Screw City GT is in it’s third year and this year, there be monsters! Lots of them. For a midwest event to have so many big monsters and creatures is truly awesome. Follow the Conesy via this post all weekend long for what’s going on.

Screw City GT photos on Google+

Round 1 – Bill Robertson, Warriors of Chaos
Bill is famously known for Warscore, the tournament scoring application. This year, though he brought a pretty standard warriors army. I went down to his army. Simply put, he played better and I didn’t handle the crazy movement as well of the speed of my army. I did manage though to use the Carmine Dragon to kill the chaos toad dragon, but that was about it.

Round 2 – Ben Vermeulen, Vampire Counts
Not the dreaded one, but the dreaded apprentice was playing Vampire counts in a fortitude game where we were able to count our characters for fortitude as well. At the top of three I killed the remains of his army except for the bunker in center which was 5 wraiths, manfred and a level 2 necromancer. Ouch! Since it was fortitude, I didn’t want to deal with it for fear of losing the game, so went in hard on his remaining 2 fortitude points. Break point scenarios aren’t always my favorite, but since we had combat every turn except the top of 1 I was very ok with it.

Round 3 – Dan Carlson, Dwarfs
Dan had 2 cannons, a grudge thrower and an organ gun and this was the first time I faced that kind of fire power, so I was sweating it pretty big. He spread the machines out a bit, so I played operation grill the machines, avoid the blocks through turn 3. At the end of 3, I knew I just had to play run away from the dwarfs and the Shard Dragon, but I didn’t think that would be a lot of fun for either of us. After not looking over the Shard Dragon rules very well, I charged in a SoM Black Dragon and 2 dark elf hydras. What resulted was, not a lot of damage and a lot of monsters held in the center. This then ensued many risky combats, where only the luck of swift striding, flying monsters to run away after being broken in combat kept me from losing this game big. Win, Conesy.

After day 1, while not having picked up objective points well, I have played pretty well with 2 wins and 1 loss. Rather then heading to do the normal Saturday night Screw City GT dinner with everyone, we went back to the hotel room with several others ordered pizza and got a game of Chaos in the Old World going. Conesy taught it and I think the guys had a blast. I did play in a game of Cards against Humanity. That’s a good game for a night after a bunch of Warhammer. Anyways, on to the next round…..

Round 4 – Adam Pyle, High Elves
Well, going into round 4 I was sure I was going to draw Warriors or nurgle daemons, or something similar. High Elves, infantry, swordmaster block with Allariele, BSB, Annointed…tough block. Going in I knew I had to avoid that unit and with dawn attack deployment, I felt confident I could readjust my battle line far more quickly then my opponent. With a huge surprise, the swordmasters with characters deployed on the right flank while the rest of his army deployed on the left. I was able to drive the center pretty hard with my flight of dragons and hydras and take out the 4 bolt throwers and 2 seagaurd units before the swordmasters could reach much. Great game, and I would love to play Adam’s high elves again. Needless to say, on this day the rightful rulers of Ulthuan prevailed!

Round 5 – Miel Vermeulen, Empire
How many tourneys do you go to that you don’t end up playing against something you played earlier? Well, I can say I seem to be lucky in that department generally and this event was no exception. Taking on the Dreaded One this was another one of those war machine match ups that I wasn’t sure I could endure. Miel’s key units was Elspeth on Carmine, 30 inner circle knights with various characters, and a Necrophex colossus. What I don’t think Miel took into account during deployment was the fact that I had shades, which helped me engage and kill all of the cannons after only a single turn of shooting. Again, cannons left little marks in my army and I weathered them well. After mopping up the cannons, a 5 pack of knights, and a wizard and halberdiers (10 pack) I went to work trying to line up a charge on the big knight block, but with Elspeth and the colossus running around throwing death spells they managed to pick up a couple of hydras and my carmine dragon. Fortunately, Elspeth misfired a purple sun and killed her own carmine dragon in the process. With shades and dark riders surrounding her, it was just a matter of time till she now dropped. The late part of this game featured me basically going into denial and running my army away from the dreaded one’s remaining forces in an attempt to just not give up the loss. It was close, but what can only be called a mistake, Miel tried for my general with a purple son rather then my remaining black dragon. Another win for the Conesy. Perhaps the dreaded one has lost some of his fearsome reputation? I think not!

Overall, 4-1 for the weekend. If anything I could have done better, it was picking up objectives. Battle points, I know I was up there with the other top Dark Elf players. It’s been a long time since I have been in that kind of position with an army. While I don’t pretend to be a tourney contender kind of player, it’s really nice to have performed so well. For a game that seems not to reward the play of dragons much anymore, it was great to take 3 of them into this weekend and have them take on huge roles and get me so close to the top.

Thank you to Alex Gonzalez and staff for putting on a great tournament. Thanks to all of my opponents. See you all next year.