OFCC is a 5-game team tournament at 2800 points. 2012 they allowed Storm of Magic choices to be taken as rare, which was my inspiration for Iron Brush (I just noticed I never posted for my own tournament…>.<) but for this year you had to take only options from your own book which was sad. Not because I had anything I wanted to take, but because I like people being able to take all of their toys!

Unfortunately, I took no photos of the games. I was to busy!

The match-ups were created in a very interesting manner. The first 3 rounds of the tournament were determined by people challenging each other, with the last 2 games having the teams matched by how well they were doing. The team captains came together and brought a copy of each persons list on their team. They diced for who would “present” first. The winner presents a list, and the other captain chooses two lists from his own team for the presenter to choose. The chosen two play Warhammer together. They swap turns, with each captain presenting, until all players are matched. When presenting, the captains talk about what sort of player the person is and what sort of army they brought. In this way, you can get Pete playing someone really hard because he loves those games, and me playing someone a bit less challenging because I’m more of a hobbyist (although Pete has been corrupting me…)

My army:

• Carnosaur Lord
• Scar-Vet BSB on Cold One
• Skink Priest
• Skink Priest on Engine
• 38 Saurus Warriors
• 3×10 Skink Skirmishers with Javelins (one unit had a Brave)
• 11 Cold One Cavalry
• 24 Temple Guard+Razor Standard
• A single Salamander

I won’t post any photos in this, because it’s already massive, but I have a bunch of photos that I took before the tournament of my army to edit and we’ll get to those shortly.

Saturday

Game 1

We had been challenged by Black Sheep Spaelsau, because last year their team captain had played Pete. Pete claims that this guy really didn’t like the game, but when we spoke with him it seemed that he thought it was the toughest game of Warhammer he’d ever played and that he wanted to do it again!

We played a scenario called Kill Mr. Lucky. One champion in your army is Mr. Lucky and he allows you to re-roll a single dice per phase of the game. You get 4 bonus points for killing your opponents Mr. Lucky and 6 points for keeping your Mr. Lucky alive. I chose a skink brave, as I could keep him alive for a long time.

I played Taylor and his Daemons. He had

• Keeper of Secrets
• Slaanesh Herald BSB
• Khorne Herald on Juggernaut
• Nurgle Herald on Palaquin
• 29 Daemonettes
• 26 Plaguebearers
• 10 Seekers of Slaanesh
• 3 Fiends of Slaanesh
• 3 Beasts of Nurgle
• 5 Bloodcrushers of Khorne

Turn 1, he Dimensional Cascaded his Keeper.

Before the game, I had predicted that I could work hard to get a draw against this guy. He had a decent list, and had decent experience against my sub-optimal list and losing streak. But I’ve been working hard to up my game recently, and I thought I could use that to push this game. Losing a 600 point character in the first turn was a pretty huge uphill battle for him.

I pushed my Saurus block into his Plaguebearers, hoping to tie them up for the game, but around turn 4 they box-carred and removed the entire unit, giving me another 360 points that I hadn’t thought I would get.

I made a huge mistake in the last turn of the game. I had kept Mr. Lucky alive for the entire game by prioritizing him, keeping him from charge arcs and such. But I forgot or didn’t notice that his Bloodcrushers could charge the skinks on his last turn. I ran, thinking that I could make a Ld6 roll and that would be ok. I hadn’t notice that his last Beast was still in charge range and arc to run that skink unit off the table,  meaning that I lost 6 bonus points (of 20).

I thought I played really well, as did he. But the dice were severely against him, and I got a major win for 10 points to his 7.  He didn’t have a Mr. Lucky, so I didn’t get the 4 points for killing him!

Game 2

Scenario called Fulcrum Fight. Two Fulcrums on the table, with a bunch of special rules including –

• Mage on the Fulcrum has Loremaster.
• Mage on the Fulcrum Channels on a 2+.
• If occupied, the Fulcrum casts a D6 S5 Magic Missile at a unit of your choice.

We were originally matched against Scared Hitless, but ended up playing Gamers Haven instead. My opponent was Evan Guthmiller, a really awesome guy who had only recently started playing Fantasy. Despite that, he had a great knowledge of the rules and even corrected me a few times (not surprising, since I still play 7th Ed in my head…). His list had:

• 2 Warlords
• 2 Plague Priests
• 1 Chieftain
• 39 Stormvermin
• 39 Clanrats, 20 Clanrats
• 35 Plaguemonks, 35 Plaguemonks
• 1 Doomwheel
• 2 Plagueclaw Catapults
• And a Hellpit Abomination.

Our board had a giant river running exactly down the long line of it at about 16″ from his board edge. Apparently rivers are extremely bad for Skaven since they lose the rank bonus and get no leadership bonus, but he was determined to make it work. We placed our Fulcrums on the river and called them ford points, just to help out a bit. I would have thought he would set up primarily on the side that had no river section (it had a bend in it, at about 24″ from my left side) but he set up entirely behind the river at 12″ in his deployment. His plan – run forward and charge me at his earliest convenience.

This plan was ballsy. If he miscalculated my distance from him and the river or screwed a charge roll, his massive long units would be screwed while I tore a bunch of rats off per turn and he’d have Ld5 tests to make. Turn 2, he charged and made it entirely over the river and into the fight! We spent the next hour and a bit rolling for each fight, and slowly I managed to grind out his units until he started failing break tests.

Another good moment for me – my carnosaur lord killed the abom and the doomwheel. Yay!

I won this one 20 to his 3, because I took both Fulcrums in the end. I hope he had a decent game anyway! He told me that the organizers had sent back his list 3 times because it was to hard, but I’m hard-pressed to see how his current list is “overpowered”!

