Panic Puppet takes on Throne of Skulls

Hey TDC! This weekend I'm off down to Throne of Skulls (currently putting the final tweaks to my army, leaving in about 3 hours!). 2 days, 5 games, one champion for each race. I've been twice before with my Blood Angels, and this time I'm taking my comparatively new Dark Eldar force down with me! Plugging this up early so people can see the list I'm taking and take a guess at how well I'll do. Will hopefully update briefly tomorrow night with news-in-brief of games 1 to 3, and if you're very lucky and my phone co-operates there will be resultant batreps with pics!

The list:
Archon, Huskblade, Venom Blade, Shadowfield, Combat Drugs - 140 points
Combat HQ - huskblade lets him go toe to toe with nasty things, venom blade for the mooks. Drugs have a decent shot at mitigating low strength

5 Incubi, Raider, Flickerfield - 180 points
Escort unit. Hits like a freight train even without the archon. Gets the flickerfield because its too valuable to risk dying on T1.

5 Warriors, Blaster, Venom with additional splinter cannon - 125 points
Standard unit. Shoots stuff, scores, can even pop armour in a pinch

5 Warriors, Blaster, Venom with additional splinter cannon - 125 points
So good I took it twice!

5 Wyches, Haywire grenades, Venom with additional splinter cannon - 125 points
Suicide tankbusting unit, can also take on weakened units in combat. Unfortunately overwatch just shafts Wyches.

10 Warriors, Splinter Cannon, Raider with splinter racks - 170 points
Workhorse unit - can deal out a punishing level of firepower.

3 Reavers, Heat Lance - 78 points
Perhaps a weak link, these guys are a last minute sub after my 3 trueborn with 2 dark lances just weren't working out.

5 Scourges, 2 haywire blasters - 130 points
I just love the scourge models. They've been best used as a 'finisher' unit - picking off weakened tanks or the dregs of a squad.

Ravager (3 Dark Lances), Night Shields - 115 points
Its a ravager. It (theoretically) ravages things. I hope.

Razorwing, Flickerfield - 155 points
Batplane number one! Lances to give me a chance in a dogfight, four missiles to make a mess of enemy infantry.

Razorwing, Flickerfield - 155 points
Was going to be a void raven but my conversion failed to materialise, so its been pressed into service as a second razorwing.

That's the lot! Not 100% optimised as I was juggling wargear and vehicle upgrades at the end, but I think it'll do me proud. Look out for an update tomorrow night if I can get interweb access, will give a brief recap on Sunday night, and batreps will start going up on Monday. If anyone else is down and happens to spot a pasty Scotsman with a dark turquoise Dark Eldar army, come say hi!

For Commorragh! Slaves will be taken!

+EDIT+
Found time to write up some fluff to go with my list - enjoy!

The Kabal of the Eternal Masquerade

Recently, a heavy Imperial presence in the Zhoros system met resistance from ancient forces, a dark alliance of Chaos and Necron forces, which sparked an all-out campaign for the entire system. Watching from the shadows, a young kabalite trueborn saw a chance to make his name. Gathering a small band of his fellow warriors, Val’daer splintered from his native kabal and set out into realspace to achieve glory, or die trying – there was no going back from here.

String after string of unlikely victories followed, and more Dark Eldar were slowly lured to Val’daer’s side. The forces of the Imperium and the Ancients were taken completely by surprise, and were hard pressed to defend against the invading third force. After the fall of the first planet in the system, Khaleski, to the Dark Eldar forces, Val’daer was hailed as leader by the forces under his command, and took up the mantle of Archon – the Kabal of the Eternal Masquerade had been born.

A local platoon of the Imperial Guard chose to side with the Dark Eldar rather than be obliterated to a man, reasoning that death later was better than death now. They were, however, surprised at their treatment, as Val’daer instructed his warriors to regard the guardsmen as allies as opposed to slaves, and to treat them with honour and respect. Not wishing to risk an uprising was a concern, but Val’daer also knew that the tanks of the Guard’s forces would be an asset in quelling the other forces. One by one the planets began to fall and, with the Imperium and Chaos at each other’s throats, they were powerless to prevent command of the system from falling to the Dark Eldar.

