Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament - I came 2nd WOO!

Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament. I’ve been to every one of their tournaments so far this year and the next one is a 2000 point apocalypse style event (not quite sure how that’ll work at the moment).

I turned up late because I had the wrong time in my head so I was in a rush and flustered before I started.

I used the same list as the day before:

HQ – Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops – 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports – 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack – 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

1^st game

The first game was an objective game with secret objectives with dawn of war deployment. Both players get random cards that detail which of the 2 objectives on the table they need to go after. These can be the same as your opponent.

When I found the table with my first opponent my heart immediately sank. It was guard mech army with 3 vendettas. My least favourite thing to ever see on the table. It put me in a pretty foul mood before I’d even got out any models. Luckily I was setting up second.

He deployed in a big blob in the middle of his deployment zone with his manticore and medusa to the side. I used this to my advantage and deployed everything in a corner keeping my scarabs out of range of his nasty guns and my wraiths being the only thing he could safely shoot at. It was this deployment that I think won me the game. He focussed his shooting on the wraiths when he could have slaughtered the scarabs with his ordnance barrage manticore. My scarabs grew while my wraiths shrugged off wounds and eventually I got into combat with his tanks with both my wraiths and the scarabs and it all went downhill for him from there. My Nightscythes came on and pounded his tanks, on one occasion I killed a chimera and the arc sparking off it managed to kill another chimera next to it but this was the only time over the whole weekend that the arcing managed to work.

By the end I had both my objectives and my opponent had one of his, kill points didn’t count unfortunately, I’d made it into a slaughterfest.

2^nd game

The next game was 5 objectives on the table with the short edge deployment zone. My opponent had daemons that were a real mix of everything, stuff from all the 4 powers with a daemon prince and a Lord of Change.

I deployed my force as spread out in my zone as possible expecting all his stuff to come in hard and fast next to me. What happened next baffled me immensely. He deep struck a soul grinder and a squad of plague bearers about half way up the table and the rest of his army landed right at the back in his deployment zone, including his shooty units! I managed to keep my poker face though.

My army moved up the table picking off units and when my flyers came on it was all over for him.

I won the game holding 4 objectives and contesting the 5^th with my scarabs. I had a quite unhappy opponent and I don’t blame him for being unhappy but daemons are meant to be an in your face hard and fast army not a sit at the back army especially when they don’t have much shooting.

3^rd game

The final game was a fight for 1^st place with Ken’s Salamanders allied with Tau. Lots of shooty but a real mix of units. The mission was half kill points and half relic.

We deployed facing each other and he kept a variety of units in reserve for the bonus points achievable for deepstriking, outflanking and coming on from reserve.

My wraiths shrugged off a ton of fire and made their way into the squishy innards of his army. My spyders ran around killing all sorts of things including most of a squad of marines, a squad of tau shooty stealt suits (I think), a drop pod and land speeder and nearly killed Vulcan Hestan.

Vulcan Hestan was the bane of my army, he didn’t kill much but just wouldn’t die and kept running away from combat. At the end of the game I had neglected both the Relic and Hestan for a turn and this was my downfall, he ran up and claimed it (any infantry could claim in this game). I charged him in the last turn with 2 spyders and a failed charge from my wraiths but failed to kill him and it was ruled that the relic was still held by Hestan at the end and not contested. In the end this pulled Ken 4 points ahead of me and two points ahead in the overall tournament. So he came first and I came second. To be fair he had put in consistent effort all day long to gather every single bonus point he could and I’d neglected the bonus points most of the time. He deserved victory and he outplayed me in the end anyway.

Congrats to Ken!

The results:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
76	Ken Chambers	8	27	17	24
74	Mike Towers (ME :D )	6	22	26	20
71	Mike Stewart	3	24	15	29
71	Dave Stewart	6	23	5	37
69	Ryan	4	13	23	29
51	Steven Almond	8	13	16	14
50	Glenn Few	7	24	11	8
21	Charles Lister	7	1	4	9

The summary from the GoT guys:

"Ken Chambers wins our October 40k tournament with Salamander Space Marines allied with Tau. He played well and made the most of  the days achievements to win by just 2 points! Well done Ken and the rest of the days contestants, Michael Towers picked up 2nd place with his Necrons and the Stewart brothers in joint third with bragging rights going to David who had more achievements."

