1000 pt Tournament at Dragon*Con - Battle Summary/Highlights

This past labor day weekend, I played in a 1000 pt tourney held at Dragon*Con. The same TO organized a 750 pt tourney last year, which I placed 3rd in. Since I can't remember every detail of each of the 3 rounds, I will present the highlights below.

My list was as follows:

HQ: Archon - WWP, blaster, power sword (goes on raider with trueborn)

Elite: Trueborn x5, blaster x4, Raider (dis cannon)

Troop1: Kabalite warriors x5, blaster, Raider (dark lance)
Troop2: Kabalite warriors x5, blaster, Raider (dark lance)
Troop3: Kabalite warriors x5, blaster, Venom (Splinter Cannon x2)
Troop4: Kabalite warriors x5, blaster, Venom (Splinter Cannon x2)

Heavy1: Ravager (dark lance x3)
Heavy2: Ravager (dis cannon x3)


The ruleset for this particular tourney was 7th edition battleforged, with draft FAQs in effect. I knew that I was going to be in for a rough ride when the TO announced that, for simplicity, all 3 rounds were to be Purge the Alien, and as you all know, DE tend to give out kill points like candy. The tourney winners would be determined by total number of victory points won over the course of the 3 rounds.

Round 1: vs. Khorne Daemonkin
My opponent for this round had a couple units of cultists, a couple units of berzerkers (1 led by a lord), a unit of possessed, and a Defiler. His strategy was basically to run at me from across the board while his defiler lobbed pie-plates. Luckily, his Defiler fell to dark lance fire on turn 2, so I could devote all of my firepower to shooting down the advancing units. He did manage to get his possessed into cc, killing a unit of warriors; the possessed got torn apart by splinter shots in the following turn, of course. By the end of the game, all that my opponent had remaining was his chaos lord, so he spent all of his boon points and transformed it into a bloodthirster. This was intimidating to be sure, until the bloodthirster died to massed blaster and splinter fire immediately afterward.

Result: Win 10-2


Round 2: vs. Dark Angels

My opponents army consisted of a Ravenwing Strike Force and a Skyhammer Annihilation Force. This was actually the first time I had ever played against the cheese that is the darkshroud's re-rollable 2+ cover save bubble. Since my army is shooty-based, I pretty much had no way to counter this. Still, early on, I did manage to hit one of his landspeeders with a dark lance shot that he rolled double 1's on, which got me first blood. All other shots were, of course, ineffective.

Thankfully, when his skyhammer came in, they were far enough out from his cover bubble to be viable targets. So, after some initial losses, I started to get back some kill points by targeting his assault and devastator squads.

I did far better than I thought that I was going to, but he still edged out a win by moving a unit of bikes into my deployment zone to grab linebreaker on the final turn.

Result: Loss 6-7


Round 3: vs. Craftworld Eldar

My opponent's army consisted of a CAD and an Aspect Host. It consisted of Rangers, several Vypers, a unit fire dragons(in a wave serpent), a unit of dark reapers, and a large unit of Scorpions led by Karandras. The board had several nice pieces of LOS-blocking building terrain, so I decided to take a huge gamble; I deployed 2 units of warriors on foot behind buildings (far apart from each other), and put the rest of my entire army into deep-strike reserve (except for the ravagers, who were in standard reserve). It made for a very tense turn 1, as I waited to see if my opponent could position himself to successfully table me.

However, my warriors ducked, covered, and survived, and my turn 2 reserve rolls went well, so the gamble paid off. First order of business was taking out his Dark Reapers, who were kind enough to stand on some battlements for me and die to massed splinter fire. His scorpions rushed forward and took out one of my initial units of warriors, but it left his unit far away from the rest of the action, with the prospect of slogging across lots of open ground to get to where they could be useful. The draft FAQ jink rule was just as much of a hindrance to him as it was to me, as he had to snap fire with his fire dragons after unloading them off of a jinking wave serpent. My archon, at this point, lacking his transport and down a few trueborn, decided to charge the fire dragons, and killed them all with his power sword. Unfortunately, he fell to shuriken cannon fire in the next turn. Still, by the end of turn 5, all that was left of my opponent's army was a unit of rangers, a vyper, and Karandras standing all by his lonesome. I had 2 venoms full of warriors, and 2 ravagers - Definitely enough to give me a shot at scoring 1-3 more VPs in turn 6. However, the die roll determined that there would be no turn 6.

Result: Win 7-6

So, I totalled 23 VPs over the 3 rounds, which was 2 points shy of 3rd place.

Excellent showing from the dark kin in an uphill battle. Not much to be said about skyhammer dark angels I'm afraid.