As some of you might know, I went to a tournament in the UK last weekend (I'm from the Netherlands myself). I got invited to come over by Alex Harrison/Killswitch. Basicly I had a great weekend, thanks again for that Alex! Now, I had hoped I would be providing you with battlereports now to show how I play Mech Eldar... but when I was about to make my first picture my camera turned out to be dead. Broken. Kaput! So I'll just tell you some things now about the tournament, for those who are interested.
First the tournament itself. The tournament was called 'Brighton Warlords' and I've been told that it's one of the better tournaments in southern England. 42 people participated. 1750 points, 6 games and basic rulebook missions. Now personally I don't really mind playing rulebook missions, you get used to it. Kill-points I actually find the most boring mission. It's kinda easy to just consolidate after you're a few killpoints ahead, but c'est la vie. Now the terrain...was surprisingly good! Nice mix of area terrain, some smaller pieces of rubble/fences and some LoS blocking things.
What made it really enjoyable for me, was the fact that the place the tournament was held in was a really awesome(ly) old pub! We don't have anything like that in Holland and to play 40k there was just really nice. Beer tasted well, but that aside =p
Now, I took Eldar. Alex told me pretty much every Eldar player there plays with a Seer Council, Eldard and/or Yriël. My list contains neither of course:
Farseer; Guide + RoWa, Spear
Autarch; Fusion gun
5 Dire Avengers (falcon)
2x 5 Dire Avengers
Serpent; TL-Brightlance, Cannon, Stones
3x 5 Fire Dragons
Serpent; TL-Scatter, Cannon, Stones
2x Fire Prism; Cannon
Falcon; EML, Cannon, Holo, stones
So, how did I do? Reasonable. Won 4 games and lost 2, ending up 8th place. However, those losses... were not really my fault.
1st loss: Against Necrons. Yes people, I lost to Necrons. Unthinkable isn't it? Not really, not when you play kill-points in dawn of war, game ending turn 5 and the Necron player rolling bloody unbelievable well! He honestly hitted 75% on average through the whole game and 20-25% 6's... And his Nightbringer saved like he had a 3++ at least lol.
As a result he won 2-1 in kill-points!
It felt somewhat unfair, but I didn't really care, because my oppenent was a great player. He took Necrons as a challenge, which was nice to see.
2nd loss: Against Lash Chaos. I know, I know. How did I manage to lose this one?! Oh wait yes, dice again heh. What happened? Well the dice during the game were already not really in my favour, but that was oké. I still managed to stay into the game by keeping some of my vehicles alive. As I got the last turn and we played with 5 objectives, I could just tank-shock my vehicles onto objectives to draw at least, but probably win. So what went wrong? Me rolling 1's for all 3 terrain tests I made for my skimmers. Yes, all 3 wrecked themselves.
But yet I didn't really mind, that's just how the game is. My oppenent again was just a good player (give this guy a proper army and he would be winning tournaments I think) and he freely admitted himself that I should have won that game. Heck, he was surprised that I was still so cheerfull haha.
I probably would not have won all 6 games though, not even with normal dice. I mean, I would have played against different oppenents if I went 4-0 or 5-0. (could have lost a game there, or a draw who knows) It's also not only the dice itself, its the dice in combination with Eldar. Eldar can't really take bad dice, because it relies on a few expensive (read: overpriced) vehicles to win games. Same with Chaos to be honest. If he would have fluffed his first cover saves on his Oblits then he would have lost the game right there. Same goes for the Necrons, if he would have failed his first dice rolls for his Nightbringer. That's how it is with most old armies: They got a few key units which the whole army relies on, little to no redundancy.
I was satisfied with my own performance though, I played really sharp the whole tourney. Can't remember misjudging 1 distance and I can't remember any real mistakes either. Maybe I'm just not critical at myself haha.
Then, my impression of the players and lists there!
Quite some good players actually. Not only that, they were also pleasant to play against. During the whole tourney we didn't need to check the rulebook once, nor did we ask the TO/judge for anything. The players I beat also didn't act sour, which is always nice. Wait no, the last guy kinda did. Well that's what you get if you bring 3 Land Raiders, Abaddon and Khârn lol.
Oh, before I forget: I met Rupert too! He wore some gay kind of spandex thingy. Ew. Great guy apart from that =P
The lists... were not that good, but still decent. I expected better, especially after BroLo telling me multiple times how I would get rolled with my shitty Mech Eldar. Nobody rolled me BroLo, you is a lie.
Decent lists were usual armies like Wolves and IG, 2 or so GK lists, 1or 2 BA lists, 1 Dark Eldar, Deathwing and the Necron army.
Loads of lists had stupid stuff in it though, like 1 stormraven and 1 land raider, Hordish Orks, more Land raider armies and the usual Rainbow armies.
How did Alex/Killswitch do? He practicly won the tournament. Except he forgot that Deathcult assassins didn't have frags and the TO decided his game on the final table would be a draw instead because of that. In hindsight this was a pretty rough decision, as he could have just putted Coteaz with them if he knew (would not have changed the game if he was there instead). Now he ended up taking home 5th place. Still not bad, especially considering he only played 3 games with GK's in total prior to the tournament! So I'm afraid he's a pretty good player ;)
All in all a nice tournament and I'll try to go the UK again, although I'll bring a better army myself then heh.
