The ETC is a hardcore team event where you bring your filthiest list or you go home. I played it back in 2009 with Team Ireland and this year I was invited to play for Team Wales at relatively short notice as they needed to replace a last-minute cancellation.  I thought I was lucky when the Welsh asked me to use a Warriors of Chaos army as it would mean that I could use an army that I already had rather than paint up a new one in a hurry. Unfortunately, the particular niche that my army was intended to fill in the Welsh lineup required a fairly specific build and I ended up having to paint up almost everything I needed anyhow. The only parts of my existing army that I could use were my Sorceror on a Disc, my Chaos Knights, my marauders and my Chosen (which were pulling duty as halberd armed Chaos Warriors in this list). I had to paint up 50 more Marauders, 11 Chaos Warriors with Halberds and a mounted Chaos Lord of Khorne to bring the army up to spec and this was bolstered with a Hellcannon borrowed from one of the other Welsh team members.

Somehow, and with significant assistance from my wife, that lot got painted up in the three weeks or so that I had before the event and I took off to sunny Montreux. That part of Switzerland is a beautiful place and Montreux itself is particularly stunning.  I was staying at a Youth Hostel just down the lake shore from the event hall and my walk to and from the tournament every day was just incredible. The ETC itself is held over two days with three games on each day. Our first game was against the Greek team who were a good tip for the winners’ podium and so we weren’t expecting to take much away from that. Sure enough we got destroyed – my game vs their Dark Elf player ended 16-4 against after a methodical demolition job. The Hellcannon did well to eat a War Hydra in close combat but that was the only real bright spot for me. Next up we played team Norn Iron and I was feeling good about this as every time I’d played them in previous events, I’d won. Sure enough, I blew through their Dwarf player and scored 15 points for the team. Our final opponents for the day were team Netherlands where I got schooled 20-0 by a Vampire Counts player.

After a hard day of wargaming we headed into the town where we quickly realised that Montreux is not for people like us. Unless you are fabulously wealthy your entertainment options are going to be extremely limited. We sat and had horrendously expensive pizza and then sat on the beach drinking spiced rum until the small hours. The whole weekend was blisteringly hot and, as the town is sheltered by the mountains, there is no wind so the air stays warm even at night.

The next day we were ready for more punishment and we were drawn against Team Belgium to kick off. I played against a Dwarf army that was practically identical to the one I’d murdered on the previous day except this time everything went wrong for me. Another 20-0 shoeing ensued. After the Belgians we were drawn against Hungary where an Empire army proceeded to pull my army apart and then jump on the bits. Some horrendously bad dice sealed the deal and handed 20 gift-wrapped points to my opponent. I don’t like to blame the dice too much in games because generally losing due to dice means that you are leaning on luck rather than good play to win, however this was about as bad as I’ve ever had and I’m not sure that I could have done things differently. My Sorceror failed 7 leadership tests in a row and fled off the table, 8 out of 10 Chaos Knights failed a strength test and were killed by a Dwellers Below, 34 attacks from halberd-wielding Chaos Warriors of Khorne scored 4 hits and no wounds on the Arch Lector, two hits from a mortar killed an entire unit of Marauders in a single turn. Stuff like that. Finally we were drawn against Team Scotland who ended up beating us narrowly and me handily. By this point there was nothing to play for for either team so we all kicked back and had  a relaxed game. I played another Empire army and, once more found that I had no way to protect myself from his magic and warmachines. Still it was a fun game and we’d hit our team goal of not coming last.

In the end we came 24th out of 28 teams and we were thrilled to win the award for most sporting team. We celebrated with more spiced rum on the beach then I bade farewell to Captain Matt and the rest of the lads and headed back to the hostel. I took a lot of pictures over the weekend; pictures of Montreux can be found here while pictures of armies and miniatures from the ETC itself can be found here.

After my adventure in Switzerland I had a couple of weeks before I was off on a real holiday to the US. In that time I managed to finish painting up an HQ choice for my Grey Knight army. The figure is Castellan Crowe but I will generally be using him as a standard Brotherhood Champion and attaching him to a Razorback squad. Following my experiments with the armour of the Grey Knight Terminators, I decided to try a different tack for Crowe. His armour is heavily shaded and highlighted with Charadon Granite and Vallejo Ivory respectively. Rather than leave the silver areas flat and highlight the edges, I chose to accentuate the curves of the armour plates by painting in the sharp reflections and then contrasting these with deep shadows in a non-metallic metal style – although I was using a metallic colour as a base. This was much more successful than the Terminators were although it was time consuming to achieve. Originally his sword was blue but I painted myself into a corner when I was doing the banner and needed a strong colour that would contrast with the blue field of the banner and so I repainted the sword yellow and repeated this for the chained blade on the banner itself. The runes on the blade were done in blue and a weak object source lighting effect was added by means of a blue glaze. The other detailing was done to match the Terminators except the cloak which was painted a pale yellowish brown to complement the sword and had a triple stripe painted on the hem with some freehand lettering added.

