage. Despite getting 3 stomps there were no 6s and the terminators survived. Unsurprisingly the stompa went down in the next turn and I realised that I'd forgotten to get the 20 strong mob out from inside it so they perished in the blast.

Elsewhere the Culexus saw his opportunity, darted out from behind a building and tossed a psyk-out grenade at the weirdboy. This caused a perils (the weirdboy had already had one in the first turn) which killed the ork psyker. Its mission accomplished, charged into combat and killed off the nob in a challenge before the warboss crushed the assassin in his power klaws. The dreadknight was luckier this turn and managed to kill off both of the maulerfiends. This left just the Orks to deal with him and they didn't provide much resistance.

The dakkajet arrived and managed to strip a couple of hullpoints from the vendetta. The daemon prince and defiler were now stuck in combat with the chapter master and his insane 2+/3++/2+ FNL combo. By this point I only had a handful of Orks left and Dan's plague marines were getting hammered by the custodes, dreadknight and tanks on the right flank. It would probably have ended up a tabling but the store was closing soon so time was running out. That meant we'd only make it to the end of turn 3. At the end of the Imperial turn the score was 14-10 so we looked for a last ditch attempt to sneak a win.

We drew Hold the Line and two objective cards. One was under the Imperial Knight so forget that one. The other was deep in Imperial lines but the Warboss unleashed a Waaagh! and went for it. We'd also need linebreaker so the deffkoptas blasted into their deployment zone. So, with Hold the Line, line breaker and one of the objectives we'd get a draw. We therefore hoped we could kill their two Warlords to take the win. The forgefiends were able to wreck the command chimera leaving the occupants for the dakkajet to deal with. With the vehicle only wrecked, Matt managed to hide the commander behind the wreckage. Despite killing most of the squad, they passed their morale check and stayed alive. The insanely tough chapter master hung on against the daemon prince whilst the warboss' unit failed their charge. This left us with a 14-12 loss.

Conclusion
It never felt like a particularly close game but this was mostly down to our failing as generals! We should have definitely had the stompa on the opposite side of the field. That would've meant it could deal with the tanks etc on the right flank before the IK got to it and the breachers wouldn't have been in range straight away. I've still not used my stompa as much as I'd have liked but I'm thinking of taking it to Dave's Birthday Bash 2.0 in a couple of weeks.

We could've also played for the objectives a bit more by focusing more fire on the scions to shift them off the objective which would've been worth 2 VPs to us at the time. Still it was great that we had a (slim) chance to steal victory in the end. We've already booked a table at WHW for our next battle in April which will see Matt and I paired up again. Probably with good old Bloody Wolves (BA/SW).