It's been a few weeks (or maybe more like five months), but the Broadside Bash is finished and in the books. This year 28 players faced off in a series of five games and at the end of the tournament, the winner was defending champion Club Capri's Jeremy Campbell, winning his second overall champion award. I played well, gained almost all the objective points, and managed to finish 2nd place overall, earning myself some sweet prize support (including a Frontline gaming table mat) and the all important invite for the West Coast qualifier for the U.S. Masters.
Below is a breakdown of all my games and scores, but full results are available here. This year I was playing a monster mash Dark Elf list and had a blast throwing tons of monsters and thunder stomps around the board. My scores for this year were: 83 battle points (3rd overall), 18 composition points (14th overall on opponent judged), 24 sports points, and 31 paint points.
Now on to the games!
Round #1: Sam Valdez - Orcs and Goblins
To start the tournament off, I got to play Sam Valdez and his very shooty Orcs and Goblins army. His list was the standard corner-hammer list with two doomdivers, two rock lobbas, the savage orc horde, mangler squigs, night goblins, and all the rest of the standard shooty Orc and Goblin shenanigans.
For this battle, we had to roll randomly for our deployment, which hurt Sam significantly. He was unable to protect two of his warmachines and his night goblins were placed behind terrain so that I was able to pop the fanatics out on the first turn and send them all to their deaths as they crashed into the terrain. From there, I just pushed everything forward hoping to survive the shooting long enough to make it into combat. Sam's rolls didn't help him as I emerged relatively unscathed from several turns of shooting with only some sporadic wounds placed on various monsters.
Everything I had was able to slowly pick apart his army except for the troll horde over the course of the game, granting me a full point victory and 20 points to begin the day. The saddest part for Sam was that I lost more models to dangerous terrain tests (11 in total) than he was able to kill with his shooting and magic throughout the entire game.
Round #2: Jeremy Larson - Ogre Kingdoms
Jeremy Larson is a standard in the So-Cal tournament scene and I have seen him at many other tournaments, though this was only the second time we have ever played. For this event, he was running a standard Ogre Kingdoms list with some extra shooting units. I don't remember everything he had in his list, but I remember there was several shooting units, a gut star, and at least one (maybe two) Ironblasters.
This game was different from normal games against Ogres in that Jeremy castled his army in the corner behind some hills hoping to protect his units. Unfortunately for him, I was able to go first and push hard with all my fast moving troops. I tackled the Ironblaster first thing, and then slowly worked on pushing wounds through the units and shooters to make sure my monsters wouldn't be crushed in a single turn. I hit Jeremy with several chargers in the middle of the game and the Ogres went 'poof.' There aren't many things that Ogres can do when they are hit with several strength 5 and strength 7 attacks. The BSB in particular cleared up several units with his d3 wounds on the charge ability.
Another solid, max point win putting me at 40 battle points in the tournament.
Round #3: Jeremy Campbell - Empire
Jeremy, last year's champion (and eventual tournament overall champion for this year) was playing a really nasty Empire light council list filled with 1+ armor saves and a bunch of cannons including two steam tanks. Luckily, his magic base was lower than a lot of other light councils and he only had a single Banishment in our game. (Seriously, I hate this spell).
Jeremy and I chased each other around the center tower which he was able to enter, but I was not (because I didn't have a single infantry model). I spent most of the game eating up small units of knights and demigryphs with multiple combo-charges, including one early charge that saw the dragon, a kharybdis, the bsb, a hydra, and a unit of warlocks hit the demigryphs in the front. A single Soulblight later and the chickens were roasted and eaten by the monsters. Unfortunately, two steam tanks would make a mess of the army before I was able to crush one underfoot. In the end, I took a solid win but no bonus points as Jeremy kept my lord (whose Dragon was killed from under him) from entering the building for a few turns with a well-timed 16" steam tank charge. The lord stayed in combat for a few rounds before dying, but alas, no bonus points for me.
This game put me in first at 57 battle points for the tournament. Not a bad way to end Day 1.
Round #4: Steve Shariff - Empire
Starting Day 2, I was looking across at Steve and his nasty Empire army. It didn't have nearly the saves and combat potential of Jeremy's army, but was coming in with a full light council, two Banishments, a few magic missiles, and lots of cannons with a hellblaster. This is the type of Empire list I normally love to play as it just can't put enough damage out against the more standard maximum shooting dark elves that I play, but against the all monster list, I was going to have serious problems.
This game started off bad from the start. Steve cornered heavily and I set up with all the monsters across from him hoping to push into combat as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Steve got to go first and before I was able to declare charges on my Turn 2, I lost a hydra, the Dragon, and two units of Dark Riders. Then, after some poor charge rolls and awesome leadership rolls on Steve's part, I was stuck in combat and eventually ground out with counter chargers. I made some good tactical plays in the last few turns and almost brought the game to a draw, but some more decent leadership tests kept the game a solid win in Steve's favor. In the end, I took a loss with no bonus points. This dropped my total score to 63 points and put me roughly in fifth or sixth place I believe going into the last round.
Round #5: Brian Brown - Warriors of Chaos
For Round 5 I got the opportunity to play Brian and his Warriors army. I know Brian well from the tournament circuit but don't really ever get the opportunity to play him. This time, he was playing a very combat oriented warriors army.
This game involved lots of tactical moves and games of Keep Away. I knew that Brian would only be able to close with a few of the smaller units if I just kept out of his line of sight with my faster moving monsters, so I just focused on clearing one unit at a time in a single round of combat if possible. I also sacrificed the dark riders in a series of double flees to make sure that Brian wouldn't be able to catch my expensive characters. In the end I took a massive win with full bonus points after a good fun game. I look forward to playing Brian again with the army I'm currently working on and seeing who can do better in a straight forward charge game.
Now, to start getting models done for next year's tournament!
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