Astronomi-con pics and thoughts

Well, after my first tournament I have lots of thoughts about things I'd do differently. First off, play more games. I kept running into trouble with not knowing rules off the top of my head, which was hard when I came across people who were unfamiliar themselves. Everybody interprets some rules differently, and you can forget that when you play against the same group of people who all play with the same understandings. Since my list was deff rolla dependant, and the rules for it are FAQ'd this was a bit of an issue. Mostly because the organizers of Astro don't recognize any FAQs except their own, including GW's. Only the errata is official in their minds, so this makes things a little difficult when you have things like the deff rolla that don't behave like everything else.

The other thing I didn't care for was that they include all imperial armour rules, including flyers. Luckly I didn't come against any, but I think that really throws the dynamic of 40k out when some players can compete against that and others can't.



Anyway, enough of that... My results were decent. I had a 50/50 win/loss ratio, and I'm sure if I were to play again I'd do better. They have different scenarios for each table, so its all about playing the mission, which I generally suck at. With a little more practice I'm sure I'll do better at those. My army score was decent and I mostly got dinged for not painting my 60 boyz up to the same standard as my elites and HQ's as well as not having a lot of conversions. My painting score was high though, so I was happy with that.

Overall it was great. The general timing of the events was ample for the points (2 hours for 1500 point games), and time for lunch. I would say that there was room for improvement at the end when we were waiting for the results (they didn't do the draw prizes or announce any painting winners until all the results were calculated). This meant that everybody had to hang around for an extra hour, which was less than ideal for those of us who had to drive home. The other thing that could be improved was the tables and terrain. They expanded the event to allow for more entrants, but this meant that a bunch of the tables were painted sheets with terrain on them. 1/3 of my games were on tables like this, so that took away from the value of the tournament, but hopefully that will be something that they change in the future knowing in advance how much interest there is for the tournament.

This guy got voted best single miniature:





Anyway, here are some pictures that I took at the event.

Highland tuft and display board

I ran out of time, but here's what I was able to do in about 45 minutes of painting with my airbrush. It could really use a clear coat of something, but I'm afraid of spraying over the foam (the paint is thin). Anyway, it'll have to do because I won't have time to work on it tomorrow. I just hope the sand doesn't come off before judging. Not that I think the display will win, but it should help my score.

I also put some final touches on my warboss and big mek. I picked up some Army Builder highland tuft and glued it on. I had to get the fantasy base pack, so only a tiny amount of tufts come with that, but I have some of the bigger packs on order.

Army display board

Here's my work in progress for a quick and dirty display that I plan on using for Astronomi-con this weekend. Just some foam hills on a piece of wood. My army basically covers the whole area, so I don't really have any room to add emblishments, which is ok because I don't have time to make or paint them ether. I should note though that it is semi-magnetized. There is magnetic paint under the sand, and each of my orks (and 3 of the 4 battle wagons) have magnets on their bases. This makes things a little more sturdy, and I carry most of the army around in an old metal tool case.

I used the foam cutter in miniwargaming.com's terrain building room. A video about how fireman Tim built it can be found here. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm beginning to think of ideas for a table I'd like to build for the club.

1500 pt Battlewagon list

Here's a list I'm considering for the upcoming Astronomi-con tournament in Oakville (May 1-2). I'd like to use my orks since there will be too many space wolves and the new blood angels codex hasn't been out long enough.

Anyway, I've got 4 battle wagons, and with the new ork faq I think the deff rolla is the thing to have. I'm also a strong believer in ork boyz, so here's what I've come up with. C&C would be most welcome.

HQ
warboss, power klaw, attack squig, skorcha, bosspole
-110
big mek, kustom force field, bosspole
-90

Troops
20 shoota boyz, one upgraded to nob with power klaw, boss pole
-160
20 shoota boyz, one upgraded to nob with power klaw, boss pole
-160
20 shoota boyz, one upgraded to nob with power klaw, boss pole
-160
11 shoota boyz, trukk, red paint job
-106
3 mega nobz, 1 skorcha, 1 rokkit, battlewagon, deff rolla, red paint job, boarding planks
-254
Deff dread, +2 dccw
-105

Heavy support
Battle wagon, deff rolla, red paint job, boarding planks
-120
Battle wagon, deff rolla, red paint job, boarding planks
-120
Battle wagon, deff rolla, red paint job, boarding planks
-120

total: 1496