Sorry for the minor act of necromancy. I hope the mods will allow it as this chunk of the forum is rather sleepy.
Quick question before I get into it: what counts as a "dragon singer?" I see knight singers and spirit singers, but no "dragon singers." I played anything non-psychic with the word "singer" in its name as being a dragonsinger, but I wasn't sure if this was correct. Also, Nocturne of Shadow is still useful, but the second part of its rules are outdated since nightfighting has changed.
I got in another playtest tonight. It was 2,000 points, and I took the following:
HQ
170-The Prince of Nine Worlds (Dragon King)*: Drake Lance, Shield of Vaul, Armour of Vaul, Hunting Drake, Vaul's Sigil
*Fluff is that this guy leads exodites to new maiden worlds when they become populous enough. Each time I win a battle, I'm going to considdder changing his title by increasing the number of worlds by one.
TROOPS
115-Dragon Knights X 5: Storm Lance, Knightsinger with Hunting Horn
5-Chieftain: Laser Lance
115-Dragon Knights X 5: Storm Lance, Knightsinger with Hunting Horn
5-Chieftain: Laser Lance
110-Dragon Knights X 5: Storm Lance, Knightsinger with War Drum
5-Chieftain: Laser Lance
110-Dragon Knights X 5: Storm Lance, Knightsinger with War Drum
5-Chieftain: Laser Lance
156-Raptors X 12
ELITES
245-Kindred Guard X 8: X 7 Drake Lances, First Knight has a Hunting Drake
25-Spiritsiner: Witch Lance, nocturne and lullaby for melodies, chorus and refrain for harmonies
FAST ATTACK
89-Dragonwarders X 5: Herwarden has Drake Arrows
105 Drake Flight X 6:
150-Great Dreak:
HEAVY SUPPORT
240-Knight COnstruct (Fire Gale): Jump Jets, Knight Lance, Scatter Laser
240-Knight COnstruct (Fire Gale): Jump Jets, Suncannon, Scatter Laser
100-Carnosaur
Total: 1990
He took an IG/Tau combo including:
... a 3 man squad of Russes with the tank commander guy
...A hammerhead with longstrike
...a priest, lord comissar, crisis commander, servitor
...2 chimeras with vets inside
...a squad of scions and a squad of rough riders
... A tau flyer of some sort (didn't do much)
...Pathfinders, fire warriors, and broadsides
THE GAME
We did crusade and dawn of war. I won first turn and deployed with my raptors screening my kindred knights, my dragon knights on the sides, a construct on either flank, and the carnosaur on my right flank. My great drake chose to start off the board. My drake wing chose to deepstrike. My wardens outflanked. His warlord trait let him outflank his veterans and their chimeras along with his rough riders.
TURN 1
On the first turn, everything rushes forward. My knight lance construct puts a glance on a russ, my suncannon knight evaporates a pathfinder squad, and everything else runs. Oh! And I use the maiden's lullaby to put his fire warriors to sleep. You *may* need to debuff the lullaby just a bit. Maybe make it just 2d6 or 3d6 take the two highest. In combination with the refrain harmony (which I used), it's basically an auto-pin.
On his turn, his russes manage to mow through the entire raptor squad, and random other shooting kills a few dragon knights, but not much else.
TURN 2
My drake wing and great drake show up. The former zooms along one flank hoping to have some juicy targets to roast next turn. The latter deepstrikes onto the middle of the board in hopes of reinforcing a flank later on.
I lullaby the fire warriors again while my kindred guard and dragon king smash into his russ squad. My suncannon construct smashes into the hammerhead along with a dragon knight squad. While my shooting fails to do much (I think I glanced a couple of things and failed to get past the crisis commander's invul), assault saw me destroying the hammerhead and demolishing the russ squadd (which exploded and killed both a kindred guard and the tech priest).
In retaliation, all of his reserves but the flyer arrive. Lucky snapshooting sees him killing my great drake and my carnosaur. The carnosaur, it's worth noting, died to regular shooting from a vet squad. One melta hit and two las weapons, to be precise. He was basically in the list to draw fire, which he did, but this guy seems rather fragile. The knight construct also took some wounds, and his rough riders killed a dragon knight or two.
TURN 3
My warders show up to put a glance on one chimera. My sun cannon construct finished it off while my knight lance construct dealt with the other chimera. He no longer had any tanks. Not bad for turn 3 from a melee army! My kindred guard and king killed off his fire warriors while the drake wing was busy roasting a handful of scions.
He shoots my spiritsinger and a kindred guard to death with his broadsides and commander. He also put a wound on the king, but only because I forgot I had a 2+ save and FNP. >.< More dakka sees him down my knight lance construct, but the stunned survivors of his chimera fail to harm my warders.
TURN 4
My suncannon construct blasts a veteran squad to oblivion. My dragon knights catch up with the comissar as he struggles away from the front line and put a laser lance shot into his back. The king broke off from the kindred guard who downed the broadsides with their lances. The king's lance failed to burn the commander in shooting, but he quickly finished said commander off in the assault phase.
Not much happened from there. His flyer showed up and failed to hit anything at which point we called game. He had a good chance of claiming one objective if he could kill my drake wing, but I controlled every other objective on the board. Over the course of the game, he killed all but one of my monstrous creatures, and I think he wiped out a single dragon knight squad. Aside from that, casualties were minimal. His outflanking gave him a nasty turn 2 punch, but it probably hurt him more than it helped. Protecting his russes for an extra turn would have let him do a lot of damage to me.
That said, the exodites worked very well. It would have been a very different game without the fire support of the knight constructs. Their fire power and durability were well worth the points. I'll probably use the drakes to screen in the future as deepstriking a full squad leaves them too prone to being out of range, and 12" movement lets you cover a lot of ground fast. My great drake andd carnosaur were cheap enough that I didn't mind losing them. The great drake is slightly awkward in that jinking with him leaves him without any weapons to use, but he's well worth the points. The psychic powers ranged from awesome to sort of useless. The anti-psyker one would be fine against some armies. Not helpful versus tau, but oh well. The nocturne is a solid choice. The nova is potent, but my kindred guard don't seem like the type to need help killing things once they're within 6". The lullaby is good to the point of being broken at shutting down a unit a turn.
On that note, I was a little confused about how to use Refrain. Er, no "note" pun intended. I played it that I did psychic tests to activate the melody, then did seperate tests to activate the harmony. How does chorus work with powers that would otherwise be out of range? Do you just fail to use the power if you fail to activate the chorus? Should I have been rolling to use chorus before the power? Slight confusion there.
One last thing. What's the point of noble knight kindred? They seem to be cheaper kindred guard but with fewer options. Saving a couple points would be nice, but their presence seems redundant.
It was fun using your 'dex! Let me know what you think of the feedback!