1250 tournament - recap reports

Ended up playing in a small 1250 point tournament last night - 10 players altogether, and only 4x4 boards due to lack of space (also subsequent lack of much terrain). 2 Eldar players, 2 Blood Angel players, 1 Chaos Space Marines, 1 Tau, 1 Imperial Guard, 1 Dark Angels, 1 Space Marines, and 1 Dark Eldar (me!). I ran:
Archon, Huskblade, Shadowfield, Venom blade, Combat Drugs

9 wyches, haywire grenades, raider
10 warriors, raider, splinter racks
10 warriors, raider, splinter racks
5 warriors, venom, extra cannon

3 Trueborn, 2 cannons, 1 shardcarbine, venom, extra cannon
4 Trueborn, 4 blasters, venom, extra cannon

Ravager
Ravager

Round 1 was Big Guns and I played the Dark Angels - mostly Ravenwing with a single unit of Deathwing Knights, Samael on speeder, regular speeder, and a decent number of 3 man bike squads. Also had a Ravenwing command squad with standard of devastation. I castled up behind a bastion and he scouted forwards; I then proceeded to steal the initiative (warlord trait that gives +1 to seize and re-roll reserves) and catch the Ravenwing with their power armoured pants down. Cleared out an entire flank on my first turn and forced the side with the dakka banner to jink so as to not get annihilated by dark lances, and cleaned up everything bar Samael in reserves by turn 3, finishing him on turn 4 when he arrived.

Round 2 was Emperor's Will and I played the Imperial Guard, with an Aegis Defence Line, Punisher, a Russ HQ squadron with Pask in a Vanquisher and a demolisher, a Chimera providing cover, a ton of Guardsmen, and a Vulture (only flier in the room). I won the roll and deployed first, saw that his deployment left very little in range of me, and forced him to take the first turn. He secured First Blood, but couldn't stop my eventual flanking manoeuvre around the side away from his surviving tanks that let me contest his objective with an objective secured raider. We had to end on turn 5 because of time constraints, but I had 2 full raiders that could have contested and I doubt he'd have been able to shift 2 raiders and 20 warriors with what he had available. Pask also managed to miss 3 of his first 4 shots   

Final round was Relic against the Eldar player who had the scariest list (from my perspective): 5 Jetbikes with Farseer (warlord), 4 dark reapers with exarch, 3 war walkers (scatter laser/star cannon), 5 fire dragons in a wave serpent, some dire avengers on foot, and dire avengers with a second farseer in a second serpent. I got the same warlord trait as round 1 and hid behind a ruin leaving one venom with the warriors in reserve. Pinched the initiative on a 5 and evaporated the jetbikes with concentrated fire for First Blood, and forced both serpents to jink as well as taking two hull points off of one. He hid the Jetseer from my gunline but my reserve venom came in and scored 5 wounds, he failed four saves and evaporated. Managed to clear him down to a wave serpent and the war walkers; he made a strong comeback to almost table me popping my wych raider at the bottom of turn 6, leaving the archon and wyches as my last models, but the game ended that turn.

The list performed really well - pumped out a STUPID number of shots into things. Effectively 250 points down as well, as the archon and wyches did nothing all evening - the raider claimed my EW objective in game 2, but they never got out all night. I didn't even bother to unpack them from the case - they were there as I felt I was a bit light on anti tank but I didn't want to send them across open ground after a wave serpent. I -was- worried about fliers and managed to face the only one in the room, and was fortunately able to ignore it. Ended up taking first place by a reasonable margin, the Tau player coming second and my final round opponent in third place.

Really nice battle report, congrats on your wins and top placement. Do you wish you had dropped the archon and Wyches for something else and if so what would you have brought instead?

Nice one Panic! Thanks for sharing the pain.

I was toying with replacing the Archon with a haemy and 3 reavers with cluster caltrops. I wish I'd brought something else instead of the Archon and wyches because they didn't do anything particularly useful, but at the same time 9 lances and 4 blasters isn't necessarily enough anti-tank.

The wyches didn't do anything but I didn't really need them; had I faced either of the Blood Angel players (who both had Land Raiders) or the Iron Hands player who had that awesome looking Forge World tank that looks like the love child of a Land Raider and a Predator I'd have been very glad of them. They'd also have been very useful against the Eldar had I had any hope of getting them near the war walkers but there was basically zero terrain... 2 LoS blocking ruins and a hill.

That said, the fact that they contributed nothing means that I was effectively playing with a 1000 point list that still drowned the opposition in splinter fire...

really sweet to see the DE mopping up with shooting