The West Coast GT 2015 is over (a long ass time ago now) and a great time was had by all (or at least me, as I was in the running for overall into the very last game). As usual, the tournament was held at the Elk's Lodge in Mission Viejo which has its own bar. And as usual, any tournament that has a bar in the venue will be one of my favorites. This year was no exception.
The winner of this year's West Coast GT was Joseph Urban (who ducked me all weekend, or so I'll claim) and he won the coveted first automatic spot to the 2016 U.S. Master's Tournament to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 5-7, 2016. Despite not winning the event, I did fairly well, having replaced my poor Master's list (which comped a 14) with an even better Wood Elf list (which also comped a 14). My new list was much more suited to the variable victory point system and was designed to grab most of the bonus objectives as well to give me a leg up in the tournament. In the end, I ended up 8th place and getting 3rd Best General for all my troubles. Full results are available here, but my breakdown is as follows: 76 battle points, 28.4 composition points (for comping a 14.2 out of the possible 15 on the Swedish scale), 30 sportsmanship points, and 24 paint points (which I need to find a way to grab an extra two at these tournaments as these two paint points are really killing me in overall placing).
I received 76 battle points out of a possible 100 going 2-2-1 for the weekend over the course of five games.
Round #1: Donovan Stauder - Dark Elves
Round 1 I was matched up against Donovan Stauder and his Dark Elves as we were both similarly comped at around a 14. Donovan's army was interesting, and was a decent list for his high composition score. Unfortunately, his list was not designed to take on a highly mobile points denial list and it would cost him in this game. His list included a Supreme Sorceress with the Lore of Beasts, 2 Khainite Assassins, 2 masters on dark steeds (mobile 1+ armor saves designed to take out chaff), another master as battle standard bearer, a unit of 25 corsairs (where all the foot mounted characters went), two units of dark riders, two units of 12 witches, a kharibdyss, a unit of cold one knights, two units of harpies, and three repeater bolt throwers (which were his largest comp hits next to the level 4).
This game was rather interesting as I concentrated on killing Donovan's chaff early in the game which made it difficult to pick up his characters later in the game preventing me from taking a larger win. I used my shooting to quickly drop the dark riders and one of the master's on dark steed. Magic was spent on trying to wipe the corsairs and putting wounds on the kharibdyss. I then focused on the witches only turning to the corsairs when the other units were dead. Donovan made great use of his chaff, and even managed some impressive flock of dooms which took out a unit of archers. I would eventually lose both Wild Rider units (one to the Kharibdyss after some amazingly bad rolls), but I picked up everything but a single harpy, one assassin, one RBT, the other master on dark steed (on 1 wound), the battle standard bearer, and the level 4. Had the unit of archers not died so early (turn 2) or the wild riders not died to the wounded kharibdyss, I think I could have picked up the last little bit (or had my rolling to wound been a bit better). I ended up with over a 500 point victory for a 12/8, but just getting the last harpy and the last wound on the wounded master would have made it a 13/7. Donovan did a good job of making my pay for not taking out the RBTs earlier too, as they reduced lots of my units to less than half strength before two of them were destroyed.
I was able to get all 4 bonus points, however, as I killed Mickey, giving me a solid 16 battle points to start the tournament. A decent place for Round 1 as it kept me from some of the hardest lists at the tournament (as the tournament was only using Swedish for comping purposes and you didn't get the difference in score as additional victory points).
Round #2: Zack Lopez - Warriors of Chaos
Zack's list was a rather funky, high comping, warriors list. His list included a Chaos Lord of Nurgle on a Palanquin, a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, an Exalted Hero of Nurgle, 12 Chaos warriors of Nurgle (into which all the characters started), two units of 5 marauder horsemen, 2 chimeras, 5 chaos knights marked nurgle, a chaos chariot of nurgle, and a unit of warhounds for chaff.
Zack's list was heavily combat focused, but his biggest threats were in the chimeras which could breath one archer unit down before charging another one a turn later. They were my key targets and I needed to prevent both of them from hitting my line at the same time.
This game started off very rough as we were playing corner deployment zones which meant Zack's forces were only a measly 12" away from my deployment zone. This meant I had to keep my units even further back so that he wasn't charging me on the first couple of turns. I used all my archer fire to take down the mauraders, warhounds, and put a few wounds on a chimera at the start of the game. The other Chimera I led around with the wild riders, but lost an entire unit of them to a Chimera's breath weapon (with great "to wound" rolling by Zack, and my continued bad dice rolling on Wild Rider armor saves).
Unfortunately, Zack wasn't feeling very well from the night before so we had lots of breaks in this game which meant that we only made it through Turn 4 and that was by rushing the turn so that he could try and get into combat and I could kill a few units. In the end I killed all five chaos knights with several turns of focused Waywatcher fire, all the maurauder horsemen, one of the Chimeras (the other was alive, but in Zack's backfield and wouldn't be doing anything unless we made it to turn 6), and his Daemon Prince for the loss of a Wild Rider unit and a unit of archers that died before the first Chimera could be killed. In the end, I won by over 500 points for another 12/8. Had we gone the distance, I think I could have gotten the 16/4 as Zack was down to only 2 models left in the chaos warrior unit, and a severely wounded exalted hero of nurgle who was the battle standard bearer. These two units alone would have accounted for the necessary points to make it a 16/4. Zack could have gotten the other Chimera back into the game, but I don't think it could have gotten more than an archer unit which wouldn't have changed the outcome.
