I was thinking about the top players that I have never beaten...

And what that led me to do is to think about players that I have beaten, tied and lost to. I thought I would make a quick list.

The people I have beaten

Really there are a lot, and this is not a brag post, or a humble brag, but I have won my share. I will say that I have heard the phase “I (or he) have (has) never lost before (with this army)” many times. 

The Even Stevens

When you hear about the top players in the country I have played just about all of them at one time or another. As you work your way up to the top tables you see a lot of familiar faces. Against the top players I have a pretty good record, and for the most part I can hold my own. Also there are a lot of top players that I have split games with, or tied. Like Darkwyn of BoLS fame that I played once in an RTT in Orlando and he beat my Chaos with his Black Templars. Then a few weeks later we had a re-match in Tampa and it was his Black Templars vs. my Eldar, and I did a lot better. Let’s put it like this…after this game he started to take blessed hull even though there was no DE running around at that time ;) Another example is against Greg Sparks where I had one of my favorite games of all time at LA Games Day a few years ago. I was playing my Tyranids against his Chaos, and it was a slug-fest that ended in a close tie, and then I played him again at the Adepticon Invitational and again I almost beat him and it ended up in another tie. There are many others like Marc Parker, Alex Fenell, Mike Mutscheller, Dave Fay, etc that I have tied or we have ended up splitting our games. 

The no-shows

I like playing the best-of-the-best and I like to be challenged so here is the short list of players that I have never played but want to:

Mike Brandt

Nick “Yermom” Nanavati

Thomas “Goatperson” Reidy

Shawn Kemp

Ragnar Arneson

Bill Kim

The Victors

Here is the short list of people that I have played but lost to that hurt the most (plus excuses ;):

Ben “Spacecurves” Mohlie

Ben has beaten me twice. The first time was in a demo game at Adepticon a couple of years ago. I was playing Chaos Space Marines and he was playing Space Wolves (Hey, when I put it like that, it does not sound so bad!). I popped his Land Raider on the first turn, and that was the first and last bit of luck that I had. He had to foot slog his way to me and I could not even come close to hitting him with a plasma cannon, and his rhinos were impregnable (he should have put whatever they were made out of on the land raider) and I lost. The other time was last summer in the Mirror Match tournament at Wargames Con where we both had the same Space Marine army. I was making a good accounting of myself even though I have never played Space Marine before, and they are Ben’s wheelhouse. Well, I got the jump on one of his squads and hit it hard, but he made almost all of his saves, and then he hit back and I could not roll that well and I lost several guys. At this point I should have failed my morale check and run, but I forgot that I could do that and he assaulted me and beat me down. Next year’s mirror match will be chaos marines and one of my specialties, so we will see how he does then!  

Tony Kopach

As most people know, I played him twice at the Nova Open. The first game I played him in the invitational and I rolled like crap and his grey hunters beat up my paladins in assault. The second game was in the Nova finals where I lost the game when I did not make my Interceptors scoring. I got sick, and was so tired after 13 games that when I looked down at the end of turn #3 and I realized that I only have 2 troops in an objective game I knew I was screwed.

Paul Murphy

I guess I lost to him twice, but I do not count the first time. It was at the Adepticon Gladiator and he just destroyed me with a stompawith a lifta-droppa arm. The second time was the same year at the AdepticonInvitational and he was running Nob Bikers (back when they were unbeatable) vs.my Chaos Space Marines. He ran up to me with his bikers and I assaulted them with my HQs (a Demon Prince and a Sorcerer on a disc). I had a Thousand Son’s Squad that I could throw at them, but I was worried about combat resolution. He ended up collapsing on my HQs, and killing them. I should have thrown my Thousand Sons squad at them to hold him in place so he could not get all of those attacks at my HQs, and I would have had 2 turns of beating on them, and hopefully cripple them.

Reese Robins

This was Space Wolves vs. my first and only running of myDark Eldar at the Sprue Posse GT. I had him right where I wanted him in a KP mission, and I ended up failing a morale roll on LD 9 and 2 KP ran off the table at the end of the game giving him the win.

Scott Simpson

He is retired as far as I know, but back-in-the-day he was quite the Tau specialist. In the Games Day LA tournament that Sparks and I played in above we fought to a tie, and Scott who was behind us ended up jumping over us in the standing to win the tournament. Also a few months before Scott and I played we were both undefeated in the final round of the Baltimore GT and we just missed each other as I was on table #2 and he was on table #1 playing Toledo Brad. We both won our games and he ended up with a perfect 100 battle points and won best general, and I was at 97 battle points because I misread a mission and screwed up getting 3 points and I ended up with the second highest battle points. I ended up playing him at the Las Vegas GT when I was playing my Witch Hunters, and he was playing his Tau. I had a Rhino filled with Sisters that were pressuring him, and he ended up not only exploding the rhino, but doing enough casualties that I had to take a leadership check that I failed and ran away. If I could have gotten those sisters into assault with him, it would have been game over for him, but it was not to be and I was handed a loss.  

Justin “Dash of Pepper” Hilderbrandt

This loss hurt the most. I was playing in the So Cal Slaughter in Space and we get paired up against each other. He is playing DE (old codex) and I was playing Chaos. This is a bad match-up for me to begin with but I was game. I have wanted to play him because he does well on the tournament scene and I wanted to see what he was made out of, and if he was really that good. So I look at the mission and it was who ever had the most KPs left alive at the end of the game wins. Well, that is great because I like small elite armies that have very few kill points, and he had over 20 of them. That was not too good for me, and the game ended up just like you would expect it to because I would just about need to table him with his fast moving units to get the win in this game. 

This is of course not a comprehensive list of everyone that I have lost to. I have lost my share and then some, but these are the losses that hurt the most.