It was a good day of games even if it started badly. After two days of using the list I’m thinking of getting rid of the scarab farm, it’s just too vulnerable to blast and flamers but I really do like it. I won’t post what my new ideas are though until I’ve used and tested them though. Some of my opponents have been reading my blog and finding out my tactics lol.

Open War XVIII - Necrons take a beating - some nice pics of other armies too

What a busy 4 days of wargaming stuff I’ve just had. Friday was finishing my necron croissants and new destroyer lord, Saturday was Open War XVIII, Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 40k 1750 point tournament and Monday was the first club night of our WarmaHordes Journeyman league. My girlfriend is desperately hoping I've had my wargaming fix for a while.

I’ll do a post on these things separately but I’ll start with Open War first.

It was my first big tournament and there were some proper hardcore army lists there. The list I was using was hard I know but some of them were just mental!

There were some truly excellent armies on show there too and I took some pictures, not particularly good ones though as my camera is a cheapo thing.

That immense and amazing dude in the middle was a Trygon, his entire army was based on a tyranid warrior theme

A Full on Death Korps of Kreig army, holy crap. There were very well painted too.

Pre-heresy Blood Angels FTW.

The list I was using was:

HQ 

• Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops

• 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports 

• 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack

• 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

So Basically a scarab farm, a DLord+Wraith squad and a little bit of flyer spam. I cocked up on my list by thinking I could have the 12 man warrior squad in the ghost ark but it only has a capacity of 10 and the scythes have space for 15 so I had to bung them in the flyer instead. Having just 5 warriors in the ark made it pretty ineffective but it was surprising how much people wanted it dead just because it’s armour 13.

First game was against Nids with lots of monstrous creatures. It was a kill points game so my opponent had his tervigons ruined effectively as any gaunts they make would just be squishy kill points for me. His list was (copied and pasted from his own blog lol http://clawsandfists.blogspot.co.uk):

Flying Hive Tyrant w. 2x TL Devourers & Hive Commander

Tyranid Prime w. 2x Boneswords, Scything Talons & Regen

Zoanthrope

Zoanthrope

Tervigon w. Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

Tervigon w. Crushing Claws, Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

10 Termagants

10 Termagants

Mawloc

Trygon

2x Carnifexes w. 2x TL Devourers each

I can’t remember a great deal of this game as it was at the beginning of a very long weekend for me. We basically moved towards each other and duked it out in combat.

My wraiths and Dlord were in combat with a Trygon, Lots of Gaunts and eventually his Tyrant. The tyrant fell foul to my mindshackle scarabs in a challenge and smashed himself in the face. Eventually My lord and wraiths ground them all down to a gooey pulp without taking too much damage.

I generated a large scarab squad, somewhere in the region of 30 bases I think, and charged into his Carnifexes and slowy munched on them but was left with bugger all scarabs at the end and still in combat with 1 fex at the end. He was quite unfortunate with his rolling in this combat.

My flyers just flew around picking off easy targets like his lone zoanthropes and gaunts hiding at the back.

In the end I won 23-7 and I can’t for the life of me remember how that scoring works but I know I killed more and that’s what counted.

Game 2

Grey Knights with allied Blood Angels

He had 2 storm ravens, one from each army, Mephiston and a metric crap ton of shooting.

It was the mission where heavies can take objectives.

I was slaughtered. Grey Knights always seem to be the scissors to my paper in 40k. Nuff said.

Game 3

Grey Knights again :(

This was a really nicely painted and converted army. The entire army was a heresy/pre-heresy 1000 sons. 

Space Crusade Dreadnoughts!!

There were lots of plasma weapons which helpfully kept blowing up in the faces of the guys using them.

I lost this game but had a fun time loosing. I was pretty much slaughtered but not tabled this time. There was 1 truly epic turn where I had just 2 warriors left on the table and 2 of my flyers in reserve refusing to come on. The warriors were on an objective in ruins and the random ability it gave was a bonus to cover saves. My warriors went to ground and absorbed a round of shooting by everything that was in range without loosing either dude. They deserved a medal! My flyers then finally decided to arrive and saved me from being tabled.

