Sunday, February 26, 2012

Ryan G. ToFG: CCG's 2,500 Pt. Tourney

Okay, so here is my take on yesterdays 2500 pt tourney.

The list:
Slaughtermaster - lvl 4, Lore of Maw, Sword of swift slaying, Dispel Scroll, Talisman of Preservation, and Ironcurse Icon
Bruiser - BSB, Armour of Silvered Steel, Luckstone

8 Ironguts - Standard of Discipline
8 Ogres
7 Ogres
Stonehorn
Giant
Sabertusk
Sabertusk
4 Leadbelchers
Gorger
Gorger
Scraplauncher

Game 1!
For my first game I was up against "The" Paul Vinton and his Dark Elves in a battle line scenario.
He had a Cauldron BSB, Dreadlord on Pegasus, lvl 3 Shadow Mage, and lvl 2 Metal Mage. His main unit was a horde of 30 Witchelves, but also had a RXB, Chariot, 30 Warriors, 11 Dark Riders, Hydra, and 6 Shades.

Paul and I have been playing against each other for many years now, and we generally go back and forth on wins and loses. Paul is very experienced and well knowledgeable at this game and in my opinion one of the tougher players in this area, so any time I can do well against him, I consider it a hard fought victory. This game was very weird though dice wise for me. He pretty much deployed all of his things on his board edge and made me come to him. His metal wizard was of no use at all this game. His two spells were not worth casting towards me and so he never even really tried. When it came to charging, my dice were horrible. I only got off one charge the entire game, and it was one that he stuck his shades in front of my stuff to redirect them. That being said, he got to decide when and what charged where. Once he got into combat though, his dice urned on him, and mine caught fire. My hitting and wounding were about normal, but I was making armor saves left and right. In the end, the final result was a draw. 1554 for him, and 1504 for me. Great game, and great opponent.

Game 2!
For game 2 I got John W. and his Lizardmen which had a Shadow Slann, Heaven Priest, 2 Chiefs on Terradons, and Scar Vet on Cold One. Troops he had 20 Saurus, 25 Saurus, 16 Skinks, 16 Skinks, 5 Cav, 2 Sally's, Ancient Steg, 5 Cam Skinks, and 5 Cam Skinks.

This game was dawn attack, and we both got screwed by the random deployment. His stuff was very spread out along the flanks, and very little in the center. I did ok, except that my BSB ended up on my right flank with no unit to join. Turn one his priest irresistibly cast a comet that on my turn killed more points worth of his stuff than mine. Things were working well for me until turn two, when his ancient Stegadon charged my Ironguts containing the Slaughtermaster and they failed their leadership 9 terror check and fled from the steg. The Stegadon ended up rolling higher than me, and wiped out the entire unit without a single attack being made. 900 points gone right there. After that, his Slann had magic dominance, and was able to use shadow effectively to reduce my stats and make sure his troops won combat. I still managed to get quite a few victory points, but not nearly enough. John won a major victory 1907 - 996. Again, a great opponent and a great game.


Game 3!
For the final game I faced off against Chip E and his Warriors of Chaos containing a lvl 3 Nurgle Wizard, and Khorne Lord, and Khorne BSB. Also 2, 20 man Khorne Warrior blocks, 10 Khorn Knights, 15 Khorne Marauders, and Hellcannon.

Chip is a good friend of mine, and we regularly play against one another in my basement. I knew right away I was in for a fun but tough game. This was the meeting engagement scenario, and his Hellcannon had to start in reserves. I started out taking the Stonehorn into a unit of warriors, and did pretty good damage to them, but not enough to take away their steadfast. Turn 2 his Hellcannon dropped a direct hit on my ogres and caused that unit to fail 2 LD 8 tests (BSB was in the unit) and flee. That turn my stonehorn also failed a LD 9 stubborn break test and ran away also. At one point, all of my block units were running, but he could not run any of them down. The Giant slowed down the knights, and even managed to kill 3 of them. This bought me enough time to rally everything, and hit his knights in the front and both flanks. He still held on and won combat that round, but steadfast kept both of the flanking units in combat. The knights finally broke the next turn, and that sealed the deal for me. I had a victory 1500ish points to 714. Once again, Chip did not let me down and we had a great game even though I was getting a bit tired and probably was not as fun of an opponent as usual.

Overall take-away?
Overall, I learned quite a bit. Scraplaunchers suck! I did not kill a single thing with it, so I spent most games just using it as a chariot. I knew that the Giant would not be the best choice, but I was hoping it would draw some fire power away from the Stonehorn, which it did. Neither the Giant nor Stonehorn lived till the end of any game, but that was more my fault with the Stonehorn. It was the first time I got to play with it, and kept putting it in bad situations, just to get it in combat.
I was not that impressed with the Gorgers either. I like them, and think they are fun, but they didn't really do that much. Best case scenario, they can not even get into combat till turn 3. I think I will probably try other things in place of these and see what happens.

The Giant and Scraplauncher will also be replaced for tournament games. I have 4 Mournfang and 1 Ironblaster boxes, and just got to get them put together and painted. I also picked up my 3rd Maneater yesterday, so I look forward to testing them also. 

Overall, I had a great time and managed to win best sportsman out of 16 people. I am very proud of that because sportsmanship is something that I have been working on. I do not think I am a bad player to play against, but I don't hide disappointment or frustration well on my face, and when things go badly it shows. I try very hard to make sure my opponent has a good time as well, no matter what the final score.

Thanks to everyone that showed up and made it a great tourney.

Cheers,
Ryan G

1 comment:

Cpjiardina said...

good job on best sportsmanship.