A Much Better Experience

I went into Lone Wolf with trepidation. I had an abysmal experience last time I went, intent upon never returning. I now have further evidence that much of my bad experience was my fault (not all of it, but more than enough to matter).

Day One started off with a very fun game against a Forces of Nature army designed to limit others ability to do damage and heal what little damage there was. It worked well. By the time I figured it out, my army was too badly out of position and damage to do anything about it.
It was a 20-0 victory for the Forces of Nature.

The second round came against the Empire of Dust. This one hurt, not because of losing 13-7, but because I STILL regret selling my tomb kings. It was a close, fun game, but I ended up losing it in the end. Too many of my high priced units died and not enough of is died.

Game three was against the Ratkin. the final score was 17-3 rats, and it wasn't even really that close. Once again I allowed my units to be singled out and killed one by one.  I held my objective, but that was about it. he got all the other points.

In the last game of day one I played the prettiest army I saw across the table all weekend. It was a gorilla themed Herd list. My opponent won 12-8, for my closest game so far. Again, I allowed my units to be killed off piecemeal, but part of that was confusing Stampede hordes for the humans that were actually on the bases. Thinking they were cheap human regiments, I let them get into position to charge my toughest units, where they slaughtered whatever they hit. Fun yet confusing game.

Day two worked out better, starting with a 20-0 win over an Ogre force that looked to be brutal, but was unable to survive counter-charges. In the middle of my turn at the bottom of turn four, my opponent yielded, giving me a 20-0 win. We could have played it out, but I was down a troll horde and a cavalry regiment. He had a warlock and standard bearer left. The warlock had been charged by the other cavalry unit, though we had not resolved that charge yet. I held all three objectives and had all of the bonus points available.

Game six was against another Empire of Dust army, for the only repeat army race for the tournament. Bad deployment cost me dearly in the first few turns, aided by some on fire artillery on my opponent's part. I managed to pull out a 10-10 draw anyway, and I am convinced my chances to win would have been good if we'd gone to turn seven,

I need to plan my army better, for sure, and play more as well.

As to the soft scores, I got the flat rate of 64 sportsmanship, which means I had no positive or negative feedback in regard to sportsmanship. Paint is what surprised me, I scored 59 out of 80, which is by far the best score I've ever gotten. I blame the rubric the TO created to let us point out to him where we had done blending, modeling, and converting.

All in all, it was a good day.

Screw That!

So I won't be going back to Lone Wolf GT. $60 for entry, another $100 for a hotel, and two tanks of gas is a bit too much to pay for the shittiest single tournament I've ever been involved in.

A major part of the problem was my crappy performance with my crappy army. I've got no one to blame but myself for the performance of my list. I brought a soft list and played it badly. The few times I did everything right were foiled by the dice. It happens.

Another problem was I get tired of looking across the table at unpainted models. All five people I played had unfinished models on the table. 3/5 had major parts of their army unfinished and two of those had 60% or more with little or no paint at all. One of them had 2/3 of his army based black with a splash of red and silver so he could get credit for three colors in judging. He admitted as much to the paint judge.

The number of people who had bad days or weekends due to playing against those displaying abysmal behavior didn't help either. I didn't have any bad games, I just had too few good ones. One spent too much time talking smack to the organizers to pay attention to our game and one was pissy the entire game because of the way the comp scores worked. Around me, however, I saw players tantruming and throwing fits because things didn't go their way in games they were winning.

Questionable judging was the final straw. The armies that took prizes for appearance deserved their recognition. Looking down the list, there were armies that were judged far more harshly than deserved while others were given far better scores than deserved. It seems being local or affiliated with the right club was an important factor in paint judging. Two armies that had unfinished models on the table actually scored better than mine for paint. That guy with the three stripes of paint? He scored one point less than me for painting. The models he had that were painted were nice. They  weren't based. So lesson learned - based coat with a spray can, smear a couple of blotches of paint, and go. You'll get scored at mid level. Or be local. That seems to matter.

I realize that much of this is out of control of the TOs, but that last bit is on them. Judging paint is thankless and subjective, but the scores from LWGT show a distinct bias or base incompetence. Either is inexcusable.

Either way, the event left such a bad taste in my mouth that I think I'll save the money and effort next year and stay home.

EDIT: Some of the bitter has faded, and I realize much of my bad time was brought on by choices I made. Still probably not going next year.

Skellingtons invade Ft. Worth

So here we have it. The major differences in this list and previous versions is fewer skeletons, no BSB, more Tomb Guard, dropping the hierotitan and colossus for three necropolis knights and adding a light council in place of the lvl 4 death caster.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend for a couple of reasons. First, I've never been to Lonewolf GT, I hear it's a great event. Second, I've never played a comped tournament. This should be interesting. I have no illusions of winning, but I hope to at least have some good games. Finishing in the top half would be nice too. Hell, winning another game at a GT with this army would be nice. Finally, I haven't dragged out the Tomb Kings in a while other than as Undead Legions, and this looks to be a list with possibilities.

Anyway, I hope to update as the weekend goes.