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2009 Adepticon Gladiator

For those that don’t know the Adepticon Gladiator is a no-hold barred, anything goes 4 game, 2250 point RTT. At least back-in-the-day, it was anything goes. Trial rules, Forge World, Opponents permission only, etc. literally anything that had rules was allowed. This year they kind of retreated off of the “anything goes” attitude quite a bit because GW has changed it’s website and removed almost all of it’s trial rules, and with 5th edition making a lot of old armies no longer compatible with the current rules edition. So it was mostly current codexes + Apocalypse units + forge world.


My Army:

I decided not to take a hard-core army, and brought my favorite army, the Thousand Sons. I have not played the army since early 4th edition and it shows. I took a list similar to what I played in 3rd edition to see how it would fare. I have some Word Bearer troops that I was thinking about bringing to beef up my army with, but I tried to be as faithful to a pure Thousand Sons army as possible with the exception of adding 2 oblits for the hard-core gladiator environment.

One thing I wanted to try out with this army is the Silver Towers of Tzeentch, since you can use structure points in the Gladiator, but it was not in the rules as an approved unit (it is an apocalypse data sheet on GW’s website, and not in the Forge World/Apocalypse books so it seems like it was overlooked). So maybe I will try this army next year with it added in.

HQ
Chaos Sorcerer: Disc of Tzeentch, Personal Icon, Warptime, Winds of Chaos, Mark of Tzeentch.

Demon Prince: Wings, Mark of Slaanesh, Lash of Submission.

Elites
Dreadnought: Plasma Cannon, Heavy Flamer

9 Chaos Terminators: Chain Fist, Power Fist, Combi-Melta x4, Reaper Auto-cannons x2, Icon of Tzeentch
Aspiring Terminator Champion: Lighting Claws x2
Land Raider

Troops
7 Thousand Sons Marines[b]
[b]Aspiring Sorcerer: Melta Bombs, Warptime
Rhino Combi-Flamer

8 Thousand Sons Marines[b]
[b]Aspiring Sorcerer: Melta Bombs, Warptime
Rhino Combi-Flamer

Heavy Support
Predator: TL Lascannon, 2 Lascannon Sponsons, Demonic Possession

2 Obliterators

Defiler


Game #1


Opponent’s army
I find myself matched up against Matt Rogers and his Ultramarines

Opponent’s army
[HQ]
Ortan Cassius (I could not believe that this guy is only 125 points!)

Librarian Corwin: Null Zone, Gate of Infinity (Bad news for me….Null Zone+Psychic Hood)

Elites
7 Assault Terminators: Thunderhammers, Storm Shields
Land Raider Crusader

5 Terminators: Assault Cannon, Chain Fist
Land Raider Crusader

Troops
5 Tactical Marines

5 Tactical Marines


Heavy Support
Land Raider: Extra Armor

Land Raider: Extra Armor

Land Raider



Deployment: Triangle deployment (18” in from the corners)

Special Rules: Infiltrate, Deep Strike, Reserves, Outflank, Random Game Length, Night Fight for the whole game!!!


Primary Objective: (Control the Battlefield) For every full player turn that a scoring unit holds the center of the table (at least one model from a scoring unit within 3” of the center of the table), that player gains one (1) objective point. The player with the most objective points at the end of the game wins this objectives. Win=20, Draw=10, Loss=0
Secondary Objective: Victory Points, if within 225 Points it is a draw. Win=15, Draw=7, Loss=0
Tertiary Objective: Kill the enemy Commander(The most expensive HQ model) If both players achieve this objective it’s a draw. Win=10, Draw=5, Loss=0

Tactical Bonuses:
+2 Have at least one model in your opponent’s deployment zone without your opponent having any models in your deployment zone.

+1 Hold more terrain features than your opponent (Have a scoring unit with 3” of a terrain feature and no enemy units within 3” of that feature.

Strategy: Ok, like all unbalanced armies, he has a weakness. He has a grand total of 10 marines for scoring units. I get rid of them, and I am half way done.


The Setup



Turn #1

Thousand Sons Turn #1
No picture

I drive my rhinos forward and try to get to the objective first. I light up his land raiders holding the troops, with both of my rhinos, but I fail to do much.

Ultramarines Turn #1
He unloads on my rhinos destroying both of them. At this point I realize my mistake. I should have only used one searchlight so he would have trouble seeing both of them instead of both of them being illuminated. The good news is that he hangs back and tried to soften me up some.



Turn #2

Thousand Sons Turn #2
I hold the objective for one whole turn and gain a point! I again try to shoot his Land Raiders with the troops and I don’t do much.

(No Picture)

Ultramarines Turn #2
He finally makes his move and comes up and unloads on me. He wipes out one of my Thousand Sons squads with his Assault terminators, and his regular Terminators kill my Defiler.



Turn #3

Thousand Sons Turn #3
Business is picking up. I hit his Terminators with everything I have, killing most of them. Oh. and my Oblits die when they land on a land raider after a 10" scatter.



Ultramarines Turn #3
I finish off his Assault terminators. He gets a land raider stuck in the woods.



Turn #4

Thousand Sons Turn #4
My Sorcerer goes after his terminators winning the combat, and he chooses to run for it. My Demon Prince goes after a Land Raider and fails to kill it. My terminators finally show up and don’t do much.


Ultramarines Turn #4
He moves in to kill/block my terminators. I am not fond of them moving 12" and still being able to shoot. In the mean time he kills my demon Prince.




Turn #5

Thousand Sons Turn #5
I finally get to kill one of his Land Raiders!!!

Ultramarines Turn #5
The troop squad who’s land raider I just killed runs into another land raider. What a disappointment.
He unloads on my army, killing a lot of guys.



Turn #6

Thousand Sons Turn #6
I try to kill another Land Raider with my Termies and fail.




Ultramarines Turn #6
He wipes me out with shooting, and his librarian finishes off my troops.




End Game



I am glad it ended when it did because if we went one more turn he would have held the center and we would have tied the primary.

Objectives were:
Primary=Win
Secondary=Loss
Tertiary=Draw
and he got +1 bonus point.

Overall I think of it as a tie. I was happy with that after seeing the army I was up against. I imagine that he took the null-zone to kill demon armiues, but my army got coaught in the crossfire. The re-roll of the inv save hurt me in assault, and allowed him to kill my terminators very quickly.

If I'm following the report correctly, he tabled you and you still won? Interesting mission parameters.

Still, cool report so far. 4 Land Raiders would be tough w/o D strength weapons.

Sarigar wrote:

Still, cool report so far. 4 Land Raiders would be tough w/o D strength weapons.

you mean without melta weapons right?

Sarigar wrote:If I'm following the report correctly, he tabled you and you still won? Interesting mission parameters.

Still, cool report so far. 4 Land Raiders would be tough w/o D strength weapons.

Actually, if you table someone you get full points. This was a problem because the reaver titans were tabling people to get the win and they are going to take a look at that rule for next years gladiator.

Also we might have a different definition of tabling, because where I play that means he has to kill all of my units like my Land Raider and my Predator that you can see through the battle on the lower right, and were untouched.

I find it weird people are running min scoring units, but I've yet to see more than this mission - so maybe it's making more sense when I see the rest

Thanks for the well thought out report!

Yep. I missed the 2 tanks that were still intact. My mistake.

Very interesting reports (1 and 2) with the FW/Apocolypse parameters.