Hulls Angels Charity Tournament 2013

Hulls Angels charity tournament 2013 was so large that the club was forces out of their usual quarters and instead took up the whole of the sports hall at their venue. Three systems were played at the tournament, including Warhammer 40,000, Warhamer and the Warmachine/Hordes system.

I competed in the Warhammer 40,000 group with a very static Ultramarines list, Devastator squads from the 8th Company with missile launchers, my mainstay 5th Company tactical squads with a missile launcher, heavy bolter and flamers and a Captain with Thunder Hammer accompanied by 5 terminators.

Game 1 was against Chaos Space Marines and a sizeable band of Cultists, an army that had beat me soundly only a few days before. It was a relic mission which was not good for my largely static force either. I was getting mauled fairly badly, Helldrakes doing significant AP3 damage and my opponents patience put his cultists up a three story building on a sky-shield platform with the relic in hand when the game time limit was called.

I still had my turn to go, so hammered the building with everything I had and managed to very narrowly finish 20 cultists with blast damage, giving me the game on secondary objectives.

Game 2 was Emperors Will. I castled my objective well, but had only a tentative foray towards my enemy's objective with my Captain and the Terminators. My opponent's force was Space Marines and largely arrived from reserve, with several squads in drop pods and a Captain and escort arriving via Storm Raven. The dice gods were smiling upon me and my opponents force arrived piecemeal. I was able to destroy a squad at a time and delayed his Captain's arrival with a lucky shot that put the Storm Raven on locked velocity, forcing a risky deep strike a turn later.

I was unable to take his objective as my offensive thrust took the brunt of his remaining force, but with neither of us making our main objectives it came down to secondary objectives again and another win for me.

Game 3 I thought would break me, as it has on the last few tournaments. I was facing a Tyranid force in a kill points game, when I had more kill points on offer than in my opponents list. I don't have a picture, but it was a really impressive Aliens themed force which later won best painted. I set up and dug in, with only my underwhelming Captain and his Terminators up front.

Running head first into the a missile heavy force of Space Marines, dug in behind terrain did not appeal to my Tyranid opponent and he tried to flank me, but a combination of deploying right in the corner of the board and a central piece of terrain only gave me more time to fire at the things I could see and fewer distractions in terms of the target choices. Almost nothing from the Tyranid force connected, leaving my Captain kicking his heels for the third game in a row and feeling like a waste of points. When the dust cleared I walked away almost unscathed and with a significant victory.

Tiebreaker!

Hulls Angels 2013 Tournament Trophy

Only one other player had won all three games, one of the members of the York Garrison gaming club who had come over to play in the tournament, bringing an all drop pod Space Wolf list. The organisers decided that the fairest way to decide the outright winner was fight!

My Capitan would have to go toe to toe with the Space Wolf Wolf Priest. On paper it looked like an easy win. I had a 2+ save and a strength 8 weapon, he had no invulnerable save, so although I would be striking last a single blow would be enough to finish him. The Wolf Priest struck first and despite my artificer armour, or perhaps because I had only moments before said the fatal words "I'll be fine, I have my  artificer armour" I took two wounds. Ouch. One wound left I rolled to hit. All but one of my attacks missed the mark. I was sweating as I rolled to wound. I needed anything but a 1.... I won!

I sat through the charity auction in a mild state of shock while my win sunk in. It was as much luck of the draw as anything else and I have to congratulate and commiserate my opponents, who fought well, but lost to luck.

Overall it was a fantastic day, well organised and ran as ever and I am looking forward to next year. A good sum of money was raised for Help for Heroes and if you live in the area I suggest you sign up for next years tournament.

Games Day 2013

Games day 2013 or as it quickly became known Retail Day was a bit of a let-down after excellent shows the last two years. I found like many gamers that by the time the afternoon came around I had ran out of things to do and really felt the absence of the gaming boards.

The store area was no less manic despite the reduced numbers and larger store floor space. Sadly Forgeworld was pretty much sold out by the time I got there and the main store was also largely what you would expect to find in any high-street store, unsurprising following the death of specialist games this year.

