'Ard Boyz army results.....in a nutshell

I went over to Dakka-Dakka and looked at the breakdowns on the armies that are placing in the top 3 in the 'Ard Boyz prelims, and I was not totally surprised by what I found:

36 Grey Knights
28 Space Wolves
25 Dark Eldar
22 Blood Angels
20 Orks
19 Codex: Marines
16 Imperial Guard
15 Eldar
13 Tyranids
10 Dark Angels
8 Chaos Marines
8 Chaos Daemons
5 Black Templar
5 Tau
2 Necron
2 Sisters of Battle

Now I make no claim that these results are complete ( I manually scraped them from a forum this morning), but they paint an interesting picture. This stuff gives me a lot to think about. The first thing I notice is that the wolves are right up there hitting hard for a second year in a row. Is that book that efficient? Really? The Grey Knights I expect with the new army syndrome , and to a lesser extent the Dark Eldar. Now, I am playing DE right now so I know how fragile they are. They can hit like a ton of bricks, but cannot take the return punches.  This speaks for the skill of the player able to capitalize on this army. Tyranids are the same way. They have very little in the way of "conventional" strength, but they can really wreck your day if you are not careful.

It looks like the GW FAQ on the older marine codeci made an impact with 10 deathwing/ravenwing armies placing well.  I am also seeing a metric crap-ton (don't ask for a definition) of vanilla marines doing well. I guess that speaks for the balance in that book. I'm looking forward to see how the regional games go, and if the "favored" armies really do as well as these numbers seem to indicate.

40k 'Ard Boyz prelims and more

Well I ran the 40k "Ard Boyz tournament at Ravenstone. We had a maxed out 14 people at the store. A good day had by all with no incidents at all. In the end Drew Hixon walked away in first with 60 Battle points....With Tyranids. Drew was due, he has been within inches for at least the last three years. Grats Drew!
Second place was Deathwing/Ravenwing combo Angels. This was a rather nice army that had a rough second round. Third place went to one of three Grey knight armies. Great Job Mike!

I have been playing the games I needed to with my Dark Eldar and after watching 'Ard Boyz and playing those games, I see the loop holes I can easily plug. That said, I think I am going to diversify my hammer units a bit.

Also, Boltgun posted the first test mission, and it screws my entire strategy. My portals are there to receive my reserves, but I can't use them that way if they are in reserve themselves.....crap. So this leaves three of my hammers on foot with no way to close quickly before they get shot. So now I need to adapt....or is it evolve?