UKGT 2010 final - Report from the Steel Legion perspective - Part One.

As as a report, this is *months* late, but hopefully it should prove at least vaguely illuminating...And what's a blog without a little reflective navel gazing?

Oh, and there'll be pictures of tanks!



The Armies

I had considered doing an army very like the one I am planning on taking this year - one full of the three Vs - Vendettas, Veterans & Valkyries. I decided against it, and stuck with my beloved mechanised infantry. Wandering around the tables, I saw that a.) there were far more guard players than usual and b.) Valkyries & Vendettas were everywhere.

It was at this point I realised that guard had transmogrified from an army your opponent would smirk about to an army your opponent would complain about. Still, looking up close with my hardened Guard player's eye, I wasn't very impressed by lots of these armies... for example, several had 7, 8 or 9 flyers. No matter how many lists I've written, I can't really fit that many in to a coherent 1500pt list.

Still, lots of them were beautifully painted, like this traitor Guard army:



Other than all the Guard, there were some of the tournament standards - Lash Prince Chaos, Ork Battlewagon list, Nobz Bikers - the usual. Of course, plenty of decent, fair sensible armies played by nice people too! The big surprise for me was the lack of Tyranid lists - there were only two in the final. My guess is, the lack of a model for a Tervigon probably stopped them appearing, as they are a pretty key feature of any competitive Tyranid build....

Anyway, my army was pretty different from the other guard builds there. No veterans, no vendettas. Here it is:

Steel legion army list

Hq

Colonel, 2 meltas, 2 flamers, Officer of the Fleet
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy flamer

Troops

Red platoon

Hq 4 flamers
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy flamer

Squad with lascannon & plasma gun
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy bolter

Squad with lascannon & plasma gun
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy bolter

Blue platoon

Hq 4 flamers
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy flamer

Squad with lascannon & plasma gun
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy bolter

Squad with lascannon & plasma gun
Chimera with multilaser, heavy stubber, heavy bolter

Heavy Support

Russ Demolisher with lascannon 180
Russ with lascannon 165
Russ with heavy flamer 150


Anyway, more on the games in the next couple of days as it's late and I'm tired!

Throne of Skulls/UK GT - why I'm going

The Games Workshop Grand Tournament has changed this year, drastically.

The responses from tournament players have varied from the fairly reasonable "This is as far from a competitive event I have ever seen in my life"( typified by this post to the outraged "This whole thing reeks of thirty-one flavors of bullshit" nerd-rage best exemplified by this amusingly swearing filled hate-rant.

Now, my disapproval leans more to the reasoned complaint than to the drinking-from-a-bottle-of-meths-in-a-piss-stained-raincoat lunatic ranting from our American chums.

For a long time, I've sat across the atlantic, wondering how US gamers put up with the awful dog show aspects of the tournament scene over there. There are far more points available for army "composition", for painting and for "being a nice guy" than there are for actually, you know, playing the game.

It's nice in theory - but it leads to all kinds of awful distortions of the game. For example, people paying professionals to paint their armies to guarantee painting scores, people deliberately swapping "most sporting player" for points, and the way in which army composition being "fair" or not is entirely subjective.

For example, at the last GT, my army looked like this:



You might notice, there's quite a few tanks. More tanks than my opponent had men.

Still, totally in-keeping with the background of my army (Steel Legion, remember). Nicely painted. But is it nicely painted enough? Is it "fair" enough to pass composition scores? Is it "fair" enough that people will not think I'm using a "cheesy" army?

I actually had a brilliant game against that Space Wolf player, but I totally destroyed him. Would he give me "best opposing army"?

Is it "fairer" than this army?:



Some people don't like tank armies. Some people think Vendettas are undercosted. Some people just hate playing against Imperial Guard. You can be perceived as a cheat just because of internet gossip or what that specific tournament environment is like. For example, this year, literally, the first question I was asked when I told my opponent what army I was playing was "how many Vendettas"?

