While the majority of top Polish players were duking it out at Kraków Arena - to date the biggest Polish event of the year - and our friends from the UK were discovering how badly broken all flavours of Vengor Launchers are, Majson, from the Polish National Team, went on a secret mission in France. He travelled to the land of wine and cheese to take part in the FRENCH WARGAME DAY - a 120-player event. He gave his absolute best and came 2nd, making us, the Polish fans, very very happy. Here is his personal account of the event:
Contact Lost: Sir, you have just landed back from France - a land where no Polish 40k player has ventured before. Why France?
Majson: That's very simple:D they directly invited me to their biggest wargaming event. There where a couple of tournaments held there, inlcluding 2v2 Wh40k, Age of Sigmar, Legion and many others.
CL: Tell us something about the event and the format. Is it much different from the Polish one/WTC one? Do you treat such events as preparation for the WTC or rather as a way to blow off some steam and play something you enjoy?
M: The format of the tournament is 1v1 WTC singles. It is something similar to what we are used to right now in Polish singles tournaments so win/draw/lose format with WTC 20-0 scoring system behind it (11-9 means win). First of all, worth mentioning is fact that they were using WTC terrain standard but only two specific setups were fixed for the event (table 4 and 5). That enabled players to prepare their lists specifically for this event (these particular maps were something in the middle between dense and open tables). Another interesting feature in the format was that top8 was locked after playing 4 out of 5 rounds.
Regarding the second question, personally I focus on team events as my main target. I am usually not adapting my current team list for singles (this might change in the future thou :D). I treat singles as something to both enjoy (there are less stressfull and demanding than teams event, without "pairings" analysis layer) and test WTC list.
CL: Tell us about your list: why GSC and why this particular composition? Was it for testing purposes or did you rather hope to score big with a list you know well? Does it hav any downsides?
M: Why GSC ? I have been playing this army since Arks of Omen update and used it for both ITT and Team tournaments in the Netherlands. I play GSC bikes and neophytes spam list (30+80). It is not the best singles pick in my opinion, because the army in this particular build gives up one secondary for free (No Prisoners). That means that it is hard to score really high against good players. Moreover, there are two really tricky pairings: against DA and against Guard.
CL: Have you done any research prior to the event? Did that affect your army choice in any way? Did you dig into the local meta or is the global meta solved to the point where it is hard to be surprised anymore?
M: With so many tournaments happening in the last two months I didn't manage to make proper research for this particular event. I realize what the global meta looks like (as one of the Polish team selectors I try to sty up to date with it) and so I prepared myself in terms of analysing win/draw/lose scheme (how many undefeated players there will be after every round, and on which mission I will have higher chance to get stronger players).
CL: Let's find out how your games went:
Game 1 - mirror vs GSC
M: My first game was against Lamar's GSC. It was a different list of GSC, based on a most recent invention: trucks instead of bikes. Unfortunately, I started the game here (its problematic in GSC mirror). I knew I had the board presence advantage, so I planned my game for a big turn blocking the opponent's deepstrikes, or having control over them. My idea was to avoid trades on the objectives, try to push aggresively and score high points early, giving up end game for the opponent. Finally, I didnt have an opening turn 2, Lamar used his 20 perfect ambush neos to dispose of one of my units, but next turn I managed to block the board from 40 neophytes. At this point I had clear advantage on the board. Unfortunately I rolled poorly against neos surviving from the previous turn (having killed just a couple with my perfect ambush squad). So it allowed this particular unit to score some more no prisoner points by killing my units. The game ended 16-4 in my favour. Board control and aggresive play turned out to be a good idea.
Game 2 - Salysia with World Eaters
That's a pairing I am very familiar with at this point. So basically, move block, killing units one by one. Both sides got some really good secondaries, mission rules allowed to score more primary points as well, so I knew it would be close. I made a mistake during this game and turn three pushed a little bit too far, instead of playing safely. Then I failed some charges to block off 10 berserkers disembarking. This allowed Salysia to recover and to score some big points in the end. 11-9 for me. At this point I was unintentionaly "submarining" :D
Game 3 - Alfa with TS+Deamons mix
Mission 33, so another one with basically free 15 primary points. I knew it would be a really tricky pairing due to the "auspex scan" stratagem from TS. The opponent played it smartly, positioning game for 3 turns, playing safely with termies and rubrics. Unfortunately for him, he picked a bad secondary: Sorcerous Prowess (killing units in psychic phase). This is a really bad secondary, if you consider that it is really hard to kill my 24 and 20 wounds unit in a single psychic phase. That particular secondary pick allowed me to play safely, using my units to score ambush, doing retrieve battlefield data (last one done with big neos squad :D).
Game 4 vs Guard
Ptit-Nico's Guard with two command squads, russes, mortars. It's really an unfavourable pairing for me, due to "no deep strike" order, which basically counters my entire game plan. I didn't start the game, then failed my 5 inch charge with bikes (no cp reroll, because I didn't recover any). After that I thought it was game over for me. But my opponent made a small mistake, charging my Genestealers with his command squad, killing one - I broke coherency on purpose, which resulted in freeing the purestrains from combat and 4 of them could actually get to mortars and remove some models from two units also causing some losses to kasrkins. This, connected with exposing command squads, allowed me to turn the game in my favour. Final score was: 12-8.
Game 5 vs Le_Poete's Dark Angels
Another hard matchup for me. Le_Poete's Dark Angels with the worst configuration for me, so 47 terminators. Matchup, where I can't play Ambush. I decided to go for No prisoners, hoping to at least score some points. However, I had a big advantage with the mission 13, which allows to deny a lot of primary points and requires splitting the army on the board. I managed to start the game and played safely for two turns (I was really lucky that my opponent rolled poorly for advances turn 1). I decided not to commit any deep strikes turn 2.
I forced the opponent to commit terminators on different sides. Turn 3, I blocked the entire board arriving basically everywhere (10 dead reserved termies). The rest of the game was basically point denial game from my side, like stepping off the objectives to deny shock tactics. I finished 14-6 in the end.
CL: What conclusions have you drawn from your games - any new intel to share with the rest of the team? Anything about the French meta/team? Or does it make no difference when 10th ed has been announced and it was only for fun?
M: I always try to get some intel :D Even if 10th edition is announced, I believe that every experience gained currently will translate directly to the next edition. Maybe lists and metagame intel is not that relevant, but it was really nice to see how Team France works on singles, how they approach training and team selection :)
CL: Would it be fair to say that preparations for the WTC are already underway? What is it like to prepare for an event knowing that an earthquake in the shape of a new edition is imminent and will change everything? How is Team Poland embracing that?
M: Yes. We are preparing ourselves as players for the WTC. Team selection is in progress. Incoming reshape of the game doesn't change that we need to prepare ourselves. However, during preparation process, personally, I focus more on different aspects of the game, for example learning abstraction that stands behind decision making process and so on. I believe, that currently, mastering particular armies is not as much relevant as it used to be during last year's preparation.
CL: Do you intend to stick to your army choices till the end of edition or will you keep on testing?
M: Probably I will play some other armies locally :D just to motivate myself for painting. I really enjoy playing GSC, but playing this army on TTS is a nightmare :D
CL: Where to now? Where is next for Team Poland?
M: Alpine Cup incoming. Two Polish teams are hoping for the win :D Personally, I needed to drop unfortunately, but I will support our colleagues as much as possible remotely :)
CL: Thank you for your time and fingers crossed for you and the team!
The LISTS: https://miniheadquarters.com/tournaments/individual/army-lists/fdw-ii-40k-1v1-open-2023-03-25
Author: Tomasz 'tweak' Data
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