Golden Throne GT South-West: A Week later...

Howdy Folks! So I was going to write up a bunch of Battle Reports, but frankly, I find those boring to read, and a chore to write. So I thought that I would give an overview of the event, and my thoughts on what sort of Meta we saw.

Venue: This was part of a larger gaming convention. We shared space all weekend with the biggest WarmaHordes tournament I have ever seen. Our attendance was around 22 players, which is not too shabby. It was held at the Waco Convention Center.

Nice bathrooms, Restaurants with-in walking distance, and right across the street from my hotel. Lots of space between tables, and space between each for room to set down your carrying tray. Well ventilated, and well lit.

There weren't that many other games being played though. And the vendor hall was pretty sparse as well. I'm not sure the price of Convention Admission was worth it. Had I not had a specific event I wanted to play in, I would have been let down at what they had going on. Unless you have an event to go to from the gate, I would NOT recommend going to this Convention. When you compare it to conventions like KublaCon, or OrcCon, it is a real letdown. I guess not everything is bigger in Texas.

To be fair, this was their first year; maybe next year will be better.

Tournament:  No real complaints. After a brief stall Saturday morning (which was in no way the TO's fault), it ran very quickly; pairings were up well before the start of each round, and at 3-hours per match, we had plenty of time to finish each game.

However, here we get to one of my issues. I finished all of my games in well-under 2 hours. Which left me with too much time on my hands. BUT... there were a few tables/players that did need/use the entire time to play their games. Thank G-D that I didn't play those people, that would have killed me. The TO and I went out for food Saturday night and when I mentioned this, he made a comment that caused me to consider this in a different light. I'm in it for the result (I'm going for the win, not the story line). These players care more about what their Lord did that turn, and they want to Forge a Narrative. They did pay the same money I did, and if that's how they enjoy it, more power to them.

I think a GT isn't the place for that, but like I said, I didn't have to play them, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Armies: Quite the varied selection, I must say! You can see the results and the army breakdown here:

 http://goldenthronegt.com/southwest/?page_id=69

Very, VERY few vanilla marine armies, despite the codex just getting released, though a White Scars list did take 1st. And Bugz took 2nd! Crazy!

Here I want to make a statement that I've been mulling over in my head all week. I'm not sure the results to these events ever really give us any real data with which to judge the meta.

Take the top two players' lists. I look at them and see armies that I'm pretty sure I would have wrecked, had I played them. Same goes for many of the armies I saw at the top tables. Or maybe its just me bitching.

Final Comment:  (Spolier: I'm going to vent, so you may just want to close this now...)

Fucking Heldrakes!

Disclaimer: This opponent I'm about to discuss seemed like a good guy during our match, and it was a fun game over all. This in no way is a negative comment about him. I'm actually hoping to see him next weekend at a local event, and hopefully we can play again.

Going into my 4th game Sunday morning, I was 2-1, and feeling pretty good. My only loss Saturday was a VERY close game Round 1, that literally came down to a single dice roll for consolidation onto an objective, and then the game ended. Those are the best games, I think.

So 4th round: I played a good guy from Dallas, who ran a very swift moving CSM list: Biker Lord with Spawns, 3x CCW-type Forgefiends, a daemon prince w/ wings, Bloodthrister, 2x blobs of Plagebearers and 3x blobs of cultists. And...... 2x Heldrakes. He had actually posted his list to me on FB earlier in the week, and I had made the comment that the only real threat I saw to my list was his Heldrakes. Guess what happened?

We played a 5-objective Dawn of War mission where the Fast Attacks are also scoring. Long story short, it was pretty back and forth. I wiped all of him fast movers by turn 2/3, with him doing light damage to me in return. Then his Dragons came on. Fast forward to turn 5 or 6 (I don't recall, I believe it was actually turn 6) and his 2x dragons had erased 90% of my army. Despite all that, I had still managed contest his rear/home objectives, but his dragons simply swooped in and scored another two, winning him the game.

I'm about to make a comment that will make me look like a whiny bitch to some, but fuck you, I'm going to make it anyways: His Heldrakes were the only thing that won him the game, against me anyways. He still made it to the top ten overall, but you can't compare fighting  most other armies and fighting DE. You just can't. Apples and oranges. I'm making this comment as an indictment of that particular unit, not him taking them.

There is NO weaknesses to that unit. NONE. AV12 all around, that template of death weapon, Flying so most weapons are snap shooting; they are also Fast Attack options, so they do not really have anything to compete with in Army Selection in the CSM codex. They are just too good, IMO. As our game showed, they can allow a player to win a game all by themselves. No single unit should have the ability to affect the game in that manner.

*End Rant*

Anyways, had a great time, and if you live on the West Coast of the US, I would highly recommend attending the main Golden Throne GT out there.

Next Time: IG Fanatic shelves his Ultramarines, in favor of pulling the trigger on a long time pipedream army: War of Faith coming soon to this space.