I’m Bart Goris and I was asked by one of the money wolves, Stefano, to write a small piece about the Grand Tournament Benelux 2006 at Tilburg which I attended. As you can see I accepted the offer.
I’m a warhammer enthusiast for almost 7 years now and play a lot of tournaments. This was my second Grand Tournament, the spirit and feeling of that weekend last year was so good I had to attend again. The Tournament goes over 2 days with this year 5 battles. Some have a scenario which is fun for having a lot of different type battles. It’s also important at choosing your army, which units to bring or to leave, but you had 2250 points to fill so you could take a lot. I’m playing Brettonians so it gave me the opportunity to field some more peasant’s and use some more magic items.
On Saturday morning I first had to drive to Leopoldsburg to pick up 2 other warhammer fanatics, Patrick and Kenneth, both of them great gamers and nice people to have as company. When arriving at the Tilburg venue we saw we were not alone, 121 gamers from the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Belgium, etc… were also participating.
I was briefed on which table to start the tournament and so I went to table 12 where a Mortal Chaos Khorne general, Iwan Oosterveld (a Dutch bloke), was awaiting me. The nicely painted Chaos dragon immediately got my attention together with the Khorne knights and flesh hounds, very quick army. After a brief introduction from the organisers we could start our battle. It was a battle without scenario and we had to play pitched battle. I used my Damsels to outmanoeuvre the frenzy troops but the Dragon was a bit of a problem. He moved immediately 20” forward out of reach of my knights and was aiming for flanks and peasants. So at the end most of my peasant’s were run down by the Dragon, who in his turn was heroically ran down by my General leading the Questing knights. I won the battle by 17/3.
It was a very nice battle and a very pleasant guy to play against.
So by winning the first battle I got again a good player to battle against and it was Bjorn Keulemans, a knight errant and the guy who convinced Patrick and me to come to the GT of 2005. The scenario was battlefield dominion and I was up against a lot of Skaven, which by the way were again nicely painted and converted. This was a battle with scenario so by getting the objective you could improve your result. Bjorn started the battle and the first 2 turns were me trying to dispel, to save and to ward save the shooting and magical attacks from the foul rat men. This was done with mixed success. So when my units started to charge it was only on slaves and smaller units and so I got a bit outmanoeuvred. But piece by piece I was killing Skaven and at the end when we calculated the points it was a draw but Bjorn having the objective. He got a minor victory and I a minor loss. So I still got 7 points which it wasn’t looking for at the beginning. This was again a fun battle and a very nice player to play against.
The third and final battle of day one was messengers and was a battle against Bretonnians. The player was Arnold Kerkvliet from the Lowland mercenaries. A nice fellow and playing against Bretonnians with Bretonnians is very tactical. He had 4 Lances of 9, trebuchet, 1 unit of men at arms, 3 pegasus knights and a lot of archers. He deployed and I saw he didn’t had enough space so if I could put him under pressure from turn one I might get the win.
So by winning the dice roll for starting I immediately started the game and moved forward. After some heroic battles on the flanks, which could have gone either way, I put pressure from left and right on the centre. In the meantime you had to get 3 messengers with important information to the other side. These guys could alter your battle result but the objective was a draw. So the victory points were in my favour and again a win 15/5. Again a good gamer to play against, we had a small dispute but it was settled in chivalric fashion, so we didn’t have to leave the table with a bad feeling. Instead it made this again a memorable battle.
The tournament was going well after day 1. We had to showcase our armies so judges could check army painting and army presentation during the night. So I left my troops at the Sporthal venue after a sneak preview for the upcoming warhammer rule set and armies. Patrick, Kenneth and I went to our hotel in the centre of Tilburg. After checking in we went for a bite and a drink in the city. Talking the matches through and bringing up some older battle memories it was quickly very late and so we went for a good nice sleep.
In the morning after a good rest and a healthy breakfast, we went back to hopefully be as successive as on Saturday. Checking how we scored on painting I was happily surprised and got a lot of points so I could really compete today for a nice place on the GT. I was aiming of bettering the 36th place of last year.
The fourth battle was capture and my opponent, Chris Legg an English bloke from Nottingham playing chaos, was a bit late. He had some chariots a giant, some herds, hounds, level 4 and level 2 shamans, screamers and some knights. Him having the first turn, he moved up on me. So on turn one I had to charge in order to keep some manoeuvre space and so I did. The thing was to look out for the giant and flanks from the knights which charged me in the front on turn 2 but were repelled which gave me a bit of the initiative. The giant on the other hand gave a lot of problems tying my Pegasus knights and knights’ errant up for 2 turns so my smaller knights of the realm units and peasants had to hold or win the flank. It was a nice and quickly played game but maybe my opponent was still a bit under influence of last night or still dreaming. I won the game by 15 / 5 but didn’t have the objective which was a draw. Again it was a nice game and a pleasant opponent.
Before the final battle, a small quiz was held with 15 questions about the hobby, going from rules questions to fluff knowledge. I scored average so not to bad.
The final battle I was up against Richard de Swaaf with his Army of Sylvania and it was again pitched battle to end the tournament. I played him once before, 2 years back in Hasselt. He is a nice guy and a very good player, normally top 10 for a GT. So to get me a good result I had to be very careful. He had 2 coaches, a vampire lord, 2 thralls a lot of zombies, some skeletons, and 2 units of hounds, 2 units of bats, the drakenhof guard and a banshee. This wasn’t going to be easy. He gave me first turn so I moved forward to put some pressure on him but after his magic fase his units were doubled by the invocation. So I could only kill off the smaller units and go for a coach rather than to get trapped in a big unit of skeletons. My knight errants charged his drakenhof guard after 2 turns of restraining and killed 10 models before running when charged in flank by skeletons. My men at arms died when charged by one of the coaches while they were fighting some zombies. My empathic paladin was overrun by some dire wolves when he couldn’t hit them. But the archers under the guidance of the general killed the vampire thrall with wolf form, due to combat resolution. My Pegasus knights were first charged by bats. They killed the bats before fleeing from a coach. This coach was then charged by my general and his questing knight retinue which killed it outright.
The battle went both ways so it was inevitable, it became a hard-fought draw which was a very nice result for this memorable game.
After the final battle I can already speak of a very successful and amusing Grand Tournament Benelux. I had 5 very nice opponents which gave me 5 pleasant and amusing games. Patrick and Kenneth were very entertaining company and brought some hilarious moments. When eventually we got the results I was very pleased with my 11th place overall.
The winner overall was Joe Sturge, an English bloke with snowy wood elves. He also won the best painted, the quiz and best general. The only award he missed was the great gamer award. This is given by the players to the player who was most sporting and well by voting on your opponent after every game. You give a score of 0 to 20 on how you liked the game. The winner had the maximum score of 100 but they were tied with 3 players. And so Sander Tijssen won this award before Lars Frencken and my companion Patrick Cannaerts.
So hopefully you enjoyed reading this,
Cheerz,
Bart Goris.
Here are some more pictures of nice things I encountered.