I was able to get 3 of the 4 bonus points as I missed the final point for killing all my opponent's rares (stupid Chimera). This gave me a solid, but not super high 31 out of 40 points going into Round 3. It was a good submarine spot, but I would have preferred a 35 at this point.
Round #3: Jeremy "Effing" Campbell - WoC
Jeremy and I always seem to play each other at every tournament, somewhere around Round 3 or Round 4 and we usually do some level of comparable point draw. This game was no different and firmly set-up Jeremy and I to both have middling finishes in battle points with both of us cracking the top 15.
Jeremy was playing a highly comped Warriors army that was focused on fast, points denial with lethal Tzeentch magic. His list included two chaos lords of Tzeentch on Daemonic mounts (so really high armor and ward saves), a sorcerer lord of Tzeentch on disc, an exalted hero of tzeentch on chaos steed who acted as battle standard bearer, a unit of 15 marauder horsemen (into which all the characters except the sorcerer lord went), a unit of 10 marauder horsemen, four skullcrushers of khrone, a hellcannon, and two units of warhounds.
This game was extremely tough going as most of Jeremy's points were in extremely hard units to crack. Jeremy and I raced forward on opposite flanks with our character units trying to get to each other's backfield. My character bus charged the hellcannon to protect it from the sorcerer lord (taking it off in a single round to run off the board while blowing my wizard up in the process on a simple two dice spell). My shooting worked to take out the marauder horsemen and warhounds dropping both units and the smaller horsemen unit. But, through his use of magic and fast movement he was able to kill off my way watchers and most archer units throughout the game. I finished off the crushers with a double Wild Rider charge, and gained some more points from Jeremy's mage following mine into the warp but there was nothing I could do against the large horsemen unit or other characters. In the end, Jeremy won the game by 100 points making it a 9/11, but I was able to get all four bonus points while he only got two. This left us with an exact 13/13 draw and effectively dropped us off the top tables for Round 4.
At the end of Day 1 I was sitting at a decent, but not super high 44 out of 60 battle points. This put me in top battle for the day at tied for 9th.
Round #4: Josh Fricke - Daemons of Chaos
For Round 4 I was matched up against Josh Fricke from Leadership 2. He was playing a really solid Daemons of Chaos list that included two Bloodthirsters, a Keeper of Secrets, four units of 10 horrors, a unit of furies, and two soul grinders of Nurgle. This was a really hard hitting combat/magic list with the Slaneesh and Tzeentch spells and the double Bloodthirsters. Unfortunately for Josh and his list, we were playing the Beach Blanket scenario. In that scenario, only units with fortitude or command models could control or contest a beach blanket and Josh's horrors were most likely not going to be moving forward during the course of the game.
I focused as much shooting and magic as possible at the horror units killing off two units in a single turn as well as putting a few wounds on one of the soul grinders. As Josh moved forward, I rushed the Wild Riders around the lords and took out the other two horror units in combat. Both Bloodthirsters took out most of the archer units, but the Waywatchers killed off the Keeper during a stand and shoot in an ill-advised charge (and some lucky "6s" to wound).
At the end of the game I was able to put banners on all three blankets and Josh was only able to contest one of them, giving me a large 16/4 victory. I also picked up all four bonus points for a solid 20 first thing in the morning and boosting me to a 64 out of 80 battle points (and going into the final round at 4th highest battle points).
Round #5: Mike McTyre - High Elves
For Round 5 I played Mike on TABLE TWO! Mike was playing an absolutely vicious High Elf list that comped much lower than my 14.4. His list included a tooled-up prince, a archmage using high magic, a lothern sea helm, a handmaiden of the everqueen, three units of 10 archers, 5 reavers, 9 silver helms, a unit of 26 phoenix guard (where all the characters except the handmaiden), two bolt throwers, and two eagles.
This game was difficult to get through. Mike's Phoenix guard star usually had a 2++ ward save and so there was no point in going after the unit. I lost the roll to go first, and failed to vanguard, which would cost me the Wild Riders after only getting a single unit of archers. Two turns of failed walk between worlds cost me the poison archers who never rolled a poison wound. I left the phoenix guard alone and focused on everything else.
In the end, I got all the archers, but not the handmaiden (who was separately hit five times, but I failed to wound twice!), one eagle, the reavers, the silver helms and one bolt thrower. In turn, I lost two archer units and two units of Wild Riders. Because neither of us could hurt each other's star, I ended up with only an 11 point difference making that game a straight 10/10 draw. Had I managed to get the handmaiden (who should have died a horrible death), that would have been an additional 140 points turning the game into a 11/9. Further, if we were playing full Swedish i would have been up another couple hundred points as Mike had the worst comp out of anyone I played making this game more like a 13/7 or 14/6 under true Swedish rules. Alas, it was not to be and after only getting two of the bonus objectives (as Mike's general was still alive) I ended the round with a 12 point gain dropping me from the top stacks.
At the end of the tournament I ended up with a total of 76 battle points out of 100 and a top ten finish with a 3rd place Best General. Will play again next year.
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