UK Throne of Skulls - October 2012

[Captain Idaho]

ToS is really relaxed now. Its not even a tournament as such any more, more of a gaming weekend than anything else (its advertised as a gaming weekend rather than 'tournament' now), I had an interesting chat with the events staff after the awards ceremony. Means its really cool for the casual or semi-competitive player who just wants a weekend of fun and good games, hardcore tournament players should probably look elsewhere (unless your idea of 'fun' is mercilessly crushing people with non-tailored lists). They even changed the draw so that your opponent is completely random every round - you could have 4 wins going into your fifth game and get paired against someone with no wins.

 

Funny how you said how relaxed it is yet so far every list you've faced is pretty hard! :)

 

I agree though (aside from the teasing above!). The tournament is very relaxed, even though there are a hefty amount of gamers playing for keeps and having really powerful lists, they generally all are easy going and there are still plenty of casual, for fun, gamers. (historically I'd say a third are)

 

Only thing about the format I would say is unfair is playing random players is harder on the "weaker" players than the ones there to win. I don't mind personally since I rarely find myself getting easy games and could do with some seal clubbing.

[Morticon]

Only thing about the format I would say is unfair is playing random players is harder on the "weaker" players than the ones there to win. I don't mind personally since I rarely find myself getting easy games and could do with some seal clubbing.

 

:down: am i a bad person if the random player thing has now made me want to play in this tourney more than ever! ;)

[Chaplain Admetus]

Round Four

Mission: The Emperor's Will

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Hooray for draws! Was really hoping this was the mission we didn't get to play as in part its the least fun one (for me, anyway), and partly because we still had Big Guns and Relic as options, and those are probably my best two missions due to a fast army and a pair of heavy support choices (everything bar my Sternguard scores in Big Guns).

Anyway, I walked in after about 3 hours sleep (the people I was with had gone for a night out and come back somewhat the worse for wear at 4 in the morning) and checked the board, and saw that I'd be playing against "Big" Dave and his Space Marines - Dave being a long-time staffer who I'd originally met in Aberdeen and who now works in the Dundee store. Its been six years since we'd last played a game, so I was really looking forward to this one.

Dave's List:

Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer

Techmarine with Thunderfire Cannon

6 Sternguard with combi-meltas in a pod (snap!)

2 10 man tactical squads with plasma gun, plasma cannon, and combi-plasma

Vindicator

Autocannon/Heavy Bolter Predator

2 Stormtalons

Land speeder with multi-melta and heavy flamer

Eurgh... that vindicator is going RIGHT to the top of my 'to kill' list, and I'm a little worried about the two talons. Saving grace is a lack of scoring models, hopefully I'll be able to put them down. Either way, its very clear that this is going to be an attacker/defender style game, with my Angels cast in the aggressive role. Librarian rolled up prescience and scrier's gaze, the latter I was hoping to use since I was planning reserve shenanigans, especially to get the raven on after both his talons. I won the roll and picked the edge of the table that had both ruins just jutting into it, so as to deny his techmarines their bolster defences, and also got to go first.

Deployment. His talons and speeder are in reserve, as are my raven and a combat squad in a rhino (who are also fearless). My objective is in that forest under the tactical marines, and his is behind the forest next to the predator. We roll and its night fighting on turn 1, and he doesn't seize the initiative. Let's roll!

Turn 1 - AS: Librarian presciences the devastators. Both assault squads advance down the middle, but my priest hangs towards the back of the unit to cover the devastators (this is important). Sternguard land in that useful little gap between all his stuff. Shooting, and I run to get further forwards. The sternguard melta up the vindicator, scoring 2 penetrating hits and rip off both its guns (demo cannon and storm bolter). This aint enough and I want first blood, so despite it having a 3+ cover save from a forest and shrouding due to night time, the devs unload as its been left side on. I manage two penetrating hits and a glance, Dave makes the cover saves for the penetrators but the glance gets through and wrecks it for first blood.

Turn 1 - SM: His pod lands between my devs/combat squad/assault squad. Some movement from his combat squads that don't have cannons in. Its at this point that my grievous error becomes apparent... my priest is closest to his sternguard, followed by a single marine, then the librarian. And since look out sir goes onto the closest model, my characters are in trouble. He scores 3 wounding hits with all his melta, and I figure the best situation is to kill off my priest and the assault marine, then try to save the librarian with look out sir, who decides to roll a 1. Looks like I'll be playing this round without a warlord. The plasma cannons open up into my assault squads, but I've spaced them correctly and he can only hit one at a time with direct hits. Thunder fire cannon fires as well, and some stuff goes after the sternguard. Upshot of shooting is 2 dead marines from the flamer squad, and most of my sternguard dead, leaving me with the fist and melta.