More pictures of Crowe are on the Grey Knights gallery page.

I was competing in the WFB event with my (mostly complete) Warriors of Chaos. Armies are small at 1500 points and the event features some strict composition rules that prohibit most of the nastier elements. No more than two total magic levels are allowed for example along with a blanket ban on named characters and restrictions on flyers and large targets. My army at its core is largely unchanged from previous events. The rundown is as follows:

Sorceror of Tzeentch; Ironcurse Icon, Spell Familiar (General)

Exalted Champion of Tzeentch; Chaos Steed, Blasted Standard (Army Standard Bearer)

5x Knights of Tzeentch; Full command, Banner of Rage

19x Warriors of Tzeentch; Full command, shields, War Banner

10x Chosen of Tzeentch; Full command, halberds, Lichebone Pennant, Favour of the Gods

30x Marauders; Full command, flails

The tactics are fairly straightforwards with this force, the Sorceror goes in the Warriors unit for some protection and to bolster the line with his close ranged magic, any of the infantry units acts as an anvil while the Knights are a hammer.  The Knights are a very strong unit even at higher points values and I expected them to be devastating in a game of this size.

First up was a Dwarf army. Mostly it was based around large combat blocks led by a king borne on a shield and bodyguarded by Hammerers. Two smallish Quarreller units, a couple of bolt-throwers and a Grudge Thrower were his only shooting units. He moved forwards, I moved forwards and managed to avoid his big block of hammerers for long enough to smash through his lines. By the time he’d brought the Dwarf King and his bodyguard around to bear, I’d demolished all of his support and was able to charge him from all sides with everything in my army at once. Not even Stubborn, elite Dwarves led by their king can handle that kind of punishment and the game was a massacre. I’d lost my Battle Standard Bearer to a challenge but my army was otherwise fully intact.

Next in line was a tide of Chaos Daemons. This featured a horde sized unit of Bloodletters, supported by Flamers, a Herald of Tzeentch on a disc, a single Bloodcrusher and all led by a Daemon Prince. he set up with these last two holding a flank by themselves while the Bloodletters held the centre and everything else skipped forwards to take targets of opportunity. I wasn’t sure how to take the two big guys on, especially after they demolished my Marauder block but then they carried on through into the Chaos Warriors and were summarily dispatched on the first round of combat much to my relief. Meanwhile my Sorceror had almost single handedly destroyed the Flamers with repeated applications of his Flickering Fire of Tzeentch spell and theChaos Knights had charged down the Herald of Tzeentch who’d been caught out in the open. This didn’t go exactly as planned due to my Exalted Champion’s sudden inability to roll dice but after a coupel of rounds the inevitable occurred and the Daemon was sent howling back to the Warp. All this time I had been (pleasantly) surprised by my opponent’s reluctance to commit his Bloodletter block. He’d danced around some difficult terrain in the centre of the board and was perfectly content to let me come to him. On my last turn I’d destroyed everything else in his army and was in position for a combined charge but decided that I’d already won and that charging in would only give him the opportunity to score some late victory points while it would be impossible for me to improve my situation. Thus I ended my turn as soon as it started and took a convincing win.

Finally I played against a very nice High Elf army. The lady who it belonged to ended up taking home the best painted army prize after a judging call between her army and mine. Her force consisted of a noble on a Griffon, a large block of Swordmasters, a block of White lions, two units of archers and a repeater bolt-thrower. I wasn’t really sure how to deal with the Swordmasters and, frustratingly, I hadn’t rolled any useful spells for dealing with them. I love to cast Treason of Tzeentch on great-weapon wielding Elves but I didn’t have anything that was likely to help me in this game. Luckily for me, she hadn’t rolled any good spells for her mage either so things evened out for me. The odds got better when she wiped out her own unit of Swordmasters in a calamitous series of miscasts over three turns. The first one wiped out half the unit and they panicked only to rally right on the table edge, The next turn saw another miscast and the mage took a wound and then finally a third miscast on turn three killed the mage and triggered another panicked flight, this time off the table. Having neutralised her own most dangerous unit for me, she had precious little with which to stand against the heavily armoured horde crashing down upon her and a resounding victory resulted from the mopping up operation.

