Redditch Tabletop Gamers Forum

Hey guys,

I thought I’d steal Rob’s idea for making a tournament diary because I’d like to go to more events over the next few months. As I go, being new to tournaments, would really appreciate any feedback or comments you guys have like “oh why didn’t you do that instead in turn 2?” sort of thing. I’m fully aware that I’m still prone to some blunders and I really want to improve, have some fun and have a decent win record. I’m going to try and sum up my thoughts each time about what I’ve learnt, but welcome to feedback from you guys too.

So yesterday I went to Skorched Summer Skies at Sanctuary Games. They were running an 1850 tournament with essentially Eternal War missions. The venue is super cool, it’s an old Church and has an awesome GrimDark feel to it.
I took:

CSM CAD
ML3 Sorcerer with Force Axe, Spell Familiar, Aura of Dark Glory, Bike
ML3 Sorcerer with Force Stave, Spell Familiar, Aura of Dark Glory, Bike
Cultist x2
Heldrake

Renegade Knight with Gatling Cannon

Daemon Allies
Be’lakor
11x Horrors

KDK Allies
Herald on Juggernaut with Exhalted Locus of Wrath, Brazen Rune
8x Bloodletters
11x Flesh Hounds

The basic idea was to do something a little different to the regular Cabal star, and have a smaller star and two other threats (Be’lakor and the Knight). This didn’t work as well as I had hoped (see lessons learnt later on)

Game 1 vs. Rob A’s FW Tau (Emperors Will and Relic with Vanguard strike deployment)

So this was an intimidating game for my first one of the day, standing opposite a Tau supremacy suit, which is monstrously large. I roll for psychic powers and don’t get anything good to protect the star, so no Sanctuary, Hammerhand or Endurance. The only thing protecting them was Invis from Be’lakor. I also got Gate of Infinity.



The table wasn’t bad for terrain but a bit bare in the middle. So I deployed behind some terrain, as won the roll to go first but didn’t want my ass in the wind if he seized. He sets up most of his stuff in cover or behind his tidewall. Turn 1 I moved up and was a bit too confident with the star, assuming he would just sit back and blast me. He moved his tetras quite far forward, so I made them my main target, going towards them but failing the charge. I got invis on my star, Be’lakor started flying and the Knight tried to fire at some Fire Warriors on the tidewall, but he went to ground so no wounds.



My hubris came to bite me in his turn 1, where he just moved the supremacy suit forwards, and after firing everything (even with markerlights) he killed maybe 2 hounds and put a HP on the knight. Then he assaults the star and starts stomping away. Without Hammerhand, I had nothing in therethat could really deal with him (meltabombs next time!). So I get stomped, but fortunately it’s the weak one, and another stomp does no damage. So I lost the herald and some dogs but not too much.

My turn 2, I really need the star to be doing something else, like pasting fire warriors and tetras but without Hit and Run my options were limited. I gated backwards to save my Warlord, and just running away. This was the clutch moment where I could have potentially done something. The Supremacy suit consolidates after I gate away a full 6”, making the charge to my Knight too long. So I invis the knight with Be’lakor, hoping to get a turn 3 charge on the supremacy suit and maybe get lucky with my D hits in CC. I summon some hounds with the horrors and they start running across the board.



Heldrake comes in and does what it does, burns a load of fire warriors behind their wall. Bloodletters deepstrike in behind the ruin near his tidewall and behind the supremacy suit. On his Turn 3, he keeps the Supremacy fairly still, and moving it more towards my Knight, as if he’s afraid of getting stuck in combat with the Bloodletters. More fire removes a few more hounds and a sorcerer from my star, leaving only my Warlord and a few hounds. Other than that, Be’lakor and the Knight tank fair amount of shots with Invis/jink etc. Cultists are just moving forward hoping to sneak the relic back to my line as they’ve largely been ignored so far.

My turn 3, I see my chance. I get invis on the Knight again, move him towards the Supremacy suit. The summoned dogs keep running forward to the tidewall. The Warlord continues to try and retreat away from the supremacy (and now some remora drones that have come in). Heldrake vector strikes his barracuda stripping a weapon off. Horrors summon another unit of dogs. The Knight has 4” to get into combat with the supremacy…..rolls the dice….two 1’s. GG. I charge with a unit of summoned hounds that have now made it across the board to the tidewall. They wipe out a fire warrior unit and consolidate behind the shield wall.
On his turn, he continues the supremacy’s march towards my warlord. The supremacy suit and remora drones fire on the horrors and kill a few. The supremacy gets into CC with them, stomping him out. He also deep strikes some tau sentry guns right on the relic in the middle. They don’t scatter and apparently are objective secured troops too!

With the supremacy suit now having moved, assaulted, and consolidated another 6” again it was miles away from my Knight, so I abandoned that and went for his tidewall where the space pope (his warlord) was chilling. My plan now as to try and get some points by just taking his Emperors Will obj, as it was clear he’d definitely get mine with an unscathed supremacy suit.

Be’lakor had dropped down in the previous turn, and puts invis on himself, hoping to kill the sentry guns, get the cultists on the objective and see if we could move it towards my knight and other units now taking over his tidewall.
I drop my Heldrake into hover mode to turnaround and burn more FW’s. The knight now has decent cover behind a big building and I’m planning a charge on his Warlord. The supremacy continues stomping out my horrors and killing some of the summoned hounds and a unit of cultists.



Be’lakor assaults the sentry drones, which are three AV11 2HP vehicles. One was dead already from the Knight’s gatling cannon so Be’lakor only had to deal with 4 hull points. Charges in, 7 attacks, hit 5. No problem, he’s got Armourbane right? WRONG. I manage to kill one of them, rolling 9’s and 10’s on armourbane from a Str7 weapon on 3 of my attacks. Next turn Be’lakor gets killed with weight of fire, the Knight goes down to the barracudas rail guns and Str7 stuff (side armour). He’d suffered one or two HP’s earlier on, so was only on 4 or so. The Heldrake (now in hover mode), got 6’d out by the supremacy’s main weapon. So by the end of turn 5 all I had was 3 hounds that were summoned earlier and were near the objective.



Game ends in a loss 0 – 15. He still had his Emperors Will, mine, linebreaker, slay the warlord, first strike and the relic. I didn’t get any points.

Lessons Learnt
- Meltabombs might be a good way to spend those last 10-15 points I obsessed over too much.
- I probably should have just focused on taking his Emperors Will with my knight, Be’lakor, the Heldrake and some hounds, and abandoned mine much earlier so I at least got some points. I could have got Warlord that way too.
- If I took the Cyclopian Cabal, I could have used Shroud of Deceit to make his supremacy suit fire on his own army. That’ll teach me for not “going with the flow”. Cabal it is next time.
- I was too arrogant with my star at the start of the game, assuming he’d just sit back and shoot and not thinking he’d come forward to stomp me out. I had assumed that Be’lakor and the Knight being close by would have been a deterrent.
- I also forgot that KDK hounds get Furious Charge so they could have helped finish that last sentry gun when Be’lakor flubbed it like a punk

Game 2 and 3 on the way!

Game 2 vs Rob Brown’s IG (Echoes of War – 3 objectives across the central line with Dawn of War deployment)

Going into this one, I was again overconfident. I saw his list was mostly vehicles with Pask in a punisher and a punisher squadmade, 3 units of vets with melta in Chimeras, a Shadowsword and a hydra. As long as I could get across the table quickly and into CC I should have been able to multi assault and wreck face with all those AV10 on the rear vehicles. However, we were playing on planet bowlingball and I ended up stuck on the side with essentially no cover whatsoever. That’s not a problem, but what is a problem for my army is not having decent cover in the middle to hop between. It was essentially an open field and he had all the cover on my side. C’est la vie.

So, he wins the roll to deploy first but opts to let me do it, which I’m happy to do. I need to get my star protected with psychic powers and start running forward. In this game, I got Endurance and Sanctuary which was critical for me.
So turn 1, I move forward full and run most of my stuff. I need to get into CC in turn 2 and can’t be caught in the open for long. I power up the star, putting Endurance and Sanctuary on the star. Horrors stay behind the one piece of cover on my side which is LOS blocking. I put invis on the star rather than the knight, confident that the knight “should” be okay as long as it isn’t 6’d out by the Shadowsword. My plan was to get the knight into CC with Pask and his buddy, flip them over with the knight, and if it lasts longer than that then it’s a bonus. However, my overconfidence was my downfall. Pask rolls forward and proceeds to wreck the knight. With his gatling cannon and multi melta sponsons, he does about 5 rends and then a glance with the MM. I fail all my 4+ saves, and two of the rends do 3 hull points each, so Pask breezed through the Knight. It explodes and catches a dog.

Damn.

In my turn I realise I can’t make the charge to Pask without suffering the full firepower of his army, so I run behind a large LOS building in his deployment zone. He was a full 24” away, so the odds of getting into CC were low. I was hoping to bait him to come towards me with Pask to get some shots off, and left a dog on the edge to bait him towards me. With him closing the gap for me (even by 6”) I could then pounce. He didn’t fall for it, we had a bit of a standoff in turn 2, while my cultists were running forward towards the central line. His shadowsword fired his volcano cannon at my cultists (lol) and killed one or two.

Turn 3 I was desperate and ready for a gamble. I planned to get invis on my star, leave Be’lakor behind the LOS blocking building, then move my star forwards, and gate across to the other side of the table, out of Pask’s range, and behind the Shaowsword, where the only thing nearby was one squad of vets with metlas in a Chimera. I could then start opening them up with some assaults, and while they were distracted, Be’lakor could then pounce on Pask and hopefully wreck him.

So I move my star out (but not the full 12”) as I’m confident I’ll get Gate off. I power up the star, get Invis, Endurance and Sanctuary. Go for Gate and get it with three dice. With his 4 dispell dice, he gets 3 6’s…..*****! So my star (whilst invisible) gets stuck in the open.

The star proceeds to tank fire from his whole army, and I lose a wound on a dog. The Shadowsword couldn’t fire because I was invisible, so shot at cultists again (lol).

Next turn I assault Pask and his squadron with my star. I tried a 9” charge with Be’lakor who’s now popped out from behind the building to join in and help assault Pask. He fails his charge so he’s hanging about in the open. I should have also multi assaulted the remaining vets and Primaris Pskyer in the building too but I wanted to ensure Pasks demise. The Herald and the Stave sorcerer came up trumps, stepping forward and wrecking both vehicles with ease.

With this being turn 3/4, he starts moving his vets to the objectives. One of the objectives now disappears, and it’s the one on the far side where I had no units, so bonus for me. We now only had the middle one and the one I had units near. He deepstrikes his Scions in and starts shooting up the cultists that have survived two rounds of Volcano cannon D strikes and are near the objective, and starts dismounting his vets from his chimeras in the centre. My face starts to light up with all that squishy stuff to assault. The shadowsword fires his StrD shot at Be’lakor, getting a direct hit with no scatter, and then rolls a 6 D result. Goodnight Be’lakor. He also manages to fire a snapshot lascannon from the Shadowsword that hits and blows up my Heldrake in the air. Fantastic!

In my turn 4, I start multi-assaulting all the stuff in the middle of the table, wrecking chimeras, and deleting squads of guardsmen with ease. I continue to tank loads of fire (even without invis) using Look out Sir (from Sorcerer and Herald), 4+ Invul and 4+ FnP. 2 wound flesh hounds can take a beating.

