The Colonial GT in Review (40k and Fantasy)

Hey all so last weekend was the Colonial GT. It was my first fantasy GT (After really only playing the game for 2 weeks) and my 2nd time at the Colonial. Lets just say it was a blast with the new location(s) being great with an actual bar full of veterans and $1.50 draft beers(Did I mention the beer could be purchased in fairly cheap in pitchers as well?). The GT filled wayyy before the actual date with a final crowd of 78 for fantasy and 32 for 40k.
As a side note they are probably gonna make more room for 40k next year as I personally know almost a dozen guys that wanted to attend but could not due to a lack of slots. Actually since they changed the 40k to be ran by a new group, btw really nice and awesome guys, loads better than last year, I wanted to play 40k with my updated Storm Wardens Vanilla marines army. But since that filled and I wanted to anyway I went for Fantasy. Now first of all I will go over briefly how the 40k GT went down and then I will comment on my fantasy experience since most of my online readers are interested in the 40k meta.

First of all 40k lucked out and was in the room attached to the bar. All of the 16 tables had 5 pieces of terrain fairly nova open style with the terrain being tight yet it lacked good LOS blocking pieces in my oppinion yet you could still hide rhino class sized models well. The field was made up with the following breakdown.
6 Orks
5 Grey Knights
3 Blood Angels
3 Space Wolves
2 Imperial Guard
2 Dark Eldar
2 Necrons
2 Space Marines (Vanilla)
2 Chaos Space Marines (1 Khorne, 1 Nurgle)
1 Sisters
1 Tyranids
1 Dark Angels (Deathwing)
1 Eldar
1 Chaos Daemons

So all in all a good mix with every codex in attendance (except that darkhorse of a Templars codex). Surprisingly a lot of Orks. Top 5 looked as such...with the Dark Eldar taking the win

1.Luke Riabawol-    Dark Eldar -        121
2.Andrew Gonyo-    Grey Knights-     112
3.Rich Therkin-        Sisters of Battle- 108
4.Eric Hoeger-         Necrons-            106
5.Nick Nanavati -    Tyranids-             102

All in all not a surprising result with much of the Top 5 being known excellent players, and good guys. Luke was in first almost all day and earned max points in every round but round 3. Surprising to me is Daemon Green, last years winner with a few other GT placings and wins, coming in at 16th yet from what I can tell he went 3-2 yet did not garner many extra points. Yet still had podiumed for painting as well with that beautiful Thousand sons count as vanilla marines army. Nick Nanavati, the Nova Invitational winner, not surprising me with a 5th place even with nids.....it only shows what a good hand can do with that book. The first place winner also had the lowest paint score of the top 5 proving his unmatched dominance at the top tables with the glasshammer book DE. It is the players not the codices that make myself unsurpised at how the event went. Also good numbers came from Deathwing, played by Lou Branco coming in 6th, and Eldar, played by Brad Nichols, coming in 9th overall. Ted Nagel, in attendance with a gorgeous as always, Space Wolves army won Top sports for 40k with Daemon Green having top painted (I believe as he had the largest score for sports but both had tied painting scores, please correct me if I mixed the two up)
Well that is the numbers. As for the event the judges were excellent. Someone brought in coffee and the event was catered as well. I'm sorry as I am horrible with names so I cannot drop the cool judges from this year. All I have heard is good things from the games played...

For Fantasy I will not do the entire breakdown but most armies had between 2-7 players each yet Orcs and Goblines had over 20 players in attendance. The Top 5 came in as such....with Skaven taking it all...

1. Keith Bonneau-    Skaven-                  111.6
2. Alex Schmid-       Warriors of Chaos- 107.6
3. Paul Gates-          Warriors of Chaos- 104.4
4.Matt Cassidy-       Daemons-               103.6              
5. Larry Mottola-     Tomb Kings-           101.8

As for myself? I finished 64th out of 72 remaining players, I onyl won my last game (haha I know I am a noob at fantasy, but still I was happy to win the one and I really should have won two of my other games. but I cannot complain). I was not surprised to see a lot of Daemons hanging out around the top near the end as well as a good showing by Skaven and Warriors of Chaos yet I am surprised that Ogres did not do as strong as expected. The large showing by Orcs is surprising yet Chris, the TO, put it best when people are just learning how good that book really can be. Both events had Ork/cs with the most players