For the record, I was the top guard player. I didn't take a cheesy or min-maxed list - I beat all the people with 7,8,9 flyers. But there's a chance I would be marked down just for playing guard. Or marked up for playing non-flying guard.

It's all subjective. And it's all judged by other players. Which creates a huge problem. What is meant to encourage fun encourages a nasty, bloodthirsty competitiveness that exists outside the game. You get to anonymously attack other people's army choices, painting skills - all the rest of it.

Suffice to say, soft scores, handed out by other players, are a bad idea.

The big changes are not just the addition of these "soft scores" - which I dislike more than anything- but other bad things include:

Random pairing

Every round is random - I really enjoyed the tabbing & score system, which meant you played against equally skilled opponents. This creates a bad situation for both hardcore tournament players like me, and for the more fluff oriented gamer.

Hardened players like me want to go up against the best lists with the best players. No guarantee of that. Equally, the fluffmasters prefer it when they don't have to play against hardcore out-to-win types every round.

The point is, it used to be, you could only lose the GT on day one. So on day two, the games down at the bottom tables were a good laugh. People relaxed, just had fun. Left the sweating on dice rolls to the people on the top tables.

If you don't think this is a bad idea, imagine if Wimbledon matches (or the Oxford IV!) were randomly tabbed. You can easily end up with immensely distorted results.

In the picture below, you can see my guard just about to destroy a lovely Ultramarine army -



This result only came about as a result of both my opponent & I losing our first games badly. I did beat him, and pop back up (finishing 35th overall), but the point was, the game felt fair. We were matching players on equal points - there's far more chance of having a string of fun games against equally skilled opponents with similar armies this way, than having it random.

Segregated Scoring

You don't just "win" or "lose" overall anymore. Overall tournament victory is determined by an arcane calculation based on how many of your army there are at the tournament. This (might) be a good way to aggregate a league, but it's not a good way to assess victory in a short competitive gaming event.

Why? It takes away from the meaning of achievements. Who cares if you were the best Black Templars player if you were the only one who turned up? Equally, how do you explain the scoring system that made you the best Space Marines player? What does having the biggest "margin of victory" mean?

The new moves to race based rewards are (I think)an attempt to make more people "winners" - but the truth is, the previous system made far more people feel like they'd achieved something that day. Why? Well...

Dropped Final

If you finished in the top 45, you got to go to a free final held in the spring, which had an amazing standard of gaming. It meant that 1/3rd of people left very happy - they had got a tangible result for being pretty good.

Dropped 6th game

It used to be £55 for 6 games. Now, they are cutting it down to 3 games Saturday, 2 games Sunday. I have never need more time in a 1500 pt 40k game in a tournament. It just doesn't take two and a half hours to play.

I understand that some people complained it was hard for them to finish at 5pm on a Sunday and get home at a reasonable time. TO be honest, if this brings an influx of scottish/southeastern players, I'll be surprised.

Roster Tie-Break

I work in PR & publishing - I write in my spare time. I have no problem with the tie-breaker being on army roster (I'm already planning my Valkyrie Crash Safety brochure & Ork-Imperial phrasebook), I can see how some people who just want gaming will despise it.

Equally, it's unbelievably subjective. The judges just decide who of the tied scores wins. A coin toss would probably be fairer, or a judgement on quality of painting would probably be fairer.

Conclusions

Under the previous system, we had as credible a tournament scene as 40k could have - power paired rounds, no subjective painting or sportsmanship scores, and a final where you had to qualify in the top 45 of a tournament to even get in the door.

That final - the one with the 150 other people who were guaranteed to know how to play the game - was free to attend.

So, you got a great prize for showing up and playing your best in the heats - you were guaranteed to get six games against great opponents. That was certainly my experience of it. Winning the whole thing brought as much kudos as anything with Toy Soldiers in it; equally, the only way to qualify for the tourney other than gaming score was by having one of the 5 best painted armies at a heat.