He’s moving his stuff in desperately to the middle and manages to shoot up the last of my cultists on my objective, and the bloodletters that had deepstruck in on Turn 2 and were hiding with the star behind the building in his deployment zone for line breaker. I abandoned line breaker, running towards the objective as it’s worth a lot more. In my turn I multi-assault everything again in the middle, killing the last Chimera and squad, that are left so it’s only the Shadowsword and hydra left. I get a 1” consolidation, and I’d hoped for more so I could have wagon wheeled the middle objective and surrounded it with bodies but I only had two hounds between him and the objective. In his turn5, he opted to just move the Shadowsword in, thinking it was close enough to contest the middle, and shot the last of my bloodletters up with his Vendetta so I only had the middle objective. At the end of the game, we had to call a judge to decide distance. I was saying that the Shadowsword was more than 3” away (as he’s got to stay 1” away from me). In the end the judge called it in my favour with a quarter of an inch. I’ve got the length where it counts ladies

My first win, a narrow one but 5-1 to me.

Lessons Learnt
- Don’t underestimate “lesser” codexes. IG can still put out a punch when they need to even though he had suboptimal units like the Shadowsword. Pask can do work!
- The Knight isn’t as hardy as I think it is by itself in the open, and invis on the knight in Turn 1 would have almost guaranteed he made it into their line. He probably would have then just fired everything into the star, but with Endurance and Sanctuary and some LOS shenanigans they can take a lot of fire (as I found out in turn 4/5 when I didn’t have Be’lakor.
- Never be over-confident and have a backup plan. When I moved the star out from behind the building to gate out, I should have moved my full 12”. That way, even if I didn’t get Gate I could have attempted a long charge and maybe got it.
- I should have just pushed the star straight at Pask and not wasted a turn hiding trying to bait him. The star (when powered up) can tank all that fire for days and I was rolling 4+ invulns and 4+ FnP like a boss.

Game 3 vs. Andy C’s Battle Company (Crusade 4 Objectives with Hammer and Anvil Deployment)

So final game of the day and I was hoping for some points here as I’d not exactly earnt a lot so far. I looked at his list and wasn’t too worried. Lots of “bros” in metal boxes, but nothing scary other than the formation with the hunters and stalkers which would make short work of the Heldrake. He also checked with a judge before the game started if Skyfire can hit flying monstrous creatures on the ground with full BS, and the judge confirmed they can….Be’lakor was in a spot of bother.



I deploy with a refused flank, hoping to steamroll up the one side with more cover, and then just multi-assault the ***** out of everything. I was hoping the Knight could get into the mass of razorbacks and start stomping some out……but he seizes the initiative. He proceeds to scout everything up, and start firing. When the dust settles at the end of turn 1, the Knight is on 1 HP (thanks to some lucky meltas from a bike command squad that’s now only about 6” away and I flub all my 4+ shield saves. Be’lakor goes down to 1 wound too thanks to the Hunters and Stalkers that can apparently see him through several buildings and the Knight. I wasn’t convinced he could draw LOW, and I probably should have called a judge TBF but I didn’t.

So with two of my heavy hitters down to 1 wound and HP, it’s going to be an uphill struggle for the rest of the game, relying on my star to do as much damage as possible and maybe take an objective at the end. There’s no way I could be everywhere like he could, so my plan was to push forward through his stuff and take an objective that was between the middle of the board and his deployment. BY the time I’ve chopped my way there, it would probably be the end of the game and I’d get some points.

So, I line up my units to multi assault as much as possible, and power them up in the psychic phase. Be’lakor tries to psychic shriek the bike command squad and does no wounds (well done champ). The Knight assaults that bike command squad but loses the last HP to overwatching melta. He explodes and falls on to Be’lakor who fortunately makes his invuln from the Str10 part of the explosion. Be’lakor assaults the bike squad and butchers them. The star multi assault two units of marines and two razorbacks….killing all but one of the razorbacks that’s now down to 2HP.



I initially just asked him to roll for the heldrake, because I knew the stalkers would kill it with intercept fire so I couldn’t be bothered to unpack it. He insisted I did, in case the crash and burn mattered…..which of course it didn’t.
His turn he starts dismounting marines from his razorbacks and pouring fire into my star which tank it like true champs and I think I lose a single dog or something equally crazy. Again, I multiassault but this time I don’t wipe everything out, getting stuck in CC with the chaplain and his command squad.



The chaplain tanked my wounds from the Herald, and he failed to hit and run. This really slowed me down and meant I couldn’t issue another multi-assault in the following turn. The horrors get gunned down but are still alive so could still help out with cursed earth but that wouldn’t extend to the whole star now. My Warlord also perils to death as well during this turn’s psychic phase.

Next turn I finish that squad with the chaplain but its only turn 4 I think and we’ve got like 5 minutes left for my 4th turn. He had these counters to show which units had moved, which had shot, and all that. It just took forever for him to fart around with those, placing them in turn on each unit or razorback and roll all those bolter shots (with re-rolling 1’s and all sorts thanks to doctrines) to basically just kill one flesh hound. Quite frustrating.



In the final 5 minutes, I split the star up, moving the remaining hounds to the 2HP razorback that’s on my objective in my deployment zone, and move the remaining sorcerer and Herald down to the other objective in my deployment zone where a bike unit has sneaked into earlier and killed some cultists that were holding it. I needed a 9” charge from the sorcerer and a 10” from the herald, and failed them both, so couldn’t contest or take that objective. The hounds killed the 2HP razorback with ease, but only consolidated 1”. I think I needed 3” to get to within range of the objective…so other than first strike I score no points.



Game ends 1-13 where he’s still holding all three other objectives, and has Warlord, first strike and linebreaker.

Lessons Learnt
-I probably should have put invis on Be’lakor to keep him alive for one more turn, rather than the star as they tanked mass bolter fire and the odd melta with ease using look out sir, Endurance, Sanctuary and Cursed Earth.
-Getting seized on sucks!
-Battle Company is really boring!

So overall I think I came 28th, and I think I had quite a rough time. Useful tournament experience without a doubt, but a rough day. I don’t think death stars suit Eternal War type missions, and I’d have got a good number of KP’s and probably maelstrom in each mission if it was more of an ETC format. But the death star can’t be everywhere, or on objectives at the end of the game. I made a few mistakes and I’ll definitely learn from them, and will go to another Sanctuary event in the future. It was well run and the venue is cool. I was hoping I could hone in on what I wanted to use for Cally, but the Eternal War setup is too different I think to give me a good feel for a Cally type list. The death star performed very well, and I think the next plan will be to beef it up and go full Cyclopian Cabal with the Knight and maybe a Void Shield Generator to help in turn 1 if I go second or get seized on. For Sanctuary, I think a very different list is required to do well in Eternal War type missions. As Forge World is allowed, maybe a Renegades Purge detachment with lots of zombies and artillery could work.

