So this weekend rolled around, and most friends had made non-40k plans. Having been secretly painting my 2nd Helldrake and excited throw out two on the table, I decided it was finally time to jump headfirst into a tournament. This would be the 2nd ever competitive event I played in (the first being way back when in 4th edition, in which I got my arse handed to me).
The local Games Workshop near where I live in Bowie was hosting a tournament, that was actually something of an experiment - they decided to play 6th edition the way the book says its supposed to be played, so that meant using double force orgs at 2000, variable terrain setups and book missions.
However, and I gotta laugh at this, because right after they explained their "experiment", they added that they had decided specifically not to play Purge the Alien, nor use mysterious objectives/terrain, as kill points and exploding objectives "just hurts IG too much". The way we handled terrain setup was also not the way the rulebook explained, although I liked it much better as there is a lot less gouging each other as both sides want to set up terrain that is advantageous to themselves, apart from my 3rd game the boards ended up looking very nice, with a few silly tilted buildings that had been set up on slopes here and there.
Best painted army unofficially went to this beautiful Tallarn IG Company (there was no actual best painted award, but it would've been this one). Yellow, when done well is so very striking.
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| Makes me want to paint up some Imperial Fists, providing I can pull off painting yellow. |
So being double force-org I was totally unsure of what to expect, so I ended up taking this list. Here is a picture of my army painted nicely (but in sore need of an army tray, which will have to become a future project for me).
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Large plastic drawers work well for holding an army.
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2k Chaos Space Marines - Double Force Org
1 Daemon Prince of Tzeentch,
Wings, Power Armor, the Black Mace
1 Daemon Prince of Nurgle,
Wings, Power Armor, Burning Brand of Skalathrax
1 Chaos Sorcerer
Force Staff, Bike, Mastery Level 2
3 Chaos Spawn
Mark of Nurgle
x2 Helldrake
Baleflamer
x5 10 man Cultists Squads
2 Squads with Heavy Stubbers, the rest bare
5 Havocs
4 Autocannons
2 Obliterators
x4 Solo Obliterators (each taking up a HS slot)
Aegis Defense Line
Quadgun
So basically, using double force org for 3 HQs, I then maxed out my heavy support slots with single Obliterator units, that I planned to deep strike in 2-4 of, in order to pop rear armor, flame blob squads to death and also serve as general distractions. The fact that they have 2+ saves and are only one model, usually makes opponents decide to shoot other things besides them. I decided to experiment with cultists as well, while they are terrible at just about everything, they are still objective claiming bodies, cheap as chips and can still go to ground to get decent cover saves behind the defense line and in ruins/area terrain. Having 50 bodies too many for my opponents to punish proved to be effective in all but the last game (more on that later).
Game 1
My first game was against a Ravenwing/Imperial Guard allies army. His list looked something like this:
Shrike
10 man assault squad
x2 10-man Tactical Squad
Flamer, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
10 Space marine scouts with Sniper Rifles
1 Dreadnought
5 Terminators
Multi-Melta powerfist, Drop Pod
1 Primaris Psyker
10 Veterans
Missile Launcher, Plasma Gun
3 Leman Russ (basic battlecannon flavor) in Squadron
Game was Crusade with Dawn of War deployment and 5 objectives, I won the roll and deployed 3 in my end (1 in each corner, 1 in the center). He likewise placed his objectives in the opposite corners.
I'm going to just give a brief overview of the highlights of each game as it would take too long to write out and would be rife with inaccuracies.
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Turn 1 saw him dropping a tactical drop pod into each corner to flame cultists that were sitting on objectives. He also dropped a dreadnought right in the center in front of my cultists on the quad gun. Shrike deepstriked into the middle of the table with his unit which left him as easy prey for a daemon prince. The Leman Russes proceeded to fire at my cultists who went to ground behind the ADL and laughed at the battle cannons. They were able to easily destroy my autocannon havocs though, who didn't really have anything to shoot at all game. He had rolled the -1 to reserves warlord trait, where-as I had rolled the re-rolls on reserves, and silly as it was, helldrakes did not end up coming on until turn 4, in which most stuff was already gone. The Daemon Prince of Tzeentch all on his own was able to take out a veteran squad, and Shrike plus his assault squad. Spawns + Terminators (I attempted to tarpit them from shooting cultists) equal'd dead spawns, which I now know to avoid in the future.
End of the game ended up with me holding my 3 objectives, StW, Linebreaker with him having First Blood and neither objective. Round 1 Victory - 11-1
My turn one opponent was awesome, he played fast and was very knowledgeable enough of the rules. His list was not double-force org'd as far as I could tell, which makes me wonder if he didn't get the memo, or just chose not to play his list that way. Either way, I would play him again (with a less ridiculous list) in a heartbeat.