For my games? Round 1 I cam across an Ogres player named Stephen, standard game. He had a decent sized block of Ironguts and bulls each. a Thundertusk, a bunch of sabretusks....a unit of 4 leadbelchers, 4 mournfang cavaly, a firebelly a slaughtermaster etc. Fairly standard yet lacking ironblasters. Really nice guy too. I ran up my hexwraiths and stopped right in front of his mournfangs tieing them up the entire game with stalled out combat res (They are worth it trust me). My 25 man unit of GG with my red fury/sword of bloodshed lord) wiped out the unit of ironguts to the md inan without taking a casualty. They then went on a killing spree hacking everything in his backfield to peices. Yet where things went wrong was my horde ghouls got caught up in combat with his bull unit. I wiffed oh so many times while he eventually took out the unit and went rampaging through my backfield killing my skelies, zombies and lord. Game ended with him in advantage (MY lord split off end of the game and charged his mournfangs bringing it down to one wound lol. I lost fairly badly as he surrounded my GG with all of his characters and bulls and thrashed them with combat rez.

Game two I played a very nice Orcs player named Tony. He had some really gross special character lord on a boar with a unit of trolls, two 60x night goblin blocks with fanatics, a unit of black orcs, a unit of reg orcs, a mangler squig, 2 stone throwers and a doom diver. He also had the giant araknarok (sorry do not know the spelling). We ended up about 14 inches apart mexican standoff style for a few turbs with all of the fanatics spinning around like idiots between us. I tied up his monster spider with a banshee while my hexwraiths went warmachine hunting in his backfield. I actually had a very good position while some impassable terrain blocked his LOS while my horde ghouls were wheeled for a brutal flank charge behind it....with regular blocks lined up against him. He flinched first and slightly moved up so my ghouls had a huge flank charge against night goblins while my GG with my lord his his trolls and my zombies lagged behind. Things seemed hugely in my favor but the stupid horde unit of ghouls wiffed again and he managed to snipe my lord int he combat! crumble cruely killed me while my ghouls got stuck. He eventually sniped my other necro lord really hurting me. If I didnt lose both of those lords I wouldve won about 700-200....yet both of them together cost me the game. I tactally killed myself by not protecting my two lords and all my heroes yet math was against my ghouls all game as we both agreed they shouldve sweeped down the flank taking out all of his blocks. They had vanhels off too giving them reroll to hits! Well dice are dice it was still an awesome game.

Round 3 had myself playing against Tomb Kings with freaking Dawn attack. Now this scenerio sucks normally but it did hard for me since my lord and his block ended up on the right with the rest of my army on the left (aka no marching for awhile). The TK player had 2 large blocks of archers, a casket, 3 warsphinxes, and a larg chariot block and a couple units of carion birds. Also he had 2 screaming skull catapults. Basically what happened was I vanhels the crap out of my general swinging my army to the middle yet I never reached his lines. He roadblocked me with the carions at first then the sphinxes. I managed to get through all of that but since I never hit his characters he won.....I hate that scenerio lol

So horrible first day but I am using it as a learning experience. Day two round 4 saw myself against a dark elves player. He had a large block of 40 corsairs and 40 executioners, some harpies, a cauldron, a hydra and some skirmishers. I actually got off all my charges, with ASF from the cart and Vanhels on all of my untis! My GG and Lord whipped the corsairs to pieces while my stupid idiotic ghouls wiffed again! (gahhh!1!). He managed to wipe my ghouls in one round and got a flank charge on my lord unit, which did eliminate all of the corsairs. He tied up all my zombies so there was nothing I could do. I really should have deployed so my vampire lord could have hit the executioners and ghouls the corsiars yet hindsight is 50/50.

Now with an 0-4 record I knew I was near the bottom. Yet I managed bonus points in almost all of my rounds. Round5 was against another Tomb Kings player with 2x4 chariots, 3 large untis of archers, a large unit of skelies, a casket, and 2 catapults. I proceeded to vanhels up the board and get into combat with his chariots shredding them up, then I hit his archers while he left his skelies immobile on the flank. I had set up a massive charge against the skelies but he called it with my sureness of tabling him. So last round I got max points (yay I won lol I didn't expect to).

Still an aweosme event with good judges on the fantasy side. The fantasy paint judge was agreat guy and gave me some pointers for fantasy models (space marines I can do, zombies are harder).
There was an oddity with the top 1 and 2 for fantasy painting being fromt he same club and dating apperently (yes one was the only girl at the event!)....but they come from a group of some of the nicest and laid back gamers I have met with some awesome painting skills. They were the best two armies as well. Other than that non-issue there was no contreversey. Good Job Chris on a great event! So now it comes down to whether I use this as my exclusive Fantasy GT or I go back to 40k next year....I guess 6th edition 40k will tell myself the awnser but I will be attending. ....wow that was a long article...