Bay Area Open: My WHFB experience

Alright, so as promised, I will share my experience with Beastmen at the Bay Area Open. Just to tell you up front, I went for an unsurprising 1-2-2 record, but overall, I'm very pleased with the performance of my army.  The scenarios were interesting, and quite goofy.  If you were of a more competitive mind than myself, you could have easily written armies to take severe advantage of the non-VP games.  I wont blame the scenarios entirely, but I strongly believe if we were playing a more standard set of scenarios, I'd have done better.

Enough bantering, onto the pretty pictures!

Game 1 was against a very rough, point-denial Skaven army.  I could have wished for a better first round match up, the game wasn't much fun and really just a test in the limits of frustration I can endure, not a good game to start with, but oh well, I wouldn't let that bring me down.  Here are some pics illustrating the highlights of the game:

Game 2 was against a really nice guy who had recently started playing Lizardmen, with quite a powerful list that a friend helped him with.  He may have been new to their rules, but man, he was like a fountain of rules knowledge, it was kind of embarrassing being corrected after playing for 16 years by a new player, but I'm going to justify it by saying he doesn't have 5 editions of rules jumbled in his head.  This game ended in a tie, mostly to us both not quite realizing how important the objective was (not like we're playing 40k here!).  I feel that I could have won had we re-read the scenario more than a few minutes before the game ended, but oh well, it's my own fault.

Game 3 was against my friend Stewart.  It was Beasts on Beasts and the musky scent of their nasty bodies was in the air, unfortunately though, blood was not.  The scenario had 4 objectives, alternating placement from the players, with no restrictions on their placement, this literally became a game of Capture and Control (a terrible 40k scenario).  Between the two of us, we had 160+ models that never got within 24" of an enemy.  I managed to squeeze out a lame win by bolting for one of his objectives on the last turn, not very satisfying.  To top it off, we were both just screwing around and having fun having just recently become friends with a common love of all things beastly, so I totally forgot to take pictures!

The day was over after game 3, so we went to the local bowling alley and enjoyed White Russians... It was a religious experience, el Duderino would be proud.

Okay, back to Game 4! At this point, I was a tad hung over and battling for 10th place, so I had decided to play for the fun of playing instead of trying to conquer my enemies at all costs.  I was playing against an awesome guy named Van (hi Van!) with a very effective Empire army.  The scenario was basically Battle For The Pass, which is a nightmare for Beasts facing guns, but we also got to pick a unit with any accompanying character to come in from any table edge turn 2, which really helped even the playing field.  On the last turn, with minutes to go, I could tell it was probably going to be a tie... and I don't like ties.  I took a desperate charge against a horde of Greatswords, knowing that if I lost, he would win, but the slim chance I won, I would take the gold, either way, someone would actually go home a winner, instead of a boring tie.  Oh, in case you didn't guess, I lost.

My final game was against yet another Beastman player.  He was a nice guy with a great collection of ancient specimens of Beasts.  His army was a bit unorthodox, with only one unit of line troops.  It wasn't a very eventful game, but I had a lot of fun, mostly due to the good company (all the fun opponents in the lower brackets).  It ended in a tie, but was still fun despite the indecision of it all.

Overall I had a good time and am very happy with my army, I doubt I'll be changing the list much, everything pretty much did as I expected and as it should, though maybe I'll drop the Ungors and a chariot to try and squeeze in some more lovely Razorgors.  Hopefully in the future, they take a cue from 40k and play book missions, or something close to them at least.  I want to thank Reece and everyone who helped him put on a great event that will only get better with time and experience!

Also, I got some photos of a beautiful army painted by a guy named Larry, he didn't take home best painted, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks he should have.  Check out his amazing army and display: