Warpstorm VIII was run over the weekend in Wellington, NZ. Wellington is home of the Warlords and 17 of the 28 participants were from Australasia's premier Warhammer 40k club.
The event was won by Charlie St Clair with his Orks. Charlie has now gone a full year without being defeated with this army and sits on maximum possible points in the NZ Ranking system. Given that he won Liber in Melbourne last year it would be a brave man to dispute his position of Australasia's top player.
Warpstorm saw two Warlords podium for the first time. Aaron Twose steered his Space Marines into 2nd Place and David Eagles continued his improvement of the past 12 months to finish 3rd (David was the only person to take points off Charlie). Glen Burfield followed up his Best Presented Army award at Fields of Blood with another here at Warpstorm.
Not surprisingly, Aaron (a whopping 102 places) and David were the rankings stories. David enters the Top 10 for the first time (at 8th) with the Top 7 unchanged.
The lack of recent tournaments has seen some of the old warhorses drop down the rankings. Hagen Kerr, Bryn Jones and Jack Dunn will all need to some tournaments in over the next eight months or see their Masters' chances evaporate.
Next tournament is Equinox (Auckland) in a fortnight, followed by NatCon at Easter.
Pete Dunn
Rankings HQ