GW Newbury went with a good crowd on Monday, along with Reading, Oxford and Swindon.
The day started terribly for me at 5.30 am with a flat tyre on the car, but I just made it to the store for the bus.
I had had a chat with my partner Chris about his Eldar force the day before, and we discussed our options a little more on the coach. I had considered taking my Howling Griffons, but decided against them, as I hadn't had much success with them yet, and my Assault Terminators were less than half done. Chaos was another option, using my old Lost and the Damned army from Eye of Terror for Bezerkers and Cultists. However, I don't have a decent Khorne Lord and I figured there would be a plethora of Chaos armies there with lots of the shiny new models. Also, with points being awarded for cohesion between the two armies, it would be an unlikely / unholy alliance. Eventually I decided on taking my small Space Wolves force. I played a trial game on Sunday, using two units of Grey Hunters with plasma guns and pistols, a Razorback with lascannons and a small unit of Swiftclaw bikers and a biker Wolf Lord. They won on objectives in the trial game, but on the coach I decided to downgrade the HQ to a Wolf Guard Battle Leader and to swap the Razorback for a Drop Pod.
Chris had been up late getting some paint on his figures the night before, so arrived at the store even later than me! He took a Farseer, a unit of Dire Avengers, some Guardians with a Warlock and a unit of Dark Reapers.
Our first opponents were a Space Wolves / Ork combo with lots of biker orks, two units of Grey Hunters in Rhinos and a Runepriest. In every game, I used the Drop Pod aggressively and put it in the opposition deployment zone and in this game my Grey Hunters shot up the Lootas and made them run off the board, giving us First Blood. However, my bikes failed their charge on the Ork bikers, which proved costly. If the game had finished a couple of minutes earlier we would have won, but in the last few minutes the remains of my drop pod hunters were shot off one objective and their rhinos deposited their passengers onto two high-value objectives, giving them a 7-2 win.
The second game was against Grey Knights and Guard. On the first turn a Demolisher shot took out most of my bikers and my warlord, giving them three VPs straight away from one model! Again I put my Drop Pod down in harm's way, right in front of a Vindicare Assassin, which then seemed to have a a charmed life. It made numerous 4+ invulnerable saves on its last wound and eventually beat off my Grey Hunters after a couple of rounds of drawn combat. A combination of the Deathwind launcher and Eldar shooting killed off the Rough Riders (very nicely-painted Death Korps models) and the power-armoured GKs, but we never recovered from the early setback, and were only one wound away from being tabled by the end of the game.
Having had two losses, we hoped for better fortune in the final game, against more Space Wolves and more Guard from the Reading store! There were plenty of Chaos armies there, but we hadn't met any of them! This force included a fun Commissar on a Segway!
We finally managed to get the first turn in a game, but only by seizing the initiative. Again the Drop Pod went down behind their Medusa, but we just couldn't kill it off. This wasn't helped my my repeated rolling a 1s with my plasma weapons. During the day I got snake-eyes twice when rapid-firing my plasma guns! Of course, I also then failed the 3+ armour save each time. I even got Chris to roll for me instead, and of course he also rolled a 1!! We did have a bit of luck managing to hit their Vendetta with a snapshot from my multimelta Attack Bike, but then only managed to remove one of the twin-linked lascannons. Chris' Dark Reapers had given us First Blood by sending their Thunderwolves running and his Runes of Warding also nullified and finally killed off their Runepriest.
I was just a little too sporting for us to win this game. With two minutes to go they suggested and I agreed to a draw, as we were tied on VPs and had had three turns each. Had we continued my remaining Grey Hunter could have got close enough to contest their three-point objective and we would have also had Linebreaker. I just hadn't thought of suggesting this in game one and was a little taken aback by the suggestion. This was only my second ever tournament, so I guess I'll know better next time.
Overall, GW Reading emerged victorious, so well done to them. After the success in April, I won't tell you where Newbury came out of the four stores competing, but we were disappointed. This was despite Quinn's team winning every game by taking two identical armies of Tervigons and Doom of Malan'tai, which basically swamped their enemies with Termagants.
The coach back was slightly delayed by another vehicular mishap, when someone reversed into our parked coach just before we were due to get on.
We had a fun day out and I have certainly learnt quite a bit for future competitions like this. In particular, being a bit more decisive about my list and getting some practice games with my partner would be very useful.
