Monday, October 22, 2012

Interview with our Warmaster - Teddy Woody



This evening I have an interview with Teddy Woody who won the highly coveted Warmaster award this year taking the top spot as our Best General. There was a lot of great players this year and I watched as they knocked each other out of contention. The second day was very intense as each of the three final rounds passed by one slowly after another. I had thought Teddy was done on the first day after losing an extremely close match in the second round to another Necron player. As fate would have it Lady Luck decided to smile upon Teddy when the one last undefeated player lost in the last round. Teddy won Best General by the slimmest possible margin of a single bonus point... It was just that close.

I met Teddy several years ago when he came down from Georgia to play in a tournament I helped run in Sarasota, Florida. He is a very easy going guy and seems to get along well with everyone. Maybe one day he will figure out my last name is Turner... heh !!

So let's go ahead and get started now that the introduction is over.


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Q1. My first question is what is your intent with the dark eldar army you won? I know some told me they were planning to sell it if they won it. Will you actually play any games with the army?

A1. I’m going to keep the Dark Eldar army, even though many other players would have sold it immediately. It’s a trophy, it not meant to be sold, its meant to be displayed, and played. I did play a game this week with my new Dark Eldar, had fun with it.

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Q2. How did you go about developing your winning Necron army list? Did you have time to do a lot of playtesting?

A2. The developing of the army was basically watching and learning from other players’ mistakes. Nova was the best place for me to learn, a lot of Nercon’s players were bringing too many flyers on the board able to control the sky, but no troops on the ground. So, I needed to bring a balanced list, which was able to control the sky and the ground. The MVP of my list was Immotekh. His ability to control the night fight was a key element, and kept my units to survive and deny my opponents from shooting at me. To tell you the truth I didn’t play test this army at all.

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Q3. What types of armies besides other Necron lists had you most worried? Did you face any of them and if so how did you go about beating them?

A3. I feared drop pod Sternguards….., but no one was playing them. The other army at the tournament I feared was blob squads of Orks, or even IG. I would have to focus all of my fire power into those units that could have up to 30 men per squad. The odd thing is that I didn’t play against any these type of army….I guess I was lucky.

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Q4. I know there was a little bit of discontent from a few that the award did not go to an undefeated player - Other top players eventually knocked each other out of contention over the course of the final two games. How do you feel about winning the Warmaster award with a 5W-1L record and what were your thoughts on day 2 to stay focused on the top prize?

A4. Well, if you did the math at the beginning of tournament there could have been a 5-1 winner, due to the odd number. I believe that happen at Feast of Blades last year. I ask the TO, what was the battle points were going to use for. Got my answer… tie breakers [and Swiss pairings]. Going into the second day with a loss, I knew that I had to be on top of my game. This is year has been great for me as a 40k player. Able to get Best General in WarGamesCon in the RTT and then winning my first GT, that the achievement that every 40k players wants. This win was the icing on the cake.

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Q5. Tell us about your second game versus the Necron player. Looking back now is there anything you could have done differently to have won that game?

A5. The player name was Kai and I tip my hat to him, he was the only player that was able to defeat me in the tournament. Would I have things differently? Why yes, I would have played with more reserve, rather than aggressively. Kai played a great game, it came to one objective, shot everything and there were only two troops left. I would have won if was able to wipeout his unit, but I didn’t. So at the end we have to go to third tie breaker, 9-7 close game, Kai wins.
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Q6. Who was your favorite opponent? Please tell us why.

A6. My favorite opponent was on the last day, last game Necrons Vs. Necrons, Scott Hutchens. Scott looks at my list and stated “I played this army already.” He did, the other Necron player that placed third had a similar list….and he was only one that defeated him. It was like Scott knew what the outcome was going to be, before the game started. We both had Immotekh and laughed to see how long can we keep the night fight going and who would strike with Immotekh 's Lighting. I also stated that we should hire someone to play with the light switch…. just for the effect of night fight. It was a great game even though it was one sided. Scott - it was a great game, had a really great time.

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Q7. How did you like the overall system and rules this year? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

A7. I like the rule that there was auto turn 6, this was key to my victory. The backup system, if we didn’t have an even number of players to get an undefeated player at the end of the tournament. I hope that next year, we will have a top player’s bracket, for players that do go undefeated in the first day and silver bracket for other players. Each bracket will have a prize, and you will have a true Warmaster at the end of day two.

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Q8. Feel free now to discuss anything you wish that I haven't covered above.

A8. Now there has been discussion on Dakka... Hulksmash and BloodofKitten about loaded dices. Look I don’t like drama and I’m too old for that shit. In any GT level tournament, you’re going to have players that are either asshole, rules lawyers, cheats, or just rage quit. I could talk about it, but I won’t. Steve Tuner and Matt ran a great tournament and I will attend BeakyCon3. This was my 4th tournament which Steve Tuner has hosted, never had a single problem from either TOs or from any players. I’m glad to see a GT here in the south. Y’alls did a great job, keep up with the great work and see y’alls next year.

This is BlackSunShine saying “Scouts Out'.


Thursday, October 11, 2012

BeakyCon2 Final Report


Another year has gone by and the results are finally in again...

Warmaster - Teddy Woody, Necrons (Best General)
Emperor's Champion - Alex Simon, Grey Knights w. Imperial Guard allies (2nd Best General)
Honorable Mention - Remy Colins, Necrons (3rd Best General)
Player's Choice - Gabe Dobkins, Blood Angels
Best Army - Scott Hutchens, Necrons w. Chaos Space Marine allies

The Grand Tournament was held again at the Marriott in the Tampa international airport here in sunny Florida. Some flew into the airport and never had to step outside which I think is pretty cool. We had 64 players originally signed up with six rounds over the course of two days (three rounds per day) but had a couple drop right before the weekend. As fate would have it there was one undefeated player going into the final round but he lost his last game so we ended up with six players accumulating 5W-1L records. Bonus points were used to determine the final ranking (total aggregate of kill points, objectives held, First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Line Breaker summed from all six rounds).

