1250 tournament recap

Last night I had the pleasure of taking my DE for their first proper spin in a 1250 point tournament run by my local GW in preparation for an event happening in July, and to coincide with the release of WD400. I took the following:

HQ
Archon, huskblade, shadowfield, combat drugs - 135

Troops
10 kabalite warriors, splinter cannon - 100
Raider with splinter racks - 70

5 warriors, blaster - 60
Venom with additional splinter cannon - 65

5 warriors, blaster - 60
Venom with additional splinter cannon - 65

5 wyches, haywire grenades - 60
Venom with additional splinter cannon

Elites
5 Incubi - 110
Raider - 60

Fast Attack
5 Scourges, 2 haywire blasters - 130

Heavy Support
Ravager (3 lances), night shields - 115

Razorwing Jetfighter with flickerfield, monoscythe missiles and 2 dark lances - 155

Only 10 of us (small store) and playing on 4x4 tables. Fairly wide array of armies, we had 2 tau, 2 blood angels, and one each of orks, dark eldar, dark angels, grey knights, space wolves and necrons. Missions were randomly rolled for and everyone played the same one.

Game 1 I had an unfortunately easy run as I got drawn against the death company list - 3 Death Company furiosos, a terminator reclusiarch, a terminator sanguinary priest, a flamer-ed up Baal predator, and 15 death company armed to the teeth. Emperor's Will and Vanguard strike, but not really relevant... two of the dreadnoughts got shot down by darklight before they got anywhere near me, the third had its flamer arm ripped off so I sent in the haywire wyches to get rid. The Baal showed up from outflank, managed to flame the ravager and a raider but didn't manage even a single glance, and took a blaster to the back, and all the while my venoms were just gunning down death company with impunity, blood angels conceding at the end of turn 3.

Game 2 I played Crusade against Dark Angels on a desert board (complete with pyramid at one end, bastion at the other, and some craters/aquila in the centre). He had an epistolary, company master, 6 man devastator squad with 2x ML, 6 man dev squad with 2x plasma cannon (on the bastion roof), a large tactical squad with the company master in it, ditto for the librarian, and 2 min-sized ones with heavy weapons. All on foot. Also a deathwing squad with assault cannon, and 4 ravenwing bikers (some melta). Perfect storm occurred... I rolled night attacker as a warlord trait, and the Dark Angels were setting up first so I set up out of range (ready to fire back with impunity thanks to night-fighting); bikers scouted forwards down my flank, and I then pinched the initiative... shot down three of the four bikers and the last fled, and killed one small tactical squad for first blood. Ended up focussing fire on his scoring units whilst deep-striking my scourges into his deployment zone to act as another hassle unit. Razorwing turned up and dropped two missiles right on top of his unit with the company master and wiped a good portion of it straight off the table; deathwing ate dark lances, and just generally a bad day at the office for the first legion.

Final game was on the same table, vanguard strike, Relic. Played against Necrons for this one, with 3 wraiths, 2x 5 scarabs with entropic strike (I assume, I never actually asked), 2 ghost arks with 5 warriors in each, an annihilation barge, 10 warriors with overlord and cryptek on foot, and 5 deathmarks with another cryptek in a night scythe. Night fighting on turn 1 so I made sure to set up back, just as well as the necrons stole the initiative. Everything flooded forwards, and he took pot shots at my tanks, but fortunately the snap-firing combined with night-fight left me ok. My darklight on turn 1 was atrocious, with the ravager missing altogether and only landing 2 penetrating hits from the blasters/raider lances, both of which were jinked. Most of my splinter fire went into the wraiths as a result, wiping them out, and the remainder put down 4 warriors from his big squad. Assaulted the scarabs with the incubi in one, and wyches into another, as I didn't want them dropping my tanks (incubi obliterated their unit, wyches tarpitted the others until the end of turn 4). The rest of the game was a really close-fought grind, as my anti-tank weaponry was atrocious (turn 2 still saw no tanks killed as the ravager got 3 hits but not even one glance, the razorwing glanced the night scythe, and that was it) but I kept making jink saves, including a crucial one to keep my ravager alive on its last hull point, and saving one of two glances and 2 of three penetrating hits on my razorwing causing it to be velocity locked, but still alive. Incubi and archon pulled off an 8" charge through cover to massacre the big warrior squad and his overlord who didn't get back up, and it slowly but surely began to tip back towards the dark eldar. Methodically picked off the necron troops, but my stuff started to die once it was out of transports. Archon was caught in the open after the incubi were shredded, but made 8 shadowfield saves before getting into combat with the last of the warriors to keep safe; one venom exploded and lost ALL its passengers, raider squad got 4 killed in an explosion and got pinned - absolute carnage. Eventually however, the dust settled and the Dark Eldar had narrowly emerged on top!


