Flame On, with special Epic UK friends Tim and Tom, pooled their scenery collection for a mega-battle. We'd call it the Stomp Informal, but that does Si a disservice. The man had crafted a scenario for this epic Epic showdown which pitted Imperial versus Chaos on a 24'x6' city board. 8 players clashed for supremacy.
You can read a draft copy of his scenario here. It was tweaked on the day.
Imperial Commanders Curis and SPAYSE MAHREEN had a heated discussion on tactics. It was settled by arm wrestling.
To aid the Imperial Commander, Black Templars, White Scars and Dark Angels swept down from the skies Drop Pods and Thunderhawks. The combination of Stomp's aggressive Crusaders with Si's resilient Leman Russes broke the Chaos on the Imperial right flank. Grand Urlock, Despoiler of Worlds, and all round Evil Overlord, Tim could do little to stop the Flame On synergysing. The right flank was a 5-2 victory to the Imperials. Meanwhile, Chaos Commander Christian had brought a Dark Imperator Titan to the game. Here's Curis and Christian doing their very best Imperator impressions. The Imperials chose to ignore this mighty firebase in favour of the objectives, with the left flank ending at a 3-3 tie. Overall, a victory for the Imperium of Man. And now, to end on the obligatory shot of Simon at a trendy bar.]]>
I also tried Scouts with Razorbacks - as I liked the idea of garrisoned twin-linked Lascannons. This necessitated lots of conversions using Ork battlewagon turrets glued together, as the classic SM2 era Razorbacks are super-rare.
Assault Marines - Supreme Commander
Assault Marines - Chaplain
Assault Marines - Chaplain
Devastators Devastators
Devastators
Thunderhawk Gunship
Thunderhawk Gunship
Thunderhawk Gunship
Scouts - 4 Lascannon Razorbacks
Scouts - 4 Lascannon Razorbacks
Scouts - 3 Lascannon Razorbacks, 1 Rhino
Land Speeders
"These drinks are called bombs Simon! They're 3BP each!"
Steve had a fairly similar strategy to me - with two sets of Aspects in Vampires that would aerially assault, while his ground formations sat around on overwatch on objectives. We romped through turns one and two in under ten minutes - which was fortunate as our late departure meant we were pushed for time. The flying transports (each containing our BTSs) both landed turn 3, with the exception of my first laden Thunderhawk that was shot down in flames with no survivors. I forced it to a Turn 4, but Steve obliterated my measly four-strong Assault Marines BTS and had a set of Aspects on my Blitz I was unable to approach let alone shift. 0-2 turn 4.
Aha! A rematch against Jez's Marines with a pair of Warhounds as its BTS. I'd played this last tournament - where I'd pounced on his Titanly BTS with all my Thunderhawks Turn 1, leaving one on 1DC. The hall had then witnessed howls of frustration as everything else I had fired at it hoping to finish it off only to watch it pass every 5+ reinforced save ever.
This game I forced corners, and attempted a similar Thunderhawk trick. At the critical moment Jez had advanced the bulk of his army up the board leaving the Warhounds behind unsupported. My first Thunderhawk approached this pair of cursed dogbots - only to be shot down on the approach. Again. Twice in two games. I elected not to retain, and Jez doubled the Warhounds back to the safety of the main bulk of his force. However, I still had two Thunderhawks left, and they did the classic one-two with the first dropping off its formations within 15cm to lay blast markers and add supporting fire for the engagement from the second. This wiped all the DC off both of them, and I got revenge. However, this was a case of Captain Ahab getting his whale, as my obsession with the Warhounds meant the bulk of my army was in the open against Jez's Marines. He won the initiative Turn 2 and destroyed all my Titan-hunters in turn, and went on for a 2-1 win Turn 3.
Two losses under my belt, and the alleged swissing system now drew me against gaming supremo Tim Hunt. Argh! I've already faced one premier league player, I can't manage two. Tim expertly pulled my forces apart in short order, with my only real good tactical moves limited to onion-skinning my Blitz with formations from Thunderhawks to force a Turn 4. At least none of them were shot down on the approach. Tim managed to assault some Razorbacks with his Deathstrikes, proving their worth as a front-line battletank.