Game 2
My 2nd opponent, Alex ran a mono-IG list that looked something like this (very rough estimate, as IG has their own sub force orgs for troop choices)
Lord Commissar
20ish Conscripts
2 Heavy Weapons teams
3 Mortars, 3 Lascannons
1 Infantry Platoon
Platoon Command Squad, another Commissar
3 20 man bodies
Grenade Launchers
20ish bodies apiece
2 Sentinel Scouts
1 Leman Russ Battletank
2 Leman Russ Demolishers
2 Valkyries
Each with a stormtrooper squad inside
I really liked the look of his army as he had used Catachan models painted with urban grey and black camo.
We played hammer and anvil deployment, mission was Big Guns Never Tire with 5 objectives. He put 3 on his half with one a little bit closer to the edge of his deployment zone. I put one in a building in the back and one in area terrain to the right. I also got lucky and seized the initiative. I also decided in terrain setup it would be wise to stick some LOS blocking ruins right in the center of the board to give my advancing elements something to move up behind and get a cover save.
The game ended up with me moving the spawn/sorcerer, 2 daemon princes, and a group of cultists forward to try and hide in the middle ruins until it was time to make a run for the objective. I was very wary of the two Leman Russ Demolishers on each side. He moved his stuff up, and had some fairly ineffective shooting at my units which utilized cover saves successfully (the DP of Nurgle in particular with shrouded gets a 2+ save in ruins). He also moved his ground blob up over the objective on the area terrain. The next turn I glided both princes forward, to charge the Russ and the blob, along with the spawn. This was a huge mistake on my part, as the Spawn made it, but the Prince needing a 7 to get at the blob failed his charge roll (5, doh!). The other prince charged the Russ and blew it up.
The next turn, my opponent promptly put both demon princes down, one with combined torrent of fire, the other being a demolisher round to the back of his head (if only I had made it into the combat). The Spawn performed admirably against GEQs, if only they could make it into combat with them more often - assault although a powerful tool, really has been nerfed compared to how reliable shooting is in 6th edition. Coming from 4th edition (skipping 5th) assault was the way to go, lol most games ended up with huge melees in the middle of the board.
My Helldrakes both came in turn 3, and an Oblit deep struck in behind the other demolisher and proceeded to take it out via TL meltagun. His Valkyrie came in and faced off against a Helldrake in some hot flyer on flyer action. I rolled a successful Daemon save against a lascannon pen that would've killed it otherwise.
The next turn saw my helldrakes, combined with shooting from my backfield clearing out most of the guard on one of his objectives, a final turn enabled me to blow his guard completely off of one objective, spawn finished off the guard, and got in a fight with his dropped off stormtroopers). The cultists made a feeble attempt to run from the center ruins for the objective, but got killed by mass lasgun fire from his remaining troops in the building.
The game ended with him claiming one objective, with 2 extra points from an Oblit that deepstrike miss-happed (rolled a 1 as well) and StW. I held 2 objectives, had StW, Linebreaker and First Blood + 2 kill points from killing his two Leman Russ Demolishers (the 3rd vanilla Russ largely got ignored as most of its shooting was ineffective).
Final Score: Victory - 10 to 5
Game 3
Game 3 vs. my third opponent, Joe would be my downfall, as he had an exceptionally good list, a strong counter to my scoring cultists (through 4 barrage pie plates a turn that ignored my defense line's cover) and also I had some exceptionally atrocious bad rolls in the beginning and end of the game. I don't ever blame my loss purely on dice rolls, however had I not rolled as terribly, although he still would've won, the game would've gone differently and I probably would've scored more points at the end.
UPDATE: To make a point, I read the rules for barrage today, and it turns out that barrage weapons do NOT ignore cover, however, you allocate wounds from the direction of the center of the template, so it would ignore hiding behind, say an Aegis Defense Line. However, for area terrain/obstruction by ruins, you still get a cover save. ALSO, when targeting units in Ruins, barrage weapons hit the models of the unit that are on the upper most level. Had I known these things and what I was up against, my objective would've gone into the ruins, with me constantly moving a few cultists up a level per turn to die so as to remain holding the objective at the end of the game. POINT I'M GETTING AT: This goes to show how important it is to not only understand that capabilities and rules of your own armies, but the capabilities of others' as well, so that you can exploit their weaknesses and don't get manhandled because you aren't aware of how something works.