End of turn 1

Turn 2 - AS: Neither of my reserves show. I toy with the idea of sending stuff back to deal with those sternguard, but decide to play like a true Blood Angel and plough forward. I shoot down a decent number of the sternguard, and my 2 remaining sternguard move towards his Master of the Forge. Meltagun hits, but fails to wound. The left hand assault squad shoots his tactical combat squad with plasma cannon, killing 2, and he chooses to fail his morale test and fall back out of assault range. Woops. Won't be falling for that one again. I straight out charge the one on the other side of the board, and my sternguard charge his master of the forge and the sergeant pimp slaps him into the middle of next week. If I can't have a warlord, you can't either.

Turn 2 - SM: One of the talons shows up. Combat squad rallies, and moves round to shoot at the guys that just shot them. The other combat squad on the side nearest the pred moves round and assaults in to help their buddies. Shooting kills some stuff (sternguard take a lot of flak because they could be very annoying in future turns), and the sternguard get stuck in to my devastators, locking them down for a while.

End of turn 2

Turn 3 - AS: Raven arrives and blasts forward. I don't like the state off affairs, so send my unengaged assault squad to help out in the massive combat. My bullets blast his storm talon from the sky, and with the combined might of two assault squads I butcher his two combat squads and consolidate. Devs and sternguard flail uselessly.

Turn 3 - Marines: His remaining reserves turn up, and the storm talon repays the favour by taking down my raven. One of my assault squads gets shredded by concentrated fire, leaving me with 5 marines including the sergeant in the other one.

Turn 4 - AS: Rhino turns up and decides to act as a shield. Hopefully I can cling on to that objective with two units there. Assault squad banks off and assaults one of his combat squads, the sergeants killing each other, leaving me with 4 assault marines in there. He holds, unfortunately. I can't shoot down the talon.

Turn 4 - SM: The last combat squad with 3 dudes pelts it for the objective. Until I finish the other combat squad, I can't get to them. Talon moves over and shoots some dudes, as does the pred, whilst the land speeder turbos its way down the table. My devastators lose combat to the sternguard, break and get away. But that last sternguard could be a problem.

End of T4

Turn 5 - AS: Devastators rally, and I try to shoot something (can't remember what though). My tactical marines get out of their box, and I begin to spread everyone out to make his job as hard as possible. My assault squad still can't kill enough of the marines to get out of combat though. Its an odd situation; I need them to get out of combat to win, but I need them to not do it on my turn otherwise they'll just get shot and take away linebreaker, and all my chances at getting his objective.

Turn 5 - SM: Talon goes for a hover strike so it doesn't move off the board. Speeder comes in and takes down the rhino. Shooting at both combat squads doesn't kill them though; he had planned to move the sternguard and then run to try and get him into contesting range but forgot to move (though he only got a rubbish run roll so wouldn't have made it). Combat is ongoing; if the game ends now I get it, but we go to turn 6.

End of turn 6. A really tight game hangs in the balance.

I'll just do the rest from here to the end... I charge his sternguard to tie him up. Meltagun has a fail and can't get the speeder. His bullets leave a couple of guys alive, and the combat is ongoing (still can't finish those damn tactical marines!). I have a few guys left for the win at the bottom of turn 6, and the devs finish the sternguard, and it goes on...

In turn 7, I beat up the tactical marines and consolidate behind the wrecked vindicator out of line of sight, and still linebreaker. Devastators knock the talon out of the sky. Now it just comes down to whether he can kill those tactical marines... he starts to do so, and it ends up with just his autocannon left, to my one tactical marine on the objective. One hit, one wound, one armour save to decide the game.... and its a 1. Space Marine Victory, 4 VPs to 2

What a game. That's really not one of those games that anyone has any right to complain about losing - yes, I was unlucky to have lost on that final shot, especially since if the game had ended any earlier I'd have won, but the game was so good that it doesn't matter. A defeat where you walk away with a smile on your face, because you know you're unlikely to have a better game for a very long time.

[Chaplain Admetus]

Interlude - Best armies case (apologies for the craptacular photos, my phone won't do the armies justice)

Raven Guard (painted and finished by one of us at 5 am on the Saturday...)

The Minotaurs featured on this very forum by a battle brother who's name I forget at present :)

A nice Dark Angels force

A pair of nid armies. No power armour, I know, but I couldn't leave them out...

