I attended the Breast Cancer Brawl in Leeds on Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed it.
For those of you who are unaware the format for the tournament was a little unusual - it requires two 35 point lists. Standard enough so far but that is pretty much where it stops. All games are played with a shrinking kill-box (which shrinks by 4 inches each tun until it is only 16 inches square). Also in order to raise money for charity competitors can buy tokens before each round which can be spent in order to gain re-rolls of the dice or used in multiples to buy abilities or buffs from a predefined list. The event is approached as a day of fun and it is impossible to take things very seriously when there is so much silliness going on (which is a good thing).
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| Cheating Tokens - these had been 3D printed and looked amazing! |
So given this competition was going to be for fun I decided I wanted to take something different to the tournament. All my tournament play has been with Circle and my mercenaries are not ready for a trip out yet as I want to play them fully painted and take my time over them. I thought that this may be the perfect excuse to paint up a lot of the Cygnar models I had lying around from when I started the game and also an excuse to maybe add a new one that has caught my eye over recent months.
I will do a blog separately to show him off but I bought a Stormwall as I fancied working on a 'top secret project'. I also speed painted pStryker, eCaine, 4 Boomhowlers, 2 Stormsmiths and a unit of 10 long gunners. These are not to a very high standard but look a lot better on the shelf than the pile of bare metal that was there before did!
My lists where as follows:
eCaine
Stormwall
Squire
Rheinholdt
Stormsmith
Stormsmith
Boomhowlers x 10
Black 13th
Journeyman Warcaster
pStryker
Centurion
Centurion
Sylas
Long gunners x 10
Black 13th
Journeyman Warcaster
Charger
So, fully prepared (apart from forgetting to pack my Charger light jack) me and Dave set off to Leeds on sunday morning. This is the second trip we have made across to the leeds club for tournaments and I am full of respect for what Leeds Warmachine have achieved. They have a great player base full of enthusiasm for the game and the organisers put on regular tournaments with excellent prizes and generally put in loads of effort. I can't help but feel a little bit shamed with the lack of effort on my part with Hull Warmachine. I really need to get another tournament day in Hull lined up.
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| Great bunch of competitors - check out those pink headbands :-) |
Game 1 - James Boosey. Khador. Vlad
Stormwall VS Conquest - uh oh!
I started the tournament in my usual dithering fashion and made a lot of mistakes in this game. I should try and get a friendly game in on a tournament morning or something as I generally am not at the races in my first game. I took my eCaine list but forgot to deploy my Stormcallers which play a large part in the list. I have no complaints in losing to Boosey who played a good game and was great to talk to and I hope to get another game with him at somepointt. His combination of the Khador battle engine and conquest in a 35 point list was highly entertaining. My Stormwall was getting out shot by them heavily as he was protecting both of them with his 'windwall' spell which meant I was unable to shoot them unless I had magical weapons (which storm wall doesn't have). On the way home later in the day I mentioned this to Dave as a nice tactic and he told me that it was a mistake on Booseys part as the spells requirement is that models are completely within 3 inches of the war caster rather than just within. This means that the models where unable to benefit from the spell as their bases are simply too big to fit completely within the area. This was a shame as my initial plan had been to try and shoot down the battle engine which may have worked. Regardless of this Boosey was playing a great game and attritioning my army really well - in the end I decided to go for a long odds magic bullet assassination that unsurprisingly failed and left Caine exposed to be mashed into pulp.
Result: Loss
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| I wanna shoot that one! |
Game 2 - Dave Wilkinson. Cygnar. pStryker
Stormwall VS Stormwall - oh yeah!
Unfortunately this game ended quite abruptly - after the opening exchanges of Black 13th shooting at Black 13th and Black 13th returning fire and no one hitting anyone I saw an opportunity to shoot at pStryker with eCaine. I was a bit worried his defence would save him but in the end I was able to kill with a few focus left. Dave mentioned he hadn't remembered what eCaine did - confusing him with pCaine - so it felt a bit harsh afterwards. He had a lovely looking army and the basing on his storm wall was simply awesome.
Result: Win
Game 3 - Dan Barnett. Retribution. Ravyn
I chose to use eCaine again, wanting to get more practice with Stormwall. I went first and was able to control the table with my covering fire and mage storm attacks - these kept the whole retribution army held at the edge of the kill box and forced Dan to attempt an assassination on eCaine. When it failed Dan was in a very weak position so the win from then was inevitable.
Result: Win
Game 4 - Toby Jennings. Trollbloods. Madrak
This game was incredibly close and was a real grind. In the end Toby was left with no models and I was left with only a handful of boom howlers, Caine and a storm caller. The key exchanges of the game saw my stormwall leave Mulg on one wound, Doh! This allowed Mulg to put some heavy damage on my stormwall. The stormwall hit back on his next turn to finish off Mulg and eCaine used his feat to kill the only other beast on the board - the dire troll mauler. Madrak threw his axe to finish off the storm wall (quite dramatic!) but the boom howlers and eCaine whittled down the remaining models and I was eventually able to kill Madrak after wiping out his full army. (save one whelp I think).
I pointed out that I probably won as I had more trolls than him - I had a full 10 in boom-howlers where as he only had 8 as he was using Nyss as his second unit. The boomhowlers where my men/trolls of the match by a long way.
Result: Win
End Results
With 3 wins I knew I could realistically be finishing somewhere between 2nd and 4th but in the past I have found that I don't tend to score to high on tie breaks as I often go for assassination. However my last wins today had come with a good deal of attrition and I was delighted to come second and snag myself a boxed set of precursor knights.
This is my best tournament finish so I was delighted. I was also really pleased to see Dave scoop first prize with his tasty eSorcha Conquest list. a 1-2 finish for Hull - get in!
All Photos courtesy of Leeds Warmachine or Privateer Press - if you want me to take them down guys just let me know!