By the time the victory points for all three games had been tallied I’d managed to pull out a clear lead and won the Best General award which handily will be most of the price of the Codex: Grey Knights that I have on order.

An entirely rewarding day out with good opponents and fun games, see the full gallery of pictures from the event on this page.

I took the Chaos Warriors that have been slowly taking shape over the summer and Mario took his new Tomb Kings. Originally the plan was that he’d come over to my place yesterday and we’d have a few tutorial games to get him up to speed with the rules as he’d never played WFB before, what actually happened was that he had to do some work-stuff at very short notice so he sat at my table working on his spreadsheet while we discussed the more theoretical side of the game and I bashed out a few speed painted Chaos Warriors to bring my list up to size. This meant that the games at the tournament today were his first ever. “Don’t be a wuss” I said over his concerns that he might not be ready, “You’ll figure it out, it’s not rocket surgery.”

There was a Warmachines event happening simultaneously with the WFB tournament in the same hall so there were only ten players which is about half as many as usually show up. Mario met his first opponent, a Bretonnian player while I was matched with an Empire opponent. My general was a level 2 sorceror on a disk who didn’t manage to do much of anything during the game due to having only one useful spell (Gateway) which was always shut down by the pile of dispel dice that my opponent was able to muster. As soon as he died I realised I’d bought him a Spell Familiar so he should have had a bit more utility. I also realised about this time that I had paid for a Chaos Spawn but I’d forgotten to pack one in my case so I was down a bunch of points. These things collectively displeased me. Despite my forgetfulness and the loss of my general to a wildly optimistic round of shooting from some Pistoliers I easily won the game mostly thanks to the Chaos Knights and their superhuman ability to kill things. Wandering across to check on Mario, I was heartened to find that he’d won his game too so Team Acony was off to a great start.

Next up for me was a High Elf army and Mario faced off against a Skaven horde. This one started badly for me and went downhill fast. My Chaos Knights smashed into a mid-sized unit of White Lions and got butchered due to some terrible dice rolling for armour saves. Only the army standard bearer survived and I just managed to keep him alive long enough to finish off the last survivor from a unit of Dragon Princes who had previously been on the wrong end of an Infernal Gateway. My hero popped the last Prince then fled and died. Without my Knights, I was very much on the back foot but the Warriors managed to pull things back a little. It wasn’t enough though and the game ended with a convincing Elven victory. Across the hall, Mario had been tabled in short order but had learned from the experience.

For the final game, I drew a Skaven list (a different opponent to the one who’d demolished Mario) and Mario was matched up with a Dwarf army. My game was very back and forth with many points that could have swung a decisive victory for either side. Highlights for me were Gatewaying the Plague Furnace off the table in my first turn and having my Marauder Cavalry survive the battle after actually managing to kill things. Low points were having a Skaven unit break my Marauders and clip the General as they pursued, the next turn the Marauders rallied, the general lost combat but didn’t die and the pursuing rats hit the Marauders again who they broke again and pursued into the general who was already fleeing and thus had to flee again – right off the table. Sigh.

In the end though I’d killed almost everything on the Skaven side and had managed to preserve most of my expensive units (characters aside) so pulled out a win. Mario hadn’t been so fortunate however, he’d found out the hard way that the only army that can beat Skeletons in a long-drawn out meatgrinder are Dwarfs and at the end of his game there were still a large number of stunties standing up while none of the Khemrian forces remained on the table.

Out of the ten players who took part, I came third and Mario placed eighth. Both of us tied for most sporting player and I won the best painted army (by dint of being the only player at the event with a fully painted force no doubt). A good time was had and those of the group who didn’t take part still turned up to watch and cheer Mario and I on so even though they didn’t play, they still got a little stoked for action over the winter.

