So I had a pretty damn good time too.

At the end of the day I did better than last year (which I am supper happy about) even though I didn't hit my goal of making it into the top 50.

I ranked:

100th Best General = 1-2-2
52nd Best Sportsmanship = Game two ended very poorly
36th Best Painted = It helps making a little sign like the real contenders
Comp Score 8 = Fluffy savage orcs. My two giants were compensated by my two frenzied shaman (which I probably won’t do again… people at Hillbilly took full advantage of them being frenzied and watching your shaman charge a fully ranked block of tomb guard makes baby Mork cry)
61st overall = I’m in the top 50% even if I have yet to break the top 50.

I’ll have massive amounts of pictures for Jay to push to the website when he gets back from NC, but until then, words will have to suffice.

We started drinking in the air to Dallas. Jay ordered six Sky vodka’s to start and then we just kept on drinking until they was no more vodka left on the plane. We were all smiles and giggles. So much so that our stewardess gave Jay two bottles for free. Good times.

After we touched ground, we tried to get a shuttle together to go to the hotel. Unfortunately our Dallas-to-Little Rock flight crew snuck onto the van and took at least half of the seats. Sanders, Wade, and I waited for another 20 minutes in 90 degree hit and some ridiculous amount of humidity for the next shuttle.

The shuttle arrived and we were off. Before we got to the hotel we stopped at the most ghetto liquor store I have ever been to. (We needed to stock up on booze so we would have libations come Sunday when the entire state goes dry.) You walk into the store only to find that you are trapped inside a room the size of a walk-in closet made of iron bars and bullet proof glass. You basically place your order with the girl and she slides you your booze through an open slot in the ballistics glass. Our choices were limited. The finest bourbon was Jim Beam and their idea of an import beer was Corona. We weren’t too picky, as with the heat, humidity, and Sander’s “Growing up as an Arky” childhood stories, everything just seemed to click.

We dropped our gear off at the hotel, checked out the venue, said hello to old friends, and then hit the Flying Saucer.

It was awesome.

Our waitress was the same one we had last year, only this year she had a fake tan and was wise to our ways so the drinks came even faster!

Shane spent most of the evening trying to get pictures of her skirt. He never got a money shot, though his movie of the Sanders v. Halliburton car bomb and Jay’s moment of ill repute were particularly choice.

Everyone had a blast… too much so if you ask me as it was only Friday night. Heck, even Todd was doing car bombs! In the end Jay had probably drank at least six pitchers and ended up dancing with his pants off, Joe played the field until he got someone half his age to go home with him, and everyone else was barely able to stumble home on their own power.

Waking up on Saturday morning was painful. Wade and I grabbed some free food at the executive lounge (the hostess looked like Maya Rudolph from SNL) and headed down to the venue. We met up with Jay on the elevator. It looked like he had been beaten... or stung by a hundred bees... or was in the processes of fighting off serious alcohol poisoning. His face was so red and swollen I was actually worried. He laughed and was in good spirits, so I figured everything was ok and we didn’t need to go to the hospital but could go play some Warhammer instead.

Game One
It was me v. Eric Lenz. I challenged him to a change-your-name duel thinking he played Dark Elves and I could get him to correct his name with ease. As things turned out, he was playing Wood Elves. Jay promptly changed my name in his phonebook to Lenz. I protested that we hadn’t played the game yet, but in my heart of hearts knew that Savage Orcs v. Wood Elves was going to turn out badly.

Thankfully it didn’t! Eric had a fair number of tree spirits who couldn’t flee, and the troops that could flee I could wound with my oh-so-sad S3 troops. It was a close game, but I was able to do damage to all of his units, even the eternal guard… sometimes with me getting charges off, but most of the time with Eric hitting me and bouncing off in despair. Thankfully my boars and his dancers spent the game looking at each other, both afraid to commit. His dancers could have really torn me up. It also helped that I captured Ruby on Turn 1 with wolfriders and he was forced to shoot them (and her) to pieces which assured me a +500 swing.

Game Two
This one was weird. It was Orc v. Orc to start with. Jim Livers had a funky list with a bit of everything in it and a really strange general combo… a lvl 4 shaman on a wyvern.

I had a good game with him, and as a point of note, for the first time ever, my general got 8 St 8 attacks, but there were a number of rules disputes. I let all of them go, which in retrospect I shouldn’t have. Things like frenzied charges taking place even if a character had already charged out of the unit, or splitting frontage v. maximizing models actually did have big effects on the game.

