Las Vegas Grand Tournament Musings

Hello all, with the GT quickly approaching, I have some issues I've been mulling over, and could do with some input. I get pretty long-winded at times, so just hang in there with me. Here we go...

Tournament T-Shirt
So I decided I want to do a Sons of Sek T-Shirt for me to wear at the GT. I get all my custom shirts from zazzle.com, and have been pretty satisfied with them in the past. I think I've decided on the general layout. It will have the Sons of Sek 3rd, 1st Company banner (here's the model) on the front and the pic a Son of Sek on the back with the text: "For the magister / His voice drowns out all others."

I still have some final prep to do for the images, but I'm torn between which shirt color to get. Uh-oh, Warhammer fashion emergency! So I have a little poll on the right hand side, tell me which one looks better, the Maroon or the Brown shirt.




Concerns about the Painting Score

So last year at the Vegas GT I got a horrible paint score, truly horrible. I took an all Slaaneshi force that has won multiple best painted's locally. Now I'm well aware that what might win a local competition might not do as well nationally. However, last year there were two painting judges for 40k, one male and one female. Apparently the female judge consistently scored armies lower than the male judge. Now maybe she got all the crappy armies, and the male judge got all the amazing armies, but its also possible that she just scored lower. She judged mine and several other armies of people that I know, whose armies deserved a much higher score.

Part of the problem was the really subjective standards that they had last year, and the fact that they awarded conversions more than painting. With that in mind, I decided to do a highly converted army this year. However, they released their painting guidelines and established what I think is a fairly balanced objective set of criteria that proportionately rewards both painting and modeling.

Here's the point... Even with the more objective criteria I'm worried that my army will get judged by the "one judge" (whoever that may be) who judges harsher than the others. I think that with my display board (assuming I get it done) I should conservatively earn about 35/40 points. Let's be honest, this isn't the best army I've painted, I've had to cut corners left and right. However I pick up a lot of points in conversions. I'm just concerned that a judge might not give me the full points for conversions (being candid here, I really think that this army deserves them).

Okay, really, now here's the point: What if I were to place a binder next two my army. On the front it has a nice spiffy title and pics, and says something to the effect of: look inside to see the building and painting process of the Sons of Sek. Then i would basically have color print outs of all of the RFTL blog entries that deal with the SoS.

If you were a judge, what would you think? Would you think, cool, and probably get a deeper appreciation for all the work that went into this army? Or might you think, what a tool. This guy reeks of desperation? Or something in between?


Holes OR No Holes?
I've started thinking about the display board I'll be taking. Last year I made a really nice display board - it was the kind with the holes cut out for the models, so their base is level with board. That tray is sitting in my garage right now and will probably never get used again, since I will never use that exact army composition again. So how big of a difference do you think it will make if I didn't cut the holes out this time around?

Here's what I think-
Pros:

• Much less time to make a board without holes
• Can be used for different permutations of the army, not just one list

Cons:

• May not look as good, subsequently I'll earn fewer points
• May take longer to set up the army without holes

Anything else, pro or con you can think of? Depending on how my schedule goes, I may be scrambling at the last minute anyways, and probably won't have time for the holes. Any thoughts?


Sons of Sek Progress Tracker
If you haven't noticed, at the bottom of the blog I started posting a visual tracking device to show how much is left of the current project and what I'm currently working on. I'll update it as I go along. Here's where I'm at right now:


And finally... 1st Platoon!!!
I finished first platoon in its entirety earlier. I mentioned before that I wanted to pull them all out together at once as a kind of reward. I'm pretty satisfied with them, and am motivated to keep going. Also either today or tomorrow, I'll post some closer pics of the recently finished platoon command squad bodyguards.

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Lord of the Rings Indy GT - Results

This last weekend was the first ever Indy GT for the Lord of the Rings. It was a blast; the organizers (Tim and Dean) did a great job and provided for a great time. I'm really liking this game, I just wish there was a group that played it down here.

Edit - Here's the list I took:

• Easterling Captain (HW/Shield)
• Easterling Captain (HW/Shield)
• Easterling Captain (HW/Shield, Armored Horse)
• Easterling Warrior x14 (HW/Shield)
• Easterling Warrior x11 (Bow)
• Easterling Warrior x8 (Spear/Shield)
• Easterling Kataphrakts x10
  

The Results

I wound up placing 3rd overall, and took home 2nd place for Best General. I was really pleased with how I did. Anthony, whose Uruk-Hai I painted and whom I convinced to play this game in the first place a couple of months ago, came in second and won Best General.

1st Game

I played John Long and his Grey Company led by Aragorn. The mission was Reconnoiter, which requires you to get more models off your opponent's deployment zone than he can get off of yours. The cavalry on my right flank dealt with the detachment ahead. My right detachment dealt with what was in front of them. My middle detachment acted as free safeties who eventually slowed down Aragorn down when his body guard were shot down. I got one model off (a dismounted cavalry) and managed to break the Grey Company (at 50% of starting strength - triggered this particular scenario's end) before Aragorn could get off the board.