Game 3

We had a challenge by Black Sheep Merino this round, and I played John Evans with his Warriors of Chaos. I gave him my Favourite Opponent pin, because he had a terrific attitude and gave a great game. He had a cool theme going, where he wanted to make a Chaos army with each God being one of the “good” Gods. His army included:

• A daemon prince of Nurgle
• Exalted Hero of Tzeentch
• Sorcerer Lord
• 24 Khorne Warriors
• 23 Nurgle Warriors
• 23 Tzeentch Warriors
• 5 Marauder Horsemen
• 5 Warhounds
• A gorebeast chariot
• 3 Skullcrushers of Khorne (wankernaughts)

The scenario was Reserves and called for random deployment, similar to Meeting Engagement from the rulebook. You could place 250 points of unit in reserve, and got a bonus point for each unit you killed up to a maximum of 10.

Our table had a giant piece of impassible terrain in the middle, and this was the downfall of John. This screamed “refused flank” to me, particularly with most of his killing power in M4 blocks, but I had to base my strategy on the random deployment.

He rolled such that his 3 blocks were on my left, with his chariot, daemon prince and skullcrushers on my right. I rolled and deployed such that most of my army was on my right, except for my cavalry on the left so that I could tease his warriors forward. I killed his entire right flank, and ran away with my cav until the game was over. I was pretty close to giving him a fight, just to give his blocks some use, but each time I’d consider it he would cast Mindrazor on his Khorne block and that was the end of that. On average, even half of that unit would wipe out my entire unit!

I can’t remember how much I won this by, but it was a big win for me! I think it was about 15-6 – I killed everything but the 3 warrior blocks and the non-daemon prince characters, and he killed some skinks and my salamander.

Sunday

Sunday was my downfall. I was exhausted from Saturday night and only 3 hours of sleep and was only propped up by an hour long run, some great Darjeeling tea and a cold Monster.

Game 4

I played against Ian Holt from Borderlands Raiders Team 1 and his Warriors. He had:

• Tzeentch Lord
• Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord
• Tzeentch BSB
• Sorcerer with Shadow
• 18 Tzeentch Warriors, 17 Tzeentch Warriors
• 3×5 Warhounds
• 16 Chosen of Tzeentch
• 5 Knights of Tzeentch
• A Chimera
• 2 Spawn

The scenario was Treasure Hunt, a game that I’m glad that Owen and I played a few days beforehand. Each player placed 3 treasure tokens on the board, which were worth 2 bonus points at the end. You had to charge them to take them, and could overrun or reform after taking them. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to skip my combat units across the table towards Chaos warriors!

I tried to stay out of combat with the warrior blocks, but it wasn’t to be. Ian was a good opponent and although I managed to kill his Knights in a bad charge of his, and his Chimera by blocking it in with the Steg and Temple Guard, he used Pit of Shades quite effectively to remove my cav and carnosaur!

I lost this one 9 to 16, a loss that I’m quite pleased with – I worked hard for it!

Game 5

Before the tournament, someone had been spreading around that the Canadians wouldn’t be forced to play each other, but at this point the 3 Canadian teams had the top 3 spots for General! We were matched up against…WCP. Originally people were annoyed – “we can play them at any time” – but Dan was the voice of reason “sure, we can, but when was the last time you did?” I haven’t played Dan in probably 5 years!

I was matched up against Dan’s “monster-mash” Tomb Kings, he had:

• Liche High Priest
• Liche Priest
• 2×20 Skeleton Archers
• 2×3 Skeleton Chariots
• 14 Skeleton Warriors
• 2xKhemrian Warsphinx
• 40 Tomb Guard
• 2 Tomb Swarms (I don’t remember seeing those…)
• 3 Carrion
• 1 Casket of Souls (bad)
• 1 Necrosphinx
• 1 Screaming Skull Catapult

The scenario was King of the Hill – bonus points for units, banners and heroes on top of the hill in the center of the table.

Dan was convinced that I was going to eat him alive. I think he thought that my skinks would obliterate his monsters and at 230 points each that was a good trade to make. I wasn’t able to capitalize on that – I set up my skinks so that I could have shots at one each turn, running away with a unit and then moving another in to shoot, but I couldn’t put enough wounds on it to count.

On my right flank he had a big thing with Killing Blow and Heroic Killing Blow and I’d stupidly set up my carny on that side. I hid him behind an impassible pillar for the first two turns before I could get my saurus block into it and tie it up for the rest of the game.

I also managed to get an awesome charge against his archers with the Steg, which cleared out that unit, the carrion and the casket behind them before dying. I think he died to bow-fire and the skull catapult.

At the end, I had fought hard to kill all of his monsters and a bunch of other things, but it wasn’t enough. Those monsters were incredibly tough and they took me all game to clear, and I had sacrificed to much to get there. Last turn I had killed one, but he got a double charge against my cav and all but killed them. I had 3 skinks, 2 cav, 5 saurus and my lord (sans-dinosaur) left on the table at the end…which was about 1,300 points in 8th Ed. 😛

I lost this one 8-20. I squeaked out a Minor Loss, but because he had more models on the hill than I did, he got 5 points just for that.

 

Conclusion

I’m happy that I didn’t let my team down. I’ve lost a lot of Warhammer in my life, but I’ve been doing a lot of research and study and practice to try to bring my game up a notch because of the team environment. I won 3 games, and my losses were “not that bad” (although it could be said that Dan demolished me. :P)

I’m happily looking forward to next year. I absolutely love the format of this event, and I love that it’s a road trip hanging with my clubmates and all that.