With the local 40k Tournament of Champions coming up (this the end of the year invitational tournament at Millenium games open to the top 2 unqualified finishers of each monthly tournament), I have been busy working on a number of projects. One of those involves an experiment with allies and fortifications - I am hoping to have that experiment complete in time for the tournament and to share the initial thoughts of it later in the week.
Before moving onto new topics though, I wanted to share the final round of the DA Boyz GT Team Tournament, our overall results and some of my own observations on the event.
Our last game saw us paired up against Orks, Dark EldarCSM and Imperial Guard. I ended up stuck with the Imperial Guard playing a pretty hard list. In general I have had terrible luck with Imperial Guard with Daemons - they bring so many bodies in most cases it is hard to weather the massed number of lasguns they bring. The mission summary for Round 3 is:
Opponent: Imperial Guard
Deployment: Vanguard Strike
Primary: Victory Points
Secondary: Kill Points
Tertiary: The Emperor's WIll
Imperial Guard
HQ
CCS w/ 3x Flamers in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
Elite
-
Troops
10x Veterans w/ 3x Meltaguns in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
10x Veterans w/ 3x Plasmaguns in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
10x Veterans w/ 3x Plasmaguns in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
10x Veterans w/ 3x Plasmaguns in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
10x Veterans w/ 3x Plasmaguns in Chimera w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
Infantry Platoon w/ Comissar
Fast Attack
Vendetta w/ 3x Lascannons
Vendetta w/ 3x Lascannons
Heavy Support
2x Manticore w/ Hull Heavy Flamer
Deployment
I won the first turn and placed my opponent in the corner with the least potential damage to me from impassible terrain (the tree and the grass mounds were deemed impassible). We also called the hills/ridges difficult to move up and down but otherwise open terrain.
Warlord traits are useless this game and we get a Turn 1 Night Fight.
Turn 1
I choose a preferred wave of 2 Soul Grinders, Fateweaver, Screamers, Fiends and Flamers and get it. My Deep Strikes are pretty good overall and I manage to land just about all my forces within Fate's influence with the Screamers Turbo Boosting to the front after a big scatter. I originally placed them in the center of the hill so I could Turbo over his own troops.
My first turn shooting is mediocre but I take out his CCS Chimera (after stunning it with other shooting)and roast all but the flamers. Otherwise I spread out and built successive layers of cover over my models to take advantage of the Night Fight saves.
At this point, we have a bit of a rules debate. He wants to fire the 3 flamers who had their transports first Stunned and later destroyed. His argument was they were no longer passengers and I did not have the FAQ on me. I let him fire and they did a ton of damage to my flamers removing most of them. I also took assorted casualties from Manticores and other shooting, but Night Fight protected my army for the most part.
Turn 2
At this point the continued saga of the 'wife's keys locked in the car' reared up again. I had to run out to meet her (about 1/2 a mile round trip) and fetched a new set of them for her. It is a bit more complicated than this, but I do not think you want to get bogged down in these details.
I get the rest of my army in and Deep Strike aggressively to keep the pressure on. Fateweaver Swoops forward to support the coming assault and I use my lone Flamer to eat the overwatch from the blob before the Screamers and Fiends move in.
It seems like there are a lot more troops on the table when you see the entire army!
In assault I win but the comissar keeps the blob around - which is what I was hoping for in the first place. I also manage to wreck a Chimera with some Warpfire shots and destroy another with a Bolt of Tzeetch.
The Guard response is a bit lackluster other than one key play we will discuss on Turn 3...
Turn 3
That is right Fateweaver is dead along with most of my Horrors from the large squad. I think my run was affecting my judgement because she fled the battlefield after being zapped by a Manticore Shell that scattered off the Horrors and onto her.
Unfortunately, she cannot be hit by template weapons when flying. I respond by pressing the attack on the blob but pulling my punches to hit the Chimera nearby - which I completely whiff on.
I take a ton more shooting and my workhorse units are starting to fall. Both Vendettas also arrived this turn and started poking away at the Soul Grinders - taking some Hull Points. I really needed to kill his blob in the last turn, but I stay stuck in.
Turn 4/5
Turn 6
There is a distinct lack of my army on the field in this picture because I have a distinct lack of units. The Grinders are chilling in the back still, but I have plagues on an objective and Horrors keep trying to shoot his forces off the other one.
