Well I asked for that, didn’t I? Doing a write-up on how great your Moonclan list is before you take it to an event is a lot like Carlton supporters running their mouths in the week leading up to the Collingwood game. The same baffling overconfidence, the same crash when reality hits them like five Bloodthirsters using microwaved dice.
Vic GT was one hell of a weekend but a bellyflop on the table: my Moonclan took a 3-leg tour of the new books, losing very narrowly to OBR and Lumineth before racking up a good win vs Tzeentch. I never intended to play Day 2 so I finished up at 1-2 which was clearly not the result I was hoping for, meaning that this post comes with a major health warning for anyone who’s expecting wisdom or insight, but a big green flag for anyone who thinks I’m a prize flog and wishes to wallow in my comeuppance.
Huh? Did you drop just because you lost a couple of games?
Nah I was always gonna drop after Day 1, regardless of results. Last time I was at a GT in Bendigo I was 3-0 overnight and also dropped, so it’s got nothing to do with my overnight results:
Two-dayers just don’t really work for me right now so what I do is have a good crack on the Saturday, enjoy a big Saturday night and then back home on Sunday to see the girls. I love AOS but that’s just the stage of life I’m at: I don’t want to work all week, spend all weekend away from the family and then straight back to work on the Monday. That doesn’t work for me.
Game One
First up I had Adam and his OBR on Bountiful Equinox. A classic sideways-on layout meant nothing too fancy in deployment. I got on objectives, built up a decent early lead and was kind of clinging on by my fingertips as the Morghast were picking up whole units. I lost every Prio1 but it was the last one that clinched it – if I won that my Wolves could waltz onto objectives and ice the game, if Adam won it he could lock them down away from the objective, and that’s what happened.
Adam edged out the game 58-57 and while games don’t often come down to Prio, this one literally did – I just needed to win one along the way to put myself too far ahead on VPs. Hey ho.
On the plus side, I finished with 20+ minutes on the clock. I used chess clocks in all my games because I knew that if one of these games did time out, the natural thing to do would be to look at the guy with ~230 models, but I managed to play all of my games to time on the weekend which I was pretty happy with. Good to know I can still handle an army like this in a tournament setting.
It was a good game – a proper nail biter, and played in a good spirit with a few “Oops I Forgot Tos” and “Do You Mind If I Justs” on both sides. 10/10 would get nailed at the finish line by Adam again.
Result: 58-57 Defeat
Game Two
Next up was Ryan Chamley and his new-book Lumineth on Linked Ley Lines. I hadn’t played against Ryan in years but we always get on great and make a point of catching up at events, and I just wish I was playing a lower-mental-load army so we could talk more shit during the game.
After losing your first game you kind of hope to get an easier run but new LRL in the hands of an experienced player are certainly not that. Another close one on the scoreboard but I can’t try to hide behind the dice for this one – Ryan played a much better and tighter game than I did.
There were a few little moments where I could have piled in differently, locking different units in combat or keeping them out, but I made a few technical slip ups. I’ve basically made an entire hobby out of beating new-book filth with off-Broadway Destro armies but if you want to pull that off you can’t leave anything on the table, and I wasn’t good enough to do that in this game.
To illustrate: I could have piled one unit around the side of Ryan’s unit in combat and got a base or two into Neutral territory, which would have denied Ryan’s Battle Tactic, but I didn’t spot that opportunity and dropped the VPs as a result. I think that’s a really good illustration of how even at times when AOS can look like a big smoosh-up in the middle of the board, there’s still a lot of technical play and skill expression going on, and Ryan did it better than me for sure.
Well done mate on a well-earned win – next time I’ll bring the Ogors and a beer, and we can spend 1 hour rolling dice then 2 hours talking comics and life.
Result: 63-56 Defeat
We even finished in time for me to get on the beers with Maximus in this glorious Australian autumn sunshine. The weather was in the high 20s, with good friends and ice-cold piss. Heaven.
Game Three
So after playing into two new books in the hands of experienced players, losing every Prio in both games and going down narrowly both times, I was due a bit of luck in the draw. You can imagine my delight at getting paired into the battle-hardened Nigel Weir and his new-book Tzeentch on Noxious Nexus.