Going back to our game though, Joe had an exceptional gunline build. I don't remember the exact specifics of it but using the double force org, his army looked more or less something like this:
HQ: Company Command Squad
3 Masters of Ordnance
2 Veteran Squads
-Autocannon/Sniper/8 Lasguns
6 Infantry Squads
-Autocannon/Sniper/8 Lasguns
(A few squads had Lascannons instead of autocannons)
2 4 man squads of Ratling Snipers
Marbo
Vendetta
-Platoon Command Squad inside the vendetta
Leman Russ Executioner (Plasma cannon flavored)
2 Leman Russes (Battle cannon flavored)
Manticore
2 Heavy Weapons teams (3 autocannons)
Aegis Defense Line w/ Quadgun
Mission was Emperor's Will with Vanguard Strike Deployment
During deployment/terrain setup, he actually did something fairly aggressive and set up a LoS blocking ruins, right in front of my Quadgun, lol at that point I realized that it wasn't going to be a friendly game (haha, already was aware of that, being as that we were both at the top table). It actually ended up so that a lot of the ruins were on my side of the board, which when I rolled up the warlord trait (+1 cover save in ruins) I thought I had it in the bag and I would just fly my demon princes forward and use that and helldrakes to roast him off of his objective. Boy was I in for it.
His first turn, he drops a S10 AP4 blast on my Warlord Daemon Prince. I needed to roll a 3+ or at least a 1 to get the re-roll Tzeentch DPs get. Roughly a 77% chance of survival by my math-hammers. Lol, roll a 2 - Instakilled, before he could even take flight, which gave my opponent StW plus FB. In a mission with only 2 objectives, the best I could hope for at this point was to contest his objective and still score my own.
As is the risk with reserves, my Dragons and Obliterators ended up trickling in rather than coming in all at once which he easily able to put down turn by turn by focus-firing. To make matters worse, the Obliterators deep-strike mishapped multiple times, including one being destroyed, and 2 that he redeployed in the back on my table edge. During this time he beat down on my cultists behind the Aegis Line (where I had ignorantly put my objective) with barrages. In hopes of surviving to the end of the game, I spread out my cultists in conga-lines (rather than blobs) to reduce the number of hits pie plates get. My spawn charged forwards and got themselves locked in combat with his Ratlings he had infiltrated. The remaining Daemon Prince flew forward and managed to mulch a bunch of Guardsman before getting shot out of the sky, I contemplated gliding/charging into a guard squad, but needed about a 9" charge roll to get to the one that was on the objective and decided I could do more damage using the brand. And although my first dragon did just about nothing before it was blown out of the sky, my second one was able to blow up his manticore's missiles/slay his own warlord to nab me one VP.
The big kicker came on the very last turn of the game though - he dropped his barrages on my cultists, causing 3 separate squads to take morale checks. When it came time to take them, not only did every single squad fail their checks, they THEN proceeded to run 10-12" right off the board edge. This left me with no troops to secure my objectives. To add insult to injury, my cultists that were in some ruins, in attempts to try and come down 2 turns prior to make a run for the objective ended up rolling double ones both times, preventing descending to lower levels, they did manage to ignore terrain falling back though and still disappear off the board edge... gg, cultists. Had this not occured, he would've beat me 5 to 4 rather than 5 to 1, which might've let me jump into 2nd place. I laughed it off though, as crazy things can and will happen in 40k which is part of what makes the game so fun and exciting.
Final Thoughts:
Joe ended up winning first, I got 3rd, which I was plenty happy about. My goal had been to not get dead-last, and I felt that I did admirably in that aspect. I enjoyed the tournament overall, it was a ton of fun and I look forward to playing in another one soon. I definitely learned quite a few things about my army as well as about Guard in general, and it helped me to cement more 40k knowledge to use to my advantage in future games. Double Force Org is silly, but I feel like most average players don't have the models to fully abuse it other than min-maxing units like I did (2 fortress of redemptions/6 helldrakes anyone?). Barrage weapons hurt squishy models, but are not unbeatable if you understand how they work (of which I do now). Also, foot IG gunlines are quite good, as is AV14 front armor Leman Russes.
Surprisingly I liked how the terrain setup worked, it wasn't quite by the book as the TOs said, when they demonstrated it basically consisted of a roll-off followed by players taking turns placing terrain pieces on the table (after deployment/table sides had been established). Because most players were hoping to secure themselves good pieces, it didn't lead to shenanigans like barriers on table edges etc. (although there was an ADL that got blocked off). It actually helped me quite a bit in my second game as i was able to sacrifice terrain on my half for an avenue of attack. I would gladly play with this terrain setup format in future games if opponents are willing.
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