Bay Area Open

So, on the heels of a lucky win at the Bash, I had the BAO comming up.  Normally when I place at an event, I like to change armies so that I can just chill out and do something different.  However, I had already made arrangements to fly up there and my Daemons are my travel on a plane army.  So, I decided to take advantage of this event to accomplish a number of personal tasks.  In order of priority they were:

1) Play the Leadership 2 Crowd-
I never get to play these guys, because either I am at their event, or they are at mine.  This event was a rare chance to play some of the west coast's finest warhammer players.  In addition to being a rowdy fun club, they are just plain good players with amazing hobby skills.  The entire reason I signed up for the BAO was to face these guys.

2) Test out a friendlier DoC list-
The Keeper is too gorgeous not to use, but I wanted to tone down the manipulation aspects of the army.  I also wanted to tone it down because the L2 guys tend to play friendlier armies and I wanted to meet them on equal footing.  Finally, this event was sort of a dry run for the Alamo later in the year, where comp is a big factor, apparently.

3) Be better prepared for Ogres-
I was lucky at the Bash to only draw one Ogre army.  Ogres are very popular and strong right now, so rather than just slap Shadow Magic into the army I decided to bring a unit specifically to be able to meet them head on. I also wanted to avoid caving in and just tossing some Khorne units into the list, because basically everyone does that.

So, here is the list I ran with:
Keeper of Secrets (Alure, Torment Blade, Siren Song)
Herald of Tzeench (Loremaster of Heavens, Spellbreaker, BSB w Icon of Dispair)
Herald of Slaanesh (Siren Song, Torment Blade)
Herald of Nurgle (Slime Trails, Pestilent Breath)

29 Horrors (+1 to cast Standard, Mus, Changeling)
23 Daemonettes (Full Command)
19 Plague Bearers (Full Command)
5 Furies

6 Flamers w Champ
1 Fiend of Slaanesh
1 Beast of Nurgle

A couple things you will notice is my attempt to keep the Highlander rule in effect;  There can be only one.  Dumping some of the redundant Slaanesh units for the Nurgle units diluted theme a little, but it actually made matchups more interesting as everything in the army was much more specialized.  It also slowed things down a bit, making the movement phase a lot more important, not to mention deployment.  It made for some great and interesting games.

Anyhow, I flew up and got settled at the hotel and then went out to eat with the L2 crew.  Speaking as a Wisconsinite, those guys can really pound the booze.  Some people may not care for the rowdy crude behavior, but I felt right at home with these guys and knocked back the margaritas while discussing the finer points of warhammer and female anatomy.  After scoping out the local gaming store, I turned in for some rest and prepared mentally for day one.

Day 1-
Game 1 vs Ivan from L2 with semi shooty Tomb Kings
Well, I think Ivan had heard about my army from someone, which is not suprising as I do not make a big deal out of concealing information.  His entire deployment seemed like a massive overreaction to Siren Song, which basically gave me two free turns of advancement on his army.  He probably should have put the sphinxes out there against me, as I cannot really beat those with anything other than my Nurgle units.  Instead, he went all in on the magic phase and crapped out and I systematically tore him apart.  Highlight of the game was my Beast of Nurgle solo killing his Sphinx and the Horrors killing off the Snake Riders.  Lowlight was my risky behavior with the Keeper, but it never bit me in the butt like it should have.

Game 2 vs Jeff Suess from L2 with Anvil Gunline Dwarves
Jeff is the defending QCR champion, so I knew I was in for a good game here and he did not dissapoint.  We both more or less castled to one side.  He went first and dropped the Keeper, Furies, and Fiend before I even got to pick up the dice.  Ouch.  The next four turns were a slow advance while his stone throwers shelled the daemonettes and the flamers got anviled repeatedly.  I know this matchup fairly well, however, so I stayed on course and engaged what I could feasably kill, while avoiding the unkillable stuff.  The Nurgle block was clutch here, killing the Organ Gun and running off a sizable longbeard block.  In the end, I had one flamer, 2 survivors in each of my core blocks, and all my heralds alive.  Jeff was down to his two lords, Hammerers, and a Cannon.  A narrow and hard fought win, largely due to Jeff not being entirely familiar with my style of army.  I have no doubt if we replayed this matchup a second time, he would likely crush me.

Game 3 vs Greg(?) w Empire
Now, this empire army did not look especially strong, so I was imediately cautious, as someone does not go 2-0 with this type of army without being a really good general.  His army was basically two giant hordes of Halberdiers, a giant column of swordsmen, a cannon, a mortar, a popemobile, some pistoleers, and a couple of characters (mostly priests) spread around.  Deceptively good, but my army punishes people who bring limited numbers of units.  It would be hard to do this game justice without complex pictures detailing the grind fest that we both set up in the middle of the board, but sufficive to say I got most of the matchups I wanted and largely left my Keeper completely out of the game.  At games end, he had destroyed all of the chaffe, but I had run down all of his blocks with mine.  Good game, but the matchup highly favored me, because my army just loves chewing up T3 lightly armored guys.

