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There was a smallish (12? players) tournament at the Chicago bunker today, ostensibly to get people practice with their 1850 Adepticon Championship/Invitational lists.

I ran yet another incarnation of my daemons:

HQ: Bloodthirster (Unholy Might)
HQ: Keeper of Secrets (Transfixing Gaze & Pavane)
Elite: 3 Flamers
Elite: 6 Fiends of Slaanesh
Elite: 5 Bloodcrushers (Icon, Instrument, Render)
Troop: 5 Horrors (Bolt of Tzeentch)
Troop: 5 Horrors (Bolt of Tzeentch)
Troop: 5 Horrors (Bolt of Tzeentch, Changeling)
Troop: 12 Plaguebearers (Icon)
Heavy: Soul Grinder (Phlegm)
Heavy: Soul Grinder (Phlegm)

In all my games, my preferred wave was the greater daemons, the crushers, fiends, and soul grinders, and my not so preferred wave was the horrors, plaguebearers and flamers.


Round 1:

Mission Primary Objective: Escort two civilian tokens back to your deployment zone. They don't like this idea, and try to get away, so they scatter 1d6 at the end of each turn.
Secondary: Score more victory points
Tertiary: Table Quarters.
Deployment: Pitched Battle (though, Drop pods vs. Daemons means this didn't matter that much)

I ended up playing against a Marine army featuring:

HQ: Librarian w/ Null Zone and something else irrelevant
HQ: Pedro Kantor
Elite: 6 Sternguard w/ 2 somethings (plasma cannons?)
Elite: 10 sternguard in drop pod. They had some fancy gun upgrades too, and a powerfist guy.
Elite: Ironclad dread in drop pod
Troops: 10 Marines in a Drop Pod. Powerfist, and flamers, or maybe meltas.
Troops: 10 Marines in a Drop Pod. Powerfist, and flamers, or maybe meltas.
Troops: 10 Marines on foot. Lascannon and plasma gun (split into two units)
Heavy: Predator w/ HB sponsons and Autocannon

Turn 1
He wins the die roll and makes me go first. I get my preferred wave. They drop, and that's fairly uneventful. Shooting sees the two soulgrinders both hit with their phlegm, killing 4 guys from one combat squad (the marines on foot), and Four of the non-podding Sternguard. The sternguard run off the table. Whee.
He brings in the Librarian+Tac squad Pod, and Pedro+Sternguard pod. Librarian Null-zones, The sternguard destroy the fiends, The tac squad fail to do much. His other shooting was inconsequential.

Turn 2
Bloodthirster and Keeper both charge Pedro + Sternguard. Leave two alive. Soulgrinder phlegm's the newly arrived tac squad, dropping them to the librarian and 2 friends. Bloodcrushers start to escort the objective towards my deployment zone. He brings in the dreadnought, kills off a unit of horrors or something, but is largely ineffective. Greater daemons finish off Kantor&Company, look for new eats.

Rest of game one
My big daemons pretty much had their way this game. At the end, he'd killed one horror squad, the fiends, a soulgrinder and the bloodthirster. I'd tabled him except for one empty pod. I got all the objectives.

Round 2

Primary Objective: Kill opponent's highest point unit (For me, that's the crushers)
Secondary: Get a scoring unit into opponent deployment zone
Tertiary: Kill Points
Deployment: Dawn of War

My opponent (Blackbone on here, finished Overall Champion) is playing Chaos Marines. He's running:
HQ: Abbadabado.
HQ: Lash Prince
Troops: 8 Khorne Berserkers.
Troops: 10 Plague Marines (2 special guns?), Rhino
Troops: 10 Chaos Space Marines
Troops: 10 Chaos Space Marines
Heavy: Land Raider (Possessed)
Heavy: 2 Obliterators
Heavy: 2 Obliterators

Turn 1
He sets up to go first, but I steal the initiative, hoping to get stuff onto the table before he's spread out too much. Then, the dice abandon me. Problem one: Do not get desired wave. Flamers deep strike in a good position though, and they're set to fry a troop unit, except that with 16 hits, they only kill 5 marines. Plaguebearers came down into opponent deployment zone, hoping to hang out there, and let me icon the other stuff in off them. He rolls everything on, kills a horror unit and the flamers, and hits the plaguebearers with his berserkers, but that only kills a couple of them.

Turn 2
My reserves trickle in. I get Keeper and Fiends. They use the plaguebearer's icon. I kill an obliterator with a bolt of tzeentch, and the plaguebearers tie combat with the berserkers, each losing one. He kinda mills around, but kills a bunch of horrors with his oblits. He also kills off 4 fiends with his plague marines.