After the success of the campaign, Val’daer honoured his agreement by returning to the webway with the loot and slaves his kabal had plundered, leaving the Imperial Guard forces untouched. Wondering at this treatment, as they had fully expected to have to fight for their lives at the termination of the campaign, the Imperial Guard turned to colonising the planets. Their last memory was of Val’daer’s cold smile, as he thought of the Inquisition ships which would be descending upon the system to exact vengeance on the traitorous guardsmen when they learned of their betrayal. Why risk his own forces when the mon-keigh would clean up after him?

This was enough to mark the kabal as having a presence in Commorragh, but no kabal can survive for long without a steady supply of slaves. Val’daer has readied his forces for another attack on realspace, with no set target in mind. Cold and calculating, he will use everything at his disposal to climb to the top. Nobody is safe, not even the Kabal of the Black Heart – after all, when one defects from Vect’s kabal, and takes members with them, danger is sure to lurk in every corner…

Hey man just thought I'd say that army was pretty brutal when we had a DE showdown and I reckon you'll do well with it. Good luck!

Where does your Archon start off as all your transports look full?

Lots of dakka in the list though! Good luck!

The 5-man incubi squad are in a raider, so no they are not full I think
Good luck, anyways.

Oh yeah wow, just read it as Venom haha, sorry was trying to work out if there was a cunning plan I wasn't seeing but was just not seeing the list properly!

Good luck - looking forward to your reports.

Interesting to see how you get on with the incubi & archon with no PGL, as most would see it as a mandatory choice for the unit. I personally hope they kick arse!

I'm back! And Squierboy, I can say that arse was most definitively kicked (not necessarily by the Incubi, sadly). Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures - was too busy gaming, but I'll try to do the reports in-brief as best I can from memory (so lists might be hazy). And yep, Archon ran with the Incubi in the raider.

I'm going to give my (slightly spoilery) recap now, and do the reports tomorrow because I am EXHAUSTED. It was a fantastic weekend; good banter, good games, and I'm really pleased with the way the army performed as a whole. Surprisingly, I faced a really wide range of armies over the weekend, and most were outright new for me to face in a tournament setting. In order:
1) Space Wolves
2) Orks
3) Chaos with Necron allies (very small contingent)
4) Dark Angels with Blood Angels allies
5) Necrons

I've got a spoiler tag coming up, so if anyone doesn't want to know how I did, look away now!

Spoiler:

Stats for the stat god:
120 players (big room!). Every army was represented to some degree. 15 Dark Angels players, 14 Space Marines, 13 Tau Empire, 10 Necrons, 10 Grey Knights, 8 Space Wolves, 8 Blood Angels, 7 Chaos Space Marines, 6 Sisters of Battle, 5 each of Dark Eldar, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, and Imperial Guard, and only 2 Black Templars and Chaos Daemons players. Slightly surprising mix, and I was very glad to avoid Tau. Overall tournament winner was, surprisingly, a Dark Angel. 15 players won all 5 games, and 12 left in disgrace with 5 straight losses.

There were some utterly, utterly filthy lists that I was pleased I didn't have to play against. One Tau player took a broadside missile spam army (3x3 broadsides with SMS, missile pods, and missile drones, 3 units of pathfinders, 3 units of fire warriors) - I went with 4 friends, two of the others faced it and both got absolutely facerolled. The ubiquitous triple helldrake list was in attendance, as were a couple of other nasty armies, but those are the two that really stood out.

That's all for now - I'll post the lists I faced against and brief game reports tomorrow!

Looking forward to this especially the incubi's performance since we dont usually see those in tourneys!

Congrats on the victory! Very impressive, and good to hear other Dark Eldar players doing well, I wonder if that player is a member here? On another note is Throne of Skulls a Swiss Tournament?

the other

and congrats on your success

Thanks for the link Vasara. Good to know all this talent is lurking on The Dark City.

