Alan's Tournament Diary

[Agent0range]

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!