Warpcon Final thoughts

So Warpcon is over, and it’s been my second tournament using Blob guard at, also being one of the biggest Ireland usually gets I believe. What did I learn?

Well firstly the field was totally different than tourneys up north, the army composition was way different (I've done other Southern Tourneys previous to this one) to what normally appears at events, up North there are more unrefined lists, and I mean no disrespect to people by saying that, it's just the calibre of the southern players as well as the bigger player base means they are developing their game and armies more than up North, meaning even their lower end players are a match if you don't focus and slack about. 

Don't get me wrong there were still some lists which were far from max/min but they were put together more solid than you'd expect from a Northern tourney.

What I'm getting at is that it meant I got 5 games against armies I may not normally see up North, excluding Jan's Orks of course as he travels up for tourneys, but there were more horde armies present at Warpcon. 

The Tau were a new one for me to practise against, and I feel I played the army right in the situation, but I was a bit slack in maintaining cover. Thus I really had to slap myself into shape for future rounds or risk taking losses which could cost me the game. The outflanking Blob arriving on the wrong side after 2 rolls is just bad luck which cost me points i feel, but that is just a luck issue and I have to accept it will happen.

The Dark Eldar venom spam is a dying list up North it seems, far too many marine players means the list usually gets blown apart (Although Paul Quigley ran it and did very well at Arkham)so less people take it. I was worried due to his mass of shots, but sitting in cover helped some in keeping men alive and DOW helped me get so close it would put him under pressure when arriving.

The Lash chaos list i knew would be a really bad match for me, untinned men being lashed and killed by Daemon princes or blasts... or even Zerkers would thin me down a lot, so I had to play more defensive and try to keep him at range while working on his troops where I could. my power weapons mean little to his higher toughness models and so I was reliant on the outflanking blob coming on late to hit and hurt where I could for objs... firing the lasgun though was a rookie mistake and cost me more points (Although only 3-4 points but every point counted it seems as the field was packed together on points).

If only my Blobs could take these.

The Wolves I felt slightly less worried about but their amount of blasts could still hurt along with the redeemer rumbling around. Thus I went for quick kill points and tried to make a huge lead while also killing his troops to make sure the worst I could do was lost by being tabled (once I got his quick and light kill points I was about 6kp up, with my army only having 8kp total) so I spread out more and hoped he couldn't catch all of my stuff.

I had hoped to kill the grey hunters (One right on the short table edge with my blob 1 inch in front and the SWS one inch behind) with their rhino being a wreck and them auto dying, but the explosion happened and it meant I had to expend men killing them in HTH. Although I'm proud of the men holding down and killing 20 Grey hunters over 2 game turns meaning I really stopped his thrust toward my obj... The blob was a more than worthy sacrifice to hold his forces back and give me breathing room to keep the blob on the obj up in numbers for when the wolf scouts would arrive. 

Overall another good learning experience tournament for the Blob, and my rough edges really showed. These included the bodyguards who I'd hoped would add more HTH potential to the squad meaning I could counter charge in to enemy units doing 5 S7 WS5 power weapon attacks from Straken and 23 normal S4 attacks... not bad for an 8 man unit total made of guardsmen. But they soaked wounds I wanted to take on Straken meaning more deaths and unneeded losses, so I think they would work better with Creed in future lists. 

The main blobs were the same as I took to Arkham and I feel worked well again, the multi use allowed me to lascannon things when I didn't want to move forward, but then I found at times they were not making their points as I sat still shooting them over moving. I'm still debating dropping them to make the blob a move forward only option, though it’s hard not to like the idea of putting wounds on big things or vehicles before they close, or popping a razorback / venom quickly for a KP.

Meltaguns still are my favourite weapon; they proved their worth a lot over the tourney with the outflanking blob being just behind in effectiveness. In 3 games they did well netting me some objs or killing units and helping to relieve the other blobs as the opponent had to begin dealing with them and diverting forces. Vs the tau they flopped, and against Jan they died to a round of combat vs. a boy squad, I'm not quite sure how 40 guardsmen lost combat to 30 Orks when they got to strike first. Just have to chalk it down to bad rolls from me and test more.

Vs horde armies I'm going to have to learn how to combat them for future games, vs. Jan I was indecisive and tried some things, all of which failed and so at least I know what not to do in future. Maybe next time I'll just sit as 10 man squads and fire, fire and fire until I'm either spent or his boys are dead after each assault on a cheap 10 man squad.

Plenty more information gathered, plenty of options now being mused over. Roll on Arkham on the 18-19th of this month. New things will be attempted.