Overall I ended up coming about 13^th or 14^th out of 18 but I had a good time. The venue was great, it had loads of tables and there were tournaments going on at the same time for Warmahordes, Epic and Warhammer Fantasy. Lunch was provided, a mixture of sandwiches, pizza, chicken nuggets etc. Chocolate cake was provided too in the afternoon. At the end there was a raffle and trophy ceremony. I didn’t win anything in the raffle even though there seemed to be enough prizes for half the participants.

The top 3 armies for the tournament were all Daemons.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the Guardians of Tyr tournament. I did better at that one…….

A busy tournament weekend ahead

I've got a busy 3 days ahead of me. On Saturday I'm going to Open War XVIII in Mansfield, its the 1st company vets tournament, i.e. the guys who play at Warhammer World. It will be my first big tourny, not sure exactly what to expect. After that I have the Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament in Northampton on Sunday. I'm currently top in the year long league there and I need to acquire more points to stay out in front even if I don't get a podium spot in the event.

The only problem is, my army isn't even finished yet! AAAHHH! No big worry though, I'm just finishing off some bases, painting my HQ and probably touching up some damage to some models. Should all be sorted by the end of the day.

I expect to take lots of pictures and post about both events next week. I'm really hoping that Mephiston appears again at the Northampton tournament so that I can smash him this time instead of him annihilating my army pretty much by himself (was my own fault, Orks are quite squishy to him).

Terminators suck! and my first use of Nightscythes. A 2000 pt DA vs Cron batrep

Picture is unrelated but cool

Necron by ~Obrotowy on deviantart

Before I start, apologies to Tom for saying terminators suck, I’ll explain why I think they suck below. If I was using his army I’d have probably done the same things though.

This Monday at the club I played a 2000 point game with my Necrons vs DA Deathwing terminators. It’s the 2^nd time I’ve played against the army in 2 weeks. The first week was my ork bikes+dakkajets vs deathwing terminators with allied BA.

The armies we used:

Me with Necrons:

Destroyer lord with Mindshackle scarabs, sempiternal weave and warscythe

3x5 warriors

3x Nightscythes (hastily assembled and almost painted at the weekend)

2x10 warriors

2x Ghost arks

6x wraiths with whip coils

3x3 Canoptek Spyders (I still call them tomb spyders)

9x scarabs

Tom with Dark Angels Death wing (from memory so probably inaccurate):

Belial (attached to one of the termy squads with an apothecary)

Interrogator chaplain.

5-6? squads of 5 terminators (an assortment of combat and shooty squads)

Landraider

Mortis pattern contemptor dreadnought with 2x twin linked lascannons and typhoon missile launcher

We managed to get the Relic mission with the corner to corner deployment. Tom got the warlord trait to redeploy and I got one for my HQ to get counter attack in my own deployment zone. He deployed first with his army close to the objective and the dreadnought hiding in the back to snipe vehicles. I deployed close to the objective too, my scarab farm deploying opposite his landraider and my wraiths opposite his command squad of doom.

1^st turn night fight! Yay, cover saves for everyone!

Turn 1

I failed to steal the initiative and he advanced towards the relic and my army. His shooting took a couple of wounds off a spyder and a hull point off a ghost ark. In retaliation my army moved up, I took some pot shots killing 1 termy in his command squad. My scarabs were then in range of his land raider, charged it and munched all of its armour off mwahahaha. They’re so easy to kill now in combat with 3s to hit, loving it!

1 VP to me for first blood.

Turn 2

His army moves further up. His command squad run in the shooting phase to get into contact with the relic. His shooting failed to do anything dramatic, Ghost arks still pretty much unharmed and all my spyders and wraiths still intact. He charged my scarab squad of 18 bases with 2 terminator squads and his chaplain, they kill a big bunch of scarabs, my scarabs kill 1 or 2 termys but due to the new fearless rules they don’t care (hehe, they’re so evil now as a tar pit).

