The Dark City UK Meet Up - Throne of Skulls Nov 13

Back from ToS and absolutely knackered. Had a great time. Met up with our Exalted Leader, played some great games. Won 3, Drew 1, Lost 1. More details tomorrow.

Couldn't make it due to an impecunious nature and lack of fellow travellers... next time, gadget!

This is just a brief report as I don’t think I have the memory capacity to do a detailed report on each of the five games I played over the weekend. First things first, my list:

Baron Sathonyx (goes with Beast Pack)
5 Wyches in Venom with extra Splinter Cannon
5 Wyches in Venom with extra Splinter Cannon
Beast Pack (4 Beastmasters, 9 Khymerae, 4 Razorwings)
Farseer on Jetbike with Shard of Anaris (goes with Beast Pack)
5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon and Holo-field
5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon and Holo-field
6 Warp Spiders
Wraithknight

1500 Points

Game One
First game was against a nice guy called Liam and his White Scars bike list. From memory this was:
Khan on Moondrakken
Chaplain on Bike
3 x Bike Squads (2 with Grav, 1 with Melta)
2 x Scout Bike Squads
Land Speeder Squadron (3 Speeders)

Mission was Crusade (4 objectives) with Dawn of War deployment.  Liam suffered from some of the worst dice rolling I’ve ever seen and this basically scuppered any chance of a win for him. He failed almost every charge roll he attempted, immobilised 2 of his own Speeders on terrain and lost an entire bike squad to Psychic Scream from my Farseer. 8-0 win to me.

Game Two
Chris’s Space Wolves Drop Pod Army.
Rune Priest (Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane)
2 Dreadnoughts
4 Grey Hunter Squads
Wolf Guard Squad

Mission was The Emperor’s Will with Hammer and Anvil deployment. I gave Chris first turn as I’d have nothing to do if I went first. I deployed my entire army in one corner of the battlefield surrounding my objective. The huge footprint of my beast pack combined with the terrain made it very hard for Chris to land any of his pods close enough to do anything worthwhile and his scatter rolls moved almost all of them several inches further away from my army. In the end he managed to get First Blood by blowing up an empty Venom and that was about it. This left me in a position where I was able to get my Wyches into his Dreadnoughts and my Beasts into his Grey Hunters, which meant I was able to do some serious damage on turn one. The rest of the game consisted of Chris trying to squeeze his drop pods into some incredibly tight spaces, generally with a great deal of success and I have to commend him for his bravery/recklessness (a true Space Wolf!).  Poor reserve rolls though meant his army came in piecemeal and I was able to concentrate my firepower and assault on a couple of units at a time. At the end of the game he had one Grey Hunter pack on his objective but nothing else left alive other than drop pods. We were fast running out of time though and agreed that we were not going to be able to complete both players turn 5 in time and therefore called it at the end of turn 4, which was a draw. If it had gone on another turn I would have been able to split off my Farseer and turbo-boost him into Chris’s deployment zone for Line Breaker and the win but that’s academic.

Game Three
Alex’s Chaos Space Marines and Daemons. A beautifully converted, Nurgle-themed army.
Typhus
20+ Plague Zombies
5 Plague Marines
Helldrake
Land Raider
Predator
Obliterators
Herald of Nurgle
Plaguebearers

Mission was Big Guns Never Tire with 4 objectives and Vanguard Strike deployment. A very close battle but my (scoring) Wraithknight held an objective all game (and nothing wanted to come near it), my other units took another objective and I was able to contest his 2 objectives on the last turn leaving me with a 9-0 victory.

Game Four
John’s Grey Knights:
Crowe
2 units of Purifiers
2 Dreadknights with Incinerators, Swords and Teleporters
Vindicare
Aegis Defence Line with Icarus Lascannon
Stormraven

Mission was Purge the Alien with Hammer and Anvil deployment. I gave John the first turn. He set up one squad of Purifiers behind the defence line with both Dreadknights. Crowe cowered in a ruined building at the back of John’s deployment zone. The other Purifer Squad were in the Stormraven. I deployed in midfield with the Beast Pack as far forward as possible to try to get into his army turn 2. John infiltrated his Vindicare behind the defence line and manned the Icarus with him.

