ANUCon 2015

I've developed a healthy degree of scepticism for war gaming tournaments in general. I personally find them long and energy draining affairs that tend to get me flustered more than allow me to have fun. My preference for gaming has always been the single game of an evening with people I already know.

I used to play in a few big Flames of War tournies back in the day, but as time marches relentlessly on, I find myself without the willpower to manage two days with three games each. Which is way ANUCon instantly intrigued me the moment I heard about it, as it is the first Warhammer 40k tournament that I've seen that allows for one day entry. Given that I am a human adult with minimal time on my hands, not to mention my aforementioned lack of energy. The prospect of keeping half the weekend free to actually prepare myself for the next week of doing adult type stuff is somewhat appealing. The end result, two games on Saturday, I wasn't unhappy with this outcome.

The points limit was 1500, and I opted to bring out my guard list, which in brief, is as follows.

• HQ Sec with Master of Ordinance & Astropath
• Lord Commissar
• Priest
• Lvl 2 Primus Psyker
• 2 x Platoon with 2 Inf Squads, Melta & Plas, 1 Missile Heavy Weapon Squad attached
• 2 x Armoured Sentinels with Lascannons
• 2 x Leman Russ BT with no sponsons, hull mounted heavy bolter only.
• Aegis Defence Line with Quad Gun

Anyway, opponents were drawn and first first biff of the day began. I was paired up with these chaps.

Blessing of the Omnissiah be upon you, weak human flesh bag.

Deployment was done, I set up at my edge safely ensconced behind my block of concrete and made ready to whittle down his advancing robo-men. I ended up popping his walker thing first volley with a fortunate missile barrage, giving me first blood.

In spite of this, he continued to advance, losing a few units to battle cannon fire, but his robot-ninja things came right through the woods in centre of the board. Their bonus cover saves kept them alive long enough to smash my centre line. On my left flank an outflanking unit managed to shoot me up without the cover save from my defence line. On the right flank, the knight cleaned up with many stomps. Hilariously, I had all three of my plasma gunners fry themselves on the cooling coils of their own weapons towards the end game, even after improbably surviving round after round of shooting.

I did okay on battle points in the end, mostly due to lucky draws early game, but I was tabled first game, not off to a good start. In spite of it my opponent was polite and well prepared, hate the game not the player, as always.

Next up was quite a treat, one of the best painted and delightfully themed Ork lists I've ever played against.

I hope you like Forgeworld, Gretchen and conversions.

The deployment was hammer and anvil, so these poor Orks would be taking the long way to get to me. To my surprise, it turned out they were a shooty list rather than a mass of bodies list. The scenario itself was the one where we score each-others cards for controlling individual objectives. The initial deployment looked something like this:

A combined squad from one infantry platoon held the centre with both missile teams and company command squad. A squad from the second platoon anchored the left and right flanks with my Sentinels covering the left with their Lascannons while the Russes have almost a full field of first from their position in the centre. The most awkward part of the deployment was the bunker cutting off line of sight between the left flank and the centre, meaning that later on supporting fire from the Russes couldn't hit the left.

Anyway, it went down something like this.
I fired a bunch, killed a few squads of foot slogging Orks, though his vehicles remained resilient. I did scored a couple of immobilizing hits on the vehicles advancing down the centre and right flank, which was useful. His artillery pounded my line without mercy, though the Aegis line kept the casualty rate to an acceptable minimum from direct fire.
The left flank was eventually hit and overrun in close combat to Orks in a fast attack transport. While the right was undone by a flanking Wartrack with a flamer, which roasted the entirety of the defending infantry alive. All the while, the Wartrack survived two volleys of missile launcher fire. I ended up getting first blood early due to battle cannoning a squad of Gretchen in the early game, and both our warlord remained in play until we called time at turn four. I ended up taking slightly more victory points in the end, making it a narrow victory. Though if the battle had gone on, I'm sure I would've been ground down under sustained fire from his artillery. The Ork player was a great opponent, making it two out of two good sports for the tourney.

Weeks pass and the results of the tourney are sent around. Much to my surprise, I ended up ranking 9th overall. In retrospect, I believe a lot of the points I scored depend entirely on the cards I drew for the Maelstrom missions. I also did pretty well on the sportsmanship and the comp score, which may have helped boost my ranking out of proportion to my performance on the tabletop.

This being my first 40k tourney, I'm not sure I would do it again. As always, 40k is a slow game to play, especially for my Astra Militarum army. Every game with them is a drawn out battle of attrition. Maybe getting my Dark Angels painted up and ready would change up the play style a bit. Though the severe drubbing I got at the hands of a knight was once again a stark reminder that 40k, at its core, is not a balanced game by design. This makes it less than optimal to be played in a competition setting. On the other hand, I kind of expected this given the known weaknesses of the list I was bringing, so the said drubbing that I received was well deserved.

If I go again next year, I'll definitely bring a knight of my own. I already have the kit, I merely need to find the time to assemble it and complete a paint job. It'll probably take a while, as I'm planning to freehand the banners and house crest, watch this space.