My best purchase of the day was insignium Astartes, which has some really detailed pictures of the company banners and a range of ideas for the squad designation's.

There were some excellent miniatures and boards on show which did make up part of the ticket price but all in all I came away jaded, with only a couple of limited edition books to show for my trip down to the Birmingham NIA.

Astartes Ultra

So after a few years of collecting, putting together something that resembled the fluff, with a lot of self-scrutiny about the choices I was making, GW have brought out the largest 1 click deal they have ever done; a whole Chapter in one click, off the shelf, and knocked my collection for six.

Looking through the very impressive content there is a lot in there, with some real diversity, but less apocalypse ready formations than I expected. Outside of Landraiders it also feels a little light on armour.

One of the more interesting points is the mixed in Landspeeders and Centurions. Their squad sizes have caused me a headache, as I dislike fielding part squads. After thinking through the contentious issue of supernumeraries combined with the apocalypse formations on the table and the cost of the Centurions and speeders I have decided to lump them into the expanding division of the armoury.

I hope that when I am done Games Workshop will be kind enough to give me all the fantastic extras they are throwing in with it.

Airbrush Work

This is my first attempt at painting with an airbrush. I had been toying with the idea of getting one for a while and the big flat areas of the Storm Raven felt like the ideal test subject. It is my usual Chaos Black undercoat and then my usually Ultramarines blue watered down with thinner. I have a pretty even coat and I am happy with the result, but I fond that setting up the brush, mixing the paint and cleaning the brush means that this is only going to save me time doing very large miniatures or batch jobs.

Apocalypse at 30,000 points a side!

Once in a while Hulls Angels hold large mulit-player Apocalypse games and I couldn't miss the chance to be the largest army on the board, so I grabbed together my stuff and headed to club.

Here is the long table shot. You can just about see the blue smear by the central ruins where my Ultramarines stopped. There is a full battle Company in reserve to use the outflank rule. It is the 3rd company with Rhino transport. There is also some of the 4th Company with drop pods and 25 Terminators are to arrive via teleport.

If you are wondering what the thin line of miniatures ahead of the deployment zone is, the 10th are 'skirmishing' and forming a nice speed-bump for the the Tyranids opposite.

Setup and ready

The small cabal of Dark Eldar on my left flank was quickly pulped by the line of heavy weapons in my front rank, but Morlocks and other Tyranid infiltrators appeared in my center and started chewing through my counter assault units.

In the center of the table things stayed fairly static as strategic assets redirected enemy reinforcements left and right resulting in an evenly matched slug-fest that lasted the rest of the game.

Angry Hatter a fellow collector of Astartes brought quite a few drop pods. Turn 1 his drop pods were counter charged by Demons who were appearing all over the board and by turn 2 between us both we had dropped the better part of a battle company into this 4 x 6 table.

Orbital insertion

Things were still not going well despite weight of numbers, the Demons were not going down and the shooting from the Ork horde you can see in the distance was proving uncannily accurate. Turn 3 saw 3rd company level the odds as Angry borrowed them to outflank the Orks, taking them in the rear. 100 battle brothers and a command squad disembarked from their transports and reduced a swath of the green skin threat to a bloody smear with rapid fired bolters.

On my end of the table I was still struggling to contain the infiltrators in my back lines. To add even more mayhem Typhus and his honor guard appeared and  started leveling targets on after another.
The dark shadow of a super heavy flyer graced the table as the Harridan swept in over the Ultramarines' heads and every Imperial flyer on the board zoomed to intercept, eager to claim the epic kill that taking down this bio monstrosity was. Frightened and sporadic ground fire proved ineffective, despite the Harridan being in skimmer mode. It was finally a lucky shot from a Storm Raven that brought the creature down, although the pilot and crew paid with their lives as the enemy singled them out for reward.

A shining beacon on hope appeared in the form of a teleport beacon and the 1st Company made a strategic hammer blow and dropped into the central ruins, taking one of the key objectives for our side.

Three turns was enough to fill the day and there were some epic individual stories.

My memory is fogged by fatigue and enjoyment, so if you were there and remember anything significantly different please comment below and I will do my best to update things.