Battle for Bekrin – Arena of Death Results

This past Saturday had our players fight to the death in a Dark Eldar arena. Each player made a new character (less than 150pts) to represent their captured Dark Eldar slave that was fighting for his/her freedom. The rules we used for the fights were straight out of the new 40k Campaign book Crusade of Fire. For more information about the event and it’s rules please  see this post.

With 10 players showing up for the fights constructing a Single Elimination Bracket was a bit tricky. As you can see from the bracket image below, I ended up making some mistakes with byes and such. But even with those mistakes everyone really enjoyed themselves.

After round 1 I gave Christian a bye, reasoning being that he was the only Dark Eldar player and the background for the event was that it was all Dark Eldar run and therefore it wasn’t a stretch for him to get a bye. After realizing in round 3 that I didn’t really think ahead and that bye did nothing to help the bracket I took the easy way out and just reinserted myself back into the tournament. Of course this unintentionally caused the final fight to be between Christan and myself and I’m sure the guys won’t let me forget the time I rigged the fights for my benefit!

The Characters

While I asked players to submit their characters to me before the event, I didn’t actually receive any. So this list of character is going to be a little rough as I’m working from memory. Excuse any mistakes or missing wargear. Almost all the character were in the 135-150pt range, so I’m sure you can figure out any missing wargear.

1. Joey – World Eaters Chaos Lord w/Axe of Blind Fury
2. Christian – Archon w/ Venom Blade + Agonizer
3. Nicco – Black Legion Chaos Lord w/ Murder Sword + Combi-Melta
4. Lorand – Blood Angels Captain w/ Thunder Hammer + Storm Shield
5. Matt H – Master of the Forge?
6. Jon – Alpha Legion Chaos Lord w/ Murder Sword
7. Sean – Eldar Autarch
8. Tyler – Marine Chaplain w/Terminator Armour
9. Mike – Word Bearers Chaos Lord w/ Power Axe + Power Sword
10. Raf – Eldar Farseer (Raf brought the wrong army and forgot his necrons at home!)

The Results

Overall winner: Christian!

The Prizes

While players knew that their characters were fighting for freedom from the Dark Eldar slave pits, I did not tell them that the winner of this little Tournament would also earn the Legendary Fighter Warlord Trait. So Christian is able to use his Archon character in regular campaign games instead of his regular Supreme Warlord or regular Warlord.

I also had a couple other prizes to raffle off to the participants. Taking advantage of Meeplemart now stocking Forge World I was able to purchase that awesome FW Angron miniature (aprox. $100) for the main raffle prize. The secondary raffle prize was one of those premium Games Workshop basing kits (aprox. $40.)

After names were drawn Jon went home with Angron and Christian went home with a fancy basing kit!

The Fluff

Here’s some awesome fluff Jon wrote for the event. Jon’s written some awesome stuff during this campaign, so thanks to him for helping to flesh out the background!

+++ Recieving encrypted transmission +++
+++ Authorization accepted … beginning decryption … completed +++

Message destination: Jericho Reach – Bekrin – Operatus 54-delta-phi forward command
Message sender: Reconnaissance squad Rho 6 commander Oenopion
Unable to pinpoint location

Hydra dominatus, time is short so I will make this brief.

Our intelligence gathering operation in the large eldar ravaged area of Bekrin has been compromised.  The eldar presence is much stronger than we anticipated; I would advise against anything less than a large scale conventional assault with significant legion assets. The squad has gone to ground with orders to regroup at waypoint epsilon-phi when possible.  This will likely be my last communiqué as the xenos are jamming our comms somehow.

+++ End of message +++

Oenopion woke to complete darkness and found he could not move. A split second of panic dissolved as deep seeded mental conditioning took over. He could feel that he was still fully clad in his warplate, which was a good start, though his helm optics had been disabled somehow. Alarming thoughts of what could subdue a fully armoured astartes were quickly dismissed. He hypothesized that he was being held in some form of stasis field.

“Ah! You’re finally awake,” said a strangely accented voice suddenly. “That was quite a fight when we captured you; I believe you tallied 8 wyches by yourself. Pity, I personally knew of them 4 had very promising careers ahead of them.”  The optics in Oenopion’s helm gradually came online, and he saw a tall eldar clad in serrated body armour standing before him.

“How rude of me to forget my introductions, my name is Kothinthirl and I am a beastmaster for the newly opened arena here on this world,” said the eldar with a mocking bow. With his helm display functions back online, Oenopion could see that his bolt pistol and daemon-infused sword were still mag-locked to his armour. Only the paralyzing stasis field prevented him from attempting to eviscerate his captor. “Because of your previous spectacular performance, you have been granted the honour of being among the first to anoint the arena sands in blood. Isn’t that wonderful?” Kothinthirl continued in a sing-song voice, clearly having repeated these words many times recently. “And if you perform exceptionally well, you will even be able to win your freedom! Now if that isn’t something worth fighting for, I don’t know what is.”

Resigned to the fact that he would have to play along with whatever the eldar had planned for him, Oenopion silently prayed to the Architech of Fate to show him through the trials ahead.

The Pictures

Here are a few pictures I was able to take during the event.