Throne of Skulls is in the UK, at Warhammer World, and is run by GW. My gaming group often goes, and my friend was one of the Black Templar players! Last time he went, he got "Best Black Templar Player", as he was the only one!
This year he got "Most Useless Model", for his Dreadnaught, which got into combat against a squad of regular marines in turn 2, and was finally destroyed in turn 5, having not killed a single Marine!

ToS is designed to be a "friendly tournament", and whilst everyone there is obviously trying to win, the emphasis is on diversity, so the opponent structure is random, not graded: you might have 5 games against noobs, or against vets, or anything in between, and the final ranking is done by army, and with a complex system comparing your points to the average points for your codex.
As such, the people bringing this week's latest uber-list have to work MUCH harder than the friendly guys bringing obscure ones.
There are also plenty of other certificates for sportsmanship, modelling, and silly ones for bad luck!

My friends always come back from ToS having had a great weekend, lots to drink in Bugman's Bar, and kicking themselves for not winning the bar quiz!

(I am not allowed to go: my Skaven-Counts-As-Tyranids were not permitted, and my new DE army has a lot of non-GW models in it, which are banned as it is GW's sacred ground!)

commandersasha wrote:

so the opponent structure is random, not graded: you might have 5 games against noobs, or against vets, or anything in between

Ahh, so it's not Swiss-system tournament, that explains multiple people winning all their games (though technically that can still happen in swiss). That makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification.

Looking to take my DE to the ToS in September hopefully. Congrats to Panic_Puppet for winning all 5 games though. Excellent work!

Yupyup. It used to be winners vs winners, but it changed at some point last year. Does mean that somebody's uber-powerlist that's won 3 games easily goes up against someone's fluffy beer and pretzels list in the fourth round who hasn't won a game yet, but there's advantages and disadvantages to both systems. Vasara's already stuck the link up to the other list (filthy list, lovely chap - were were checking in on each other throughout the weekend after encountering each other after round 1 and having a chat about the relative lack of DE players). The other 3 DE players: one had a win, two draws and two losses, and the other two each had 3 wins and two losses, so overall quite successful for the few of us that were there.

Brief reports as I really can't remember much now .

Game 1 - Crusade (3 objectives), Vanguard Strike
I was up against Space Wolves for the first game - 3 10 man squads with a wulfen and dual-plasma, 3 bikes with a flamer and a m-m attack bike, 2 dreads (one lascannon, one assault cannon), missile/las longfangs, a vindicator, and two rune priests, one in termy armour (warlord) with the fangs, and one in power armour with a blob unit. Each big unit also had a wolf guard in terminator armour to sponge some wounds. I went first and managed to break the vindicator for first blood, and dented some of his squads. He ruined my incubi raider on his first turn and I didn't get to combat, so they and my archon were out of the game. I just poured fire into the squads, focussing on each one until it was dead, and one blobbed up on an objective. Then it took a razorwing to the face... two direct hits with the missiles for a grand total of 22 hits, and another lance hit, and 21 wounds. Got rid of most of the squad. Haywire wyches had one of the dreads. I pretty much ignored the dreads and longfangs until everything scoring had gone away. The warlord was the only thing left at the end of turn 5 thanks to his termy armour, and I got him at the start of turn 6. Result: DE victory by wipeout.

