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Took my Chaos Daemons to the BashCon 40K RTT last weekend. Wanted to try out something a bit different, and I'd never used Fateweaver in a tournament, so I figured out a way to squeeze him in.

HQ: Bloodthirster /w Unholy Might
HQ: Fateweaver
E: 5 Bloodcrushers /w icon, fury, & instrument
E: 3 Flamers
E: 3 Flamers
T: 11 Bloodletters /w icon
T: 9 Horrors /w bolt
T: 9 Horrors /w bolt
HS: Soul Grinder
HS: Soul Grinder

Round 1 was against Brad Chester's Iyanden Eldar. Brad and I have managed to meet up at two tournaments in recent months, and a game with him is always a good game.

This tournament was also the primer for the AdeptiCon Championships, so the missions used the AdeptiCon structure of Primary/Secondary/Tertiary objectives plus bonus battle points. For this mission, the primary was kill points, the secondary was victory points, and the tertiary was to kill troops, with bonus points for killing fast attack/elites/heavies.

I lost the roll for first turn and had to go first, then failed the roll for my preferred force, which brought in my secondary. Bloodletters landed on target and ran into the nearest cover, while the horrors landed ready to light up an infiltrating squad of scorpions. I risked the flamers on some really close landing points, and was rewarded when one landed on-target while the other only scattered a small distance away.



The flamers and horrors shot, but only a handful of wraithguard were killed. My shots at the scorpions were a bit more successful, as half the squad died.

On Brad's turn, he moved out, but had to dedicate some units to taking out the flamers. Complete inability to roll saves for the flamers wiped them out with shooting...which in retrospect, was probably a good thing, as it left his Wraithlords back in his rear area, while the wraithguard advanced forward. Going to ground saved my Bloodletters from the bulk of the enemy's incoming fire, which theoretically left his scorpions free to assault one of my horror squads, but bad difficult terrain kept them out of assault. The other horror squad died as it was charged by Eldrad and the wraithguard.



I got REALLY lucky on my reserve rolls, and everything except the bloodthirster arrived. Using the icon, I created a wall of bodies between the Wraithguard and the bloodletters using Fateweaver and the bloodcrushers, while I essentially used the soul grinders to keep a wraithlord away from my last squad of horrors. Fateweaver and the horrors were the only units that could shoot this turn, and together managed to finish off the scorpions.



Fateweaver proceeded to attract fire from pretty much the entire enemy army. He only took two wounds, but unfortunately failed his LD test on the second, so back into the warp he went. A vyper took down my red Soul Grinder with a bright lance shot, while the Wraithlord charged in at the other soul grinder, getting locked in combat but destroying a close combat weapon. Eldrad and his squad of wraithguard were the only unit that could shoot at the bloodcrushers, but he failed to cause enough wounds to make me lose a model. Both sides being fearless, and with me needing 5+ to wound, both sides were stuck in combat.

The bloodthirster failed to arrive, but with the bloodletters no longer gone to ground, they moved out of the cover and into charge range of Maugan Ra and the other squad of wraithguard. Charging in, they took a few casualties from the Maugatar, but Maugan Ra and wraithguard fell before their hellblades. I managed to down the vyper with my horrors, and the bloodcrushers ground away at the other wraithguard squad.

With both my assault units stuck in, Brad moved his wraithlords as quickly as he could, but the only two which could make it into assault in this turn charged in at the bloodletters, who still managed to kill off the remaining wraithguard in that squad.

On turn 4, my bloodthirster arrived, and the assaults continued. Bloodletters died to the wraithlords, while my bloodcrushers killed off the final remaining wraithguard. Eldrad's fortuned rune armor, however, kept him alive. The last wraithlord charged into that hand to hand, only to die from a lucky set of wound rolls as I rolled 3 6s out of 6 dice to kill the wraithlord.

The Bloodthirster jumped up and proceeded to slaughter the two wraithlords that were engaged with my bloodletters, one in my turn, and one in his.

One final turn of the game, and by piling the remaining bloodletters into the assault with Eldrad (the last remaining Eldar model) I managed to get the final wound through his re-rollable 3+ save, and kill him off for the tabling win. Which was lucky on my part, since by Kill Points, he would have won had Eldrad remained alive.

Round 2, I was up against mechanized Black Templar army with 2 Land Raider Crusaders. The mission had a randomly generated primary objective that wasn't determined until turn 4, with victory points as the secondary and killing enemy HQ's as the tertiary. Dawn of War deployment.

Again, I lost the roll to go first, and my opponent made me go first, then he elected to hold everything in reserve. I got my primary this time, and with reasonably good scatter and run rolls, took control of the center of the table, with my bloodthirster and bloodcrushers in range of fateweaver.

