Hi All
Last weekend I participated in a 2250 local tournament. It was a 2-days 4-rounds event, 2 games per day. A very-very comfortable and pleasant format if you ask me - I personally find playing 3 tense tournament games in one day highly stressful, while 2 games in a day is just perfect. The event required armies fully painted on a decent quality level (i.e. 3 flat colours wouldn't have been allowed) with strict WYSIWYG (including colour schemes).
The scoring was "20-0" system, points for each game were determined by a combination of the difference in mission points scored and the difference in the total point cost of the units destroyed by each side.
The list I took to the event was this:
Detachment: Battalion (Saim-Hann)
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HQ 1: Farseer Skyrunner (Witchblade) - [135] (Doom, Fortune)
HQ 2: Maugan Ra - [140]
Troops 1: 5 Dire Avengers (Exarch, Dual avenger shuricat) - [64]
Troops 2: 5 Dire Avengers - [60]
Troops 3: 5 Dire Avengers - [60]
Elites 1: 10 Fire Dragons (Exarch, Dragon's breath flamer) - [240]
Fast Attack 1: 5 Warp Spiders (Exarch, Powerblades) - [94]
Heavy Support 1: 5 Dark Reapers (Exarch, Tempest launcher) - [140]
Transport 1: Wave Serpent (Spirit stone, Vectored engines, Shuriken cannon (upg.), Twin shuriken cannon) - [149]
Detachment: Outrider (Saim-Hann)
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HQ 1: Autarch Skyrunner (Novalance of Saim-Hann, Warlord) - [108]
Fast Attack 1: 3 Windriders (3 x Scatter laser) - [84]
Fast Attack 2: 3 Windriders (3 x Scatter laser) - [84]
Fast Attack 3: 3 Windriders (3 x Scatter laser) - [84]
Fast Attack 4: 6 Shining Spears (Exarch, Star lance) - [188]
Detachment: Supreme Command (Saim-Hann)
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HQ 1: Warlock Skyrunner (Witchblade) - [70] (Protect/Jinx)
HQ 2: Warlock (Witchblade) - [35] (Quicken/Restrain)
HQ 3: Warlock (Witchblade) - [35] (Conceal/Reveal)
Detachment: Air Wing (Alaitoc)
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Flyers 1: Crimson Hunter - [160]
Flyers 2: Crimson Hunter - [160]
Flyers 3: Crimson Hunter - [160]
Total: 2250
For those who haven't seen it in my project blog, here's a bird's eye shot of my army.
I'll do it in a game-by-game form, trying to keep it brief - but hopefully it still qualifies as full report, so posting it here.
Game 1 - vs Astra Militarum My opponent had a Baneblade, 6 LRBTs and about 20 deep-striking Scions. Mission was one of the Eternal War types to control markers in the end of the game, with table quarters deployment.
Initial disposition looked like this:
My opponent went first, dropped his scions on my right flank aiming for my flyer and damaged it badly but the Lightning Reflexes stratagem kept it alive.
Most of the Baneblade and LRBT shooting was out of range; what was in range wiped out some Dire Avengers and removed a couple of scatter-bikes but was otherwise ineffective.
On my turn 1 the Asuryani anti-personnel fire followed by a charge of Shining Spears wiped out his Scions, Fire Dragons dropped onto his closest LRBTs and blew up one, CHs and Reapers blew up one more. From that point on it was downhill for the Mon-keigh - they fought valiantly but couldn't prevent me from killing his tanks one by one while locking the still operational ones in melee. Forces of the Imperium were wiped out by the end of turn 4.
19-1 in my favour.
Game 2 - vs Death GuardI suppose it was a "Chaos soup" rather than Death Guard. The list had Mortarion, 2 rhinos full of Plague Marines led by some DG characters, helbrute and some cultists, but there also were 3x3 Obliterators accompanied by Abbaddon. Maelstrom mission with classic deployment along the long table edges.
My opponent got first turn and, having deployed Mortarion and rhinos right across the bulk of my land forces, went straight at me.