Game 2 - Big Guns Never Tire (3 objectives), Dawn of War
Vs shooty orks. Nasty list. 2 units of lootas, battlewagon (one unit used it as a bunker), defence line with quad gun, blob of orks with heavy armour and a warboss, 10 grots, 2 killa kans, 3 killa kans, deff dread with 2 flamers, big mek with force field, and two dakkajets. He won the roll and went first. He had all his walkers on my right flank, blocking LoS to his mek behind them, and this was the only game I deployed my reavers. It was night fight, so I sat back and let him fail to get me, losing a hull point on the ravager; most of my stuff was behind a ruin. I moved everything out, and the first thing I did was turbo the reavers to the corner, bladevaning the mek for first blood, and leaving his walkers open. The dread got taken out over 3 turns by my raider's lance, and the wyches assaulted the 3 kans, killing them in his turn 2, and assaulted the second set in my turn 2. He had so much shooty though, that I had to sacrifice my incubi. Turn 1, I flat-out moved the raider right up next to his defence line, as they were a must-deal-with problem. They died, giving up warlord, but bought me time to get the rest of my army. Razors came in separately, and I was able to hide from his quad gun each time by coming on behind a ruin. I eventually got all his troops, and had 3 heavy kills and first blood vs his 2 heavy kills and warlord (still had a razorwing hiding), and he manfully struggled on to try and kick me off objectives, but conceded when I put down his warlord as he had no way to even tie (he had to kick me off the objectives, and drop the razorwing, stop my linebreaking wyches, AND get into my deployment zone).
Result: DE victory by concession (end of turn 5).

All for now, will put up games 3-5 later on!

What was that Dark Angel winner playing. My friend would like to know. He is about to give up on his DA

Haven't a clue, I'm afraid, MongooseDog.

In other news, I've been scouring WHW's facebook page to find some shots of my army in action, and got a few! So:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/935213_602582113094606_140649733_n.jpg
Archon Val'Daer, making a less than stellar entry in the Legends painting competition!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/945519_602581623094655_990749105_n.jpg
Round one - the Space Wolves try to hold off my implacable advance! Think this is during Space Wolves turn two, as I've got both my Razorwings in but haven't quite finished his bikes yet - attack bike is still there! I'm down two raiders and a venom (you can see the archon and incubi skulking behind a ruin where its relatively safe).

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/268887_602583226427828_155776588_n.jpg
Despite a lot of wrecked transports, the Kabal continues to storm an entrenched Ork position! Note the kabalites in the crater at the back, objective hugging - they ran away shortly after! This was taken pretty late in the game, Dark Eldar in the ascendancy but still all to play for!

@Mongoose Dog it was an all Ravenwing army. Bikes, Bikes and more bikes. The guy came with his brother who did an all Deathwing army. Pretty cool fellows.

Thanks, Void Stalker

Right, going to dump the last 3 reports and give overall thoughts.

Game 3 - The Relic, Hammer and Anvil
I was up against Ash this game, and this one was borderline decided ahead of time. He was playing a very strong list overall (trimmed down from a competitive 1850 list), but Dark Eldar were something of a bogey match for it. He had: Kharn and 27 cultists (fearless, blob on an objective, win games), 10 cultists, 3 units of 5 spawn, a pair of maulerfiends, a destroyer lord with all the trimmings, a single wraith, and 5 warriors in a night scythe. Unfortunately, the spawn are designed to be the workhorses of the list with their comparatively high toughness and number of wounds, but poisoned weapons make a mockery of this, especially after I won the roll for first turn. Given that his was an almost exclusively combat army, he'd have a hard time catching me. I exploded a maulerfiend on turn 1 for first blood, and perhaps stupidly advanced to try and get the relic (as I knew I'd have a hard time shifting cultists). Fortunately for me his spawn failed a lot of their charges (I'd stuck myself about 15" away to try and bait them out of cover), and turn 2 saw his remaining maulerfiend get wrecked. I foolishly dropped a unit of kabalites onto the relic, but they promptly got eaten. Night Scythe turned up but didn't do anything to my razorwings, and his 10 man squad of cultists turned up and began the long slog. Turn 3 I shot down the scythe, putting his 5 warriors back into reserve, and I slaughtered most of the remaining spawn. Rude things happened to the large cultist blob as I focussed fire on those in the open, and kharn took a dark lance to the face. He threw in the towel as I prepared to assault the remnants of his cultist blob with my archon/incubi and the wyches, leaving him dead in the water due to being down first blood and warlord, and practically no way of getting the relic.

I feel bad after going over the results as Ash won his four other games, and was one of the players who scored the max 5 points for favourite game votes (which I believe is 3 or more favourite game votes, could be 4 or more). He ended up missing best chaos player to someone who had 5 wins and 3 favourite game points, meaning that even a draw would have seen Ash take home the title.