Insane Psychopath's Iron Warriors - Best Painted winner, and tragically the photo that didn't come out properly :)

The Dark Eldar that smushed me in round one

And a nurgle chaos force to round things off

[Chaplain Admetus]

On a roll here of interrupted posts, so clearly nobody thinks game 4 was interesting :cuss. I've taken a look at the results sheets - it turns out that there were a reasonable number of us with a shot at best BA player going into the final round. 3 of us on 2 wins, and another on a win and a draw (capable of taking the title with a win if all 3 of us 6 pointers lost), so it was very much all to play for.

Round Five

Mission: Big Guns Never Tire

Deployment: Dawn of War

So, for the final game of what's been a great weekend I'm facing James and his Raven Guard drop pod army. Dammit, didn't get my sweep of facing 5 different armies! (On reflection; I'm facing 4 of the 5 races I played last time I went to a ToS... Vanilla marines twice, BA and DE once each, the difference is this time I played against Daemons instead of Guard). Quite glad its Big Guns instead of Relic, if I'm honest, as its a fairer overall mission, and drop pod armies are one of the few that can cane me at Relic by virtue of being faster. I'm definitely glad it wasn't Scouring though, seeing his list:

Librarian (Gate, Avenger)

3 x 10 man tactical squads in Drop Pods (all had some variant of special and heavy weapon)

Land speeder Squadron, all with Typhoon missile launchers

Storm Talon with Lascannon

Full size bike squad with m-m attack bike, sarge with power sword.

He won the roll and gave me first turn, as apparently going first hadn't been working out well for him over the course of the weekend.

Deployment. I've kept the tacticals together on this one as a combat squad will be picked off by a concerted strike. The objectives are on the skulls, near the ruin on the right, in the ruin at the back, in a central forest, and in a forest on the left. Librarian has prescience, and another power that never gets cast.

Turn 1 - AS: The sternguard turn up and slag one of the land speeders, and I stun another. One assault squad moves up my right flank, the rhino goes up the left, and the second assault squad (with characters) moves up the middle into a general support position. Rhino pops smoke because I can.

Turn 1 - SM: 2 pods turn up; 1 near the rhino (this one has his HQ), and one near the devastators. The bikes come round towards the rhino too. The speeders stay still and rain death down, but can't really do much damage. One tactical squad has a batch of rubbish dice against the devastators and doesn't kill any, and everything else foolishly takes a shot at the Indestructible Rhino of Doom and it shrugs off everything.

End of turn 1. I got off lightly, and now the raven guard must suffer.

Turn 2 - AS: No raven. I bring the assault squad (with prescience bonus) down to bail the devastators out of trouble, whilst the other one moves forward to support the sternguard. My bullets take out the remaining speeders, and in an assault I completely massacre the tactical squad. Highlight is my librarian being issued a challenge by his sergeant and killing the impudent fool, but not before taking two unsaved wounds from a chainsword in return! (fortunately, the priest is on hand to pass one FnP save and save him from a really inglorious end to his weekend).

Turn 2 - SM: His last pod comes down up near my stuff in the top right, but no flier for him either. The librarian splits off, and sits at one corner of my rhino (I forgot to move or get out...) whilst the squad surrounds it. His plan is to pop it and avenger my guys (side note: this is a really good plan). The bike squad lines up my assault marines. His shooting brings down a lot of my sternguard, a few assault marines, but he can't scratch the rhino! The venerable box of doom shrugs off anything he throws its way. In combat, my assault marines get the better of the bikers, but we stay in combat.

End of turn 2

Turn 3 - AS: Raven turns up. It flies off to have a go at the top tactical squad. Sternguard move over for same, as do the assault marines. The rhino moves and I disembark. I want to shoot his tactical marines with mine, but I know that's just going to lead to me taking a librarian with avenger to the face so I shoot and kill him instead. My raven, sternguard and assault marines make short work of his tactical squad.

Turn 3 - SM: No flier for him. Instead he forms a firing squad and picks off fully half of my tactical marines, who stand their ground. The assault marines finish off the bikers and prepare to assault.

End of turn 3. The dice gods have really blessed me this game; Its pretty much cut and dry from here on out.

Turns 4 +: My assault squad moves to charge his tactical squad, as there's not much else to do. The rest of my stuff potters around aimlessly. I charge and kill his final squad, but his sergeant goes out in a blaze of glory taking my librarian with him. We call it at the end of turn 5 as all he has left is a talon, and I still have five scoring units left on the tabletop.

