Last weekend I went to a function room over a pub in Tamworth to attend No Surrender 2: The Corruption. As previously mentioned, this was a narrative tournament/get together for Moarhammer patrons. I brought Nipper and da Boyz along with the intention of having a laugh and maybe getting him to survive a single game of 40k. One of those two things happened.
It's worth noting a few things before diving into a 'report'. The tournament itself was a 1250 point knock out 16 person thing, all missions were Cleanse and Capture, and there were some restrictions, such as no special characters and no use of command points for the re-roll stratagem! The dice gods will was not to be second guessed. However, around this were several other games being played out, including some Killteam on the pool table. Another quirk of the event was that we were encouraged to wear very loud shirts - in fact, I think not wearing one would cost you a victory point in each game! As a result, the room looked like this:
As a reminder, my army had a Warboss, Weirdboy, Nobz, Tankbustas, Trukk, 30 Sluggas, two units of 10 Shootas and Nipper, the Gargantuan Squiggoth.
Chris got first turn, moved up to the middle with the melee stuff, blasting Nipper with the Tyrannofex. The Prime/Hormagants and the Lictor started off the board. The 'stealers went for a long first turn charge but failed. I retaliated by moving the Boyz and Nobz up to take on the Genestealer/Broodlord/Tyrant blob, while Nipper moved in to chomp on a Trygon. There was much blood on both sides, but after a couple of turns I managed to clear that lot out while picking up some objectives along the way.
On Chris' turn 2, the Lictor turned up to try and assassinate Durrork the Weirdboy, while the Trygon Prime dug in in an attempt to charge Nipper (who again took heavy damage from the Tyrannofex.) The Lictor made the charge, dealing 4 wounds to the psyker, but his 6+ 'feel no pain' for being a Snakebite saved him. Importantly the Trygon failed to make it, leaving it exposed to a big angry squig...
Though Nipper and many of my boyz had fallen, I was far ahead on objectived and Chris didn't have much left. Warboss Redtoof led the last of the Nobz and slugga boyz to clear up the Tyrannofex, while the Shootas did for the injured Trygon and eventually the Hormagants. This left just the Ripper swarms, who eyed up a charge on the, now one wound remaining, Warboss. They made it in, but failed to scratch through his armour, and in response Redtoof squashed most of them with his klaw, letting his pet squig eat the last of them. Victory for Da Boyz!
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Redtoof marched through the undergrowth, surveying the battlefield. The lush jungle was slick with blood and ichor, and the only sounds that could be heard were gunfire and shouting. Though Nipper had been laid low, partially from his wounds, and partially from indigestion, this had been a success. Nothing that wasn't an Ork or a Squig was left alive.
"Dis was a gud fight lads! And plenty of meat left if yer wannit!" He bellowed, pointing at the alien gun-beast, one of the many huge corpses that now lay among the trees. As he walked he casually stepped on the dissolving body of an Ork that had been standing too close to an acid sac that ruptured as the gun-beast had died. He looked down at the still whimpering, mortally wounded form. "Run it off, yer weedy git."
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Game 2. This time against Daniel, who was kind of the odd one out, as rather than being a Moarhammer person, he is one of the organisers of the local club that helped to supply tables, scenery etc. In other words, he was a legend, and well deserving of a special spot in the event. As an aside, at the end a battle mat and some bits were donated to his club on our behalf as a thank you, which I thought was pretty cool. Anyway, he was running a Genestealer Cult list that he had painted up specially in time for this tournament. He had: Magus, Abominant, Sanctus, Kelermorph, Biophagus, Iconward, Aberrants, Purestrains, a small unit of Acolytes, two units of Neophytes, Brood Brothers, a Ridgerunner and a Leman Russ. He was using the Bladed Cog trait.
I started moving up the board, claiming some objectives and not achieving much in the shooting phase thanks to some poor rolls, and great saves from the cultists. (The big shootas doing more damage than Nipper's Big Zzappa or Supa Lobba was a common theme of the event.)
Things got interesting when the ambushing units turned up. Genestealers charged the big mob of Orks using the Perfect Ambush stratagem, while the Aberrants and Abominant popped up among the buildings, but failed to charge Nipper. The Purestrains took down some boyz, but they didn't last long against the counter attacking Orks.
In my turn Nipper got into the Aberrants, while Redtoof charged up the wall to face down the Abominant and his big hammer. The Warboss attacked first, reducing the Abominant to a single wound. The Aberrants paid to interrupt, but whiffed enormously and only managed to deal 3 wounds to Nipper. The Abominant promptly followed their lead and failed to hit Redtoof with any of his attacks! I paid the command points to fight again, to make sure, and the Abominant went squish, earning me many points for slay the warlord and Kingslayer.
In the next turn the Sanctus popped in the stab up the Weirdboy (which he did) and the Kelermorph revealed himself to kill the Warboss (which he didn't.) Both were quickly killed by nearby Orks. The rest of the game was a race against time as my Boyz cleared up the last of the cultists while the vehicles and heavy weapons pounded on Nipper. Down to just the Leman Russ left, Daniel managed to strip the last wounds off to drop Nipper before I could tie up the tank and eventually blow it up.
Another convincing win for the Boyz, but we definitely benefited from the dice on this one.
___Redtoof used his powerklaw to punch through the masonry and pull himself up the previously white walled building. Now, like much of the battlefield, it was covered in blood and soot. He grunted slightly as he clambered onto the roof, before clambering to his feet. A bullet wound in his left leg was leaking blood alarmingly, but it didn't seem to bother him. From here he could see the rest of the abandoned city. No sign of a mysterious orb, but plenty to show of a good fight.
