Going to GTs on consecutive weekends is totally sensible and no one can tell me otherwise. Welcome to another tournament report, this time from the Glasshammer open GT in Telford. I did rather well last time I headed up there for a major, and was hoping for a repeat performance, but also mindful that the metagame has shifted a lot since then.

How did things go? Read on and find out.

Event Details

Glasshammer are somewhat unusual in being one holdouts for using a custom event pack. You can see this in full here but the tldr is:

Modified Eternal War primary missions, with all missions using “full army” deployment with a seize step.

ITC secondaries.

Up to 6pts of differential kills at the end of the game (i.e. if the game wraps up and I’ve killed 12 units to my opponent’s 10, I get 2pts added to my score).

ETC style 20-0 scoring (i.e. you get a sliding scale from 11-20pts for a win and 0-9pts for a loss depending on margin of victory, needing to win by 20VP for a maximum 20-0).

No Index datasheets or equipment where a Codex version exists.

6 turns.

No sudden death.

Lots going on, but ultimately the missions didn’t feel that different from just playing straight ITC in play, but the nature of the scoring and some of the EW missions heavily rewards some armies. In particular, quite a few of the missions had some very low VP caps on what your primary score could reach, meaning that low model count armies were at a substantial advantage once kill points were factored in. I managed all right with a high-drop list last time I played this format, but there did seem to be a few more armies deliberately tailored to be low drops this time around, which is a pain for me as it’s tricky to push the armies I like to play that way.

Terrain wise, it was very good – largely consistent setups across all tables with central double-ls and various other lower-riding LOS blocking ruins scattered about. I marginally preferred the LGT setup with the craters on the sides rather than more ruins, but that’s a tiny complaint in the face of being very happy with it overall.

While it is interesting to try something a bit different, my conclusion on these missions remains that I’d rather just play ITC. I’ve gone off 20-0 scoring a lot, because when it can mean that being forced to play one tough matchup that you play a blinder in and take by like a single point you’re still often taken out of a podium position in a five round event. The differential kill points only exacerbate this here – you can go into a game with an incredible uphill struggle in front of you to pick up a high score. I think 20-0 is great for team events, but just doesn’t really work for singles. I do enjoy the slightly changing challenges of playing different primaries every game, but I think if you want to do that you need to go the whole hog and write some of your own – the rulebook ones just oscillate too much in what they offer.

Still, none of that’s to say I didn’t enjoy my games – I very much did – so let’s take a quick look at my list and move on to the fun bit.

My List