Leadership 2

Another tournament I hadn’t planned to attend until hours before I get into the car.  

Dave and Cameron roll onto my lab in  E-ville (the heart of evil) around 11:15 and I take shotgun from Cameron, my first win of the weekend.  On the drive down the three of us fall into a conversational rhythm and get through a lot of great warhammer chat, ending with a rather egocentric idea whereby we’re all convinced that there are so many great personalities in Ld2 that a year-long documentary about our group would be a thrilling watch.  It’s my first time to LA so the drive seems long but I’m excited when Dave announces at 5p.m. that we’re in LA; I immediately pop in Motley Crue and start headbanging.  One and one-half hours later we’re parking at the hotel.  Seriously?  Epic fail city planners, FML, first loss of the weekend.

I get into the hotel lobby and I’m more or less running for the free booze.  Two budlights at-a-time for one hour and I get maybe 8-10 down.  Derek is der-dunkel-bombed off his ass, I think there’s like 20 empty rum and punch glasses in front of him.  Jim Adams and Fred Whitney are goading him into whatever they possibly can and he’s senselessly screaming for Cameron the entire time.  The group gets split it up, some people go off to do whatever and Cameron and I end up in the pool with Tres Chique…he’s attacking EVERYONE.  He scares the shit out of this mom and her two girls.  The girl’s father comes out and he’s a large man.  Derek “waaghs” at them from the rim of the pool, the man scream’s back “Don’t do it buddy!”; Derek takes a flying leap at the man, I’m confident the man is going to clock him in the face in mid-air and probably knock him out.  Instead the man does the nice thing and catches Derek, just as I show up and grab him, putting myself between him and the guy.  I apologize profusely and tell Derek that we’re leaving.  I’m actually pretty upset at this point, I would have felt responsible if Derek would have gotten clobber-schnocked.  I more or less carry Derek up to the room, where he’s going apeshit and refusing to settle down.  I do the only thing I can think of and order porn…it’s awesome and I enjoy it.  Derek sobers up quite a bit throughout and says at least 5 times that he’s not comfortable watching porn with another guy…I don’t understand this sentiment but whatever.

Onto the games.

Game 1 vs. Mike Hannah’s Ogres
The guy I was supposed to play didn’t show.  There’s no way Mike’s Ogres were a compositionally fair match up against my DE but I’m not complaining.  Mike has the Tyrant and 3 Butcher tournament standard list w/o rhinox riders.  It was a closer game that I should have let it become but I ended up with a minor-win anyway.   Mike is a super nice guy.  He would later beat his own Orge list with Stacy’s goblins and then the two of them (in true Ogre/Goblin fashion) would find it impossible to figure out who won…classic.

Game 2 vs. Jim Adam’s High Elves
Jim is a quiet guy and I’ve but since we hung out a bit the night before we were both really chatty.  This scenario had the diagonal deployment.  Jim got the first turn and proceeded to roll either ItP or re-roll wounds (even shooting wounds!) for the entire game.   This ensured that his shooting put my shooting to rest early on and from then on out it was pretty much his game.  I managed to get his Dragon Princes with a series of crazy antics between my Hyrda and my chariots.  I spent the whole game hiding my CoK’s behind  a forest, tempting his White Lions + Lord to come through and get me, but Jim knew damn well that I probably had the ASF banner in there.  In the 5th turn he charged my CoK unit against his better instincts with his Lord + White Lions, I think he did it for kicks.  They then failed two stubborn 8 checks and I ran them down…ridiculous!  It gave me the draw.

Game 3 vs. Jim Murphy’s Lizards
Jim’s list looks beardy.  Slann + 2 EoG’s + temple guard.  However, he has nerfed his characters in the magic item selection, taking barely anything and leaving the skink at Lv 1.  He talked a lot about initially wanting to take a VC list but then deciding it wasn’t any fun to play an over-powered list.  I pretty much knew he was chipmunking me for comp, as even with nerfed magic items a Slann and 2 EoG’s are a BAD build.   I played this game all wrong from the get go.  I got into his temple guard in the front with the CoK’s, exactly what he wanted me to do.  Some bad dice gave me inopportune charges where I needed multiple units to get in but 2 of 3 failed their fear/terror tests or some such nonsense.  He ends up housing me pretty good.  Minor Loss for me.

Game 4 vs. Greg Ostashay’s WE
Greg went to high school with Burritos (and remembered him after a decade!).  I realize one turn into the game that WE have a great potential for abuse in the closed list gaming format.  They pack so many tricky combo’s into their list that you have literally no idea where the surprise is going to come from.  I had planned on keeping my CoK’s hidden most of the game but they go stupid in turn 1 and lumber up onto a hill.  I find out hidden trick #1 in the next round when his alter lord lets go 5 Bow of Loren/Arcane Bodkins shots into them and drops 2…dammit!  The next surprise came shortly after when the Hail of doom arrow (which I had assumed to be on the alter) came flying out of the BSB and drops my Lv4 sorceress off of her peggy and leaves her with 1 would left.  I didn’t get the dice where I needed them to save me in this game.  I spent a lot of time casting Doom and Darkness on his treeman on turns where I charged with my hydra, but only managed to pursue 2 and 3 inches (respectively) both times that I charged…motherfuck.

I decide to call it all a wash in turn 4 and just have a good time laughing it up and high fiving Greg as he tears me a knew wood-hole.  I gave him full points, we didn’t even count it up.  I hate wood elves.

Game 5 vs. Ron McLaughlin
Ron’s chaos warriors on foot.  REALLY fluffy list and really the worst possibly match up against mine.  I metal snipe his Chaos Lord on juggernaut and his BSB through the course of the game.  March block his chaos warrior block and pretty much wipe the board of everything else.  Ron’s dice were unkind to him at times but it was like ice skating uphill from the get go, he just didn’t have the movement to make the game in his favor.  Win for me.

As a whole, SoCal Slaughter is a great tourney that has some growing pains.  I think they more or less took what they perceived to be successful tournament formats (from QCR and Hillbilly) and then tried to mimic them.  If I have any criticism it’s that they seem to mimic successful formats w/o really knowing what purpose those formats serve.  Their comp ratings are fair; there are some things I would argue (like the guy winning best overall with a list that was clearly different from the list that the judges comp’d), but I respect that they take the time to do it.  The scenarios are way to impinging on the gameplay, but I’m not even sure they are privy to the debate surrounding the purpose of scenarios, blah blah blah.  The paint judging is always tricky.  I would honestly rather have a tournament use a checklist than try to have people judging paint that have no business doing so.  I think there are some great painters in the SCGWL and I would not mind at all if they had Roman and another guy do subjective paint judging.  As it stands they use the GW checklist and I’m okay with that too, everyone just needs to understand that their paint is being judged by a computer and there’s nothing that you can do about it.

It’s still a successful and fun tournament, and it’s worth going to if not for anything else than that it’s very different but it’s still 5 tough games of warhammer against really great opponents (The SoCal scene has some awesome players).   Many thanks to the Commish, Quinton, and the rest of SCGWL for an awesome weekend!

Johnny