Devious Space Marine dedicated to Tzeentch
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Here’s a quick tournament report from a 4-round 2k point tourney in Atlanta. It was a big turnout with some very harsh lists, because the top prize was a full 2000 point army. And not like the ‘Ard Boyz prize, where you just pick a codex and they send you units. In this one, you make an army list, you get it, up to a maximum of something like $600. Impressive prize support, and it definitely brought some power lists out of the woodwork.
I made the trip down with 3 guys from my playtest group. Between the 4 of us, we had Daemons, SM, Orks, and Tau. The field as a whole had just about everything present. I don’t know what if any SM variation Codices were present (other than multiple SW armies), but everything else was there, including Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle.
My list (mono-Tzeentch Daemons):
Kairos Fateweaver
Blue Scribes
Herald of Tzeentch, Chariot, Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch, Chaos Icon
3x 3 Flamers
5x 5 Pink Horrors, Bolt of Tzeentch (one had the Changeling)
6 Pink Horrors, Bolt, Chaod Icon
3x Daemon Prince, Mark of Tzeentch, Bolt, Daemonic Gaze
It’s a hard shooting army anchored by Kairos making everyone reroll their 4+ invulnerable saves across the board. I’ve messed with a lot of Daemon builds, but this is the first one I started with and the one I’ve played the most. One of the things that prompted this list to begin with is that by putting them all on square bases, I can use the exact same list in Fantasy (other than the DP’s), and a slightly expanded version of this just won me a 3k point army in ‘Ard Boyz.
Unfortunately, the 40k face of this coin isn’t quite as ‘Ard as the FB version. But with a little help from Tzeentch on those rolls, I think I can do pretty well. My biggest fear is lots of high AV vehicles. I can trash Rhinos and Chimeras all day, but LR’s or Monoliths are trouble.
Another interesting thing about this army is that despite how long the codex has been out, a lot of people aren’t really familiar with what this particular army is capable of. People see Kairos, but then there aren’t any Bloodcrushers and they get confused.
Round 1: SM
Cato Sicarius with Command Squad
5 Assault Termies (3 LC, 2 TH/SS) with dedicated Landraider Crusader
Dreadnought with double TL Autocannon
2x 10-man Tac squad with Las/Plas (one had a Rhino)
Thunderfire Cannon
Landraider Redeemer
Vindicator
Uh oh…2 LR’s. This could spell trouble. Particular in this mission.
Every mission had a primary, secondary, and tertiary objective, worth 15, 10, and 5 respectively. There were also a variable number of bonus points available, and a couple negatives.
This round, deployment is Dawn of War.
Primary: Modified KP’s. 3 for HQ, 2 for Elite/FA/HS, 1 for Troops and dedicated transports. Pretty standard, but with the twist that you have to win by 7+ KP’s. A difference of 6 or less is a draw.
Secondary: Have more scoring units within 6” of the center than your opponent. No contesting, just whoever has more scoring units gets it.
Tertiary: Kill all your opponent’s HQ.
Bonus point for wiping out all opponent’s Troops, and a bonus point per table quarter controlled.
I won the roll and had my opponent go first. He used Sicarius to have his Rhino squad outflank, deployed his other Tac squad in some ruins (fortified by the Techmarine manning the Thunderfire), and put Cato plus squad in the LRR. The Techmarine was in the ruins too, with the Cannon right beside him, next to the ruins he had the Dread, LRR, Vindicator, and the LRC with Termies inside to the right. He didn’t move on his first turn.
For all of my games, I chose a preferred half of Kairos, 3 DP’s, Herald, Changeling’s PH unit, and another Horror unit with the Scribes attached. I thought about variations for a couple of rounds, but stuck with this split throughout. I got the preferred half this time and dropped about midfield. Early shooting saw the Dread stunned, the TC destroyed (though the Techmarine was alive), and some random result to one of the LR’s (shaken or something).
Turn 2 his Rhino didn’t show up. He rolled his Vindicator up to get a better range and it immobilized itself in some terrain. I expected to be blitzed by the two LR-borne squads, but they both stayed home this turn. The Vindicator took a couple of Horrors out from a couple different squads (they were close together) and other shooting wounded a Prince.