So, three losses. Dismal outing for the experimental Warhoundless Marines. Simon did similarly badly. However, he was using the same list to a previous tournament - and I was using a different Marine list to last tike (Codex Astartes and not White Scars) so I qualified for a bonus championship point - and pulled further ahead of him in the Championship. Epic win!
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First off, I am sure you will join us all in thanking Neil Kerr for starting BotCh and running the first 6 BotCh's over the last few years. With the end of the Chump Wars Saga Neil has decided to move on to new challenges in life, but rest assured BotCh is in safe hands, and we look forward to this new exciting era, the start of the Double O Chump series.
Welcome to the seventh annual Flame On Battle of the Chumps event. There is no stopping us now. The battlefield, as ever, is situated on a war-torn planet of Chumponia where escalating engagements will build up over the weekend into all out war and climatic final battles to decide who shall rule.
In a real war skilful application of strategy and tactics will give the participants an edge in the conflict. The different sized games over the weekend, together with some non standard missions and objectives, is all designed to provide players with the opportunity to exercise these skills more than they would be able to do under normal tournament conditions.
Usually, players meet each other on a one to one basis, each with the same tactical objectives in mind. These represent individual minor clashes or a small part of a greater conflict that occur in a short period of time.
This event represents events occurring over a longer timescale where huge forces clash on an extensive battlefront across which conditions and objectives vary widely. In such titanic battles it is success or failure of large groups of forces which is important not the localised success or failure of one individual force; though they may greatly influence the course of the war through their bravery, skill or shear dumb luck.
The weekend's gaming is designed to reflect such conditions so the emphasis is on your overall tactical ability rather than creating a single all winning force. To win each player will need to demonstrate their ability to create and field their army in variously sized conflicts against a diverse selection of foes in order to achieve success. This might mean difficult strategic and tactical decisions need to be made while selecting your separate forces, but that is the true nature of warfare on a large scale.
Each player will have 3 separate and distinct armies drawn from the same codex. The first is a small recon force, the second is a main battle group and the third a large war host.
Location:
Maelstrom Games
Matlock Mill
Hamilton Way
Mansfield
Nottinghamshire
NG18 5BU
This year there will be:
Mike Mee's Biel Tann narrowly missed out on Epic UK Championship Points by one place at ninth, while Curis languished somewhere towards the bottom with his 1990s World Eaters.
Current Championship rankings for Flame On stand at:
Special apologies to Rug, who took a lot of shit from pre-tournie pub excursion for crying off due to snow forecasts.
Rug got the last laugh as he stayed at home toastie warm on Saturday night while Flame On crawled the 6 1/2 hours back to Manchester. We promised each other if worst came to worst and we had to huddle together for warmth to survive the night THEN WE'D CHOOSE DEATH.
We're looking forward to the next fixture in the Epic UK tournament season - Into the Breach 2012.
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Seven hours of painting with some of the best painters around.
This year's painting tutors include:
Best in Show winner at Salute 2010 and widely recognisied as one of the best painters in the world.
Founding member of the 'Eavy Metal team, Crystal Brush judge and owner of Studio McVey.
Probably the most influential painter of all time.
Co-founder and display painter extraordinarie for Golem
Golem painter and four times Golden Demon winner - including Gold Single 40K and WFB
TBA
In association with Maelstrom Games.
Clockwise from far left Nathan "Could Be Robert Nathans?" Roberts, Chris "Curis" Webb, Tim "Attention Span" King, Chris "Gang" Green, Graham "Like an Apple" Apperley, Gaz "SMONGASMONGASMONGA" Jones, Chris "My He's Grown" Apperley, Gary "Loveable Rogue" Percival, Mike "Painting Pimp" Newman, Scott "Not THE Scott Mills" Mills, Bob "Why Wasn't I in the Photo?!" Wolstencroft, Simon "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" Jenkins and Mike "2U2" Mee.
Curis' Dark Angels of the 8th Company fought at Open War XV alongside the mighty Warlord Titan - Hepatitus Alpha. HeI ranked top of Flame On, though that's like being World's Tallest Dwarf as Flame On dominate the lower places at the Open War rankings.
