Nightowls Fantasy Tourney - Not Bad Shocker!

So about once a year I dip my toe into the Warhammer Fantasy tournament playing scene, usually on a purely local scale, and to remind myself why I don't bother: getting beasted by netlists and filthy exploitative play is not my usual idea of fun.  Still once a year to support the club I'll give it a go.

James had organised a small event for the honour of the title (i.e .no prizes!) of Leeds Nightowls Champion gamer.  The rules of the day were simple, 2000 point armies with no special characters, and two hour games.  I decided on an all Goblin force, a tuned version of the list I'd had unexpected success against High Elves with in one of my few other games this year.

Built around a core of 93 Goblin spears with 3 heroes, and fanatic caddying units of bows, a large artillery park and numerous units of Cavalry and lone Trolls it was a very atypical Deathstar-esque list and far and away featured the largest single unit of the tournament.  Even I renowned club despiser of movement trays had to accept the need for a slab of MDF to shift the little beggars around on!

My first game was against Neil's Chaos Warriors, a compact list of Knights, Warriors and a pair of Warshrines (Whatever they are!).  Now no disrespect to Neil, but I felt I'd got a good draw in this game, Neil isn't the filthiest player and his tactics are conventional, I've usually fared well against him in the past.  The First scenario was a Dawn Engagement, and my typically disciplined Goblins pretty much all turned up, whilst Half Neil's army remained off table at the start.

I was also blessed with the first turn and managed to doom-diver his Chaos knights into a rout straight off the table.  From there on in it was downhill all the way for the luckless Neil, with only his army general way out on a flank making any headway.  The combined arms tactics of the Gobbos and my tendency to opt for fast outflanking manoeuvres, soon had him on the back foot.

The Chaos Warriors and another Warshrine advanced to the spears, but Perky the Troll made short work of the shrine and a combined assault by Wolf Boys, Spears and a fanatic made short work of the Warriors.

In the end I came out with a shocking 1766 point win, and so my next game was against a top teir player.

Rob is an entertaining opponent, but one I usually only play against at tournaments, which is a shame.  Also we always seem to be playing Watchtower scenarios, and this proved no different.  His Empire list looked pretty fearsome, featuring some 40 Greatswords, 13 Knights, a steam tank and an empire warshrine.  Although he won the tower, he chose not to occupy it and so we deployed around it.

In points terms I beat him about 3-2, wiping out most of his support troops.  But his Greatswords seized the Tower and his Tank kept the goblin spears away from making a counter attack.  So it was officially a Pyhhric victory for him.

And so onto my last game, with still a sniff of a respectable finish.  I wasn't dead last yet at least!  My final game turned out to be against James' "Red Orcs".  In the past I've been a jinx opponent for James but I think luck is beginning to even itself out on that score.  It was a conventional battle of unconventional forces...

James' red Orcs and Goblins come from deep in the Dwarven mines, and are competitively tuned through dozens of games:

Mine are more trad, and come from my last 25 years of irregular purchases of things Gobliny:

The battle was amiable, but unspectacular with me not being able to make much of an impact on him.  I spent too much time and effort trying to take down his Arachnarok spider, and ignoring his Savage Orcs.  A little luck went my way, but not enough to make a close fight.  I lost by about 700 points. 

But the end result was that with one victory and still having some 1300 game points I managed sixth on the day.  Shame it was only out of eight, but I did come above a Skaven and Vampire player, and beat Chaos and Empire on the table, even if scenario rules didn't always concur.  Pretty good for Gobbo's!

Lots of other photo's were taken on the day, which is just as well as fate had it that I never had to move from my table!  Al of FatSpider Casting took the following:

I can't feature the winning army/general as Daz - who it was - was the only player to bring an unpainted force.  For SHAME!! most of his cavalry didn't even have riders!  Not that it mattered, his killer list mauled all comers.

In conclusion, an acceptable foray into tournament gaming; though partly as I avoided the three armies/players I knew I had no chance against.  Lets give it another twelve months before risking another one though, eh!