Turn 3
I get a Bloodthirster, Crushers and a soul grinder from reserves. The keeper helps the plaguebearers against the berserkers. Soulgrinder destroys an entire unit of undivided marines with his phlegm. Fiends charge the Prince, deal two wounds, take one. He then shoots a bunch of stuff at the bloodcrushers, putting wounds on 4 of them, before charging Abbadon in. Abbadon kills 2, the remaining ones put 2 wounds on him.

Remaining Summary
Abbadon and the Crushers pretty much mutually destroy each other. A bolt of Tzeentch put the final wound on Abbadon, but for all intents and purposes, the primary was decided by this. One soulgrinder scattered into his guys and vanished. He kept lashing my bloodthirster through terrain, and I couldn't pass a dangerous terrain test to save my life, and forgot that I could use his invul. save against that. It took out the land raider before dying though. I ended up with the Keeper and the few remaining plaguebearers, he ended up with a handful of marines in my deployment zone, one wound left on his prince, the plaguebearer's rhino, and an obliterator unit. He got the secondary objective on the last turn by lashing the plaguebeaerers out of his deployment zone. (Ooops, another mistake - since this was dawn of war, his deployment zone was his whole half of the table, and so they technically were still there, but ooops, too late now. This is why we practice...)

Game Three

Primary Objective: Have more units (not scoring units) within 3" of a terrain piece in the middle of the board.
Secondary Objective: Kill Points
Tertiary Objective: Table Quarters
Deployment: Spearhead, escalation (infantry start on board, vehicles not. Daemons unaffected by this)

Opponent: Tony, playing Mechanized Dark Eldar. He's a good player who has had some successes at larger tournaments, and is generally in the top battle points at the bunker events.

HQ: 1 archon guy w/ retinue in raider.
Elites: 3 raiders w/ 8 wyches each
Troops: 5 raiders / 5 Warriors (Darklance+Blaster) each
Troops: 10 raiders w/ 2(?) dark lances
Heavy: 3 Ravagers w/ the other gun.

Early Turns
He wins the roll and makes me go first. I have a heavy side, that I think he'll avoid as he comes on, and a weaker side. Heavy side kills the one unit he deployed over there, and I've got most of my stuff on the board, near his table edge, before his reserves kick in. He comes in fairly piecemeal. I've killed a bunch of transports and occupants for little cost early on, but my slower stuff (Keeper, Crushers) are well out of the fight.

Mid turns
We trade punches for a bit, and model and pointwise, I'm winning, but I cannot stop enough of his fast vehicles from getting away to safe places.

Late Turns
I've got him down to two ravagers, a unit of warriors in a raider, and a unit of wyches in a raider. I've got plaguebearers, keeper and crushers near the objective. Bloodthirster has a shot at downing a full raider a good distance from the objective but the damage result comes up weapon-destroyed. With it being open-topped, this is the only roll that doesn't stop it moving to the objective. The crushers, plaguebearers and keeper, combined, cannot drop the wyches raider. He ends up with four units near the objective to my three and wins the primary, I've got the secondary, and we tied on the tertiary.


Tournament Results, thoughts
I ended up winning Best Painted, so that's a plus.

On my army, I haven't used phlegm a lot in the past, but I like having those early shots with a decent range. It makes it easier not to have to bunch up my early wave so much. The fiends are too fragile, and although they're fast and hitty, they'll probably be traded out for crushers. I like the keeper, it's a good alternative to a second bloodthirster, at less points, and it's better at eating troops and avoiding powerfists. I think I'll remove Pavane as it really didn't have a lot of use, and normally, I'd fleet the keeper instead of using pavane because I don't need to roll to hit to Fleet. My horror squads are weak, but I get the three bolts of change, which is nice. I think I'm just going to have to be resigned to the risk of getting the wrong half.


Special Bonus Content 2250 Gladiator test game

I also played a test game with my gladiator list.
Aangrath
Fateweaver
2x 5 Bloodcrushers (all the fixings)
3 flamers
5 bloodletters
5 horrors w/ bolt
5 horrors w/ bolt, changeling
12 plaguebearers (or something like that)

Versus:
Vulkan
Librarian w/ Gate, High-initiative power
10 Sternguard, 2 multimeltas, 5(?) combi-meltas, drop pod
10 tacticals (multimelta, flamer, powerfist), drop pod
10 tacticals (multimelta, flamer, powerfist), drop pod
10 scouts (3 sniper rifles, telion, 1 missile launcher, 5 BP/CCW)
10 assault terminators (TH/SS)
Whirlwind
2 MM/HF speeders
1 Storm
Ironclad Dreadnought in Pod

We played a straightforward capture&control, resulting in a tie.

