Feast of Blades: Impartial Missions/Tournament Review/Preview

Ok folks, since my GT season this fall came to a sudden unexpected empty void I decided to pull a Kirby/Tastey and do tournament coverage/review work....Since I am sidelined and starnded I will be doing impartial reviews of presented formats and missions for the upcoming Feast of Blades Open (not invitational)...

First off if I was in Denver around the time of the tournament, which actually was originally planned for a year ago today, I would be attending this tournament. Here is a blurb from the tournaments site about the FOBO...

"Feast of Blades is an annual wargaming convention in Denver Colorado held the first weekend in November. Though the Invitational is our main line event we have several other events that weekend including an Open WHFB GT, a Narrative 40k mega battle, and an Open 40k GT (For people who didn't qualify for the invitational, or people who travelled with a qualifier...or simply someone who just wants to play in a tourney). There are also dozens of "after hours events," including pod racing, character gladiator battles, and mega floor battles, chariot races and myriad other things to keep you gaming 24-7 (yes, that means ALL NIGHT gaming!)"

-(feastofblades.com)

This 5 round tournament will take place in Denver, a personal 2nd home of a city for this Jersey native, on Nov. 4th-6th...Recently the terrain was posted and here we can see my initial critiques...Excellent job from what I have seen and read online. I am a fan of equal terrain and types for every single table in an event, especially a competitive one like the invitational. We see....

LOS blocking hills....check

large ruins and buildings to hide large vehicles.....check

obligitory AT tree clumps....check

What do I see missing on a nearly flawless table? Any impassable terrain....this is a short critique and I will get into army vs. army breakdown with the rules and missions.....Also I would like to see ruins and trees in both deoplyment zones only because of kroot and bolster defences rules being a big part of some armies....but thats a small preferencial critique...

Overall on terrain, based on pre-tournament posts and pictures.....B++...very nice job FOB team...

now only if roads and buildings were commonplace.....hahahaha

So on to the missions packet release...I will not go into reviewing all of the primer missions but the missions as a group, the rules, the format/layout, and how all of these factors impacts each army....

Overall it is nice to see a variety of primer missions come out for the tournament....since 8 were released for a 5 mission tournament I expect a lot of the similar missions to be cut as is common practice....As for the layout we get a Primary/Secondary BP format...one thing I like about this set up is the lower margin of points between getting a Massacre and a regular victory....It puts winning secondary on a higher priority since effectively with a possibility of the loser winning secondary and BP's to actually come out on top...nice touch...Also we see only regular victories and massacres....with a non-automatic massacre from tableing....these are two points I like to see in tournaments today....Also a couple of things I like to see is the 4+ BP's from atleast getting to turn 5...a nice touch to discourage slow play....

Now on to some of the other impacts of the format...For one we see a large margin of love for armies that lvoe to get into someones face...In fact the format extremely discourgaes long distance shooting/castle armies....this extremely hurts Guard/Tau/Current Necrons/Castle Marine armies....we see this in a lot of the missions forcing you into an offensive action...Also the BP's tend to tilt the balance further with bonus' going to those with few things left in thier deployment zone (less than 3 units in fact for a +1 BP)...as well as a bonus for having more units towards the center of the table...Small details like this massively improve some armies chances, such as Nids and Orks....Also with terrain not being ill towards a deepstrike army DOA BA come into mind....The only problem I see is that it does penalize certain armies and builds...which I do not like to much in tournaments no matter the meta (A guardsmen is sad somewhere right now)

There is also an imbalance with this in some of the missions, for example Mission 6 is the infamous 6 objective game where you need to take your opponents 3 objectives on his side of the board....this mission tends to favor an assaulty/deepstrikey/ central dominance army while it hurts other lists....now overall other missions tend to balance this out...

I also have to point out Mission 4, "Dusk Raiders", that is objectives with night fighting on turn 5-7...this coupled with the fact you get bonus points by reserving two units almost makes this an auto win for dark eldar.

We also see every mission either being spearhead or Pitched....no diagonal or DOW deployments.....I am a fan of total variety so with only two base deployments I tend to frown...

Regardless of mission balance you see some clear cut favorate armies to make the top 4...here is my prediction....Overall you will see any aggressive army do well such as DOA, Deathwing, Orks, Nids, Grey knights, DE, etc...while armies like Tau, Necrons, Guard, Castle armies, etc do poorly....I can see very midfield minded GK armies, such as Crowe Psyback/psycannon spam doing very well....Also with such a high priority of objective missions with bonuses for reserving makes Dark Eldar very viable with DOA and Deathwing close behind....I also see assault armies making a surge, like Nids and hybrid Orks...

Overall any strong midfield army has a good shot at the title....my prediction for top 4 is a Nid player (this being our wild card pick and upset favorate).....with a list involving tervigons and masses GS's and big bugs.....Next up I see Crowe GK, over the more popular Coteaz builds only for psycannons and thier midfield domminance....clear cut favorite by being so popular and trendy currently....with missions and BP's giveing a slight advantage to fast, contesty armies I see a common venom spam Dark Eldar player making into the top 4......For my final Top 4 pick I have to show some love to Descent of Angels....a lack of impassible terrain and such a high quantity of undangerous hills I have to give these guys thier props...mission favorable and slightly trendy......Overall I see it going between the DOA and GK with GK being the number one seed.....other armies recieving votes are Battlewagon Orks (24)Mech Blood Angels (17) Vulkan 'Nilla Marines(9) Deathwing(4)...

Overall I give Missions a B+...In comparisoon to other tournaments and thier layouts/scoring/missions I easily give the FOB a solid A....its nice and refreshing with a lot of the battle point reforms I would like to see put in place.....awesome job FOB team

All in all I like the format and missions and I only wish the best of luck to the organizers and attendees with a job well done to the TO's and designers.....more on this later...