Last photo I have. I think I have more models left than at the end of every other game combined.

Angels Sanguine Victory

One last post coming up with the results, and overall thoughts

[Chaplain Admetus]

So, closing thoughts. I really like that they've done away with ToS being a traditional tournament, and making it more of a gaming weekend is fantastic. They even changed the names of the awards, so things like best Sisters player is "keeper of the flame", and best Tau player was "First amongst equals". Appropriately enough, the title for best Blood Angel:

Stats for the stat god (or Captain Idaho...): The racial averages appear to have been worked out in a really funny way. The Eldar one was apparently highest at 13.75 (it looks like the lowest score was ignored), and Blood Angels were the third lowest, beating out only Dark Angels, and surprisingly Chaos Space Marines with the lowest average of all (I'm not counting Sisters as they had a default of 5 with only 2 players, both of whom did exceptionally well).

I had a really good weekend. All 5 opponents were an absolute pleasure to play against, and I would be happy to play them again at future events. Two of my games were good (downgraded games 1 and 5 to merely 'good' because the dice gods favoured one player in each), one was great (BA vs BA, a matchup I have little to no experience with), and the other two were absolutely fantastic, two of the best games of 40k I've ever played against brilliant opponents.

The weekend is definitely set up to cater more to the casual crowd than the power-gamer, win-at-all-costs tournament gamer - if you want that sort of atmosphere, you'd be better off somewhere else. The 7 flier necron player even got the mick taken a little bit by the events team during the pub quiz :lol:. Its also not an event I'd really go to alone - this is something that you can go to with a couple (or a lot!) of friends, and have a great weekend playing a game we all enjoy with like minded opponents. If sportsmanship is an issue, I've been twice now and I've not played an ;) yet. Everyone's been really friendly and a pleasure to play against, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone in the UK who wants to give it a try.

So, with that, I offer my thanks again to the events team for putting on such a great weekend, my friends and the opponents, and all the other players who made the weekend what it was, and to all the readers who suffered through that stupidly long battle report thread leading up to this one.

For the Emperor and Sanguinius! Glory to the Angels Sanguine and the Imperium!

[Kierdale]

Very, very entertaining reads, thank you for posting them, Chaplain Admetus.

Also glad to hear you had such a good time.

Hopefully GW are going to hold the ToS over here too. I'd be sorely tempted to give it a try after reading yours and others' reports.

[Captain Idaho]

Cool.

 

Out of interest, what was the title given to the top Space Marines player?

[Jolemai]

Only thing about the format I would say is unfair is playing random players is harder on the "weaker" players than the ones there to win. I don't mind personally since I rarely find myself getting easy games and could do with some seal clubbing.

 

:) am i a bad person if the random player thing has now made me want to play in this tourney more than ever! ;)

 

I'll make sure I avoid that tournament then :P

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

So, closing thoughts. I really like that they've done away with ToS being a traditional tournament, and making it more of a gaming weekend is fantastic.

 

I hope that this is something that other tournaments do, or that we start to see more of this style of tournament play. It seems to me that this is what was intended with 6th edition. I have yet to play a game of 6th but everything I am reading here and at DakkaDakka gives me the impression that 6th is not so good for competitive play, but the best edition for a more fluffy, fun/semi-relaxed style. Which is what I've always preferred, but with no friends locally who play, I've been more into tournaments in recent years.

 

Thanks for sharing the batreps and other discussion on ToS, Chaplain Admetus.

[Captain Idaho]

Only thing about the format I would say is unfair is playing random players is harder on the "weaker" players than the ones there to win. I don't mind personally since I rarely find myself getting easy games and could do with some seal clubbing.

 

:D am i a bad person if the random player thing has now made me want to play in this tourney more than ever! :lol:

 

I'll make sure I avoid that tournament then :P

 

I thought the same thing as Morticon so you just know we'd end up facing each other and the Necron player with 11 fliers!

[Morticon]

I thought the same thing as Morticon so you just know we'd end up facing each other and the Necron player with 11 fliers!

 

Or each other!!

:D

 

Id be down for the challenge :P (i think the most they can feasibly get into a 1500 though is 8. )

[dwez]

Interlude - Best armies case (apologies for the craptacular photos, my phone won't do the armies justice)

A pair of nid armies. No power armour, I know, but I couldn't leave them out...