Evening-
A little dinner and it was back to the Bunker for some late night margarittas and board gaming with the L2 guys.  I had done well to this point, but I was unlikely to beat any of my likely game four opponents (2x Skaven, Run and Gun Wood Elves) who were all running great counters to my army and were amazingly solid generals.  I was expecting to play Justin Rusk's Wood Elves, but secretly hoping to play Ed Phillips.  No offense to Josh Rosenstien, but I had never played Ed and any game against infantry skaven was going to be a forgone conclusion anyhow.  After some drunken Thunderstone play, it was back to the hotel to pass out and prepare for the ass kickings I was likely to recieve day two.

Day 2-
Game 4- Ed Phillips L2 Guy with infantry heavy Skaven
In addition to being one of the best generals in the entire L2 group, Ed is a phenomenally good painter.  His Skaven army was as gorgeous as it was intimidating and very little redundancy in the units.  I made as good of a game of it as I could manage, but my general inability to break slaves got my army ground to a pulp by his Plague Cauldron unit.  This unit, with the Under Empire banner, just racks up tons of casualties and made my entire army evaporate, as I have no real answer to it.  Under normal circumstances, I would have hung back and tried to play for the draw, while tossing comet at the army, but my herald deleveled himself almost instantly and Ed's army has enough long range fire to make that tactic suspect, at best.  Ultimately, I killed almost nothing and lost nearly my entire army doing it, but I felt pretty good about the game because I know a lot of this game was down to matchup and there are other things I can try if we play again.  This was the best game of the weekend for me, as far as the fun factor and learning were concerned, though my game against Jeff was deffinately a close second.

Game 5-
I am not going to discuss this game in depth, except to say that next time I will not sit through three turns of cheating before I protest it.  Realistically, this was not a game I was ever going to win, given the matchup and over the top nature of the army I was facing, but the state of the game does not make intentional fudging of dice and rules any more or less acceptable.  Mainly, its personally insulting that someone thinks I am stupid enough to not notice it going on, especially when I am playing out a loss for their personal entertainment when neither of us were in contention for anything.  It was probably the single most negative experience I have had in a tournament and I will never play this person again, nor will they be welcome in events I am involved in the administration of.  No one should have to be subjected to that sort of behavior, and he can simply have the forfiet as I have better things to do with my time.

Wrap up-
Well 3-2 was what I anticipated with the tone down I did on the list, though I started strong.  I just finally managed to hit Rock with my scissors on day two.  Game 5 aside, though, it was the most fun I have had at a GT (QCR aside) in the last few years.  Some people bagged on the venue, and it was pretty ghetto in some ways, but any time I can booze, curse, and throw dice without getting tossed out of a room is a major plus for me.  As long as the L2 and Reno guys keep showing up, I will too, hopefully with some of my crew driving up with me.  I had some great games against some of the best players on the west coast, which is all I could ask for.  Props to Josh for winning and Justin for comming in second with Wood Elves (!), in what was essentially an anything goes event.

My Grades:
Venue- B-
Ample food and space were nice.  Ability to tailgate and be rowdy were also a major plus.  The cloth table toppers created some unintentional game related issues and the bathrooms were horrendous, however.
Organization- B+
The scoring needs a little more stratification, both so people know when they are out of it and can just kick back, and to let the pairings be more transparent.  Three games of pitched was nice, but no more Blood and Glory.  Scoring was clean, fast, and well handled.  Rounds were on time and well spaced, though I would prefer lunch after round two in the future. I know people do not like the idea a lot, but making degree of victory a factor in the system might make some of the point denial armies play their games a little faster.  It was somewhat anti-climactic that the top two guys never made it past turn three.
Crowd- A+
This was the main attraction for me.  The best part is that despite the essentially anything goes no comp environment, people were generally pretty fair with their lists.  Aside from the round 5 guy, there was only one person in the room I heard anything negative about all weekend, despite the enourmous temptation that winner takes all formats create for some people.
Terrain- B+
There needs to be some more LOS blocking terrain, especially in the age of the laser guided cannon.  The terrain was mostly good with a minimum three color standard.  The tables were cloth over a 4x8, which was sometimes wonky.  Terrain distrobution should be a little more even, too, as some tables were essentially a couple hills and others were saturated in area terrain.  For year two, though, it was pretty solid.

Overall Experience- A-
This is essentially the west coast warhammer/40k celebrity tournament and it delivered as advertised on that front.  A couple more staff, some terrain additions, and a cleaner bathroom will put this one over the top for me.  A Fantasy Team event might be a worthy addition for Friday Night as well, though I don't know if anyone would be sober enough to play in it!  Great work Reece and the gang.