Some Flamers and Horrors came down for me, landing on point thanks to the Icon. Everyone contracted down into a circle around Kairos. We moved in a threatening manner toward his things, in particular putting a DP where it could assault the immobilized Vindicator next turn. Shooting had a couple members of the Tac squad die, the Techmarine made a bunch of cover saves to protect his two KP’s, and some very ineffectual fire at the vehicle. Not good.
Turn 3 his Rhino came on to my left (it was probably about 14” or so from the edge of my reroll-a-thon). The LRC zipped forward to drop off Termies, they moved toward the DP nearest the Vindicator. His shooting bounced off rerolled saves all over the place, and he charged the DP with the Termies. No wounds on Termies, DP takes 2 from TH in return but passes both No Retreat wounds.
On my turn, everything else comes in, Flamers jump over to stand in front of the Rhino, waiting for it to be popped, Horrors start spreading out a little bit to control quarters. His whole army was basically in one quarter, so I dropped a PH unit in the far quarter to control it, and spread a few more out so that they were going toward being in the 2 quarters on my side and near the center. Shooting managed to immobilize the LRC somehow, and then utterly failed to kill the Rhino. So, the Flamers had to settle for hitting it with flames and getting stunned and weapon destroyed. The other 2 DP’s and Kairos charged the Termies. The two DP’s at I5 caused 4 wounds, which killed 1 TH/SS and 2 LC. Kairos and his Termie did nothing, my last Prince finished them off. Finally, my first 2 KP on the bottom of turn 3. Great.
Turn 4: His guys stayed in the stunned Rhino (not familiar with how bad Tzeentch Daemons are at combat compared to shooting, I suppose…maybe he didn’t want them to end up like the Terms). His shooting didn’t do much, though it reduced the wounded DP down to 1 wound.
I moved toward the rest of his army, leaving back the wounded DP to try to kill the immobilized LRC. I finally broke open the Rhino, and the Flamers obliterated everyone inside. I shook the LRR, blew a MM off the LRC, and Pavaned the Dreadnought toward a charge from a DP. One DP positioned himself so he could charge the Vindicator if necessary, but he wrecked it with a Bolt to side armor, so didn’t have it (the charge would take him away from Kairos and toward the LRR with command squad). The DP dismantled the Dreadnought, and the other DP managed to pull an AC off the LRC. Up to 8 KP’s, but it’s turn 4, so I really need not to lose any units.
Turn 5: The stupid Hurricane Bolters burn down the wounded DP. Now I’m up by 6 again, not enough for the primary. His other shooting bounces off invulnerable saves everywhere.
My turn 5, I need at least 1 more KP to win. I Pavane the Tac squad toward a pair of Flamers and a DP, and attempt to Pavane the Techmarine out of cover, but no good. Flamers don’t manage to kill all the Tac squad (they were on two different levels of a ruins so I couldn’t get all that many hits), leaving 2 alive. Shooting kills the Techmarine (finally), and a Pink Horror shot Bolt at the LRC and got 6 to hit, 6 to glance, 6 to wreck (thanks to AP1). Finally it’s gone too. My DP doesn’t get a large enough terrain roll to charge the 2 remaining Tac marines, who had passed their Ld check.
The game ended after 5. I was up 11 KP’s to 2 (he had killed random Horrors and Flamers here and there, particularly with the Vindicator, but no entire squads, so he only had the one DP), and he had no scoring units anywhere near the center, so I got primary and secondary. We drew tertiary because I could never get to his HQ (stayed buttoned up in the LRR the whole time). I didn’t get the bonus point for destroying all Troops, thanks to the 2 surviving guys from his Tac squad. I had 3 quarters, as his only remaining units were all in 1 quarter. If the game had gone one more turn I would have had his Troops for a point, but there’s no guarantee I would have been able to get his LRR destroyed, much less in enough time to also kill the HQ inside, so even with 2 turns I may not have gotten the tertiary. Final score: 30 (out of a possible 35)
Elsewhere, two of the guys I came down with had bad days against a couple guys from the gaming group I was with when I lived in Atlanta. The SM player got trashed by 6 Vendettas full of hate (about the last match he wanted to see) and the Tau player ran into a nasty double-Seer Council, triple-Fire Prism Eldar. The Ork player got about a middle of the road draw against some CSM.
