Saturday 18 March 2017

Horus Heresy No Retreat Gibraltar

Hello!

Last weekend I was in Gibraltar taking part in SN Battle Reports first Horus Heresy No Retreat event. It is by far the best event I have attended!! The participants, the SN team, the tables, the games and the atmosphere were incredible! I had such a good time that as soon as I returned I booked some holiday ready for No Retreat Horus Heresy II!

The Europa Retreat Centre was a great venue and the accommodation well priced and equipped. We went out for meals or ordered in take away, the SN team doing a great job at either organising or helping us all out with ordering.

The participants for the event were such a great bunch! It was great to sit around talking hobby with so many like minded people. Many of whom I will be keeping in contact with! The atmosphere was really good and for the most part the cheese was left at home! It was great to see so many awesome armies that were both great to look at and to play against.

I played 5 games over the weekend and each and everyone of them was fantastic! Here is a run down of the games that I played:

Game 1:
I got to face off against an army that I knew very little about as they aren't seen on the table top very much at the moment. The Dark Angels. Jens had a lovely army and we faced off on a great looking city fight board. We played the Shatter Strike mission as the primary.


As you can see Jens was fielding a Glaive which is such an awesome tank. Jens stole the initiative and went first. The Glaive fired and killed 7 Justaerin in one shot. That signed its death sentence!! 



In came Horus with his Justaerin squad with 5 combi Melta's and multi-melta. They shot and removed a chunk of the hull points but didn't kill it. Horus got mad and chased in down in the next turn and hit it with World Breaker, which did the job! 



Horus then began a small rampage in Jens backline and ended up winning the game by being in the Dark Angels deployment zone. He was the difference maker as he ended up being the only unit that either of us had in each others deployment! I ended up with a victory in the primary, secondary and tertiary missions, which felt slightly unfair as it was a really close game! 

Game 2:
I faced off against the new kids on the block, the Talons of the Emperor. Alex had a really cool looking army and is just how I pictured the Talons looking on the battle field. Another great table and we played Blood Feud as primary. 


The Justaerin are well matched against the Custodes and it was a really bloody battle with Horus being locked in a 4 turn combat that he eventually got out of on the last turn of the game and winning the game in the process due to the Blood Feud. 




I got to see Valdor in combat as well and he is very potent! However no match for Horus who killed him without so much as taking a wound (Due to good invun saving!) I just managed to grab the win in the primary and took a victory overall.

Game 3:
I got to face off against an army that I knew a lot better than the previous two, The Sons of Horus. Sean was fielding an army that was very different to mine and extremely hard hitting. We played Dominion as the primary. 


Unfortunately the mission didn't work for me and I made a few bad discussion to go along with it. Sean was on top of his game the whole weekend and played a vastly superior game to me. The mission required holding objectives which is a major flaw of the army I use. I shouldn't have bothered with the objectives and been a lot more aggressive on the killing front, and then gone back to claim them later on. It was a great learning experience and Sean made the game a lot of fun!



Horus' clone did a great job at killing large portions of my army! The real Horus was the only model I had left and Sean took his 3rd straight victory of the weekend. 

Game 4:
I took on Tom's Sons of Horus featuring a Baneblade, which is all kinds of bad news for my army! The board we played on was again really awesome! The main mission was tide of carnage. 


The Baneblade fired and bad things happened! It almost killed a whole Justaerin squad with one round of firing. Horus didn't like that and went straight after the Baneblade. I knew it had armoured ceramite but I wanted it dead! It didn't go so well and it turned around and opened fire again, along with a large portion of the rest of Tom's army! 



After the shooting Horus was all that was left and he had taken 2 wounds! Horus needed some serious revenge and went after as much as he could! First he took on the Justaerin then the veterans with Loken and the castalax. Loken proved to be a bit a pain, make a lot of invuns, dying and then getting back up to be squashed again! 



