Hey folks! You can find my battle reports for the other games in the
GT here:
Game One
Game Two
Game Three
Game Four: You're reading it!
Game Five
This weekend I made the eight hour drive to San Antonio, TX for the Alamo
GT. I had originally planned on taking my Necron Wraith Wing, but my wife does the painting around here, and she was under the weather for the last two weeks and didn't get a lot of painting done, so we didn't get the Monoliths done. I don't mind going to
RTTs or
FLGS tournaments with unpainted models, but not traveling long distances for a Grand Tournament. Worse...I sent in the wrong Dark Eldar list! I wych cult and my kabal are both labeled "2,000
DE.xls" in different places on my desktop, and I didn't realize until I printed out my lists Friday when I was leaving work that I had sent in my Kabal "Darklight Storm." And what I had sent was a modified version of my usual Darklight Storm that I had never actually used before; I made it to playtest a slight tweak in wargear for units.
Darklight Storm
HQ: Baron Sathonyx
HQ: Haemonculi with Shattershard, Crucible of Malediction, and Animus Vitae
Troop1: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop2: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop3: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop4: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop5: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop6: 9x Wyches with Haywire Grenades // Raider with Flickerfield and Torment Grenade Launcher
Elite1: 4x Trueborn with 4x Blasters // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Elite2: 4x Trueborn with 4x Blasters // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Elite3: 3x Trueborn with 3x Blasters // Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Fast Attack1: 3x Beastmasters, 4x Razorwing Flocks, 5x Khymerae
Heavy Support1: Ravager with 3x Dark Lances and Flickerfield
Heavy Support2: Ravager with 3x Dark Lances and Flickerfield
Heavy Support3: Ravager with 3x Dark Lances and Flickerfield
1,996 points
List Analysis
-Baron Sathonyx is actually the core of this army for his +1 to go first ability. Dark Eldar are most potent during an alpha-strike, and anything they can do to help get that alpha-strike is worth doing.
-The beast unit itself is a decent unit, but primarily exists to give the Baron a unit to hang with. The Baron is jump infantry, so can't embark on a raider or venom, and I don't want him floating around by himself getting sniped down. It works out rather well since beasts don't have grenades and couldn't use their nifty I6 and I5 if they had to assault through cover. The only decent saves in the unit are the 4++ on the Khymerae, but those are important to save for close combat power weapons. That makes the Baron's +1 cover save a perfect match for beasts! The only downside to the unit combination is their mismatched movement and assault speeds. The Baron can move 12" and assault 6", and the beasts can move 6" and assault 12". They're both fleet, but together they can only move 6" and assault 6". I've found after practice and testing that I can pretty accurately judge when to leave the Baron attached, and when to separate him so that I can get a 12" charge on the beasts.
-Each warrior venom has dual purposes. The venoms are potent anti-infantry, while the unit inside can add its own potent anti-infantry with 8 poison shots rapid-firing at 12" with a STR8 AP2 shot getting a terminator killer shot in there, or serving as a potential anti-tank addition.
-Flickerfields on Everything! Nightshields are pretty useless against almost everything that shoots at tanks, but a 5+ invulnerable save works in both close combat and ranged combat; and theoretically giving me 1/3 more vehicles! Every melta against a ravager that pings off my flickerfield is a little personal victory.
-The wyches in this army primarily exist to make this a
TAC army. Lances don't work against Monoliths or Blessed Hull, so haywire grenades fill the gap against things which I don't have the ability to kill. They're a decent assault unit, but have no Agonizer. My opponents keep being surprised at that fact - but at the end of the day, I don't have 25 points to spare for it.
-The Haemonculi is there to pass a pain token on to the wyches unless the wyches get a

for their drug and start with one - in which case he couldn't pass the pain token over, so he instead starts with a Trueborn unit. Don't ask about the Animus Vitae; it doesn't do anything to help him, and is only there because this wasn't a tested variant of my Darklight Storm.
Game Four Opponent: Chris Carlile's Dark Eldar
HQ: Asdrubael Vect
HQ: Lelith Hesperax
Troop1: 9x Wyches with Haywire Grenades and a Razorflail, one being a Hekatrix with an Agonizer, in a Raider with Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
Troop2: 9x Wyches with Haywire Grenades and a Razorflail, one being a Hekatrix with an Agonizer, in a Raider with Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
Troop3: 9x Wyches with Haywire Grenades and a Razorflail, one being a Hekatrix with an Agonizer, in a Raider with Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
Troop4: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster in a Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop5: 5x Warriors with 1x Blaster in a Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Fast Attack1: 6x Reaver Jetbikes with Bladevanes and 2x Heat Lances
Elite1: 9x Hekatrix Bloodbrides with haywire grenades and 3x Razorflails, one being a Syren with an Agonizer in a Raider with Grisly Trophies and a Flickerfield
Heavy Support1: Ravager with 3x Dark Lances and Flickerfield
Heavy Support2: Ravager with 3x Dark Lances and Flickerfield
Blitzkrieg!!:
Your forces inflicted massive casualties in the previous engagement, the enemy's main column is shattered. Your orders are to race forward and sieze as much ground as possible before the enemy can bring reserves to bear. Alamo Prime is nearly ours!
Objective: Capture and Control
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Special Rules: Rulebook Default
Duration: Random Game Length
Secondary Objective:
Pay for ground with your blood! The player with the most scoring units in the enemy deployment zone achieves the secondary objective. In the event of a tie, neither player achieves the objective.
"You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises" Davy Crockett just before being executed.
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Pre-Game Tactical Assessment:
Coming into game #4, I'm now leading the pack on battle points. Chris didn't get a flawless victory in his last game, and there were a *lot* of ties the last game. This mission actually knocked quite a few folks out of the running too because it is capture and control - something a lot of players don't play aggressively enough to win. This is our second
DE matchup for the tournament - we both faced Dark Eldar in the first game. I notice that he only has two ravagers, which inspires confidence. I also note that he has Reaver Jetbikes - which means that I don't need to open any vehicles before my splinter cannons get a chance to go to work. We're on the top table.
Here's a picture of the table.
Chris has since registered on Dakka as Caldera02, and I wanted to address a few points he made in another thread.
Caldera02 wrote:
Here are the things that bothered me about our game. The very first argument was you trying to tell me that of the 4 pieces of terrain on the board, the two hills did not count as cover. I thought that was a bit rich considering you have 9 venoms... So I didn't let you get away with that one.
The first thing we do is settle in to talk about terrain. I make the following suggestions:
1. Lets count the buildings as 4+ area terrain, two stories with 3" between levels and
TLOS for vehicles where applicable.
2. The trench system - lets call it 4+ for infantry and difficult terrain, with the flat area that the trenches are running through as open ground.
3. That building thiny on the far left in the picture....was halfway between our table and the next one, so we moved it over onto their table.
4. Lets call the fence/barricade thingies 5+ cover for infantry behind it.
5. The two hills - lets call them
TLOS terrain and difficult to go up or down the steppes of.
As noted in Chris' post above, he didn't agree with me about the hills. To me, I see barren hills. No grass on them, no bushes, trees, shrubberies, nada. If an infantry unit is on the steppes or behind it, then they get cover as applicable, and vehicles using the hills to try screening themselves from certain angles would get cover if they are 50% obscured from line of sight, but I don't see any reason that an infantry unit on top of the hill, standing out in the open with not a blade of grass to deflect an orbital bombardment should be in cover. He was VEHEMENTLY opposed to them not being 4+ area terrain completely - so I amicably note that if its really an issue, then we can call it 4+ area terrain. I don't understand what advantage he thought I was looking for by not having it be area terrain, I just prefer for stuff on the table to *be* what it looks like.
We roll off to go first and he wins! That saves me the trouble of trying to decide what to do about Vect as he elects to deploy and go first.
On the right side of the board (from my perspective) He puts his six reaver jetbikes into the trench system, a ravager, two raiders, and two venoms behind the building - you can't see his objective, but its behind the building on the corner there.
On the left side of the board goes his other ravager, the raider that has the bloodbrides, vect, and Lelith in it, and his other wych raider.
Here's a picture of his board-wide deployment.
For my deployment, I choose to reserve everything.
Enemy Turn One:
On the right side of the board, his reaver jetbikes move 12" up the trench system - with skilled rider he doesn't fail any Dangerous Terrain tests. I ask him if he should be taking two dangerous terrain tests - one for starting in and moving from dangerous terrain and once for ending in dangerous terrain since it says "begin or end" in the rules, but he's adamant that its only one test, so I roll with it. I've always taken two tests if I start in dangerous terrain, and end my movement in more dangerous terrain. I made a
THREAD about it over in YMDC just now, so we'll see what people say. Meanwhile, his venom moves from behind the building to the front of it, inside the footprint. He didn't take dangerous terrain on that roll either...but I think to myself that since we didn't talk about building "footprints" and cover, that I suppose he'd have an argument for it not being terrain where he's standing - so I didn't mention anything. The ravager and raider hang out behind the building.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/370010.page#2824537
On the left side of the board, his ravager and raiders move up to the edge of the building, while one pokes its nose through a blown out window. To pre-empt comments on this, since skimmers *do* have bases, I've always considered them to need
DT if their base lands in terrain; I've seen it played both ways, and I don't care either way as long as it is consistent.
Dashofpepper Turn One:
I roll for reserves and my Battle Barge enters the fray, leveling the table.
Post-Game Tactical Assessment:
I think that my opponent under-estimated the capability of my Battle Barge.
Just kidding.
Enemy Turn Two:
His Reaver Jetbikes move further up the trench system on my right flank and the rest of his army sits tight behind cover.
Dashofpepper Turn Two:
I roll for reserves! I get two ravagers, Baron Sathonyx and the beast unit, two trueborn venoms, and three of my five warrior venoms. 8/13 rolls, not bad! I move onto the board centrally and to the right; my ravagers are lining up to shoot at raiders, and I want all my splinter cannons either shooting at his reaver jetbikes, or at the unit(s) that get out of any transports that I wreck/explode. I'd prefer to shoot at ravagers, but they're either not in
LOS or have solid cover. My beast unit moves onto the table in the trench system - I actually took one of my models and surfed it up the trench network to make sure that I could actually move up the trenches. I couldn't fit them all in the trench based on how many models I have, so I put as many as I could in one trench, scattered models across the space between the trenches in 2" coherency (including the Baron to keep him from having to roll
DT), and put the rest in another trench.
That's my objective there - an imperial guard slave. I fight for slaves to torture!
I snapped some shots of perspective to show what I was shooting at. One of my ravagers has a clear shot at one of his raiders. From a tournament perspective, if there is *any* question about
LOS or cover saves, I always ask my opponent during the shooting phase. "Hey, if I shoot this ravager at that raider, I'm pretty sure that I can see more than 50% of its front facing. What do you think?" It avoids cover save arguments during shooting; if I think I have a clear shot at something, and my opponent disagrees, rather than argue about it, I'll pick a different target. My shooting is unfortunately legendary for how crappy it is, so I cringe while I open up with my dark lances. Two penetrates and a glance! Holy smokes. Chris begins what will turn into an unbelievable shooting phase of dice rolling with triple 5+ flickerfield saves.
My other ravager has a clear shot at the wych raider sitting on his objective, and there's a venom with dual splinter cannons hoping for a wrecked vehicle to disgorge some tasty infantry to shoot at.
Two pens and a glance again! *cheers* His flickerfield flicks away one glance and one penetrate....and I immobilize the raider. Arg.
My two trueborn and warrior venom on the right are lining up to deal with his reaver jetbikes. The trueborn might be in range of the venom, so I take a stab at it and disembark them - they are predictably out of range; I'm decent, but not a whiz with eyeballing distance.
Since I didn't manage to wreck anything with my anti-tank the three venoms on the right and the one in the center right that was hoping to get some wyches all turn their guns onto the reaver jetbikes. 36 shots should cause 12 wounds, enough to cause 6 failed saves. Instead, it takes 48 (or 60, I can't remember if the middle venom had range or not) and *barely* enough even at that. Damn his dice!
My beasts run forward a couple inches, and my turn ends having inflicted a pretty sad first blood.
Enemy Turn Three:
Chris hangs back in cover and doesn't go for the charge, choosing to do a bit of maneuvering around to get optimal firing angles on me for a turn instead.
One of his ravagers opens up on my ravagers, getting a glance and a penetrate. I fail both flickerfield saves and get shaken and immobilized.
The wych raider on the left that my other ravager whiffed against returns a single dark lance shot, and I fail another flickerfield save to lose the ravager to a wrecked result.
The Bloodbride raider throws a dark lance at my leading troop venom and glances through another flickerfield failure to stun it.