Hepatitus Alphas was on loan from Simon - a man whose ever-present sunglasses actually served their intended purpose in Mansfield's gorgeous sunshine. And made him look a bit like Lt. Horatio Caine. OOooooowwww!
Mike Mee, a man who likes to express himself simultaneously in the first and third person with sentences such as "This pleases Mee!" took home the Epic Armageddon wooden spoon. Here he is looking surprised at Chris Steel's Vanahein Aircav (picking up another well-deserved Best Army award).
Joe Jepshon's gorgeous Epic (not) Dark Angels were cruelly denied any awards, despite looking fantastic with Joe's paint-staking hyper-lighting technique
It was also nice to see Golem's paintjobs gracing box art at Maelstrom's quite frankly aspirational shop.
]]>This was a scenario written by Flame On's mighty Si. Si's campaigns, army lists and scenarios are always set in his own corner of the universe - this time the planet Mocheskan, in the throes of civil war in the dark days of Abbadon's 13th Black Crusade. Basically the attackers have to cross two rivers and capture key political buildings in a city. Though the defenders are massively outnumbered, they've mined the rivers - even going so far as adding gravitic spring mines to stop pesky skimmers. The city itself is void-shielded and encased in a flak umbrella (ella, ella, ay, ay ay...).
But with a return to miniature hostilities Flame On deployed across the length and breadth of Britain and across three systems to bring glory and prizes to Manchester's loose-association-cum-social-network.
Firstly, the 40K crowd went en masse to the 40K Masters event at the Eye of the Storm.
Left to right: Mike "White Scally Jacket" Newman, Nathan "Moptop" Roberts, Chris "Scarfy" Green, Josh "The Stallion" Robert, James "Jimbo" Knight, Neil "The King" Kerr, Gary "Han Solo" Percicval, James "Curis-doesn't-know-how-to-poke-fun-at-him" Ramsay and finally Gaz "Oh-does-Curis-know-how-to-poke-fun-at-him" Jones.
On the main Masters event 1st place was taken by the gaming powerhouse that is Josh, 2nd place by Neil. Nathan managed 3rd place in the accompanying Open event.
The army-painting machine Mike Newman did nothing, but gets a special mention for shameless SEO purposes.
Meanwhile in deep south Curis and Stompzilla bombed it to Bristol, enjoying the throbbing hypnotic sounds of the Octopus both ways. They fought weird and wonderful selection of experimental Epic: Armageddon lists. Both tied for most sporting, and Curis' Raven Wing got Best Painted, taking him to like fifty gazillion painting awards. The cock.
Special mention goes to Stomp who on top of tying for most sporting got an honourable painting mention. What unlikely achievement for that lad next? Marriage? Attending a tournament sober?
Lastly, Jimmy "Ninjahamster" Balderstone drove a measly 400 yards to Stockport's Northwest Gaming Centre to lord it up Victorian style in the realms of Malifaux (which we've decided rhymes with 'Halifax') and claim absolute first place. He only provided this pathetic photo so we've taken the liberty of reflecting his face in the trophy to make it more exciting. (We actually started with obscene pornographic reflections, but realising he's behind the site we thought better.)
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Battles took place across a variety of boards, without a single giant cocking redwood in sight.
1st place was taken rather definitely by Tim Hunt and his Skorchatastic Speed Freaks that unleashed burny death.
2nd place was taken by Joe Jephson and his real-life Dark Angels, proving the world over that perceivedly under-powered variant lists are still deadly in the hands of the tactically astute.
3rd place was taken by Matt Arnold, who'd grown a beard especially to gain an edge in one of the scenarios (which rewarded extravagent facial hair) only to forget those rules in the heat of battle.
Matt also won Most Visually Awesome Army - Judge's Choice for his Blood Red White Scars.
Chris Steel won Most Visually Awesome Army - Players' Choice for his stunning Vanaheim Air Cavalry.
Last place went to Alan Saunders, who can console himself with the special SPAYSE MAHREEN wooden spoon.
Finally, Stockport Stockade 2011 has been provisionally booked for the last weekend in September. It may be a multi-system event so we can include Citadel Combat Cards.
Thanks to everyone who attended, and the staff at the Northwest Gaming Centre for providing an excellent venue.
A fuller Flickr gallery from the Stockade can be found here.
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