October 2005 - Playing with the Big Boys

How’d you like that cliff-hanger of an ending last month. The way the end matched the beginning. Some of my best I think. J. Just to put your mind at ease, there actually is no end to the sentence, it was just creative writing. Anyway, on with the show…

I played my first 2000pt game at the end of September (close enough to October to fit in this months stuff). If you’ve been reading this series, you’ll know that the end goal is attending a tournament called Liber Animus, in Melbourne, at the end of April 06. To do this I need a 2000pt army and a bit of gaming practice. Well, who better to have my first big game with than Pete Dunn.

Pete Dunn is a prolific 40K tournament gamer, regularly travelling to attend events. He hails from Wellington in New Zealand and runs a club and tournaments as well as playing. He won the Sydney Grand Tournament in 2004 and again this year (the two days after we played our game actually) and attended the GT in Warhammer World in England. Also, at Liber Animus this year, Pete came second. We didn’t actually get to play at that tournament and I thought it would be cool for 1st and 2nd place to have a friendly game while Pete was in Sydney for the weekend. We teed up a time and played in the Battle Bunker at the Sydney City GW Hoobby Centre.

Pete chooses his side	Pete measuring	Combat	End Game

Pete was using his Emperor’s Children (Slannesh) Chaos Space Marine army. Lots of Noise Marines and Daemonettes were the order of the day. I took this army list, and as you can see, I popped in a couple of the things I stuck together last month to try them out. We rolled up a Cleanse mission at Omega level. Ahh Omega level. I like to call it the “I don’t get to have any of my cool stuff until halfway through the game because all the cool Tau stuff are jump infantry or vehicles” level. The upside is that I can bring them in where I need them at the time, which kind of off sets not having them to start with. A good challenge anyway.

The game was very tough on the old noggin because Pete makes you think about what you’re doing. The highlights of the game were:

• The fire-fight for most of the game between two of Pete’s squads (1 Havoc and 1 Normal Noise marines) vs four of my squads (2 Firewarrior, 1 Kroot and 1 Pathfinder units). Pete won.
• The constant wave of Daemonettes that seemed to be on tap and the hefty amount of firepower I levelled at them. By the end of the game Pete had about 5 left out of, if I remember right, 42 of the little blighters.
• Pete’s unfortunate teleporting/ summoning accident when he summoned a unit of Daemonettes on steeds and then promptly teleported his squad of six Slaanesh Terminators right onto the head of one of said Daemonettes. This was completely unlucky wiped out almost 500 points of Pete’s army in one roll.
• My very last roll of the game when I shot a Smart missile system at three Havocs, did one wound which Pete failed, and scored half points for the unit.

All of this added up to a draw. And to tell you the truth, I was lucky to get away with that. If the Terminators weren’t destroyed I don’t think it would’ve been so even. It was a top game with another top bloke (so many top blokes!), and I’m sure we’ll have more games in the future.

So what else this month? I painted my Crisis battlesuits, the ones I put together last month. I also ripped the flamer off the first battlesuit I painted and replaced it with a fusion blaster because in eight games I haven’t fired it once. I’ve taken a picture of what I’ve painted so far together and I must say, it’s kinda looking like an army.

On a completely different tangent, the two main questions I get asked about my own hobby are “Can you paint mine?” and “Where do you find the time?”. My standard answer to the first question is “You can’t afford my rates J”. The second question I usually direct people to the Morris Day and the Time website (a band from the eighties for the young ones out there), but I don’t actually know. So I reckon I’m gonna find out. In the spirit of all the new “cool science” shows on TV at the moment, next month I will conduct an experiment to determine “Where I find the time”.