On the right side of the board, his other ravager opens up on my closest troop venom and punches through another flickerfield failure to explode it. He gets one wound, and I fail that too. The explosion tags three of my beasts, and I fail three 3+ cover saves on razorwing flocks. *sigh* His midfield venom opens up on my disembarked trueborn but is out of range, while the venom on the right opens up on them - they go to ground for 3+ cover and lose two out of three saves. Hooray! My first save of the game!
I roll leadership on my trueborn and to add insult to injury they fail and fall back 10". And fail to regroup a second time at the start of my turn and run off the board.
Dashofpepper Turn Three:
That was a rough turn two. I lost a ravager, the functionality of a second ravager...I can't flat out because I'm immobilized, so I'm probably going to lose my other ravager, and I've lost a trueborn squad - putting a *HEFTY* dent in my anti-tank; and I'm down a venom and the functionality of a venom.
I roll for reserves and get my last trueborn venom and two warrior venoms. No wyches, no ravager. Damn.
His bloodbrides and the wych raider on my left flank are closest to my board edge since they moved around cover to fire across at my other units, so my last trueborn venom moves on the left flank and drops trueborn behind the venom. I put my venom flush with the board edge to protect the trueborn from assault; I thought it was rather clever.
My other two venoms move in to support them. Hoping to open up one of those raiders so I can splinter cannon what falls out.
My warriors get out of their stunned venom in midfield and move up into blaster range.
On my right flank, my venoms move up a couple inches to make sure that I'm in blaster range - the warriors in the crater nudge the blaster out to be safe for range, and my beasts
2d6 forward.
On to shooting! My trueborn on the left are all in range of his bloodbrides, so I open up. Three hits out of four...three penetrates! Three penetrates that I shake my head at in amazement as his flickerfields continue to perform overzealously.
On the right flank, I stun his venom, and his ravager's flickerfield shrugs off my blasters. That was incredibly ineffective, and my splinter cannons continue to have nothing to do.
Enemy Turn Four:
Chris makes his move!!
Vect and the Bloodbrides move up 12", disembark and glare at me. He's got a ravager and two raider dark lances over there - I'm expecting him to blow up my venom so that he can assault the trueborn.
His other wych raider on the left flank moves up and disgorges wyches to set up a multi-assault.
The warriors from the stunned venom get out and move back towards the building (and during the shooting phase run 5" and get up to the second level).
He commences shooting!
His ravager on the left opens up on my immobilized, no longer shaken ravager for a glance and a penetrate; and I finally make a flickerfield save! The glance gets through for a weapon destroyed.
He swivels one of the two raiders over there to fire at my ravager and my flickerfield stubbornly holds. The third one swings over and shoots at it as well and I lose my second ravager. On the flip side - he's not shooting at the venom screening the trueborn anymore, which should leave me safe from assault. o.O
The venom that isn't stunned opens up on the warriors in midfield and does five wounds. I go to ground. The white dice is the blaster warrior. I thought it was worth a picture.
On to assaults!
The regular wych squad fleets towards my ravager and multi-assaults my ravager and the venom closest to it. The assault raised my eyebrows - from where the wyches were, enough should have been able to get into base with the ravager to prevent coherency shenanigans to wander over to the venom too...but I'm *really* trying to get a good game vote.
The immobilized ravager gets wrecked, and the venom gets stunned, immobilized, and weapon destroyed.
Asdrubael Vect moves under the venom to assault the trueborn and the blood brides hit the venom. We pause for a rules dispute. Chris argues that he can get to the trueborn underneath the venom. I argue that you can't move through enemy models to assault a unit on the other side. He says that he can fit his base under my venom and doesn't need to move through it. I say that you enemy models are treated as impassable terrain - and that you can't take up the same footprint as them. He says fine - he'll go around because he didn't move their full distance for his run move, so he'll just move their full distance so that he can assault around the venom. Uh...I object to this - I didn't see his run roll, so I don't know whether he's run his full distance or not, and given that we're in the assault phase, I don't agree with going back to his shooting phase so that he could run further. With the way we've both been rolling, a single lance probably would have wrecked/exploded it. He says that he was planning on shooting it, but needed the lances for my ravager.