Game 4 - Purge the Alien, Dawn of War
First game on Sunday morning... get to the hall and take a look to see which table we're on and who we're playing (they've got a rotating powerpoint now, which is a bit irritating). Lo and behold, due to the vagaries of the completely random system, its Ash again! After a quick chat with guys on a neighbouring table, a quick opponent swap is negotiated and I end up squaring off against John's Dark/Blood Angels:
Belial (TH/SS), 2 deathwing squads (2 hammers, 2 storm bolters, 1 assault cannon), vindicator (DA), Baal Predator, Autocannon/Heavy Bolter Predator (BA), librarian, DA devastators (5 ML), and 5 assault marines with a meltagun. Under normal circumstances I'd fancy my chances heavily against this list, but the mission levels the playing field significantly - I have twice as many kill points as him, meaning its very likely that I'll need the total wipeout to win. I deploy as standard, but keep my distance as my edge lies in range. He keeps his deathwing and assault squad in reserve, and deploys his shooty element centrally. Then manages to seize the initiative. Uh-oh... Goes from bad to worse as both deathwing squads land; Belial's near my wych venom and warrior raider, and the other near my archon's raider. Some stuff advances, and there is much shooting. The archon's raider goes down in a ball of flames, and 3 incubi die. Thankfully, they don't run. Belial and his unit shoot at my warrior raider but fortunately I'd screened it with the venom, and get a cover save against his two penetrating and one glancing hit, and I jink both the pens! I start to run and knock out some tanks; archon and the remaining incubi cut down the deathwing on that side, and I shoot some of the others. Turn 2 sees the assault squad turn up, and my remaining incubi get killed. Belial goes after a venom on his own and hilariously fails to take it down (flickerfields must be annoying). Archon has the assault marines for breakfast. I slowly get rid of the rest of his army and it ends with Belial and the archon in a dangerous challenge. I piled in a warrior squad and my wyches to get re-rolls, my scourges were already there, and a warrior squad had legged it. On turn 5, we were still in the challenge, and I suddenly realised that if Belial won, I might actually lose - first blood, linebreaker, warlord, 2 raiders, warriors, incubi, archon, and Belial's warlord trait vs the fact that I'd only taken 8 kill points and linebreaker, and during my turn 5 he could easily thump my two remaining scourges to take it 10-9. Fortunately Val'Daer is alert to the danger and huskblade's Belial in the face.
Final result: DE victory by annihilation (in turn 5). Honourable mention to the pair of razorwings who decided not to show up until turn 4, when there was nothing to shoot at.


