Dice And Downloads: Gaming board

So last weekend was my first tournament of 2016 put on by Adam Jones down in Birmingham. This time I took my vanilla Ariadna as I wanted to use a few units like Van Sant and some Tank Hunters. Unfortunately I did not manage to get many photos, as I was playing pretty hard and didn't have time to set the camera up for lots of shots. I did however manage to get first place, so got that new Morat unit and also won myself a Happy panda Noodle bar by Antenocitis Workshop! who were kind enough to have donated it as a prize. This was pretty good as I am currently making a new board and need a restaurant for it so a massive bonus there! I took two lists as is the standard, but my stupid fat fingers deleted one by accident and I cant remember exactly what was in it. The below list how ever was very similar and I did use in two of the games:

What you see in pool 1

What the bad guy sees in pool 1

What you see in pool 2

What the bad guy sees in pool 2

This pic has nothing to do with the event I just wanted to show off my new model. He stands in as either a Kazak doctor with that rifle strapped to his back or a 112 if I am playing any sectorial. His trousers are painted the same as my kazak's so he blends in with them, but also has the axe so can easily as a 112 if need be.

Game 1 Quadrant Control

In my first game I came up against Luke Taylor. I have played him numerous times before. In fact it was against him that I first had to play against Chasseurs as he some times runs MMRF. This time however he was using US so I was instantly crapping myself - I thought he would be using Van Sant, but it turns out not today. I decided to take first turn as we were playing Quadrant Control, so I wanted to be able to move into sectors and react to how he had deployed his forces up the table. At first I was a little worried as he had a couple of those new desperado bikers. One instantly tore up the middle of the board and put on the pressure. He then moved his Foxtrot up with basically no AROs against him (as I was hiding) and threw down a mine to stop my Cateran getting any kills. I think in the first turn I lost an SAS with a chain rifle, Grunt sniper, Briscard HRL and basic chain rifle order monkey volunteer. This was the list I have not got photos for in case you noticed some of those models were not in the above pictures. Not much memorable happened for the next few turns - a bit of back and forth but I did do a sneaky sneaky and have my commando walk on in turn three to secure a quarter, leaving my tank hunter free to pick off his 5 man link of grunts that were stuck in the middle of the board. I did have Van Sant walk on the back but he only killed a baggage bot and marauder I think it was, so not the powerhouse I was wanting.

I passed my grunt roll as I took only one in this list and got him nice and close prone on a gantry right outside his deployment. He was instantly hard countered by a camo marker and they both just sat there for the entire game looking at each other.

Oh yeah 5 man link of grunts on a roof. counts as AM6 and better than my snipers in ARO due to the +3BS. Nice one Luke. I could basically not move around the board for ages with these guys looking at me.

This guy walked on and instantly got shot by my engineer but its a really nice paint job so threw in a pic of it not dead on the table edge.

These guys had to get a move on as they were the only few left other than a Dozer and a camo marker at the end.

Game 2 Antenna Field

Ahhhh my old nemesis Nigel. He kicked the crap out of me in the last game we played at the Northern Open so now I had to return the favour. It was a matter of honour. I chose to go second again so had to set up first as usual. I rolled and passed for Uxia and my Hard case to go right outside his deployment zone. I think this worked as the hard case has his ambush camo and I plonked it right next to an objective so it looked like a mine. Not much to say about set up, although Nigel had his Sin Eater watching the whole board so it was very hard to move about at times. He ran his Moran up to an objective so I could not get near it with anything as he had 2 krazy koalas. Going second is the way to win for sure. All I had to do was make him waste orders getting into position then react accordingly. Easily done with many camo markers and lots of Heavy Weapons. I brought my commando on in the first turn to take out Pi Well as that thing really upsets me. I didn't want to give it the chance to get into position and go into suppression putting me at instant -12 in cover to shoot it. Commando then shot his remote, capturing the objective in the middle of the board and I grabbed 2 in the end and the Moran was only counting for one. Was an intense battle after that. Nigel's Pupniks ran up the board and surrounded the objective in my deployment and it took sooooo many orders to dislodge them. In the end I prevailed by having my Dozer creep up and cautious move through a tiny gap, so as not to be gunned down by an Intruder with HMG watching the whole battlefield.

Only got one photo from this game, this was his Lieutenant obvious on the roof. I realise now why he did everything he could to get rid of all the camo markers as they were about 3 inches away from him and carrying shotguns.

