Battle Brothers Best Painted Competition (pic heavy)

The painting competition was a little different in format to previous Doubles tournaments. Instead of just a "best army" there were now rewards for best vehicle, character, monstrous creature and fortification. I personally don't think the standard was as high as we've seen at other doubles events but that isn't to take away from the people who were featured as they were miles above my skill level. Anyway, here's the pictures:

Engine of Legend (Vehicles)

Monument of Legend (Fortifications)

Beast of Legend (Monstrous Creatures)

Hero of Legend (Characters)

Army of Legend (Armies - obviously!)

Battle Brothers Game 5 - Titanic Fenrisians vs. CSM/Daemons

We were convinced our final game would involve a lot of flyers but to our pleasant surprise we were met by Siap and Onno from the Netherlands who's Pus'R'us list was a beautifully themed nurgle army. Siap asked me to say this was our toughest, most challenging game but I'll let you decide! Here's what they were taking (from their list):

Typhus
Possessed
2x 5 Plaguemarines

Epidemius
5 Beasts of Nurgle
20 plaguebearers
9 nurglings

The central idea behind this list is that Epidemius is constantly keeping count of the casualties to feed his Tally of Pestilence. This gradually makes the army better and better the more kills they get.

Battle Report
This time we'd be playing Big Guns Never Tire (4 objectives) on Dawn of War which would make our dreadknights scoring! Everything in their army was high toughness though so there was potential both getting bogged down in combat pretty easily. We'd placed our objectives on opposite flanks to try and split up the daemons as they came in.

Siap and Onno got first turn, Epidemius arrived by deep strike surrounded by plaguebearers and the rest of the army moved up to meet us in the middle. This allowed us to avoid using a teleport from one of the dreadknights and get into combat with Typhus straight away. We hoped to be able to beat him in a challenge and quickly take both First Blood and Slay the Warlord. Once again though the dice weren't in our favour. Despite getting three wounds through Onno managed to pass all 3 on 5+ and then managed to make the dreadknight flee the combat with a single wound remaining. Elsewhere the drop pod came down and the grey hunters were able to kill 3 plague marines. The thunderwolves advanced up the centre hoping to react to any Daemons coming down.

The nurglings dropped in near to the drop pod grey hunters whilst the beasts came down in our deployment zone between our two objectives. The two remaining plague marines tried to take shots at the grey hunters but could only kill one. The other plague marines fired shots at the dreadknight but failed to wound. In return the dreadknight charged into combat and was able to cut them down. The thunderwolves charged into combat with the nurglings hoping to stay there for most of the game and slowly finish them off. With the nurglings needing 6s to wound they'd be fairly safe. Meanwhile the drop pod hunters gunned down one of the plague marines and charged in to kill the other earning First Blood (this actually happened before the dreadknight combat but made sense to describe them this way).

Second time lucky!

Typhus and his possessed advanced towards the purifiers and engaged them in combat managing to cut down a couple of the grey knights elite. The beasts charged into some acotyles and easily wiped them out. The formerly fleeing dreadknight had another go at Typhus and this time was successful earning us Slay the Warlord. The remaining possessed eventually succumbed to the purifiers. This left the beasts, handful of remaining nurglings and Epidemius with his horde of plaguebearers.

The purifiers turned their attention to the beasts and were able to finish them off after a couple of rounds of combat. We realised we needed to try and gain as many points as possible from this game to help our standings. To this end we moved the drop pod hunters into their deployment zone whilst still controlling an objective. The wounded dreadknight used his shunt move to hold another and we'd got acolytes on our objectives. The thunderwolves managed to kill off the nurglings which allowed us to turn our full attention on Epidemius. The wolf priest finally arrived with his grey hunters and shot into the plaguebearers cutting a few down. The other dreadknight charged into combat with him but Epidemius refused the challenge as "he was too busy counting, come back later". Dark Excommunication allowed us to take away the plague knives and meant the dreadknight could slowly pick away at the remaining plaguebearers.

I'm busy counting, come back later

Eventually Epidemius had no choice but to engage the dreadknight but by this point he'd also got the thunderwolves and wolf priest with grey hunters to contend with! He challenged the Wolf Priest who refused and let the dreadknight kill off the daemon, sealing the game 15-0.

Conclusion
Siap and Onno were brilliant to play and kept us laughing throughout the game with attempts to convert us to Nurgle and shake our faith in the Emperor. From the sounds of it they'd had a pretty miserable visit to the UK thanks to meeting plenty of flyer armies. They were actually pleased to see we didn't have any until they saw what we did have.

With the exception of the original round of Typhus saves were were pretty lucky in contrast to Siap and Onno's bad luck. Their list was an interesting mechanic and it was refreshing not to play Flamers, Screamers or Heldrakes!

Overkill

All told we'd had a pretty successful and enjoyable weekend. Finishing 20th out of 119 teams is pretty decent, especially with the scoring system. Most importantly we've had an infinite improvement in our favourite game tally with Sean from gaming two voting for us! Apologies to our opponents if I've got details of these battle reports wrong.

It was interesting to see that our list could still perform even with the ever increasing number of flyers around. Having said that the only time we met them in great numbers was the game we lost! There seemed to be a general theme amongst the players we met that they either loved or hated flyers and therefore took them or just ignored them.

We've already booked onto the April Battle Brothers so hopefully we'll see some of you there. Before then we've got Target Sighted at the Outpost in Sheffield which is a 1,500pt singles. Matt, Jamie and I are all heading down so it should be a laugh. Stay tuned for the best painted stuff from the weekend and then some details of a little thing called Blog Wars 5!