I didn’t care at the time, but when the game was over on turn 5 and he didn’t give me the bottom of turn 5 I thought it was pretty crap. Particularly because he used turn 5 to set up some really risky attacks so he could fulfilly the mission objectives and get +400 bonus points by killing one of my shaman. Well, it would have been risky if I was allowed to get a turn 5 to respond to his moves… but I didn’t. I asked if he would at the very least simply let me rally my troops that I choose to flee with during the top of the round and his response was basically, “Sorry cuz, games over”.

That was true, but honestly this was my first game where a player was not allowed to finish the round. Worse, I got the sense that he knew what the time was like the entire time and that he had no intention of giving me the bottom of the round. Adding up score at the end was frustrating and the game ended in a draw thanks to his big points moves in the final round. I gave him a three on the sportsmanship scale… another big mistake, but I was trying to be nice as honestly the game was pretty fun up until the very end when it out of nowhere it collapsed into a pile of shit.

Game Three
This game rocked. I was up against Dayvn and a Nurgle list that looks very very close to the one I’d like to play aside from his chariot and Great Unclean One. He massed everything in the center of the board in an attempt to camp the outhouse (objective) and I threw my boyz into the center to meet him and my cav around the flanks to get some flanks and rears latter in the game.

It was a slugging match everywhere on the table, with my boyz getting the best of things in the center and his plagueriders and chariot performing better than my cav. My magic made up the difference, with the “You’re Units 6s are now 1s” “Gork will fix it” spell being the MVP of the game. It played havoc with his plagueriders and later with his GUO… forcing him to never cast again after he miscast with a roll of 1, 5, and 6.

In the end he was fighting me with the GUO but I had a flank on him with my general tossing out 7 S7 attacks with hatred every turn... both of us cleaning out about a rank of rank and file each turn but scared to go into combat with one another. We ended in a draw, (thanks to clever wound management on his part… a great lesson learned btw).

This was my favorite game of the tourney and I gave Dayvn my vote.

Game Four
Joe Rogers has an absolutely beautiful Dogs of War army decked out with Lustrian campaign conversions that was truly a work of art. I lucked out and got to play him in round four. My dice were ridiculously cold though and I didn’t have much of a chance. His magic worked against me (he had a lvl4 and and lvl 2 so it should have) and my magic worked against me (I am playing Orcs after all… it happens). Even though my magic phase was turning into more or less an additional magic phase for Joe, it was a really close game until his ogre/maneater combo broke through my left flank and then rolled up my center. It was a horrible loss but a fun game all the same. Even better, Joe is from Wisconsin so he could talk trash to Eric Lantz (formerly Lenz) about how easy I was to beat on their ride home. Yes, they drove to the Hillbilly. Fear.

Game Five
Mark Burr ran a good looking Tomb Kings army with nothing fancy, only one scorpion, and a bone giant for show. He still beat me up something fierce. To be fair, the game was actually swinging in my direction for three turns. I had rolled up his left flank with boar boys, smashed through his center with the savage orcs, and had gotten my giant into a Mexican standoff with his giant as both of us sat and watched each other unwilling to commit until the other did first.

On turn four though, he beat one of my big blocks with a combined scorpion/tomb king/general magical charge, then overran 11 inches into my rear… the scorpion connecting with my goblin shaman and the tomb king’s unit ending up 7 inches away from where my savage orc shaman where doing their best to keep pace trying to dispel the damned Tomb King bound magic. 7 inches was too close, so both shaman charged the tomb guard on turn four, and with only two dispel dice to my name the game went poorly for the orcs from that point on.

Mark was a great guy though, and even though we called a judge over to tell me I couldn’t wheel in a Waagh (with no enemy in sight) I thought he was a perfect sportsman, played a fluffy army, and was a pleasure to play with.

Sunday night we played werewolf and drank a lot but in a low key manner. As low key as a typical heavy drinking Thursday night at Pacific Coast Brewery... only the hotel staff had to speak with us about the curse words as our generic trash talking was offending the girl who worked the graveyard shift at the front desk.

My luggage got sent to Chicago on the flight home and had to fly back to Oakland that evening. Never, ever, do anything other than keep your figs in carry-on. My stinky clothes finally showed up at 11:30 last night. AA told me they would be delivered that night, but lol, 11:30 is ridiculous.