Woking War round-up

This would be my DzC trophy cabinet if I could stop finishing 2nd and 3rd all the damn time!

Another weekend, another tournament, they are coming thick and fast at the moment. We are well and truly in the middle of the season.

A few of us at Team OB, I say a few, I mean all but Dan (he was at a wedding in Bolton) took part in Woking War. There was an X-Wing and Dropzone tournament in the same venue. With 10 DzC players it was a good event. There was prize support from Hawk and ibuywargames for added shininess to the competition.

There were 3 missions for the day: 

• Recon (special variant - more later), 
• Take and Extract 
• Ground Control

My List

As we know what the missions were, it meant I could slightly tailor my list to them. That is why there are 3 squads of troops and also Tormentors. I would love to put the Hunters in a Marauder, but I just don't have the points

My Tournament

After the random draw, I ended up with SkullSword (Joe) as my first opponent, couldn't have been a tougher match-up. He was using a Freerider spam list. 12 bases of them in 6 squads!!!!!!! In total Joe had 22 bases of troops. That's 11 squads. Seriously, how am I supposed to win Recon against 11 squads of troops! *

Well, I didn't lose, I played a game of block the Freeriders with whatever I could. After turn 3 I was 5-3 up in VP's as I managed to be the occupier in the central buildings. The Freeriders were now poised to try and enter my back buildings. I had stopped the Occupation Vets and Resistance Fighters from even scoring 1 VP (Occ Vets found a bomb and were then stranded, RF's had to get into combat to stop my Warriors, I then leveled the building with them in). So, on to operation block the Freeriders. It started with my Reapers on the left flank blocking off 2 squads, then the Hunters and my Oppressor joined in by blocking 2 more squads, Finally my Stalkers and a Marauder were holding up another squad. They did their job very well, but inevitably some got through, Joe managed to level it up to 5-5 in VP's but I managed to get some stranded Destroyers into Joe's back building for a 6th turn search, there was also a solitary base of Freeriders in my back building with 2 dp left. I managed to win activation on the last turn and killed the Freeriders with falling masonry, my next activation was on the Destroyers. A 2+ to win a game that I had no right to win. Guess who rolled a 1! 

I can't complain too much, a draw was a fair result, we both rolled 1 bomb each but I really thought I had it. Joe smashed me on kill points, as I was sacrificing anything and everything I could to stop the Freeriders moving. It was probably the hardest game I have ever had to play!!

The Recon variant was a bit silly, if a 6 is rolled (objective located) it had to be re-rolled. Luckily this didn't affect our game at all, but I could foresee it being disastrous.
You may wonder what happened to the Tormentors, surely they would be perfect for killing Freeriders? You would be correct, but, on turn 1 I shot them forward safely behind a central building. On turn 2 Joe got 1 gun wagon in line of sight and range, he shot down the Marauder and blew up the tormentors in the air. He made a tough game even tougher!!

*I think Joe made a mistake in this game. He should have had 2 squads of his Freeriders come out of the drill, and placed the drill in my back field

Game 2 was against Sgt Slaughter's (Pete) PHR. He had 2 Athenas so I had to be very careful. I had a plan. Pete had 3 squads of troops, same as me, so I wanted to get a squad of Destroyers into his objective building that was occupied with only Immortals. My tormentors went up the opposite flank to do what they do best and burn Sirens! 

Turn 2 I won activation, The Destroyers blasted their way in and hurt the Immortals, next activation I played Relentless Advance on my Tormentors and they wiped out the Sirens. The plan is going swimmingly. My Warriors found their objective as did Pete's Immortals (left with the smoking boots of Sirens). Turn 3 I played Razorbirds on the Immortals I was in combat with, then smashed the remaining Immortals (4 left). I pretty much knew I was going to win from here. I removed the Nemesis and Odins, both the Athena's fell victim to Reapers too. 

I owned the Focal Point at the end, but could not stop Pete contesting it with 1 Helios. 

I won 7-3 plus I had a 3 point kill point bonus giving me a 17-3 win 

That win made me the highest points scorer (on 27), so I played Techboy2000 (Ed) who had 26 on table 1, table 2 had James and Alex both on 25 and on table 3 Joe had 23 points. 4 tournament points splitting 5 players.

Game 3 and Ground Control. I'm glad I played Ed in this mission rather than any mission with objectives. He had a rather nasty building demolition army.
This was a game of ups and downs. Ed had a really bad turn 2 and 3 where he couldn't hit or wound, and I had my run of awful luck turns 4 and 5 where I was completely impotent. It turned out pretty well for me, apart from making a mistake in the last turn that cost me the tournament........maybe it didn't work out so well. Ed made a couple of mistakes too, basically not having his quick moving stuff close enough to the centre to take advantage of moving in to any quarter he wanted. It needs to be planned on turn 4 and 5 really.
I was systematically trying to remove Ed's squads from quarters and box him in as much as I could. Scourge do this really well as they are so fast.
On to my heinous crime. I had planned to move my Oppressors Harbinger into a quarter with Minders in (Ed had 1 Falcon, so was owning it), but in my haste to finish the game (we were running on a bit) I forgot to do it. This meant that the game ended with me owning 3 quarters and contesting 1 for 7 VP's whilst Ed owned 1 and contested 2 for 4 VP's. With my kill point bonus it ended 15-5 in tournament points. Had I not made the error I would have won the game 8-3 therefore getting a 17-3 win and winning the tournament. Oh well. Live and learn. 

Conclusions
I really really enjoy playing Scourge, more than any other army I've played. Scourge have their flaws, a great many of them too. They can be flimsy, and disappointing if out of position, but when you get it right it is oh so sweet. I like the list a lot too. There is enough offensive power and the troops were just right. I love 2 squads of Reapers. It's deadly, supplemented with 2 squads of Minders there are not a lot of places to hide aircraft against me.
I'm going to take Scourge to Brighton's Coastal Assault tournament on the 16th Aug too. But this time I'm taking the Screamer and Raider. Look out for a write up of that event soon.

Final Results

1st Joe Whiddett - Resistance (43) DWW

2nd James Barry - PHR (43) WLW

3rd Mike Burch - Scourge (42) DWW

4th Dave Clark - Resistance (35) LLW

5th Ed Neale-Scullion - UCM (31) WWL

6th Peter Corps - PHR (29) LLW

7th Alex Randall - PHR (27) WWL

8th David Gilbert - Resistance (21)  LWL

9th Robert Jones - Resistance (21) WLL

10th Grant Williams - Scourge (8) LLL

Best painted: Mike Burch

Best Sport: Joe Whiddett

Kevin the Minion Award: Grant Williams

The Pictures

Game 1

Game 1

Game 3 - top 2 tables

Game 3 - tables 3, 4 and 5

My Scourge in action

More of my Scourge

TechBoy's UCM

TechBoy's UCM vs James' PHR

Dave C's Resistance vs Alex's PHR

The gruesome trio (happens to be the same 3 as Birmingham)