The Seetroll event was a doubles tournament with each player bringing along a 1500 point army built under a zero comp system. Originally my plan had been to go along with Mario and his Tomb Kings but he was unable to go at the last minute so I roped in New Guy Ryan as my doubles partner, thrust my daemon army into his hands and ran a couple of test games the day before the event to shake down the new rules. Ryan had played 40k previously some time ago but had never played WFB, for my part I’d never played 8th edition before so this was a pretty steep learning curve for both of us. I wrote both of the army lists based largely on what I had painted rather than on any optimal list-building considerations, despite this however the two forces worked well together. We had:

Daemons:

• Herald of Tzeentch (General with Daemonic Robes)
• Herald of Slaanesh (BSB, Level 1 wizard with Siren Song and Soporific Musk)
• 23 Horrors with full command
• 27 Daemonettes with full command and Siren Standard
• 5 Flesh Hounds plus Karanak
• 6 Flamers

The Chaos Mortals fetaured:

• Sorceror Lord of Tzeentch (level 3 with a Disc, Golden Eye of Tzeentch and Infernal Puppet)
• Exalted Hero (BSB, on a chaos steed with the Blasted Standard)
• 5 Chaos Knights of Tzeentch with full command and Banner of Rage
• 15 Chaos Warriors f Tzeentch with full command (hand weapons and shields)
• 15 Chaos Marauders with full command (flails and light armour)
• 10 Marauder Cavalry with full command (spears and shields)
• 10 Chaos Warhounds

I’d finished the Chaos BSB the week previously and had started work on the Warriors, only 7 were painted by the night before the event but a late night speed-painting session got the remaining 8 done in time for us to field two fully painted armies. When we got to the event we found that named characters weren’t allowed so Karanak got swapped out for two ordinary Flesh Hounds which were kindly lent to us by one of the judges.

There were two games for the event both using the Meeting Engagement scenario from the book. Our first was a mirror match versus a Marauder heavy Warriors of Chaos army and a Daemon army based on a huge block of Plaguebearers. We lost this game despite some sterling work from the Chaos Knights. We’d actually run out of time before the game ended and there were still two turns left to play when we finished, this was something of a bonus to us though because things were starting to get really ugly and, if we’d played the last turns then the result would have been worse for us I think.

The second game was against the rather unlikely combination of Lizardmen and Orcs. This one went much better for us, we were able to control the battle much more and this brought us a conclusive victory – the Orcs had been largely wiped out along with most of the Lizardmen with the exception of the large block of Saurus warriors that we’d successfully avoided engaging all match.

We were expecting a mid-table finish on the balance of our win/loss record and were hugely surprised when our names were called to receive the third prize. First doubles tournament for either of us, first 8th ed event for me and the third and fourth games of WFB ever for Ryan meant that this was quite the result for us. On the train home Ryan was eagerly planning out a Daemons of Khorne list to pit against the rest of us.

The Warhammer Fanatics’ event was a very different affair, minimal comp (only some specific army restrictions and clarifications) and a 2250 points limit. It was also much better subscribed than the Seetroll event. My army (which to my shame wasn’t fully painted) was as follows:

• Sorceror Lord of Tzeentch (General, level 4, Disc, Golden Eye of Tzeentch, Ogre Blade, Spell Familiar)
• Exalted Hero of Tzeentch (BSB, Blasted Standard, Chaos Steed)
• Wulfrik the Wanderer
• Chaos Sorceror (Infernal Puppet)
• 5 Chaos Knights of Tzeentch with full command and Banner of Rage
• 17 Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch with full command and Razor Standard (hand weapons and shields)
• 10 Chosen of Tzeentch with full command, Lichebone Pennant and Book of Secrets (Halberds)
• 10 Marauder Cavalry with full command (shields and spears)
• 10 Chaos Warhounds
• 24 Marauders with full command (light armour and flails)

The events of the previous weekend had demonstrated that small blocks of weak troops are now a waste of time. Go big or go home. I wasn’t ready to put down a block of forty Marauders in Horde formation as our first opponent did last week (in fact he had two such units!) but I certainly needed to beef up the marauders. I inflated their numbers to 23 and put Wulfrik in the front rank to add some punch and give them his surprise deployment rule. The Warriors also saw a marginal increase in size although they didn’t really need it. They were bodyguarding the level 1 sorceror in this list and proved to be a very valuable unit. Before playing many games of 8th I’d been wavering over the role of the Chaos Knights. I wasn’t convinced that five of them plus the BSB were going to be a viable force. The test run at the Seetroll event demonstrated very clearly that these were still a ridiculously powerful unit even at the minimum size and that I needn’t worry too much about filling out their number.

