Pirates Dead in the Water...

I am sad to report that my begging letter to the tournament organisers fell on deaf ears, and the Pirate project is simply dead in the water.

They suggested using one of the Raiders as counts as venoms, but a) I don't want to confuse opponents that one of my raiders is a raider but the other ones a venom b) venom wouldn't fit the whole squad on, making it a pointless transport and c) the upgrades had been modelled onto the model, such as grisly trophies, enhanced aethersails, dark lance... and these would not be available on the venom. It just wouldn't look the part.

Limiting my force to one raider wouldn't work either. The crew of the Dutchman just look like weird mutants without their ship, so I'd have to include the Dutchman... but the Dutchman is easily recognizable because of The Pearl, and without that it's like "What is this some sort of ghost ship?"

I am continuing to work on the models as best I can but it is somewhat gutting. My hope is to complete the project and perhaps find a combat patrol doubles tournament that HASN'T incorporated this random ruling. Alternatively, I go to Bracknell this year and make my case for the problematic rule to be taken out so that we can take Pirates vs Ninjas NEXT year...

To that end, I have gone completely against character and come up with an efficient spammy beardy list. It is completely in line with the rules they have set. The restriction of vehicles was apparently to defeat Necron Quantum Shielding spam. Now given most people complain about Cron Air, QS spam is a new one on me. There are 4 vehicles that come with Quantum Shielding. The Annihalation Barge, Command Barge, Doomsday Ark and Ghost Ark.

Annihalation Barge - it's a HS slot, so self limiting. Only max of 2 in the combined 1000 point force if BOTH players take Crons.
Command Barge - needs an HQ choice to ride it, can't have HQ choices with more than 2 wounds, therefore ineligible.
Doomsday Ark - Ordnance weapon, so ineligible
Ghost Ark - sure you could spam these... but would you want to? They support warriors, and of all the things in the Necron codex, if someone wanted to spam warriors and ghost arks I'd say LET THEM.

Anyway, in their desperation to prevent anything more than one necron vehicle in an entire 1000point combined force, they have put the same limits on everybody else. The only vehicles you can take more than one of are sentinals, venoms, vipers, killa kans, grot tanks, war walkers, land speeders and storm talons. Now from the various tournaments I've heard, there's nothing there that can be spammed to death right? Right?

So, with about 6 weeks to go to the tournament, I now begin 500 points for Winds batch number 2. Ken and I have usually finished respectably mid table even though we've been playing with sub par fun whacky crazy lists. It'll be interesting to see what we can do if we realy put our minds to it...