At this point, we call a judge over, who grabs a second judge and we present our two cases. There are two issues they need to decide:
1. Can he assault through/under my venom - which is flush with the board edge to get to my trueborn?
2. Can he go back to shooting to take extra run inches?
The judges debate, do some measuring...and rule against #1 - no, he cannot share a footprint with my Venom. They tell us to
D6 the second issue - Chris rolls, and I win. Then he brings up my venoms being too long, and he should be able to get around anyway if they were appropriately sized. The judges note that there is no model for them yet - I tell him that I vetted my conversions through the
TO beforehand and got them approved - and that it still wouldn't have helped him - out of the three venoms over there, I just would have stacked two of them end to end and the result would have been the same anyway.
Chris accuses me of cheating - I tell him that none of this would have been an issue if he had shot the venom in the first place - I have no idea why he thought he could assault through a venom to get to a unit on the other side - which is why I announce my intentions before I do it so that I don't run into surprises.
*sigh* We move on, and I do my best to move past it and have a good rest of the game. For those who wish I would write analytical battle reports, rules issues happen, affect the outcome of the game, and in this case affected the tournament. I'm going to write about it.
His haywire grenades need

to hit, and he immobilized my venom.
Dashofpepper Turn Four:
I get my wyches, last warrior venom and my last ravager out. I've been taking a beating so far and Chris is virtually untouched.
My wych raider moves onto the table and drops down on the other side of his wyches. The wyches get out the back end to line up an assault against his wyches, and the haemonculi gets out the front end to shattershard Vect+Bloodbrides.
Here's a shot of my haemonculi lining up for a shattershard shot at the bloodbrides and his
HQs. I line him up so that I can skim the side of my raider without touching it and snag both
HQs.
On the right side of the board, Baron Sathonyx separates from the beasts so that they can get a 12" charge - the Baron moves up towards assault range of the empty Venom and my beasts move up. My thus-far ineffective trueborn and warrior blasters skip forward another couple inches - for the love of Baby Gandalf, that ravager needs to die.
My haemonculi lays down the shattershard! 4+ removes a model from play. Vect lives. Lelith dies. Two of his three razorflails die. One bloodbride dies. 4 out of 10...better than I've done thus far. Splinter cannons and rapid fire warriors take down the rest of the bloodbrides but leaves Vect untouched. My blaster trueborn smack him for four wounds and he rolls two ones and loses Vect. I immobilize the other raider.
My wych raider dark lances the raider that vect came out of and wrecks it. Dice are starting to balance themselves out finally. My beasts roll their run move and get 6" - enough to put them into easy charge range of both the previously stunned venom and the ravager over there that's been griefing me. The ravager to the rear goes in a fiery explosion to the ravager that just came in from reserves.
The splinter cannons on the left ate up Vect's squad, the splinter cannons on the right go after the warriors in the building and melt them.
Back on the left flank, I drop one unit into his wyches to thin them down for my assault.
Baron Sathonyx assaults into the venom while my beasts multi-assault the venom and the ravager. I immobilize the ravager and explode the venom.
My wyches assault his wyches - I think he had +1
STR, I don't remember what I had, but I've got
FNP from the haemy's ex-pain token and wipe them casualty free.
Thus ends my turn with a bit of a comeback - his dice lost their fire after the judge intervention. I took a beating in the first three turns in exchange for inflicting nothing, and in the fourth turn killed a venom, a ravager, a raider, both
HQs, the bloodbrides, a wych squad and a warrior squad.
Enemy Turn Five:
Chris moves his last wych unit 12" up on my left flank and disembarks - those wyches are his only shot at getting to my objective.
On the right flank, he moves his last venom flat out onto his objective and gets the wyches+Lelith out of his raider to come threaten my beasts.
His ravager whiffs against my ravager, and his immobilized raider misses my raider at point blank range. To his rear right the immobilized raider takes a potshot at one of my raiders and I make a flickerfield save.
His wyches run...2". Not enough to put him in assault range of my own wyches to potentially contest my objective.
On the right, he multi-assaults the Baron and the beasts with Lelith and her wyches. 4 wyches go into Baron Sathonyx, while Lelith and the other wyches go into my beasts. He rolls poorly and I roll about average - I win combat, and he fails leadership. He fails his rerolled leadership from Grisly Trophies, and I catch him...wiping the unit.

We both stare blankly at the table for a minute.
Dashofpepper Turn Five:
My pinned unit midfield jump back into their no longer stunned venom and move up 12". On the left, my wyches move up to threaten his wyches while one of my warrior venoms jumps over to the objective to hold it.
I open fire on the left and take down the the last two raiders over there.