There were three games over the course of the event and my first was against a Dwarf player with a fairly standard melee-focussed army. He had an Anvil, a large block of Longbeards, a large block of Warriors, two Gyrocoptors, a cannon and a Grudgrethrower. A Dwarf Queen carried to battle on her shield and a couple of Runesmiths rounded out the force. He played very conservatively indeed and didn’t use the anvil to push forwards as he really should have done, as a result he handed me complete control over the battle and I was able to demolish each of his units on my terms. At the end of the battle he had no surviving Dwarfs at all and I hadn’t given up a single victory point. Only some really incredible flee rolls coupled with some terrible pursuit results kept him in the game past turn four.

After this mauling I was firmly in first place and so my second opponent was the Dark Elf army in second position. This battle used the Dawn Assault scenario which mixed things up a bit and led to some interesting developments in setting up. The Dark Elves featured a huge unit of Spearmen in horde formation, a respectably sized unit of Executioners, a Hydra, two units of Harpies, a unit of Dark Riders, a Sorceress on a Dark Pegasus, two repeating bolt throwers, a small unit of Crossbowmen and a minimum sized unit of Cold One Knights led by the Highborn. By turn two I was convinced that I had lost, my Knights had crashed into his Spearmen and been filleted thanks to the Cauldron giving them the Killing Blow ability, the Cold One Knights were tearing chunks out of my support units and Wulfrik was nowhere to be seen. I’d managed to get most of the Executioners to murder themselves with the Treason of Tzeentch spell but I couldn’t see how I was going to score many victory points from this army. Luckily it seems that Chaos Warriors are the new Daemons for 8th edition, even a complete numpty can just keep pushing them forwards and expect not to lose too heavily. So, despite my army getting smacked repeatedly in the face for the first half of the battle, it absorbed the abuse the Dark Elves were piling on it and came back out fighting.  Wulfrik turned up on turn 5 and helped the surviving couple of Knights to finish off the Spearmen, The Executioners were wiped out by the Warriors and the Marauder Cavalry and the Chosen had finished off most of the Dark Elf support units. All that was left by the end were half of the Cold One Knights, the Hydra (which had failed to engage anything in the entire battle) and the Sorceress. My Lord was dead but the Warriors were still intact. The last turn had the Warriors facing down the Cold One Knights and the Hydra, I moved them backwards to make the charge less reliable and my opponent decided not to risk it. I was pretty sure I’d lost but was optimistic that I’d done enough damage to score some points. As it turned out I’d lost by 155 points which resulted in a draw.

After that bloodbath, I had dropped to second place so my last game was against the new tournament leader with his Goblin army. This battle was the Meeting Engagement scenario with the added twist that each player could kill one enemy character before the battle (and score full victory points for it). Rather unsurprisingly my opponent chose to remove my Sorceror Lord from the battle and I deprived him of Skarsnik in return. His army was almost entirely Goblins with only a single Orc present (a level 4 Shaman), it featured a horde sized block of Squigs, two hordes of Spear Goblins, a couple of small units of archers, a Doom Diver, a rock lobber a unit of Trolls and two minimum sized units of Wolfriders. Various Goblin Shamans, a BSB and a goblin Warboss were scattered around the list to fill it out. Again, this battle was one that went very badly for me to begin with and ended up turning around due to the incredible resilience of Chaos Warriors. Wulfrik turned up on turn 1 and destroyed the Rock Lobber before getting wiped out by the Squig herd, the Chaos Knights took on the Trolls, routed them and carried on through to the archers but couldn’t catch the fleeing monsters and also triggered every fanatic in the army in the process. Despite this a couple of Knights survived and slaughtered the archers. My level one wizard sent a Purple Sun of Xereus towards the Goblin line but fluffed it and it went across the Chosen instead. Luckily they all survived but it demonstrated how neutered my magic was without the Sorceror lord. By comparison the Orc magic was devastating, the various direct damage spells did very little thanks to the high toughness and thick armour of the Chaos army but the Waaagh! spell was used in almost every turn to staggering effect. Goblins that can get in surprise charges that always strike first and can reroll misses are not to be underestimated and this was the downfall of Wulfrik’s Marauders, the Chaos Knights and the Marauder Cavalry. Even the Warriors, who had easily been the most reliable unit in the army prior to this match ended up failing break tests and running away from the cackling Greenskin tide. At the end of the game I’d caught up a little but I had still clearly lost. In the end there was a 560 VP difference which translated to a 12-8 loss.

I’d scored 38 tournament points in my games which put me in 6th place on battle results, I dropped some points on the soft scores due to the unpainted models in my army and so my final placing was 7th. I wasn’t particularly unhappy with that despite the fact that I’d dropped so many points in my second and third games. the opposition was very tough and the games were hard fought.