What followed was the most one-sided battle either I or my opponent had ever played. John shunted both Dreadknights right up the table and flamed both of my Venoms, wrecking one. The Vindicare attempted to assassinate the Baron with the Lascannon but his Shadowfield held. The surviving Venom opened fire with both Splinter Cannon and promptly annihilated one of the Dread’s in a veritable storm of poisoned shards. The Wave Serpents then turned their guns on the other Dreadknight which disappeared in a blinding burst of laser fire and deadly shurikens. With nothing left to assault, the beast pack ran forward towards the Purifiers. Turn 2, the Stormraven came on and opened fire on a Wave Serpent but either missed or failed to penetrate with everything. The Purifiers fired on the beasts but did little damage. The Vindicare again tried to shoot the Baron but the Shadowfield again held out (should have used Shield-Breaker!).  The Beasts bounded forward, leaving them only a few inches from the defence line. The Venom turned its cannon on the Vindicare whose agility was not quite enough to dodge all those shots. The Wave Serpents turned all their guns, and both Serpent Shields, on the Stormraven and managed to wreck it. The resulting Crash & Burn killed all 9 Purifiers that were inside it. The Beasts charged the Purifiers and easily wiped them out, leaving just Castellan Crowe alive at the end of Turn 2! Briefly, Crowe assaulted the Beasts and actually held out for 2 turns before finally succumbing to the inevitable. I had given up First Blood and lost 1 Kill Point but had Line Breaker, Slay the Warlord and all 7 kill points, which gave me a 9-2 win but that didn’t really tell the whole story of the absolute carnage inflicted on the Grey Knights.

This was a fun game and John was a great opponent who took it all in good humour. We also discovered that he was travelling with some of the staff from my local GW store and they actually game not too far from where I play. We’re therefore hoping to get together for some more games in the future.

Game Five
Going into the last game I had 3 wins and a draw, which kept me in the running for Best Dark Eldar. I faced Wayne and his Chaos Daemons/Chaos Space Marines in the last battle of the tournament. Wayne had 4 wins under his belt and a very competitive list.

Great Unclean One
2 units of Plaguebearers with Heralds
2 Soulgrinders with Phlegm Cannons
Chaos Sorceror
3 Nurgle Obliterators
10 Cultists
Helldrake
Hellbrute

The mission was The Relic, with Hammer & Anvil deployment. I always have trouble with the Relic as my troops really don’t like to be out in the open in the centre of the battlefield. This ended up being a bit of a whitewash but there were a couple of turning points in the game that went against me. If they’d gone the other way, I think I’d have actually got the win as I wiped out all Wayne’s troops and still had units that could potentially have secured the Relic. Sadly, this didn’t happen and Wayne picked up a win through First Blood and Slay the Warlord (the first and only time that the Baron died all weekend). At the end of the battle I had a single Dire Avenger left but Wayne had a Great Unclean one with a single wound and his Sorceror and Obliterators, who had deployed so far back that I just left them alone and they had little to shoot at all game due to dense terrain blocking most fire avenues. Wayne had an extraordinary knowledge of the rules and was happy to offer advice when needed but without being confrontational or condescending, which was very helpful and I learned a lot from this game.

Overall, the weekend was great fun. I met up with Sky Serpent and we had a good chat. Chris, my Space Wolf opponent from game 2, introduced me to some of his mates and we went out for beers on Saturday night, resulting in some pretty nasty hangovers on account of the Jaegerbombs. The quiz in Bugmans was good fun as usual and all of my opponents were friendly and good to play against.

Looking forward to going to another one!

Great report.

Did you roll (or even tried to roll) Fortune in many of the games?

How did you like the WK/beast combo?

Vasara wrote:

Great report.

Did you roll (or even tried to roll) Fortune in many of the games?

How did you like the WK/beast combo?

I tried to roll Fortune every game and got it once (game 3). The rest of the time I ended up taking the Primaris powers from Fate, Divination and Telepathy.

Wraithknight was a bit disappointing for me but that was mainly due to horrendous dice rolls (5 consective turns I rolled 1,1 or 1,2 to hit with the Heavy Wraithcannon). It was a major distraction though and did kill some stuff in close combat, including taking a Great Unclean One down to a single wound.

