*Disclaimer*: - If you don't know much about Warhammer 40k then this report might not make too much sense to you. I have tried to explain some things, but there will still be some of you that will be mystified. Anyway, lets do this thing.

Hello and welcome to my latest battle report. As you are about to see this report is not a cool game of StarCraft featuring Tsunami but a report of the Brisbane Warhammer 40k grand tournament.

I got interested in Warhammer 40k back in high school but I was to poor to get any of the models. I then got back into 40k two years ago and have managed to collect two Tyranid armies, an Eldar army and a space wolf army.

My first encounter with the grand tournament was last year, in which I took my first and most treasured army, the Tyranids. In that tournament I came seventh out of fifty and also won the best sportsmanship award.

This year, with the new Tyranids out I just had to try again. So out comes the new models and I immediately start drooling at them. I quickly buy the codex and using my prior knowledge of all things Tyranid, I write an army list.

I made an army using the special rules at the back of the book and made my little army. With winged Hive Tyrants and ultra powerful hormagaunts I just could not be beat. Alas this joy had to come to an end when I found out that the Grand tournament was not going to allow the back of the book rules.

So, disheartened, I almost gave up and went back to my Eldar army but something made me look at the original list. I thought too myself why not try and make an army using the standard list, so I did and this is what I came up with.

HQ

Hive Tyrant w implant attack and warp blast, 2 Tyrant guard bodyguards

Hive tyrant w implant attack and warp blast, 2 Tyrant guard bodyguards

Elites

3 Warriors w 2 deathspitters, venom cannon, improved save and scything talons

1 Lictor

Troops

11 Hormagaunts

11 Hormagaunts

11 Hormagaunts

11 Hormagaunts

11 Hormagaunts

Heavy Support

3 Biovores w poison mines

Carnifex w Barbed strangler, scything talons and increased save.

So with this list in hand and the models to go with it all I had to do was name the army. As any one who has read my reports would know, I like the Simpson's, so I decided to do some thing crazy and name my army, 'The Crazy Old Man Dance Group'.

I also had to write a short piece on how my army came about so I decided to write something funny. After seconds of hard work I pulled this masterpiece out of my asss... head, yeah that'll do.

Crazy Old Man Dance Group.

300 km from the planet Hillbilly IV, a sensor picks up a strange anomaly. A small Tyranid fleet has just entered the area and is heading directly at the planet. Defenses are alerted and ships are sent to intercept. The planetary guard has been on high alert for the past decade from the orcs in the region and is highly trained.

The ships manage to intercept the fleet and though heavy casualties are suffered the fleet is eradicated. Well, almost. For as you see one of the smaller landing ships managed to sneak past and land on the moon of Hillbilly IV. This moon is known through out the galaxy as the retirement home for crazy old dancers.

The swarm easily takes out the moons defenses and then begins the assimilation. Shortly after this catastrophic event the Tyranid swarm begin to take on characteristics of the dancing men. They all get grouped into groups and generate crazy colors so that they can synchronies perfect attacks with ease.

This 'power' however comes at a price, for you see when the old dancers where assimilated they also passed on there mental defects. So as the swarm goes from planet to planet they achieve victory by precision strikes but the also go crazy with blood lust. The synapse creatures cannot even stop this strange behavior because they too have theses lapses in intelligence.

So watch out for the Crazy old man dance group might be coming to your world today.

What a beautiful piece of literature. Anyway, the day finally arrived and I was ready to go. At 8.30 my mum drove my two brothers and I down the Brisbane city hall, where the GT was being held. Oh for those who are wondering, my brother was playing his Deathwing army and my little brother was playing his Vampire Counts in the ordinary Warhammer tournament.

Back to the story, we all shuffled in and registered, got our mission books and said hello to people that we knew. After the beginning speeches we started the fist round.