So on Friday evening after work, I got on the train for the 6 hour journey to Westfalia and imminent glory. I was pretty well prepared for this, my army had been tweaked after the Four Nations warmup and I felt it would be competitive. Add in the fact that I was playing the current easy-mode army and signs were good that we’d score some points and cover ourselves with a moderate amount of glory. For those who care the list was as follows:

Lord of Change – Level 4 wizard, Iridescent Corona, Spelldestroyer

Herald of Slaanesh – Battle Standard Bearer, Great Icon of Despair

Herald of Tzeentch – Spellbreaker

10 Horrors

11 Horrors with a musician

14 Daemonettes with full command

6 Flamers

6 Screamers

6 Flesh Hounds

The Heralds fit in the unit of Daemonettes and the 11 strong Horror regiment respectively, the Flesh Hounds screen the advance of the Daemonettes and everything else including the Greater Daemon picks off flankers. Ideally, I’d be reducing the opposition to their core units and then crushing them with multiple charges. The Horrors, the Herald of Tzeentch and the Lord of Change would meanwhile be laying down some magical artillery cover to whittle down anything that looked threatening. I love the way that plans look so straightforwards while they’re still in my head…

The tournament got off to the now traditional start of Team Ireland invading my hotel room in the small hours of the morning. I’d arrived at the hotel quite late so I missed them going out on the town and all the pre-registration stuff at the hall. They’d last seen our fearless captain asleep on the grass outside the venue and since then had managed to lose him completely. This could become a problem apparently. By the next morning however he’d shown up and we were ready to hit the tables.

The event itself was in an ice arena (sans ice) which was essentially a large windowless hall. Overhead there were stormclouds gathering and the humidity was spiking dramatically. This meant that the further away from the doors you were, the more unbearable the atmosphere became. We quickly decided on the strategy of being as rubbish as possible in order to stay on the bottom tables which were closest to the doors.

First up we were paired against the Czech republic who set the tone for the event by being very nice and friendly. I heard stories of frayed tempers and some questionable play from further up the hall over the weekend but, for us, the tournament was 6 rounds against  6 very sporting opponents who were all a pleasure to play against. I got paired up against a High Elf player despite my protests and watched a rerun of the Four Nations game where a Sun Dragon and two units of Dragon Princes rolled up my army. I had about 500 points that could affect anything in his army and that was never going to have a happy ending for me. I lost my game 20-0 and we lost the round 100-60 (and only because the tournament rules capped the winners at 100 and guaranteed 60 points to the losers).

Next in line were Norn Iron for an All-Ireland thrillah. I was paired up against Matt’s Wood Elves and revelled in the novelty of having an opponent against which flaming attacks were an advantage rather than a liability. He played cautiously and I punished him for it, only the fact that I couldn’t mop up the survivors of shattered units made the result as close as it was. I won 13-7 but the team still managed to lose the round 95-65. This was also the only game all weekend that my Lord of Change survived.

Our final match for the day was against Portugal and I ended up facing a Lizardman army that was commanded particularly well. My Lord of Change died to Skinks with poisoned blowpipes and the three Stegadons walked with impunity over the rest of my force. Another 20-0 thrashing for me and a 100-60 loss for the team.

I’ll gloss over the events of the evening’s revels to protect the innocent however the highlights were accidentally finding the only gay bar in the centre of town to sit in for a quiet drink and our fearless leader being more interested in recounting tales of 28mm woe than in appreciating the ladyflesh on display.

Sunday morning rolled around and we’d managed not to lose anyone still. Our first matchup of the new day was against Team Scotland and I was drawn against Kevin Finlay and his Vampire Counts. I stopped most of his magic but enough of it got through my dispel dice to cause me problems and prevent me from scoring many victory points from him. Ultimately he ground my army down in the classic VC style and I ended up scraping 2 points out of the game for an 18-2 loss. The rest of the team had fared just as badly as yesterday and we were once again staring at the wrong end of a 100-60 kicking.

Our fifth game of the tournament was against The Netherlands who were mostly drawn from the same club as Team Ireland and Team Norn Iron. Despite having 3 out of the 24 teams at the tournament, the Northern Wasters club was still scrapping over the bottom three places. I was up against a Lizardman force again and, once again, Skinks with blowpipes proved to be the nemesis of the Lord of Change. When you roll a double handful of dice to hit and any 6s are an automatic wound, less than a hundred points worth of Skinks can make the life of a 600 point monster very unpleasant. Another 20-0 kicking for me and yet another 100-60 result for the team.

