Oh, Blog, you're right, I have been ignoring you!

I had been preparing for two tournaments, one of which has passed (the Inner Circle GT qualifier), and one which is still coming up, the NOVA Open in Dulles, VA. And my brother was in town this week, so we got a few board games in this week. See also the Chaos in the Old World pic above. We played that about 5-6 times over the week, falling more and more in love with it as we did. I can't recommend it more highly. Buy it, buy it now.

How did the ICGT go? Four games in one day is exhausting mentally, and I didn't get enough sleep. See how I'm building excuses right there? I took my IG instead of my Flesh Tearers as I couldn't come up with a list that seemed to work on paper. Game one had me facing off against PJ Brady of F.R.A.G. who had a wonky Shrike/Khan/TH/SS/Melta Drop pod list. It was victory points/dawn of war. I ended up killing all his troops, and he returned the favor. Khan and my Marbo counts as had an epic duel, and, sadly, it did not end well for Sly. It was a 400 point difference in the end, and sadly it was not in my favor.

Game two was another marine list, a great looking Aurora Chapter list that was a tad bit underperforming. The Mission was objectives/Pitched battle. I would have had a clear victory with it, but I made a silly mistake in not chasing after a broken Sternguard squad with Vulkan attached, so we had to go to the tiebreaker of VP's, where I was the clear winner. That led me to game against another F.R.A.G.er, Pete, who's Eldar raked me over the coals. It started with the turn two loss of my Manticore, which hadn't fired a shot. The worst part? The scatter die that wrecked my tanks was mine own! Part of it was dice, but over all, my target priority was off the entire game. I hate grav tanks, with a passion, and I chose to shoot them over the Dire Avengers that wrecked my infantry.

So, I'm 1-2, and that means at best I'm mid-tier. So the last game is a fun one. I ended up playing Dave Johnson's exquisitely painted Nid Army. All the target priority problems I had in game three were gone, and I got hits all over the place. I also ended seizing initiative .His Hive Guard were halved the first turn, and gone by turn three. A Tyranofex had 5 wounds by turn one's end. It was a pitched battle old school recon mission, with whoever had more scoring troops in the enemy deployment being the winner. It came down to two squads of termigants, one with two, and one with one. He hid them so well, I had to maneuver my entire army to get them. One survived, getting him the tie, but I won the tie breaker (VP's). So, 2-2 isn't all that bad, and I was only 4 points behind the Paint Score winner.