"Gud wun lads! Da sneaky-squig-oomies didn't see dat coming!" Redtoof laughed, watching as his remaining boyz raised their choppas or fired their shootas into the air. Not so much meat around this time, but plenty of scrap to patch up Nipper's howdah. He looked down at his would-be assassin, a three armed creature in a cloak, now covered in blood. The creature had been hiding up here, waiting for him to come stomping through, and for a brief moment the thought occurred that he should be worried if his movements were so predictable. He didn't like to worry, so instead he picked up one of the creature's three pistols, and emptied the last of it's ammo into the thing's face. "Dat's fer ruining me trousers!"
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Onto the semifinal. This time I was up against Kris B and his Ad Mech, featuring the Squatarii!
Photo stolen from SorcererDave
Kris was the winner of the previous No Surrender event, so he knows what he is doing. He was running Ryza AdMech and using the Vigilus detachment to recycle servitors. This would let him stack up a lot of stratagems to make his Kataphron Destroyers, of which he had six with plasma, and three with grav, really, really nasty. He took a Dominus, a Manipulus, a couple of Enginseers, the aforementioned Destroyers, four assorted Skitarii units, two Kastellan robots and a gaggle of eco-friendly regular servitors. It was, quite frankly, a scary list, and one which looked like a pretty hard counter to mine if I couldn't get in a tie up the shooty stuff fast.
As this was the semi final, there was a little twist as well. Two units of Ork boyz were placed on the board to replace two of the objectives, fighting against both of us. These represented the forces controlling the Orb, which meant we were close to our objective!
I got first turn, and moved everything forward. I wanted to use Da Jump to put the 30 man slugga boyz mob in the middle of the board to charge right in and cause problems, but there were already 10 boyz there so they would have had to go way out on a flank. Shooting, again, was pretty useless. The Boyz in the middle were annoying, so I charged Nipper and the Trukk at them. This was partially for a bit of extra movement, partially for the chance of getting a point for Blood and Guts, but mostly because I hoped I would whiff and the Boyz would stick around, locking me in combat for Kris' shooting phase. Sadly Nipper was extra hungry, dealing 5 mortal wounds on the charge and finishing the rest of the Mob with his regular attacks.
Kris responded as anticipated, powering up the plasma Servitors with stratagems and blasting 27 wounds off Nipper in one go (and that was quite a bad roll). He then finished off the big squig with overcharged plasma on the also buffed Squatarii. I knew it was coming, but it still hurt! I think my face says it all.
Photo stolen from The Claw
After that, the shooting cleared the Trukk and a good chunk of occupants, though the Nobz still hung on, looting the Trukk for extra armour.
In my turn, I used Da Jump on the big blob of Boyz, and moved up the Nobz. If I could get some big charges off, and used the fight again stratagem, I could potentially kill off the front line of Skitarii and move on to tie up several other units and make a game of it. As it turned out, the Nobz just about made it in, killing off some rangers on an objective, but the Boyz failed the charge, leaving them sitting ducks for the Kastellans.
Predictably, Boyz and Nobz died, the Weirdboy was sniped, and all I had left were a few Shoota Boyz on the left flank and Redtoof himself on the right. However, the event is called No Surrender, so we carried on playing. The Boyz had a go at shifting the Squatarii, but ultimately we brought down by the rad-saturated stunties. Redtoof tried a valiant long charge into the Plasma Servitors, eating a load of overwatch, but only managed to get into a Tech Priest Enginseer, who was promptly snipped in half. Kris formed up a firing squad, and Redtoof was incinerated. A quick game that more or less went according to the script. I needed a few bits of luck to have a chance in this one, but it didn't happen. Still enjoyable though, Kris' army has lots of cool conversions and stuff in it, so it was a good army to be beaten by.
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Everything was going wrong. Redtoof looked around, seeing his Boyz fall in droves to unceasing firepower. Nipper had already fled the field, bleeding from many wounds and carrying a burning, white hot howdah. Snipers on a rooftop were targetting Durrork behind him, who had thrown down his precious jar of buzzer squigs as a form of smokescreen to cover his escape. There was very little that was both green and alive in sight.
"Stop bein' dead ya gits! Gerrup an fight!" An optimistic laser bolt whizzed past his ear, alerting him to one of the enemy leaders near by. By the look of him some kind of Mek with an axe. "Have I got ta do everyfing meself?" He charged in, through fire and super heated plasma from the nearby servitors. With a roar, he grasped the tech priest around the waist with his powerklaw, and snipped him clean in half, spraying blood and oil everywhere.
Durrork watched from the distance as Redtoof was enveloped in enough firepower to down a Stompa. There was nothing left, not even a pair of smoking boots. He had been removed from existence on a molecular level. Durrork grinned, fumbled in one of his pouches and produced an ork tooth of a distinctive red colouration.
"Dere is always anuvva Redtoof..."
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In the end, Kris went on to the final to face Fordy's Orks. The two had met in the final in the last installment, and as before, in spite of intervention from Richie's Gargantuan Squiggoth; Matilda, Kris ended up winning the whole thing. The Orb was in the hands/mechadendrites of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Photo stolen from Kris B
All in all, a fabulous day. The games were great fun, and there was plenty of beer. It was awesome meeting a load of cool people from the Moarhammer discord group (that you can join by becoming a Patron...) and seeing some of the Moarhammer 'regulars' like Mr AP Burn and Mikey P. Sadly Liam wasn't there, because I had a 'gift' for him, which I was unable to deliver in person.
So a big thanks to all the awesome people that turned up, and especially those that put it all together, Filth Wizard Richie and Big Mek The Claw. And now I leave you with some more stolen photos, I think all by SorcererDave, of various other cool armies and stuff going on during the day: