Millennium Invitational - 1850 Test Run

The Thanksgiving holiday gave me the rare opportunity to both test the list I was planning to run at the Millennium invitational and to play a casual 40k game without the intensity and time constraints of a tournament game.  This is actually the first non-tournament game of 40k I have played since June - it is a bit strange to play 40k in a casual setting.

For this game I had the chance to face up against a Slaanesh themed CSM army - with some very cool conversions, Noise Marines and a pair of Maulerfiends.

6th ed Memorial - Millennium May @ 2k - Rnd 2/3

A new edition has dropped, and I want to look into what this means for Daemons.  First I plan finish my final tournament of 6th edition before starting into that analysis.  I know everyone is eager to see Daemonology in action, but from a core rules standpoint there has not been much change between 6th and 7th edition (bear with me on the psychic phase part).

My draw in Round 1 against Koszka (Round 1 here) meant I was actually paired down for round 2 - we were the only ones who drew in spite of the mission type.  My round 2 opponent, Nogle, brought with him a Spartan and a pile of Lascannons too.

Calypso2ts @ The Millenium Invitational

At the end of every year Millennium Games holds its annual Invitational Tournament, composed of the top 1st and 2nd (not yet qualified) finishers from each month's  tournaments.  I qualified earlier this year in the team tournament I played with Crispy using Tyranids.  I look forward to this event because it is a nice followup to all that hard work painting to prepare for Da Boyz GT - and it is a free tournament with a ton of prize support from the owner of Millennium.  This year Millennium actually doubled its normal support - which is why I travel 100 miles each month to play in events at Millenium Games.

As usual, I decided to take my Daemons, but I wanted to do so with a slight twist.  In light of the Nova proposed composition changes I wanted to build a list that was compliant with those guidelines and that did not use Fateweaver.  That is right, a Daemons list without Fateweaver or  Grimoire of True Names or a Flying Monstrous Creatures.

Calypso2ts @ Da Boyz GT - 6 of 6

Justin and I seem to always meet at Da Boyz.  I narrowly won our first game with my Sisters against his Necron destroyer list in 2010.  In 2012 I played his Tyranids with Daemons and he beat me pretty handily.  This is a great chance for redemption.  I also found out he has had a great year at GT's this year.

Justin is bringing Tau and I wish we had a bit more Line of Sight blocking on the board.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot I can do about that.  His wife had also come with him to the GT - but she was stuck inside a bit due to the snow storm raging that day.

Calypso2ts @ Da Boyz GT - 5 of 6

In 5th edition I had really struggled with Daemons against Dark Eldar.  They were the perfect combination to tear apart Daemon armies with poison shots mounted on fast vehicles that would almost always require 6's to hit in combat.  I occasionally beat these armies, and I am really familiar with how they play.  More importantly, the changes to vehicles with Hull Points and close combat has made taking down these swarms a little easier.

For this game I was playing on an imperial cathedral battlefield.  Here is a picture pre-setup of the terrain.

The really cool part about this board is all the roofs are magnetized, so it is easy to pop them off and move models around the buildings.

Grubnards at the Millennium Invitational

The Millennium Invitational was held this past weekend at Millennium Games in Rochester NY. Every year the store holds a monthly 40k tournament on the 2nd Saturday of each month and in December, those who placed in either 1st or 2nd place in one of the previous months, gets invited to to play in the December Invitational. However, due to bad weather and some people's work schedules, not all of the invitees were able to attend. In all, 14 people showed, including 5 of the blog authors Crimanth, Calypso2ts, Crispy, DaCock, and myself (Hyv3 had to bow out due to his work schedule.) So let's get onto the reports of my games.

Calypso2ts @ Da Boyz GT - 3 of 6

If you missed the action from the first two games then you can check out  Game 1 and Game 2.  For game 3 I was paired against a Slaanesh themed CSM army with Daemon allies run by Beth.  I had the chance to play Beth in the team tournament locally back in the spring - so I had a pretty good idea what list she was bringing.