First round

I quickly found which table that I was at and started looking at the terrain, hmmm... not much cover at all, just a few boulders that were strewn about the place. (For those that don't play 40k, cover is very important for any army that 1-has very little armour and/or 2- doesn't shoot much.) My army of course is both, that is most of my guys only have a 6+ armour save and I only have a few guns. In StarCraft terms my army is like a speedling/ultra army with sunken support.

The mission that we were going to play was called dawn assault. This mission is about trying to capture table quarters while the sun is still rising. It's a cleanse type mission but the night fight special rule is used for the first turn. So with this in mind, I quickly looked around trying to find my opponent.

He arrived a few seconds later and told me that he played Black templar. I thought to my self that this would be a very interesting fight as black templar are one of the few space marine armies that actually like close combat. So after discussing the basic questions like what cover gave what save and so on went on deploying our troops. Here is a picture of the board, our troops and also our HQ and special squads.

We then started the game off by rolling a dice to see who would go first. I won the roll but amazingly decide to let him take the first turn. As expected his first turn shooting was hampered by the darkness and so I had very few casualties. In my turn however I managed to get quite a few lucky dice rolls and took out his dreadnought.

The game then turns into a blood bath after he fails to cause significant damage to my army in his shooting phase. As during my next turn I managed to charge with all my squads and destroy all but two units. These units then die in the following turn. One interesting thing was that he used his emperor's champion to challenge my hive tyrant and of course the Hive tyrant ripped him a new asshole.

Here is the map of the game after the second turn. As you can see every thing is within range to charge the last of the Black Templar army on my next turn.

When the dust cleared on the third turn, my opponent realized that with his army broken that he had lost and so for the first round of the Warhammer 40k tournament, I managed to come away with a win.

Second Round

I quickly find out which table I'm supposed to be at and then have a look at the mission. The mission, I am happy to say, was very interesting. It was a variant on the standard Recon mission and was called 'across enemy lines'.

The standard recon mission is a mission in which you and your opponent are trying to get into each other's deployment zones. However, in this mission, the only way to win is to have a squad of 5 or more models in your opponent's deployment zone. If, however, you don't have any units in your opponents deployment zone then you automatically lose. And finally, if neither you nor your opponent has any unit in each other's deployment zone then the game is counted as a draw.

My opponent then arrived and told me that he played imperial guard, Crap, Oh well this should be interesting. We began deploying our troops and I began to worry. He had a griffon, two leman Russ battle tanks and a hellhound. My hormagaunts squads started to look very scared. My battle plan for this game was to try and quickly take out his big bad boom booms and then overwhelmed him in close combat. Well this plan almost worked perfectly.

Here is the deployment at the beginning of the game. Notice how my Lictor is within charge range in my first turn.

We rolled to see who would go first and lo and behold I won it again. This time I jumped for joy and quickly started moving my troops/bugs towards the enemy. After all my movement was finished I started the shooting phase, and boy was I lucky. With my poison spore mine toting Biovores I managed to hit and kill his Griffon. I then immobilized his Hellhound and kill quite a few of his troops.

In the assault phase my Lictor charged and then chase down a squad in just one turn. Well as my opponent began his first turn I breathed a huge sigh of relief, as I now don't have too much to worry about. My opponent didn't do any movement and went straight on to his shooting phase. He started of with the two big boys, the Leman Russ battle cannons. He directed it straight in the middle of one of my hormagaunts squad and let 'er rip, and as soon as the scatter dice came to a halt, I knew the gods where smiling on me. The cannon fell short by six big inches. The second battle cannon roared into life and targeted at the exact same place but again it fell short.

Well from there on I was feeling quite happy about the game. My hormagaunts with their incredibly quick movement got into hand-to-hand combat in the second turn. And it all went down hill or my opponent from there. However, the old bastard was not quite through and with his last shooting phase managed to reduce the last of my hormagaunts too just below five models and so seeing as neither of us could achieve the objective the game was called a draw.

Here is the mid game action, don't you just love the 19-inch danger zone on a hormagaunts.