All 3 of my night scythes come from reserve, sweet! 6 of my spyders are in range of the scarabs and bung 6 more bases into combat with the termys. One of my Arks heads towards the relic and my night scythes move up to pummel all of their firepower into his command squad who are sitting on the relic. I shot the 3 night scythes, ghost ark and embarked squad into his command squad, all the shots ping off harmlessly and I almost hurt one of my spyders with the tesla arcing onto them. I charged the squad with my wraiths and 3 of my spyders, by the end of his next turn his squad and HQ are dead and my spyders, wraiths and DLord are unharmed. Belial managed to punch himself in the face twice because of my mindshackle scarabs.

Turn 3

Termys killed the last of my scarabs. Another termy squad killed a ghost ark and charged the warriors inside, killed 3 warriors and lost 2 termys. The termy command squad died to wraiths and spyders. He shot down one of my night scythes with his dreadnought.

My night scythes moved up and killed the contemptor dreadnought with glances. The warriors in the surviving ark jumped out and grabbed the relic. My wraiths and spyders charged into the termys that killed my scarabs.

Turn 4

Combats leave 2 terminators standing, the chaplain in endless challenges with my DLord and 1 terminator failing to damage any warriors. My ghost ark with the relic floats around aimlesslessly.

Turn 5.

Still the same 2 terminators fighting on. We called it a game there. I had 5 VP for relic, first blood and warlord, Tom had 0. 

It felt a bit hollow at the end, it wasn’t a close run game. I lost a night scythe and my scarabs and he lost everything. They're terminators! The Emprahs best of the best aren't meant to drop like flies... I think the problem was that his army has no significant shooty elements. Its built entirely around death star units from a really old codex, maybe the next DA codex will sort this out, maybe make their termys cheaper or something.

I think one of the problems with terminators is that your average terminator hasn’t really changed much since 3^rd edition whereas there have been all sorts of new Xenos and marine units appearing that handle how they save and attack differently from what terminators are really setup to deal with. Terminators are really built for dealing with bog-standard marines. A 2+ save doesn’t cut it these days on a one wound model that is often equipped for hitting last in combat. There are just too many units out there with volume of attacks/wounds/shots to overload their saving capacity before you even think about AP2 weapons.

Wraiths have more attacks, admittedly not power weapons, and always hitting first with 24 rending attacks is just going to make it a bad day for terminators, especially with preferred enemy from the destroyer lord giving them re-rolls on a 1 to hit and to wound.

Terminators also lack mobility. You can bung them in a landraider but things start getting stupendously expensive and again the scarabs will just pop up and munch it.

One thing I have noticed is that Relic mission really changes how the game works. I’ve played 2 games with this mission, once using massed guard infantry vs Eldar and the above battle. In the battle vs Eldar my opponent had jetbikes pick up the relic and I just couldn’t catch up with my guardsmen. The jetbikes were perfect for the role as they move an extra D6 in the assault phase.

In my game last Monday the entire game turned into a bundle in the middle and my mobile warriors hopped out of their transport, picked up the relic and hopped back in.

Having to pick something up, protect it and run away with it really changes the mechanics of 40k and forces you to thing quite differently from any mission I’ve played before.

1750 point evil necron force OF DOOM!!!

Recently I started getting a craving to try some Night Scythes for my crons. Everyone has been saying they're awesome. Problem is, I normally use a scarab farm supported by wraiths and I couldn't quite figure how to re-jig my army to suit. Well.... today I had a poke around with a list and I think it is quite nasty. Well actually very nasty.

The list:
HQ - Destroyer lord with warscythe, sempiternal weave and mindshackle scarabs (attached to wraiths)
T - 3x5 warriors
Transports - 3x Night Scythes
FA - 2x6 wraiths, all with whip coils
FA - 7 scarabs
H - 3x3 spyders

All that comes to exactly 1750 points.

Hows that for target saturation with evil things. Do you shoot the scarabs before there's too many? Shoot the wraiths before they start ripping things apart? Or shoot the flyers?

I an objective mission I'll just keep the flyers out of harms way, probably flying them off the board a lot, then in the last turn drop the payload of warriors onto various objectives.

