Good Bye 7th - Imperium Games Team Event

Warhammer 40,000 - I recently had a chance to play in a team tournament at Imperium Games (formerly Flatlands Games). The event was a team event where each player brought a 750 point CAD and played as a team through three missions: Purge the Alien, Relic and Tactical Escalation. Over all the event was really fun my opponents in the second and third rounds were amazingly cool guys and were a blast to play against.

I was running a meltas command squad, chaplain, four tactical squads, three drop pods and two rhinos, John ran a 20 woman sister squad, priest character, Immolator, redeemer squad and two exorcists. A pretty balanced list with a ton of Objective Secure Units although we were offering 17 kill points for Purge the Alien.

Round One: Tactical Escalation – This game we played a dual marine list that was one army split into two forces White Scars and Ultramarines. It appeared to be a guy and his son (who seemed to be there to take orders and roll a few dice). He brought Tigerious and a unit of thunderfire cannons that hide behind what his list called a Sanctum Imperialis (but was using a Shrine of the Aquila) that sat against the board edge on an objective and dropped divinated barrages the whole game free from being dealt with. Not a bad idea but for the "friendly" nature of how the event was billed it came off as a little douchey. Sometimes you get an opponent that just rubs you the wrong way and this was one of those times. As a commission painter when someone hands you a card and says let me know if you need anything painted immediately puts me on edge. Not actually knowing the guy he might be super cool outside of the game but for this one it was just "one of those games" The sister blob got stuck in difficult terrain that we forgot to discuss prior to starting and as a result got decimated before they could limp to engage the grav centurions on the ruin. The cards didn't go our way until the last turn but at that point it was to late to catch up.

Round Two: The Relic - My least favorite mission that seems to be ran at every event. Our opponents in this round were a Double Flyrant Tyranid, with some spores as troops and a void shield generator list paired with a Tau Stormsurge a boatload of marker lights and a few random suits. Both of these were well painted armies with a cool converted void shield. The game was rough with me loosing a full unit to interceptor fire before the game began. However due to a lucky melta gun shot we were able to keep the Flyrants on the ground so the sister blob could slowly hack away at both of them for the whole game. Sadly the Stormsurge was able to stomp in an claim the relic on the last turn. The game was really fun and both of the guys were played were great.

Round Three: Purge the Alien - Straight kill points can be a rough game. Having lost the first two rounds I assumed the Khorne Daemonkin and Space Wolf assault lists we face this round had also sone poorly. It turns out they were undefeated coming into this so I'm not sure how pairings were figured. The models the Khorne player used were really cool sculpts that I think I may need if I expand my Daemons in the future. Again really great opponents that were fun to play. I think this was my favorite game of the day. We were able to drop the Bloodthirster turn one and tie up the dogs with the sister blob on turn two. From there on out it was straight attrition with my metas guns hitting on overwatch more than I've hit with shooting in the last ten games I played. The Exorcists were on fire and took out drop pods with ease. The game was close but we managed to pull out a win.

Prizes were awarded to the overall winner, second place, best painted and best theme. Then there was a raffle for the Shadow War box, Imperial Knight, Eldar Knight, Imperial Triumverate and the Eldar Triumverate. It was nice that you put your tickets in the boxes for the things you wanted to win so the odds of getting something you want is better. Sadly we walked away empty handed. The black and yellow marines we faced first round won best paint and a cool Patorian Guard force won best theme.

Overall it was a fun event, but there were some highs and lows:
• LOW - The event was billed as registration at 11:30am Dice roll at noon. We didn't start until almost 1:30pm because they had an odd number with some guy waiting on his partner to show. I'm sorry but you need to keep on schedule to run an event, start time is sacred so if someones late you give them a fist round loss and work it into the next round. 
• LOW - Paint judging. Rather than having an area to set up your boards as you finished round one and doing the judging in one place they had you set up throughout the game area and didn't start judging until after lunch. If they would have done it as people ended their games and had a designated area we could have been done an hour earlier. Also not a huge fan of a single judge but that's neither here nor there, also no player vote rubs me wrong.
• HIGH - Food was provided. Decent Hungry Howie's pizza with a variety of toppings. This could have been a huge time saver as people didn't need to break for lunch.
• HIGH - Large turnout there were at least 25 teams so that's 50 players kicking in $15 each. considering that the prize pool was decent.
• HIGH - Most of the players were really fun to play against and generally every seemed to have a good time. There were a few tables that looked uncomfortable at times but overall it was good.
• MIXED - The terrain. What was on the tables looked pretty good. Sadly most of the tables had five pieces of terrain on them which was really sparse. Given the amount of Tau giant suits that were there you'd think they'ed put more large terrain blocking site lines across the table. (especially since the terrain shelves seemed to have plenty to fill in  the blanks)
• LOW - Bringing you kid/wife/significant other to "be your partner" It's lame to drag someone to and event to tell them what to do and have them roll a few die while you play your full 1500 point army at a team event. Bringing you kid and teaching them the game and letting them play awesome. Bringing your kid to stand there and "roll this" once in a while is lame. Although I get that if you're doing that it's likely you may lack the social skills to play well with others.