Third round

Well after a quick lunch we jumped straight back into it and boy was this going to be an interesting mission. It was called guerrilla war and awarded double victory points for kills in close combat. The setup was similar to that of the last mission and so as soon as my opponent arrived we began the game.

The deployment was the funniest thing about this round as my opponent, who was playing blood angels, deployed in a straight line across the table while I did the exact same thing on my side. Since we where allowed to deploy exactly 18 inches away from each other we were both able the charge on the first turn.

So after finishing the deployment we rolled to see who got first turn, it was I.

This was a joyous occasion for me as this would mean I would be able to move 6 inches, fleet of claw and then charge. With the hormagaunts bounding rule, which lets me charge a huge 12 inches, I could charge anything of his.

And I did, and it was a complete blood bath that ended on the second turn with me breaking hit army. In fact this was such a slaughter that I managed to receive the full 20-point win.

Well after this match it was already past six at night and so I went home with my two brothers to fix up a few paint chips that had occurred and also to get some sleep.

Day 2

Well as we arrived on this second day there was a buzz of activity as everyone was setting their army up for the beauty pageant. This is were all the armies a set up then all the players can go around and look at each others armies.

Well, let me tell you that there were some magnificently painted armies there and I also managed to go and have a look at a few Warhammer armies as well. After everyone finished voting we started the fourth round.

Fourth round

I was already at the table and so I waited for my opponent, who turned out to be my friend Pino. I had played him a few times before this tournament but always against his Tau. Now he told me he brought his black templar, I was sad. To make matters worse we where playing on the exact same table hat I played on in the first round.

I had a sudden case of déjà vu. In the first round I played a black templar army on table 18, and now I'm back on the same table playing the same army. Well, at least the mission was different. This round we would be playing a standard Recon mission.

He started his deployment first and placed his only heavy support, a Whirlwind, directly in the middle of the board. That had the nasty effect of splitting my army in two. We finished the deployment and it wasn't looking too good on my side of the table.

With my army split in two I just hoped I wouldn't get shot to pieces very quickly.

The game got interesting on the second turn when combat between most of our armies began. His emperor champion challenged my hive tyrant and then proceeded to die very quickly, (more déjà vu). He also managed to take my carnifex down to 1 wound before assaulting it, taking it down with one very lucky roll.

With my poor dice rolling in force, Pino managed to roll over my hormagaunts and win the game.

Oh well, you win some and you lose some. With my current score at 2 wins 1 draw and a loss I moved on to the final round.

Fifth round

This rounds mission was the infamous Messenger mission. In this mission you have to try and get messengers off of your opponents board edges, which in turn earns you big bonus victory points. My opponent was playing Dark angels and for this game we got straight to it.

With the deployment done we quickly started the first turn and realized that we had quite a challenge between us.

I managed to get my hormagaunts on the left flank to charge on the first turn. This held up most of his squads, to prevent him from shooting me. Things were going quite well for me as I managed to get one messenger off and had two in position to go off in the very next turn but unfortunately we ran out of time and as it stood he was in front by 100 victory points.

Had we gone on to just one more turn I would have won easily but that is the problem with having over fifty hormagaunts, the first turn for every game that I played took approximately 1-½ hours.

So with all the games finished and just the presentations to do I came away with 2 wins, a draw and 2 losses. With my painting, army composition and sportsmanship points, I managed to get into 14 place out of 50. My brother with his deathwing got 1 win, 2 draws and 2 losses and only got 36 place. And guess who the winner was, that's right my friend Pino with his Black templar. Dam him, he said he would let me win; he finished the day with 4 wins and a draw.

Well there is my big report on the Australian Warhammer 40k grand tournament. I just have a few things to say, SM~StegaF I hope you like this, as you're the one who told me to go ahead and do this thing.

Thanks to backgroundcity.com for this nifty background, and finally I would like this opportunity to tell you all a joke.

While I was growing up my parents would always tell me, that if I didn't go to church every Sunday I would become a convicted child molester. Well I guess the joke is on them, cause I've never been convicted.

You've all been had; Gojky has done this.