Pure DE at ATC

As I’m sure most people have heard there were some issues with the ATC this year.  There were some shenanigans, that was lame.  The event was habitually behind schedule, that was also lame.  The event was made even more behind schedule because the TOs didn’t handle some of the shenanigans particularly well, that was even more lame.

Event problems aside, I had 6 great games against 6 very pleasant opponents, and despite being way behind schedule still made it to Champy’s on Saturday night for some delicious chicken and 40s (those being my main 2 goals every ATC).

My role this year was to be a rock/defender.  Still trying to win most games but not necessarily trying to max points, and more importantly never lose by a 40-0 landslide.  With DE being my 1st 40k love and the impressive mix of solid offense and unexpected durability we currently have I took this list:

Black heart:
Archon, VB, PGL, Writ, Warlord
3x Dissie Ravagers

Cursed Blade:
2x Succubus, shardnets
2x 6 wyches
19 wyches, 2 shardnets

Prophets of Flesh:
Urien
Haemie, hexrifle, E-whip
7 Grots
2x 5 wracks
9 wracks, osseofactor
2x 3 Talos, haywire, chain flails


In order I played:

1) Brent’s Tyranids/GSC: 2 dakka flyrants, 18 hive guard, malanthrope, 2 neurothropes, magus, 15ish stealers, 10 GSC guardsmen, a smattering if rippers
2) Kolton’s Tyranids/GSC: 2 melee/dakka flyrants, swarmlord, 6 hiveguard, rippers, 30 gaunts, 2 neurothropes, 2x 20 stealers, 2-3 magus, 10 GSC dudes.
3) Ian’s knights/assassins: 3 castellans, 2 eversors, 1 callidus
4) Jim’s AM/BA/SM: guard bodies with mortars, mephiston, lemartes, TH jump captain, 3x5 Scouts, 15-20 deathcompany with a few THs, Shrike, jump primaris lieutenant, 2x5 aggressors, 3x5 intercessors
5) Bob’s Nurgle horde: several buff characters, DP, 90ish plaguebearers, 25 Drone riders.
6) Bill’s Orks: warboss, painboy, 2 kff meks, 2 weirdboys, 60 slugga boys, 30 shoots boys, 30 stormboys, 18 kustom mega cannon mek guns.

Overall I went 4-2, winning by 15-20 in rounds 1 and 2, losing by about 15 in round 3, losing by 6 in round 4, then winning by 5-10 in rounds 5 and 6. Overall accomplishing what the army was designed for. I’ll do individual game reports later.

Looking forward to those reports.

Sent from Topic'it App

Footslogging wyches and wracks . . . you have my attention.

Ok on to round 1 and I found myself paired against Brent and his Tyranids/GSC: 2 dakka flyrants, 18 hive guard, malanthrope, 2 neurothropes, magus, 15ish stealers, 10ish GSC guardsmen, and a few squads of rippers.  

Being 40k MIA for the past year this was actually my first game against either Nids or GSC, but I pretty much knew what everything did, lots of ignore LoS pew pew and some GSC sneakiness.  His army was built to not give up ITC secondaries very well so I went with good ol' Recon/Behind Enemy Lines/Old School.  We rolled up normal Dawn of War deployment, and were playing ITC Mission 1 (lots of objectives which is great for me). Check out the deployment map if you're not familiar with it cause that's how I'll be describing positions.
 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ltQMdeDqYRXOhvdYT3dtUSji3AISvZRM8gDlhOXDaF8/edit#heading=h.1fqd6my3d2w

He deploys almost completely centrally with hive guard on his deployment line, Malanthrope and Neuros behind, and GSC dudes screening on the right, with rippers and tyrants DSing, Stealers and Magus ambushing.  I DSed the grots and big wyche squad, all 3 ravagers (my last deployments) went into my right corner where only 2-3 hive guard from 1 squad had range, 3 talos deploy on my left objective with a heamie and succubus right behind, 3 talos on my right objective with urien and a succubus behind, most of my other stuff goes on the right side, with only a 6 man wyche and 5 man wrack unit on the left.  Looking at my deployment the left side was way under supported and the 3 talos there looked kind of hung out to dry, this was intentional as I wanted him to take this 'easy' target rather than shuffle for more shots on ravagers.

His T1: the couple Hive guard in range of the one ravager shoot and do a couple wounds, all the rest pile into those 3 talos on the left and I think kill one and put some wounds another .  Stealers ambush but he rolls a 3?, and has to be more than 12" away.  Had he gotten a 5/6 he might have been able to charge a ravager since I didn't screen the best, oops, but the dice gods saved me from that mistake.  He still came in on the right table edge near my ravagers with his stealers with magus behind.  I Vect his Hive Guard shoot twice strat.

My T1: Talos push up aggressively, other squads jump on their objectives, I heal one talos on the left for 3 wounds (woot!), other squads shuffle to block Tyrant DSing and intercept stealers but nothing has a great chance at making the charge.  Seeing the way he used his hive guard last turn (took the talos bait and didn't reposition to smoke ravagers), Talos and ravagers pile shooting into stealers and wipe them.

His T2: Tyrants come in conservatively near the center of the board, Magus runs up to mind control a ravager.  Some rippers DS onto an objective, some more DS to screen his left flank (but not very well).  He fails his check to mind control (nice!), shooting is more of the same with both dakka flyrants piling into those poor talos on the left wiping the squad, but he didn't have anything left to shoot the characters with. I vect his hive guard shoot twice strat again.

My T2: Showtime!!  He only used 1 ripper squad to screen on the left, leaving plenty of space to charge rippers and tag hive guard with pile-in/consolidate so both DSing squads go to that side, 5 man wracks use the Prophets strat to show up on his back right board edge to charge GSC dudes strung out to his back right objective, 9 man wracks move to charge rippers on the right midfield objective, 6 man wyches move to charge his magus.  Ravagers dump into his right hive guard and kill 4-5.  Grots fail their charge, but the big wyche unit rolls well and (declaring only rippers as my target) strings out and tags his 2 full hive guard squads with shardnets after wiping the rippers.  Hive guard kill some wyches in CC but Cursed Blade means I don't care about morale.  Everyone else makes their charges killing his magus, another ripper unit, and a couple GSC dudes.  

At this point I now control 5/6 objectives (maybe 6/6 I think I charged his one tyrant on the left midfield objective with vexator mask haemie and a 5 man wrack unit), have lots of stuff in place for recon/behind enemy lines and his offense is basically just the tyrants since the Hive guard won't get out of combat.  Neuros and tyrants dished out a few mortals. Tyrants shot down a couple of my smaller squads, then he pulled them back to try to deal with the wyches/grots and bail out the hive guard but it didn't work.  Wyches leave combat, ravagers pew pew hive guard, then grots and succubus (that followed the now dead talos up) charge whats left to lock it again.  Then the game progresses predictably from here with ravagers mowing things down and my other talos eventually reaching his lines and blending stuff.

We added up points and I won by 15 or so.  A solid performance for a defender list.  I could probably have squeezed more points out of it by being more aggressive but I was given orders by my team captain to not take any risks and just get a Win.

Two our players got near max scores, one other got a low score win, and one took a pretty bad loss giving our team a 4-1 round score and a solid team win for round 1

Thank you for a detailed breakdown of the game. Its both entertaining and useful to se a unusual list in use.