Saturday 26th of February was a day to be long remembered in the history of our miniature playing covenant "Imladris" on campus of the University of Tromsø, Norway...
I was gonna play my Death Guard against a Blood Angel player this day, and so set foot on campus a few minutes after noon local time, since we had decided to play around noon - one o'clock.
This particular player were undefeated so far, so I looked forward to "clash swords" with him, since we were well underway in our local "Halia" tournament at the time and I wasn't doing very well with 2 defeats and 3 wins before this match.
His army have been of some debate during the campaign, being min/maxed in the extreme to supply him with an "invincible" Death Company, little else of troops, and as many as possible of long range support units...
Of the top of my head I think it went something like this (Pretty accurate):
2 Reclusiarchs w/6+2D6 Death Company
2x 5 Marines w/LasCannon & Veteran Sergeant
2x 5 Marines w/Missile Launcher & Veteran Sergeant
2x 5 Scouts w/Veteran Sergeant, Bolt Pistols & Close Combat Weapons
2x Dreadnoughts w/2 DCCW, Melta-Gun, Heavy Flamer (Deployed in Drop Pods w/Missile Launcher)
1x Venerable Dreadnought w/Twin-LasCannons, Storm Bolter and DCCW
1x Landspeeder w/Heavy Bolter & Assault Cannon
1x Baal Predator w/Heavy Bolter, Twin-Assault Cannon & Storm Bolter
1x Predator Annihilator w/2 LasCannons & Twin-LasCannons
This totals around 1850 points, and doesn't even fulfill our tournament requirements of at least 40% troops, not to mention that this list which was supposed to be fixed before and through the campaign was changed at least a couple of times during its duration...
But back to the battle at hand...
First of all I waited until 13.45 before sending him a message at which point he got up and hasted to the game (arriving at least 30 minutes later) with the poor excuse that he thought it wasn't supposed to start before three o'clock.
I had set up terrain in the meantime to save time, and he promptly removed all of what would deny lines of sight for his support squads and tanks, claiming them to be ugly terrain pieces. An argument which might have held credibility despite the fact he was keeping smaller things that looked worse, because of convenience and my insisting to have terrain...
The tournament used the Rules of Engagement set of rules found in UK WD294 p. 62 - 66, and we rolled up accordingly... We rolled up diagonal deployment-zones, and he got "Lightning raid" while I got the "Firebase" missions.
(I had to hold one of both sides objective markers and he had to have 2 scoring units in my deployment zone and hold one of my objectives)
Since he had placed one marker deep in his deploymentzone, out of reach for a slow-flooted army like mine, and the other near the largest side of my deploymentzone and I had both of mine near the center of my lines most of the battle would be fought on one side.
He quickly saw that I had my defiler on the board with the trusted battlecannon, and so dispersed his troops as much as possible... (His Death Company were 2-3" inches from each other at places and everyone wasn't in coherency...)
I got first round and moved a rhino mounted squad forward on my flank as bait, before I bombed his death company and the one lascannon team which were standing within it... The support team took 2 casualties, failed its morale test and left the table, while the death company took two, along with two more from bolter/plasma-fire...
This made sure that when he charged the "bait-squad" next turn he only got four members engaged (albeit moving the rest into base to base contact making sure that the ones in the back moved at least 16"), and so were unable to wipe out my unit and things piled in...
Next round I charged with a 14 man squad of plaguemarines and a Daemonprince I had included in the campaign because I lacked alternative HQ models, and because I needed something to autokill Death Company and Necrons...
Within 3 assault phases his "invincible" unit had been annihilated and something snapped in his head (possibly because this was the first time it had happend, who knows!)...
He next started an incredible show of stealing inches in the movement phases and the assault phases. Rolling more dices than there were weapons or attacks on the models, and if something didn't do anything at all: Forget that he had rolled for them and roll again... He also "forgot" that his drop-pods were open-topped, so that I didn't get the destroyed result I should have got and had to charge the thing next round with my Great Unclean One with explosive results that wounded everything within 4".
It was all an astonishing show of 3,5 turn of cheating, and with all that he just barely managed to win... Many might call me a sore looser reading this, but I had several fellow players as spectators (there were a general concensus that it would be cool if he lost amongst the players present since he had done this through the whole campaign!) which pointed out things along the way, and at every mention he promptly denied it furiously...
After the battle was over though he started apologising for that: "his competitive instincts took over" and "hoped that he would learn to play like we did in time"...
At this point I was close to decking him...
At the end he got a 1 (rated from 1 to 6, 6 being highest) in sportsmanship, and later on withdrew from the campaign when he became aware of what we thought of his playing style...
There are of course no excuse for cheating in games, and should it be noticed that you have you should at least admit it and accept the proper result. There were no winnings involved in the campaign, and this is what we get for trying to host a friendly athmosphere for players.
I choose sportsmanship over winning or loosing any day...
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