His Oblits with Abbaddon dropped against my right flank and tried to intercept my flyers, but to no avail - not the least because he was unlucky to roll "1" for Damage for 2 out of three of his Oblit squads. That and the combination of Alaitoc bonus and Lightning Reflexes stratagem ensured that Oblits only knocked 6 wounds off one CH and 2-3 off another one.
In the meantime Morty used a command point to get himself Warptime psy power - I never knew it was possible and it took me slightly off guard. He promptly barged straight into my Wave Serpent, blowing it up and killing a bunch of models all around (including a couple of Warlocks) with his pestilent miasma.
That proved my opponent biggest success however. On my turn 1 my CHs darted to my far left flank, leaving Oblits pretty much stranded in the open with no worthy targets within reach. I Doomed Morty and poured most of my fire into him, reducing him to his last couple of wounds - after which my Autarch, the White Snake himself, charged in, putting a lance blast straight through each of the great beast's eyes with surgical precision. With his brain evaporated, the Primarch lost his grip on the physical reality and was instantly dragged back into the Warp, denied the chance of spilling any more of his contagious filth around him.
In game terms, after losing his last wound Mortarion explodes on 4+ causing some mayhem all around him - however, even with a command re-roll my opponent rolled two "3"s, and Morty was denied his last laugh.
In subsequent turns my CHs dealt with Oblits, mercilessly using their range advantage to keep out of their reach. The rest of my force destroyed Plague Marines and their leaders on the left flank - but those did prove extremely tenacious, and dealing with them took me almost 3 full turns. Moreover, seeing the biggest threats to my units effectively neutralised, I sort of relaxed and thought that the game's already won, not paying much attention to Maelstrom cards. Nor did I pay much attention to the fact that game was going rather slowly - right until the end of my turn 4, when the judge suddenly called Dice Down. All that was left of my opponent's army was Abbaddon and 10 cultists hiding in a forest - but he wasn't wiped out and all of a sudden ended up being 4 or 5 mission points ahead of me. Difference in the cost of killed units was still heavily in my favour though, which resulted in a dead draw of 10-10.
Game 3 - vs TauThe Tau force I faced in the first game of day 2 consisted of a couple of deep-striking Commanders, a few regular Crisis suits (also deep-striking) and a firebase of several Broadsides and an assortment of characters, supported by a bunch of Stealth suits. Needless to say, all that was protected by buzzing clouds of dozens of Shield drones.
The mission was Maelstrom with diagonal deployment.
My opponent chose to bunch his firebase units close together in a big ruined temple, which soon proved to be his undoing.
This was the only game where I went first. Seizing the opportunity, I buffed my Shining Spears with Protect and Fortune, then catapulted them straight into the Tau firebase with Quicken. Let me point out that this was seriously lucky of me to get all those spells off - this sort of thing only works in about 1 game out of each 3 or 4. This time however it did work, and Tau were punished for taking up such constricted position.
It was a bit one-sided, but it also was a beautiful triumph of the Saim-Hann Windrider Host. The combined fire of Shining Spears' twin shuricats and scatter-bikes cleared out the nearest screening units of Fire Warriors, opening the way for the Spears to charge straight into the ruined temple. And charge in they did, locking up over half of the Tau firebase.
Even despite serious protective buffs, Spears did take some heavy losses to the overwatch and in the subsequent combat (be it not for the combination of Protect and Fortune they probably wouldn't have survived their own charge). However, on my turn 2 the Autarch caught up with them, sealing the fate of the Tau ground forces. Their deep-striking battlesuits did inflict some damage, but it didn't help to change the course of the battle, and Tau were wiped out by the end of turn 5, giving me a clean 20-0 win.
Game 4 - vs DaemonsIn the last game I went against the primary candidate for the 1st place and his crazy daemon horde. Although technically this also was a "Chaos soup" - a horde of Tzeench daemons (including one full-sized pack of 30 Pink Horrors) mixed with some cultists and big pack of poxwalkers led by Typhus. Notably, the list also included a crazy 480(ish) pts fortification (forgot the name) with 30 wounds and T10, that could contain up to 30 models and fired D6 shots hitting on 5+ and causing D6 mortal wounds with each hit.