I packed my models onto their tray and trudged down to the bottom tables, ready for 3 hours of picking up minis and trying to concoct plausible excuses for my 0-3 humiliation. What I got instead was an unexpected highlight of the weekend.
Nigel’s always been alright by me, cos he collects Gloomspite and always likes my posts on Bluesky, but this was the first time we’d played against each other and I can’t believe how much positive energy this man still had after 9 hours of hard mental labour. Luckily for me, most of Nigel’s army was Infantry units, and I don’t think I failed a 3+ Netters roll for the whole game. At one point with various layered buffs and debuffs, he was Hitting me on 5s2, Wounding on 2s, Rend 1 Damage 2. That’s quite the profile.
When push came to shove, Nigel’s stuff just couldn’t kill my stuff quickly enough, and I won pretty handily on VPs in the end.
Result: 60-11 Victory
One fun story from the event came from Maximus (with his Tallyband) playing into Kieran Coates and his Skaven. Kieran castled up his army like he’d never castled before, then the penny dropped about how Tallyband works and that was pretty much GG. Fair fucks to Kieran, Maximus offered him the rerack but Kieran insisted on wearing the mistake – a true competitor. Apparently, Disease did 60+ Mortals in that one!
Saturday Night
Pat ran the World’s Richest AOS Quiz and the great man was in his element. Signature elements of Pat’s quiz include “AOS by the Numbers”, general nerd trivia, musical outros for every round and a full round devoted to one of Pat’s pet subjects (last year was Mike Judge, this year was Bruce Campbell).
The energy levels were sky high and the hallmark of a great quiz is that when you don’t flat-know the correct answer, you can have a good crack at figuring out some reasonable guesstimate. Pat got jeered pretty hard for his incorrect Mancrushers question, I got shut down just as hard with a failed challenge on a Cities / KO answer, and then Pat owned Kieran harder than the Tallyband when Kieran started popping off about Jezzails. All in good spirits.
I was on a banging team including some PC stalwarts like ROCKMAN and Graal, and we finished second overall. Joel McGrath and NC Dave’s team took first place.
Highlights included:
- Pat playing us the legendary Evil Dead 2 scene with the hand, and War Pigs in the music round
- A room full of beered-up nerds singing Sweet Caroline
- “The humble Gnoblar, only 6.5 points per wound”
That took us through to 11pm then a few of us kicked on over the road, until about 2.30am. Good friends and good times.
Day Two
Coke and Panadol. Name a more iconic duo.
I went back to the venue to collect my army, spent half an hour wandering around annoying people who were trying to play their games and then smoke-bombed to enjoy this glorious autumn sunshine.
Yup, that was my Day Two.
Notes from the Event
Congrats to Joel Graham on the taking out the event! Still the best and most accomplished opponent I’ve played against.
As for my own army: despite the lackluster result, Moonclan can certainly compete. It felt like I could have won both of the games that I lost, with a Prio here and a bit of sharper decision-making there. There really wasn’t much in it. That being said, the best way to run the army competitively is still the Zapp Brannigan style:
Table 1, Round 5 was Lumineth vs Lumineth so golf clap to the Devs for unleashing that on the world. I’m obviously delighted that the perennial underdogs have finally gotten some high-end rules, and now the latest wave of books look just as cracked, so I guess we’re back into Haves and Have-Nots territory.
In the local meta generally there wasn’t much shooting around, so I’d call this the Be Careful What You Wish For Meta: Combat armies that dick on other combat armies, in a variety of cruel and unusual ways.
There’s plenty of bullshit out there and GW have been spamming the 5++ ward button particularly hard recently. It’s getting to the point where it feels slightly surprising when your target unit doesn’t have one. Anyway, the brand new books coming out look just as busted, so they’ll shake things up a lot – all I ask is that the new Ogors book is equally as bent when it hits.
Thanks to TO Pat for running Vic GT, to Maximus for making the long drive solo, to each of my opponents and to everyone I enjoyed a beer with on the weekend. It was a ripper, and to everyone rolling dice this weekend, I hope you have a great time too.
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