The 15 best painted tickets usually meant the standard of the armies in the best army nominations was phenomenal. Incidentally, this year, at the final, 9 of the 15 best painters had qualified on gaming score AND painting, just in case you thought they were automatically "easy" games.

How is the new system a better celebration of the hobby? I suspect the quality of the armies will be worse, the quality of the games will be worse, and we all get less game for our money.

But, I'll still be going.

Why?

Much as I like non-GW events (like Vanguard & Spoils of War, the brilliant tournament organised by my Brizzle chums - buy tickets now!) I find they draw from a narrower pool of Gamers - for example, I look down the lists of gamers and find I know about 1/3rd of them.

It is very much Bristol's gaming community's big day out. There's nothing wrong with that, but at the GT I've played people from all over Europe, from all over the country. Nothing has the same pull and the same variety of gamers and armies.

Equally, they don't have the same "feel".

There is something to be said from playing in the big gaming hall in Nottingham - from winning best army at an event where the pics go on the GW website - from the deeply varied group the GT attracts.

Also, at the end of the day, it is still a good value for money event. All the food is included; all of the terrain and scenery is lovely. £27 a day is not a great deal for that sort of thing. There are cheaper options available, yes, but if I was worried about money I probably wouldn't play GW games.

Ultimately, I'm going to give it a try - despite my reservations, maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be terrible. But at least I'll be able to say authoritatively one way or another.

Also, I'll be able to add weight to my complaints if it *is* bad. Staying away, in my opinion, isn't really going to cut it. If the GT (something I really enjoy) is being damaged, then I want to fight to save it, not acquiesce and say, "Ah, I'll just go to Mayhem/Vanquish".

Rocket Boots are my Inspiration

Hey all,

things here at the ATB are all pretty quiet - the army is slowly progressing.

However, I bought my GT ticket on Monday, so it is all going on (I'll write up my feelings on the new GT format soon Nic, don't worry). So, the clock is ticking, it's all go - in short, woop woop!

That's all very well Willard, but you still haven't told us why you're doing a Guard Army with Jump-Packs?

I've always wanted to do a guard army with Jump-Packs - ever since I saw this piece of art:



It was in the Rogue trader compendium back when I was about 11 - back in the golden age of every guard army dying instantly to literally everything, and eventually being cleaned up by your mum or eaten by your dog. The biggest enemy of the Imperial Guard at the time was indifference.

I do wonder about what happens to all of the Imperial Guardsmen who get bought by 11 year olds. Or people with the attention span of twelve year olds, like Adam Evan-Jones or Jeff McDeath. (Adam, if you're reading this, honestly, I think you're great - but my god man, finish an army!)

Most of them stay on the sprue, eventually being binned. Maybe they get used as decoration on the base of the inevitable Chaos marine army that comes along a couple of years later. Whatever happens, it's not a good life. Maybe they go to a better place - probably Ebay to a bloke in Texas, in this day and age.

Anyway, I was 11. Chubby, useless at sport. Loud. Basically, the same as I am now, but with less money and worse dress sense. Yes, that is possible. On both counts. One wet afternoon in Maidstone, I turned over my pocket money to the greasy bikers who ran GW Maidstone and bought the 40k compendium. Sitting on the bus home, I realised how awesome rocket pack guardsmen were. They had rocket packs! And pistols! Pewpew!

So, I really wanted an army entirely composed of guys with rocket packs. This was possibly just because I was sitting on a bus in south kent in the nineties, with the roof leaking, and thought rocketing home would have been cool.

But after that hour long bus journey plan, it just never you know, happened. This was in the days before mailorder, before ebay, so you had to actually get a shop which had jump-packs in stock to buy them. Finding Imperial Guard was hard enough, let alone rare bits. It was like being metal-eating hunter-gatherer. I'd have starved - I used to buy most of my figures in a branch of Athena - a shop best known for pictures of tennis players scratching their arse.

