I once set up a forum about 5 or 6 years ago, which , like this blog, was also called Raise the Standard. I like the double meaning of the name, which seems relevant in terms of my own hobby.
Carnage last Monday seems a good place to start, as it actually involved some gaming.
The Manager at my local Games Workshop goes by the name of Quinn. That's his surname, but he is simply Quinn. Anyway, last Saturday he said he was running a trip to the Carnage Doubles Tournament at Warhammer World in Nottingham. I had always wanted to go there and the Easter holidays had just started, so I signed up. Teams from the GW stores in Newbury, Reading, Swindon, Oxford, Windsor and Maidenhead would be competing.
I was less confident about the gaming part. I run a Wargames Club at the school where I teach, but I only really play against kids. Not that there is anything wrong with kids playing at all. It's just that most are beginners and only have a small collection of figures. (More on the Club another time.)
There were already two pairs going from Newbury, and I didn't have a partner, so Quinn quickly rang the Reading store and found out that there was a spare there I could team up with, who would be using Blood Angels. Forces would be 800pts per player.
I have four viable 40K Armies I could have used at 800pts. I decided against the three Space Marine armies (Salamanders, Space Wolves and Chaos) in favour of my Imperial Guard army. I recall a blog on the GW website, where a doubles team of Blood Angels and Guard won a tournament, even though they had never met before.
Back at home I looked at my collection and decided I wanted to include my unit of 20 conscripts and Executioner tank, both unfinished. I then spent most of Saturday and Sunday trying to get them all painted in the Khaki / Bestial Brown colour scheme and up to scratch. If I had had more time, I would have finally got round to doing the bases properly. However, I also knew that GW were soon to release some lovely textured paints, which would make basing much quicker. A coat of Graveyard Earth with the edge in the old Terracotta colour would have to do for the bases. As it was, I was sat in the dark in my shed with a head-torch on doing some last details and sorting out the figure case.
On Monday the coach left GW Newbury at 6am and then picked up at Reading. Everyone was talking about their figures and how pleased they were with their bases. Oops! I was beginning to feel even less confident about playing and then I found out that my partner from the Reading store, who was friend of Quinn's called Nick, didn't have Blood Angels, but Imperial Guard too!
Fortunately, we were the first store to arrive at Warhammer World, so we compared our lists in Bugman's Bar. We had a slight problem in that we both wanted to use Leman Russ tanks in our 800pts, but the tournament rules were that we couldn't have two Heavy Support choices without any Elite choice in our armies. Neither of us had any Ogryns, Ratlings or Stormtroopers or any other Elites with us. In the end we decided that I would drop my tank and take more heavy weapons troops choices, along with a Chimera borrowed from Nick. Luckily, Nick uses Tallarn figures, and mine also had a desert scheme, so it didn't look out of place in my army.
My list - Mitorian XIII
HQ - Lord Commissar - Power Fist
Troops - 10 Veterans - Power Fist, 3 Meltaguns
Troops - Platoon Command Squad, Captain Chenkov, Autocannon, Chimera
2 Infantry Squads with Missile Launchers
1 Infantry Squad with Grenade Launcher
1 Heavy Weapons Squad with 2 Lascannons and a Missile Launcher
20 Conscripts with Send in the Next Wave
Nick's Tallarn List
HQ - Techpriest Enginseer
Troops - Platoon Command Squad
2 Infantry Squads, one with a Commissar
Fast Attack - Squadron of 2 Vendettas
Heavy Support - Squadron of 2 normal Leman Russ with Lascannons
Nick suggested the team name of the Mitorian-Tallarn 135th for our combined army.
Our first game was Annihilation against a Guard / Dark Eldar team using Spearhead deployment.
We were quite happy to let the Ogryns and xenos come towards us and were able to knock out a Venom and immobilize the Ravager and strip it of weapons fairly quickly, so they had to yomp across the battelfield. Nick's troops did grab the bastion in the middle of the board and they seemed to get fixated on this, rather than going for some softer targets. The Archon shrugged off a lot of fire with its 2+ invulnerable save, but when he charged my plucky conscripts he scored zero hits and they managed to knock out the invulnerable just as the 90 minutes for the game elapsed. We won on kill points, as they had not wiped out any complete units, whereas we got 5 or 6 kills, including the transports.
After lunch our second game was against another Guard / xenos team, but with Tyranids. This time it was a Pitched Battle with three objectives. We won the roll for placing objectives, so had two on our side of the board. Again we had some early success with shooting killing the Zoanthrope first turn with a lascannon and on the second turn claimed the Tervigon, which killed more nids as it exploded than it had spawned by then. The nids got across to my lines, but the hormagaunts were soon decimated by the chimera's heavy flamer and my rapid-firing conscripts. Once the Warriors were gone on my flank, the remaining termagaunts were reduced to lurking in the woods. The other player's Medusas were a concern, but again we destroyed one and knocked out the others weapon, before gaining another victory with 2-1 objectives.
We knew the final game, Capture and Control with Dawn of War, would be a tough one. We drew a Blood Angels / Vanilla combo, with a couple of infiltrating Baal Predators and a Plasmagun wielding Contemptor Dread to worry about. The night-fighting limited the shooting in the first turn, but the Blood Angels with meltaguns in a drop pod soon accounted for our Leman Russ tanks. The librarian and his squad from the other player's drop pod did not last long in the face of some concentrated rapid fire. Their objective was in a bastion guarded by some scouts, which did a good job of pinning my veterans, before the bastion was blown up. Our troops guarding our objective in the woods were slowly being whittled down. Tycho and his squad, who had claimed the tanks, then wiped out my conscripts in combat. This finally allowed me to Send in the Next Wave and recycle the unit in the last few minutes of the game. A little stupidly, I brought them on nearer Tycho, whereas I should have put them by our objective. In our last turn, the surviving Vendetta swooped in to contest their objective. In their last move, the last scout biker tried to get close enough to our objective to pull the same trick, but just came up too short with the terrain. We had won every game!!
This meant that not only were we the best Newbury team, but Newbury also had the best average out of all the stores there. Nick was a great partner, who more than made up for my lack of experience at tournaments. However, I plan on going to more, now that I have a certificate from one!
Whilst at Warhammer World, I had a look at some of the Forge World shinies in the shop there. I was tempted by the Hydra Flak tank, but they don't do the conversion kit anymore. I knew there was an untouched Chimera kit at home, so was reluctant to pay the full £43 for a complete Hydra kit. After some hesitation, I settled on some Space Marine bits I had been wanting for a while - Salamander termie shoulders and Space Wolves rhino doors.
I showed my wife the certificate when I got home. Her response was "That can go in the shed."
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