The Dark Eldar that smushed me in round one

And a nurgle chaos force to round things off

Thanks for still sharing the nid armies, the top one is mine and the bottom one is my mate Otty's. You also have been very generous about my other mate Liam's efforts, did you know he's scratchbuilt a Warhound and Warlord Titan? Coincidentally I also faced Jim's Ravenguard and Phil's Blood Angels with the nids. Thanks for sharing I know Liam will be interested to read your report. I will be putting mine on my blog as soon as I can but there's still plenty to download on it already if you're into free foamboard building templates and wound markers.

[dwez]

Interlude - Best armies case (apologies for the craptacular photos, my phone won't do the armies justice)

A pair of nid armies. No power armour, I know, but I couldn't leave them out...

The Dark Eldar that smushed me in round one

And a nurgle chaos force to round things off

Thanks for still sharing the nid armies, the top one is mine and the bottom one is my mate Otty's. You also have been very generous about my other mate Liam's efforts, did you know he's scratchbuilt a Warhound and Warlord Titan? Coincidentally I also faced Jim's Ravenguard and Phil's Blood Angels with the nids. Thanks for sharing I know Liam will be interested to read your report. I will be putting mine on my blog as soon as I can but there's still plenty to download on it already if you're into free foamboard building templates and wound markers.

[Morticon]

Thanks for signing up and sharing, Dwez!!

[dwez]

Thanks for signing up and sharing, Dwez!!

 

Thanks Morticon, I was searching for any other pics and reports from ToS and google brought these up. I couldn't believe they included one of Liams battles and also two of my own opponents, thanks to Admetus for putting them up. I'm in the process of writing mine and will let you know when they're ready.

[Morticon]

Thanks for signing up and sharing, Dwez!!

 

Thanks Morticon, I was searching for any other pics and reports from ToS and google brought these up. I couldn't believe they included one of Liams battles and also two of my own opponents, thanks to Admetus for putting them up. I'm in the process of writing mine and will let you know when they're ready.

 

Dont forget the board rules though! Theyre quite power armour specific (assuming you're writing nid reports!)

 

Rules Here

[dwez]

Dont forget the board rules though! Theyre quite power armour specific (assuming you're writing nid reports!)

 

Rules Here

 

Indeed, I'll only share the two matches that I had that Admetus also played and the other Grey Knights match I lost. When I get round to painting my Dark Angels I'll be sure to show how they're getting on too.

[Chaplain Admetus]

Thanks for the input Dwez! Those nid armies are both absolutely stellar, props to all of you for outstanding looking forces. I particularly liked the defence line - its a really good gribbly take on things. I knew Liam had sculpted and cast all the bases himself, but scratch-building titans?! The man's clearly crossing the line between genius and insanity!

 

These armies are the sort of thing that both inspire and depress me... they look absolutely stellar and are a joy to play against, and then I feel bad that mine don't match up as it just looks like I'm a child with a box of crayola who's also been given caffeine...

 

Just out of curiosity, how did you fare against the Tank Army of Death? I'm just glad I came prepared for guard, last year's army wouldn't have had a prayer.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

Chaplain Admetus - First up well done on the Best Blood Angels army, I still rememeber that was your aim last year that ToS April & how close it was. Like wise great report & was good talk with yourself during the weekend. Will you be taken the Blood Angels down to Throne of Skulls next year or any other events that they will be take part in?

Insane Psychopath's Iron Warriors - Best Painted winner, and tragically the photo that didn't come out properly :tu:

Thanks very much for the photo Chaplain Admetus, I been trying to see if there many on the internet from Throne of Skulls but not much luck ;)

If people wish to check out more on the Iron Warriors they can see my topics in the WIP or Chaos area

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...=242456&hl=

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...=242006&hl=

The army is currently take part in another tournament this weekend Rapid Fire (Stirling wargamer) with day 1 just finish today. Heldrake are great, now if I could roll for there reserve they'd be brillaint...... :( They been arrive by turn 4.

IP

[Chaplain Admetus]

@IP - I'll definitely be taking them to other events. Maybe not immediately - still riding the high of victory, and in the knowledge that the only from the top is down :P. But BA are my main army, and my first, so they'll be back. I'm considering building up a new army specifically for the March ToS, once I decide what to do. Got a couple of ideas, top 3 at the moment are an all-aspect themed Eldar, Dark Eldar (cos I love the models), and a Deathwatch army using Kantor, 3 sternguard units, 2 actual troops, and an allied inquisitor with some henchmen. If the latter gets the nod, there will be a project log!

 

Best of luck with the rest of the Stirling Rapid Fire - I know a few players from Aberdeen who were looking forward to it, and it sounds like a good tournament