Round 2: SW
Wolf Lord, Frost Blade, Rune Armor, 4+ Invul, Hit on 3’s ability, Eternal Warrior
4 Wolf Guard, all with Frost Blades, various gear
5x 10-man Grey Slayer squads, 2x Meltagun and PFist in each, in Rhinos with EA
5 Longfangs, 2 Missile and 2 Lascannon, with a Razorback
Landraider (it may have been a dedicated transport for the Wolf Guard, not sure)
In general, a very good match-up for me. Aside from the LR, the rest of the army is the type my army preys on. I have scores of AP3 shooting plus the Flamers, and plenty of Bolts for the transports. There are no Invul saves anywhere except the lord.
For this mission, the deployment zones are formed by drawing a line diagonally corner-to-corner across the table. The armies can’t set up within 12” of this line, so they were similar to the old corner-triangle deployment of some older edition missions (like Cleanse II from 4th). After all deployments and extra moves have been made, an objective marker is placed in the dead center of the board, and is scattered along the central line. It scatters 4D6”, discarding the lowest roll. Initially we thought the objective simply scattered, but were corrected by the TO. It still stayed right between the two DZ’s.
Primary: Control of the objective. Control is established by totaling up numbers of units within 6” of it. Each of your scoring units adds one to your score, and each of your non-scoring units within 6” subtracts one from your opponent’s score (and vice versa, of course). Highest score by this method controls the objective. Troops must be disembarked from vehicle to count.
Secondary: More scoring units in opponent’s DZ than he has in yours.
Tertiary: More non-scoring units in opponent’s DZ than he has in yours.
Bonus point for wiping out all of the opponent’s troops.
Bonus point for each surviving troop unit of yours.
Couple of random negative modifiers.
Well, Daemons don’t exactly have any issues getting to anywhere on the board they want to go. But he has a lot of mobility, and a lot of non-scoring units in those Rhinos that could be an issue. However, my opponent was clearly unfamiliar with Daemons. He knew the basics, but was unfamiliar with most of the actual units, and didn’t seem to have a good idea on how to approach the game. So he made a decision that would come back to haunt him. He made me go first (a good call), but on his deployment, decided to keep everything in reserve.
Turns 1 and 2:
I got the wrong half of my army. However, since he had nothing in play and wouldn’t until after my 2nd turn, I had plenty of time to recover. The objective had slid to the left, toward the side of the board that had the wide part of my DZ and the narrow part of his. There were a couple of terrain features that the TO had defined as impassible forests that block LOS between the DZ’s on that end, so turn 1 saw me running and maneuvering to form a wall of bodies stretched between those forests and some more regular area terrain woods on the other side. He would either have to go through my forces to get into my DZ, or wide around the side (to the area where my DZ tapered off), so I was in a pretty good spot to block off any incursion into my zone. We were clustered pretty near the objective (12” or so). Also, I had an icon in this wave on the 6-man PH unit. Turn 2 I got a DP, the Herald, and the Changeling’s unit. Notably, no Kairos. A favorable matchup could turn ugly pretty quick if he doesn’t show up with the other two Princes soon. The Prince dropped front and center of my giant pink blob. The Flamers moved to the back and out of LOS as much as possible. On his turn 2, he got 4 Troop units in, nothing else. They drove in 12” in the Rhinos, tight formation, facing me down across the objective. Everyone got out. Those in range opened fire on the Prince, but some good saves saw him live with 1 wound left. The other units fired at some Horrors, whittling down but not wiping any squads.
Turn 3:
This is where everything went to hell for him all at the same time. All the rest of my reserves came down. Suddenly there was a wall of monstrous creatures in front of my army, and Kairos was at the dead center of everyone. Further, he had forgotten or not noticed that the Flamers were jump infantry (I had mentioned it in my pre-game army rundown and it was on the army list, but since he seemed pretty unfamiliar with the army as a whole, I guess it was a lot to take in). His troops were packed in super tight between the Rhinos, base-to-base and in a straight line. Two units of 3 Flamers jumped up right in front of two of his Troop units. The one mobile DP moved toward a unit, and the last unit of Flamers went for a 4th Troop, although they were a little short. Luckily, the Scribes’ Pavane fixed that, arranging them into a teardrop shape right in front of the Flamers. The Flamers fired, and 3 units of Marines ceased to exist. I was going to try to Pavane the 4th unit near the DP, shoot with it to whittle them down (and with other DP’s), then charge and finish them off. However, I didn’t get the 2nd Pavane, and would have been short on the charge if he had pulled the front guy or two. So I shot the rest at his Rhinos (ineffectual due to smoke), and got ready to charge. Then after shooting was done, I realized I was about to charge a DP with 1 wound remaining out of Kairos range and into a 10-man Counter-Attacking SW unit. Terrible idea. So I didn’t bother.
What pretty much sealed the deal for him was that he did not get a single reserve unit in on the bottom of 3. So he was left with the one Troop unit by itself, and 4 Rhinos. Minimal shooting was negated by Kairos, and the Slayers charged the DP. He cut down 2, and then the remaining 8…failed to wound him. It just gets better and better.
Turn 4:
Not a lot to do. Shooting wrecks a Rhino, and the PFist guy fails a T test to Boon of Mutation (the third he had to take). 2 DP’s and Kairos charged into the combat. I threw the combined 14 attacks of the 3 DP’s together and killed 3. They did no damage in return, and after ATSKNF shenanigans, we were still in combat. It could have been problematic if there was anything else in play, but there wasn’t.
On his turn, he got in his Wolf Guard with lord in their ride, and the Long Fangs. The Razorback and last Troop unit stayed out despite needing 2’s. The Long Fangs wandered in at the corner. The LR came about middle of his board edge and fired at some stuff, doing a little damage to a PH unit. The monsters wiped the Slayer unit and consolidated in various directions.
Turn 5:
I positioned multiple PH units around/near the objective on various sides, wandered a couple far enough up to be easily in his DZ, and moved some Flamers into his DZ. The DP’s got in position to charge various Rhinos, and Kairos moved with one DP and some Flamers toward the LR. I wrecked all but one Rhino in shooting and immobilized the last (I didn’t want a bunch of tank shocks off the objective, and/or them blazing into my DZ). Couldn’t scratch the LR.
His turn, he disembarked his lord’s unit, finally got in his Razorback and last Troop squad (back behind the LR, deep in his DZ and toward the Long Fangs). The LR tank shocked to near the objective, but its movement wasn’t enough to push a couple of the Horror units off. Shooting didn’t do much, and then he tried to fire Bolt Pistols at Kairos, but failed his Changeling check and shot the nearby Rhino instead. Now they couldn’t charge Kairos, haven’t shot a different target. The roll gives us another turn.
Turn 6:
Kairos knows the command squad is well in hand and jumps off toward the other vehicles. 4 units of PH arrange themselves radiating outward from the objective, in a way that the LR can’t tank shock more than 2 in any direction from where it is. Everyone else maneuvers around some. The lord fails a T test and is removed (apparently not quite Eternal after all) and the squad is burned down by Flamers. A ton of Bolts immobilize the LR, Kairos wrecks the last Rhino and shakes the Razorback (he can split fire), then charges the Razorback, immobilizing it in CC.
His LR and Long Fangs shoot but don’t do much, the last Troop unit charges Kairos and fail to hurt him, then the game ends.
I control the objective (more PH by it than he has contesting units), and I have scoring and non-scoring in his DZ, so all three objectives. I get +6 for still having 6 Troop units left alive. The only point I miss is a +1 for not wiping out all Troops (one came in too late).
