Echoes of War

Hello everyone, Sam here with a write up on another awesome weekend of dice and fun in Cardiff. Our hosts for the weekend, the Vale Renegades  are a group that we met over a year ago at a tournament in Bristol and since then have attended several of each other’s tournaments. Echoes of War was an ITC event with 34 competitors at the fantastic venue of Firestorm Games. This post is going to have a brief overview of the day as well as a few pictures and synopsis of all 5 games that I had over the weekend.

So Sam, Bruce, Chris, Jamie and Jack were joined by Jack’s brother Scott (making them the Brothers Grimdark), Tom Baker from Code40K and Battered Bristles (http://code40k.blogspot.co.uk/) (https://www.facebook.com/Batteredbristles) and Ian, made the 2 hour or so drive down to Cardiff for a weekend of games. A few of us had been to their last tournament Seeds of Destruction last September and were very excited about returning.

Prior to the event, the Vale Renegades shared a list of all of the lists that were going to the event, and as a group of people who are very much over 7^th edition and the power creep lists we were worried. We saw many Ynnari and War Convocation lists which we knew would blow our lists off  the board. We had each brought what we considered to be very strong armies, ones that other people too no doubt read and thought were powerful and for lack of a better word, cheesy.

Upon arrival and after the first minute or two of the first game that worry was gone. What followed was a series of some of the most enjoyable games that we had every taken part in. I played three guys on the Saturday who were all from the same gaming group in Swansea who were real nice guys who played their very well painted armies well. The painting competition was fierce with Tom Baker winning best painted single model and the best painted army going to a fantastically converted and painted Renegade’s army which to my regret after two tournaments I have still not played against.

So the scores for the weekend are as follows

Jack scored the best out of us and managed to bag 2^nd place!

Tom placed 4^th and was one point off getting a winning trophy despite winning all 5 of his games.  He also won best single painted model.

Jamie managed to earn himself 5^th place with his Eldar.

 Bruce won best sport and got 10^th place.

Sam placed 11^th

Scott placed 14th

Ian Placed 26th

Chris placed 33^rd

The trophies that you can see in the pictures above were 3D printed by Jack Whitefoot. If you are interested in any of his work or want a quote for something similar then please visit. (https://whitefoot3d.co.uk)

                Game One

                My first game was against a chap called Ben who was running an Iron Hands Space Marine army supported by an Acheron Knight. The army was painted beautifully with a nice distinction between the greys and black on his Marines. What was great to see was that Ben was fielding the Living Saint in his list which he had done a lovely job painting. His list was supported by many tanks that I am familiar with in Heresy and was very effective at stripping points off of my list. The game began with me stripping hull points off his Knight with the combined firepower of my entire army and eventually bringing it down. Ben retaliated by wiping out my entire Skyhamer formation in a turn and witling down the Knights.  The game was incredibly close in the end, with Celestine flipping my Acheron in retaliation for me killing Bens before getting removed from play by the Lancer. Funny moment for me was my Atrapos knight shooting his graviton singularity cannon and causing a vortex to get scarily close. The game ended 15 points to 8 and set the tone for the entire weekend.

                Thank you for the game Ben and hopefully see you at the next event.  

                Game Two

                My second game was against another player from Swansea, Martin who was running Dark Angels with Space Wolf allies. Martin was a very smart player who from the first dice roll had plans in place to take objectives wherever he could and out maneuverer my Baronial Court as much as possible. His army was well painted and there was a lot of it! Our deployment zone was table quarters and his army filled that quarter up. Bubble wrapping his tanks with his 30 fenrisian wolves with a 4++ was a tactic that I had not come across before and it was very effective. It took about 4 turns for 3 Imperial Knights to work their way through that whilst the rest of his army scored Maelstrom points. The highlights of the game for me were two Marines in separate combats, who just would not die, they rolled a ridiculous amount of 3+ saves only to finally get saved by the Knights before getting shot to death by a Storm Bolter. The other highlight was once again the Knight Atrapos causing a vortex which rolled over itself and killing himself in one shot. The game ended up with a loss for me by a single point and was the closest game of 40K that I can remember having without any tension or over competiveness from either side.

                Martin got my vote for best game and Bruce who played him also mentioned how much he enjoyed playing Martin.

                Game Three

                Game three did not go to plan.

                Game three was over in 15 minutes

                Game three I conceded turn 2

                Magnus the red and his D beam spell lined up all my knights and killed them in two shots.

 My opponent was another gamer from Swansea called Nathan. His Magnus was painted really well as well as the rest of his army. He has modelled his Magnus to have rocks floating underneath his outstretched hand which is both cool and maybe something that I may pinch when I get round to making one myself.  Now the skyhammer was more of less useless and the knights were removed, end of story for the game really. Nathan was a very good player and went on to play Tom in game 5 which looked like a nail biting conclusion to the weekend for them both.

                Despite being beaten soundly, we had a real good chat afterwards about 30k, painting and modelling which made the end of my Saturday really nice. A fellow Iron Warrior player and nice guy I hope to play you again (without Magnus) in the future mate.

                Game Four

                After nursing a slight hangover that absolutely in no way was noticeable we returned to Firestorm Games for the second day. My opponent (sorry mate I was an absolute state at the beginning of our game) was a chap called James who was running Dark Angels. His army was really nicely painted, some really controlled edge highlighting on his many vehicles and his Dark Knights looked incredible. Unfortunately for James his army was not geared up to take on Imperial Knights and the game ended up with a tabling but he was a real good sport and great opponent.  In the chronicles of the Atrapos hurting himself, the scatter for his singularity killed one of my devastator squads down to a single man, took a hull point off a drop pod and took two wounds off of itself, the scatter for this shot was 11 inches L

                Game Five

                Feeling what I would call 46.5% of myself I had my last game against a chap called Ben. Ben had a Lamentors army which was really cool. His army was full of character with flames coming out of Dreadnoughts hands, Marines leaping through the air and smoke coming out of his checked Rhinos. 

Ben was sound and I had a good game against him. Similar to my last game the Knights were a very strong thing to fight against when you are not prepared for them and they walked through several different combats. Ben was a great sport and earned lots of M
aelstrom points throughout the game with the tides only fully turning in game turn 5. Oh and the Atrapos (with his pilot now named Corporal Liability) took a wound off of itself, scattered and took a wound off the Acheron.

Thank you to all of our opponents from this weekend and to everyone who had a hand in making the weekend so enjoyable. Also a massive thank you to the chaps from the Vale Renegades for being such fantastic hosts! We look forward to seeing you at the next one and hopefully we can organise a big social next time.

Sam