Horus nearly fought his way out but the game ended, he had 1 wound remaining and the 2 castalax to get rid of. In the end Tom won the game very convincingly! 

Game 5:
The last game of the weekend was an incredible game! I got matched up against Liam's awesome White Scars. I had dreaded this match up as his army is plasma heavy and vastly more manoeuvrable! Thankfully the table helped and the Justaerins resilience paid off. The primary for this was Onslaught which greatly helped my chances. 


We each had an objective in the others deployment and I planned on marching straight down the middle to limit Liam's fire arches and ability to move. It worked really well but I had to withstand an awful lot of firepower in the process. 


Horus and his unit deep struck in the middle and were intercepted by the plasma bikes but we only took 3 wounds. I charged them as often as I could, not making a charge until my turn 6. However that was ok as each time Liam overmatched he seemed to kill another 1 or 2 of his bikes! 



Liam outflanked a Land Raider full of vets with combi-flamers. I needed them dead to prevent them claiming the objective in my half. I charged and the 5 flamers combined for 15 hits, that ended my charge hopes! 



The game was won by a sneaky attack bike that I had forgotten about moving up to contest his objective! It was such a hard fought game! What we both thought would be a bad match up turned into an incredible game! 

I ended the weekend with 2 wins and 3 loses. I ended up 14th which I am happy with, a few different dice rolls could have meant I finished a lot higher up. However I had so much fun that it doesn't really matter where I ended up! 

The SN Team kindly awarded me with one of the 5 SN awards for my army, which I am truly grateful for! I have put a lot of work into the army and to get rewarded for others seeing it as a cool army is really something! Thank you to the SN Team! (me on the left!) 


I would like to thank each and everyone of my opponents, Jens, Alex, Sean, Tom and Liam. You guys were great fun to play and I had 5 of the best games of Heresy I have ever had!! 

Thank you to the rest of the participants and to the SN team, you all made the weekend incredible! 

The next No Retreat Horus Heresy has been announce and you can apply now! You will not regret it! I will definitely be going again! 


I will get some pictures of all the participants awesome armies and the tables in the week. 

Darien 

15 comments:

  1. It was great spending time with you again Darien. Hopefully we might get a game against each other on the next one. Well done for the award too 👍🏻

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    1. Thanks buddy! Congrats on your awards too! Would be great to get a game in next time!

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  2. Thanks for sharing your experience of the tournament. I really like the forest-and-chainlink-fence scenery, which is a rarity nowadays. Cheers.

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    1. The scenery was really good! It added so much to the games. It also meant varing tactics as well to fit the board!

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  3. A great read, been hoping for a write up of your battles. Thought about any changes you'd make to your army whilst sticking with the 1st Company theme?

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    1. Thanks! The next event is up to 3000 points so a change to the list will be needed. I might try and get Abaddon in, to provide deep strike to another unit or perhaps a leviathan or 2. Though they would most likely need dreadnaught drop pods which are difficult to get hold of at the moment.

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  4. The terrain looks aweseom, the models look great. What company makes the mats used on those 3?

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    1. I believe they are Gamemat.eu and so is some of the Mechanicum type generator terrain. Flipping brilliant set up the guys have there, why didn't I know of this when I often visited Gib with 'work'...

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    2. Yeah some were gamemat.eu others are Wargame Terrian Factory. Really great tables to play on!

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  5. Looks amazing! My Death Guard would love it there!!

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    1. It was amazing! You should apply for the next one!

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  6. Great pics man, pretty funny that you ended up in a few SoH on SoH battles too!

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    1. Yeah I thought that too! One of them I believe you painted!

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  7. Was a pleasure meeting you mate and would love a rematch if the opportunity ever arrises! Ours was the best game of the weekend for me and that's saying something considering I had 4 bloody amazing games!

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    1. Thanks mate! Was great meeting you too and that game was also my favourite of the weekend! So incredible! I can't believe some of things that happened! We will definitely have to arrange a rematch!

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