The mission was the Relic, with Spearhead deployment (short edges with a wedge).
Not having encountered anything like this army before, and having very little knowledge of the Daemons codex in general, I totally failed to devise any efficient plan on the fly and did just about everything wrong. That said, even though I could do better, I don't see any way how I could possibly try to win the primary objective (i.e. the Relic) with my list.
Since Relic is the basic rulebook mission, the one who finished deploying first went first. Needless to say, due to that fortification my opponent had about 1.5 times less deployment choices than me, and I failed to seize.
Furthermore, I was totally ignorant about the insane amount of firepower that a full unit of 30 Pink Horrors dishes out and deployed my Shining Spears too close to the front. In his turn 1 my opponent deep-struck his 30 Pinks straight onto the Relic in the centre, then had them fire at my Spears promptly wiping them out (90 shots with +1 to wound from some psychic buff is insane, even with -1 to hit for Lightning Reflexes).
This wasn't the biggest surprise however. I soon learned that, in addition to what was already on the table, my opponent's army included a full compliment of Blue and Brimstone horrors, as well as (iirc) at least 80 poxwalker models. This was a bit jaw-dropping, seeing the fact that the whole army was commission-painted up to a top-notch, practically showcase standard - I can only guess that the amount of money invested in it should've been crazy. Anyway, the primary trick that that made this force work was the combination of two stratagems that affected poxwalkers and that my opponent was activating repeatedly turn after turn. The stratagems were "Cloud of Flies" that prohibits shooting at a poxwalker unit unless they are the closest target, and "The dead walk again" that adds a new poxwalker to the unit each time an infantry model is slain within 7" of them. Just in case you're wondering, it was specifically FAQ'ed that poxwalkers can go above their starting strength and new ones do not require reinforcement points.
So, the Poxwalkers were screened with Horrors on all sides, making those Horrors effectively the only thing I could shoot at. However, as I mentioned above, my opponent had a pool of reinforcement points set aside for a full compliment of lesser Horrors. As a result, each time I tried to fire at the big pack of 30 Pinks that was holding the relic, each dead Pink was replaced by 2 Blues, and each dead Blue was replaced by a Brimstone - and each time a new Poxwalker was born. This was a genuinely new experience for me: in the past I did have multiple situations when I was firing at the enemy with all I had failing to inflict a single casualty; however, this was the first time in all my 40k experience when all the firepower I poured into the enemy caused the opposing army to actually
grow in number
Sadly, I only have one mid-game shot for illustration here:
So, this chittering and shambling blob of daemons slowly rolled across the table towards the Asuryani position, blasting countless smites in all directions, and there was precisely nothing we could do about it. Even just that primary unit that started as 30 Pinks, due to the reinforcing models contained the effective total of 145 wounds for me to work through before I actually could force them to drop the relic (145 because the single Pink actually holding the Relic would have had to be left alive till the last). Even if that unit was the only thing on the table, I'm not sure I physically had enough shots to destroy it in the course of 5-turn game. And then there were Poxes that would've grown to 100+ models in the process of me killing Horrors, not counting several dozen of cultists and smaller Brimstone units, and multiple characters.
Had the game went to turn 5, I'm pretty sure I would've been tabled. However, the crazy number of models and equally crazy number of special rules, stratagems and psy powers to work through ensured that we only managed to complete 3 turns, resulting in my minor loss of 6-14.
In the end I was surprised to find out that, due to uncharacteristicall
y high number of draws between other high-scoring players, and due to my high painting score, I placed 2nd overall. The 1st place overall was taken by my opponent from the last game, while the 3rd place went to a savage firepower-based Tyranids list with 15 Hive Guard, 2 Exocrenes, Tyrannofex, etc., topped with like 5 or 6 HQ Zoanthropes.
My thoughts on the list are
here, in the thread where the list was discussed originally.Hope you found this interesting. Thanks for reading!
