Like many other participants have already said, the level of terrain was great on the tables at this tournament. There was a decent amount of it, and beautiful to boot.

Things progressed well, and on time, the only criticism I could make was the scoring system. The massacre system really doesn't reward close games, and leaves the scenarios fairly bland and very rule book like.

My army for the weekend was good old Necrons. For 1750 points I took:

Nightbringer

Lord with res orb and the veil of darkness

20 x Warriors

20 x Warriors

3 x Wraiths

2 x Tomb Spyders

Monolith

My phase out number was 11, and this happened in only one game.

I have to tell you that the nightbringer died in 4 out of the 5 games. Unfortunately in the last game I did realise I'd been killing him at 4 wounds instead of 5, oh well.

So on to the games:

Game 1
I arrived 10 minutes after the requested check in time, felt bad about that, and then panicked when I saw some tables had already started playing, a full 20 minutes before official starting time. I quickly checked in and found my opponent, a young guy named Christian.

He was playing Imperial Guard, with masses of infantry, one Chimera, one Leman Russ demolisher, and one Valkyrie. I saw a few lists like this which we in Vancouver would really consider soft. His entire army only had about 10 painted models, which he stated he had bought in that condition. Oh well, little grey plastic men die just as quickly as painted ones I guess. Then a second revelation, he had left his Valkyrie at home, so asked if he could use his beanie hat as a proxie model. Unconventional in the least, but I said sure, not wanting to be the mean guy from the mainland.

Primary objective was annihilation, secondary was capture and control.

He combined all his squads into 3 giant 30 man units to reduce kill points. That was fine with me. Deployment was Dawn of War, and I made a tactical error right off the bat because I thought we were late starting, and declared I would start with everything off the board. This meant 3 turns of the nightbringer simply trying to cross the board.

Turn 2 I teleported my warriors in front of one of his big units on the flank, and shot it to pieces, forcing the survivors to run off board. My wraiths had turbo boosted up to his Demolisher to put pressure on it, which forced him to bring his 'beanie' in to try shoot my wraiths. They all survived and proceeded to destroy the little woolen hat on the first turn it was on the board.

Turn 3 he was trying to assault my units, but he learnt the hard way that the nightbringer simply pushes strength 3 units away from him and anything near him. I wish I had remembered this rule in game 5.

The game ended with a massacre win for me, with my monolith and second unit of warriors not even taking part or firing a shot. I felt a little bad beating up on the little kid like that, but he seemed excited about facing the nightbringer anyway.

Game 2
I don't remember my oppos name, but he was playing space wolves. A lot of grey hunters in rhinos, some long fangs, Bjourn the fell handed, and an inquisitor ally with a mythic to allow him to shoot at any units deep striking nearby....great.

Primary was capture and control, secondary was to kill the most expensive unit....great.

I kept the monolith and a squad right in my corner covering my objective. He set up with the objective on top of a building, which we said would be 6 inches high, so you'd need to roll a 6 to climb to the top of. He placed a unit of long fangs up there with them. HMMM, I've seen this classic mistake before, the opponent thinking he had control of the objective.

Spearhead left my nightbringer far from the action once again, forcing me to travel across ground trying to get to grips with the ugly big dreadnaught. I took anough lascannon fire to kill the nightbringer before he got into combat with anything, with me removing him once he had 4 wounds, instead of 5 :(

My wraiths and tomb spyders harrassed the 3 rhinos all coming along the same flank for some reason, and tied up his force in one place, preventing him getting anywhere near my objective. I tried to deep strike my one squad right near the base of his building to try shoot up his last 2 troop choices over there, but I scatterred and landed on his troops. Deep Strike mishap let him place my unit anywhere he wanted, and so he placed my general right in the corner, forcing a bunch of my warriors to simply vanish off the edge of the board. I found out later he wasn't really allowed to do this, but oh well, had no effect on the game in the end.

Turn 5 the game ended and he looked all pleased, until I told him I had actually won the game. He didn't realise his troops on the ground weren't close enough to the objective 6 inches higher up. So that was a minor victory for me after checking some of the rules in the book.

Game 3
I felt pretty good going into round 3 sitting at 8th place overall in battle points. I was facing a really great opponent named Bryce playing an eldar force that I really can't say was overly hard. He had an autarch on a bike supporting some shining spears, a farseer on a bike supporting some guardian bikes, another squad of guardian bikes, 2 squads of dire avengers, some fire dragons on foot, a bunch of harlies, and 3 walkers with maxed out scatter lasers.