My trueborn on the right move up, disembark, and penetrate past his flat out save to explode his last venom. Four of the warriors inside are wounded, and all four fail their armour saves. The Baron reattached to the beasts, and they
2d6 onto his objective to set up a multi-assault against his lone warrior and the empty immobilized wych raider.
My wyches vs. his wyches...with me on the charge, there's a slightly better than 50% chance of me winning, but dice are fickle - it isn't a killpoint game, so the Haemonculi moves into assault range; one of my warrior units also disembarks and prepares to assault into his wyches. While my wyches have 4++ and 4+
FNP that could probably shrug off most of his attacks (except the agonizer), I want to throw as many attacks in there as I can to prevent any chance of him getting to my objective. With the agonizer tied up with my wyches, at least he can't power weapon my warriors.
I assault in and win combat - the wyches flee; letting me consolidate to within 6" to keep them running.
I assault into the lone warrior and empty raider and kill them both.
Chris concedes - he's got one unit left on the table and they're fleeing. I
D6 for another turn and it would continue to let me put the midfield warriors into his deployment zone.
Post Game Assessment:
I was tempted not to write this battle report - I expect this thread to descend out of control, but have committed myself to writing them.

Chris' die were absolutely on fire while mine were in the pits for the first three turns. He literally made every one of his saves and I failed every one of mine. It was obscene. The game turned ugly after the judge intervention - I tried keeping a light face on it, but as his die rolls worsened he got uglier; calling me a cheater - at the end of the game, he told me that I only won because I cheated. He went on to tell anyone who would listen that I cheated...including hostile spectating in my last game to shout that I was cheating (which was ridiculous, and I'll cover later) - up to booing me at the award ceremony. I didn't give him a bad game vote...although I really should have. Judges make rulings; I've been ruled against - but I've never started screaming about it, and it was very unpleasant.
Every story has two sides; Chris registered for Dakka to tell his.
Caldera02 wrote:Converted raider!? really? what did you convert? You added two guns to the front, big whoop. And wrong guns at that. You didn't even try. Most DE players went out of their way to actually convert a venom from vypers or something similar. They are CLEARLY smaller than a raider in the book. Tyranid players went out of their way to convert tervigons. So don't sit there and try to say your raiders are converted.
Here are the things that bothered me about our game. The very first argument was you trying to tell me that of the 4 pieces of terrain on the board, the two hills did not count as cover. I thought that was a bit rich considering you have 9 venoms... So I didn't let you get away with that one.
Second, you were not always consistent with your dice rolls. You said anything that rolled outside your dice box would get re-rolled. That only happened once during our game but the final match I watched you do it repeatedly. Just very shady in my opinion that you would follow your own rule when it suited you.
Third, now this isn't exactly against the rules but also very dirty. I watched you measure movement for your side ways counts as venoms and then rotate them to gain inches. Normally I would just shake my head at such cheasy tactics just to get a win but couple that with your extra long venoms, you actually gain a lot of extra distance by doing this.
Fourth and the one that bothered me the most. You cheating me out of that charge. My base was clearly touching yours without being "under" your so called venom. Also in this instance if you had a correctly modified venom I could have charged around the other side but it was so close the judges did not want to make a solid ruling on it. So we diced off on a game changing move that should never have even been a question.
Out of the 5 people you played this past weekend, 4 of them gave you bad games. how does that make you feel? Do you feel better by cheating to win? I don't know how you won having such a crappy sportsmanship score. And giving your prize to the last place person does not redeem you. That is an act of kindness done only by winners.
I hope you come to wargamescon and try to have fun by not cheating your opponents. But I will tell you this, cheating will not be tolerated. Have fun little man.
Caldera02 wrote:My name is Chris Carlile. I've played in more than a handful of GT's now. Placed very high in most of them and I have been playing 40k since late 2nd edition. I know the rules very well. In so much as I will be judging at Wargamescon this year.
Kingsley has also posted in this thread. A fellow austinite who had the misfortune of playing against Dash. He can lend credence to his cheaty behavior and shoddy play. As to the rules argument that changed the game, that was only dash, the two judges and I. They did not want to make a very tough call on table 1 so made us dice off on it.
My response:
Dashofpepper wrote:Well, I'm planning on addressing this in my battle report. It helps that I have pictures. Quite a few pictures, including the intended charge, the denial...etc.
