Monday, August 25, 2014

Beef and Wing Brawl Preparation

This year marks the inaugural Beef and Wing Brawl held in Buffalo New York.  True to the nature of the club, the event has a strong emphasis on painting and sportsmanship with the games themselves following a narrative style campaign (30/30/40 breakdown).  I am not sure if spaces are still available, but it looks to be an awesome event - if you have a chance to make it down I would recommend doing so. (link to their site http://www.beefandwing.com/ )

Beef and Winger in their natural environment

Keeping the soft scores in mind - and the two hour open bar after the first round of the tournament - I need an army that will be fun, competitive, painted and does well with respect to composition/sportsmanship rules.

The Beef and Wing Brawl (BnBW) set a 1250 point limit for the tournament and restrict lists to at most 2 'sources.'  Furthermore, the forces must be battle forged.  One mission is a Kill Point mission - modified to penalize excessive Warlords/Knights and the others revolve around mobility and aggressive play.  The real challenge at 1250 with Daemons, is that it is not really possible to address every possible threat.  Knights do not have a good counter for a Daemons list and Flyers are difficult to deal with in general short of FMC (namely Lash of Despair princes).  However, summoning does allow for some strong objective scoring abilities with the hopes of weathering the storm of flyers or Knights.


I really have two ways to go with the list - either a Monster Mash style list with 2 Greater Daemons, Soul Grinders and maybe a Helbrute Murderpack or a fast assault oriented list with T3/4 models.  I generally prefer the second list and here is my first shot at it (note I love Seekers but I am not bringing them because they need too much work for painting to finish and after 3 or 4 beers I have a good feeling I am going to start breaking them).

Proposed List:

HQ
Herald of Khorne on Juggurnaut w/ Lesser Gift, Locus of Wrath
Herald of Khorne on Juggurnaut w/ Lesser Gift (Warlord)
The Blue Scribes

Elites
6x Flamers of Tzeentch

Troops
10x Horrors
10x Horrors
10x Plaguebearers

Fast Attack
9x Screamers of Tzeentch
18x Flesh Hounds of Khorne

Heavy Support
-

I decided to skip out on the Grinders since I am trying not to replicate selections - although I am notably doing so with the Heralds of Khorne  The core of this list is once again an assault army with some potential buffs from The Blue Scribes and extra troops or 'hard hitting' units through Summoning with the Horrors.  With the fast screeamers and hounds, there should be significant pressure on my opponent to protect my more fragile troop selections.  The Flamers are there to encourage my opponent to spread out and to disperse their firepower a bit through that threat.

I would really like to bring 2 units of hounds - but from a sportsmanship perspective I know that would be over the top.  The real question is whether to lose the second Khorne Herald and bring along some Plague Drones to eat overwatch and tie up units.  The changes to smash have really made the drones better and it would be a chance to practice some additional airbrushing.

Another option is the inclusion of Karanak - since his Collar REALLY punishes psykers with a perils on any double and the dangerous nature of the new perils table.   His scout rule is a bit wasted though - as there are not any really good Khorne units to scout up or outflank that he can join.

Critiques welcome - I would really like to have a chance to add in an Aegis line now too with the elimination of Focus Fire - but there is only so much that can fit in 1250.

5 comments:

  1. What if you brought 3 horror squads. With the extra warp charge and more chances for cursed earth it may be more beneficial. You could always summon those plague bearers later. hahaha

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    1. I agree on the Horrors, but I am trying not to completely spam Horrors for troops - but more importantly I do not actually have 10 more horrors at the moment. From an opponent perspective - is running the full complement of 36 Hounds over the top? I feel like it is at 1250, for many armies it is simply too much to deal with.

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  2. 36 hounds on a 4x4. Yikes!

    Its really hard to deal with so many hounds, but then again takes a few battle cannons/demolisher/ion accelerator shots to punch holes into those packs ( or just a knight!).

    I think that with scout you are usually in a good situation for board coverage. 32 may be a little too much on the board. They may have difficulty spreading out to avoid templates. They also may get tied up with a wraith knight, dreadnaught, mauler fiend,hell brute,etc. and then you just lose a lot of your force. I think 16 is enough for your list. I do think you should invest in some fiends or a cannon of khorne or two. Both of those will pretty much guarantee that your charges will hit home properly ( not to mention great for knocking off HP on vehicles too).

    Rending will play an important role in your build i think. You could always summon flamers if you need them, and with wound allocation, when do 6 flamers all get to unload shots effectively. It seems like 3 is usually sufficient. Those fiends though are high initiative, have rending, and dump a lot of attacks. This'll help you deal with MC's that can bog your dogs down.

    Then again this is perspective from a loyal imperial looking in. Filthy Daemons! I cast you out!

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    1. I had trouble in the past with Wraithknights/Riptides/Dreadknights and that is what prompted the Heralds of Khorne to deal with those threats. I still do not have an answer to AV 13 in the unit - a Knight is one of the major weaknesses in this list. I completely forgot we had a 4x4 board to play on - that makes it hard to escape from assault lists!

      I toyed with bringing Fiends - I liked them alot as an anti-psyker option and to stop the Hit and Run from some of the deathstars in 6th edition. It is hard to bring them with how weak they are in combat for their cost (3 base attacks is pathetic for 35 points).

      I am not totally sold on the Flamers - I tend to like some templates to encourage opponents to spread out a bit and diffuse their forces. At these points though, maybe the threat of summoning 3 Flamers is enough. The new Flamer wound allocation does make it difficult to really go to town with them anymore.

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  3. Just wanted to chime in and say that there are still some spots remaining. sign up soon though. the list is looking good and really does not seem over the top to me. Its really hard in this format to cover all your bases. I can really see some rock paper scissors matchups for some lists. hopefully the missions balance it out.

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