Hi magenb,
Thanks for the reply I appreciate it. I took the list and had some interesting matchups. I faced a Necron AV 13 wall and virtually tabled them with rear shots on transports. The spiders took out a C'Tan the scythes took care of the necron wraiths.
I faced an Eldar exodite list with harlequins, hornets, bikes, warp hunter. I was beaten in a close game. The Exodite player is my friend and we test lists against each other. 50% of the time we win against each other with the same lists. He eventually won the tournament.
Next a Grey Knight Admec army. Cataphron destroyers, the big robots, GK termies and 3 dread knights. I tabled them on turn 4
I then faced an Orc horde which I had to table by T5 to win.
Lastly for the tournament lead I Iost narrowly to an Elysian drop troop list with 5 flyers. We had to stop on T5 but I would have taken the game on T6. He had 2 reserve jammers with master of the fleet and I unwisely held my army in reserve had I not the game would have been different. I over estimated the early shooting. The spiders would have weathered it well. Having to make reserve rolls on a 5+ was tough but even when I should have been making reserve rolls on a 3+ I did not get the last 50% of my spiders on till T4. Sometimes the dice don't go your way.
All up I liked the list. The Autarch was very useful I will keep him with wings. He usually just stayed in reserve or chilled in the gunboat serpent. He could jump out and do some nasty melta tricks with that 18 inch plus battle focus movement. Or if things got too unpleasant he could skyleap back off the board come back down and take a seperate objective.
The wraith scythes caused a lot of issues for everyone and modified peoples deployment significantly having the spare serpent kept their threat potential up its harder to focus down 2 serpents.
The Vauls wraith were great distractions no-one would go near them till they were dead and they took more high strength shooting than you would imagine, this took pressure off the serpents. I found that often I had 1 or even 2 serpents on the board on T5.
The spiders were the heavy lifters and backbone of the list. Super reliable very strong and able to function even in reduced numbers with the exarch alive. Very mobile never tarpitted.
The bikes would just shoot a little or not at all and just zip around taking objectives.
The hornets were a pain for everyone they took hull points off anything I pointed them at. Once again able to take objectives and still snapshot with that extra movement.
The night wing was a useful ground attack unit I shot an orc flyer with it but otherwise it just irritated people it did not do much but was able to shoot up troops on the ground it was utilitarian.
All up really happy with the list. I had tested it against the marine blue tide of free stuff formations and it was able to get rid of all the light mech fairly well. It still puts out over 100 S6 shots just mostly at close range.
It was a fun list to play I ended up getting best sports award, people I played seemed to have been happy. You have to think carefully where you put the spiders and measure carefully.
I may try to include a sword and board Wraith Knight. Drop the flyer, drop a hornet and reduce the spider squads to get one in at 1848 points