Finally we were up against Team Croatia and, for this round there was no minimum tournament score so it was vital that we try and salvage some honour here. I was paired against another Daemon army (this one led by a Bloodthirster) and got to watch as Bloodletters, Flesh Hounds and the Bloodthirster itself hit my line like a train. I did some damage but not enough to count and the Lord of Change died to combat resolution late in the game to put any kind of points well out of my reach and my fourth 20-0 of the event. The team didn’t manage to rise above the 60 points target we’d set ourselves and the end result was a 115-45 loss.

In all we came dead last, with 345 points. I wasn’t the lowest scoring member of my team despite four 20-0 thrashings and we had all had a good time so we declared victory and drew a line underneath the event. I had to leave before the awards ceremony as I had a train to catch, unfortunately my overnight train from Münster that would have got me home in time for work the next morning was cancelled and so I spent 3 hours travelling around Westfalia on regional trains and waiting in epic thunderstorms until I could get back to Offenburg to meet the first train through to Villingen. I actually got back at the time I was scheduled to but without having an uninterrupted 6 hour stretch on the ICE to get some sleep. Monday at work was mostly due to coffee and willpower.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tournament despite being well out of my depth and I certainly hope that Team Ireland go next year and that there’s a place for me then.

Pictures of the event are on the official site along with full scores and rules, my pictures can be seen on my gallery page.

As this was a team tournament, the pairings weren’t based on the usual Swiss system. Instead each team played every other team once on the Saturday and then the 3rd and 4th placed teams and the 1st and 2nd teams played each other first on Sunday before switching to the 1st v the 3rd and the 2nd v the 4th. Lists were semi-secret and each team took it in turns to put one of their armies forwards for matching, the other team would then pick two armies to fight it and the first team would pick one of those two for the game. This alternated until all team members were matched. There was also a ‘secret champion’ per team who was never put up as a match but was instead paired up with the other team’s secret champion once all the other pairings were determined. The games themselves used the standard 20 points system for match results.

My army was as follows:

Lord of Change – Level 4 wizard, Iridescent Corona, Flames ofTzeentch, Spell Destroyer

Herald of Slaanesh – Level 1 WIzard, Battle Standard Bearer, Great Icon of Despair

Herald of Tzeentch – Level 2 Wizard, Spellbreaker

14 Daemonettes – Full command

15 Daemonettes – Full command

17 Horrors – Full command

6 Screamers

6 Flamers

The basic strategy was to use the Daemonettes as shock troops, the Flamers and the Screamers as harrassing forces/march blockers and to score cheap victory points, the Horrors were basically a magical sniper unit and the Lord of Change would cause Terror tests and provide magical heavy support.

First up were the Northern Irish team and I was paired up with their captain Jonny Fisher and his Daemons army. He had a lot of Screamers as well as a largish unit of Flesh Hounds, three heralds (two Tzeentch and one of Khorne) were the only characters in the force and nothing particularly big or scary looking. We both set up for a fairly cautious deployment and I gave him the first turn. He rushed forwards and in my first turn he Sirened my Lord of Change – as I can’t choose to flee, I had no choice except to pile Mr Feathers into one of his Daemonette units. Luckily, although the Lord of Change isn’t really a huge combat monster, he’s also not exactly rubbish and I’d given him the Iridescent Corona specifically to help him out in case he got sucked into tarpit units. That combat went on for a bit with the greater daemon gettign charged by Flesh Hounds and the Herald of Khorne who were countercharged in turn by one of my Daemonette units and eventually (thanks to my knack for rolling ward saves), he emerged bloodied but victorious and surrounded by a heap of lightly crisped daemon corpses.

Hot daemon on daemon action

While that conflict was raging, the rest of our armies were shredding each other pretty effectively but, with most of his attention focused on trying to kill my general, I was able to mop up the rest with little problem. I came away with a 12-8 win which was a great start.

After the Northern Irish lads, we were matched up with Team England and I got drawn against an Empire army that was pretty much designed for Daemon killing. A War Altar firing off bound Light Magic spells was the main problem I had to face, that and the Steam Tank that ran over Daemonettes multiple times. I didn’t dare move my Lord of Change out into sight of his two cannon and so Feathers spent most of the game hiding in a wood firing off area of effect spells to negligible effect. The Empire knights and crossbowmen took apart what little I had left from the depredations of the War Altar and pretty soon, all that remained was a single Flamer hiding in a wood. I salvaged some honour by killing both the War Altar and the Arch Lector on it with this last Daemon but the end result was a solid 20-0 defeat.

