WOW-Keepers Neujahrsdoppel 2011 - Report

All games are played and another fun event is behind me. As oposed to my earlier post, I did not field my Templars but decided to use the opportunity to play the Dark Adeptus Mechanicus!
What a joy it was to finally get the approval of a tournament host since I never had the chance to play them before. My list was restricted to the models I have so it wasn't really competitive:

- 1 x Chaos sorcerer with the Mark of Slaanesh and Lash of Submission
- 1 x Greater Daemon
- 1 x Dreadnought with two DCCW and a Heavy Flamer
- 2 x Five Plaguemarines with two plasmaguns and Champion with Powerfist
- 2 x Defiler with two DDCWs each 

My friend had to compensate so he went for a Firepower Imperial Guard list with a big block(tarpit) of Infantry to hold objectives.

- 1 x HQ with 3 Meltaguns and a Com
- 1 x Infantry Platoon Command with four flamers
- 3 x Infantrie squads with Autocannon, (one Commisar and one Com)
- 1 x Veterans with 3 Meltaguns
- 2 x Vendetta
- 1 x Leman Russ Executioner

So I got up at 5:00 AM and drove 3,5 hours to Vienna by car only to be welcomed by cold and windy weather and 14 other teams!

First game against a team of Imperial Guard and Orks- 2 Hydras, 130 Guards (with some antitank) and 120 Boys and one Bigmek to be specific. Now that looked to be fun. They were rather fast in deployment though and thereby made some mistakes. The first one was to set up a 50 man tarpit without a commisar right at their tableedge. The LemanRuss punished them by putting 32 wounds on them which made them flee of the table in round 2. The other big mistake was to setup the big mek in the first row- so I could easily lash him to my greater daemon on turn him into pulp. The rest of the game saw us charging the orkmobs with defilers and dreadnoughts and tear through them in a bloody mess. The result was closer than we thought after we destroyed 100 boys, the tanks and about 70 Guards but still we won.

 "...Lookout boyz- them got battle cannons!"

 Dark Magos directs his battle droids towards the Ork line.

 

Vendetta moves in to snipe the army command.

"...Protect the Magos!"

"...HULK SMASH PUNY OKRMEK!"

Snakdread eats his way through 30 boys. NOM NOM NOM

Second game was against an unholy alliance of Space wolves and Chaosmarines. These were some nice armies and we had a lot of fun with our shootout. They took the initiative by droping a dread and Wolfguard Terminators in Pods asap followed by a Plague Rhino as well as a daemon prince at our frontlines while flanking with their wolfscouts. But in the end all attacks were repelled and it was a close win for us. The Lash sorcerer played his magic tricks well staying just outside the range of the Runepriest Blocking Staff and even struck down the Daemonprince in self defence but finally died to a perils of the warp attack late game. (So is the price of Chaos)

 

All setup and ready to receive the drop pod assault.

The unholy alliance defends the mission objective

 "Drive them back in the name of the Magos!"

 

Ambushing a Vendetta- now that shows some insane herosim (Spacewolves-eh)

Last game we played against a shooty mix of Imperial Guard and Bloodangels. I think I counted 17 Lasercannons so we were seriously outgunned. It made no sense to setup our armour so we only placed the tarpit and 5 Plague marines to deny them the scout moves of their threee Vendettas. The rest came in form reserves- to our delight (sarcasm here) one after the other so that they could be destroyed piecemeal. A very tough game and we had to pull off every trick and use ever inch but we (with a fair amount of luck on our side) managed to draw the game in the end. Not bad for bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Operation "humand shield" begins

That looks like a grim future for those guards

And its getting grimmer...

...and grimmer by the second

 Furiosy Librarian tears through the freshly arrived reserves.

 Hulk arrives in turn 5 to save the day

The end of the tournamt sees us on third place

Lowight of the tournament was the painting competition. I planed to win it in the first place since my army is totally converted and painted to a very high tabletopstandard but it seems someone had a problem with the techniques I used. 

It is true that it looks dirty and unlcean but that's on purpose- the army is a Fallen Mechanicus totally corrupted by chaos- scavenging Necron parts using possession and badly maintenanced. I used sponge dibbing, pigments, washes- so heavy weathering all over and the result is (in my oppinion) very convincing. All the more surpised I was to learn that it not even made final cut denying me the chance to be voted on by the players for best painted army. Also the paintjudge did not give me any answer to why I din not place when I asked him. Very dissapointing and also annoying to see that two armies painted by him were nominated... I made pictures with my iPhone so you can judge for yourself- the red Chaos army won best painted by the way.

Yellow can be a hard color to paint if you take the wrong aproach. 

The yellow coat was to thick and the bases to plain for me to win best painted after all.

This army got my vote. Although the highlights are very subtle- the detailconversions are nice.

Scouts with helmets- much better than the stumpy head. I do this for my models too.

Cool OSL but again the tanks cannot hold up to the standard the infantry sets.

 Alltogether just not enough to get my vote.

 

One of the better nominated armies- clear highlights but a little frosting from the varnish lets it down.

 Closeup shows the frosting.

 This army won best painted. In my opinion the tanks lower the score dramatically since they are really plain.

A lot of Fantasy Chaos bits went in there.

And here is my army for comparison

 Defiler in the first row, dread behind him

 

Closeup of my greater Daemon on his diorama base (yes it is not really possible to hide him in games)