Apologies for wall o'text, didn't get any pictures. End result had me in first place with my 3 wins and good painting and sportsmanship scores, with my necron opponent and the grey knight player joint 2nd just behind. Thanks for reading, and if anyone has any comments on the lists/game recaps then I'd love to hear them!

Where'd you stick the Archon? Just chillin on foot?

Congratz on the win too, always nice to see.

Nah, he's rocking with the Incubi in their raider (only place with enough space). And it ensures that whatever it hits, stays hit...

Sorry, for some reason I saw that as a venom; not a raider. Thanks for poking me

Nice report and congrats on the finish. What were the MVPs and LVPs (least valuable players) of the matches and what changes would you make if any?

Ooh...tricky. I think, to be honest, the MVPs were probably the venoms, being consistently good in all 3 games. Scourges are a surprising close second, coming in to as a finisher squad to polish off weakened units of any flavour. The Incubi did absolutely nothing in game 1, acted just as a fire magnet in game 2, but won me game 3 practically single-handed so its tricky to judge. LVP would be, in brutal honesty, Mr. Ravager... consistently poor dice rolling really let it down. If memory serves, it accounted for a biker, 2 deathwing, a ghost ark (eventually), and the left arm from a dreadnought.

I don't think I'd make any changes to the list; as it stands it puts out a devastating amount of ranged firepower whilst maintaining the tools to take on almost anything. Armed to the teeth with anti-infantry, 7 dark lances for tankbusting with a squad of haywire wyches for similar, a razorwing to give half a chance against enemy fliers, and incubi to chew through anything nasty.

The only realistic change I might make is swapping the scourges for another carbon copy of one of the venom squads, since they all cost about the same points (venom squads all cost 125, scourges cost 130)

I run that exact same scourge unit and would never leave home without it. They're some of the best looking models around, plus I seem to always strip 2 HP off any vehicle I fire at. Took out 12 fire warriors behind a 5+ barricade earlier today too, 7 casualties and they ran off the board. Next turn they finished off a hammerhead, turn 3 they charged into 2 broadsides and tied them up for the rest of the game. Legends.

Timatron, that sounds worryingly, WORRYINGLY like my game against Tau last Wednesday. Finished off a fire warrior squad the turn they game down, then got charged by crisis suits and saw them off, finally charging broadsides to lock them out. I've been finding that that configuration works really well as it should take a hull point per turn, whilst having the same damage output (roughly) as a warrior squad against infantry if there's no good vehicle present (11 shots vs 10-15 depending if there's a splinter cannon present). I mostly run them because I was in GW looking for things to expand my collection and absolutely loved the models, and I don't regret it for a second.

Scourges today: Deepstruck, hit a Helbrute in the back armour, 3 glancing hits ( Codex rule says resolve shot normally and THEN roll for Haywire effect, supersedes the Haywire USR in the BRB!) Then got charged by 5 Plague marines with Champ wieding power maul and the rest with the dirty knives, whatever they're called. Lost Solarite to a challenge ( first time i've ever paid the 10pts for him) then lost combat but got away. Rallied, jumped into ruins ( Strategic trait 1 for the win!), sat on an objective that was worth 3 points (the scouring!) then gunned down all but the champ in return. Sadly they couldn't finish him off, but the objective he was on was only a 2pt one so whatever. That has to be the all time best performance they have ever put in, I said it before and will say it again, Legends!