Beasts were my star unit in every game. They absorb so much firepower and roll so many dice that there is very little that can withstand them. Combined with Prescience and Fearless from the Farseer they are incredible!

You didn't encounter anyone who consentrated fire on beasts first turn who could wipe them out?

How many throws on fate before moving on to othes spelltables?

I was quite lucky in that we had night fight on a couple of games which limited the incoming firepower. Wayne in game 5 did pour a lot of fire into the beasts and took out most of the khymerae, which later enabled him to take out the rest of the unit as I could no longer take high S hits on Khymerae. I also got pretty lucky with the Helldrakes in that only in game 5 did they really do a lot of damage.

Just seen the overall army representation at ToS.

BA - 5
Daemons - 4
CSM - 11
DA - 5
DE - 7
Eldar - 8
GK - 8
IG - 6
Necrons - 5
Orks - 6
SoB - 5
SM - 12
SW - 1
Tau - 7
Tyranids - 6

Count Adhemar wrote:

Just seen the overall army representation at ToS.

BA - 5
Daemons - 4
CSM - 11
DA - 5
DE - 7
Eldar - 8
GK - 8
IG - 6
Necrons - 5
Orks - 6
SoB - 5
SM - 12
SW - 1
Tau - 7
Tyranids - 6

SoB beated Space Wolves and Daemons.  
So little Tau and Eldar as well.

Yeah, I was quite surprised but GW official tournaments are a very different beast from independent events.

As an aside, the GW staff were getting pretty strict on painting and basing. The White Scars player I faced in game 1 was told he had to paint the exhausts on all his bikes, I was told I had to texture paint the base of my Wraithknight (which looked worse after doing that than it did with a plain black base).

They only seem to nitpick over minor things that are visible from a quick scan... I got whined at because my raiders didn't have the crew in them, whilst my opponent got away with having 3rd party heads on almost all of his models last time I went...

Also, that list only references the primary force; allies aren't taken into account. So there may have been a fair amount more Tau and Eldar present as allies to other armies.

Yeah, it would have been useful to have the allies listed too. There were certainly a lot of armies with allies but I couldn't hazard a guess how many of each.

As I'm bored at work, I decided to sort the armies by Win%. Results are:

Codex                Win %
Chaos Daemons        85.00
Eldar                        72.50
Necrons                64.00
Space Wolves        60.00
Dark Eldar                57.14
Tyranids                53.33
Sisters of Battle        52.00
Tau Empire                51.43
Grey Knights        50.00
Space Marines        45.00
Chaos Space Marines 34.55
Dark Angels                32.00
Orks                        30.00
Blood Angels        28.00
Imperial Guard        20.00

Seems like expected results except TAU. What happened to them?

I didn't face any and neither did my mate. Maybe the Tau players jumped on the bandwagon with the new codex but just weren't very good players? Who knows!

Bandwagoning happens a lot. Or could have had rough matchups.

Also, BA win percentage down at 28%?! Should have gone; I'd have cleaned up!

Blood Angels really suffered in 6e so I'm not surprised they lost most of their games. Things like Helldrakes make Assault Marines very dead, very quickly, even if they are hiding in Razorbacks (and therefore unable to assault).

BA are my main army - took best BA with them at one of the ToS last year. Ironically it was with my worst overall result of the times I've been; 4-1 with BA and 5-0 with DE weren't enough to get best in race, but the 3-2 was...

Favourite game scores count for almost as much as your wins. I got better results than my Necron mate but he got a couple of fave game votes and therefore finished with more points than me. The perils of soft scores!

It was indeed a good tournament and nice meeting up with Count.

I took 4 wins and a loss, coming second to another DE player who won all 5 games, using what I think was a venom spam list.

My list was similar in ways to Count's with use of a large beastpack and a Wraithknight. The WK wasn't massively impressive and I don't think he will feature too soon as I have more plans for his points but was good fun nonetheless.

To answer your question Vasara I got Fortune in my last 3 games and I always roll twice for it, taking Prescience with my third roll.