by J.D. Welch
If you missed the first part, you can find it at this link.
http://natfka.blogspot.com/2013/11/valhalla-october-2013-part-1.html#more
But the main attraction of Valhalla for me was being able to get in a bunch of games of 40K against a variety of interesting opponents. My goal was to get in at least two games per day, but I didn’t accomplish that, mainly because of the time I spent in the free hobby classes that I mentioned that were also offered.
We arrived at Valhalla at about 5:00 PM on Monday, October 21st, which didn’t leave too much time to try to get a game in, although a few die-hards did. I wanted to get to know as many people as I could on that first night, and just settle in. Plus, I’d driven for 12 hours on Sunday, and had a restless night’s sleep Sunday night (no fault of the Western Hotel that I stayed in in Spanish Fork). I had brake trouble on the way up, and needed to get that looked into first thing Monday morning, which all got straightened out, but contributed to a bad night’s sleep Sunday night. But Monday night was great fun, and I had a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of different folks, including getting to know Thomas really well by discussing strategy and army lists over a few drinks. This was the largest Valhalla yet, with over 40 guests, so there were lots of people to meet and greet.
On Tuesday afternoon (I spent Monday morning scouting future opponents that I would be playing later in the week, and just unwinding and getting into the vacation spirit), I had my first game of 40K against none other than Shawn Gately, BTP’s owner and our host for the week. It was a great game, lots of fun to play, and I’d been anticipating playing against Shawn and his infamous Eldar forces. Shawn didn’t disappoint, and he even videotaped the game and put it up on the BTP YouTube channel (in three parts), called (erroneously) “Eldar vs. Chaos Daemons”, parts 1, 2 and 3. I actually played my Death Guard with Nurgle Daemon allies, so it was more of a Chaos Space Marines vs. Eldar battle report. If you haven’t
watched the videos yet and don’t want to be spoiled, skip the rest of this paragraph. If the game had ended on Turn 5 or 6, I would have been victorious, with a score of 5-1 (I had First Blood, Linebreaker, and held one of the 4 objectives in this Crusade game, and contested two of the other objectives where Shawn had large squads of jet bikes, while Shawn just had Linebreaker at that point), but, alas, the game went to a 7th Turn, and there was no way I could hold out with just my Nurgle Biker Lord, a single Nurgle Spawn with only one wound left on it, a unit of Plaguebearers that were too slow and too far away from the closest objective (and one of Shawn’s jet bike squads) to matter, and a lone Plague Marine holding an objective. Shawn had way too many units left, including a full squad of War Walkers and a Wraithknight, and would have easily taken care of what I had left, so we called it as soon as the roll to see if we would go to Turn 7 was made.
It was great fun, but a bit stressful to be being recorded and having to keep up such a frantic pace, but it makes for a great battle report, so I recommend watching it.
My next game was the next morning, Wednesday, when I played Rich, who often appears in BTP battle reports, and whose wife, Andrea, was the caterer for all of this year’s Valhalla events. Andrea is a fantastic chef, and one of the great attractions of Valhalla is the fabulous food that Andrea puts out for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night snacking.
Rich played his Orks, with lots of Trukks, and we rolled up “Purge the Alien”, which wasn’t a great matchup for him vs. my CSMs and Daemon allies. But Rich is a really great guy, nothing phazes him, and he’s eternally cheerful. I ended up crushing him, being able to take way too many Kill Points off of his numerous Trukk Orks, while not giving up too many Kill Points of my own. The highlight of this battle, for me at least, was The Black Mace on my Nurgle Biker Lord taking out Rich’s Biker Warboss, and then causing the unit of MegaNobs that were also in the combat to flee. These poor Nobs were scared off the table by two Plaguebearers that were remaining in my next turn who had the cajones to charge them while they were fleeing; Rich failed their Leadership test, and the Nobs were toast.