Hey mate,

Great reports! Much more detailed than mine!

I need to take more pics (any pics!) - gives the reports a much more depth I feel!

Games:

I enjoyed the read, you played some very tough armies.

Game1:
Just to check, did you scout after seizing or scout at all? As Seizing is now done before scout moves.

Rob is a top player, he knows Tau (forgeworld Tau) very well, I'm not sure what you could have done without Hammerhand, vs the Tau'nar, maybe force and hope you cause a wound or two before he's stomps you to death?

Game2:
Losing a knight to pask is likely to never happen again, plus the table looked super rough for you to play on! If the Knight survives you go marching through is army IMO.

Game3:
I know what you mean about the Galadius style list, you have to be super quick to get to turn5 and slowing the game down with even more tokens.. doesn't help. If you feel you're being slow played, intentionally or not (some people are slow/precise/talkative etc), you have to approach the subject with your opponent, don't accuse them, but if you feel you are you have to say, I go with this approach: "we" need to speed up or we're not getting to turn5. Or something along those lines, I say "we" as its not so direct (IMO), I did it a few times this weekend, or start to say we have to call this at turn4 unless we speed up. Or the final thing I say is with an hour or so to go (which is about 2 normal turns each I've found) "what turn do you think we'll get to, realistically". Each time I've been met with a reasonable response. As its not a accusation, but it makes it clear that you think you're not getting the full turns in.

An Example I had this weekend: My game one on Saturday, I had turn1 and started moving models with 1.45 left to go.. (My deployment took 5-10mins) so with one hour to go, my turn 2, I said, "what turn do you think we'll get to?" we agreed to both rush to go to turn4 and call it.

Also where you getting your KDK blood tide points to summon units to the table I knew a player that didn't take KDK as primary and thought it couldn't be done?

List changes: I like it! The deathstar looks okay to me, the triple threat is a good idea imo. For the deathstar itself, is it worth, looking at something like:

Dropping the Choas Cad for a Cabal?

Cabal:
Lvl3 Sorcerer on Bike, Stave, Spell Familiar (Warlord)
Lvl3 Sorcerer on Bike, Stave, Spell Familiar
Lvl3 Sorcerer on Bike, Stave, Spell Familiar
Lvl3 Sorcerer on Bike, Stave, Spell Familiar

Knight Detachment
Knight Warden

Daemon Allies:
Be'lakor
11 Horrors
3 Nurgling bases *these are annoying to face & easy to hide, plus deep strike/reserve really well*

To finish the list: either of these:

Idea 1:
KDK Allied Detachment:
Lvl3 Sorcerer on Bike, Stave, Spell Familiar
8 Bloodletters
AS MANY Hounds as you can (My rough pts working out us about 15?)

Idea 2:

Cypher: 190pts, gives shrouded and hit and run, plus other stuff.
KDK Gorepack:
2 units of Bikers
And as many hounds!*

* I think you need around 15 hounds to make the star durable enough, so might have to drop the Horrors?

Cypher helps when not going first, plus hit and run helps your star not get bogged down. But with more Psykers.. you have a much better chance at Hammerhand, Invisibility is pretty much the only power you need. With Be'Lakor, he can cast that on the Knight and the star with Invis as well, you have 3 Super durable, super tough units, with a couple of Shrieks as well as a enemy unit shooting its own army!!

Another different idea is that you drop Be'Lakor, and go for multiple large hound units, and split the Cabal up, this way you can force multiple enemy units to shoot at each other and can cast multiple Invis if you get it?

Nice report Alan. Good read. I can't think of any specific advice as I don't play chaos, although you said in game two some the rends from pask did multiple hull points to the knight. Rending isn't AP2 vs vehicles so I don't think they could have done that unless pask has some kind of special rule or the galling cannon has a higher AP than I remember? Sounds like the knight would have died anyway though.

(22-08-2016, 06:58 AM)Embolden Wrote: [ -> ]*SNIP*

Thanks for the feedback Rob, that's actually really helpful. In the first game I didn't scout forward, and whilst I couldn't have charged, I would have at least suffered a bit less shooting perhaps. I think I must have forgotten that scout confers, as it didn't occur to me during that game.

Some good advice about the third game and how to broach the time issue. I don't think he was deliberately slow playing, but with so many metal bawkses and bros jumping out of them with bolters it just took ages for his turns. My army moves super quick, and has literally no shooting, and I'm usually 90% confident on what psychic powers I want to cast so I can get mine done pretty quick.

Agh! Completely forgot about Blood tithe! I just assumed it only worked for the primary detachment but I'll check the Codex when I get home. I'll take a look at sticking some of your suggestions on the list. Quite like the Cypher idea actually, and I recently bought one. Might try without Be'lakor too.

(22-08-2016, 10:01 AM)will Wrote: [ -> ]Nice report Alan. Good read. I can't think of any specific advice as I don't play chaos, although you said in game two some the rends from pask did multiple hull points to the knight. Rending isn't AP2 vs vehicles so I don't think they could have done that unless pask has some kind of special rule or the galling cannon has a higher AP than I remember? Sounds like the knight would have died anyway though.

Good catch with that Will, I think we were resolving them at AP2 actually but just checked the rules and didn't realize that's not for vehicles and it's the regular AP.

Nice reports. I think we discussed most of the games in the car on the way home already tbf so not a great deal to add.
I also played Andy's battle company and found him to be quite slow, down to the nature of his list. I think we only got to turn 4 too, had it gone to turn 5 I feel I would have got a win over him rather than a draw.