As it turns out, she made some modifications that made her list much stronger for the GT - which is to be expected!

Grubnards GT Countdown T-5 Weeks

... Or Grubnard's big shakeup!

We are nearing the 1 month mark before the Da Boyz GT is upon us and this past week has been a crazy time for me. I've been working on terrain, painting my army, and this past weekend I played in the Millennium Games monthly tournament which was geared towards practicing for the GT. I brought the thus far completed Tyranid terrain to the event so that I could get the players thoughts and feedback on how the terrain worked and what, if any improvements could be made. So without wasting anymore time lets jump into this week's post.

Da Boyz GT: T - 7 Weeks - Calypso2ts

Somehow the transition from 8 week left until the DA Boyz GT and 7 weeks seems like a big difference when it comes to finishing up painting.  Luckily, I am getting close to having the Flesh Hounds complete - which I will be showcasing in this post.  I also had another chance to get a game in with my GT list and had my first game against the new Eldar.



My opponent was Josh - we had arranged a game since I was going to be in town and he brought the following pure Eldar list:

Da Boyz GT: T - 9 Weeks - Practice Tournament-G2

With a victory in the first game of the tournament I was in rare company - with approximately half the field - of being undefeated.  That game was against a Grey Knight opponent and the battle report can be found here.  This game saw me matched up on a fairly open table - there is a hint on the table as to my opponent's army.

It appears Grey Knights (GK) are appropriately hunting Daemons.  I discuss my list (with a swap of a fiend for a Locus of Fury) here.  My opponent brought a hybrid mech list with a pair of Dreadknights, summarized below:

Kill Teams: Chaos Marine vs Necrons

This past weekend I was able to get in a game of 40k with an old buddy of mine. We normally only get to see each other once or twice a year but this past weekend we were both invited to a wedding and he stopped over my place after the reception. I was showing him my new man cave/playing table and he mentioned that he would like to throw down a quick game before he had to leave. Since he did not have his models and we wanted to get in a quick game we decided we would play a kill team match and he would use my necrons.

For those who are not familiar with kill teams, the basic rules are:

hyv3mynd @ August RTT - Games 3, 4, and Results

If you missed my first two games, they can be found here.  At this point, I'm 2-0 going into round #3.  My opponent for this game was Bryan, who despite frequenting the same monthly events as myself for roughly three years, has never actually been paired against me.  He's been playing Imperial Fists as far back as I can remember.  In fact, I've never seen him play another army.

Bryan's list (1,000pts):
Lysander
Sternguard x10 + combi-melta x1, drop pod
Tactical Squad x10 + melta, hvy bolter, drop pod
Tactical Squad x10 + missile launcher, flamer
Vindicator

hyv3mynd @ August RTT - Games 1 & 2

I have a lot of game material from this month so I'm going to report two games at a time.  Our monthly local tournament format this month was 1,000pts with no allies allowed and we played 4 rounds instead of 3.  Tables were also 4'x4' instead of the standard size.

Here's the list I took:
- Spirit Seer (shriek, conceal)
- 5 Wraith Guards
- Wave Serpent w/Scatter Lasers, holofields
- 3 Jet Bikes w/Shuriken Cannon
- 3 Jet Bikes w/Shuriken Cannon
- 3 War Walkers with 2 Scatter Lasers each
- Wraith Knight w/ 2 Cannons
- 2 Vaul Support Cannons with Shadow Weaver

1500Point - Play the Game, Read the Story GT Report - Games 1 & 2

     July in Syracuse means it’s time for Play the Game, Read the Story’s annual GT. Last year I managed to snag 2^nd overall, so I was looking forward to this year’s event and hoping for a repeat performance. This year’s event was a single day, 5-round, 1500point tournament, bringing in just over 30 players. The scoring weighed heavily on battle (0-9/game), but also included soft scores: Paint (0-10), Sportsmanship (0-5), and Comp (0-10). Having attended a few of their events over the past year, I felt that I had a good grasp on what they were looking for in comp, and what kind of armies I’d likely see.

