2012 Australian Masters - Day 2

This is the second half of my account of the Masters tournament I attended last weekend. You can find the first half of it here.

Game 4: Sealed Section
Casey Tabner, Dark Elves

Supreme Sorceress, (Level 4, Lore of Shadow) with Darkstar Cloak, Talisman of Preservation
Sorceress (Level 2, Lore of Metal) with Lifetaker, Tome of Furion
Death Hag (BSB) on Cauldron of Blood
Master on Dark Pegasus with Heavy Armour, Cloak of Hag Graef, Dawnstone
11 Repeater Crossbowmen with Champion
11 Repeater Crossbowmen with Champion
39 Dark Elf Spearmen with Shields, Full Command
5 Dark Riders with Musician, Repeater Crossbows, Spears
5 Harpies
5 Harpies
29 Har Ganeth Executioners with Full Command, Banner of Eternal Flame
War Hydra
Reaper Bolt Thrower
Reaper Bolt Thrower

Comp score: 1.5/5

Casey is normally a Skaven player, but she would be using Zac's Dark Elf army against me. For my part, I had inherited Sam's Chaos Dwarfs:

Sorcerer-Prophet (Level 4, Lore of Death) on Bale Taurus with Charmed Shield, Earthing Rod, Talisman of Preservation
Infernal Castellan (BSB) with Shield, Mask of the Furnace, Luckstone
Daemonsmith Sorcerer (Level 2, Lore of Metal) with Chalice of Blood and Darkness
20 Hobgoblin Cutthroats with Full Command, Bows, Light Armour, Shields
20 Hobgoblin Cutthroats with Standard, Musician, Bows, Light Armour, Shields
32 Chaos Dwarf Infernal Guard with Full Command, Great Weapons, Lichebone Pennant
Deathshrieker Death Rocket 
Hellcannon 
K'daai Destroyer 

Comp score: 1/5

I'm not going to lie to you - when I saw the match-up and had a look at the Dark Elf army list, I figured I had no business losing this game. It was a horrible match for the Elves - the K'dai Destroyer presented a massive headache for which the army had no real answers. The shooting was unlikely to threaten it, the only spell that might hurt it (Pit of Shades) relied on it failing an Initiative 5 test, and the Executioners were flaming, so granted it a 2+ ward save. The only real chance of killing it would be Mindrazor on the Spearmen, using Mystifying Miasma AND Pit of Shades, or (maybe) knocking 3 off its Toughness with The Withering before shooting it - not an ideal scenario. The Bale Taurus was almost as bad, and the Chaos Dwarfs would be well capable of dealing damage to the Dark Elves in return. All in all, this game was a bit of a gift for me.

Game 4 deployment (well, soon after)

2012 Australian Masters - Day 1

Well the weekend is over (actually, by the time I am posting this, it's already Wednesday morning) and I survived another whirlwind trip to Canberra for this year's Australian Masters event. After a weekend with plenty of gaming, karaoke and too little sleep, I'm just a bit tired. But it's time for another tournament report - this one with more pictures than ever before! I might actually be getting better at this...

For those not familiar with the Masters, it's a tournament with a unique format. Comp scores are determined by the players, with all the lists being collated and sent out prior to the event. The 3 highest and lowest scores were discarded, and the scores were then averaged out and attached to the armies, rather than the players? Why is this an important distinction? Because in rounds 3 and 4, players use the army belonging to someone else, drawn randomly out of a hat. So for those rounds you get the comp score associated with the list you draw, rather than the one you arrived with at the start of the event. These 2 rounds are referred to as the "sealed section", and are the real distinguishing feature of the event.

I've already revealed the details of my Empire list here. It received a comp score of 2.5 out of 5, so was considered about mid-range in terms of strength. Having said that, a number of people expressed their admiration for the list going into the event, and declared that it should be strong enough for me to do well. If people were to be believed, the list had the goods. In that case the only remaining question marks were around the player...

Once more to Masters

To war!

The year's end is fast approaching, which also means we've reached the conclusion of the Warhammer tournament season. This means the Masters, which will be held in Canberra on the weekend of December 1st-2nd. That's only a week and a half away now. My strong finish to the year with Axemaster means that I've wound up ranked 3rd in the country, so I'll be making the trip for the second year running.

Rather than building an army list from scratch for the event, I decided that I might as well stick with the formula that worked well at Axemaster. I had to trim 100 points off due to the 2400pt limit at the Masters, but that wasn't too hard. This is what my list looks like now:

• Arch Lector on War Altar with Great Weapon; Heavy Amour; Shield; Talisman of Preservation; Van Horstman's Speculum
• Wizard Lord (Level 4 Lore of Light) with White Cloak of Ulric
• 1 Captain of the Empire on Barded Warhorse with Full Plate Armor; Battle Standard; Charmed Shield; Talisman of Endurance; Biting Blade
• 50 Halberdiers with Standard; Musician; Sergeant
• Detachment: 5 Archers
• 9 Knights of the Inner Circle with Lance; Shield; Standard; Musician
• 24 Flagellants 
• 4 Demigryph Knights with Lance; Shield; Standard; Musician
• Great Cannon
• Celestial Hurricanum
• Steam Tank 

My Masters Adventure

The Masters trophies on offer

Well, I have now had time to recover from the adventure that was the Australian Masters for 2011. It was the first time I have actually flown interstate for a tournament (normally we make a big road trip of it, with an extra day or so to relax whilst up there), and the whirlwind nature of the whole thing takes its toll a little. It was good fun though, and there is something to be said for being able to make a trip like this happen without having to take any leave from work.
 