After 2 rounds, I have 66 of 72 possible battle points, and am in second place (leader has 70). At this point I’m not exactly sure about the points my other buddies had, but I know that after the first-round thumping the SM player went on a solid run of wins (I think back-to-back massacres) and the Tau player…well, let’s just leave it as it wasn’t the most fun he’d ever had.
Round 3: IG (current points leader)
Company Command Squad, Bodyguard, couple Meltas, Master of the Fleet (ouch), in a Chimera with Heavy Flamer
5 Veteran squads, 3 Melta, Chimeras (one Chimera had Heavy Flamer)
Vendetta
2 Hydra Flak Batteries
2 Medusas, one with Bastion-Breacher Shells
Russ Executioner with Plasma Cannon sponsons, Lascannon, and KC Pask (double ouch)
Banewolf
Marbo
6-man Psyker Battle Squad in a Chimera (not looking good)
Inquisitor, 2 Mystics (are you &%#$ing kidding me?)
So…seriously…wtf? This is gonna hurt.
A quick precursor to describe this scenario. It’s Pitched Battle, but has Night Fight on turn one, and at the beginning of subsequent turns, you roll to see if it’s still nighttime. On turn 2, it’s still night on a 2+. On turn 3, stays night on a 4+, 5+ on turn 4, 6 on turn 5, absolutely daytime by turn 6 at latest. Also, no Random Game Length…guaranteed 6 turns or time. Also, the secondary objective involves collecting “bonus victory points” (not related to regular victory points). Each player gets 4 slips of paper and writes down values between 0 and 250, to total up to 500 bonus points. You must use the exact amount. Then players alternate placing these slips underneath terrain features. You can’t place two of your own under the same terrain feature, but each player can put one under the same piece. They are controlled at the end by having a scoring unit and no enemy units in, on, or touching the terrain piece. Whoever controls more of these at the end wins. I honestly had no idea the best way to go about doing this. I split it into 250, 125, 125, 0, putting 0 in a terrain piece off to the side, 250 in the nearest one it seemed likely I could control, and randomly putting the other two in neutral-seeming locations. I have no idea how this will go.
Primary: Victory points
Secondary: Bonus points
Tertiary: Kill all the opponent’s Troops
He won the roll and made me go first. It’s a little hard to recall exactly what happened in which order after the first couple turns, so I’ll give a synopsis. His deployment had his Hydras in the far right corner, the Medusas behind some ruins closer to the center, the CCS near the Medusas to the right of the ruins, and the main bulk of the force centered to the left of the ruins. Going from the building he had Pask’s tank, the Vendetta (with Inquisitor inside), PBS in Chimera, Banewolf, Vet squad, with the other Vet squads arrayed in front of the back row to provide some cover. Significantly, the Vendetta was within 6” of the Executioner.
I got the right half of my army and started DSing. Kairos scattered into Mystic range and got blasted by Pask, shrugging off the wounds. Now that he was there though, I needed to try to land as many as possible in his bubble, which meant braving the free shots. Oh well, c’est la vie. With plasma cannons not being overly efficient at targeting single models (I would have been much more scared of a Punisher), the Herald was fine and 2 of the 3 DP’s were fine. The third scattered far forward, out of Kairos range, and got lit up for 3 wounds. Not good. Also, the Scribe’s unit got hit by it too, and that was much uglier. He got 23 wounds on the unit, reducing it to just the Bolt guy (who made 4/4 thanks to rerolls) and the Scribes (who made 3/3). The Changeling’s unit came down out of range.
Shooting saw the demise of the Vendetta, and one Mystic died in the explosion. Since the Inquisitor himself didn’t have any weapons (other than maybe a pistol), that was no longer something to worry about. I also wrecked the PBS’s Chimera, though didn’t have a chance to really do anything to them. I may have done something to a Chimera too. Wasn’t a lot. Didn’t have reliable range to much thanks to Night Fight.
