Equinox 2012 - Day 2

Day 2 of Equinox started with high hopes after a good nights sleep and a pretty average performance the day before. Of course this means nothing in the world of tournament gaming...

Round Five vs Chris "the master of all things Cryx" Otton. Chris is one of the "top blokes" I mentioned in the previous post, the last time we meant he went to great pains to explain how his army was going to beat me... before then proceeding to beat me in that exact way  :)  This yeas he is taking time away from Cryx to move to Circle and was running an eKaya list, packing plenty of big wolves, shifting stones and druids (pretty much the list I should have been running if I could have gotten the extra bits painted in time. This was one of the most memorable games I have ever had as I felt outclassed by a superior player, made plenty of dumb mistakes, and then watched as the dice tried valiantly to assassinate his chances of winning, combined with a few silly mistakes in his part. In the end the classier player won as he managed to get me away from the flags and pull off a 3-1 Control Point win!

Round Six was verses Dan's beautifully painted Skorne (which won best painted) - this was another memorable games with eHexeris. I used my speed to my advantage and managed to pick away at his force, whilst he expended alot of firepower trying to destroy one of the objectives. In our final turn I managed to get him down to a pair of Cetrati and a single Titan, but through some stupidity of my own left Kaya without any Fury (burnt it off stopping the Titan from being able to charge thanks to a Spirit Fang). Dan started his turn, moved the Titan in and basically did nothing, then said "oops, I forgot to cut myself for Fury", I let him grab the two Fury anyway but said... "If you win this turn....". Looking at the situation he decided that the only way to go was a Page 5 mentality, moved Hexeris into the open and threw a Hellfire at Kaya...boost to hit, boost to damage... Kaya falls over. As it happened he still had the two extra Fury left so it did not matter... not that it made me feel much better  :D

Round Seven... needed a win for some self respect. Found myself facing a big Blindwater list with Maelok in charge. This was one of those games where by the end of turn 2 I pretty much knew I could not pull it off and just tried to get a few points. Managed to duck and dive, picking off points for about 5 or 6 turns before Maelok popped his feat and a gang of angry Gators ate Kara - it did take the entire unit with re roll misses, but they managed it!

So, 7 games down, 2 wins (one of them rather dubious...), so not a good weekend on the pitch. However plenty of fun and lots of good spirits amongst the competitors and a pile of nicely painted armies. What more could a players want?

As it turns out, they might want a nice trophy... The rather interesting specimen on the right was (as the plaque said) the Equinox Warmachine Trophy. Looking like that I can see why the organisers of Equinox had to put such an obvious name on it, as otherwise someone might think that their grandmother left a Sherry glass laying round the hall? Either way there was some pretty impressive prize and trophy/medal support (just to be clear I am being facetious!) for a 30+ player event that should have brought in enough entry fees to almost cover the hall hire. Luckily Chris and the Thrallblacks guys who were organising the Warmachine part of the event really went to town (check out the trophies from the last post). 

In the final wind up Scott Avery took out the top spot, literally standing head and shoulders above the rest of the competition. I managed to not take out the rather coveted wooden spoon award (I was not far off though!). However my fellow competitors were kind enough to give me the Best Sport award (letting people have extra Fury to kill me had to pay off some time) proving that those that can, Win, and those that cannot should go for the Sports Award  :D

Now that is what I call a TROPHY (check out the sweet Thrallblacks shot glass)

Thanks to all the competitors, especially Chris and the Thrallblacks for putting it all together and I will see some of you in three weeks for the NZ Nationals. Looking at what I need to paint for that I am in deep trouble - but whats life if you are not painting the night before an event anyway!