Result: Major Victory

Game 2

This game was Storm the Camp, which ends when you have more models than your opponent within 12" of your opponent's deployment corner. If you do this and are not broken, its a major victory. I played Mike's Uruk-Hai.

I sacrificed my infantry to go toe-to-toe with his block of Uruks. This took pressure off of my infantry who only had to deal with some crossbow uruks and a handful of swords- and pikemen. In what turned out to be the final turn of the game I managed to get one of my cavalry to charge one of his pikemen in his deployment zone. His pikemen was in his deployment zone by about 1/2 an inch. I charged in such a way that if I won the fight (regardless if I killed the model) I would push the Uruk out of the 12" zone. I won the fight and won the game. It was kind of a phyrric victory considering I killed about 6 models and he killed about 18.

Result: Major Victory

3rd Game

This last game of Saturday was against Eric Carlson's Haradrim. He had three Hasharim (crazy Assassins) and the Witch King on Fellbeast - Yikes! The mission was Meeting engagement, where you have to get your opponent to 25% of their starting size. I thought I would have this game pretty handily since I almost outnumbered him 2-1, and he has a bunch of Defense 4 dudes. What I didn't count on was his ability to roll 6's to kill my cavalry like a champ. Once I closed with him, I had 3 out of 11 cavalry left.

That evened the odds quite a bit. I broke his force first but no one ran. Next turn he broke me, and his Witchking throws out a -1 Courage aura, which forced plenty of my models to run. On our last turn enough of his models and enough of mine ran away that we were both reduced to 25% at the same time.

Result: Draw

Game 4

No pic for this one. It was over before it started. This was against Anthony and his Uruk-Hai. The mission was Treasure Hunt. There's a marker in the middle of the table. You have to get a model in base with it, and on a 4+ the model uncovers the treasure. To win you have to carry the treasure off the board.

This game was over in 22 minutes. My cavalry reached the marker in two turns, my Captain on horse picked it up right away. Although he had to dismount to dig it up, and lost his horse from then on. I then won priority the next two turns and moved all of my forces back, Anthony conceded at that point, because no matter what happened in the next two turns I would be able to get the treasure off the table, and he would be unable to break my force.

Result: Major Victory

Game 5

This game was against the "Ringer." Frank flew in from Tampa and is a major player on the LotR tournament circuit; he brought his Mordor force. The mission was Contest of Champions, where you nominate a character who has to kill more models than your opponent's character does.

It was a great game, and Frank used his placement in the terrain to draw me in to some unfavorable positions. As the battle lines finally met I felt pretty good about the standup fight that would ensue had my Captain not been killed, but alas... His Wringwraith more than earned his points transfixing my captain (basically nerfing his combat effectiveness - allowing him to be easily surrounded and cut down). My captain died without killing a single model, and as soon as Shagrat (his nominated character) killed one Easterling, that ended the game.

I asked for some advice after the game, and got some good tips about how to better use my archers (I've known that I haven't been using to their full effectiveness for quite a while), and being more patient with my cavalry captain in the scenario. All in all, I think I learned a lot from that game and am hopefully walking away a better player.

Seriously... consider giving Lord of the Rings a chance. I consider myself a pretty hardcore 40k and Fantasy gamer, and LotR is really worth getting into.

I need to get back to working on my guardsmen. I'm visiting my family in Albuquerque right now, so I've planned to get behind schedule. I brought some stuff with me to build at least. I'll post some pics of my officers who I built the other night, but still need to be painted.

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Study Break: Las Vegas Grand Tournament

Grand Tournament
Las Vegas
September 5-7, 2008
Treasure Island Hotel
Las Vegas, Nevada


Yesterday I signed up for the Las Vegas Grand Tournament. Proceeds from the sale of my Ravenwing paid for the ticket . I signed up for the 40K tournament, and will likely be playing Imperial Guard.

"But wait, Sean. You don't have an Imperial Guard army." Right you are voice of reason. However, I've been planning on doing a traitor guard army for a while. And all I've needed is a crazy deadline.

I will be doing the Sons of Sek from the Gaunt's Ghosts series, who will be, er... dropping from the sky. Yes, I'm doing drop guard plasma/melta spam, but with flair. I have 169 models in the army. It's 167 infantry who will all be heavily converted. The other two models will be Penitent Engines, piloted by the new Bloodletters, which will count as Sentinels.

It's going to be really tight getting this army done, especially since before I can start them, I have to finish my Easterlings and Anthony's Uruk-Hai army for the Lord of the Rings Indy GT in July! I've created a schedule, which I'll post in the future. Everything (the Easterlings, the Uruk-Hai, and the Sons of Sek) will all be documented here from start to finish. I've got some cool conversions planned for the Sons and can't wait to get started on them.

I'm really excited for the GT, but I have a ton of work to do. Speaking of work, back to studying. Had my second final today, next one is Friday. Can't wait to be done.
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