So I'm doing the final prep to my Cally January list and keen to know what you all think. Haven't playtested this at all unfortunately. Getting married, work, honeymoon and Christmas has gotten in the way of toy soldiers

Here's the list:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PLAYER: Alan Hastings
ARMY TOTAL: [1850pts]
ALLIANCE LEVEL: BATTLE BROTHERS
PRIMARY DETACHMENT: COMBINED ARMS DETACHMENT: Chaos Khorne Daemonkin
HQ1: Herald of Khorne (55pts) with Exalted Locus of Wrath (25 pts), Hellblade, Juggernaut of Khorne (45pts) [125] [WARLORD]
Troop 1: 8x Chaos Cultists [58]
Troop 2: 8x Bloodletters [80]
FA1: 13x Flesh Hounds of Khorne [Daemon of Khorne, 13x Flesh Hounds (208pts) [208]
FA2: Heldrake with Baleflamer [170]
TOTAL [641pts]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SECONDARY DETACHMENT: ALLIED DETACHMENT: Chaos Daemons: Codex (2013)
HQ2 : Herald of Tzeentch (45pts) with Paradox (25pts), Psyker Level 2 (25pts) [95]
Troop 3: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch [Daemon of Tzeentch, 11x Pink Horrors (99pts) [99]
TOTAL [194pts]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TERTIARY DETACHMENT: FORMATION DETACHMENT: Chaos Space Marines Codex – Black Legion Suppliment [Cyclopia Cabal]
HQ3: Chaos Sorcerer (60pts), 2x Additional Mastery Level (50 pts), Bike (20pts), Aura of Dark Glory (15pts), Bolt Pistol, Force Axe (0pts), Spell Familiar (15pts), Veterans of the Long War (0pts) [160]
HQ4: Chaos Sorcerer (60pts), 2x Additional Mastery Level (50 pts), Bike (20pts), Aura of Dark Glory (15pts), Bolt Pistol, Force Stave (0pts), Spell Familiar (15pts), Veterans of the Long War (0pts)[160]
HQ5: Chaos Sorcerer (60pts), 2x Additional Mastery Level (50 pts), Bike (20pts), Aura of Dark Glory (15pts), Bolt Pistol, Force Stave (0pts), Spell Familiar (15pts), Veterans of the Long War (0pts)[160]
HQ6: Chaos Sorcerer (60pts), 2x Additional Mastery Level (50 pts), Bike (20pts), Aura of Dark Glory (15pts), Bolt Pistol, Force Stave (0pts), Spell Familiar (15pts), Veterans of the Long War (0pts)[160]
TOTAL [640pts]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUATERNARY DETACHMENT: CHAOS RENEGADE KNIGHT FORSWORN KNIGHT DETACHMENT: Chaos Renegade Knights
LoW: Knight Warden (375) [Avenger Gatling Cannon w/ Heavy Flamer (0pts), Heavy Stubber (0pts), Reaper Chainsword (0pts)] [375]
TOTAL [375pts]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Caledonia January 2017

Hey guys,

It's been a week or so since Cally and I've totally forgotten to do a writeup about how my games went. Overall, I feel that I could have done much better, and I'm definitely out of practice. Getting married, work and honeymoon has impact my time I spend on toy soldiers! So haven't really had time to play many games of 40K since October really. In many ways I was going in to Cally under practiced, but I definitely learnt a few things. I had a great time, and played some cracking games, plus the pub quiz on Saturday night was good fun to.

So I took the list above, the Cabal star with daemons and a knight. My psychic powers were generally quite kind to me and I pretty much got all the powers I needed (except for one game – more on that later). The cabal performed as I expected it to, when buffed up it’s super hard to take down but where I really lost out on most of my games is being outscored on maelstrom. With just horrors and a cultist unit chilling in my backfield, it’s hard to score the “hold two odd” or “Hold two even” or both even and odd objectives as they’re in quite varied places across the board.

Unfortunately, completely forgot to take pics as well, so prepare for a WALL OF TEXT!

Game 1 vs. Tau Optimised Stealth Cadre with three Ghostkeels, Skyray formation and Firestream Wing with Sisters of Silence
Played a very cool looking 90’s gulf war chocolate chip desert camo tau army. The firestream wing was a new one on me, so wasn’t sure how to handle this and thought I’d get easily beat on objectives. I seized the initiative, and moved forward, buffed the star up and ran as far as I could to setup for a turn 2 charge.
It was handy to get the buffs up first, but I did deploy quite conservatively with lots of cover. I was concerned about the sisters of silence and their ability to switch off all my buffs if I got close, so I made them a priority. I used Shroud of Deceit to take over his ghost keels and shoot the sisters of silence, killing 2 as they made an ungodly number of 3+ saves. Fortunately, my knight then saves the day with his Gatling cannon, gunning the rest down. But with the volume of ghost keel shots, I was hoping they’d crush the sisters out, and could move on to other targets. We also had some nice LOS blocking terrain on this board meaning I think he killed one hound in his turn 1. In my turn 2, I power up the star again and start charging stuff. I was hoping to get a big multi charge on his stealth suit warlord, some of the skyrays and possibly drones and ghost keels, but I botch the charge and roll like a 4 or something daft, so barely get in to one of the Skyrays….but I showed that skyray who the boss was though! :p

Meanwhile the knight charges the ghost keels, and flubs his attacks and stomps, meaning two get away with a few wounds each. Damnit! Was hoping to crush them out. Unsurprisingly they then bring down the knight with their wall of mirrors in the next turn when they get out of combat. Can’t remember how that happened though.

Next turn the star just tanks his whole army and multicharges again. Finishing off the rest of the skyrays, leaving the air clear for the drake, killing a bunch of drones and catching his warlord unit. The drake came in and burnt up some drones, and took some hull points off some piranhas which he had stacked up along the sides of the board to go off and come back quickly. In return he then takes off the firestream wings on turn 3, and we run out of time so they don’t come back. We played till the end of four and called it there with like 15 mins left of the round. All of those firestream piranhas as pretty fiddly with their magnetized rockets on, which took a fair bit of the time up.

