Octoberfest 2013

Just a quick one from me today - Wanted to highlight a few things about this weekends 1750pts Octoberfest tournament and how I feel our team will fair down in Tolworth.

You can check out The Tolworth First Founding's facebook page here if you were interested in attending future events.

So we have Myself, Luke Nurser, Michael Marlow, Richard Fielder and James 'The Disaster' Taylor within the Death or Glory team. Outside of that we have everyone's favorite thug of Sutton Chris Ashman who is still plying his trade being newly returned to the game.



Mayhem tournaments are very different to any other you may find on the tournament scene whether north, south, UK or rest of the world.

The main different is the emphasis on troop choices. You cannot win a game at full points here without taking ALL objectives on the board. Crusade for example is played with a standard 4 objectives worth 5 points each. To score 20 points you need to be holding all 4 by the end of the game. Each game may have bonus objectives for VP's - generally Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker and First Blood. Relic though gives 2 bonus VP's for holding it in your opponents deployment zone.

Interesting times!

So what does that normally mean to the attendance at these tournaments?

Well for a start, you will already begin to work out that there is always a massive shift in what most people coin as 'The Meta'. Armies that do well in all other standard rulebook tournaments just simply will not have the capacity to do well at Octoberfest.

Leading on from that, armies that would normally dominate anywhere else may not be the best choice. Therefor the codex selection tends to shift away from armies like Tau and Eldar with their weak troop choices and towards solid troop option lists like Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Necrons.

The tournament is also non-Forgeworld, so I expect to see a lot of flyers and have myself bought 3.

Let me run you through my list just to give you an example of what a mayhem list may look like.

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Imperial Guard Primary Detachment

Command Squad [Warlord] - Vox

Platoon Command Squad - 2 Flamers
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Vox
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Meltabomb
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Power Axe
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Power Axe

Platoon Command Squad - 2 Flamers
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Vox
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Meltabomb
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Power Axe
Infantry Platoon - Autocannon, Power Axe

Vendetta - Heavy Bolters
Vendetta - Heavy Bolters
Vendetta

Manticore

Sisters of Battle Allies (New Digital Codex)
Saint Celestine

2 Priests

5 Sisters - 2 Meltaguns
Rhino - Dozer Blade

Exorcist

Fortification

Defence Line - Comms Relay
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So we have 5 troop choices if I want to blob my 2 Infantry Platoons up. 2 of which can go in the Vendetta's. 2 of which are fearless (Priests) and 1 of which can hit and run if they don't like fighting their combat (Saint).

All in all I reckon it will be a fairly boring army to play with to be fair. But for us southerners Octoberfest and it's Spring counterpart Mayhem are the 2 biggest accolades of the tournament calender.

How will the others Fair?
Mike's trying out some desperate allies with his DE which I'm actually quite liking. I'm tipping him to place the highest from DoG. It will be a close one though with...

Luke and his Eldar have tournament wins under his belt along with a good string of finishes recently (the last being winning the GT 2 heat!). If it wasn't for the lack of solid troop units I would have tipped him to place highest, the bookies probably would have too(!), but for this reason it'll be 2nd.

Rich has been using his Chaos list for a while now and it's slowly evolving into what is a very competitive list. Rich always does well at Tolworth through a mixture of max painting scores, sportsmanship points and standard top 15 finish in generalship. I'm putting rich in 3rd.

Taylor is someone who will always do well whatever army he uses. Normally representing the Flying Daemon Circus, it's lack of troops has made Taylor go for a slightly different approach. Its an AV13 heavy Necron list with 10 Wraiths and a Lord heading it up. Some Chaos allies throws in a Heldrake for good measure. I like the list, but I just have a feeling that the other 3's perseverance with their armies will give them the edge in any close games or bad matchups they may have. Plus Taylor will probably get wasted on Sake on Saturday night and not turn up for game 4. This puts him in 4th.

Chris has been practicing a lot recently and has beaten me in a few practice games. Chris has also gone for the Necron approach but is somewhat limited in his army selection with actual models he owns. The army is well painted and I would expect him to get off his duck with some wins at Octoberfest.

Tune in after the tournament for the final standings where I'm sure my fellow DoG members will relish proving my predictions completely wrong.

See you at the weekend for those going!