Remember the Alamo... Day 1

     This last weekend was the Alamo Indy GT in San Antonio. I believe there were 70 gamers in attendance. Well, 69 plus the ringer. And even with records of 0-5 and 1-3-1, team Woodroof still returned home with a tank, an award and a cool new game to check out.

     So, I ended up facing off against Grey Knights played by Thomas "Goatboy" Reidy III in the first Round. It was early, and we got an entire 6 turn game done in 45minutes, so I forgot completely to take any pictures of the board or his army. His list contained a Librarian, 10 man termie squad with Thawn, Castellan Crowe, Purifier units in rhinos (of which I believe there were 3, but it might have been 2) and 3 psy-rifleman dreadnoughts.
     All in all, a heinous amount of fire with a lot of 3+ cover saving due to the librarian's assistance. Enjoyed the game, but ended up getting tabled. Like I said, I enjoyed the game, but Thomas wouldn't be my first choice for a repeat-opponent in the future. He talks fast, he plays fast and overly so. It's possible to complete a 6 turn game in a 2.5 hour window without playing like a hamster on speed. Take a breath, enjoy your turn a bit more. I missed an item in one of my turns because I felt rushed to get everything done, and he didn't remember his army had the aegis until turn three, much less that his dreads have an improved version that impose a -4 instead of a -1 on opponent's psykers. S'alright; that gave me a good hour and a half to watch my wife's first game against the dark eldar and see how that army runs.
     Insert a run to Bill Walker's Barbeque for lunch and we return with round 2.

      My second opponent, Neal Quigley, played an a-typical Blood Angel army. That is, his army included 2 dev squads, 2 tactical squads and a scout squad that all split off into combat squads and shot at me the whole game. Now he did have 2 assault squads, a librarian with a jump pack and some sanguinary priests, but the bulk of his army stood back and fired heavy weapons my way. I had a great time against Neal and it was a whole new side to Blood Angels than I've seen anyone run.

Neal's great display board.

This was a very close capture and control mission and Neal just squeaked out the win in the last turn pulling my marines off their objective through a great round of melee. I definitely regretted bringing the land raider and not a whole other squad of grey hunters to this event throughout the weekend.
     My third and final opponent of the day was the ringer, Troy, fielding an imperial guard army of shootyness. Having not ever played Imp Guard really, I wasn't prepared for the truly prodigious amount of fire directed my way. 2 battlecannons, 5 plasma blast templates, 9 lascannons, 3 squads of plasma guns, 2 squads of meltaguns and a psyker unit with what is basically a lascannon large blast made for some very sad Wolf Marines.
     Now maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the ringer wasn't supposed to let their opponent win, but not set out blast their opponent into oblivion and beyond and just give a good game to someone who's already gotten their ass handed to them at least once if not multiple times. Found out later that my wife played the ringer day 2 and beat him. Tiny vindication for team Woodroof I guess. Day 1 ends and our heroes are exhausted. Pile in the car, fire up the Google and return to casa de Filgo for pizza and a brief respite before munchkin zombie with some of Scott's friends. Not a bad first day even if the winning eluded us.