Aftermath: N.I.M.G.C. Tournament

This past weekend was the N.I.M.G.C. Spring Tournament in DeKalb, Illinois at On Board Games. It had been a few years since I had been out to this store and this was my first tournament hosted by the N.I.M.G.C. crew.

Leading up to the tournament, I was debating about which army I was going to bring to the tournament. I was aiming to bring the Emerald Eye (chaos daemons), but I decided that since the tournament results were based on battle points only, I would instead bring a painted army and not worry about winning. To this end, I decided to bring necrons, as I expected no one else would dare field them in a battle point tournament.

My list
Deceiver 300 pts
4 Pariahs 144 pts
7 Immortals 196 pts
10 Warriors 180 pts
10 Warriors 180 pts
4 Destroyers 200 pts
2 Wraith 81 pts
2 Wraith 81 pts
1 Heavy Destroyer
1 Heavy Destroyer

Round One
The first round of the tournament involved a mission to control the most objectives spread evenly across the table. My opponent was fielding a Nidzilla list that was optimized for the tournament.


I spent the first turn of the game basically doing nothing, as I didn’t really have a game plan. My opponent was quite the opposite, dropping each of his pie plates on me using the maximum wording of the rules.

The next few turns were basically me making small advances and him killing units. By the time we reached the fifth turn, I conceded the game as I could not capture any objectives. I had not phased out or lost my supreme general, so I felt good about the result considering all things.

Round Two
The second round was against Jeff F and his Imperial Guard. His army was impressive and by far the best painted army at the event. For this game, we each had one objective that we placed within our deployment zone. The goal was to protect our objective while capturing our opponent’s one.

The game was interesting and by far the most fun I had at the tournament. The end result was a solid draw, with me losing one battle point for my supreme general dying and Jeff getting one for his living. I cannot rave enough how much fun Jeff was as an opponent. The game had the kind of casual feel that I prefer when playing.

Round Three
The last game was also against a great player. This game also had that casual feeling. The only difference between this game and the one with Jeff was this game didn’t come down to the wire. By the end of the game, he had a badly wounded carnifex and three stealers. I had everything but my wraith and c’tan.

At the end, I came in 9th place out of 14 players. A nice finish for the “worse” army in the game.

Place - Player (Battle Points) - Army - Round results - Opponent Battle Points
1st - Tom Crzi (20) - Eldar - WWD - 35
2nd - Andrew Delso (20) - Space Marines - WWD - 25
3rd - Jeff McConnel (19) - Black Templar - WWD
4th - Tim Waeyaert (19) - Tyranids - WWL
5th - Andrew K. (18) - Chaos Space Marines
6th - Mike Rios (12) - Black Templar
7th - Jim Slagstad (10) - Tau - WDL - 50
8th - Greg Chyson (10) - Space Marines -WDL - 35
9th - John Gaszak (10) - Necrons -WDL - 32
10th - Carl Swieton (10) - Space Wolves - DDL
11th - Ricky Neyens (9) - Tyranids
12th - Jeff Florido (7) - Imperial Guard
13th - Jason Chyson (6) - Tyranids
14th - John Keehn (2) - Chaos Space Marines

So, what did I learn from the tournament? It never hurts to bring a painted army. Jeff, my second round opponent, won best painted and received a cool Battle Foam t-shirt for his efforts. This is especially cool since the best painted category was never announced.

If I bring the necrons to another tournament before a new codex, I think I will focus everything on close combat. I figure I will finish painting 10 pariahs. I am also going to add a really big unit of flayed ones. Don’t know if I would swap the Deceiver for a CC necron lord, but it is something to consider. The reason I want to do this is purely because you never see this kind of army. It just seems like a cool army if you don’t care about winning.

Another lesson I learned was I cannot play the snail game. My play style is like the Chicago Bears’ playbook. I play not to lose. I am thinking that I really want to try an army where I send everything running at the enemy instead of my usual piecemeal and hold approach.

My thoughts on the tournament are very positive. It had been a few years since I went to a 40K event, and had my reservations about going to another. The end result though was that I had two really fun games, and one that was fair. The fair game was a reflection of my usual comments about the game is about the person, not the army. That said, I will try my best to make the next tournament as I think it was worth the drive. If you live within the area, I highly recommend attending the next tournament if you like casual tournaments. The guys of N.I.M.G.C. know how to put on a fun time.