Unfortunately, as the weekend was a fairly unusual format - casual gaming on Saturday and 150 point non-ITS doubles tournament on Sunday - the event was not particularly well attended compared to others in the Challenge series, but I still had a really good time and appreciated the chance to get a bit of a preview of N3 and test out some new toys.
Speaking of new toys, there is always an excellent array of Infinity boxes, blisters and scenery for sale at these events and I picked up a copy of the new Dactyl for my army as well as a bunch of 55mm MAS Urban Fight bases for my TAGs, Remotes and Bikes.
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| Spoiled for choice! |
On the Saturday we played a fan-made co-operative zombie scenario with myself and Stuart (another Bristol gamer) controlling the shambling dead and the remaining players having 75 point forces. We did pretty well, eventually forcing the defenders to evacuate and causing heavy casualties among both them and the civilians they were trying to protect. In the end the Shasvastii player was the only one to escape unscathed (conspiracy theorists read into that what you will) with the Tohaa, Yu Jing and Haqqislam troops being badly mauled.
I'll try and dig up the rules at some point as it was a blast to play and is part of a mini-campaign of three linked games that should be good fun to play through.
As always, the tables for all our games looked great and I tried to snap a picture of each of them on the Saturday.
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| In the grim darkness of the far future there are only parking violations |
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| Not used in the actual tournament, but definitely an exciting table to play on! |
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| Desert(ed) outpost - see if you can spot the Vatican |
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| The ever popular container port - now with adorable egg cars! |
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| Futuristic warfare in an abandoned Napoleonic-themed park |
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| Note the Dire Foes art cards in Wilko(?) picture frames |
After a couple more hours of casual gaming, including some good old fashioned card games (The Great Dalmuti and Cockroach Poker) it was off to The Seven Stars for a slap-up meal.
Seriously go to this pub if you are in the area. The portions are absurdly huge (I recommend the 'plate of meat' that is the gammon) and the drinks are reasonably priced. We go there as a group at least once or twice every Challenge weekend now.
Would I go so far as calling it a highlight of the weekend? Yeah, probably.
Sunday was the main event - 150 point doubles where we were paired up so there was one experienced and one newer player per team. I was matched up with Dave and his wonderfully converted Haqqislam army:
Haqqislam | 6 models
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Ghulam Lieutenant (13|0) Ghulam Rifle (13|0)
Azra'il AP Rifle (36|0.5)
Lasiq Viral (26|0)
Djanbazan Doctor (32|0)
Nasmat (3|0)
Kaplan Eng A (27|0)
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150/150 points | 0.5/3 swc
open with Aleph Toolbox 
: direct link
: direct linkI bought my Aleph to the party:
Aleph | 9 models
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Deva Lieutenant (26|0)
Devabot
Naga Minelayer (27|0.5) Naga Minelayer (27|0.5)
Myrmidon Spitfire (32|1)
Thorakites smg (13|0) Thorakites smg (13|0)
Netrod (4|0) Netrod (4|0) Netrod (4|0)
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150/150 points | 2/3 swc
open with Aleph Toolbox : http://goo.gl/l4xpkH
: http://goo.gl/l4xpkHI really wanted to try out as many of the new rules as possible, Nagas seemed like the obvious choice as they had mines, template weapons, camouflage, infiltration and the newly souped-up shotguns. I took a Myrmidon with Spitfire so I could at least pretend that I had some ranged weaponry and the rest of the list is pretty much filler with the cheapest (and most obvious) LT I could find.
Well, I had to try out the new Loss of Lieutenant rules somehow, right?
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| Once bacon please |
The scenario for the day involved getting on top of a building in the centre of the battlefield, discovering what horrible thing was on top of it and then holding the rooftop until the end of the game. The mysterious surprise was covered by enigmatic-blue-hemispheres-of-death, so we couldn't tell what awaited us.
There was also a scoresheet where we received points for completing various achievements. Killing our own models with Heal/Repair rolls, shooting into combat, passing lots of armour saves, missing with lots of shots etc. Prizes were determined by getting these points. Unfortunately I didn't pay proper attention to this and my army was spectacularly badly designed for actually completing these achievements. Oh well.
As it wasn't an ITS tournament I didn't make any proper notes about the games, but there were certainly some highlights:
- Dave, my team-mate, only dropping 58 points (Lasiq and Djanbazan) all day.
- Coming up against Snipers/HMGs/Rocket Launchers in all three games when the only weapon we had with a range longer than 24" was the Azra'ils disposable Panzerfasust.
- Said Panzerfaust killing an MSV2/Spitfire Order Sergeant and a Djanbazan HMG...
- Stuart making 7 of a possible 9 dodge saves against my Deva Lt and her Devabots template weapons (and even passing the armour save of one of the failures)!
- Going into Loss of Lieutenant and turning ALL of my orders into Regular ones with Command Tokens.
- Nagas killing pretty much everything (including Snipers, Knights and cheerleaders)
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| What's under there? If you guessed killer-giant-mushroom-tentacle-monster then you were right. |
Overall I had a good time and our team came out clearly ahead in terms of claiming objectives. But alas, I didn't do too well in terms of getting the actual points that mattered, so no prizes for me this week. I've got to say, I'm looking forward to playing proper ITS games again soon.
So that's it for another season. Thank you to Ian for running all the events this year and I'm looking forward to many more in the future - starting with the Winter Challenge in January!
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