Game 5 - The Emperor's Will, Hammer and Anvil
Final game of the weekend, and I've drawn Matthew's Necrons. The good: I outrange him. The bad: I'm dominated by firepower at close range. The ugly: there's a d-lord and a large unit of wraiths. His list:
Destroyer lord (all the cool stuff), big unit of wraiths, most with whip coils, 5 destroyers (bleah), 10 immortals with a cryptek, 20 warriors with a veil-cryptek, and res-orb overlord (hmm, I wonder what he's planning to use as a scoring unit), and a pair of annihilation barges. I win the roll for table sides and pick the side with a ruin in it, and a ruin just outside of the DZ, leaving some forests in the middle and him with a forest and crater. Handily, my warlord trait is the stealth (ruins) one, and my objective goes in the ruin (his is in the crater). He wins the roll for first turn though, and sets up with the immortals on his objective, the warriors off to one side, and everything else far forwards. I set up out of sight with some things, but keep everything out of his max range. This is the only game I played with mysterious objectives, and his turned out to be a skyfire nexus (smeg), mine was sabotaged. Turn 1 his barges retreat slightly, but the wraiths and destroyers came blasting forwards. His big unit veiled right into my deployment zone, on the side away from my warrior raider and incubi raider, but unfortunately scattered wildly and mishapped, going back into ongoing reserves. My turn, and I poured almost everything into the destroyers (because by the spires of Commorragh, I HATE those things). I wipe them out for first blood, then turn my attention to the wraiths (which I hate even more than destroyers, but I wanted to be sure of first blood as that's really important with this mission and set-up). I get him down to just two wraiths remaining (I think. It could be turn 2 I manage that). Incubi charge because its better than being charged, and I lose, the archon running. He later charges and kills my archon with the wraiths. What happened when is hazy but I remember killing the lord, who got back up, and charged my reavers which I stupidly jetbiked into the building to try and keep safe, as I was relying on them for a late linebreaker. Fortunately, they killed him with overwatch (ha!) and he came back again, where my warriors put him down for the third time and he stayed there. Razors turned up individually and shot at the immortals. One got velocity locked by a barge; I killed the other barge with lances. Wyches fluffed killing his barge with haywire on turn 4. The swing factor in this game was his veil-tek. Turn 2, they marched back on. Turn 3 they veiled to the same place as before, and scattered again, this time onto the venom, and went back into reserve. Turn 4, they marched back on. Turn 5, they veiled onto my objective. Now normally, I'd have been well away by then but I'd been leaving my warriors in a raider back because I knew I'd still have these to deal with. The cryptek gets a 9 inch scatter, and guess where he lands... the warriors go back into ongoing reserve AGAIN, leaving me a 1 hull point annihilation barge and 3 immortals to deal with on my turn 5. I duly do, and its a really unfortunate tabling.
End result: DE victory by annihilation (turn 5). Helped immensely by the fact that I never had to deal with a good 400-odd points of his army. I got one shooting phase at the big unit on turn 3 from a razorwing, and that was it. If they'd landed earlier, I'd certainly have had a rough time. Turn 5 I still would have been ok, as I'd have been able to contest that one with the reavers and win by first blood, but it still felt like a really unfortunate way to win.



So, overall, 5 wins - which I was absolutely ecstatic with, given that I'm a relative Dark Eldar noob. My gaming goal had been to win more games than I lose, and I definitely made that. In all I had a fantastic weekend - played against some great opponents, and had a good weekend catching up with old friends. Team Diversity, so called because there were five of us, four of us had allies, and we still only used four codices between us (DE, DE+ Eldar, Tau+SM, and 2 SM+Tau)! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed about not getting best Dark Eldar, but that doesn't take anything away from the weekend as a whole. It looks like Throne of Skulls might be shifting to a one-day format, which I wouldn't necessarily go to, but I might well have more gaming weekend reports to come in the future. Any C&C then let me know!

Hi Panic,

Congratulations on winning all five games so convincingly (even if the Necron player was having some reserves issues) - that's obviously a really solid showing. Is there anything you'd change about your army? I know it's a little frustrating to lose out on best player (I once lost it because my printer crashed and I had to hand-write my list, and that was the deciding factor! Curses. I'd even beaten the guy who won in the end - we both went 4-1 - I see him at ToS fairly regularly - we still laugh about it... and it was back in 5th ed!).

You weren't, by any chance, hanging around the Rhino outside Warhammer World at the end of the day, were you?

From what I hear, ToS is staying as two days, but they are also going to run 1 day versions - I, like you, will stick to the 2days, feels like a much more solid event. Plus more games is always better

Will you be taking Dark Eldar next time you go? I saw your models (the dark turqoise army) - looking really good -I was quite envious!

Oh, for anyone who cares, my mate won overall and his Ravenwing list was this:

Sammael
Level 2 Librarian, Bike, Auspex
Command Squad (6 members thanks to the FAQ) Apothecary, Banner of Devestation, 1 Grenade Launcher
6 Bikes, 2 Meltaguns, Multimelta Attack Bike
6 Bikes, 2 Meltaguns, Multimelta Attack bike
6 Bikes, 2 Meltaguns, Multimelta Attack bike
6 Bikes, 2 Flamers
1,499 points

He won all five of his games and got 3 out of 5 for favourite opponent points.