Rich also had a fantastic model that he had brought with him, that he didn’t use in our game (for obvious reasons), but is a fantastic model and centerpiece to his huge army of Orks. It’s a hand-sculpted and fantastically painted Squiggoth:
This model is huge, with amazing details on it, and Rich is rightfully proud of it.
My next game was Wednesday afternoon, and marked the last time that I used my CSMs with Daemon allies. This was against BTP’s Thomas, and his Pre-Heresy Emperor’s Children, which he runs as Salamanders. I’d seen several BTP battle reports of Thomas playing this army, so had a pretty good idea what I’d be up against, which was a good thing.
Thomas is a regular tournament player, and quite a competitor, so I knew I’d be in for a challenge. However, even though he had three Thunderfire Cannons and a lot of mobility, I was able to defeat him something like 11-1 in this Crusade game that also had 4 objectives. I was shocked! What’s more, this marked the third game in a row that my Nurgle Biker Lord had survived the entire game, which is a rarity!
The next morning I had a class, so didn’t get a game in until the afternoon. My opponent on this day was MiniWarGaming’s Matt, who came with Tyranids. Matt is an experienced Tyranid player, and this marked only the fourth time that I’d played a game with my Nurgle Daemon army (all Nurgle Daemons, no allies). Matt crushed me, and we called it after the top of Turn 5 (his turn). It didn’t help that the Doom of Malentai took all but one of the wounds off of my Great Unclean One, but the GUO did managed to get Iron Arm off two turns in a row while in a challenge with Matt’s Hive Tyrant, despite having to roll 3D6 for his psychic test due to the Tyrant’s Shadow of the Warp rule.
But it was a fun game, nonetheless, and Matt is a really great guy. I got the opportunity to chat with him while I had a smoke break, and pick his brains about Games Workshop, MiniWarGaming, and selling product online. It was a good day.
On Friday I faced off against Thomas’ Salamanders again in the morning, but this time with my all-Daemon army. And to my delight and surprise, I won again! It didn’t hurt that on his half of Turn 5 all three of his remaining 5 man units of Tactical Marines rolled miserably in difficult terrain and were just short of both objectives in this Emperor’s Will game. If I hadn’t rolled a 1 to see if the game ended after my half of Turn 5, he would have surely won, given what he had left, but after all, it is a game of dice, and the die rolled in my favor that time. That afternoon I had the airbrushing class with Chung, and was just too spent at that point to try to get another game in, so took it easy for the rest of the day and evening.
I managed to get a game in on Saturday morning against another one of the guests, and really great guy named Yan from Montreal, Canada. Yan was using his very well painted Imperial Fists models, but had chosen to run them using the Iron Hands chapter tactic, which was fine by me. I took my all-Daemon army again, but had changed up my list a bit after my game with Thomas and some post-game strategizing with Thomas. Yan and I were only able to make it to the top of Turn 3, but by that time I had the upper hand, and we both agreed that there was no way that he was going to be able to claim more than one objective, while I held three and had First Blood and Linebreaker.
Then, I had to frantically pack up and go so that I could meet me daughter at BYU in Provo, where she’s a student, in time to see a play that she had written the previous semester that was being put on as part of a series of seven 10 minute short plays. After Yan and I packed up our armies, the BTP folks started packing up all the fabulous terrain, tables, shelves and other supplies that they had brought with them up to Valhalla in a U-Haul truck, so I felt pleased that I was able to squeeze in a game on the final day, and ended up the week 4-2, tired, but very happy for the experience.
I highly recommend Valhalla to anyone who can make it there. In 2014, BTP has a Valhalla scheduled in May and in October again; if those two sell out, they will likely hold a third one in August for the overflow. Valhalla is a great time, a great vacation value (in my humble opinion), very relaxed, and you get to meet a lot of really great people. Among the other folks that I met there were WarGamerGirl Miranda, MiniWarGaming Dave, BrushForHire Austin, CodexDan (formerly of MiniWarGaming), and a host of BTP faces that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever watched more than a few of their videos.
I’ve already made plans to attend Valhalla next October. If you can make it, come see me and say “Hi!”.