It was also hard to do an army like that back then. Soon after I had a chat with our local rules lawyer, who pointed out I needed a mountain of other models before I could take even one squad of Rocketeers. I was thwarted. The army lived only in my dreams for an hour, on the bus, then vanished. I forgot about it.

Until a year or so later, when Battle for Armageddon came out. I've waxed lyrical before about how much I love the game. But, the game had one unit that stood out for me. A whole Army Corps of Assault troops! Their stats were 8/1/1...and they took 4 turns to build....making them totally rubbish. But they had style. I never forgot them, kept thinking of ways I could do them.

So... I guess doing this army is all about me making something I really wanted as a little boy come true. Cute, huh?

Anyway, melancholy musing aside, this week, it's all about the choices I'm making for individual weapons.

Democharges

I've never really liked any of the GW democharge models. I want my charges to be interesting, huge and varied. I tried a bunch of ideas based on models of real explosives - from circular magnetic mines, to German Gebalte-Landungs (basically, seven stick greandes tied together), but nothing was working. Ultimately, I was watching "The Thing", and it came back to me - why not try the classic bundle of dynamite?



Below is my first go at a democharge - a little rough around the edges, but it does the job, I think.



Feedback from Nerds welcome! And yes, in honour of the Kurt Russell character, this model is totally called Macready - such a shame you can't have a flamer AND a democharge...

Other guns

As for other equipment, I want a real mix of weapons in every squad, let alone across the army. I've been very influenced by the idea of "every space marine is a hero" that Dan Abnett wrote in "Iron Snakes", which has influenced loads of the models that Smithy, Andrew and Nicola have made over the last couple of years.

It's also a reaction to other Imperial Guard players. With the introduction of the latest guard codex, you see far more veterans than you do ordinary guardsmen. Sadly, most of these "veterans" are just Cadians straight out of the box. I'm determined that if I am going to use veterans, they will at least look the part.

I've got a mix of weapons below:

Submachine gun -



Big Revolver -



Break Barrel Shotgun -



I'm particularly happy with the way this guy turned out - I had to do a lot of cutting and filing and sculpting to get him the way he looks. I especially like the way the shoulderpads (from a Superheavy tank commander, no less!) mark him out as very, very experienced.

I'm pretty determined now to try to have a different gun for everyone who can have one... Damn all this work I'm making for myself.

Right, must dash, tis late... Soon, I'll write up what I think about the changes to the GT format, post my list for commentary, and start showing you Valkyries - colour scheme inspired by:

A day in the life - Art Concept.

Hi all,

the project continues apace. Not much time to blog right now, but here's my concept art order to my old chum Bob Shaw, of Sprung Chicken Productions. Check him out here.

Hey bobbins,

As promised, here's my art brief (sorry it's coming from the iPhone, haven't had five minutes to myself in a couple of days)

Basically, I want a concept art piece, which will go up on my blog, and will appear on assorted bits & pieces I do for the UK GT this year...

What I want is something like this:



A proper concept piece, in other words.

The regiment I want you to do a piece for is called the Armageddon assault corps. There's some grainy pictures of some concept models here:





Basically, draw me one! I've included some background below, which will help you visualise these guys. I'll pay you £X, plus you'll have a neat concept piece. I'll ask for more if it's good!

Brief Concept:

Guard Hardened Veterans with Jet Packs, jumping out of planes on to hive spires.

Basic Background:

The Assault Corps is a part of the Armageddon Steel Legion, an Imperial Guard regiment raised on the highly toxic hive world which gives them their name.

The Steel legion are highly mechanised, and much better equipped regiment than most other regiments of the guard.

Their signature equipment is their box respirator gas masks, big dust goggles & ww2 german paratrooper helmets, 3/4r length coats, which conceal their body armour.

