Surprising Tournament Results

[Denzark]

OK chaps

Recently i went to a 1-dayer tournament at my wargames club in Huntingdon. I took IG, at 1750pts. The TO allowed printed DH codex so I cheesed it with 2 mystics and a inq/psychic hood for a bit of psy defence.

16 players, I came 5th. I bring this up because of some interesting dynamics.

1st place, Spacewolves with 2 15 strong squads of big hairy wulluffs backing up a wolf-borne lord and Canis. They got up close very quickly, backed up by 10 ml longfangs, and minimum troop squads. This was my only loss so quite happy at the fact he was the winner.

2nd place, Orks. 4 x Deffrolla Battlewagons, with bigmek field things. No finesse as I'm sure you can imagine, I was happy to watch my Pask Vanq pick some off, for a draw.

3rd - can't remember.

4th. Now, this will interest. One of the younger guys at the club came up after his first game. 'How did you get on?' I said. 'bad' he replies. Goes on to say, the entire army was terminators. 'What, Wolf Guard' I asked. No came the answer. Probably confused by the fact they were painted Ultramarines, it was actually Deathwing! I think they only did so well because everyone was so surprised they were still around!

Amusingly, the wooden spoon winner won most sporting, and also best army for his Black Templars - another surprise contender (no necrons, WH or other surprises although I got to drown Eldar pansies in fire).

So what were my 'lessons identified?'

1. When BoLS et al go on about the metagame, remember it really means the North American continent - things go a little different here (and other places I am sure.)

2. When it comes to set up, think carefully! A good setup particularly the objectives, goes a long way, particulalrly with new 5th edition codexes and similar skilled players, the set up is key as tie breaker.

3. Follow the objectives. I won my last game by parking a weaponless LR on top of the objective and chaging a 10 man IG inf squad at no lesser person than Shrike - 5 IG walked away victorious!.

4. Redundancy in troops - and if you can, reserve them to stop them getting wacked out.

As I said, I wouldn't necessarily share this except for some random army choices including a rare Deathwing sighting.

[DrLove42]

Yeah i've got a double tournie in a month or 2 in Bournemouth. The meta game of heavy meching, melta spam whatever our american cousins talk about on here doesn't really exist over here

And personally i think we brits are better for it. The game plays better without it.

[Spiv]

I field the Deathwing, quite successfully. I'm happy that he did so well; they are hard to field because you waste so many points on the troops, but they need minimal back-up other then anti-tank weapons (if you don't tank cyclones).

I wish it wasn't so metagame here in N.A. I would love to play in that kind of tournament setting.

[BuFFo]

1. When BoLS et al go on about the metagame, remember it really means the North American continent - things go a little different here (and other places I am sure.)

Wrong.

When the BoLS guys talk about metagame, they talk about Austin only, NOT North America AT ALL. If anything, they can talk about the meta game of a Specific tournament for a specific year, like Astronomicon 2010, and that is it.

I am glad you finally realized this, but many of us BoLs followers have known this for quite a long time, have voiced this many times, and are generally ignored as far as BoLs is concerned.

Take, for instance, every time Goatboy posts on his his articles about a unit he says will be the next big thing, or a unit that no one uses, or a unit that is under the radar. PRO TIP - The majority of the responders to hose posts already knew these things. Just because BoLs is actually BEHIND the metagame ball, that doesn't make it's readers the same.

It is like BoLs think they invented Lascannons or Devestator, lol....

[DarkLink]

Also, results like these aren't uncommon in smaller, local tournaments. I play Grey Knights, and tend to do very well in our local tournaments.

It's when you have events like 'ard boyz, where every player there is very skilled and has lots of experience and has a well honed list, that you start to see trends in the armies that win.

It's a matter of statistics. Locally, there is big variation in player skill, what types of lists are taken, and what armies are taken. A skilled DH player can beat an unskilled IG player (like I did my last game, though I admit that was due to a few key lucky moments, and that my opponent wasn't unskilled). But when everyone is skilled, and has optimized lists, what army they have becomes a much more significant variable, and has a much greater influence on the final result.