ETC 6 Nations Day 2

Wales: Full of rugby fans, sheep and some sound 40k players.

Its the day after and the dust has settled and most of the lads who travelled over to Cork will be on the way back home about now. Congratulations to the English lads that won it, just taking it from the Welsh by a point. I'm pretty sure they had tonnes of VPs to spare if it came down to a tie-breaker though. War.org has the results.

I just have to say that it was savage and I'm looking forward to the weekend in Switzerland. A big shout out to the Welsh boys for making a weekend out of it - including standing in a park until half 11 drinking beer and gin with orange juice. Classy. Or as the lads would say: Tidy.


Onto the games on Day 2.


Game 4 v Wales.
Primary: Kill Points
Secondary: 3 Objectives (1 in the centre, 1 within 6" of each table edge)
Deployment: Dawn of War

I got drawn with Gary Morgan's Eldar. Mech Eldar. With 2 Seer Councils and Holo-fields. That's a lot of re-rolls. They conspired to dick me for a few turns and I was onto a loser on turn 5. Turn 6 rolled around and I managed to Immobilise a Falcon, charge it and tear off all of its guns.

That's 4 Rockets from Long Fangs, 2 Meltas from Grey Hunters, 5 Krak Grenades auto-hitting, 6 S6 attacks auto-hitting and 3 Fist attacks auto-hitting and I tear off 3 guns and I was down by 3 KP and just trying to claw back points for the team. Turn 7 rolled around and I completely stole the game back.

The Falcon in combat was wrecked in the Eldar turn and the DAVU squad pinned while the Eldar shooting phase was successful. Too successful in fact as a unit of Hunters on the right objective were shot, lost 3 grunts, failed their Ld test and fled 9". Savage - just what I needed. They auto-rallied 3", moved 6", and I was back on the objective. Then I realised there was an easy KP in it: a 6-man unit of Dire Avengers were within 6" of them. In they went, and the 3 lads killed 2 and the squishy Eldars ran away.

The DAVU on the left were mangled aswell and my jaw dropped when Gary told me that I'd tied the game at 5KP and won the secondary with 12-8 the final score. Some of the lads present started to piss themselves laughing when they saw my reaction but all I could think about was the lovely 12 points I'd picked up. If you read this Gary, I owe you a pint in Montreaux.

Round 5 v England
Primary: Capture & Control
Secondary: Kill Points
Deployment: Pitched Battle


At this stage it was England 7 points, Ireland 6, Wales 6, Scotland 2, the Nordies 1 and the poor Barbars 0. I was thrown into the ring with Harry Allen's Battlewagon Orks and had no idea what to do with it. I had 6 Meltas, 3 of them 1-shot, 4 Rockets and 2 combat monsters with S10 that would realistically only hit on 6's.

I won the roll to go first and took it. I plopped the Fangs on my right, a Rhino squad to their left behind a forest, the Wolfblob (TWC + Fenris Wolves) in the centre and 2 Rhinos on the left with the objective bang in the left-hand corner.

Harry popped his in the far right corner, and shielded it with his Wagons and Killa Kans with a Dread in the left corner. He sat there shifting a few inches for 3 turns gunning down the Fangs before chasing after the Wolfblob in the middle and catching them after 5 turns when I only managed to move 10" in 2 turns through terrain. Harry gunned down all the Wolves netting himself another KP before dumping out a Mega-armoured Warboss with 5 Meganobs, 4 Meganobs and 19 Orks with a Power-Klaw Nob and multi-charging 3 of the now IC (according to ETC rules) HQ choices. He killed 2 of them, wounded the Claw Lord once while I wounded the Warboss twice, killed 2 Nobs and drew combat.

The Claw Lord was the man of the hour passing 7 out of 8 Invul saves with his Storm Shield and tying up about 1/2 of Harry's Orks. I was still well down on KPs but thankfully the game continued to turn 6. I multi-charged (this will get its own post here detailing this as I had an argument with Mike Tangney about where to go) with 2 units of Grey Hunters (that had spent 3 turns chasing the Dread) and the Bear Lord that had been left out in the initial charge. The Meganobs fluffed their attacks, the Bear Lord mulched the Nobs, the Claw Lord bagged the wounded Warboss and the Orks needed snake eyes to pass. They didn't and ran off.

Cue me punching the air - 4 KP at once and another from a GH squad that had popped a Wagon that turn put me one ahead. Harry, in fairness to him, threw himself forward and Deathrolla'd the Claw Lord, and punished me for forgetting to move one of my Rhinos and he glanced it to death when I was hoping it would detonate from the Nob's Power Klaw.

The end result was a 10-10 draw as a result. Had I moved the Rhino it probably would have been 12-8 but I can't really complain as Harry had the game by a country mile on Turn 5 before it dragged on and it was my own fault for being sloppy. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway as England got 2 20-0's (one against our stand-in Guard player who hadn't played in a while) which gave them enough points for a win and the tournament.

I had a great laugh over the course of the weekend and I was surprised that I was able to hold my own against lists that I thought would wreck me altogether. I found that I did miss the Rune Priest's 4+ and more Long Fangs alright but I was pleased to step out of my comfort zone and hold my own with an unconventional (read: a bit crap) list. I'll be following this up with a few more detailed Batreps with pics and pointers. I'm just waiting for some pics from Nick and they'll be up in a few days or so.

The Home Nations gave me an idea of how the whole team thing happens and given me a taste for the real thing in August. I'm really looking forward to the ETC now.