NatCon Summary

Overall I would have to say I enjoyed NatCon more than any previous tournament I’ve attended. There’s a couple of good reasons for this – not least of all the fact that this was also my best performance in a tournament so far!

I played 8 excellent opponents, only one of which is a regular opponent (Mark). Despite the fact I played all three Brettonian armies (thanks again for that Philfy…) and two Dwarf armies I found every game enjoyable and challenging in its own unique way. The two Dwarf armies had some similarities in terms of army composition but the generals behind the army were VERY different players. Ken and Darren were both an absolute blast to play and I really hope to face them again at future events. The Brettonians, an army I have previously had enormous trouble dealing with, were all managed quite brilliantly (how’s that for modesty?).

Against Mark I suffered from a bout of karmic realignment with that blasted Paladin – if it weren’t for that I would have had him sown up nicely (sigh... more battle points go wanting).

Against Harry I was toast and the question was only by how much – beyond a shadow of a doubt Tomb Kings are my nemesis army, good general or not (Harry is, unsurprisingly, an EXCELLENT general!). Retrospectively I should have played cagey, denied points, sacrificed crap all over the place and eked out a minor loss if at all possible.

Against Joe I shouldn’t have obsessed so much over the bloody dragon and taken shots at his bolt throwers instead which more than earned their points back by eliminating my diverting options in the middle game (turns 3 and 4). I was unlucky to not killing the Dragon (one wound left… come on!!!) but it’s hard to blame the dice when you aren’t really thinking strategically (although I did roll up that ‘1’ for number of wounds on the first shot…). In fact I’m really disappointed about that last game – I should have known the placings would come down to a couple of points between 7th and 4th – the Flagellents died cheap and nasty and that was very poor play on my part. I’m also disappointed that I didn’t play Reid – obviously one of us needs to work a little harder to create that kind of matchup! I had a good run early on and got my wish – to play good players and to face off against challenging armies.

I very much liked that Phil gave everyone a copy of all the army lists in play. Made for some entertaining theoryhammer at the end of the day as we contemplated our matchups for the next round and also circumvented a lot of questions during the games. Damn good idea and something I’ll be stealing later in the year. The tournament overall was well-organised and ran smoothly (one misdrawn round aside – and that was quickly fixed before any damage was done). Congrats and cheers to Phil for his hard work and to the comp judges. No thanks for to Phil for drawing me against three Brettonians and two Dwarfs but that’s as much my fault as anyone elses :)

Having mentioned the comp judges I found the army composition scoring to be (as always) a focal point for further discussion. Having all the army lists available means you can actually try and make some sense of the comp scores people received. On the whole I’d have to say I like what I see but there were a few things that stood out that, while I wouldn’t directly question (far be it for me to question the judgement of a panel of vastly more experienced players!) and would like to gain a better understanding of for future events.

First, that Vampire Counts army. Harry made the comment in a discussion midway through the event that the Dixon clan had pretty much got together and created the hardest army they felt they could get away with. Ok, fine. Thing is though – they actually did get away with it! It received 25/60 for composition. It was not vetoed. This really drew significant attention from me because I am currently working on a VC army for the 2010 tournament season (starting with DogCon – fingers crossed!) so any comp dialogue or VC army lists gain my immediate notice. I couldn’t help but compare this to my Empire list (41/60 comp score). A 16 point differential could easily have been made up by a good player – I’m confident I could have done better with that VC list than I did with my Empire. Was it hit hard enough? Was it hard enough to warrant a veto? Rumour had it that only one list was vetoed and resubmitted (a magic heavy Daemon list) but I wonder how this list dodged the veto bullet or how close it came to missing.


The Star Dragon High Elf list – 34/60. Joe wasn’t pulling too many punches here.

Flying uber-boss, ItP (Standard of Balance – also cancels Hatred/Frenzy; useful against Dark Elves!) Dragon Prince bus, 2 bolties, mini-Swordmasters. Reminded me a lot of Philfy’s Fields list actually J The only thing he was light on was magic offense and defense and given the highly aggressive focus of the list this wasn’t likely to make much of a difference in most of his games if he had blasted through his opponent’s two major units by the end of the second turn. The list undoubtedly took a hit but with a differential between our lists of 7 points I guess I feel less bad (he was only 5 battle points ahead of me in the end). I suppose the lack of a magic phase from High Elves is a concession but this appeared to me to be somewhat counteracted by the ItP Dragon Prince unit from hell.