In the end I win 14-6, so a good start and feeling quite confident. The star had proven it could tank a massive number of shots from a tau army quite well. A 4++ rerollable save with 4+ FNP seemed pretty good, and I was impressed that I didn’t need invis.

Game 2 vs Knights and Furioso Dreads in Pods
This was the only game I didn’t get exactly the powers I needed. My go-to powers are usually Warp Fate (re-roll all failed saves), endurance, sanctuary but didn’t get hammerhand. One or two got iron arm though. In hindsight with all armour in this game, I should have gone for the Heretek tree as there is a lot of D3 haywire type powers in there which would have helped bash down those pesky AV13 dreds. So I fail to seize, deploy quite conservatively in such a way as to protect my stuff from getting immediately shafted by drop pod dreads. I didn’t realise that those dreads were toting frag cannons (the same as the deathwatch one with the template) and they deep struck in and brutalised my horrors and herald, killing them with something daft like 23 hits (from multiple templates) with ignore cover. They were in a ruin and to be honest I should have spread them out (probably on different levels). So that’s 4 WC lost straight away and first blood to him. So I think to myself time to exact some revenge. I power the star up, iron arm one of my sorcerers, and multicharge a pod and a dread with the star, and another dread with the knight. The dread fighting my knight was clearly a champ, because all his attacks hit, and then caused three pens, of which did the explode D3 hull points. In return I barely hull point him out, as we’re both I4. The knight just explodes on itself, so not exactly a fair exchange. The star proceeds to struggle to kill the dreads and get bogged down.

My thinking was that with three knights barrelling down at me, if I could pick up some of these dreads quickly I could earn some VP’s and then just play keep away for the rest of the game with the knights. Didn’t expect to get stuck in combat with the dread for like two rounds of combat. This gives the knights time to move up. He moves two knights in to finish my star and crush it, as the dreads were keeping me tied up quite well with very little of my star being able to hurt it without hammerhand.

My heldrake and bloodletters fail to come in until turn 4. When the bloodletters do, I deep strike them in his back corner hoping to grab a cheeky line breaker. They mishap and he places the knight in front of his knights and easily guns them down. My heldrake has literally nothing to do, so vector strikes a dread, and then it was the only thing left on the board in turn 5, I took the gamble that the game would end by going into hover mode and grabbing an eternal war objective at the end of the game. Too little too late, with the KP difference, maelstrom difference and holding 2 eternal war objectives, I think it was something like 26-4 or something so ended up 20-0. Really hadn’t planned or considered what I’d do against an AV13 wall to be honest, and even with hammerhand I’d only be glancing things on 5’s and 6’s so isn’t exactly super reliable.

Game 3 vs Cabal Star, Psykana Division, VSG, Fateweaver and horrors.
So a similar list to mine in game 3, his cabal star had a few little differences like having a grimoire carrier, but essentially the same. I knew (with playing Terry’s bark bark star) that deathstar on deathstar ends one of two ways. Either its just 5 turns of continual combat where each of you loses a dog a turn or something daft, or someone flubs their psychic powers and get crushed when they lose their buffs. So my plan was to send my knight after his start to buy me time, while my star hoovered up his other units and try to grab some maelstrom in the process. I think he didn’t get hammerhand (from what I remember) so I fancied my chances with my knight in being able to hopefully stomp out some sorcerers if I got lucky.

So turn 1 I move up, shoot 2 HP of the VSG with the knight, get my buffs up and generally do some positioning. He then starts the psykana division shenanigans and starts summoning horrors like there’s no tomorrow and they start to scatter in such a way as to get in the way of my advance (ideally for him). I’ve still got the knight fairly midboard, but then move my star over to the other side of the board, as he moves his star towards mine. So I give him the option of dealing with the knight which I know he won’t be keen to do. Fatey starts flying around and being a dick with the D beam power, clipping the knight but luckily only doing 1 HP. Annoyingly some of the summoned horrors had the D beam powers. Keeping the knight in between the stars, I charged the knight into the horrors with the D beam power, thinking I’d pick them up quickly but he’s got the blue horrors as well, and they start spawning and appearing as I’m whacking pinks, and then brimstones start appearing. This continues for like three turns, and I’ve got a wall of blues, pinks and brimstones in my way now with the knight and my star hacking through this hedgerow of horrors in front of me. My heldrake comes in like a boss, I line up a perfect balelflamer shot that would have wiped out two whole psykana squads together to stop them summoning more of these bastards, and then he smugly reminds me there’s one more shield on the VSG which my flames just harmlessly bounce off with it’s one hit failing to glance it down. Eventually, fatey and the horrors catch the knight out of combat and finish it off with a D beam.

It explodes and falls towards his star (but only kills a hound). It’s now turn 5 and because my star and knight have been effectively walled in by horrors (some of which have the D beam power or are summoning more heralds and horrors themselves) I’ve got almost no maelstrom, about 8-9 KP’s and I can’t even clear the two eternal war objectives for long enough before I seem to get swarmed with pinks. It ends on turn 5, but had it gone on, his star would have finally reached mine and engaged it.

It ends 16-4 to him. Super frustrating with this never ending tide of stupid pink/blue/brimstone horrors, and I don’t think I could bring myself to play the same with so many horrors. To be honest, I wasn’t fully clear (and I don’t think he was at times) about which of them were separate squads, and what powers they have. They ended up in a huge mass in front of me, and I had to continually ask which squad was which. They weren’t marked up so I wasn’t even sure how many units I killed. It definitely felt like a real waste of time, and I ended day 1 going 1 win 2 losses, with the last one being super frustrating to fight.

