And then this happened....Astro 2013

It almost seems fitting that the 13th Astronomicon tournament in Winnipeg would see the remnants of my 13th Company army (re-tasked as a Space Wolves drop pod army) take the Best Overall trophy. It was a bit of a surprise as my playing while admittedly better than normal, was not spectacular. Astronomicon is best classified as a hobbyist's tournament in that your painting scores, army composition scores, sportsmanship. army list, display base, etc....all go into your overall score. So while my points earned for playing over the weekend was not overwhelming, my high scores for painting, conversions, and theme put me over the top. Oh and I should mention that over the top means that I took top place by only 1 point, so things were very close indeed.

I have played in numerous Canadian GTs in the distant past as well as one Chicago GT back when GW recognized the value of such things. Inevitably in a weekend with 6 or 7 games with total strangers you will probably encounter a player whose play style or demeanor just does not mesh well with yours. Astronomicon has yet to produce such an experience for me over the 13 year span that I have played in it.

Worth mentioning is the fact that amongst the winners there were two people whom I have known for years who had their first trip to the podium ever for an Astronomicon. Neil Spears, playing a Blood Angels army, won the award for Best Army list. Alex Bedard won a well deserved award for Best Army for a heavily converted ork air cavalry army.

I was also pleased to finally get an Astro game in against Dave Violago and his Eldar Sword Wind. Dave has been playing Eldar for as long as I have known him, and in a game where victory requires some luck and some mistakes on the part of your opponent, Dave makes very few of the latter.

In all I had a superb set of games against a good range of players, and I feel I must thank them all again for their patience as my experience with 6th edition wh40K was limited to two games before the tournament. I know I still managed to screw some things up but in the end I had a blast and found the weekend mentally draining in trying to out maneuver and out play an exceptional group of players.

My opponents for the weekend were:

Dave Violago - Swordwind Eldar (In my mind Dave is the epitome of a true Eldar general....the fight will happen on their terms foolish mon-keigh).

Jim Baidacoff - Dark Eldar (his Vietnamese restaurant themed army list was a joy to read; and never have so many Dark Lances done so little to a flier; the effects of Drahzar on Grey Hunters was another matter entirely).

Darrel Hoover - Space Wolves with Imperial Guard allies (my face hurt from laughing so much during this game. Darrell was just a lot of fun to play against e.g. this was the only game where I lost the Storm Eagle, but the explosion finished off his Rune Priest while he was locked in combat with my Rune Priest)

Charles Janke - Crimson Fists and Blood Angels, Including Pedro Cantor (mental note: never again will I drop pod a dread in front of a Contemptor Mortis dread... there wasn't enough left of my poor dread for a dental record check)

JP Perrault - Night Lords Chaos marines (perhaps my best tactical performance but we ran out of time before we could make a boss fight happen; by the way the Helldrake bale flamer is nasty, killing 12 Grey Hunters before my Storm Eagle finished it off with a lascanon enema)

Sean Habing - Necrons led by the Storm Lord (apparently the Necron's true strength is in completely nullifying my ability to roll anything more than a 2 leading to two of the most pathetic close combat performances by a pair of Space Wolves dread and the almost complete nullification of my melta weapons; another game where I laughed a lot but mainly at my bad luck...what else can you do?).

I have a few pics but there are a bunch from my game with Dave that I can not locate so they may be on another hard drive somewhere. Once I locate them I will post them. Luckily Dave will be posting his pics on his gaming group's blog, including great shots of the armies that were there,  which can be found here:

 http://wpggamegeeks.blogspot.ca/

The results of the tournament: 

Best Overall:	Mario Rocha	- Space Wolves
Best Sportsman:	Greg Ritchie	- Space Marines
Best Army:	Alex Bedard	- Orks
Best Appearance:	Brock Jansen	- Tyranids
Best General:	Mike Knudsen	- Dark Eldar
Best Terrain:	Kevin Nelson	- Jungle
Best Single Miniature:	J.P. Perrault	- Chaos Sorcerer
Best Army List:	Neil Spears	- Blood Angels

For more info about the Astronomicon tournament can be found here:

http://www.astronomi-con.com/

I recommend checking out the Astronomicon scenarios as it is this aspect of the tournament that really sets it apart. That and the fact that this tournament is run in 4 cities in North America (Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, and Dallas) and the TO's consist of 3 guys doing all of the heavy lifting. This is truly a labour of love for them.

I should mention that while some of the pics below were taken by me, Mike Major and Christian Augst (2 of the TOs) are also responsible for some of them too.

And pics:

Photo by Christian Augst

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major