First things first, Mike and his staff did a great job from what I saw. His people were kind, courteous, dedicated and worked to fix issues in a timely manner. They didn't always succeed and I'll list some of those issues in another post as well as where they dealt with the unexpected quickly. The NOVA team should cover most of that in their post event hot wash.
Here, I mainly want to discuss my actual experience playing in the GT. I went 1-5 with a close fight in the win, four losses by a sliver and once getting slaughtered. IMO, TOs for tournaments need to make some changes, because like Mike's idea that "well everyone can just play their 5th lists mainly" when he made the switch to 6th, I think there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. This is an overview, so I'm not going to break down each battle here. My list is here.
Here, I mainly want to discuss my actual experience playing in the GT. I went 1-5 with a close fight in the win, four losses by a sliver and once getting slaughtered. IMO, TOs for tournaments need to make some changes, because like Mike's idea that "well everyone can just play their 5th lists mainly" when he made the switch to 6th, I think there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. This is an overview, so I'm not going to break down each battle here. My list is here.
Game one was my only five turn game in the tournament. It was vs an IG player and it was turn five that decided it. Well played with only one real mistake by my opponent and he had it barely won at the end of the top of five, but I came back to bypass the modified KP objective.
Game two was the one I got stomped in. This was actually the most problematic. It was against an Eldar/DE list running a warlock biker squad with Farseers. The bad part, I screwed up in deployment because I didn't deploy in my standard manner and then on the first movement I pulled a stupid caused by my ignorance of the Eldar codex by charging the Warlocks with my Scarabs to tie them up when eight of the Warlocks were packing that flamer template power, which I didn't realize. I gave that game away.
The worst part? To be the most polite, the player was unfamiliar with his own codex. He was totally incorrect in two facts he told me and then made a couple of other "errors" during play. He flat out said that Rangers did not have Stealth, but simply got +1 to their cover save ("it's an old codex") to claim he could get +2 to his cover saves for Stealth from Night Fighting. He also said that Swooping Hawks with Skyleap could "leap" out every movement phase and then automatically because they were in "ongoing reserves" they got to come back immediately every turn and drop their large blast template. He did roll for Deep Strike scatter, but never did roll for reserves on them.
The absolute worst part? Yes, it gets even worse. He was cheating. If it had been any other game besides the last game of Friday night, I probably would have missed it as it got lost in the blur of the other games, but I was able to put my army up, go back downstairs to smoke and write up my notes, then look up my PDF files of the Eldar codex and FAQ to find the errors mentioned above and woke up early realizing the first and worst mistake I made was trusting him. I'll detail the points that I cannot prove objectively, but I know happened.
1. He was prone to snatch and grab his dice, especially rerolling saves and when I called him on it, he just would claim he had a 2+ cover save for some reason or that that was a three and not the two I saw. By the time I squashed him on that, in the bottom of turn two, it was too late for it to matter, he'd gotten a decisive edge.
2. After the first round of CC, he was trying to "do the rolls for me" when I got one of the Warlocks with my MSS, but not bothering to roll it in front of me and calling it, just rolling among his generic swings. Supposedly, I didn't see any extra dice above his own attacks being rolled. I did the rolls for myself anyway.
3. Yet another mistake of mine. Just before deploying, I noticed him looking at one of the Psyker ability pages in the rulebook and rolling a d6 twice while consulting that page, then flipping to a second page and consulting it while rolling a d6 twice more. He told me he had rolled up .... Invisibility IIRC, that gave him Stealth and Shrouding on the Warlock unit, which added to Jink to give him +2 cover saves. Note this: Two Farseers with Stones that makes them Mastery 2 as his only psykers. He rolled two times on two different tables without telling me what he was up to. Okay, two Farseers, level 2, with two BRB rolled powers. This is what woke me up from a dead sleep when it hit me...Why was the guy still using Fortune and Doom with one of the Farseers?!
Flat out, if he wasn't cheating, he was trying his best to simulate it. Why? Even without my mistakes that would have been a tough list for me to deal with, but in conversation with me and what I overheard post game with his buddy, it was obvious that he was part of a group and all of them were doing everything they could to jack up their comp scores to make sure at least one of them got into the top bracket. My best evidence? I killed two, I say again two, I tell you three times two (2) Rangers the entire game. Look at my list again and explain to me how that happened in a straight game with lots of shooting.
Game 3 was a four turn game and it was a back and forth luck thing at the end. I shot a four Marine squad on an objective at the bottom of three with a S4 blast and five Tesla shots, ending up with five wounds. He proceeded to roll three ones and a two. Top of four he moved and ran with two squads, getting a six for each to get them in range to claim two objectives. After lots of shooting in the bottom of four, he managed to have one Marine within range of the two objectives to ease me out.
Game four was the other four turn and that one got to be a bit hairy. We ended up tying on all three victory conditions and at the end, I called a judge over to clarify something we weren't sure about. Since it was Big Guns and he had killed one of my Annihilation Barges he got an extra 50 Victory Points and edged me out by 20 something VP to get the win.
Game five was a bit of a pain. Several rules issues, that I probably should have let go, but after game two, I wasn't in the mood to. It got down to me failing a pinning check, failing a charge, failing an EL roll and enough time having been wasted by that point with yet another rules issue (there is no impassible terrain by NOVA FAQ, so even if you cannot see through a wall, you can still move "over it", but he wanted to claim I couldn't assault him because I couldn't see him, even though part of the squad could clearly see him, but those models couldn't reach him with my charge roll, yadayadayada) that I couldn't get the next turn in, so he got me by one objective.