Early Turns
I got my desired wave, but bad scatters saw Aangrath off in a corner, and Fateweaver places, at my opponent's discretion, right in front of his assault terminators. Fateweaver weathered 30 thunderhammer attacks (w/ Master-crafted rerolls), and only took one wound (and he didn't run away!). 10 Bloodcrushers make fairly short work of 10 Termies, even when the termies do have the stormshields, but they can't beat up an ironclad for nothing (the unit fighting the ironclad did so for 8 player-turns, until the game ended).

Mid Turns
While Aanggrath was pretty much killing anything he touched, the inability to lock into combat, paired with marines auto-rallying, meant that he did far less than expected for his cost. Killing five marines doesn't justify the price-tag. My opponent pretty much ignored him and concentrated, rightly, on my troops, which were all too easy to kill for his TL heavy-flamer speeders.

Late turns
I cleared his guys off my objective, and had his last troop unit (scouts) in combat with a very few plaguebearers. That didn't go far fast. I was able to get the last two bloodletters into the fight, and killed everyone but telion, the brave veteran scout sgt holding out and contesting his objective.

I'm definitely bringing Aangrath to the Gladiator. But, it doesn't seem like an entirely unsuccessful strategy to simply ignore him, let him do what little damage he might, and concentrate the rest of your force against the rest of mind. Obviously, against another 'big thing', that won't be the case, but there is no way this army can possibly win the gladiator. Aangrath is too many points and too easy to essentially neutralize simply by ignoring.

I bet your opponent wishes he had taken Null Zone as his 2nd psychic power. I think that probably would have changed things quite a bit.

I would think that anyone bringing a SM Librarian to the Gladiator would be taking that power.

I dunno. It seems like you want the teleport power in any kind of serious tournament. The ability to warp your guy is just too crucial, last turn objective grabbing, escaping headhunters, etc.

Then, if you take the null zone as your other power, you are running the risk of your librarian not being able to contribute to the game if you don't get Daemons or Terminators. Seems like in the Gladiator you'd be most concerned with Orks/CSM.

40kenthusiast wrote:I dunno. It seems like you want the teleport power in any kind of serious tournament. The ability to warp your guy is just too crucial, last turn objective grabbing, escaping headhunters, etc.

Then, if you take the null zone as your other power, you are running the risk of your librarian not being able to contribute to the game if you don't get Daemons or Terminators. Seems like in the Gladiator you'd be most concerned with Orks/CSM.

I wasn't advocating getting rid of Gate. I would personally take Gate and Null Zone to a tournament nowadays.

Null Zone almost single-handedly allows you to beat Daemons and with Nob bikers with cybork bodies and Farseers with Bike councils running about it seems like Null Zone is a useful power against quite a few different armies.

I dunno, Null Zone, in my opinion, is a false hope against daemons. The people I've played against who have used it have all lost, and pretty badly. Maybe that's just how my games have gone. Taking it "because of daemons" just doesn't seem all that important.

Case in point, round one of the tournament above. My opponent had Null Zone, and killed off my fiends because of it, but, realistically, with the units he shot at them, he'd have dropped them anyway. And, it put him within 24 inches of a lot of return fire.

I think the better anti-daemon tech is the allied inquisitor w/ mystics & psycannon. That scares me a lot more than a 2-wound librarian.

Generally speaking daemons are so strong in close combat that null zone is typically only going to be useful when shooting at warp spawn. So it comes down to can shoot them enough before they catch you in cc.

G

I think Yakface is absolutely right. Nullzone and Gate are the best combo's for the Librarian. In my playtesting against Daemons, both powers have been invaluable. The Gate allows my unit of GK's with psycannons to teleport around for the best shots against Fateweaver and the Nullzone allowed me to bring down Angarath in 2 assault phases in back to back games.

Glad to have played against a Redbeard army in a tournament - his armies are always fully-painted and so cool-looking in person. We had a bang up game and he gave me some good pointers on fighting Daemons afterwards. You also definately took your bum luck in stride when the other wave came in and whatnot.

Wish more people had showed up, but I had fun and there were a lot of familiar faces and good games had.

I am anxious to hang out Friday night and see how some of those Gladiator games go. Who did you practice against in that 2250 game?

- Blackbone

Just a local friend, we were playing at my place, where we have a ready supply of beers, not at the bunker.