The Conservative Zone

Well, first of all let me say a good time was had by all. When you can have three great games in one day, that is a fun day, win or lose.

My first game was against David and his Chaos Space Marines, which are regular Space Marines that have gone over to the Dark Side. The scenario was Arch Rivals, where your general always had to move toward the enemy general. You got 200 victory points if your general managed to kill the other one and survive the battle. Well, I whittled his general down a bit, and let him get into close combat with my general. Too bad he got to go first and he killed my general before he could even get a hit in. The rest of the game went like that, I was reduced to a Dreadnought, a Land Speeder and half a squad of Marines. I ended up losing big time.

Next was against Jeremy and his own Chapter of Space Marines. You can take a Chapter like I have (Ultramarines) who have everything set for you, or you can "design your own." You have certain traits that you can take, but the more positive traits you take, the more and worse disadvantages you have also. Up until now, I have been able to beat him pretty regularly when I have played him, but this time he got it right and wiped the battlefield with me. The scenario was Unplanned Assault and at the end of the battle I was reduced to one squad running around in its Rhino transport. I managed to get that squad into his deployment zone for a victory point, but I lost one for losing my general.

My third and final battle was against Gus and his Black Templar Space Marines. Think Crusades and you'll be on the right track. This time the scenario was The Hunted, where you get double points for destroying a particular unit. He picked my lowest cost (and weakest) unit, while I picked a unit that had a medium cost to it. He had a rather large points sink in the fact that he had two units of Terminators, virtually unstoppable Marines. It took five of the six turns to kill one unit of them off and knock the other unit below 50% of models left, giving me at least some points for banging mercilessly on those two units. Gus hurt me pretty bad, but at the end of the game I had killed the hunted unit I was after, and I still had two and a half tactical squads left. I eked out a win, just a few points less and it would have been a draw.

While I ended up with a 1-2 record, I managed to impress my opponents enough for them to max out their points that we use to rate each other in army composition, painting and stuff like that. I surprisingly ended up tied for 4th place, and then won the Best Sportsman award! Even though we only had 11 people at the event, for me to place as highly as I did with that record was a real shock to me.

For my efforts, I was awarded a Lord of the Rings blister pack with a character in it, and a "Liber Chaotica," a fluff (backstory) book on one of the kinds of Chaos Space Marines.

I looks like I'll be tuning my list for another go at one of these tournaments when it comes around again in 3-4 months or so. Hopefully I will also have finished upgrading and repainting my tactical squads. That way I can look a whole lot better than my tactical squads look now. If you want to see an example of what I mean, look at this entry. Then after I finish with the tactical squads, I'll be repainting all of my vehicles. That will be so much fun I can't wait to begin[/sarcasm].

But, you know, painting keeps me busy in my spare time and gives me something positive and constructive to do. At least I'm not out blowing my money getting lap dances.... ;-)