Leadership 2

I roll into the hotel about 2:30 to find Derek already two Martini’s in.

We decide to head over to the venue but find it is about 2 miles away. Grabbing a town car, we find the hall and say our hello’s to the organizers. They immediately start plying Derek and I with Sierra Nevada ’s. This should have been my first hint of trouble. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think Derek even likes beer and there he is drinking as many as I am. 

We head back to the hotel and start putting a dent in the free booze, with Derek slamming down rum and punches as fast as I can get them. The rest of the crew arrives just as the free booze starts and immediatly joins in.   Needless to say, it starts getting quite boisterous, with Derek starting to get Jihadi agro. At one point in the evening, Johnny tells Betty (on the cell), “I am the voice of reason since I have only had 9 drinks”. Problem is, it was actually true. 

Deciding to start chain smoking early, I track down some cigarettes, bump into some guys from Phoenix and miss the pool shenagins. I do see Johnny dragging a soaking Derek (apparently Derek did not bother to take his socks or shirt off before going into the pool) through the lobby. When I say dragging, I do mean dragging, with the occasional body slam

The evening ends at 1 am with some of us walking through the Jack in the Box drive through and lamenting the fact that all the bars and liquor stores were closed.

Game 1 v Skaven -John
John brought a fairly typical checkerboard Skaven list with a huge unit of plague bearers. I use my magic to take out his shooting and start beating him up.  He does get the Warlord with the fell blade (and +7 CR unit) into my chosen. Eats up the Champ, then the BSB in consecutive turns but I manage to hold. He is saving a scroll for my regen spell. I manage to miscast but then get box cars. The regen saves my lord in the challenge, the chosen (with +1 AT) do there thing and I break the unit, they flee and hit the knights I had brought around the rear.

Win

Game 2 v. VC –Fernando Lopez
Fernando has one of the tamest VC lists ever. 6 casting dice. Lord with ward, hatred and balefire lance. Unit of Blood Knights, big unit of Grave Guard and Black Knights. Some wraiths as well. No helm, no book. I snipe the necro, beat down his magic, keep his Blood Knights way until I get a Rot off that destroys it. Then send the Chosen into the Grave guard with Knights into the flank.

Really fun game with a good guy. I gave Fernando my best game.

Win

Game 3 v. Demon- Tourdj
Tourdj and I had been trading beers since 9:30, so were pretty liquored up for this rematch from QCR 2008. Tourdj seemed to take a while to get going and it took us an hour to get the game started. I stood there patiently (though picking up the pace on the drinking) waiting for him to get his shit together. I manage to get the 4+ ward save on the Chosen the old fashion way-rolling Box cars on the first roll. He does a general advance, proceeds to start calling me fag and a girl for not doing the same (I know his game). I bunker the chosen and marauders on a hill on the flank. I toss spells out and use my light troops to break up his advance. I charge his general’s (Khorne Herald) bloodcrusher unit with the knights. Bad dice on my part combined with his good dice prevent my from exploding the unit, leaving me stuck with a flank exposed to a unit of Bloodletters. His next turn, the Nurgle scenario screws him, as he gets blessed, killing his general. It also kills two of my knights and takes the knight unit out the Bloodletters charge arc. We spend ten minutes arguing about this, since it was out by a good quarter inch. I finally concede to roll off, fail and have to flee from his charge. End of turn three finds the game being called for time and he only has killed the marauder fast cav (the knights rallied). We are pretty drunk and it is taking us some time to count things up. Quentin finally had to come (hall closes and we had to get out of there) over, add it up and I am declared the winner.  

Win

Pretty drunk at this point, I start drinking more, am turned away from the Jack in the crack drive through, accelerate the cig smoking, and go down about 1 again.

Game 4 v. David Lidswood Demons
Feeling shitty, I play Dave’s game 3 opponent. Bloodthirster and other general Demon nastiness. Turn 1 sees my Lord miscast, roll a 3 and kill the unit champ, wound the BSB and Lord, and knock off a couple of Chosen . Turn 2 sees my Chaos knights bounce off the flank of demonettes and are run down while my Lord miscasts again, finishes off the BSB and inflicts a second wound on the Lord. The only good thing is the remaining Chosen stand for 3 rounds of combat against the Bloodthirster and the demonettes in the flank and need to be killed to a man. 

My dice certainly raped me but I also feel I did not play a good game. Not sure if it was tourdj’s match, the glitter basing of my opponent, or maybe I let the Bloodthirster pysch me out. Who knows.

Loss

Game 5 Robert Hawk –Lizards
Fun game. Slann, huge unit of Temple Guard , another of Saurus Warriors, EoTg, skinking riding steg with warspear, lots of skinks. I manage to sink his Ancient steg with Cloying Quag and I am well on my way to cleaning him up. The chosen are standing toe to toe with the temple guard, but such a large unit is going to take some doing to kill. I made the mistake of flank charging the TG with my marauder foot. Moving my remaining fast cav to make sure the steg with the warspear does not rear charge the marauders and I set up the remaining knights for a rear charge against the Temple Guard , with the trolls posed on the other flank. I go to the bathroom and realize that I may have been with in 6” of the Steg and the Fast Cav unit did not take a terror test. With no way of knowing, I decide it is only fair that I should take the terror which I promptly fail. This is also where I hate closed lists. Someone of lesser ethics could easily have said nothing, since how does he no which is marked and which is not. Anyways, I am forced to use my Knights as a redirector now. With march blocking and a building hampering my way, the best I could do was make sure the Steg has to go through the knights to get to the rear of the marauders. I give them Terror with the Death Mage and regen. They take the charge, I have to challenge and I take 1 wound, losing by 1 (wound+outnumber v. Standard). I breathe a sigh of relief that I had given them terror and they are not auto breaking, howebver I fail both break 7 tests. Yep failed three leadership sevens in a row, any one of them would have won me the game (I had moved up more stuff to deal with steg if I could hold). Steg goes into the rear, Rapturous banner fails me and I break and flee. I need to rally on a 10, roll the 11 and hand my opponent a victory. This one I feel I played well only to get bitten by the dice gods.

Loss

Oh well. Middle of the pack finish and my BoB moment of glory is fading fast. I had a great time and the SoCal guys were great hosts.  

Other favorite moments:

• Leadership 2 seemed to be the only players awarded the goofy Khorne Krab hat, apparently awarded for being loud and obnoxious.
• Derek waking up the next morning and asking where all the bumps and bruises came from. Most were self inflicted.
• Cameron destroying a Steam Tank with Killing Blow (which I now owe him a top shelf drink).