Bjorn again at Blog Wars

See its not only Gav who can make musical references in his posts.

So yesterday I headed to Mansfield bright and early after a wedding that went on till three the previous night so suffice to say I was feeling a little bit delicate but a McDonalds breakfast and a can of coke later I was raring to go.

I had been playing well in the lead up to this tournament beating Gav, Paul (a dark Eldar player from our club) and Graham twice in about three hours (love you really G) so I had high hopes.

We had three games with the missions and deployment picked at random. Unfortunately there was one drop out so Darren came and filled in meaning there were four Claws and Fists members appearing at the tournament with Gav along to 'help out' the running of the day as well.

The first game was Spearhead with 2 objectives known as the bore draw to some.
I found myself up against an Elysian air cav army featuring two Valkyries, two vendettas and two vultures which give up their transport capacity for a twin linked punisher cannon which is nasty.
He reserved his Vultures and Valks and because of Bjorns reroll I was able to get first turn however one serious error was made.

Along the side of our board we had a 'river' with a small bridge along it. My opponent decided that this river should be difficult terrain and I agreed however this gave his Air Cav army a major advantage seeing as I had to get through the terrain. In a more competitive environment I would have asked a ref but this was only a friendly tournament so I can't lament it that much.

Other than that the game went well. I immobilised his Vendettas and took off the majority of their weapons, Bjorn killed a sentinel but I did immobilise a rhino on the difficult terrain. Second turn his Valks came on they blew up a rhino and one started contesting my objective so I blew them up. Finally his punishers came on they knocked a long fang unit down to one man but they then died.

The game ended on turn five with a draw, me having killed 1500 VP's and having lost ~300. It was my own fault I should have run my grey hunters earlier to contest their objective but it was a fun match against an interesting army which went on to win best painted.

During lunch we voted for the best painting competition which I didn't bother to put my stuff out for I never do.

Second game I was happy to come up against one the armies I had hoped to this tournament, a Grey Knights army. Unfortunately it was a pure Paladin and Draigo army in a Dawn of War kill points mission. As he only had three kill points I was only ever going to win by tabling him which was going to be difficult but I had a lot of missile launchers.

To put it simply, I shot him lots he got his four kill points and tried not to die. Bjorn was immense. One of his Paladin squads was down to 5 Paladins and Draigo and Bjorn charged them. He shrugged off a couple of hammer blows and went on to kill them all. By this time I had whittled down his other squad to two models and it was the top of turn 5. I needed to get them into combat but fell half an inch short. Again the game finished and although I had killed 5 times the victory points I lost the game disappointingly. So after two games on table 5 I found myself falling to table 11.

I played a tau army in my last game and I have to be honest I really don't like playing tau. The army was very similar to what our club chairman Matt plays, pathfinders, broadsides and crisis suits but it had two big blob squads of Kroot and Hounds. For once Bjorn didn't gain me a first turn and it started badly with me losing 3 transports including my razorback early on. However Bjorn again came to the rescue. He rocked up giving my remaining vehicle a cover saving, saving 5 ups from broadsides my opponent finally immobilising him only to reroll it and get a can't shoot result. Eventually the living legend that is Bjorn munched through a 30 strong force of Kroot and Hounds a couple of Broadsides and a squad of crisis suits to contest an objective on turn 6 but the game was run on the other side of the table.

Again I thought I had left it too long, I hadn't ran my squad forward enough but luckily for the first time in a long time in a tournament game I had a 6th turn. I was able to use this to sling shot into a squad of broadsides. So it came down to this, could I destroy a squad of broad sides and get a big enough consolidation roll with only half a squad of grey hunters because they couldn't get into combat. I made two wounds so they needed a 6 to stay in combat. A 7 was rolled and I contested the objective.

All in all I had three games drew one, lost one and won one and finished half way on 13 out of 26. I felt that I probably deserved to win the first two while the third I deserved to draw.

The day was great but my one and onlysuggesting for the next event is that it needs to have some sort of score modifiers for VP's like we do at open war and like the ETC uses.
I met some great people and I look forward to another.

I was certainly pleased with my choice of taking Bjorn, he never failed to have a big impact on the game whether it was gaining me the first turn against an alpha strike army or butchering models. I estimate that he killed close to 1750 points over the course of the three games, he certainly lived up to the living legend tag that he has.