Primary was annihilation, secondary was to control center objective.

This game started well for me, moving my mono up to the center with a squad hiding behind it, my other squad hiding behind trees right in my corner. Wraiths moved up and charged 3 bikes, leaving only one alive. Tomb spyders supported the nightbringer moving across towards the bulk of his army.

My mono just kept scattering off his bunched up infantry squads causing only 2 wounds with shooting over 2 turns. The wraiths were dealt with swiftly by the harlies, and the nightbring and tomb spyders absorbed a lot of fire power. Unfortunately I again removed the nightbringer at 4 wounds once he'd taken like 4 turns of massed fire from the war walkers.

I teleported my one suad up to try take out the harlies, and scattered right on top of them...again. My oppo was decent about it though, putting my guys down right in front of the mono, to prevent my other squad popping out there, and forcing me to take dangerous terrain tests in the rivver. I was still in a position to shoot his harlies though, and wiped them down to one remaining model. ARRGGH. He then charged me with the spears and autarch, where I only lost the comabt by 2, so needed a morale check on 8, and I rolled a 12. I was run down and lost my lord and 20 warriors. I played out the rest of the game knowing I'd lost, but taking my shots where I could, eventuaally losing my second squad and phasing out.

Massacre loss for me :( but a really great opponent who'd I'd play again anyday.

Game 4
Well day 2 started with me facing another great guy named Garth. He was playing a chaos marine army, with khorne beserkers in rhinos, a land raider with some special character and more berserkers, 2 vindicators, a squad of raptors, and some chosen in a rhino.

Primary was seize ground with 4 objectives, secondary was kill the HQ.

This game went really well for me, he was forced to charge me to do any real damage, so my nightbringer got stuck in early. He charged his lord and squad into nightbringer early, allowing me to kill of the entire unit in 2 turns of assault. I managed to destroy his land raider with a tomb spyder, and take out both vindicators with the wraiths. I shot up his raptors with the monolith and one squad of warriors.

Unfortunately for him his chosen unit outflanked from the wrong side of the table, so had to drive all the way across. We kept going even though thats all he had left in his army, to see if they could take out the nightbringer in the last turn. They had 5 plasma guns, rapid fired, and scored 2 wounds on the nightbringer, I failed both saves, so took him off as dead because he had taken 4 wounds....INSTEAD OF 5, arrgghh, this changed the result from a massacre for me, to a solid victory, losing 3 total battle points.

Garth put his bad luck down to the fact that the blood god was getting no blood from my oily machines.

Game 5
Final game, and I felt pretty good. Other than my one bad loss it had been a fairly successful weekend. I ended up playing against Adam, another great player that I had faced in a local tournie before. He usually plays a beautiful red Tau army, but for this weekend had brought out his Tyranids again. There was a really tooled up Tyrant with 2 tyrant guard, 3 zoanthropes, 3 hive guard, a large hormagant sqaud, a termagant squad, a tervigon, some genestealers, and a large warrior brood in mycetic spores.

Primary was victory points, Secondary was 2 objectives, which added 250 points to your victory point total.

The game was one of the better tactical battles I had. It really did go back and forth. This is the game that I forgot about my push back ability with the nightbringer. Adam spawned a unit of 11 termagants from the tervigon, and assault my nightbringer. I didn't push them away, so he managed to do 4 wounds with his toxin sacs wounding on 4's. I was going to take him off as a casualty when Adam to his credit mentioned I had 5 wounds. This was when the penny dropped and I almost cried about my previous games.

I The next turn he tried to charge me again, and theats when I remembered his special rule, sigh, one turn too late, I'd already taken the 4 wounds. I did try charging the hive tyrant, and I killed a guard, and got 2 wounds on the tyrant, leaving him with 2 wounds, and one guard left.

His zoanthropes hit my monolith over and over, but only penetrated once in the 5th turn, doing a wepond damaged result, giving him half vic points for the vehicle.

The really sad thing for Adam was scattering his warriors off the table, and dying in the warp, that was over 450 points down the drain, a total game changer. That balanced out my 4 early wounds on my nightbringer.

The other high light of the game was Adam rolling perils of the warp on the tyrant in the last turn, killing himself and giving me all those points.

This game ended with us being within 20 victory points, so a draw.

I'm still waiting to see where I placed overall, but on the whole I was pleased with my performance.