On his turn, he sent Chimera after Chimera shooting at Kairos until one could actually see him. That one lit him up with a searchlight. Must be nice to have 10+ of those in a half-Night Fight game. The one who saw Kairos actually managed to put a wound on him too, hilariously. Passed the Ld check, and glad it happened before the PBS hit. As soon as Kairos was lit up, he got PBS’ed down to Ld 2 and everything else unloaded. He shrugged everything off, including around 12 wounds from the Hydra batteries. Those things put out a ridiculous amount of fire for their points. Finally, all that was left was Pask, who lined up Kairos…and failed his Changeling Ld test. Instead he swiveled the turret and unloaded onto the PBS, standing out of cover behind their broken Chimera. Scatters were pretty wild, but it still reduced the unit down to a single Psyker. Good start…now the PBS is all but out of the game, and so is the Inquisitor. On the other hand, he did finish off the 1 wound remaining Prince before it would get a chance to charge Pask.
My next turn I made what was probably my biggest tactical error in not sending the Herald over to try to end the Hydras. I had some things come down on his Icon, and wanted him nearby for more of that, as well as the reroll. I basically underestimated how much damage the Hydras could do…for some reason they didn’t really jump out at me all that much during my read of the codex. I guess they got overshadowed by the Hellhound and friends, Vendetta, Russ variants, and ordnance batteries. Not a mistake I’ll make again though.
I did some damage in my turn but not nearly enough. He got a -1 Ld on Kairos with the PBS, but it didn’t matter…after a failed wound from the Hydras’ shooting, I rolled boxcars on the Ld and Kairos was gone. A shame too…one more good turn with him and he would have done a ton of damage…jumping out to where he had easy pickings of side armor on Pask or Medusas, with charges on either. The game started looking downhill. Hilariously, Pask failed his second consecutive Changeling test and shot the side of the Medusas. If that had done something it would have been big, but between scatters and low penetration rolls nothing happened.
Over the rest of the game we did a ton of damage to each other. My Herald and the last arriving unit of Horrors killed off the Medusas and Hydras over the course of 2 turns, a DP ripped apart Pask’s tank, some Chimeras got smashed and Vet squads got hit by Flamers, the last Psyker died and the Inquisitor lost a wound and his other Mystic. Also, the Banewolf was immobilized, a couple Chimeras were immobilized, and the CCS was reduced below half. With me having no hope of getting all his troops for the tertiary, I played for a draw there, keeping some Horrors where not much could get to them, but the stupid Inquisitor charged a unit after it was shot down to 2, killing one on his turn (bottom of 5) and the other on my turn (top of 6). At that point I had one Horror from one squad alive, sitting in some terrain (the ruins on his side). The Inquisitor charged him, but since I got to swing first due to terrain, the Horror punched the Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in the brain, taking his last wound and a small measure of vengeance for Daemons everywhere.
When all was said and done, I had lost Kairos, the Herald, the Scribes, 5 full Horror squads including the 6-man with Icon and the Changelings’, one Flamer unit, 1 DP, and one Horror squad was below half. The difference in VP’s was in the neighborhood of 250, not enough for a win. Since my last Horror was still alive, we drew on tertiary. He controlled a couple of terrain pieces to my one, but the numbers down threw the secondary far in his favor (he got my 250 I placed). In hindsight I should have placed big numbers under the terrain on his side, since I would want to be blitzing forward to get side shots and charges, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. I would never have been able to predict how the game went down though…stuff ended up scattered all over the place.
All in all, we drew primary and tertiary for 7-7 and 2-2, he got secondary (10-0), and he got 3 bonus points for killing my most expensive unit (Kairos) and most expensive vehicle or MC that wasn’t the most expensive unit (1 DP…the one we had designated before game happened to be the one to scatter right into his lap) and having HQ alive. I got 2 bonus points for his most expensive (Pask) and 2nd most (Medusas). Final score, 22-11 (I had the 11 for those playing along at home).
After 3 rounds I now have 77 points out of 105 or so, with the leader now at 92. Only 15 points back, but need to really bring it hard in round 4. I’m not entirely sure of the standings at this point, but I’m still in the top 4, and still have a shot at the win. The other two armies in the top 4 with us are two guys I’ve played a lot of games against, and who helped brainstorm this army at a diner after gaming. One is rocking 6 Ironclad Dreads and the other has dual-lash Chaos.
