Astronomi-con: Recap

I went into this tournament with a nearly entirely infantry scoring army.  MANY of the missions looked to be weighed heavily in my favour either due to scoring or the fact I had Gate of Infinity on my Librarian.  Unfortunately for me, I only got to play 2 such missions (my two wins) which was a bit surprising but such is the way the cookie crumbles.

Shane was definitely my most fun opponent. We spent the whole game laughing, he was carefree and just looking for a fun game. His quote about his army "I'm going for table or tie" - it was a very direct BA army with Dante+Sang Guard, Lemartes+DC & DC Dread in Storm Rave, DC Dread in Lucius Pattern Drop Pod. It was a crate pick up mission, my drop pod scatter stranded my terminators from using GoI with the locator beacon and I didn't roll a scatter "hit" all game.  Still I made too many mistakes trying to catch up in number of crates and ended up with none.

Game 1 vs Shane (Blood Angels) Loss

Patrick had a pretty cool desert theme Tau army.  Nothing too shocking in his list - 2x 6 FW in devilfish, 10FW, 6x PF in devilfish, 3x 3 Suits, 2 Broadsides and a Piranha. He played very conservatively and I think that was his undoing.  His pathfinder devilfish immobilised itself in a building during it's scout move and I think it scared him a bit. It was a "clear buildings" mission where scoring units were particularly valuable (yay!) so I just focused on destroying his fire warriors and clearing buildings.  He had a chance to tie late but I blew up his devilfish and panicked his remaining FW squad.

Game 2 vs Patrick (Tau) Win

Mark's army had custom made mycetic spores from foam cups & expanding foam as well as a starship troopers toy to represent some FW gargantuan creature.  The toy wasn't too bad but I thought the spores weren't so hot. We played a crazy mission with a sandstorm where everywhere was difficult terrain and to shoot over 12" you needed 6's to hit.  I thought I had eeked out a draw but mistakenly thought only his genestealers were troops but warriors are as well. If the game had ended on turn 5 I would have actually won.

Game 3 vs Mark (Tyranids) Loss

This was probably my least favourite game.  Chris was running a Space Wolf list but his marines were only partially painted and mostly as black termplars. His army was also a bit on what I'd term the "beardy" side, running 5 multi-melta long fangs in a drop pod with Grimnar was not quite what this tournament was supposed to be about. He was a good sport and fair, he managed to steal the initiative but to be honest with his squad of 6 combi-plasma wolf guard in a drop pod I dunno if the result would have been much different. This was another "crate" pick up mission, which if it had ended on turn 5 would have been a draw because he wasn't paying enough attention to what turn it was but it went to turn 7 and ended a total massacre.

Game 4 vs Chris (Space Wolves) Loss

A fun game vs. a fun opponent.  Derek brought a Armoured Company IG list that unfortunately was just sprayed green. I made a huge mistake thinking that you needed scoring units to claim table quarters (some missions were) but this one wasn't so I wasted a couple turns focusing on the wrong units.
In the end he had last turn and was able to contest the quarters I was trying to hold and held two of his own. 
I enjoyed the game immensely though.

Game 5 vs Derek (Imperial Guard) Loss

Paul was only the 3rd army that was fully painted.  He was doing a DIY BA successor, but to be honest I think he might have done better running them as Vanilla Marines. He had a couple tacticals, a min dev squad, a squadron of landspeeders and some termies.  The city board we played on was the nicest table I got to play on all weekend, so that was a treat. It was an objective based mission, which suited my all scoring army well (yay!) and in the end I destroyed his two tactical squads and contested the objective his assault marines were on and held three myself.

Game 6 vs Paul (Blood Angels) Win

Overall I had a really great time and the "hobby/comp" aspect of the tournament I really liked.  I meant the armies were a little more flavourful than 3x unit A, 3x unit B, etc. The one really dissapointing thing was I felt my army was the nicest out of all my opponents - and having only scored 15/30 for painting it kinda sucked not to play a bunch of nicely painted armies.

Our group did quite well overall, with my friend Mike coming in 3rd overall, Jon picking up Best Army for his pre-heresy Emperor's Children and a surprise win of Best Sportsman for Claudio who wasn't expecting it - but whose Space Wolf army was commended by the organizers for being the best "balanced" list they saw all tournament.

I even ended up winning a raffle prize - won myself a free rhino.  Woot!