I have most of this list made and painted but this gives me a reason to paint up my 6 wraiths on my desk and I've now got 3 Scythes coming in the post.

I feel dirty for even considering using it but I want more tournament points next time!!!

Guardians of Tyr 1500 pt 40k tournament today

After a gap in my posts due to a holiday in Croatia I'm back!

Today I took part in the GoT 1500 point tournament in Northampton. There was a good turn out for this one and quite a few new players and armies. I took my bikerz and dakkajets from my previous post, basically: Warboss on bike, 7 nob bikers, Wazdakka, 11 bikers, 3 dakkajets. Its quite a hard list but not impossible to beat by any stretch.One thing I've learnt is that the dakkajets look nice but die quickly and rarely kill much but I just like them too much.

1st game was 2 hidden objectives and I was pitched against a Blood Angel player with Mephiston leading a seemingly random assortment of units. His random assortment proved very capable though. I cocked up on this mission by overestimating the strength of his sanguinary guard and got scared into hiding my nob bikers to claim an objective. Big mistake! My hardest hitting unit hiding like cowards while the rest of my army got slaughtered. In the end I had 1 contested objective and he had 2 uncontested objectives. He also scored a crap ton of bonus points for killing Wazdakka with Mephiston too.

The marines that he had painted were really nice, shame there was so few.

Mephiston next to sanguinary priest! Cheese I cried! Its the sort of thing I'd do though....

2nd game was 5 objectives and I was against my old opponent Mark Pagett and he was using Guard with allied Grey Knights. A spawny army with 2 vendettas and a stormraven! lol. It was a fun game and there were many dead guardsmen. It was a draw in the end with both of us claiming 2 objectives each, he held one with 3 guards men and another held by a commissar lord with one wound (any infantry could hold in this tourny), I held one with some bikes and one with Wazdakka. My dakkajets were actually useful in this game, killing a vendetta and quite a few guardsmen. My nob bikers absorbed his entire army's firepower for pretty much the entire game and slaughtered 2 squads of grey knights, an inquisitor and a squad of guard vets in combat. A fun game.

3rd game was annihilation. I was against Glenn Few, who I played against in the last tournament. He was using his Red Scorpion marines. I felt bad at the end because I know he's still learning and my army just splatted everything. I tabled his army without loosing a unit. I'm sure once he's got used to 6th edition and starts working out some shenanigans to pull with his marines he'll do a lot better.

I didn't play against these nids but they looked really cool so I had to fit them in here somewhere.

The standings at the end are below:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
82	Mike Stewart	4	31	21	26	blood angels
64	Jon Ellam	8	15	13	28	marines
59	Dave Stewart	7	21	6	25	daemons
56	Mike Towers	6	8	13	29	orks
49	Ashley Taylor	4	23	12	10	guard
47	Ken Chambers	8	2	25	12	marines
45	Alex Jarosz	8	16	18	3	marines
41	Mark Perry	9	10	12	10	tyranids
41	Mark Pagett	5	12	11	13	Grey knights
14	Glenn Few	6	1	6	1	marines

A bit of a random mix and not entirely in line with the meta that the internet claims. Not even any Necron players but that's probably my fault as I'm normally the one with them.

I had great fun today and I'm looking forward to the next one already. I don't feel so bad about loosing so terribly to Mike Stewarts Blood Angels in the first game now because he slaughtered everyone else too. I might use guard next time, I have some sneaky ideas for them.

3 Dakkajets put into action in tonights game

Tonight at the club I used the list I mentioned in the last article. It was an ork biker list, with a nob biker squad with warboss, wazdakka with a big squad of bikes and 3 dakkajets. I played against Ian's dark mechanicus army (basically chaos marines). He had a squad of 10 terminators, 6 obliterators, 2 squads of marines in rhinos and a raptor squad with a sorceror. 16 models with 2+ saves!!!

The fastest moving orks in the galaxy!

The green baddy mechanicus of doom

I rolled for a random mission and we got the D3+2 objectives one that allows heavy support units to score and you collect points at the end of every turn for claiming objectives. No good for me as I had no heavys. The deployment was short table edge each, so the opposite of the old pitched battle. We decided to only allow the objectives in the middle of the board instead of the actual game restrictions as I'd have just sat on my 2 objectives the whole game.

