750 pt Tournament at Dragon*Con (9/6): Summary/Highlights

This past Sunday, I competed in a 3 round 750 pt tournament at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA. My list was as follows:

Combined Arms Detachment (747 pts Total):

HQ: Archon - blaster, haywire grenade (goes on TROOP1's raider)

TROOP1: 9 kabalite warriors - blaster x1
            raider - splinter racks, dark lance

TROOP2: 5 kabalite warriors - blaster x1
            venom - add'l splinter cannon

TROOP3: 5 kabalite warriors - blaster x1
            venom - add'l splinter cannon

FAST: Clawed Fiend x1

HEAVY1: Ravager - dark lances x3

HEAVY2: Ravager - disintegrator x3


There were about 12 people competing in this tournament. Armies that were there included 3 Tau, 1 Eldar, 1 Harlequin, 1 Necron, 1 Militarum Tempestus, 1 Dark Angels, 1 Chaos of some flavor, and, of course, some vanilla Space Marines. While checking out the various competitors' armies, I thought to myself, "I hope I don't get paired against either the Eldar or Necron army". Naturally, I ended up having to play against both of them. Here is a summary of the event:

ROUND 1: vs. Tau
MISSION: kill points - no objectives, just kill points (slay the warlord, linebreaker, and first blood were in effect for all games)

The Tau army was composed of several (3, I believe) fire warrior  and (2) kroot squads, and 3 suits, each its own unit, with one being the warlord. He didn't cover his suits that well in the early game, so I managed to kill all three by focusing my long range fire on them, netting me 4 kill points by turn 2. However, as the game progressed, he started to outshoot me, particularly with his firewarriors. One particularly tenacious squad of kroot also managed to stay alive with only 3 models due to very lucky cover save rolls. In the end, it was a tie game.

ROUND 1 RESULT: 6 - 6, Draw


ROUND 2: vs. Eldar
Mission: 2 Objectives, 1 bonus VP for every Heavy Support unit destroyed.

This army was composed of 2 ranger squads, an aspect host formation (1 dire avengers, 1 dark reapers, 1 fire dragons), a farseer (attached to the dark reapers), and a falcon grav-tank (holding the fire dragons). This game was extremely intense and bloody. Luckily for me, my opponent deployed his dark reapers on foot and within striking distance of my 36" range weapons, so my first priority was taking them out. His first priority was taking out my dissie ravager, which he did, before I could annihilate all of his dark reapers through focused fire. A lucky lance shot exploded his grav-tank, forcing his fire dragons to walk. The clawed fiend slaughtered one of the ranger squads, only to charge into the second ranger squad and get killed in hand-to-hand with them. At one point, he moved his fire dragons out of cover to fire at my HQ raider (which exploded - it was next to an objective, so the squad inside just hunkered down in the crater), but couldn't make it back into cover with his battle focus move, allowing me to gun down the entire squad while it was sitting out in the open. By the end of the game, one squad of rangers was pretty much all that he had on the board... but he managed to get them over to one of the objectives and take it uncontested (I assumed that my clawed fiend could kill them and take the objective - the rest of both of our armies were all the way on the other side of the board, and it was turn 7, so I didn't have time to get over there).

ROUND 2 RESULT: 6 - 5, Dark Eldar win.


ROUND 3: vs. Necrons
Mission: 2 Objectives, Automatic Nightfight on first turn

This army was composed of 2 blobs of necron warriors, a necron lord, and a canoptek harvest formation. The two objectives were placed near the board center, next to each other, so it was imperative that I get rid of those two blob squads. I put my HQ raider in deep strike reserve (which is the only time I used reserves in this tournament); I noticed that he had his lord at the very back of one of his warrior blobs, so I figured that if I could drop in behind him, I might be able to grab Slay the Warlord, and do some heavy damage to the attached warriors. I focused most of my firepower on the warriors, pretty much ignoring the canoptek harvest. I did fly my lance ravager over to the far side of the board to take potshots at the wraiths, and to lead them away from the rest of my army. The scarabs took the bait, and they destroyed the ravager, but didn't get back to the main force in time to be useful where it counted. My dissie ravager got charged by the wraiths, but managed to survive with only 1 hp lost and crew shaken. The wraiths' charge put them out of 12" resurrection range of the spyder, so I focused fire on the wraiths for that 1 turn to take them out. Eventually, my HQ raider arrived on turn 4 (I had abysmal reserve rolls), and fired on the squad with the necron lord. The lord made all but 1 of his 'look out sir' rolls, but several of the necron warriors around him got dropped. In the final turn of the game, I just ignored the spyder/scarabs, surrounded the objectives, and fired everything I had at the warriors. Volume of fire dropped all of the warriors, and left the necron lord standing alone, unable to contest vs. my troops.

ROUND 3 RESULT: 6 - 1, Dark Eldar win


In the end, I placed 3rd in the Tournament. The #1 player was one of the Tau armies (not the one that I played against - this army included a riptide, broadsides, some sort of forgeworld suit, and 2 squads of kroot), and I *think* that the 2nd place player played vanilla marines.

Congratulations! But you know you only won because they let you win! ;-P

CptMetal wrote:

Congratulations! But you know you only won because they let you win! ;-P

Most of the game vs. Eldar was spent with me marveling at how sickening the bonuses for the Aspect Host formation are. "What? Everything hits on a 2+, gets to reroll LD checks, and there are no drawbacks? That's disgusting." "Yeah, it is pretty disgusting."