The NOVA Open, Part 4

Here we are.  I was placed in the 3^rd Bracket which is the second bracket of players with a 3-1 record.  This bracket was quite fine with me, as the 2^nd bracket, for players with the same record but a higher number of battle points had something like 6 out of 16 armies with Knight Titans.  My bracket, however had players like Andrew Gonyo (His army was my worst matchup I think ), Marc Parker and Jesse Newton

Bracket Game 1, vs Alex's Necrons and the only game I did not enjoy of the event ( and judging by the sportsmanship score he gave me, he didn’t either. )  Actually, the game started fine, we were both having fun, until in turn 3 he missed a 5 inch charge that would've given him 1^st blood and possibly the game.  Missing that charge, the fun dude I was playing against for 3 turns turned into captain jackass.  He then proceeded to complain the rest of the game to whoever was nearby about losing the game, my dice rolls  (  The fact that I missed 3 summons in a row clearly was not mentioned, but me succeeding 1 IWND and 3 FNP was a tragedy )  We’ve all been there.  I won by a bunch of points, because at some point he was so busy bitching and thinking that I was a scrub who didn’t know how lucky I was, he forgot to read the scenario and allowed me to shark him out of more points while I joked around with his friends.  
Greetings from the untamed north, bro.

Being somewhat unfamiliar with top tables and what not, I was hoping the other games would not turn like this.

Bracket game 2, versus Brad with the awesome tattoo and a Necron army ( Again with the freakin’ robots man! ) 

His army featured Anrakyr, Obyron and an immortal Deathstar teleporting across the board, as well as a Scarab/Spider farm. 

My turn one, I charged a 5-Wound, IWND, Invisible, Iron Arm, Warp Speed, Enduranced Grimoired Daemon Prince with Balesword at the death star ( Yes, it’s exactly like playing the Hulk, but with more fart noises ) hoping to catch a quick first blood, but sadly, even with the Fateweaver re-roll I failed my mindshackle roll, and did nothing.  He teleported out, and the hulk went on to kill an Annhil Barge that was left a little too close. 

The rest of the game was mostly my princes trying to complete the other secondary objectives while I spawned more troops in my half and Brad spawned more Scarabs on his.  I won 12-8

My bracket game 3 was versus the infamous Marc Parker. 

It was 10:45am and let me tell you that we were already deep in some serious trash talking action.  How deep?  As deep as where Marc puts…you get the picture  This game on the Torrent of Fire live stream would’ve been rated R, I invoked prison rules while slamming my fist on the table well before turn 2, and Marc had to flash his pistol in a very Big Lebowski-esque way. 

All this aside, Marc was on the back foot the whole game for not rolling the “infiltrate” warlord trait.  In some other missions, it would have been fine without it, but this was a mission which heavily favoured my army from the start.  Having infiltrate meant I’d actually have to do something in the game rather that just snipe one unit.  My score sheet is below, as you can see in the “how many points did you destroy“checkbox, doing nothing is a valid tactic sometime.  Shenanigans aside, Marc is a great guy and I really hop to play him again in a more bloodthirsty mission.

Bracket finals, vs Justin and his 5 Knights Army.

I was feeling good about this game, as both the matchup and scenario were favoring me.  My game 7 win with 35 points killed could be outclassed with my round 8 win with 0 points killed.  Despite this achievement, I figured I’d roll on Biomancy with one prince to try to get Iron Arm and maybe pull a Vector Strike lucky hit or time a charge to score some actual points.  The only part of this whole paragraph that worked was me rolling Iron Arm.  Yeah.

The game itself is what my buddies at home call a classic me game.  Rolling total crap with those cubes.  In Turn 1 and 2, I failed at casting summoning 4 times out of 6 with 8 dice each time.  Turn 3 I failed twice with 6 dice.  Also on turn 2, my biomancy daemon prince managed to perils while casting Iron Arm on 2 dice, rolling a 2, and lost Iron Arm.  Way to go magic.  This is pretty much how the game went down.  I manage to scrape 8 points, but had no way of stopping Justin from getting 13 and winning the bracket.  Sometime you wat the bar, sometime the bar eats you as they say.

Aftermath and closing statements:

6-2 is what I said I’d be happy with, and I am more than delighted with this score, as I got to the finals of a nasty 3-1 bracket.  On the hobby side of things, I was top 5 in painting and won the Fan Favorite award for my big gooey guys.  Speaking of big guys, my Ogryn, Capt Jack, got 1^st cut in the painting competition and got a lot of laughs and great reactions from everyone, including Dave Taylor, the man who’s army got me into wargaming when I saw it at the back of a White Dwarf when I was 10 years old.  NOVA truly was a great event and I will add it to the list of tournaments to attend.