Turn 1

I managed to steal the initiative and moved my bike squads onto the objectives in the middle. The mysterious objectives gave me a +1 to cover saves on the middle objective and skyfire for the left objective. The +1 cover save was awesome as ork bikers have a 4+ cover save as basic anyway, the skyfire sucked because Ian had no flyers but if he too the objective he could shoot mine out of the sky with ease.

I shot my nob bikers at his termis, killing a reaper autocannon dude with my precision shots. Yay for nobs all being characters and their dakkaguns being twin linked. Wazdakka and his boyz destroyed an rhino with their shooting.

Now for Ian's retaliation. He shot everything at my 2 squads. My nobs took a handful of wounds and spread them out amongst themselves and the other squad lost 1 or 2 bikes. He then tried charging my nob bikers with the termis. The termis failed to get far enough and my overwatch firing killed the other autocannon, again yay for precision shots when all the shots you need to hit anyway are 6s. His sorceror tried to use lash of submission on my nobs but rolled an 11 and failed, he then rolled too low for them to charge too. This left most of his army in front of me, waiting for me to charge.

I held 2 objectives and had killed the first unit. 7 points to me in turn 1??!?

Turn 2
 

There used to be a 10 man terminator squad in front of the nob bikers in the left of the pic. The stuff behind the hill is the dead pile, the stuff on the hill is the obliterators.

2 of my Dakkajets arrive from reserve. In the shooting phase I call the Waaagh to get double the shots with my dakkajets, they killed 2 or 3 marines, pants!

My nob bikers charge the termis after killing another with shooting. My painboy got killed by the overwatch but my nobs annihilate the terminators in combat. It was ridiculous how powerful the nob bikers were. The consolidated back onto the objective.

My biker squad and Wazdakka charge the raptors and sorceror. I thought about issuing a challenge and chose not to. Then Ian issued a challenge, after some thought I thought screw it and let wazdakka accept the challenge. He kicked arse! Ian failed to wound Wazdakka then beat the snot out of the sorceror, doing 4 power klaw wounds and killing it! My bikers then beat the snot out of the raptors. The raptors lost their morale check and ran away. Again I consolidated onto the objective.

In Ians turn he tried to knock out the flyers but didn't roll high enough when he penetrated with his obliterator's las cannons. The rest of the army tried to shoot my bikes but their bolter rounds just pinged off my bikes. He charged my bike squad with his remaining 2 squads of marines. They lost horribly in combat and ran away as well.

At the end of the turn I held 2 objectives again and claimed another 6 points. Ian still had 0 :( I was feeling bad at this point.

Turn 3

Turn 3 was pretty much just me shooting at stragglers running away and my dakkajets ineffectually shooting at the obliterators. The obliterators then returned fire at the dakkajets and were equally ineffectual.

Turn 4

We gave up. It was just getting ridiculous. We gave up counting objective points because it was just silly at this point.



Lessons learnt:
Nob bikers are way more powerful than I thought they'd be. the 4+/5+Fnp against everything including lascannons was just crazy. The allocating half of their shots due to them all being characters was even crazier. You just pick what you want to die basically.

Dakkajets are kind of sucky but a good distraction. I'll keep fielding them simply because I like the models and it fits with my speed freaks army.

Its all well and good having obliterators that can claim objectives but you actually need to move them to the objective!

Mysterious objectives are fun! and they give you a reason to go after them before the last turn.


I'm on holiday for the next 2 weeks so I won't get to play for a while. I'm looking forward to the 40k tournament on the 12th of August in Northampton. Its a 1500 point tournament run by the Guardians of Tyr (see the link on the right hand side). Now I need some sleep. Got work in 7 and a bit hours!

Lots of pics of last Mondays 4 player 40k

Last Monday we played a 2v2 game of 40k. 2 Blood Angels players vs a Marine and Nid player. We setup in a weird quarters situation with our ally in our opposite corner and our opponent either side of us.

It made for a fun and weird game.