Game six was a blow off for me. I offered the young gentleman a choice of rolling 2d6 each and going home, writing him up as a winner, or playing him a game if he wanted one. Dammit, he was young enough that I knew he wanted a game and I gave him one. It was a bit of fun, but we didn't push hard though so we only got to three and I actually almost won it while screwing around playing "hunt the Zilla" and popping off Snapfire at a flying Hive Tyrant with an Annihilation Barge (which scored 5!, count them 5! Tesla hits about of six shots).
Overall, I had four excellent games, one somewhat frustrating game and one extremely frustrating game as far as sportsmanship went.
Game two was the one I got stomped in. This was actually the most problematic. It was against an Eldar/DE list running a warlock biker squad with Farseers. The bad part, I screwed up in deployment because I didn't deploy in my standard manner and then on the first movement I pulled a stupid caused by my ignorance of the Eldar codex by charging the Warlocks with my Scarabs to tie them up when eight of the Warlocks were packing that flamer template power, which I didn't realize. I gave that game away.
The worst part? To be the most polite, the player was unfamiliar with his own codex. He was totally incorrect in two facts he told me and then made a couple of other "errors" during play. He flat out said that Rangers did not have Stealth, but simply got +1 to their cover save ("it's an old codex") to claim he could get +2 to his cover saves for Stealth from Night Fighting. He also said that Swooping Hawks with Skyleap could "leap" out every movement phase and then automatically because they were in "ongoing reserves" they got to come back immediately every turn and drop their large blast template. He did roll for Deep Strike scatter, but never did roll for reserves on them.
The absolute worst part? Yes, it gets even worse. He was cheating. If it had been any other game besides the last game of Friday night, I probably would have missed it as it got lost in the blur of the other games, but I was able to put my army up, go back downstairs to smoke and write up my notes, then look up my PDF files of the Eldar codex and FAQ to find the errors mentioned above and woke up early realizing the first and worst mistake I made was trusting him. I'll detail the points that I cannot prove objectively, but I know happened.
1. He was prone to snatch and grab his dice, especially rerolling saves and when I called him on it, he just would claim he had a 2+ cover save for some reason or that that was a three and not the two I saw. By the time I squashed him on that, in the bottom of turn two, it was too late for it to matter, he'd gotten a decisive edge.
2. After the first round of CC, he was trying to "do the rolls for me" when I got one of the Warlocks with my MSS, but not bothering to roll it in front of me and calling it, just rolling among his generic swings. Supposedly, I didn't see any extra dice above his own attacks being rolled. I did the rolls for myself anyway.
3. Yet another mistake of mine. Just before deploying, I noticed him looking at one of the Psyker ability pages in the rulebook and rolling a d6 twice while consulting that page, then flipping to a second page and consulting it while rolling a d6 twice more. He told me he had rolled up .... Invisibility IIRC, that gave him Stealth and Shrouding on the Warlock unit, which added to Jink to give him +2 cover saves. Note this: Two Farseers with Stones that makes them Mastery 2 as his only psykers. He rolled two times on two different tables without telling me what he was up to. Okay, two Farseers, level 2, with two BRB rolled powers. This is what woke me up from a dead sleep when it hit me...Why was the guy still using Fortune and Doom with one of the Farseers?!
Flat out, if he wasn't cheating, he was trying his best to simulate it. Why? Even without my mistakes that would have been a tough list for me to deal with, but in conversation with me and what I overheard post game with his buddy, it was obvious that he was part of a group and all of them were doing everything they could to jack up their comp scores to make sure at least one of them got into the top bracket. My best evidence? I killed two, I say again two, I tell you three times two (2) Rangers the entire game. Look at my list again and explain to me how that happened in a straight game with lots of shooting.
Game 3 was a four turn game and it was a back and forth luck thing at the end. I shot a four Marine squad on an objective at the bottom of three with a S4 blast and five Tesla shots, ending up with five wounds. He proceeded to roll three ones and a two. Top of four he moved and ran with two squads, getting a six for each to get them in range to claim two objectives. After lots of shooting in the bottom of four, he managed to have one Marine within range of the two objectives to ease me out.
Game four was the other four turn and that one got to be a bit hairy. We ended up tying on all three victory conditions and at the end, I called a judge over to clarify something we weren't sure about. Since it was Big Guns and he had killed one of my Annihilation Barges he got an extra 50 Victory Points and edged me out by 20 something VP to get the win.
Game five was a bit of a pain. Several rules issues, that I probably should have let go, but after game two, I wasn't in the mood to. It got down to me failing a pinning check, failing a charge, failing an EL roll and enough time having been wasted by that point with yet another rules issue (there is no impassible terrain by NOVA FAQ, so even if you cannot see through a wall, you can still move "over it", but he wanted to claim I couldn't assault him because I couldn't see him, even though part of the squad could clearly see him, but those models couldn't reach him with my charge roll, yadayadayada) that I couldn't get the next turn in, so he got me by one objective.
Game six was a blow off for me. I offered the young gentleman a choice of rolling 2d6 each and going home, writing him up as a winner, or playing him a game if he wanted one. Dammit, he was young enough that I knew he wanted a game and I gave him one. It was a bit of fun, but we didn't push hard though so we only got to three and I actually almost won it while screwing around playing "hunt the Zilla" and popping off Snapfire at a flying Hive Tyrant with an Annihilation Barge (which scored 5!, count them 5! Tesla hits about of six shots).
Overall, I had four excellent games, one somewhat frustrating game and one extremely frustrating game as far as sportsmanship went.
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