The last game of Saturday was against Team Scotland and I happened to be our secret champion. Unfortunately their secret champion was their High Elf player who’d brought along an army that was pretty much completely immune to flaming attacks. The only things in my army that don’t have flaming attacks are the Daemonettes and even many of the Tzeentch spells have been FAQed to be Flaming attacks as well. Needless to say it was a very frustrating game as there was almost no point in me rolling any dice for combat. The Daemonettes, who were pretty much all that I had were crisped by his Dragon in a series of fly-by shootings and then dispatched on the lances of Dragon Princes. Eventually the Dragon got bored of such easy prey and waded into the Lord of Change who was completely unable to damage the beast or its rider. Another 20-0 defeat but there was no way that I could have salvaged anything from that. I killed some archers and both chariots but they were small change compared to the big points sinks of the dragon and the knights. It didn’t help that the Lord of Change rolled a miscast on 5 of the six magic phases but there were very few things I could do to him even if my magic had been more reliable.

This picture brought to you by the words Immune To Fire.

On Sunday we were drawn against Northern Ireland again to begin with and I chose to put up against a Dark Elf army rather than give Jonny Fisher a rematch. I thought I had a pretty good chance despite getting an assassin amongst my Flamers in the first turn. He put his Black Guard forwards and both units of Daemonettes accepted the bait and charged. Two turns later I had no Daemonettes left as he’d tanked the unit to the hilt. Always Strike First, Eternal Hatred, 3+ armour saves and some strong magical protection meant that Daemonettes died before they could fight back. I managed to get a Bolt of Change off on the War Hydra and left it with one wound, I also managed to get Gift of Chaos off in most magic phases but no unit got hit with anything higher than strength 2 throughout the whole game. In the end I was reduced to doing fly past spell bombs and trying to cause terror tests when everything except the Lord of Change was dead. He survived but gave up half his victory points and another 20-0 defeat.

Finally we played Team England and I got paired up with Jerry Brawley’s Vampire Counts. This was a game I should have won easily – and in fact was winning easily until the dice gods decided that I needed to see what three utterly awful turns looked like. So, to start I had things under control. I was shutting down his magic phases, I had killed most of the Blood Knights and I was making inroads into the Graveguard. Between actual combat casualties and combat resolution he was being whittled down pretty handily. Then my Lord of Change rolled a pair of ones for a spell casting test followed by a double one on the miscast table. Off he goes and from there it got worse. My Daemonettes proved incapable of hitting anything, every single ward save that I was asked to take failed and I rolled double sixes for 3 out of 4 instability tests. A comfortable 20-0 win was turned around into a 20-0 crushing due to nothing more than some of the worst luck with dice I’ve ever seen.

As a team we came last with Team England taking the winners’ shield for the event.

Team England victorious

The standard of armies was generaly very high. My Daemons weren’t the worst and my lord of Change was (in my opinion) at least as good as anything else there. Here are a few of the more interesting armies from the event.

Alex West's Phoenix Guard

Dark Elf Lord

340 Strong Skaven Army!

Alex West's Dragon Princes

Narnia themed Wood Elf force

More of the Narnian Wood Elves

Narnian Wood Elf army in detail

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the army came out. The painting standard is on the low side of acceptable but it’s all complete and mostly pretty neat. It’s going to get tidied up and completed between now and August but I don’t feel too bad about putting it on the table this weekend.

The complete army

Slaaneshi BSB in progress

Front view

Tzeentchian Herald in progress

There is still some work to do on them and I’ll not be going too crazy on highlighting and detailing but they’ll stand out nicely I think and shouldn’t be too hard to finish to a basic standard tonight. And with that. I’ll be done!

Read the final update here.

Still pretty horrible but definitely better

Last of the Horrors and Daemonettes

Converted Masque

As you can see the Masque of Slaanesh is pretty easy to convert into an Battle Standard Bearer, I cut the double-ended mask off, drilled a hole through the hand and then passed a short length of brass rod through it. The banner itself is from a mounted Chaos Marauder sprue. She’ll be painted up tonight and tomorrow. In progress pictures to follow.

Finally here are the scores.

Points Painted Today : 252 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +52

Points Target Overall: 1200 Points Painted Overall: 1032 Difference: -168

Figures Painted Today: 16

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +6

Figure Target Overall: 60 Difference: -2
Read the next update here.