WH40k Aspirant’s Tourney and Armies on Parade

It’s been way too long since I’ve been back on the horse with miniature gaming. Work has been taking way too much of my time (as is the case with real life), and while I have been painting during the year-end holidays, I haven’t had the opportunity to show any of the WIPs yet. So when this year’s 40k Aspirant’s Tourney in Gamersaurus Rex turned up last Saturday, I figured why not show up and take part? I get to show off my models, and the fact that they have Armies on Parade on that day itself seems to be a great second reason to turn up.

Here’s the list that I turned up with. Roughly 50 boys, 15 lootas, 3 deffkoptas, 1 dakkajet, and 1 Warboss in a battlewagon. It was less a tuned army and more ‘play whatever I painted recently’. And yes, I haven’t shown my painting WIPs of the battlewagon yet.

Because GR had a lot of entries this weekend, we were split into 1 divisions. One had the newer players, and the other had the more veteran, cutthroat ones. Having played in a few tourneys before, I was (sadly) relegated to the hardcore category. My first game was with Mark, who was suitably frightening. My first game with Necrons, and it was one with 10 wraiths and 3 Annihilation barges. Ouch. When the teslas melted half of my Lootas turn one I knew it was going to be an uphill battle.

I gave it the old college try and I managed to kill most of the Wraiths, and my Battlewagon managed to ram one Barge down (I think the lootas and Dakkajet took another one down). Unfortunately, it was still too much for me and I was wiped off the board.

Round 2 was a lot better. Was playing against Marcus and his combination Ravenwing/Dark Angels army. Unfortunately, he made a tactical error in getting close to the orks on turn one. I assaulted his terminators and his bikes with one unit of boys each, and I think I ended up rolling roughly 150 dice. Suffice to say his guys evaporated, and he was on the back foot after that. When my troops got to his back field, it was over and he conceded, although I believe it would have been very different if he had chosen to stay back and gun me down as my guys slogged it up the field.

We paused to take army shots of everyone’s armies. I apologize if I didn’t get everyone’s armies in here; some were still playing when I was making my way around the store. It turns out there were a reasonable number of Eldar, Tau, Orks and surprisingly enough Dark Angels.

Round 3 paired me with Nick Chan, who was rocking his killer Tau. My orks evaporated under the attention of his riptide and missile sides, and while my Lootas and Dakkajet happened to help out a little bit with the Missilesides, it was too little too late and I think I conceded around turn 3 or 4. I have to admit that I didn’t target prioritize as much as I should have, and the after battle debrief really helped me understand what I should have done. Whether I actually end up doing it in the future is of course another matter.

In the end we had 3 winners (2 each) in the divisions: Christopher Rankine (Eldar), Nicholas Chan (Tau Empire), Leon Chen (Eldar) and Jason Tan (Tyranids). I was lucky enough to snag best painted, and also I just realized that all the winners were rocking monstrous creatures.

The armies on parade were also pretty darn awesome. All of the armies were really good, and the Eldar board was especially striking. However, personally I’d probably go with Nic Wong and Zack’s armies for technical work and attention to detail. Both boards had a lot of work done to it, but if I had to make a hard call I’d go with Nic’s work, purely because it was slightly more thematic.

And that’s it for the Aspirant’s Tourney! I’ll try to write up more when I join more tourneys, but in all honesty I don’t see myself joining another one anytime soon as work is starting to ramp up again. But I REALLY hope to be able to show you my lootas and dakkajet and battlewagon, as I’m very proud of them.