*****

Before I’d put some more serious and considered thought into how my own army went I was initially strongly considering taking a Steam Tank to my next tournament (Runefang II – one month away), however the more I thought about it the more I have become convinced that I don’t need to have a Stank to make the army work better and there were multiple opportunities and moments where I made poor in-game decisions or failed to take advantage of opportunities that my opponent presented that would have netted me a substantial points gain. The Rune of Challenge incident against the Dwarfs for instance – I should have fled the Rune-encouraged charge against the Ironbreakers (a guaranteed loss) and fled. Average dice may or may not have put me off the table (was probably about 12-13” away) but more importantly would have not only prevented the Dwarfs from gaining my Knight’s banner but also allowed the Flagellents to get a charge off on the Ironbreakers. While the Flagellents would never have broken the unit (or indeed caused much in the way of casualties) it would have meant gaining the initiative over the Dwarfs and possibly allowing the Flagellents to survive the game with a couple of models left. In real terms this is a points gain to me of 100 points at the very least (the captured banner), maybe as much as 205 points (banner + surviving ½-strength Flagellents). Had the Knights and Priest actually not fled the board then the points differential would have been even greater (potentially a 500+ points difference overall!!!). This sort of margin of difference would have changed my overall placing enough to move me to the podium! So, no Steam Tank for now and I just need to play better J My initial plan Empire was to become a much better player by utilising clever strategy and cagey decision-making, not by taking uber-units of doom and destruction (which is what, in Empire terms at least, classify the Steam Tank). I’ve included my original thoughts below for the sake of amusement and to illustrate the change in direction of my thinking on the army’s effectiveness over the last couple of days.


DELETED BUT INCLUDED FOR AMUSEMENT - My own comp score of 41/60 is probably spot on. I can see how I could have gone softer but I’m not a good enough general to not have the Arch-Lector’s magic defense and survivability as an asset and the Flagellents as a block of reliable and guaranteed Unbreakable troops. Of everything else in the list the only hindrance to a more decent comp score is probably the two Cannons but quite frankly, Empire have to have something to deal with the various monstrousities that are out there! My strongest consideration at this point is whether I should lose the Flagellents and the Knights with Great Weapons (no comp bonus for that unit and definitely not worth taking in game terms) and get a Steam Tank. Gives me some more points to play around with too (33pts – 48 if I lose the Sigil of Sigmar on the Priest which never came into play). I know Steam Tanks are hideously vulnerable in the current game but the Flagellents guarantee the opponent such a vast amount of points so easily (anything that charges them, shooting, magic… you name, it kills them) that I really struggle to think of a game where they worked really effectively AND survived the game (I’m not talking ½ points – I mean at all!). With a plastic kit coming out, the Steam Tank is looking more tempting than ever! Taking a -1 comp hit for including it is easily worth not giving up points to my opponent AND the strategic value I get out of the model itself.

Other than that the army worked fairly well. The detachment system is great when it works but the army book has been around for so long that people are either wise to the counter-charge tactics or you are facing something so hideously brutal that the loss of ranks doesn’t hurt at all and you end up giving up combat res getting your detachments killed off. Three or four years ago detachments would have been awesome. They can still be very useful but you have to resign yourself to giving up a lot of points using them to divert and bait so to me it just reinforces the fact that a detachment-based Empire force bleeds points like there’s no tomorrow. However, given the models I’m using are the models I have available and the army wasn’t constructed and theoryhammered from the get go to be a killing machine I fell I did well. Part of that was luck of the draw in terms of matchups, part of it was down to some lucky artillery rolls, and part of it was down to my opponents (particularly the Dwarf and Brettonian players) getting frustrated to heck by all those little guys running around and getting in the way :)


Haven’t heard where NatCon is next year but based on my most recent experience I’d like to think I’d be in there again. Once again, congratulations to the prizewinners and place-getters and to Philfy for doing such a standup job of running the whole show.