This past Saturday (Sorry for the delay) I participated in my first in a long time Warhammer 40k tournament. It was held at Mid-South Hobbies, as part of their grand opening in their new space. Sorry I don’t have any pictures.

I debated between playing my Ultramarines or Sisters of Battle. I went with Ultramarines because with the White Dwarf “codex” release for the Sisters, I needed a Penitent Engine to field the full 2,000 points.

I am not enthusiastic about 40k anymore, simply because of “Codex creep.” Games Workshop likes to make each release of a codex (army manual) to be more powerful than the ones before. If you want a chance to win, then you are forced to get into each re-released army in order to take advantage of the newest codex. My Space Marines Codex dates back almost to the release of 5th Edition. So, many codexes have been released since then, and all are more powerful than my army.

You see, GW is a company that manufactures and sells miniatures to convert and paint. They just so happen to also sell a set of rules so you can play with them. So, they found a way to get you to buy into each new army that they release, so you can play with the new units covered in the latest codex. By making each successive new codex more powerful than the rest, you are forced to maintain a standing army of each race.

[/rant]. On to the battle report.

My first game was against Orks. The scenarios used today were mostly Troop based, and I had four troop units to my opponents two, and I managed to kill one of them. I managed to claim one table quarter, which gave me a Minor Victory.

The second game was against Tyranids, This list was heavily weighted towards monstrous creatures, optimized to close combat. This scenario was “Hold the Center.” With these monstrous creatures, it was very difficult for me to kill them. I managed to kill two small units, and almost killed one monstrous creature, but I was totally annihilated. I lost big time.

The third game was against Chaos Space Marines. This scenario was to rescue/capture wounded models on the battlefield. This battle came out to be a draw, simply because I was one inch short of one objective with one unit and my opponent had one model that I couldn’t kill contesting another objective.

So, the final talley was 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw. I didn’t come anywhere close to the money, but at least I didn’t get a new brick of dice for coming in last.

I still view this as, “The worst day gaming beats the best day working.”