St Albans Smackdown - Post Covid Gaming

 

As anyone who reads my blog will know, I was at St Albans Smackdown this weekend. My main objective was to take a Shasvastii force I'd painted completely myself, so I was already a winner when I walked in the door of the Scout hut. But how did the games themselves go? It was a 3 round, 300 point tournament with the "Free Play" optional extra, but neither I nor any of the armies I faced seemed to utilise that.

The first game was "Supplies" against the Invincible Army of "Chappers". I took initiative in the hope of causing a lot of damage so I could go get the supply boxes. All my opponent deployed was Krit Kokram, a camo token and a five person link using a Haidao Sniper as an ARO piece - and a Hulang as the reserve model.

Chappers changed his deployment slightly after I took this photo, putting the missile remote down prone next to the Haidao sniper and one of the infantry down in the low building out of sight.

This was a bit of a mistake. My Speculo Killer snuck in the back and shot the link leader, breaking the link. I then revealed my Noctifer and put a surprise shot missile into the Haidao with a blast template, catching the missile remote in the blast. The Haidao was lucky with his armour saves, only taking one wound and diving to the floor to avoid a follow up killing him outright, but the remote was blown to pieces.

With the ARO pieces out of the way, one of my Shrouded ran in to get the centre box and ran away, although he got targeted by a Hacker on the way through. The game then got a bit intense and I didn't take many photos. In short, a Hac Tao with Heavy Machine Gun put some serious hurt on my left flank, but I countered with a cheap remote running up with a flamethrower and putting paid to the Hac Tao. On the right flank, my Caliban tried to lock down the Hulang but died to a Crazy Koala without injuring the Hulang.

Running low on orders on turn 2, my Seed Soldier Paramedic managed to hatch and get a second supplies box, but couldn't get very far away.

Meanwhile the Hulang picked up a box and legged it well clear of where I was. Despite the early damage, I was in trouble...

The Daoying Lieutenant realised it was time to shine! He killed the Seed Soldier paramedic, and once he was sure I couldn't get to that box, legged it around a building the long way, turned camo for a perilous dash past my ARO pieces, and shot down my poor Shrouded as it tried to hide in a building, leaving me with no points on the table. A 5-0 loss for game one!

Second game was Countermeasures against Freki, who had brought Varuna Immediate Reaction Division. I had first turn again, though this time it was more that I was worried about being shot to pieces and not being able to catch up rather than planning a big alpha strike.

After a hairy turn trying to deal with Helot Militia and losing far too many orders and pieces to them, I misjudged a distance and didn't even manage to score a single Classified.

Varuna, meanwhile, had brought a Cutter, on the logic that specialists can't score objectives if they're dead. Anything that stuck its head out ended up filled with bullets, and I'd lost my main Multispectral Visor attack piece on turn one to the Helots, so could do really nothing back.

My Hacker was killed by a surprise attack from a Killer Hacker, and everything just started turning into a blood bath. My Gwailo was able to get a couple of shots in with the Breaker Pistol to stop the Montesa Knight rampaging through everything.

But I'd lost too much, and the Cutter came up to complete Extreme Prejudice and finish off the Predator objective the Montesa had started by punching the Gwailo to death. In the end it was Varuna with four objectives to my three, leaving the score 6-3.

My final game was against the Shasvastii of MonstrousMakings, making it a mirror match. This was an excellent game, but I was enjoying myself so much I forgot to take many photos! It was clean white Shasvastii versus dirty grey Shasvastii, and I was excited, especially as it was Supremacy, a mission all about area control and board placement.

I took deployment, pushing MonstrousMakings to take the first turn when he didn't really want it. I used my Q-Drone as bait for the hidden Noctifer and his poor Gwailo Heavy Rocket Launcher got caught by both and went down.

It was back and forth - we had a Shrouded Hacker duel on the right flank at one point - but I kept the pressure on and kept managing to score the zone control points.

In the end I was able to score a very respectable 9-2 victory, but more importantly, had a really excellent game with a great opponent.

It was good to get out of the house again, although I was absolutely wrecked afterwards. I'm definitely quite unfit, and going out is stressful. Still, it was absolutely worth it, and I'm looking forward to getting out to another event in the future. Just, maybe not too soon?