Warpcon 2012

So finally I've writing tournament reports of events I went to this year. And first up is one close to my heart: Warpcon 2012. Warpcon held a 1850pt, Warhammer 40,000 tournament in UCC on the last weekend of January. It was also utilising a very interesting 2 missions per mission rulespack. It was different from the one that was used in the TOWN by putting more weight on the secondary objective. It was also the first 2 day tournament where I'd be using the new Necron Codex.

They said they'd be back.

The list I was using was what I affectionately call my "So many new things so I took one of everything" list:

Anrakyr w/Command Barge
Overlord w/ Mindshackle, Warscthye, Semp Weave and Command Barge 
Royal Court 1:
Solar Pulse Crytek
Veil Cryptek
Royal Court 2:
3 S8 AP2 Crypteks
Solar Pulse Cryptek
Chronometron Cryptek

Triarch Stalker
7 x Warriors
8 x Warriors
8 x Immortals (W/ phyriann eternal upgrade)
6 Wraiths w/ upgrades
9 scarabs
3 scarabs
3 diversified Tomb Spyders.

As you can probably tell, the name wasn't picked ironically. I can't do irony.

Will I make a Tony Starch joke? Yes, yes I will.

Basically the ingenious plan behind my list was I was waiting for a new codex for ages. Therefore, I wanted to use all of the things, all of the time. Which I did. It was glorious. It's at this point I should say that I really like the new codex. Good but not to the retarded level of Space Wolves or Grey Knights. Cool tricks involving entropic strike and night-fighting but still quite fragile.

Anyway, I seem to be getting distracted by all this talk of wargames. It turns out that the Friday night of Warpcon was also the day that I finished my end of year exams. This led to many, many drinks being consumed. Some would say too many drinks but I don't hang out with people like that, so it's fine. After being a good Samaritan and helping transport and set up tables I parked my car in UCC with the direct intention of being unfit to drive for several days. While setting up tables the lads from Dublin arrived down, Alec "Black Templars" Cornelius, Peter "Richard Gere" Scott and newbie Ryan "Emily" McMullan. Also Bobert "Oh crap, my Drop Pods are on fire" Brennan was there but, to be honest, I see that guy all the time. He might as well move to Cork. HINT HINT.

Insert obligatory picture of Alcohol.

So anyway, we met a plethora of nerds in the Old Bar and formed to become the most formidable quiz team of all time. This time we even had a girl. An actual girl and not just Jiggy. The way I remember it, we won the quiz, were applauded as fantastic nerds and then I continued to act in a responsible manner for the rest of the evening. It was either that or we(I'm using "we" quite liberally) tried to ruin the quiz, shouted and were playing a ridiculous cruel game of roll dice and drink beer(hmmm.... sounds like Skibbcon). After many a beer, shot and other various alcoholi it was home for a good 4 hours sleep before having to be up to play in the morning.

The next morning.

So OW. My head hurt but I managed to get myself down to UCC(which is more effort than I put into my entire of 3rd year). After many hellos and hugs to all the people who came down early on the Saturday it was time to get all matched up. I was playing James "Mage" Carey of BannerCon fame. I was gutted to have missed that one as the lads have told me about how much fun it was. James was playing an Eldar hybrid lists. It had:
Elderad
Wraithlord
Big Guardians squad
2 Fireprisims
Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents
Lots of Dire Avengers with Bladestorm.
More Wave Serpents?

I won first turn which put James in a bad situation. I had a moderate amount of S8 firepower but combined with the Triarch Stalker and the chronometron it was all very reliable. So as is not uncommon with Eldar he went full reserve. I used the 2 turns to spread out. Wraiths and a lord on a barge down one flank, scarabs spyders and Anrakyr down the other. The Stalker walked down the middle with the guns getting into a good position. Half his things came on first turn. The wraiths went after the guardians and wraithlord. The scarabs ate themselves a serpent. While my lord swept a firm prism. When my wraiths managed to tag the Wraithlord into the combat versus the guardians he died to Fearless saves.

Lord of the who? Must be different Wraiths.

The rest of the game went poorly for James with his dire avengers failing to kill my Wraiths leaving enough time for my furious-charging immortals time to deepstrike over and assault next turn. The scarabs and anrakyr teamed up to maul more tanks and go after Elderad once he'd become unmeched. Unfortunately just before the game could end James was called away and had to concede the game. It was a shame as I had a lovely time playing him. He's a great opponent and I have no trouble seeing why BannerCon was such a success.
20 - 0 to me.

This put me up on Table 2 with Rowan "Why don't I just jump on this band-wagon" Sheridan playing a Venom heavy Dark Eldar Tesla heavy Necron list. To be honest, I can't ridicule his list as being all spam and broken-ness because it was the exact way I was going to go before I went with the Dana approach. His list was:
Nemesor Zandrek w/barge
Obyron
Anrakyr w/ barge
1 gun squad of Crypteks, 1 with veils and pulses.
3 Annihilation Barge
2 squads of Wraiths
Immortals
Warriors

We both decided to leave the pulses at home to get around the whole Daytime, Night-time problem. We started off and the first thing I did was charge a 6 man Wraith squad into his 5 man Wraith squad with a mindshackle lord. With that happening in the middle of the board I tried to slow his stuff down. Obyron hopped in his bosses barge and was slowing making his way towards me along with the second squad of Wraiths. I didn't have near enough guns to kill his stuff. His wraiths won out in the middle of the board and he had his objective well covered on his side of the board. I did, however, swamp Anrakyr's Barge and mange to stop him from setting out, so that made me feel better.