Game 4 – War Convocation with Tiggy
Day 2 – had a strategy planned in my head about my opponent that I should have had (an eldar player with dual wraith knight, jetbikes and d-cannon battery and I was going to use shroud of deceit to get the d cannon battery to kill a wraithknight a turn) but unfortunately he dropped and I got paired against a War Convo. I’ve never played War Convo before so it would be interesting to learn. They’re a really cool army with some awesome tricks, and I had a good fun game. I setup quite conservatively, keeping my knight out of range of his grav destroyers with their 30” range. With it being relic, I thought I’d getup quick, grab it, maybe charge or maybe take the relic back a bit as I knew he wouldn’t be very mobile, but my star can move quite fast, so even if I moved the relic back 6” or more it buys me more time to gobble his army up and then maybe even have time to get back on the relic at the end. Turn 1 he has very little to shoot at because of a big LOS blocking ruin in my deployment zone that I’ve protected the knight and the star with. With night fighting too, I think I took a wound on a dog or something equally daft. I then move my star up with all haste as usual, get my powers up to buff, and move my knight towards his. He had the dakka knight, so my plan was to D him out in CC as I’ve got the chainsword. Again I’d use the knight to be in-between my star and his knight. Turn 2 I tank all his fire again and my star does what it does best. I thinkable lose two dogs perhaps but nothing serious. In this game my psykers rolled like bosses, with their first rolls getting me the powers I needed, so I just threw the remainder at invis and got it. So I had endurance, iron arm, sanctuary, warp fate, warp speed and life leech I think.

I had cursed earth from the horrors (but kept them in the back as invis and 4++ rerolls are fine). Goes without saying he could have been shooting for a month of Sundays and it wouldn’t do much…other than knight stomps. With tiggy being his only psyker I just blocked almost every power he cast too. 16+ WC dice against about 5 means it’s a quiet psychic phase for him.

My turn 2 I charge the dragoons. It was a long charge (like 9” I think) but I thought it best to try and get them before they charge me, as they’re quite strong on the charge. I kill them easily, and I think he’s quite worried as they’re the only real CC threat he has. My heldrake comes in on the edge of the board out of range of his onager, and burns up a load of vanguard with their rad carbines, making them run (no -1T for me ). Turn 3 he does his canticles and does one where he gets to make load of I10 attacks. He charges me with his grav destroyers, a skitarii ranger unit and something else that I can’t remember. I beat down most of the stuff with ease, but somehow fail to sweep it. I killed all the grav destroyers (so my knight was reasonably free to runabout now) but somehow some pesky rangers got away (3 of them who later rallied onto an objective nearby netting him some maelstrom.

Turn 4 I move the star up to multicharge the unit of scouts he has holding his emperors will objective (about 6” away) and the rangers (also about 6” away) but I fail to charge them. This I think cost me the game, as both of those units managed to sneak away and claim maelstrom points. In turn 4 he had a windfall round where he got like 3 cards that were all either 2 or 3VP ones (hold two even and two odd – stuff like that) and I don’t think I had any maelstrom. My knight charged his knight. He’d managed to put three HP on my knight from the onager and his knights autocannon but it was mutually assured destruction and both our knights went down together. I could live with that, as his was more points being the full dakka one with the rocket pods, and effectively the only real threat to my star now gone. My heldrake burned up a load of vanguard in the unit with tiggy and his dominus. Turns out tiggy doesn’t have an invuln so got burnt up by heldrake wounds  He still had the dominus and about 5 vanguard left though.
Turn 5 I decide after failing to multicharge those chumps, that I’d grab the relic in case it ended and I wanted to be on it. For some reason I had it my head that it was worth 6VP and not 4 so I put too much value in the relic. What I should have done was tried the same failed multicharge again, killed those stupid scouts holding his emperors will and also charged the dominus’ squad to get warlord, his emperors will, linebreaker and one of my maelstrom cards for killing a character. No idea why I did this, but he had another windfall round of maelstrom again. The heldrake after burning up tiggy gets killed by the onager (which is a beast against flyers).

The final score ends something like 16-4 to him even though I felt that I’d destroyed loads more, the KP differential was small, I’d not picked many maelstrom and he had two good rounds of 3/2VP cards which just made a huge gap. My real problem with the star is picking up little units that are far apart, like those three rangers holding that objective, or the rust stalkers that I’d shrieked down to two guys but were some distance away and if I went after them I’d have dropped the relic. Fun game though, and war con is very cool!

Game 5 – Eldar + Harlequins
Being beaten quite soundly three times now I’m now near the bottom of the pack. My lack of practice, and inability to score many maelstrom objectives was really showing. Interestingly though, when looking around at other tables near me, I saw quite a few deathstar type lists down in the bottom too. It may be that others were finding the same thing I was and that scoring some of those 3VP cards like “hold two odd and two even” is nigh on impossible with a star type list when all you’ve got is that, cultists and horrors chilling out in your backfield.

Also, this was my first game against a girl! Eeeeeeeeewwww!

But no, seriously her army was very cool, a mix of some harlequin stuff (which I had to ask a ton of questions about) a sword and board wraithknight, a wraithlord (lol) and three units of wraithguard. One had d-flamers, one had d-shooting and one had axes. All quite potent and gave me nightmares of when I played Tess Yoxall at cally in July and my deathstar got its ass handed to it with deepstriking D flamers with an archon. She didn’t have the same trick but I knew what a mess those d flamers could have made to my star, or my knight. So she gets first turn, and turbo boosts up the wave serpents that the d flamers and d shooting guys had. My star pounces on the d shooting wave serpent, wrecking it easily in combat, and the knight shoots at the other but does no damage with night fighting. I do force it to jink though. The d shot guys start trying to shoot at my star, but with it having it’s usual buffs, there wasn’t much damage (maybe a dog died?). The d flamer guys for some reason, rather than changing course to come get the star or the knight, keep going further down the edge of the board to hassle my horrors and herald. I managed to pass enough invuln saves, and spread my horrors out in such a way that it took them two turns to d flamer half the unit. This bought my heldrake some time.

So in my turn, the heldrake comes in, I cast the -1T power from biomancy on the axe wraiths behind the d shot wraiths, and being T4/5 now, with daemonforge, the heldrake just picked them all up. The star charged the d shot guys (using the cultists to absorb the overwatch first ) and a little squad she infiltrated at the start of the game that had a solitaire, a death jester and some other funky named elf onto an objective and then picked them all up (other than one last wraith as my star was too stretched out to maximise its number of attack). I stomped them out but they did cause me to have a squeaky bum moment with something that hit at I10 with str8 but fortunately only took a HP or two off.