So how did it go? Well, I can reveal that I did not win the event. Indeed, I didn’t even come close – I was far closer to coming last. This is a fairly novel experience for me, however with the nature of the event and there being no weak opposition, it was always a possibility. I finished in 14^th place out of 16, so I finished on the lower rungs of the anti-podium (this is probably not a thing – I just made it up).I actually did win 2 games and draw another, however the margins of my losses were far more convincing than those of my wins, and the close nature of the event meant my lack of battle points left me close to the bottom of the pile.

All of the army lists involved (including mine) can be found in the WargamerAU thread here.

My army arrayed for happy snaps

Masters preparation - time is up

Well, it's still a couple of days until the Masters, however I find myself in a situation where I am unlikely to get any more preparation done. Prior engagements, coupled with the need to fly interstate to the event on the evening before (instead of painting frantically up until the last minute) are crippling my efforts. As such, I am going to have to settle for what I've done so far.

22 Halberdiers, ready for action. Well, sort of ready. As ready as they're going to be...

 Close enough is good enough, right? Often I tend to subscribe to this phrase when it comes to painting. I am lazy, and if the thing looks finished enough, I may well leave it that way. In this case however, the models are clearly not done. What still needs to be done before they could properly be called finished (to my rather moderate standards)? 

Paints, Masters and Skyrim

It seems to be a fairly common thing for bloggers to drop off the radar for a bit, then reappear in a gush of apologies and a frenzy of catch-up activity. Well, this is me doing much the same thing. Admittedly, I wasn't gone for all that long - however, it is still the longest gap I have left so far in my postings. Real life caught up with me a little bit, and I had to spend most of my spare time preparing for a presentation I had to do. Thankfully that is out of the way now, so maybe my blog can enjoy a bit more attention...

So, what have I been doing? I have a number of things to update, so I'll put it all under some relevant headings.

Masters preparation

The Masters are this coming weekend, and my army is not yet ready. I am still in the process of painting 22 Halberdiers to pad out my regiment for the tournament, and they have a way to go yet before they will be done.

The Halberdiers progress gradually. Since I took this picture, I have added a basecoat for the white half of the uniforms to most of the models.

The lists for the other players in the tournament have been revealed, and the peer-based comp scores have been determined. You can see the lists here, on WargamerAU. It's a tough field, and in hindsight I think my army is not structured ideally to face some of these lists. This doesn't really bother me, but the proliferation of chaff was not something I had anticipated. My comp score of 3/5 is one of the better scores, so that is something. Whether it will serve as adequate compensation for what some of the armies may do to mine... Well, we shall see.

Preparing for the Masters

As I mentioned previously, this year I have qualified for the Australian Masters tournament, to be held in Canberra on the 3rd and 4th of December. That is in 3 weeks, and today is the deadline for army submission. I spent a fair bit of time umming and ahhing over what I was going to use, but I finally committed over the weekend and sent in my list last night.

I say was I trying to decide what list to use, however the army was always going to be the Empire. This is still my Year of the Empire, although the Masters represent the last tournament to which this applies. There will be nothing through until Cancon next year, and I have not made any plans for the new year. So I was definitely using Empire for this tournament, and I figured I would still to something similar to what I've been using recently. Of course, I used all-cavalry armies in the last 2 tournaments I attended - Book of Grudges and Axemaster. I considered doing it again, however I was slightly worried that people might think I was taking the piss when I'm sure some are approaching this event very earnestly. I might not be as serious about winning as some others, however I am not there to poke fun at things. I would also have been fielding a compromised army for little benefit - I doubt anyone would care about things like themed armies at this tournament, so it felt like there was little point.

A changing of the guard

The old days

Since the arrival of 8^th edition (now well over a year ago), The Warhammer Fantasy tournament scene in Australia has seen some pretty dramatic changes. 7^th edition had seen the rise and rise of the game being used in a competitive context. Player numbers were at an all-time high, with a number of tournaments attracting 100 or more players. Large numbers of players were travelling interstate in order to attend the flagship events (in fact this is really the only way tournament attendances can reach the levels we were seeing).

The Warhammer rankings (originally hosted on Irresistible Force, and now found on Rankings HQ) were unquestionably a contributing factor to the vibrant tournament scene. The rankings provided players with a way of gauging their success on a national level, and helped establish some of the front-runners as “the ones to beat”. It helped give competitive and aspiring players an idea of where they stood, and what would be required if they wanted to make it to the top.

There will always be disputes over the validity of the rankings model. There are a lot of different factors to consider when attempting to score the relative merits of one tournament over another – the main ones being the number of players and rounds, and the army sizes involved. Invariably the system will favour the players who manage to attend a number of the largest tournaments, as this tends to be where the most points are available. Whether this is fair has been the subject of debate, with the geographical location of these big events making things easier for some than others.

Leveraging the rankings system, the Warhammer Fantasy Masters is an invitational tournament held toward the end of the calendar year. The general concept is to gather the top 16 players together and have them play off to determine the champion for that year. As with all things, the implementation is never so simple as the idea. Places are held for the reigning champion from the previous year, the top-placed player in the New Zealand rankings, and the winner of a designated tournament in Western Australia (an acknowledgement of the tyranny of distance when trying to attend enough of the larger events on the other side of the continent in order to qualify in the normal manner).