My opponent rolled onto the table, in what I think was an attempt to prepare a coordinated turn 2 assault.



His shots were ineffectual, and the game moved on to turn 2.

Now, as I said, he'd rolled his units onto the table. The Land Raiders, in particular, only moved on 6", which left the models hanging off the back end of the board. Unfortunately, my red Soul Grinder had scattered a bit farther forward than I'd wanted it to...which meant that a good run roll would let me charge the Land Raider. Which I ended up doing.

I also got EXTREMELY lucky with my reserve rolls this turn, and everything arrived.

The Soul Grinder v. Land Raider assault was the only thing of note...and it was notable because my soul grinder failed to do anything. Of course, my opponent was left with the problem that he couldn't move the land raider away from my soul grinder, and had to just pray that he could kill the soul grinder with his other units. Lucky for him, he managed to do so. Unlucky for him, he'd decided that just in case, he should disembark the terminators from that land raider just in case he failed. He also charged a small squad of Templars into one of my Horror squads, who killed off some horrors, but failed to wipe them out.

On my turn, the bloodcrushers charged in at the templars fighting my horrors and wiped them out, while my flamers jumped up and tried to flame down the terminators. They only managed to kill one, but the Templars failed their morale check and ran off the table. My bloodthirster jumped up and did what the Soul Grinder couldn't, and toasted the Land Raider.



Thus began what was in essence of a game of the Black Templars maneuvering, while my Daemons chased them down. I eventually managed to corner the other Land Raider Crusader, and surrounding it with fateweaver, bloodcrushers, flamers, and the bloodthirster, killed it and prevented the troops from disembarking.





The remainder of the game was him running away, and my units chasing after him. At the end of the game, he had only a single scoring unit and its transport alive, while I'd killed everything else, achieving all the objectives in the process.

Game 3 was against THE Mike Mutscheller. He won the 2007 GT Circuit, and is a damn good player. He fielded a Dual-lash, 9-oblit list, that also included a land raider (bought as a transport for his Terminators).

The mission had 4 objectives as its primary, VPs (with a 750 point margin) for the secondary, and control of the table as its tertiary. To get the tertiary, you had to have a unit in each table quarter. Bonus points for keeping your opponent from controlling any objectives, killing your oppoonents most expensive HQ, and having your opponent with fewer than 4 units left at the end of the game.

I won the roll, and decided to go first. The chance of alpha-striking with flamers was just too tempting to pass up. Deployment zones were table quarters, and there was a nice, gigantic piece of terrain in the center of the table that blocked LOS nicely.

Luck was with me and I got my chosen half. I kept my nerve and landed the first squad of flamers directly on-target, right where I wanted them. I followed up with a squad of horrors, which deviated nearly on top of the flamers (they were just under an inch away) but by careful placement of models, I managed to avoid a mishap. After that, I placed everything else (Fateweaver, the bloodcrushers, and the other flamer unit) behind the large building in the center, and tried to run everyone there within fateweaver coverage. The flamers made it, but the bloodcrushers didn't.

Flaming away, I killed a handful of models from various squads, but most importantly (to me), I managed to put 3 wounds on the Lash Prince.

Mike killed the horrors and flamers, then lashed the bloodcrushers further away from Fateweaver and opened up with his oblits. By the time he was done shooting at them, he'd killed two bloodcrushers, and put wounds on all the remaining crushers. His final lashed pushed the bloodcrushers even further away from his army.

On my second turn, I got the bloodthirster, bloodletters, and one of the soul grinders. The bloodletters used the bloodcrushers icon, while I gambled with the bloodthirster and placed him near where I planned to move fateweaver. The soul grinder arrived on the other flank of Mike's army, in an attempt to put pressure on him.

Moving my forces up in the movement and running in the shooting phase, I managed to get fateweaver and the bloodthirster into a mutually supporting range, made up lost ground with the bloodcrushers, and partially surrounded both fateweaver and the bloodthirster with the bloodletters, to reduce his Lash effectiveness. The flamers moved up behind the building, ready to jump out on the next turn and flame away.



Fateweaver shot at the wounded Daemon Prince, and wounded him three times...and the DP made all the saves. A bad sign.

My attempts to reduce the effectiveness of Mike's Lashes went to naught, as he rolled an 11 and a 12 for the lashes, looping the bloodthirster out of the bloodletters and right in front of his gunline. Concentrated fire took him down, while potshots from his bolters killed a few bloodletters.

My turn 3, I finally got to grips with his army, charging one of the obliterator squads with the bloodletters and soul grinder and dropping them easily, while my flamers took out all but 3 of his berserkers. My horrors finally arrived, as did the second soul grinder, and they opened up on the Prince...who made all his saves. Again.

The surviving berserkers charged into the flamers, but there reduced numbers were insufficient to take down even the three-man squad, and on my next turn, the surviving bloodcrushers would tear them apart. Meanwhile, he continued to skillfullly use lash to move my units, this time targetting the bloodletters and moving them out of fateweaver coverage and into range of his guns. His shooting was less than effective however, as I went to ground and used his own troops to block the majority of the incoming fire, while the one squad that had an open shot decided to load their bolters with paintballs instead of bolter rounds. He did manage to reduce the squad to what he thought was a manageable size, and charged in, but discovered that even six bloodletters can put a serious amount of hurt on units.



Oh yeah, the Lash Prince decided to take a perils of the warp hit...for which he made both his invulnerable saves. Nuts.

I continued to advance, pushing Mike off the objectives as he tried to stay as far away from my bloodcrushers as possible. Fateweaver and the horrors combined their fire and finally took out the Lash Prince, and the soul grinder charged in to take the pressure off the bloodletters, while fateweaver charged into one of the remaining obliterator squads while the other grinder charged the other remaining obliterator squad.

Fateweaver did what he does best - make 3++ saves - but the soul grinder decided to kill two obliterators, but the remaining oblit killed the soul grinder in return.



Sometime before this, Mike managed to kill most of the remaining horrors in my army, while my remaining grinder immobilized the land raider and began tearing off weapons, which he proceeded to do for the remaining parts of the game. The lash sorcerer moved out and pushed the horrors into LOS, and his remaining units gunned them down. My flamers tried to roadblock the last unengaged obliterator, but failed miserably at saves and died, while my bloodcrushers charged in at the lash sorcerer and obliterators engaging Fateweaver, and managed to kill off the sorcerer.

Unfortunately his obliterators managed to kill off my last bloodletter, so I was now troopless, and the game ended after turn 5, with neither of us claiming an objective, VP's nowhere near 750 points in my favor, and neither of us controlling table, for a nice draw.




All in all, though, a very fun, challenging game, against one of the better players out there, fielding an extremely strong list.

I ended the day in a veritable plethora of 2nd place - 2nd overall, 2nd in battle points. I did manage to score highest on the quiz, which featured absolutely no trick questions whatsoever.

It was lots of fun, and despite the occassional usefulness of Fateweaver, I think I'm going to return to the Bluescribes as my second HQ. The re-rolls were nice, but nothing that couldn't have been helped by adding more bodies to my squads, while there were often times I greatly missed having the Pavane available.

im excited.

Great report, i understand your opinion on fateweaver, that changed my view on bringing the big bird myself

Great job Cent. The final round against Moocher was a real nail biter. To be honest I'm glad to hear you found that you prefer the Blue Scribes to the Fateweaver. The rerollable saves are nice but I think it makes players tend to clump up their units. Again great job.

BTW who ended up taking 1st place?

G

Really nice report and good to see C:CD in use Well done on the tourne finish too.

Really nice report and good to see C:CD in use Well done on the tourne finish too.

enmitee wrote:Great report, i understand your opinion on fateweaver, that changed my view on bringing the big bird myself

Green Blow Fly wrote:Great job Cent. The final round against Moocher was a real nail biter. To be honest I'm glad to hear you found that you prefer the Blue Scribes to the Fateweaver. The rerollable saves are nice but I think it makes players tend to clump up their units. Again great job.

BTW who ended up taking 1st place?

G

Mike got first - I edged him in battle, we were about the same in Sports, and he crushed in painting.

Fateweaver was cool, don't get me wrong, but there was definitely the "clumping" factor...I NEEDED to have my units within range of fateweaver, which greatly limited my options when it came to deploying my troops.

Add in to that the inherent flexibility of the bluescribes, and the usefulness of Pavane, and I'd rather have the Bluescribes, 3 more bloodcrushers, and 5 more bloodletters (which is essentially what I gave up to field Fateweaver).

Add on to that my own personal preference - I'd rather use swarming tactics.

Nice reports, good looking armies, and nice boards to play on...Just what reports should be! Also great to see you do so well against such a skilled opponent.

I am also curious....who took first?

Centurian99 wrote:

Mike got first - I edged him in battle, we were about the same in Sports, and he crushed in painting.

Cent if you really like that pavane you should look at the Masque come on, you know you want to. Especially with all those bloodcrushers, she could hide right behind em.