They look sort of like this:

http://www.battleforarmageddon.com/?p=10

But with turbine powered rocket packs like this:

http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=49

Deeper background

The assault Corps was originally founded with one idea mind - capturing the spires of rebel hive cities. Hives are vast sprawling super cities, with Walls 100s of feet high - designed to keep out invaders, but also roaming mutants and bandits who haunt the planetary ash deserts.

Hives are often seething with discontent: in the long history of Armageddon, hives have been seized from within many times- by insidious psychic aliens, charismatic demagogues and scheming nobles.

The key to taking any hive is the void shield controls, which usually reside in the tallest spires. Take the shield down, and the hive is vulnerable to bombardment from aircraft & artillery. Usually the threat of such action is enough to quell the rebellious populace.

Taking a hive without taking down the shield is a nightmare. Huge gates, shielded by spacecraft level energy fields must be broken down. Usually, this leads to a resort to spaceborne weapons, such as nova cannons or mass drivers, or arcane machines controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus, such as siege titans or the terrifying sonic annihilators mounted on Ordinatii.

In addition to the crippling damage these weapons do to the infrastructure of the rebel hive, the favours of the fleet or the mechanicus do not come for free, and having to resort to inflicting such damage (and admitting a hive has rebelled successfully) will often be enough for the high lords of terra to order the death of the planetary overlord.

With this in mind, following the freak riots of m41.636, the assault corps was formed. The assault Corp are equipped with voss pattern turbine flight packs, which enable them to leap from aircraft on to spire towers, or even leap from building to building, window to window, smashing their way in.

Not for these guardsmen the refinement of long range gunplay - spirefights are tough and close range. The weapons of choice are the shotgun, the submachine gun, the boot, the knife.

Environmental protection is vital - even at the top of the hive, atmospheric pollution is deadly to unprotected humans. Indeed, many rebellious hives have been conquered without a shot fired by the assault corps, troopers smashing through giant viewports, showering traitor commanders with shards of glass before the rolling clouds of poison finish them off.

Of course, until the shields are down, the assault corps are without support. Thus, the will tend to be armed to the teeth. The average trooper will be festooned with guns, pistols, bullets.

He will carry grenades of all types - smoke, frag, krak - even rare explosives like plasma or melta charges, or atomic demolition charges.

The prevalence of explosives is explained by the nature of the spirefights. If the assault Corps cannot get where they are going - through Walls, blast doors & bulkheads, they are dead.

Thus, many troopers will eschew the normal mix of revolvers, smgs & shotguns for esoteric breaching weapons - meltaguns, phasefield generators, eviscerators & telekinetic mountain blitzers.

Of course, occasionally the corps will have to fight at range - for example, requiring cover from their vendetta gun-ships during an assault. If their aircraft cannot support them, picked marksmen among the troopers employ a variety of super high powered sniper weapons, such as the voss pattern slug rifle. In emergencies, such as when confronted by armoured vehicles like dreadnoughts or large beasts like cyberogryns, the marksmen can use special rounds made from imbatainium, which can punch holes in all but the thickest armour, and shatter even an ambull's skull like a ripe melon.

Veterans who survive full tours in the corps often carry rare and esoteric personal equipment common to hive nobles - even incredibly rare or xenos devices like hrud fusils, tau digital rocket rippers or barghesi hyperviolent smashfists.

Culture

The assault corps is an elite force, with high standards of combat efficiency required for entry. Most recruits have already completed careers in the PDF or Steel Legion.

The violent, close combat nature of the work frequently attracts former hive gangers. Even guardsmen from high hab zone families will adopt gang tattoos, markings & traditions, which have become as much a part of the regimental identity as flags or uniforms in other, more regular formations.

Indeed, many of the assault corp's officers are rough & ready former gang leaders, as ready to swap a tale about running drugs like brilliance or squab as they are to offer tactical advice.

That's as far as I've got thus far - new updates soon!