Chris, I got three votes for bad games. I've talked about them elsewhere (
DCM forums).
Game #3: My opponent was running what I consider to be an uncompetitive army. To face me, he had to have had maximum battle points. I gave him every benefit during the game. Everywhere he wanted cover, he got it - even if he wasn't 50% covered. I let him have it. His 6.5" moves, I let him do it. We joked, I did my best to keep him cheerful, and at the end he said, "You were fine to play against, and I appreciate you being as friendly as you were, but your army simply isn't fun to play against. I sat here for 20 minutes during each of your first two turns and just rolled saves." I tried especially hard to joke and keep him cheerful because he was sullen throughout most of the game - and the more he lost, the angrier and sullen he got. Super kudos to him for having made it through two rounds with max points with a vanilla marine list consisting of two razorbacks, a landspeeder, two devastator squads, two units of foot-slogging terminators, and a crapton of walking tactical marines. I talked to him again after the tournament and he said, "It is your job to make the game fun for me." Short of bringing a different list - something that he could have gleefully trounced on...there's nothing to be done about it. So I got a bad game vote because he didn't have fun. Interesting that you're noting here that "he can lend credence to his cheaty behavior and shoddy play" - he told me that the game was fine, and I was fine, but the army wasn't fun to play against. Either you're calling him a liar...or he is a liar? I'll be honest, given that you two are friends, and that he prepped you for our game (as you gleefully pointed out), helping you with target priorities and knowing what I was going to do, I was half expecting you to tank my sportsmanship regardless of how the game went.
Game #4: Our game. Do you know WHY I always announce my intention for shooting during movement? How many times did I say "I think I have a clear shot from here to there...what do you think?" Its to avoid any issues that might arise when it comes around to shooting. You should practice the same. Enemy models are treated as impassable terrain. You MAY NOT move through an enemy model, or through the footprint of an enemy model to get to something on the other side. If you doubt me, visit the
YMDC forums, and create a thread about it. There is no rule interpretation that in any way would EVER allow you to assault through a venom to the unit on the other side. If you had announced your intention during movement, I would have pointed out the illegality of what you were about to do, and saved you feeling exposed and unable to charge the target you were trying to get to. Then, after declaring the assault, discovering that what you were trying to do was illegal, you moved your models back...declared that you were going back to the shooting phase, and told me that you hadn't run them the full distance allowable - so you were going to move up a couple more inches so that you could go around the venom to assault them. I objected. The judges agreed with me, and ruled against you - we didn't have to dice off on it. And despite them ruling against you...you have the balls to accuse me of cheating. Then you went and told all your friends that I cheated you out of the game. And worst of all....as you're spectating at the top table in my last game, you have the bad form to shout, "STOP CHEATING!!!!" Your conduct was extremely unbecoming for a public venue.
In terms of your accusation about my inconsistency with dice rolls and the dice tray I was using: When the table is crowded with model and there's a lot of stuff going on, I'll break out the dice tray to make keeping the dice together easier. I always offer its use (and my dice) to every opponent before the game. If I'm rolling in the box, and die misses, goes off the table, on the floor, or anything else, I will reroll it into the box regardless of result. There is ONE exception to this policy. If I haven't announced to my opponent that I will reroll anything that doesn't land in the box, and I roll a bunch of armour saves and one rolls out of the box and fails - and *then* I announce that I will reroll anything that lands outside of the tray, it looks shady. *ESPECIALLY* when the die-roll is for Baron Sathonyx on a 2++ Shadowfield save and I roll a

out of the tray. Then I said, "Alright...I'll keep it, but for future reference, anything that I roll in the tray that bounces out I will reroll back in the tray. My fifth round opponent commented on it twice that he was glad I was doing that, because I rolled a

for Baron Sathonyx out of the box before I made that announcement and kept it...and I had a penetrating roll of

bounce out of the box that turned into a

inside the box. There was *never* a case in which I benefited. I didn't *always* roll in the tray. Rolling 1-3 dice, I usually do it on the table. But rolling attacks for wyches, beasts, splinter cannons.....those go in the tray so that dice don't scatter all over.
Hopefully with those things already addressed and answed...and with three other battle reports and a Tournament Discussion thread overloaded with much discussion about the same things...perhaps we can just talk about the tactics? And some Q&A about tactics? I would be most appreciative.