500p tournament skirmish ideas

Hi guys

recently i've participated in two 500pts one-day tourney in my local store.
List restrictions are:
0-1 HQ.
1-3 Troops.
0-2 Units taken in any combination from Elites, Fast attack or Heavy support.
no formations, no one model can cost more than 100pts, maximum 2 vehicles and bunch other that dont affect DE, eg psyker, armor value etc....

so its three games per night and maelstrom/eternal war randomly.

Now, in 1000points+ i tend to win more than i lose but so far ive been crushed badly in all 6 games. two games i won on points though with 2-3 models left because of time limits or, the game ended. But that was mostly luck, if there had been time for one more round=tabled

My army the first games:
5 warriors/dis raider
5 warriors/2xSC venom
5 warriors
6 reavers/caltrops/champ-warlord
5 haywire scourges

second:
5 trueborn/2xSC/dracon/haywire grenade-warlord
2x5 warriors/blaster/2xSC venom
5 warriors/blaster
6 scourges


in my first list i thought i didnt have enough shooting and i was facing mostly toughness values so in my next one i focused on AI. That blew up in my face and i felt it hard in 2/3 games. Also faced a nurgle army with shrouded on main units that had cover saves down to 2+ .... i couldnt scratch them. Is the blaster too much in the warrior unit ?


aanyway, do you guys have some tips og tactics in these small games. In the next tourney i was thinking of taking 2xwarriors/venoms, beastmasters with a dash of fiend and khymera and haywire scourges. The scourges are really invaluable in these games with them haywires! Also lack of cc hurt me somewhat, i think incubi and grots are too expensive here hence the beastmasters

Hi doriii,

I wouldn't bother with Trueborn at all because they eat up one of your 2 slots for non-troop units. And seeing as the limit is 1-3 troops, not 2-3, I'd opt for only one unit of Kabalites.

Beastmasters are stars in small point games, so yeah definitely give them some consideration. All of them would do well, I think, but the stand out is one or two clawed fiend as they're a pretty big threat to all targets, especially when rules restricting spamming well armoured units or psychic units go. Add your choice of dogs or birds or both to taste if points allow.

Have you considered, or do you own, any Sslyth? Just 2 or 3 of them in a transport gives you a significant boost to combat and can shoot fairly well too. If it were me, I'd go 2 Sslyth, 1 Medusae in a dual cannon Venom. More survivable and infinitely more killy than 5 Kabalites.

Something like:

HQ - Court with 2 Sslyth, Medusae, Venom.
Troop - Kabalites x10 with Syrabite, Raider with Splinter Racks and Dark Lance
Fast - Scourges x 5 with 4 haywire blasters.
Fast - Beastmaster unit with 1 Clawed fiend, 4 dogs, and a beastmaster.

I can't recall the prices of beastmaster models exactly, though, so it might not work.

im definitely testing the beast then!
i considered sslyths, i dont have the models yet but also worth it

now that im thinking about it, our T5 units are all something that needs a babysitter, sslyth, fiend and grots. a tax of sort

the beasts are overlooked in bigger games, when we can take the fighter, reavers and scourges en masse

since i dont have the sslyth (or medusae) and i need longer range antitank with AP2 support for pesky units

2x5 warriors/DL raider
beastmasters: 4 fiends, 2 khymera, 2 beastmasters
5 haywire scourges, solarite/venom blade


i will have to juggle the units in the beast pack back and forth, also thinking about duality, are reavers with heatlance/blaster/caltrops better overall than the 5 scourge haywire unit ?

I think so, yeah. Some opponents will show up without any vehicles at all, and at that point Scourges become pretty bad.

Even Reavers with Cluster Caltrops alone are quite damaging to anything, especially at only 500 points. If points allow, your choice of Heat Lance or Blaster is good, and you might even be able to get an Arena Champion added.

Have you considered running two units of Reavers, supported by the two Kabalite units in their transports? It would be a fast, versatile, symmetrical build. Could be pretty potent.

You're right when you say that our vanilla T5 models need babysitting, but it's worth remembering that Clawed Fiends ( and Sslyth for that matter) can literally be fielded in a 1 model unit all on their own so leadership isn't a factor anyway. A single clawed fiend is surprisingly tough to kill at 500 points, and its really annoying to deal with if it camps cover. At such a low cost, it eats transports or small units in combat pretty efficiently.

I think you have a lot of choices available, I wish you all the best!