Next year we are planning to increase the player base up to 96 with two final brackets to ensure we end up with one undefeated player. It's ironic how it ended as so often there is a lot of heated debate on the Internet regarding whether a pure win-loss system or margin of victory (MoV) is the better system to determine who is actually the best general. We had planned on using total bonus points as a tie breaker to cover the case of such a contingency so in the end everything worked out quite smoothly. The irony is that it turned MoV was used to determine the top player... Advocates of MoV so often claim that this system allows any player to lose one game while still having a shot at grabbing the top spot which turned out to be the case.


It's obvious from the results that Necron flyer spam is one of the top (if not the top) armies in the current meta. Necron flyer based armies are highly mobile and can pour out a lot of high strength (S7+) fire power. They also have excellent dedicated melee units in the form of Canoptek Wraiths and Scarabs coupled with either Overlords or Destroyer Lords sweeping through the field. The two Necron armies that finished in the top three to eventually climb their way back to the top both featured lots of flyers and obviously racked up lots and lots of bonus points. Also note that the top Necron army suffered its one loss to another Necron flyer based army and that game came down to a very close hard fought tie breaker on the tertiary win condition.

There was only one Grey Knight army in the top three (taking second best general) and it was quite an interesting list featuring lots of Grey Knight fire power coupled with Imperial Guard as its ally. Note that this army did not feature any flyers. This player suffered its one loss to one of our youngest players (John Lennon) fielding Tyranids which eventually ended up knocking the Grey Knight player out of contention for the top spot which was also quite ironic in its own way.

There were some other exotic lists such as Marc Parker's ork horde army which did quite well along the way until finally losing to the same Tyranid player mentioned above. Another army I think worth mentioning that did well was Kenny Boucher's (Next Level Painting) daemon army that only had one one flying monstrous creature (Fateweaver of course) and lots of Flamers and Screamers. This army also did quite well until finally losing to the Grey Knight army mentioned above.

Top 2 Army Lists
Here are the top two army lists:

Necrons (1994)
Imotekh the Stormlord
Harbinger of Eternity - Chronometron
7x Warrior - Nightscythe
7x Warrior - Nightscythe
7x Warrior - Nightscythe
6x Warrior - Nightscythe
Doomscythe
6x Canoptek Wraith - 3x Whip Coil
6x Canoptek Wraith - 3x Whip Coil
3x Canoptek Scarab
3x Canoptek Spyder - Gloom Prism
3x Canoptek Spyder - Gloom Prism

Note - I played a pick up game during the Friday evening preceding the GT versus this army with the professionally painted dark eldar army (by Next Level Painting) we gave away as the top prize playing an objective based mission and was crushed. It really brought home to me just how powerful are Necron flyer based armies as I could do nothing but play run and hide most of the game while the Stormlord's lighting continued to rock my puny xenos world over the course of the majority of the game. I was playing a fun raider based army with two Voidravens, Reaver jetbikes plus Vect and Drazhar leading a small squad of Incubi mounted in a Venom. Necrons in general are very resilient and their flyers can easily match the speed of dark eldar... It proved to be too tough of a match up for my dark eldar and I don't think I would fared any better in a kill point or table quarters based mission. Drazhar and his Incubi did manage to shred one squad of Canoptek Wraiths (in melee obviously) - that was the one highlight of the game for me. Oh well you can't win 'em all. I'm happy to see the dark eldar go to someone who will enjoy playing the army. I'd be hard pressed to think of any major event that handed out a better prize - this one came with two carrying cases from Sabol along with the codex. : )

Grey Knights Allied Imperial Guard Fusion (1999)
- Primary Detachment -
Coteaz
4x Jokaero - Chimera w/Searchlight
3x Acolyte Henchmen - 2x plasmagun - Chimera w. Searchlight
10x Grey Knight - 2x Psycannons, Daemonhammer - Psyback
Vindicare Assassin
Psyfleman
Psyfleman
Nemesis Dreadknight - Heavy Incinerator

- Allies -
Company Command Squad - 3x plasmagun, Officer of the Fleet - Chimera
Infantry Platoon:
- Platoon Command
- 2x Infantry Squad (naked)
- 4x Heavy Weapon Squads -3x auto cannons each
Manticore

This was another interesting army as well and generates lots of fire power. I didn't get to watch its demise to the Hive Mind and I'm sure that must have been a very intense game. So there you have it... Another year has gone by and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Teddy Woody wins BeakyCon2


Here is Teddy receiving the highly coveted dark eldar army painted by Next Level Painting. Teddy told me he is looking forward to playing the army.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Final Results

Warmaster - Teddy Woody, Necrons (Best General)
Emperor's Champion - Alex Simons, Grey Knights (2nd Best General)
Honorable Mention - Remy Colins, Necrons (3rd Best General)

Player's Choice - Gabe Dobkins, Blood Angels
Best Army - Scott Hutchens, Necrons

Note that we had a few players drop right before the event and ended up with six players who finished with 5-1 records. Bonus points were used to determine the final ranking.

I have some more pictures to post and will write a full tournament report this week. Thanks to everyone who came out and all the fantastic support !!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Day 1 Round 1



Marc Parker sheds a tear after watching his ole Warboss spawned.


Teddy Woody's Necrons on a roll.


Kenny Boucher's beautiful daemon army.