Curis got some Epic Squats. And then we all went out for curry. Those sentences are not the wrong way round.
Yes, the 2011 Epic UK Championship season has officially started with Full Scale Assault this weekend gone. Manchester’s gaming collective Flame On swamped it with their finest tactical brains. And Curis.
Left-to-right: Curis, Bob (3rd place), Si and Mike (Best Army – Judges’ Choice)
Si’s Shadow Scorpions
It was a time of extreme experimental lists. Si took his Shadow Scorpions Marine force (as Black Templars) and mounted everything in a Battle Barge. Battle Barges are only able to turn up on from the third turn onwards (at the end of which you determine victory conditions). It’s very last minute. It also gives his opponents two turns to manoeuvre however they so please to prepare for the scary orbital drop.
Simon adopting his extremely coy and lovable expression. We chalk this one up to sleep deprivation.
It’s also a very risky tactic as if the opponent has a strategy rating of 5 (one flavour of Eldar, all loyalist Marines) and a spacecraft of their own then all they have to do is win the strategy roll for picking spacecraft arrival turns to force the Shadow Scorpion Battle Barge to arrive turn 4 and thus not at all. Instant win. Luckily this didn’t happen. Si says:
The Battle Barge list wasn’t as one-dimensional as feared but it was very rock/paper/scissors. Against a slow moving defensive army (IG) I could predict where he’d be and let the drop do the damage – it wasn’t pleasant. Against fast aggressive armies (everyone else…) they could easily move to the ‘middle ground’ away from any likely landing site then use their speed to engage my landed troops at a place and time of their choosing. Without the advantage of the Deathwinds, bombardment and close enemy to assault – a unit of Devs or Tacticals is very fragile to engagements or sustained shooting.
I’m glad I took the Battle Barge list as I was becoming jaded to the cookie-cutter Marine list and want to try all the stuff that people have written off in theoryhammer. Of course, they write if off in theoryhammer usually with good reason.
I’d also like to tell you all that on the drive down we stopped to allow Si to place a serious orbital bombardment on some hedges. We’ve never seen him eat any food so what we was actually throwing up is anyone’s guess.
Bob’s Black Templars
But speaking of instant wins, Bob (also playing Black Templars) managed to win his second game without deploying a single model. Bob takes an incredibly aggressive “balls-on-the-road” Black Templar army that orbitally drops in turn one. Classically the mohawked man anticipates where his opponent will deploy his most expensive formation and focusses all his fury at it until it is dead. Aware of this extreme tactic Rug, his Imperial Guard adversary, clumped every formation together in a tight huddle so his most most expensive formation couldn’t get picked on without most of its friends being on hand.
Unfortunately, unbeknown to Rug, Bob had already plotted his Strike Cruiser’s Orbital bombardment at the exact co-ordinates as Rug’s big clump of Imperial Guard.
Before the Deathwind Drop Pods had landed and the army had deployed there was so much devastation Bob and Rug decided to call it a 5-0 perfect victory there and then. A game over in a single shot. A single shot from a model that wasn’t even on the table. Or anywhere, as Bob doesn’t actually own one.
Bob romped to 3rd place in the Epic UK Championship,
Curis’ Warlord Marines
Curis took a mighty Warlord Titan, the most expensive model available to an Imperial player. These are seldom seen at 3,000 points as they eat up so many points you’re left with a massive activation disadvantge. People out-activate you then run rings around the lumbering Warlord with its 15cm move.
Curis, smirking at his opponent. In his sleep-deprived state little did he realise his opponent had walked off some twenty-minutes earlier.
To compensate for this Curis made every other formation as cheap as possible – Scouts, Speeders, Thunderhawks, Thunderbolts and Assault Marines. This meant sourcing sixty Assault Marines (special thanks to Evil & Chaos) which come 9pm Friday night were still on their sprues. However, at 5am they looked like this.
And Mike and other things
Mike Mee had also left his painting last minute, and sickeningly won Judge’s Choice for Best Army. Congratulations Mike.
Special thanks to the chap who took all these photos.
The ever-avuncular Mephiston also gifted Curis with a collection of Epic Squats, swelling the ranks of his Golgothans with a second Land Train, Colossus and swathes of Gyrocopters. Look out for them.
Here’re Mephiston’s Blue and Orange Space Marines. Blue and Orange.
The day was finished off by the suitably epic prog blasting of The Octopus, which Curis has now learnt all the words to and performed them at maximum volume to keep Flame On awake for the entire journey back. Brief pauses were made to critique each other’s Grassman impersonations.
The next event is Into the Breach in March. What to take?
Curis, you know that speaking for one’s self in the third person is one of the first signs of schizophrenic megalomania? Thus spake the might Antipope!!!
Looks like a fun event. I didn’t realise that was Bob’s hair on the first picture. I thought it was a bunch of twigs arranged on the wall behind (who knows with modern art these days). Looks like the Flame On people did it again!
Curis was not aware of that.
Curis will suggest to the Working Men’s Club the event was held at that they girl-up with twiggy wall decorations. Then he will run away quickly.
I always wanted to play epic. But my original gaming group opted for WFB when we expanded from 40K. When it was re-released with the giantest titan ever, my friend put together a huge ork army. I was supposed to do Chaos, but the models came out slowly and I was a starving student. Now I’m just starving.
I don’t relish the painting of the wee guys, especially if I did orks, but if I had money to burn I’d scour eBay and what have you and assemble an army. I think there are a few people who play in Van. I gotta get myself a regular gaming group again.
Thanks for the photos and tales of glory.
I find the 6mm infantry really quick to paint, it’s assembly that’s the chore as I like basing them on something other than the strips. Which means cutting of their discs without slicing away their feet. Again and again and again.