WHFB Tournament - Istanbul, Karargah club

So over the weekend, some buddies of mine convinced me to go to a local tournament.

I have been avoiding the tournament scene in Turkey for a while now due to some "bad" experiences in the past. Plus the fact that I have not been playing all that much this year.

In fact, looking back at the blog, my last game was a 40k friendly trying out the Dark Angels in my old place. This was back in February! Wow time flies!

Prior to that, my last fantasy game that I recorded about was from June of last year! Really? That long ago? Against long time opponent BuRock of Chaos Dwarf fame.

So to say that I am a bit rusty with the rules would be an understatement. Though the thing for me this past Sunday was more to socialize, see everyone at the club again, and mostly get out of the house. Oh and showing off my Finalist Medal from GD Germany didn't hurt none either.

What is even more funny, is that since I am all packed up and ready to move to UK ( which should be happening any week/month/year now? :S ) all my armies are also packed up! Problem solved as one of the club members loaned me his Beastmen army, and created me a list to play it with! Huzzah! However due to busy work schedules and such, no time to actually review or talk about the list, so I entered the tournament blind more or less. Always a good start to a tournament, right?

Have to say, that for the most part the tournament was very calm. Though it did kick off with quite a commotion concerning the first scenario and the rules behind it. Always saying that emotions run high in Turkey, and gamers be no different here.

Thankfully that passed quickly, and everyone proceeded to toss dice.. at the table. not each other! And play their games.

I got the luck of pairing up again an Ogre player in a watchtower scenario. With a list on both sides that made it so that neither of us could place anyone in it at the beginning of the game. You can see the set up on the top photo of this article.

The biggest upset in this game was for the poor Ogre player. Whose deathstar unit of Ironguts, with General, BSB, and Mage, was removed from the tower by a unit of Beastigors wielding great weapons. With a LD of 9, and having the re-roll, he was pretty confident that he was to stay in the tower.. however that was not the case when he tossed an 11 and then a 12. As stated.. a big upset on the game for him, as he was dominating the rest of the board with his units, and it was just that single rolls that threw him off.

He unfortunately never recovered from that, and I won the game with a minor victory. I still had not really figured out the army yet as the scenario did not lend itself easily to do so, nor had I fully remembered all the little things of WHFB that are required to do well.

Second game was a bit more interesting. You can see from the set up that I was in for a bit of a challenge with the Empire castling up in the corner the furthest away from me.

Same gent as in the photo above "discussing" things, but honestly not that aggressive compared to other opponents I have faced previously. Just loud really :)

Still trying to figure out the rules, and my army once more, this was not the best match up for such a thing. Though I did begin to see why everyone was scared of my Doombull that I was given.

Biggest mistakes here was that I placed myself too far away from his corner section, and that in the middle of the table was a huge impassible terrain piece that gave off a -1 ld to all within 6 inches of it. To which was bad for me as I was pretty much always within 6 inches of it.

Highlights for me though was that the Doombull took out the steam tank ( only thing I killed ) and caused my opponent great concern when he wouldn't die in combat. Ever.. I think he took a total of 1 wound in the game, which was 1 more than the previous, and also the only wound in the entire tournament. Will post his set up during the explanation of the next battle. Biggest things here that hurt me though was magic. I had poor dice for my rounds, and he had the upper hand on his. I was constantly walking around with negatives and RIPs on my guys throughout the second half of the game. Was a major loss for me in the end, but one that I learned a few things on how to use this army better, and where I would have taken it into this match differently also.

Last game was against an O&G player. Probably the member with the longest history with this army, and quite the Orc fanatic actually. I have the same obsession with the Goblin side of this army, so it was nice to play against them.

Finally in my third game I was beginning to understand how this Beastmen army was playing. I guess I probably should have also stated at the beginning, that I have never played Beastment since my first army some 18 yrs ago in I think 3rd or 4th edition? A lot has changed in it. But I was given some advice in that if I can get the chance.. to send my Doombull, alone, against his horde of 40 Savage Orcs. Honestly, I was not sure about it, but I figured what the heck.

After set up though it showed that it would be tricky to pull that trick off, so I sent him and his 6 minotaur buddies off against some hard boys. 40 in total. Atfter 4 rounds of combat, and losing a few minotaurs, the boys were gone, and Doombull, and his 2 buddies were standing ready to take on the savage Orcs.

My opponent did try to make it so that I would have to charge his Savage orcs on boarboys by placing them in my way. However they left me just enough room for mr Doombull to squeeze out, and run after the Savage Boys instead as can be seen on the left here.

This brought a lot of eyebrows up concerning this point though as everyone was thinking "Why take one character vs a full unit of 40 Savage orcs, solo.. kinda dumb move."

However, let's look at the Doombull's stats and equipment shall we?

Doombull - 348 pts. Mv:6, WS:6, BS:3, St:6, T:5, Wo:5, In:5, At:5/6, Ld:8, Sv:1+
Equipment: Hand weapon, heavy armor, sheild

• Sword of Swift Slaying: Always Strike First
• Ramhorn Helm: +1 Sv, make a bonus attack at basic strength for every armor save you pass
• Dawnstone: Re-roll failed armor saves
• The Other Trickster's Shard: All models in base contact must re-roll successful ward saves
• Gnarled hide: 5+ Scaly Skin armor save

So basically, it was explained to me that he gets his normal 6 attacks, striking first, and re-rolling misses to hit if he has a higher In than the opponent ( which he does against Savage Orcs ). He was gaining an extra attack everytime he won combat, which was always. He has a 1+, re-rollable armor save, that when he saves, he gets to attack back? Seriously? And if they opponents have a ward save, and save, they have to re-roll it? Dammmn.. 

Lets just sum up what happened in that fight with pictures then shall we?? 

And yes, to add insult to injury, I was able to get off the Savage beast of Horros on him. Granting him +3 attacks and +3 strength. His last man did run on the last turn of his play, and ran away with a distance of 9 inches between us. I did charge after him, for a total of 14 inches.. he only ran an additional 3.. Doombull finished off 40 Savage Orc solo over a few rounds of combat. 

Though if needed, I did have the beastigor unit sitting in the back, not doing anything but just watching the entire game unfold. Though I guess I probably could have used them better ( or at all? ) to do something more in the game. 

It turned out to be a minor victory for me. Main mistakes I made from not making it a major or a massacre.. not targeting his characters when they were in close combat. Always focusing on the hordes themselves. This would have saved me a lot of gors had I killed off his little goblin shamans.. but again.. I was not thinking about targeting and was more focused on what the hell was that Doombull doing to his army!

In the end, I had a decent day. Tossing some dice, having some laughs, trying to get through a few points throughout the day. Was not expecting to do well, and thankfully I was rewarded with such luck. 9th out of 12 players. Upside.. I was not last. :) This will most likely and with all intentional purposes be my last games this year, though if i have my way not my last in Turkey! It did renew some faith in the gaming community to me compared to other past experiences.. though I just wish there was less yelling before getting things started :)

Some more photos below of other gamers etc and some of their models.. an sorry for the long post.. hopefully everyone is still awake!