At this point the game ends and we tally up the points:
Primary - Victory Points
Minor Loss
I have half a unit of Horrors, 1 Grinder and the Plagues left. He has a Manticore squad, 2 Vendettas, 2x Vets, 1 Flamer from the CCS and 1 Chimera remaining.
Secondary - Kill Points
Draw
I have 11 Kill Points and with 3 remaining I gave up 8. I gain 8 which meant w tied on the Seconday objective.
Tertiary - Objectives
Loss - 2:1
I just cannot get the guardsmen off the objectives in the back and with only 3 objectives this game I do not have a backfield objective to grab of my own.
This was a really tough game from the start and it got worse with the rules mistakes that I made during the game - these seem to be a continued theme. The limited practice I had with flyers and psychic powers really showed during the three games I played from the team tournament in general.
Overall I did not expect to see so much mech given the transition I have seen in general - but I think mixed with the blob bubble wrap squad it works.
Concluding Thoughts
I brought Fateweaver with me to Da Boyz because she ate a huge chunk of points (and I did not have enough painted based models!) - I think she can be good too - but she really does not fit my playstyle. I found on multiple occasions I wished for another assault unit or a unit of Blood Crushers with my Assault threats all being a bit too fragile - in spite of being fast. From my experienceshe is not as effective with massed 5+ saves as she is with 4+ or 3+ . In fact, I would say she is so ineffective with those levels of saves that she does not come close to making her points back given her other liabilities. A 1 in 9 chance for a crusher to fail a save is much much better incrementally than the 5 in 9 chance to wound on a standard 5+ save.
A sneak peak into the tournament this week - I will not be taking Fateweaver and instead plan to bring something with this skeleton
Tzeetch Herald on Disc w/ Bolt, Gaze, We Are Legion, Master of Sorcery (or Blue Scribes)
6x Fiends
6x Crushers
6x Flamers
9x Horrors w/ Bolt
5x Horrors w/ Bolt
12x Daemonettes
9x Screamers
2x Grinder
CSM Allies (say what!)
Sorcers w/ Spell Familar, 2 Mastery Levels, Force Staff
18x Cultists w/ CCW/Pistol
Aegis Line w/ Comms Relay
More thoughts to come on this list and more of an analysis, strategy plus a bonus battle report from last week when I took it for a test drive.
Even with allies I still worry about the lack of troops. Do you feel that it would be beneficial to drop a grinder from another troop or maybe beef up some other squads?
ReplyDeleteIn general I have found with Daemons that if my troops are actually being threatened - something has gone terribly wrong. The other units in a Daemon army tend to be so killy, that attacking the troops (like you might against other armies) means the Fiends/Flamers/Screamers/Crushers are in the process of tabling their army.
DeleteI have run a few experiments with troops for Daemons. I took 18x Daemonettes, 18x Horrors, 7x and 7x Plague Bearers for one tournament. In another I did four units of 5x Horrors with one unit of 7x plagues. On aggregate I have wanted my troops to be a smaller part of the army points wise or to be more killy in CC so they can be deployed closer to the opponent. That might mean Bloodletters eventually (but I do not own any right now!)
As I can see, mech-IG is not a good match for Daemons with no Crushers at all. Fate+Crushers is the combo that wrecked IG in the past and do it now. But they are so expensive that you build a Fatecrusher army or take none of them, I think. So, your idea on dropping Fate is not a bad one if you don't want to spam crushers.
DeleteAnd I believe that Aegis is not the way the TRUE daemon should go:) This blob anchors you down.
Ouch a rough game for sure. And yeah - it is in the FAQ - you are still stunned and can't shoot. You can move though. It is one of the reason you see the movement away from Chimeras and other boxes on the table. What if he had two blobs of guys in there instead of the one?
ReplyDeleteStill a rough game and having to go get keys to your wife will knock you off your game. Demons are interesting and I think they do very well Allied with CSM - you get some shooting and backfield strength that can be a big help. And the random dragon isn't too bad.
Painting restrictions (my lack of painting that is) means the CSM are still in a pretty barebones form at this point. I want to include a Dragon and a Forge Fiend with the list as well - I think they complement the grinders pretty well.
DeleteIf there was a second blob in that army - they are pretty cheap so the sacrifice might have only been a pair of vet squads - I do not think I would have had a chance at all. 40-60 S3 shots are brutal for Daemons in general - where marines tend to shrug those hits off a bit more. That is another reason I am going to bring Crushers along - they are slow but I think the resiliency adds a lot to the army's late game push.