Day two

Today is the second day of the London GT. There are a couple of things about this event which are slightly unusual. One of them is it starts later in the day than most events I’ve been to do. I can’t claim to be a frequent flyer when it comes to two day tournaments but very often the pattern is doors open somewhere around 8:45 to 9:00 AM and the first game starts somewhere between 9:15 and 9:30am. You play one game before lunch, one immediately after lunch, one in the early evening and that’s day one. On day two, very often the first game starts at the same time as on day one then after lunch you play the afternoon game, game five, and then there is a wrap up presentation of prizes and everybody goes home.

I think part of the reason I was so tired last night is the doors don’t open at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre until 9:00 AM and then because the event is very large it takes half an hour for everybody to filter into the hall and then you’re spending time setting up and getting ready and game one doesn’t start until 10 AM which means lunch is then a little bit later game two is a little bit later and you’re well into the evening before you know it. I think we started game three at 4:45 and that doesn’t finish until 7:30. That’s not terrible but it is much later than most events I’ve been to.

What it did mean is we didn’t leave until around 8:00pm, didn’t get home until gone 9 and once home had a few minutes to potter about before going to bed. I was very grateful to go to bed too, you know those days when you get into bed and you just immediately feel the relief it’s time to sleep, it’s time to rest. What a wonderful feeling to have earned with a busy day.

I played two games. The first against an absolutely stunning Warriors of Chaos army. Very much an army designed to show off the owner’s ability to paint. He had the Age of Sigmar Archaon model which is a Chaos Lord riding a Chaos Dragon in a very dramatic pose. A unit of Chosen Chaos Knights, a unit of regular Chaos Knights, a large block of Chaos Warriors nd a unit of three Dragon Ogres with great weapons. Everything which could take a Mark of Chaos had the Mark of Tzeentch.

I felt reasonably upbeat about this as the Mark of Chaos Undivided, which is the default, gives you a reroll on terror and panic tests and my army is designed to cause terror. If you fail a terror test you immediately flee which can be a really efficient way of getting rid of really expensive units. This tactic worked well against his army. The Mark of Tzeentch gives them some resistance against magic but it doesn’t really help against me because it removes the ability to reroll terror tests. Over the course of the game he failed four or five with extremely expensive units turning tail and running from mine. In the end he turned things around and killed pretty much everything I have but it was a really fun game partly because it showed me that my idea for the army could work.

My final game of the weekend was against a Tomb King force. He had a pair of Mortuary Priests, a High Priest, several units of skeleton horse archers, a couple of units of skeleton archers,  some tomb swarms,  five Ushabti and 3 Necrosphinxes. This was a really great learning experience because I am used to playing Orcs and Goblins. A faction which, although enthusiastic, are not the most effective fighters and so you have to be careful to try to outnumber or grind down your opponent.

Warriors of Chaos on the other hand are elite and when we deployed I was very cautious with the placement of some of my units, failing to realise caution belonged on the other side of the table. The nervous person should have been my opponent.

When he set up as far away from my Lord as he could get I thought I was fortunate. Only as the game proceeded realising he was concerned my Lord was going to rush across the table and slaughter his stuff. Next time Gadget, next time.