Here’s what I brought:

HQ

Tyranid Prime w/ Lash Whip & Bone Sword, Toxin Sacs

Elite

2 Hive Guard

5 Ymgarls

Troops

12 Termagants

Tervigon w/ Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs and +2 Powers

5 Genestealers w/ Broodlord

Fast Attack

5 Shrikes w/ Lash Whip & Bone Sword, Toxin Sacs

Heavy Support

2 Carnifex w/ 2X Twin Link Devourers

3 Biovores

Total: 1496

In the past 3 years, I can only remember squaring off against 3 other Tyranid players (2 of which are my co-authors Hyv3mynd & DaCock), but somehow I managed to draw 3 on this day. Below the fold are bat-reps from my first 2 games. 

May Tournament Recap

This month's local event was a 1999pt tournament with an allowance for one forgeworld unit as long as it wasn't superheavy, gargantuan, or a d-weapon.  Scoring was battle + painting.  One of the cool perks this month was the DaBoyz team from Adepticon brought in their Tau terrain to play on.  More pics of their project can be found here.

Tournament Photodump and Results

I've been falling behind on battle reports and tournament results due to the amount of 40k content flooding into my life.  Some of the authors have a big (4k per team, 2v2) game this weekend and our monthly tournament the week after so I've got to unload the content I've been sitting on or else I'll never catch up.

Tyranid Tournament Wrap-up

     It's been a hell of a few weeks, including a small tournament that 4 of our authors made it out to, an all-nighter at work that obliterated my post for last week, and a smattering of modeling to expand the swarm.

This scene sums up my game against Calypso2ts. Well played sir, well played. 

     The tournament in Syracuse we went to had an interesting comp system.  I know a lot of people don't like comp, but I've never really had a problem with it. I figure that it's just another way to play the game. Because I travel to events a lot, I like to try and conform to what our hosts want to see. Going into this event, I was at -1 on the comp scale.

Daemon Codex - 1500 Tournament Redux

I had the chance last week to take the new Daemon codex out for a spin at a local tournament.  I did not, unfortunately, get a chance to take pictures due to time constraints - so I am going to provide my opponents lists, my strategy and some overall thoughts on the list.  The rounds were originally projected at 1.5 hours, but moved to 2 hours - which turned out to be a blessing.  I wanted to test some of my evaluations - and did so in a fairly restrictive environment.

Unlike many tournaments, this one included...wait for it...composition scores.  Without going into too many details, the composition requirements penalized taking Death Stars, repeated units/wargear or min/maxing selections.  20% of the score was also attributed to lists defined as 'excessively devoted to winning at all costs' which I took to mean, those looking to game the system.  As such I chose a diverse Daemon list - and took an initial comp hit of 10% for bringing a greater daemon.  My list for the event was...

Batrep: GK & SM vs IG & BA Team Event

This report was our (Crimthaan & hyv3mynd) first game in the local Adepticon team primer.  We had originally planned to bring double CSM, but my painting wasn't progressing quickly enough and I didn't want to handicap my partner with an unpainted army.  Here's what we ended up with:

Adepticon Team Tournament Primer Games 1 and 2

Two weekends ago I participated in a team tournament with a friend of mine who goes by the name sinistermind on this and other boards. Since we both seemed to have been touched by chaos at an early age we decided to run a dual chaos list. You can read our list selections and our plan of action over here. This was the same event the Calypso2ts, Crispy, Hvy3mynd, and Crimthann all attended as well. As luck would have it I do not believe any of us got paired up against each other. There was a solid turnout of 26 players, or 13 teams, which meant the TO played as the ringer.

We felt pretty good with our lists going into the morning because our two practice games ended up with two wins for us and we felt that we had a good synergy between our two vastly different styles of armies.