themurphyfella

If it ain’t Brocon…

…and other such bad jokes.
I took a trip to Limerick for the Sunday 40K event.  The event itself was a fairly straightforward 1750 3 round winner takes all rules pack. The use of the ETC style scoring was a little novel. It worked well on the day even though I’m a lazy gamer who hates having to tot up Victory Points every game. That was one of my favourite changes in 5th ed and my lazy ass reserves the right to grumble over a perfectly functional thing that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.

On arrival I was handed a rather fetching high-visibility vest. Jay interpreted my raised eyebrow as a request for further information. Apparently I had a bounty on my head for the weekend. “Why? ” I imagine you saying.  Well I’m part of the Irish 40K ETC team, and as Brocon is the last event before the team heads out to Germany it was decided it would be “good training” to incentivize our opponents to beat us.   So we were all wearing hi-viz vests.  Nice.  Spoiler alert – I didn’t lose

GAME 1

So I took my ETC Ork list and the first game was against another ETC member – Joe “I’m a lasher” Cullen.

Last time I faced Joe was at Warpcon so the rematch was going to be interesting.  Both lists had changed significantly: 1500 pts to 1750 and crutch to crutchless for me.  Joe however had dropped a single lash crutch, I mean “Prince” and replaced it with a zimmer frame made out of 2 Land Raiders and all the Obliterators he could scrape up.  We had a spearhead 3 objective game that had lots of deathrollering, powerclawing and lashing.

The last few turns it almost became 3 separate battles.  On the right my Boyz in a Trukk were paying keep away or die with a squad of Terminators.  In the centre it was Battlewagons and Trukks vs Terminators and Prince and on the left my Biker Nobs and the Warboss were asking the Marines in the immobile Land Raider if they’d seen an objective around here.

The game ended with an objective draw and I swung the all important moral victory on the VP/malus.

GAME 2

So game 2 rolled around and I faced off against Gary.  Playing one of the unicorns of 40K tournaments, Necrons.

So it was the good old draw mission with one objective each.  Going first I did the Orky thing and setup on the 12″ line and waited for the fight to begin.

He deployed with 3 Warrior squads in the centre behind Nightbringer with 2 units of 4 Destroyers on my right flank and 2 units of 4 heavy Destroyers and some Scarabs on my left flank.

Turn one I rolled everything forward and took a few pot shots with Big  Shootas and suchlike.  The Nob mob boosted up on the left flank .

His turn one he came a bit forward with the Destroyers on my right and Nightbringer in the centre.  His shooting destroyed one of the Battlewagons. Those lads got the fun job of holding my objective while their pals went and had some fun.  He also took out the Looted wagon. I guess Necrons don’t like things with AP3 blasts.

Turn 2 was funny from my side as everything in my army zipped past the big scary godmonster and kicked the electronics out of his minions.  There were cries of “BRB – LOL!” from the Boys in the Battle Wagon as they went rumbling past.  One Ork wagghh later and there were a lot less necrons on the board. All the Warrior squads were after breaking but not running far enough to be outside of 6″ of my troops. The scarabs were gone as was one of the Destroyer units. The destroyer unit that was left had it’s hands full of orks.

At the start of Gary’s turn his three Warrior squads ran off the board and he conceded defeat. On the plus side he got a spot prize later for the quickest defeat. I felt a little bad until he told me he’d taken 10th at the GT with Necrons and was already hatching cunning plans for revenge, mainly centred around not letting me get within choppa range of his army ever again.

GAME 3

So good news I’d won a game . Bad news I was facing another ETC army. Darragh’s Sisters of Battle. Really horrible news, it was killpoints.  My army has more killpoints than facebook friends.

The details of the game are a bit hazy at this point.  There were epic charges and heroic Deathrolla attacks followed by cowardly shooting of flamers and melta weapons. The Deffcopter decided to  take a spin around and check out the scenery before turning up and killing Inquisitors and Sisters of Battle and making a real nuisance of itself.

My highlight was rolling over one of Darraghs transports and laughing manically at the expression on his face as he searched the rule book to find something to save the girls inside from also being rolled into mush.  As it turns out a meltabomb in the tailpipe works very effectively at stopping Battlewagons.

The game ended with neither of us able to say who’d won until the KP’s were counted up. I’d swung it 12-9 with a 200ish VP difference to get me a 15-5 win.

So overall I snagged 4th place. Critically preserving my dubious slagging rights by piping Joe for by 1 point.

The presentations went well with 4 of the top 5 players being in the ETC team. Tristram managing to sneak into 1st place when no one was watching.

Paul as ETC captain took a minute to promote the team and explain to the lads from Galway that Cork and Donegal are not actually part of Dublin. Who knew he was that good at geography being from within the pale himself. The ritual humiliation of the ETC players who lost a game completed he let Jay hand out some prizes. Congratulations to the people who got one. What’s so special about 3? 4 is a much nicer number to include. It’s even and we all know even is another word for fair…….

So a big thank you to Jay for a great set of games.  It deserves a mention that Jay managed to beg and borrow the terrain from several sources mainly Ronan Murphy, Gary and WAC. Proof that gamers can actually cooperate.

Final rankings from RHQ
1.  Tristram Hills, Imperial Guard
2.  Richard Flood, Space Marines
3.  Paul Quigley, Dark Eldar
4.  Jimmy Murphy, Orks
5.  Joseph Cullen, Chaos Space Marines
6.  Ralph Risk, Black Templars
7.  Mervyn Murphy, Space Wolves
8.  Michael Tangney, Eldar
9.  Nick Meade, Space Wolves
10.Michael Foreman, Space Wolves
11. Darragh Cullen ,Witch Hunters
12. Luke Osbourne ,Space Wolves
13. Rowan McLaughlin, Space Wolves
14. Andy Farrell, Space Marines
15. James Barrett, Daemons Of Chaos
16. Pearce Condren, Blood Angels
17. Gary Griffin, Necrons
18. Keiran Waters, Space Wolves
19. Barra Macniocaill, Blood Angels
20. Eugene O’Gorman, Imperial Guard
21. Padraic o’Confhaola, Tyranids
22. Sean Nee, Blood Angels
23. Frank O’Donnell, Space Marines
24. Philip Johnston, Imperial Guard
25. Gearoid Madden, Space Wolves
26. Donal Cooney, Orks
27. Jason Lane
28. Patrick Bourke, Blood Angels
29. Darren Kerwick, Space Wolves
30. Michael Murphy, Tau
31. Ruairi McGovern, Orks
32. Jonny O’Driscoll, Space Marines
33. Robert Brennan, Imperial Guard
34. Alex Storey, Tau
35. Rob Martin, Space Marines
36. Donnacha O’Mahony, Space Marines