Game 3 Comms Centre

Sorry literally no photos of this game. It was the final match and I had won 2 major victories so was concentrating really bloody hard. I came up against Jasper. Last event I went to I got 1st and he came in at 2nd so I knew he was good. I had also never played him before so had no idea what his style of play was like. The one redeeming factor I did have was that he was using Nomads and they were my first force so I already knew what his units were capable of. Unfortunately for him I shoved everything in camo so he had no idea what to expect. He passed his infiltration roll for his camo marker that turned out to be a Bandit but I instantly countered it with a chasseur. He moved. I shot with a flamer. He shot with a combi. We both died. As an Ariadna player this was good for me as his was specialist, cost more points and was right in my lines so I was happy with that exchange. However I sucked at getting in his face with my rolls. Jasper put a reaction bot and engineer on a roof. so to hard counter I rolled for a grunt with a flamer and failed. Then rolled for a grunt with a flamer and failed. Then rolled for a Hardcase with a shotgun and failed. Then finally passed with Uxia in a 12. He was pretty quick to figure out what it was though with that roll. Managed to take out the engineer and the baggage bot in ARO and not have her die so that was a specialist and a lot of points I instantly gained for free. The basic layout of the game was he moved up really quick and grabbed some objectives, then I had to slowly try and chip away at his force. It was not easy because he had two Moran Massai with Krazy Koalas locking down the entire middle strip of the board and also behind buildings, so I could not get any lines of fire. My Cateran did however smash the crap out of his Alguacil link by picking them off one at a time, but it took a few orders to get it done. I thought he had a lot of points on the table so was surprised when he revealed his camo marker. He went on a rampage with an Intruder HMG down the right hand side of the board. I was seriously lucky when he was right in my deployment zone gunning everything down then from miles away when my LT hit him in something like 2 or 3 and took him down. I think one more order on that guy and he would have targeted the LT just to knock an order away and get a lucky LT kill. In my last turn I had to get 2 objectives. My commando FO ran on and got behind his guys and took a few down, then made a run for the objective and got it. I had a few more orders, so my 112 doctor took one more for shits and giggles and in the last roll of the game stole another off him. Fun times.

So that was that. I managed to nab first place at my first event of ITS and scored nice and high so hopefully will get myself a place at the UK masters. This is the chart as it stands based on last weekend. Now to crack on with painting that new model even though I have no idea what most of its rules are yet.

The Northern Open was on last week. I'm not sure if it counted towards this seasons ITS, so I am just going to assume it was. I managed to come seventh out of 21 players (so I can at least claim that I was in the top 30%!).

I took my French again for three reasons:

1. They have won me two tournaments in the past season;

2. They are fully painted and I have been playing way too many video games recently so not got much painting done (I blame Borderlands);

3. I am a boring bastard.

My First game was Front Line against Greg Warwick who runs http://www.theplasticcrackblog.com/ We had practiced a different mission the night before at my house and I did that thing where you show absolutely no restraint so I smashed the crap out of his force, who then went into retreat but he still had one turn and managed to grab the objectives. So this time I was a little more careful. I took a buttload of skirmishers and put them all prone on a roof in the middle of the table. The rest of my force hid prone in the bins so he didn't really have much to shoot at. But the ace up my sleeve in this mission was my two commandos who walked on in the last turn and took the furthest zone I needed to be in. I didn't lose a single model so actually had 340 army points on the table at the end due to baggage so that was a nice moral victory (sorry Greg).

Game two was Beacon Land. I was matched up against my old nemesis Nigel King who I have played three times in the past at previous events. At the last Northern Open I asked to play him in the first round as a grudge match as he beat me in the last game we played (and I needed to defend my honor!). I won't go into too many details but let's just say I could have done with bringing some KY Jelly for that match. I got completely destroyed... it was embarrassing! Nigel set up really well and had his Moran Masai using his Koalas to full effect locking down most of the board, and His Pi Well remote was pretty much impossible to dislodge when it was on suppression and in cover with ODD. That brought our games to two all. (Next event I will beat him for sure.)

My third game was against one of the lads from Bolton (sorry mate for not remembering your name). We played highly classified. It was one of those games that just happened to go my way. My opponent had set up his Bulleteer, engineer and and Hospitaller behind cover nice and bunched up. To my luck my Briscard with heavy rocket launcher could only see the engineer who was facing away from him! Two shots went into him and hit everything around killing the remote and the engineer. Then I noticed he had one line troop hidden way at the back who was a complete lieutenant obvious. Ir was really really far away from my force but playing the style I do I easily had enough orders to hunt her down. With a few orders pumped into one of my Chasseurs I snuck into position and opened fire taking her out with one shot. After that my Loup Garous went to town doing as much damage as I could then tried to clean up the missions with my Alguacil Hacker. I feel bad for bitching about him in a previous entry as he got me 4VPs in this game.

All in all a good day. I didn't do too bad and I managed to get second place in the raffle so nabbed myself a Saladin. Nice model and isn't carrying a gun so probably going to use him as a Scientist HVT for the D20 missions. Thanks to everyone who put on the event and people that donated tables and a big shout out to people who let me take pics of their models for us all to look at.

Hiding in a bin was 100% what these guys signed up for at the Ariadna recruitment centre.

I played on this table for my 1st and 3rd game and it was awesome. Really helped putting all my sneaky units on the roof and making Greg waste orders getting close.

All the interiors of the buildings had things in them and it really felt like a table that told a story instead of numerous empty buildings. here you can see the wild Moblot in its natural environment that is the server room.

That's how you play a link team. Hide them at the back all prone.

The only redeeming play I managed to pull off in my game against Nigel was getting my Metro to pass his inferior infiltration roll. Having never played French he had no idea what it was and it put him on edge a little. Well so much so that he had to hard counter with his Pupniks. It was rather satisfying to see his face when he managed to reveal the camo and asked what it was, only to find out it was a crappy line troop with a rifle. "HA JOKES ON YOU NIGEL!" . . . right before you wipe the floor with me.