So I'm back and recovered from a day of 6th edition 40k action at the annual Judgement Day tournament. This 750 point tournament is hosted by the Western Suburbs Wargaming Association, and this was the 7th year of its operation.
I had just finished painting this army the night before. A bunch of rats from the Warhammer box set painted up as Horrors and Nurglings, lead by the big man Kai-rat Fatecheeser himself. The display board was a plate I bought from a $2 store on the way home from work the night before, covered with air-drying clay, and spray painted and dry brushed in the morning. Here's the list:
- Fatecheeser
- 6 Horrors with bolt and icon
- 5 Horrors with bolt
- 5 Horrors with bolt
- 4 Nurglings
- 4 Nurglings
My Games
The first mission was 3 objectives with Dawn of War deployment (read pitched battle). My opponent was rocking a simple Space Wolves Logan-wing list:
- Logan
- 10 Wolfguard with 5 Terminators, 2 assault cannons
- 5 Wolfguard with 1 Terminator, cyclone missile launcher
My opponent shot back and got 20ish wounds on Fatecheeser, but I saved them all - thanks to the Feel No Pain Warlord trait he rolled up! I then proceeded to completely forget for the rest of the game that he only got FNP when within 3" of an objective. 6th edition comes with a lot to remember. In my turn the rest of the army deepstruck in (yay for 3+ reserves) and I flew Fatecheeser and shot the small squad. Managed to kill two, which was enough for them to fail Morale and flee the table.
After that the game degenerated into a brawl as Fatecheeser assaulted the big squad with one Nurgling squad, whislt the other held Logan off for most of the game. Unfortunately I forgot about his ability to turn people within 6" into Chaos Spawn - I would have had 4 goes against Logan's Toughness 4! Unfortunately the game lasted until turn 7, when he finally killed Fatecheeser and the Nurglings, charged forward to the centre and contested that objective, giving us one each. It was a victory to him because he got bonus points for killing my warlord.
Next up was some kind of diagonal deployment, with whatever 6th edition calls kill points as the objective. This time I was facing a balanced Sisters of Battle list:
- One sisters squad in a Rhino
- Another on foot
- Retributors with heavy bolters and a multi-melta
- the irrepressible Celestine
- a big squad of Serephim
It's real hard for horrors to stand up to any kind of shooting, especially now that they can't go to ground. I'm pretty sure I was tabled. Charging flamers with swarms is not a good idea, I took 6 wounds from one flamer! Then later on facing Seraphim with 4 flamer pistols there was no way I was going to charge that :(
Sorry, no more pics from here...
Sooo two losses but I'm having fun. Next up is the Relic mission, with another kind of deployment that I get to ignore. My opponent had brought a pretty soft Dark Eldar list:
- Archon
- Wyches in a Raider
- Warriors with splinter stuff
- Trueborn with some gun they never got to use
- A Reaver with disintegrators
Fatecheeser and horrors dropped in right on the Relic. One squad of horrors promptly eliminated the Trueborn, who weren't in cover. I was doing well, but Nightshields prevented me from taking shots at the Raider. This cost me as he was able to to get into assault range. But then it all went to hell as Fatecheeser took a wound and stumbled, confused, off the board! I was tabled by turn 5.
The final game was the two objective Capture and Control replacement. My final opponent had brought Orks:
- Warboss in mega-armour
- Nobs on foot with painboy
- 12 Boys on foot
- 3 Kannons
- Looted Wagon with Boomgun
The Tournament
Of course with this being one of the first tournaments to run 6th edition here in Australia, there was a lot of questions in the air about how the new system would run in a tournament environment. The organisers took the angle of keeping it as simple as possible, using rulebook missions and excluding special rules for most of the day. By special rules, that included warlord traits, night fighting, reserves (!), mysterious terrain and mysterious objectives. They also dropped the number of games in the day from 5 to 4. This gave us 1.5 hours, a quarter of an hour more that usual, and that was plenty of time event with me having only learnt the rules from the internet and never having actually put them in practice.
I've been to the last 5 JDs, and this was by far the smallest and most relaxed of those. Numbers were in their mid 30s, rather than the 60 plus that turned up last year. This was obviously caused by a reluctance in the community to jump in to 6th edition. I think a lot of that would be because the mini rulebook has not yet been released - I raised this issue in the wargamerau forums before the event and was assured that it was OK to turn up sans rulebook. Others might not have been willing to do this, and unwilling to shell out the $120 (wtf?) for the rulebook in this country. It didn't really have a negative effect on my experience (nice to have the space really) but I'd like to share the fun with a few more gamers. Next year?
With only 4 games the day ended earlier than expected. Prizes were distributed and I missed out on the wooden spoon, coming 32nd out of 34. Prizes were provided by Bunker Games, who I want to mention here because they seem to have an amazing deal on GW models: 25% off always, plus a 10% cash back kind of thing on top of that, plus other deals on top of that! If I ever buy something new... Usually a large portion of the participants head off the La Porchetta for pizza and 40k discussion. No one seemed up for it this year which was a pity, not the least because I have an unhealthy obsession with pizza.
Here's a few pics of the more eye-catching armies:
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