Suck it Other Anrakyr.

18 - 2 to Rowan.

So for my third delay to my drinking on Saturday I was playing Lloyd "I still remember those Red Imperial Guard" Courtney of The Last Chancers. I was delighted because Lloyd was the second person I'd ever played a full game of 40k with back in game 2 of Warpcon 09. He was also the first person to ever table me. Now I get a chance to get even. Lloyd was playing Dark Angels. No, not Deathwing, Dark Angels. His list was:
Interrogator Chaplain
Belial
Troop Termie Squad
Venerable Combat Dread
Big Assault Squad
Tactical Squad in a rhino
Tactical squad in a Drop Pod
2 Predators

So the table we were at had a piece of terrain in the middle courtesy of Donal "Right, okay" Casey. It was an awesome Ork Fortress. Beautifully detailed and HUGE. It took up the entire centre of the table. It reminded me of a very evil piece of terrain from Gaelcon that took advantage of poor drunk Eoin. We decided to make the walls impassable as we both had jump infantry squads so we would be a very interesting game revolving around this terrain piece. It was kill points primary, 1 objective each secondary with deployment as Dawn of War. Both objectives were deployed on one side of the fortress. I won first turn and I set up my cryteks, and 2 troops on my objective hoping to shoot anything that showed up. Lloyd brought everything on the other side of the fortress out of line of sight of my army.

And you can't shoot what you can't see.

My wraiths jumped into the fortress ready for action and hid for 2 turns while my scarabs got shot and slowly made their way towards his things. My two lords hopped into the assault squad causing the marines to do more harm to themselves than anything else. My stalker hung around my objective pretty safe, ready to destroy the tac squad and drop pod that would poised to show up at any moment. Turns out Lloyd had been told previously that scarabs are a lot scarier than they actually are, which explains the hanging back. It's didn't take too long however for him to realise he just needed to charge them and he'd be all good. The game got very bloody towards the end but I managed to get more kill points and Lloyd's defensive strategy left the two objectives in my possession too. Vps were brutal though and the game ended with a win to me. Not the utter hammering Lloyd gave me back in the day but it went a ways to patching the wounds.

And he didn't.

17 - 3 to me.

So then it was drinking time. A pile of us headed to Captain America's for dinner. For my dinner I had a Long Island Ice Tea. I emphasise the LONG as I got a Cocktail Tower. These things are awesome. Unfortunately no amount of sweet, alcoholy goodness could convince Sylvan to come back to the Old Bar with us so into a taxi we went and took off to the land of Beer(UCC Old Bar). Here I played an exhibition match or Red or Black against no 1 contender for my world championship title. The game ended rather suddenly when I predicted the joker and won the universe. Also, Burkhardt the mean German made me cry. The night ended with a bunch of people having to hear Drunk Eoin talk about why the new Necron Codex was the best thing to happen since Batman became a thing.

I later found out that Batman is a Necron.

Cue Sunday and a horribly hungover taxi ride to UCC. My head was killing me. I finally got in the door and was greeted with the great news that I was to play Mike Tagney, ETC Captain and all around way too good a player to play drunk-gover. It was also nice to see that Mike's list had been made specifically with killing Wraiths, Scarabs and Necrons in general, firmly in mind. I think this was because of two of his clubmates bringing Necron lists down. Thanks guys...

His list was:
2 x Tervigon
Hive Commander
His bodyguard
2 squads of Genestealers
2 squads of Ymargl Genestealers
Various different flavours of guants.

I had various different flashbacks to the only other time I'd played Mike before. It was in Athlone, with old Necrons, when I was too hungover to move. I had to tell him to roll all of the dice and I'd believe him and just let me die inside until I needed to roll saves. I'm some classy opponent. We were playing the 5 objective game and Mike had ALL OF THE TROOPS. Well long story short here, Mike destroyed me. He's a great player and I just couldn't handle those Ymargls. Why have these not been in every Tyranid list ever? Great game, apart from the Hangover of Doom.

I was so hungover my teeth hurt.

Loss 17 - 3

Game 5 had me against Cork gamer James Howell. Although he's a WAC-head I'd never had many dealings with James as he games mainly on the weekends, when I go down to Skibbereen and he can't come to games on Thursdays because of his work schedule. James was playing Space Wolves with everyone's favourite Great Wolf(After John Stowe), Logan Grimar. His list was:
Logan
Long Fangs
Large Grey Hunter squads in Rhinos
Tiny Wolf Guard Squads in Razorbacks
Wolf Scouts

Ah, the familiar look of cheating with Space Wolves.

This was a brilliant game with lots of back and forth, his scouts taking out my Stalker early and all of his Grey Hunters destroying my Wraiths. There was a Giant Combat with a big squad of Long Fangs and Grey Hunters in combat with a big unit of scarabs that meant that my mindshackle lord could pick on Logan and make him punch himself over and over. Silly Logan. Scarabs were the MVPs in this match making James job just way too difficult. Game ended after 7 turns of slaughter to a victory for me. James is a fantastic opponent and hope to find a way of playing his Wolves again soon.

Win 17 - 3

So I finished up on about 59 BPs, 1 BP and place behind Ryan "Cheating with Space Wolves" McMullan. I had a fantastic time and learned so much more about my new codex. I want to thank Colin and all of the lads for the sterling job, all of my opponents and everybody who was there to make the whole event spectacular. Big shout out goes to Lenny for making some class buns for the ETC fund-raising and winning Merv's predator in a game of "Throw the dice in Merv's tank to win it".

See you all there next year. I'm not going to miss it.

Terminator reference number 4

-Eoin