Battle Brothers Game 4 - Titanic Fenrisians vs. Orks

Our first game on the second day of the tournament saw us facing Will and Andy and their Ork army. We'd be playing Crusade (3 objectives) on Hammer & Anvil deployment. Before I get into their list it's worth mentioning that the Will in question is Will Hayes of Forgeworld. The man responsible for some of the best Forgeworld models including the titans, Tau Manta, a lot of the Ork stuff. It seems, looking now that he's actually design most of the stuff on the FW site!! Talented guy, that's for sure.

Anyway, onto the battle itself after that spot of man-love. WIll and Andy were fielding (again from memory and getting hazy at this point):

Warboss on bike w/ klaw

Old Zogwort

2 large boyz mobs

4 nob bikers with painboy

8 or so warbikes

2 dakkajets

Battle Report

We won the roll off (yet again) and decided to go first. We deployed pretty much identically to how we had in all our games. Dreadknights, TWC and purifiers in the middle right on the edge of our deployment and everything else in various forms of reserve. Will and Andy deployed one boyz mob with Zogwort on their left flank with the rest of their army over towards the right. They rolled for their controlled objective and got a Skyfire Nexus which would come in handy later as the dakkajets were, of course, in reserve.

I brought the drop pod down in front of Zogwort hoping to gun down a good number of orks. I managed to kill 7 which was about average and would help a lot in the inevitable assault. The dreadknights teleported forwards and incinerated a few bikers but could only score a single wound on the nob bikes. Everything else just advanced as fast as possible.

In return Zogwort unleashed his psychic potential. He got off his psychic attack and rolled "Frazzle" which is an S6 AP3 blast. I'd failed to spread out my grey hunters and when he hit with the template I took off 7 models. I was whilst I was doing this that I remembered Deny the Witch and, much to Andy's frustration, I rolled a 6 and promptly put the models back (it was good of them to allow us to do this). The rest of the mob made up for it though by managing to kill 5 grey hunters with shooting after I failed all but one of my saves. 

In the centre, the nob bikes drove straight round the two dreadknights and lined themselves up to charge the thunderwolves. Their shooting managed to kill the storm shield bearer outright and the resulting charge was just as effective. With their Hammer of Wrath attacks they were able to kill another wolf! I was left with my power fist which, with its S10, should be able to cut down a few bikes. Unfortunately, I only managed to hit with one attack and the return hits from the powerklaws made short work of the wolves giving our opponents First Blood. 

Elsewhere, Andy was asking about the dreadknights and sighing every time we told him about their rules. In particular the fact that they're characters. This makes them excellent in challenges. He also wasn't pleased about them being S10 AP2 and striking at normal initiative. We pointed out that Will should take it up with Matt Ward next time he saw him. Needless to say, being Orks they warboss still charged and quite rightly challenged leading to his swift demise. This made his remaining warbikers flee the field. The large ork mob charged the remaining drop pod hunters and miraculously they survived and killed a few orks in the process. 

The purifiers were able to gun down the nob bikers without the need to charge them. The combination of the wolf priest's preferred enemy fire and the dreadknight was enough to not only kill off a fair chunk of the remaining boyz mob but also kill a biker and force them to continue fleeing. The remaining boyz were cut down in an assault from the dreadknight. Meanwhile Zogwort and co. were finishing off the grey hunters. One of the two dakkajets arrived and put some wounds on the purifiers. Brilliantly, Matt had put Coteaz at the front who was lucky not to be insta-killed by the supashooters. 

The dreadknights headed over to help finish off Zogwort and his boyz. Matt attempted to gun down the dakkajet but could only strip a hull point. However, he had, at least, managed to make him Evade. This saved the wolf priest's grey hunters from getting gunned down. They responded by using the skyfire nexus to full effect and blowing up the stricken dakkajet. The second dakkajet arrived and this time was able to gun down Coteaz and a couple of purifiers thanks to a Waaagh! volley. A ranged attempt to down a second flyer from the Wolf priest's squad managed to inflict a Locked Velocity result. This meant that he'd need to move 36" in the next turn. Whilst all this had been happening we'd been merrily walking on our warrior acolytes onto an objective. The dakkajet was forced to zoom over their heads though and would fly off in the next turn. Our opponents conceded here and with two objectives in our control we secured a solid 8-2 victory.

Conclusion

To be fair to Will and Andy this was the sort of army that will always struggle to deal with ours. They were pretty unlucky to give us a skyfire nexus but by that point it wasn't likely to matter as at some point the dakkajets would either leave the table or else not be in a position to shoot us. 

They did give us a scare though. The loss off the thunderwolves was a shock and had I not made that Deny the Witch roll the grey hunter pack would've succumb to orky shooting and hence Zogwort's mob would've been much stronger when they met the purifiers/dreadknights. To be honest there was no need to put the drop pod that close and frankly I perhaps should've focused more on the objective that we never managed to secure. In a tournament where absolute victory points are being recorded, this is the kind of thing that makes a big difference. From their position on the flank, Zogwort's mob would've had to slog it over to our lines whilst we were dealing with everything else. 

This was certainly our most visually stunning game. The Forgeworld ork bikers (designed by Will I think) are gorgeous models and their painting had certainly done them justice. The dakkajets were both beautiful examples too. They were quite rightly nominated for the best painted army (more on that soon).

Another thoroughly enjoyable game for us. I'm not convinced Will and Andy had much fun as we told them about the, frankly ridiculous, dreadknight rules!