On her turn, she wastes more time chasing my horrors around, and I move the knight towards a little harlequin unit that’s in ruins about midboard (where they infiltrated to). He shoots his Gatling canon and gets a few of them. For whatever reason, she doesn’t charge the wrathknight into my star (maybe fearing force but I didn’t have hammerhand in this game) but goes after my knight. My knight at this point is in combat with the little harlequin unit it was shooting at. My horrors summon a unit of 5 dogs, again with the intent to just slow down the wraithlord by creating a picket line in front of the knight. She went for it and charged the wraithknight and lord into the dogs. They beat them but cost her time. My bloodletters show up and deep strike into her backfield onto an objective and in her “dead pile” of models. In the end I think she forgot about them and they sat there for linebreaker and got me the maelstrom where you need to hold the objective for two turns.

Meanwhile her wraith knight then D’s out my knight who falls over and kills a few horrors. Seeing that my star is about to get charged by her wraith knight, and seeing there was about 20 mins left, I split my star up and spread the sorcerers out onto a few of the eternal war objectives. I created a picket line of hounds (again to waste time) and protect a sorcerer or two. Her wraith knight would have to waste precious game time dealing with dogs. I psychic shrieked the wraithlord to death and the heldrake burned up the D flamer wraiths. Having had quite enough of losing wraithguard to the helturkey, she drops them back into the serpent and they sit there for the rest of the game on an eternal war objective in my deployment zone, getting her line breaker but I couldn’t deal with them. The heldrake then goes on to burn up another harlequin unit she infiltrated and kept in a ruin on an objective that had her warlord on. Unfortunately, because of different levels, I couldn’t kill them all otherwise the heldrake would have been able to nab warlord for me (doubled out from the Str6 flame). I had a plan to take out the wraithlord though but it failed. My plan was to peel a few wounds off with psychic shriek, and then buff up one of my sorcerers to have similar durability to the star (endurance, force, iron arm, warp speed) but strangely even with no psychic dice from her to block it, and spell familiars, most of those powers failed. So my brave sorcerer that was going to try and go toe to toe with the wraithknight bottled it and turbo boosted away in the shooting phase towards another objective. Both shrieks failed as well getting like a 7 and a 9 on two sets of 3D6 from two sorcerers! Grr!! Game ends with the wraithknight and some harlequin character butchering my dogs….but my sorcerers and warlord had split up and spread out onto a few objectives. It was a surprisingly close game as again she had a good run of 2VP and 3VP maelstrom cards, despite me holding more eternal war at the end.

Game ends 11-9 to me. So 3 losses and 2 victories. I place 75th in the tourney, which wasn’t as good as I was hoping but not much surprise considering the mistakes I made and how out of practice I am with the list and 40K. Overall a great weekend though, and already planning what I want to take to Cally in July.

Lessons Learnt
It might be time for a re-think on the list. The cabal star is fun but I feel like I’m thinking more about my powers and combos I need rather than the mission and objectives. Quite a few times I found myself thinking “oh *****, and I also need to get there or do that”. Maybe that’s because I haven’t practiced much so can’t play the list on autopilot.

I need to incorporate some sort of MSU scoring to sweep up some maelstrom, because I really struggled to pick any of those up. Maybe a smaller star and a min chaos warband that’s all obsec?

Bring something to kill AV13 if you don’t get hammerhand! Even a few meltabombs!

Quelle surprise! I forgot the heldrake does soul blaze again!

So I'm thinking of starting a new army that I can take to tournaments, has some competitive bite, but also is a little simpler to play and has a bit less variability (without relying on specific psychic powers). I stumbled across a list a while ago that won a GT in the US back in November, and someone ran something similar at LVO recently and came 12th. The list I'm thinking of is as follows:

Source 1 - Talon Strike Force
Core - Battle Demi Company
Captain in Cataphractii Terminator armour and storm shield
5 man tac squad with melta/combi melta in drop pod
5 man tac squad with flamer/combi flamer in drop pod
5 man tac squad in rhino
Attack bike with heavy bolter
Devastators with grav cannons in drop pod

Aux - Raptor Wing
2x Stormtalons with missile upgrades
1 landspeeder.

Aux Shadowstrike Kill team
2x 5 Scouts with combi grav
2x 5 Vanguard Veterans with 2x powerfists and meltabomb in each squad

Source 2 - White Scars Allied Detachment
Librarian with Hunters Eye
Scouts in Landspeeder storm

Source 3 - Inquisitorial Detachment
Coteaz
Ordo Xenos with 3x Servo Skulls

The talon strike force allows me to re-roll who deploys first, and table sides, and can start coming in from reserve on turn 1 on a 4+

The shadowstrike kill team allows you to choose to pass or fail the reserve roll and when deep striking within 9" of the scouts, the vanguard vets don't scatter and then charge the turn they arrive.

The raptor talon formation arrive automatically in turn 2, and enemy units within 18" of the landspeeder give the stormtalons the ability to re-roll pens and wounds and re-roll glances. Got about 60-70 points to play with, so could fit something in there. Maybe shave off some points for a thunderfire cannon, or add a whirlwind.....or another speeder or something for more objective grabbing.

The librarian with hunters eye and captain with storm shield go in the pod with the grav cents, and drop down and kill stuff. The cataphractii confers slow and purposeful (I think?)

It looks like a really fun and tactical army where I've got the option of null deploying and a fair amount of the army having a chance to come in on turn 1 onwards, or later on if I want to (shadowstrike can choose when to pass/fail). It's also simple to play, as it's just marine bodies and bros essentially without being dull like a full battle company. It's got some sneakyness and options to it while not being too reliant on having the right things go off...so I can focus more on the mission and task at hand rather than continually evaluating and trying to work out what psychic power combos will keep my star alive and do damage to the enemy. I'm also hoping it's a wolf in sheeps clothing sort of list, with no obvious right hook type move to it (other than grav devs).

What do you all think?