I agree on fateweaver. I think to get the use out of em you probably need to run multiple large hard hitting units. Maybe if you were doing a 16 bloodcrusher list or something. I have been contemplating 2 9 man flamer squads flying around with fateweaver. Something like the daemon equivalent to a warlock council.

Warmaster wrote:Cent if you really like that pavane you should look at the Masque come on, you know you want to. Especially with all those bloodcrushers, she could hide right behind em.

I agree on fateweaver. I think to get the use out of em you probably need to run multiple large hard hitting units. Maybe if you were doing a 16 bloodcrusher list or something. I have been contemplating 2 9 man flamer squads flying around with fateweaver. Something like the daemon equivalent to a warlock council.

Funny enough, I have been thinking about the Masque. 30 pts cheaper than the Bluescribes, a 3++ save, although she's less flexible since she doesn't have bolt/gaze/warpfire/aura/breath/boon available, and then there's always the no-IC thing.

I think a list where fateweaver would shine would be a troop heavy daemon list. 6 troop ,15-20 each.

What vow did the Templars player take? Seems like his deployment choice really screwed him turn 2 onwards.

Capt K

CaptKaruthors wrote:What vow did the Templars player take? Seems like his deployment choice really screwed him turn 2 onwards.

Capt K

Templars have vows besides Preferred enemy?

Not moving on at full speed is really what screwed him. Had he done so, I would have had a harder time assaulting his land raiders, and a turn 2 or turn 3 charge would have created an interesting situation.

I am going to run a pure Khorne daemonic hordes but I think there are a lot of cool things you can do with the other Chaos Gods.

G

Curious though, how do you play the blue scribes? in a horror squad? cuz i just see him being shot at when he's alone.

enmitee wrote:Curious though, how do you play the blue scribes? in a horror squad? cuz i just see him being shot at when he's alone.

I started out using him with Flamer squads, on the idea that the movement matches so they're a good fit. After playing for a while, I discovered that putting him in a horror squad was a much better idea and worked out better, because I found myself using the Bluescribes mainly as a Pavane platform. I can deep strike the flamers in closer, pavane a unit, maybe pavane another unit, fire the horrors at either unit or at a third unit, if the situation demands.

I usually run horror squads at 9-strong, so that's nine wounds before I have to assign wounds to the Bluescribes, or I can use the bluescribes as a way to keep a horror alive.

Later in the game, the bluescribes may find it advantageous to leave the horrors and operate on their own, or with flamers, but on the initial drop, I've found them to work best dropping with horrors.

Bill, thanks for the game. I have been thinking on the shoulda, coulda, woulda's of this battle all week. I don't think I would have done anything differently. I mention it because I think Fateweaver is a solid build in your list. I was impressed with him and your deployment.

Also, with the ruling about instant death (Yes, I am admitting you were right and I was er.....um.....wrong) your list works well against the nob biker list.

I see Mike did his ole crawl up on the table trick =)

Good BR, and I hope to finally get a game in with you at Adepticon this year.

This is why I want mystics with at least 2 psycannons in each list. Thanks for the heads up on Mikes list also, though they have been playing the chaos crutch in Ohio for years now. I've got two words for both of you: Thunderfire Cannon.

Also, with the ruling about instant death (Yes, I am admitting you were right and I was er.....um.....wrong) your list works well against the nob biker list.

A bit OT, but do you mind if I ask what the rule debate was?

TISL wrote:

Also, with the ruling about instant death (Yes, I am admitting you were right and I was er.....um.....wrong) your list works well against the nob biker list.

A bit OT, but do you mind if I ask what the rule debate was?

Allocating instant death wounds on units of multi-wound models. Nob bikers can assign an instant death wound to previously wounded models, because they assign wounds before saves are taken. Obliterators can't because the models are identical for wound allocation purposes.

DarthDiggler wrote:This is why I want mystics with at least 2 psycannons in each list. Thanks for the heads up on Mikes list also, though they have been playing the chaos crutch in Ohio for years now. I've got two words for both of you: Thunderfire Cannon.

Another reason why I probably won't take Fateweaver to AdeptiCon.

The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:Bill, thanks for the game. I have been thinking on the shoulda, coulda, woulda's of this battle all week. I don't think I would have done anything differently. I mention it because I think Fateweaver is a solid build in your list. I was impressed with him and your deployment.

In retrospect, I only see two things we could have done differently. On your side, I think you could have tried harder to get the berskerers into the land raider. On my side, in that last series of charges, I should have ignored your land raider, send my soul grinder into into your sorcerer, sent the bloodcrushers into the oblit that just killed the other soul grinder, and brought the flamers up to flame under fateweaver protection.