Spartan Games Ascension Tournament 1500 pts overall review

 Heya all and welcome back to the webway!

Today I have participate in a local tournament in a store named Spartan Games Arena, as a result of several factors, but primarily due to the prospect that I may meet some people I know and also due to the beckoning of my current gaming group. Here's the pic of my army;

My army list is quite simple;

Duke Sliscus
1 squad of 9 Kabalites in a Raider with Splinter Racks, Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
1 squad of 10 Kabalites in a Raider with Splinter Racks, Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
3 squads of 5  Wyches with Haywire Grenades in Venoms with two  Splinter Cannons
1  squad  of 9 Reavers with 3 Heat  Lances and an Arena Champion with Venom Blade
2 Ravagers with Flickerfield
1 Razorwing with Flickerfield

The list that I am using is done as a result of me being unable to secure my Eldar allied detachment models in time for a true WYSIWYG, thus forcing me to use a less powerful list for the tournament.

For this tournament there are 20 players in total participating, with a surprising mix of armies. The main thing I noticed is the fact that there are a total of three Dark Eldar players and this oddly enough made us one of the largest Xenos contingents alongside the Tau. Chaos is ever present, with the Daemon presence being rather strong as compared to the CSM side. As usual Marines of every heraldic colour were present, and some lonesome armies. This brings us to the next surprising element of the tournament; no serpent spam and no Cronair. This actually made me rather happy in a sense.

However, quite a number of top players are in the event and I am honestly a little intimidated by their presence despite the fact that I once played with a majority of them on a regular basis.

The two pics below are when the players are gathering at the store and also the TO's of the tournament. One of the TO is actually my Deepstriking guru, which already made my day that much better. Also to my surprise, I managed to meet a number of my old gaming buddies from my ex-LGS (including in this rank of players is Mr.Chaos of painting fame (yes, I know him in real -life)).

Here are the pics of my gaming group's armies.

Top to bottom: Redeye's Tau, David's Ravenwing, Wong's Flyer spam/Tiggy Combo and Chris'  Farsight/Tau Empire army. 

As you can see, my buddies actually came in with some rather brutal lists for the tournament, while my list is relatively weaker in comparison. Below are the armies of my fellow GC comrades from a long time ago (I see them from time to time, but not on the tabletop).

From top to bottom:  MrChaos' Orks, Kadir's Khornate host, Dann's Haemonculi coven and Joe's Daemons

Personally, I tend to notice that my roots as a balanced player comes from my days as a GC gamer, and it is from these people that I learned my approach to battle. That and having thematic armies. MrChaos went on to win Best Painted Army and also Best Sportsmanship, while Joe went on to becoming 2nd place in the tourney while Kadir won the biggest lucky draw of the day; the starter set for Dropzone Commander.

Of course there are also some other players as well, with a significant presence from Legio Malaysia, the premier gaming club in the nation. Things have changed since my day, and I am personally a ronin these days so fuck being part of a specific club (Lawl). Nonetheless here are pics of some of the other armies;

 My overall performance in the tournament is well beyond my expectations; I managed to earn the maximum amount of points for my first two games and managed to be one of the main contenders for winning the tournament while my buddies have rather mixed results in their games. Quite the irony when one consider that my list is perhaps the weakest among my buddies.

Top to Bottom: 1st Game: DE vs Dark Angels, 2nd Game: De vs Draigowing, 3rd game: De vs DE/Eldar 

 My first game is essentially my army doing a divide and conquer upon all his forces and I totally annihilated his army within the 5 turn bracket.  My second game is a much more annoying prospect as 20 Paladins is a pain in the ass, especially with 8 psycannons and tons of storm bolters shooting at me but I managed to win by the virtue of having a scoring unit within his deployment zone.

However, it was in the third game that I met my match, and the Serpent is arguably the MVP of my opponent as it does as it pleases against my army. I had a chance to kill it off with  haywire grenades and also killing another Ravager in turn, but alas the dice gods decided that this battle will be where I fall hard. Thus I was almost annihilated as a result of the Serpent raping my stuff left and right. Unfortunately for me, this also means that I lost my chance of becoming the tournament champion, as my last battle is the battle between the two highest scoring generals. Due to the crushing defeat, I am pushed down to 7th place out of 20 players. Nonetheless as a result of the number of players, I am still one of the top players in the tournament at the time.

The top three armies for the tournament are;

1)Dark Eldar/Eldar
2)Daemons
3)Tau

Other than the Dark Eldar/Eldar, the other armies' position are consistent with the current meta of the game.

My overall experience in this tournament tells me that as a pure force, Dark Eldar has a lot going for them but to really win the tournament I must ally in some Eldar stuff to become a force to be reckoned with. In addition, I find myself a little too rash in some of my decisions which may work for me or against me. Some form of temperance is needed in my method of war.

Also, I am rather surprised in my performance today as this is one of my better runs in a tournament with my Dark Eldar. This makes me rather glad that I came for this tournament, as I am able to test the waters for the tournament in Malaysia and allow myself a little bit of knowledge of some of the top players in the nation since I have left the country.

Last but not least, I got some goodies for participating. For a fee of 10 USD, I got myself these few things as part of the goody bag. Trophies are overrated in my opinion, but things I can really use in real-life is much better for me.

And now for me to lick my wounds, and enjoy its dull sensation of pain and ecstasy..........see ya all next time!