Tacticon 2010

Yesterday I attended Tacticon 2010 in Denver, Colorado. Though it was a disappointing day for results I still had a lot of fun.

My first game I was paired against a Space Wolves army with the mission being Spearhead and Annihilation. I initially won the roll off so it appeared things were looking up; unfortunately the initiative was taken making my deployment very ineffective. Things only went down hill from their. This opponent had a wolf rider squad with two lords which is by far the most over powered squad I have faced. Three volleys from my entire army before the broke my lines and I had only reduced the squad by 2 models. Ultimately suffered a major defeat. The good news is he went on to win the RTT.

My second game was against Necrons. This was a standard pitched battle seize ground mission. I easily controlled the Necrons in this game, but sadly only ended with a draw. My opponent played extremely slow allowing us to only finish 4 of 6 turns.

Game three was a mechanized Ork army with a dawn of war deployment and 6 objectives. I lost the deployment roll and was on the defensive most of the game. Through a lot of tactical moves and losses I did manage to ultimately end the game in a draw by contesting all claimed objectives. The dawn of ware deployment causes large problems primarily because I was unable to control the Nob biker squad before it broke my ranks. Overall this was the most fun I had.

Finally painting. Sadly I did not walk away the victor this time; I lost to the SM army pictured below. I apologize for the relatively bad picture, lighting was horrible in the room. In addition to my army there was a Demon army that was painted exceptionally, but I was unable to get a good picture because it was in a plexy glass box. As for the winner he seemed to impress the judges primarily with his display base, conversions, and hand painted markings. The judging criteria seemed to favor these items more the just painting technique. I talked to one of the judges afterwards who was brought in as an outside party who explained most of this to me. Additionally, it seems the two primary judges knew this individual and where impressed with how much time it took him to create. Overall, I think this army was worthy of winning. Painting is ultimately very subjective, and comes down to opinion in most cases.