Round 4: CSM (with the Dreads paired against the leader’s IG)
Prince, MoS, Lash
Sorcerer, MoS, Lash, Wings
3x 9 Khorne Beserkers, PFist, Rhino with Combi-melta
7 Plague Marines, 2x Meltas, Rhino with Combi-melta (maybe a PFist here too?)
Defiler, extra CC arm, TL Reaper Autocannon
2x 3 Obliterators
This list (and this player) won the most recent Adepticon Invitational, so it’s certainly a hard list. However, I do know the match-up very well and can come at this with a very good game plan…it’ll be tough, but I think it’s doable.
The mission: Spearhead Deployment, Capture and Control with a twist. After deployment, you put your objective marker somewhere in your opponent’s DZ, and he places his in your DZ. So no hiding yours all the way at the back and castling.
Primary: Control both objectives
Secondary: Control your objective
Tertiary: Control your opponent’s objective
Well, that’s certainly a straight-forward mission…control both objectives for the massacre. He deploys basically right up against the curved part of the Spearhead DZ. The Plauge Rhino is front and center (and sideways) giving cover to the DP and one Berserker Rhino behind. Another ‘Zerker Rhino with the Sorcerer is slightly to the right, the third further to the left and back (kind of a rear-guard a little, in case I get cheeky and show up behind him). To the left of the Plauges is the Defiler, and then the Oblits are on the two near edges of his DZ.
Pre-game assessment: I want to bring down the hard shooting, clustered, and start blowing up Rhinos. If I can explode the Plague Rhino, I can burn down the DP with Gaze and Bolt. Opening up as many ‘Zerker Rhinos as possible would also be good. Ok, got a solid plan…probably why Tzeentch decided to dump on me.
Remember how I said this game is doable? Well, the problem with that is that my army has a self-destruct button it likes to push sometimes. Every Daemon army has to contend with the failed Daemonic Assault roll, but my army is heavily dependent on Kairos. It’s not a big deal if he dies (sometimes), so long as he was around long enough to do his job. But I need him there at the beginning. A failed roll is alright so long as he shows up promptly in reserve rolls and doesn’t mishap. In this game, however, I got the wrong half to show up, and Kairos didn’t come in until 4. He still could have salvaged the game on 2, coming down on an Icon in combat with the Lash Prince and Defiler that just refused to die (I had dropped far away but the unit got double-lashed). However, when Kairos showed up on 4 with the last Prince, the only other things I had alive were 2 other Princes and the Herald, and short work was made of them all when Kairos was lashed away and charged. In the end, I took out the Plagues with a unit of Flamers, all but one ‘Zerker from one squad (of course it went back and camped on one objective), the Defiler, a couple Rhinos, and a couple Oblits, but on my turn 5 I had nothing left alive but Kairos and a DP, both in combat, and was tabled by the bottom of 5. 35-0. Not a whole lot to tell about this game, as you can imagine how well Flamers and Pink Horrors stand up to Khorne Berserker multicharges.
Oh well, such is the capricious nature of Chaos. The IG player got the SM player down to a single model, but that model was on an objective, so the primary and tertiary were both draws, and he got another score similar to the 3rd round.
In the end, the CSM player from my last round got 1st place, the IG player fell to 2nd, and the Ironclad player pulled third. My abysmal last round dropped me to 8th. Space Wolves pulled 4th, and the TH/SS Terminator player I came down with got 5th (he played the 4th place SW in the last round).
All in all, a great tournament. I was still in contention for the top prize up to the last round, and while the game certainly wouldn’t have been easy with the right half of my army, I wouldn’t have just rolled over and died. Third place got his pick of a Troops kit, 2nd place got pick of any Vehicle kit, and first place of course got to make arrangements for getting the army. Interestingly, the troops picked were Ork Boyz and the Vehicle kit was a Battlewagon. The winner decided he was going to get Dark Eldar…which I think would make him the 3rd Dark Eldar player in a 3-state radius. And who says they’re not popular?
Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave feedback!
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.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
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