Spoils of War Rectification part 1

Wow, what a weekend. 54 players, 6 teams, 26 tables, 5 games, 17 hours.

This was my first event of any sort, and in a way I'm happy that it was a slightly laid back campaign style tournament.

The format was slightly escalation with 5 games: 1000pt (no heavy support or special characters, max of 3 fast/ellite total), 2 x 1500pt, 2 x 2000pt (1 forgeworld 'extra' or an extra HS/E/FA slot).

Yes, so I may have lost out a little bit with these tweaks, but largely it didn't make a huge impact. So I could have done with a pie plate in game 1, and an extra set of suits in game 5, but in the end neither would have made a huge difference, I plain didn't own the extra models, and the other guy had exactly the same advantages/disadvantages.

Players were arranged into teams:

Team Primus – Space Marines of all loyal chapters.
Team Aquila – Imperial Guard, Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters.
Team Chaotica – Chaos Space Marines, Daemons and Traitor Guard.
Team Epsilon – Tau and Eldar.
Team Reavers – Dark Eldar, Necrons and Tyranids.
Team Waaargh! – Orks.

I loved this idea - for the most part because it prevented mirror matches, and also it had a cool effect on table/opponent choice...

For each round, the winning team from the previous round (it was random in the first) chose their tables. Then the team with the next highest points, etc. When all the tables had one person on it, the subsequent players filled up the opponent lots. The first player to a table chose deployment type, the second player chose mission, both out of the main rulebook.
Then play continued normally.

I like this in principle. In actuallity, it screwed me on a couple of games - more to come later.

Finally teams were given small bonus cards based on random/wins from previous round. These were fairly small effects, a sniper shot, minefield, fearless troop, that sort of thing. In all 5 of my games, this did exactly nothing. I know that some of my teammates had great success with outflanking Wraithguard in a serpent, or redeplying an opponents unit to spin a tank 180 for rear shots. Next, a very brief run down of my games (with a few pics)...