Blog Wars 7 aftermath - a minor victory for the Iron Hands

Hi folks,

Yesterday marked the 7th installment of Blog Wars, which was as enjoyable as ever. The venue staff were friendly as always and the food was a notch better this time around IMO. It was great to catch up with some of the veterans of previous events as well as meet some new faces. Matt came in second place this time around with his best BW performance to date. Although I was late to put my army out for the painting comp (and then forgot to put my player number next to them for voting) I was thrilled to be granted best special character when the awards were announced at the end of the day. (see pics below) This particular chap was a labour of love to convert and so I'm glad other people liked the end result. The painting competition was replete with the usual high standard armies, my personal favourites being Dave Weston's Tyranids, Hendrik's Eldar (from Den of Imagination) and the ultimate winner: Chris Benstead's Iron Warriors. Gaming-wise I had a hit and miss day:

Game one - I drew Ken's Tau army (someone who like myself could appreciate the pain of line highlighting his army) for the first game and we were playing lengthways down the board - possibly the worst draw my army could have got in fairness. However, my opponent was a great chap and, through great fortune on my part (and much misfortune on his) the dice Gods allowed my army to churn full-pelt upfield for two turns and emerge relatively unscathed. My chapter master was in no small part responsible for this, taking a huge volume of fire and protecting the rest of the army while only losing a single wound. However, after getting bogged down by some Kroot my implacable advance then creaked to a halt and I was gradually whittled down through volume of fire and loss of mobility. A decent performance despite being at a disadvantage from the start, but still a loss.

Game two - this time we were playing the Emperor's relic diagonally. My opponent, another great chap called Michael, had a Blood Angels army sporting a particularly nice Scibor 'Sanguinius' counting as Mephiston. I had a better time of things this time around to the point that it was a bit one-sided in my favour for most of the battle. Still, some clever tactical play from Michael made it difficult for me to achieve both deployment zone objectives (and he got a spot prize for our HQ challenege face-off), making for some drama towards the conclusion. This was my only win of the day and, despite feeling bad for Michael as he had some poor luck with the old dice, I felt that I remembered to do everything and played pretty well tactically and so was happy with the result.

Game three - my last game was ironically Vs Iron Hands (plus some dirty Tau allies) playing the control freak mission, which meant you scored points every player turn for being on objectives. Chris was a great chap and it was nice to chat Iron Hands stuff with him throughout the game. It went pretty badly for me from the beginning, mainly through going second and going up against a power list with minmaxed grav marine squads and a grav centurion deathstar led by chapter master and Tau commander (hit and run/ignores cover). I lost my chapter master and most of my bikes/tanks in the opening salvo which was pretty much unrecoverable. The Last volley from the deathstar (minus one centurion) did no less than 13 glancing hits to my as of then unscathed land raider!!! I clung on til turn 5 with a single attack bike remaining. Not a very fun game in that respect but it was more down to mismatched armies than anything else

That's it for another 6 months then. The Iron Hands are being retired from blog wars with a best painted army and best painted special character under their belt. I'm not sure which army to take next time around but rest assured it will be space marines. The iron Hands have a few models that still need painting, namely a third dreadnought, some techmarines and some honour guard. One day I would love to expand them to include some command bikers, an Iron father, a drop pod and a stormtalon, but we'll see. In the meantime here are some army shots and the new additions: