Jervis Johnson
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Games Workshop Grand Tournament Finland was held last weekend in Helsinki Finland in unison with the yearly modelling convention ModelExpo at the largest fair centre in the country. More than 20'000 people visited ModelExpo during saturday so GW's games got plenty of nice PR and probably quite a few new recruits to the hobby. Since the Grand Tournament was an official one sponsored in part by GW, a local gaming store, and Microsoft, the head referee and his assistant flew in from England. They don't allow Beast Cowers to be cast on Greater Daemons at the UK GT circuit, nor do they allow it at the ETC, so it wasn't allowed here either. Wolf hunts falls under the same criteria. They keep saying they are soon releasing a FAQ that clarifies monstrous characters as simply characters as far as spells that affect monsters are concerned.
The tournament was exactly from the UK playbook, meaning 2000 point armies, six games per player, and everything from the GW GT tournament rules pack. You can go read the scenarios from the GW UK home site, but in a nutshell, three missions were each played twice. The first mission awarded one game point from your home quarters and three for each of your enemy's table quarters. Contesting units mean neither player gets the quarter. The player with more game points wins. A win is worth 30 tournament points, a draw 10 tournament points, and a loss 1 point. If you concede a game before it ends you get zero points. Victory points were also calculated for tie-breaker situations. The second mission had players place four objective markers on the table, and each of them was worth a single point. The player controlling more objectives at the end of the game wins. These objectives were impossible to contest, since the player nearest to the objective with a scoring unit gets it. The third mission was kill points, meaning the player with the most kill points at the end of the game wins. Three points for destroying a lord choice, one point for a hero, one extra point for killing a named character, one for a core unit, two for special and three for a rare. A Treeman Ancient for example would be worth 6 kill points. Units that cost less than 100 army points are ever worth only 1 kill point regardless which force organization choice they represent.
With everything in mind, and knowing what people played at the UK GTs this year I took the best army imaginable. The requirements for myself were that I need to counter Star Dragons, Kairos Fateweavers, and Bloodthirsters, all the while keeping a solid chance against summon hordes and gunlines. I was hoping I wouldn't have to play against gunlines though.
Heroes:
-Keeper of Secrets: General, Level 1, Allure of Slaanesh, Torment Blade, Soul Hunger, Siren Song
-The Masque of Slaanesh
-Herald of Tzeentch: Battle Standard Bearer, Great Icon of Despair, Winged Horror, Spell Breaker
Core:
-10 Horrors
-10 Horrors
-10 Horrors
-5 Furies
Special:
-5 Flesh Hounds
-5 Flesh Hounds
-5 Flesh Hounds
Rare:
-5 Flamers
I was convinced I would enter the tournament without a greater daemon. I was contemplating either a list with Skulltaker, two Tzeentch Heralds and four units of 6 Hounds and two full units of Flamers, or with three Tzeentch Heralds, Blue Scribes and the same four units of dogs and two units of Flamers. However, in the end my requirements kept bugging me and I didn't want to spam beast cowers every turn on enemy Dragons. Additionally the fact that the spell wouldn't be working on greater daemons made me think I should be playing one. Lastly, I really don't like relying on spells to work, because they often don't. The Keeper of Secrets slaughters a BT and the Star Dragon in combat, because they never really get to attack him (they have to pass two LD tests each phase at -3, -4 or -5 LD to strike) and I can force the combat whenever I want with siren.
I didn't take any notes, so I'm writing all of the following from memory. A lot of people were taking pictures, so I might be able to upload some later. A total of 94 people showed up to play.
Game 1, Daemons of Chaos
I was happy with my army decision when I saw what my first opponent was running. He had Kairos Fateweaver, two Tz Heralds and Blue Scribes. In addition to those he only had lots of Horrors, some Furies, a single Fiend of Slaanesh and a unit of Flamers.
I deployed the kipper behind a wood and tried to focus mostly on the centre of the field with the rest of my stuff. He won the roll and wanted to start. He was foolishly confident and simply rushed forward with everything, including Kairos on the right flank, the same flank I had the Keeper at. He started the magic phase by nuking a unit of dogs, but he wasn't happy with 7 dispel dice and MR3 so after he finally killed a single dog he switched to a unit of Horrors which was outside his range. In my turn I pushed everything at march speed, leaving them basically 10" from all of his units. I marched into Kairos' line of sight. Flamers destroyed a unit of Furies that were left out in the open for god knows what reason. I never charge anything with my own Furies. Actually, I mostly never even move them. Their purpose is to score either the home quarter they are deployed in, or move to the enemy quarter in the last turn. Anyway, my magic did more than his, and I killed a few Horrors. In his turn I siren songed Kairos Fateweaver to charge the Keeper. Game was over pretty quick from here, as I charged all his Horrors with dogs, killed Kairos which never passed the -4 or -5 LD checks to even attack the Keeper with his puny one or two attacks (flaming sword of rhuin) and wiped the rest of his stuff out. He was an incredibly poor player, and he found the perfect counter to his list. I wiped everything he had out, so I took a slowed amount of kill points and scored about 2500 victory points against his 0.
Game 2, Lizardmen
I deployed both my objectives on the right side, he deployed one on the right side and one in the middle. The Lizards had a Slann, a large Temple Guard, two units of 12 Saurus spearmen, a Skink chief in a Stegadon, a Priest with Ancient Stegadon and Engine and a third Stegadon. He also had two units of Skinks.
I don't know if I fooled him by deploying my heroes last, but for some reason he anchored the left side of the table with all his Stegadons and left the Saurus and Slann pretty lonely on the right side with all the objectives. I refused the left side because the Stegadons weren't even scoring units so were effectively worthless to me, and deployed to the right.
I rushed forward at full speed to take use of a hill in the middle. The Slann was using lore of fire so I had little to worry about. I noted to my opponent that I thought he had already lost the game because he can't protect his general with the Stegadons, so like I said I moved everything forward for a turn two massacre. I reduced the movement of the Slann's TG by 3 with the Masque. In his turn I siren songed the Saurus unit protecting the Slann's flank to charge the Keeper. They didn't want to come so they chose to flee, and ran off the table and were destroyed. He tried to move his Stegadons closer to the action but they were 40" away. Slann cast his puny fire spells at the Keeper, which I dispeled with dice and spell breaker. On my second turn I flank charged the Temple Guard with Hounds and took the front with Hounds and the kipper. I reduced their LD by -4 total with Masque and the banner. Stubborn LD5 isn't all that impressive, but they held. After the next combat phase there weren't any Temple Guard left and the Slann was alone and fled off the table. Stegadons were blocked by two units of Horrors, they went through one to the other and were then charged by everything I got, and I wiped his army out in the process. In the end I had the objective points 4-0 in possession and victory points were 120 to the opponent and something like 2500 to me.
Game 3, High Elves
This guy was a worthy opponent as he is a tournament regular and a solid competitor. He was using Teclis, a mounted BSB, a unit of Dragon Princes, a huge Phoenix Guard, two units of Swordmasters, two units of Archers and three RBTs. The mission was table quarters. He deployed across the board in a line, but mostly focused on my right hand side. On the left side one of his RBTs took advantage of a hill but the other two were just sniping through holes between friendly units.
He won the roll and took first turn, and naturally didn't move much except consolidated to better firing positions. Some Archers moved to the hills. He had Banner of Sorcery, so Teclis as the lone mage was rolling something like 11 to 12 power dice each turn. He took lore of fire and his strategy was just going with 5 dice Fiery Blast and 5 dice Conflagration each turn plus the occasional Fireball. He really put the hurt on the Flesh Hounds because MR3 isn't much use against non-stop irresistible force casts. He put about three wounds to two different units of dogs, plus killed four Horrors. I wasn't sure how I should proceed because the Keeper is very vulnerable to shooting, but I had to move, so that's what I did. I managed to get shots with Flamers against an out of position unit of Swordmasters and killed enough to cause them to panic and run. On the right I marched with the Keeper and friends and tried to limit the bolt thrower line of sight to minimum of one RBT, but I would be hit with all the magic. I used siren song on the Dragon Princes because I managed to move to such a position that they would surely run off the board. To my advantage they therefore chose to charge which in turn made me safe from the shooting. He challenged and showed the Helm of Fortune on the champion, but an 1+ re-rollable save isn't good enough against my guy so I killed him and took one overkill. I lost by one but had BSB nearby. I took some hits from ranged fire again, but I charged a unit of Swordmasters with three surviving hounds and a unit of Archers with two hounds. The Keeper destroyed the DPs with the help of my third unit of hounds which I simply wanted to pursuit to a safer direction. The wounded units of dogs showed why they're so popular and just straight smoked the ASF Elves even with such small numbers and went through. I was march blocking and limiting the Phoenix Guard to M2 or M3, and decided that I'm going to ignore the unit for the whole game while wiping out scoring units. That's what I did, and in the end of the game Teclis was still with his nearly immobile unit while the BSB with Battle Banner was in a unit of Archers, but everything else was destroyed. He took one home quarter which I couldn't contest, but I took one of his and two of mine, for a 5-1 victory. Victory points were reasonably even, I think I only had 300 VPs over him, because I had lost plenty of Hounds and eventually the Keeper of Secrets to magic and bowfire. It wasn't Teclis' doing though: A unit of ten bowmen caused three unsaved wounds to finish the Keeper off. I was still happy with the game, because I played the mission and therefore a lot of my units were outright expendable.
Game 4, Daemons of Chaos
The missions were played in reverse order on the second day of the tournament, meaning the table quarters mission first. My opponent was a superbly nice guy playing infantry focused friendly Daemons. I had no idea how he had accumulated three wins during day one, and neither did he, but he was happy to play. He said he wanted to use units everyone else ignored. He had a Daemon Prince (!), a Herald of Tzeentch, a BSB Herald of Nurgle, a huge unit of Daemonettes, a huge unit of Pink Horrors, a huge unit of Plaguebearers, a unit of two Beasts of Nurgle, four Fiends of Slaanesh, three bases of Nurglings and a unit of Furies.
He deployed the PBs on the far right, Daemonettes and Horrors in the middle and Fiends and boss to the left. I put the Keeper, BSB and Hounds to left, two units of Hounds, Flamers and two units of Horrors to the middle, and Horrors and Masque to the right to counter the unkillable PBs.
I gave the opponent the first turn, and he advanced, but the 18" magic was out of range. He built a solid circle to counter any idiot who decided to move towards the middle. That's not what my army does however, so I moved a unit of Hounds to far left in flanking position facing the middle, Keeper towards the middle sneak peeking behind a hill to draw LOS to the DP but not to the Fiends, and everything else just positioned to receive a charge, Horrors naturally behind the dogs. Masque rushed forward to limit the PB movement to 1". I used all my magic to cause two unsaved wounds on the Beasts of Nurgle. The enemy DP was then siren songed to my Keeper, and his Fiends charged my dogs. Everything including the Beasts advanced. The DP took six wounds and couldn't ward enough to survive and was outright killed. The Fiends were naturally no match for the dogs even on the charge, and didn't do much. In my turn I already had the Keeper out of combat because of the quick kill, and flank charged Daemonettes with Keeper and Hounds. I flank charged the Fiends with Hounds which was also a multicharge against the Beasts. I fought the Daemonette fight first which was a massacre and together with the -2 LD banner I destroyed the entire unit of 20 Daemonettes in one go. I overran the GD into the Beasts so my boss got to fight again in the same combat phase. Naturally the Fiends and Beasts were also annihilated nearly in one go, so in one atom bomb turn nearly the entire enemy army had vanished. He still had a big block of Horrors, which I proceeded to kill next. He got one Bolt of Change off with IR, hitting my Keeper 8 times with S9, but I was left with one wound remaining. We had time constraints (a common problem at GW GTs) so I wiped out everything else except the PBs which couldn't move all game because of the Masque. I took quarter points 5-0 because I controlled three and contested one. The VP difference was pretty huge, as I hadn't lost anything but the Keeper was under half strength.
Game 5, Daemons of Chaos
The mission was objectives, and the opponent was running a mirror list to mine. He had an identical hero setup and the same core apart from the fact that he had two units of Furies instead of one. He had two units of six Hounds and one unit of six Flamers. I like units of six too, but I prefered my list over his for this tournament.
I deployed an objective behind a building in my deployment zone (one of the objectives can be deployed into the deployment zone) and saw that my opponent deployed his first objective in the absolute opposite corner of the table. I asked whether he was going for a draw and he said he was. I deployed my second objective a bit more to the middle, and he deployed his second objective as close to his first as was legally allowed. He deployed his entire army in a bunker. Furies were hugging the corner objective, Hounds were in a line blocking the Horrors, Flamers and Keeper behind. It was pretty ridiculous. I was unsure what I should do but I had already made a mistake with my deployment so I figured I would make sure I would get a draw, and try to break out a win in the last two turns of the game.
I won the roll and gave him the first turn, but he didn't do anything. Actually, he didn't do anything in the following three turns, so long story short I went to control his home quarter which had no troops in, and moved all my Hounds, Flamers, Masque, BSB, Keeper towards his army while keeping some range. He responded by reforming his Hounds so that they were showing their rear to me and blocking the horrors, so I couldn't siren song anything. It wasn't a good move, because what I now did was move my entire army into charge range and all he could do in the next turn was reform to face me again. What happened next was I siren songed his Flamers through a gap in his lines, and proceeded to annihilate them. I charged a unit of six Hounds with ten of mine and I reduced the enemy dog LD by 4. Masque got charged by a unit of Furies shortly. The Masque destroyed the Furies, I destroyed the Hounds, I destroyed the Flamers, but I was running out of turns to play. The enemy Kipper pulled the Masque as it was the only thing it could do, being march blocked behind his own units, and so the Masque died. In my last turn while my opponent was still chuckling about the inevitable draw I flew my BSB within 10" of the single unit of Furies holding his corner objective. When I asked whether my opponent knew that I only had to kill a single Fury with magic to make the unit non-scoring, in order to turn the game 2 objectives for me and 1 for him and a 30-1 victory tournament points wise, his face turned red. I don't think he saw it coming for some reason. It was a long shot however, because he hadn't used his scroll. Well, actually he did use his scroll during turn three when my Horrors were taking shots at his other unit of Furies but he quickly decided it was a stupid move and said he doesn't want to scroll afterall, and I let him not use it. Anyway, I had Gift of Chaos and Flickering Fire, so I tried both spells with two dice. I was thinking of going 3D6 on Gift of Chaos but I figured that the increased IR chance doesn't offset the one die cast on the other spell against 7 dispel dice. Additionally, if I managed to roll something like 11 for both spells, a misdispel was a possibility. However, my dice failed me and I failed the 7+ cast on Gift of Chaos, so he just scrolled the Flickering Fire and the game was a draw 2-2. Victory points wise, he had 90 points from the Masque, and I had a total of 830. Not much I could've done better after the deployment of the objectives. My plan initially was to play dumb and pull the Furies with siren song from the objective in the last turn, but he had Flamers nearby that would just re-control the objective afterwards, so it wouldn't have worked.
Game 6, Wood Elves
So the last game of the tournament was against Wood Elves. I applauded my opponent's success with his treehuggers, considering he had beat a solid Bloodthirster lead Daemon army in the previous round. If you don't have any forests on the table and still beat an army that your entire army doesn't get saves against and manage to deal with an enemy model that instantly annihilates everything it touches, you know you've played well. My opponent had a level 4 wizard (three scrolls and a power stone as I later found out), a BSB (HoDa), three units of Archers, three units of Dryads, a unit of Wardancers, a unit of Wild Riders (Warbanner) and two Treemen. The mission was kill points, so I figured that if I keep my special choice Hounds and especially the rare choice Flamers alive and destroy a single 3 KP Treeman plus some friends I'm home.
I won the roll and took the first turn. In a mission like this the last turn is meaningless, so I considered myself lucky. I advanced nearly full speed. I had deployed poorly though, mostly because of my opponent having more deployment choices and keeping his Treemen undeployed untill the last minute. My kipper was on the far left side with his BSB and Masque and Flamers, and I had everything else in the middle. The opponent had Archers on left, right and middle, Treemen on left and right, characters on right, Wardancers and Dryads on left and Dryads and Riders on right, and the last unit of Dryads in the middle. I had to choose one side to attack and I went to the left with everything and refused the right side. It wasn't the best play but I figured it would still lead to a win. The enemy shooting was powerful. After all the arrows and Treeman root fire and Hail of Doom Arrow from the BSB one of my Hound units was reduced to 1 model with 1 wounds remaining. This was very fortunate as the unit isn't worth any kill points untill its destroyed. I had to scroll a Wolf Hunts cast on a Treeman that marched forward for a flank charge a fresh unit of Hounds. The enemy casting strategy was simply a 5 dice roll for Wolf Hunts or Beast Cowers every turn, which produces a lot of IRs. The turn he uses his power stone he gets both of the big spells off.
I realised I hadn't advanced fast enough so all I could charge was a unit of Dryads in the middle with the dogs, and it was a fraction of an inch type of charge which my opponent allowed. I marched the surviving dog full speed towards the hill in my own deployment zone and managed to hide it there much to my opponent's dismay. I took the second unit of dogs towards the mass of units on the left, and I made my move with the Kipper and took him out to face the Archers and Dryads in the left. A Treeman was there too but he was facing a cliff to avoid sirens, and the Wardancers were completely hidden. I caused a lot of casualties on the Archer unit there with Slicing Shards of Slaanesh, which by the way is a wonderful spell when the enemy has his LD modified. The Archers were finished off by the Flamers. I reduced the Treeman's movement to 2. The Hounds in the middle destroyed the Dryads and pursuited off the table. The opponent misdispeled a Flickering Fire against the other Treeman, and although I rolled 7 hits I only got strength 4 and didn't manage to roll any sixes to wound. It would have been beautiful. My three units of Horrors left all by themselves could now do nothing else except sacrifice themselves to hold the split enemy army at bay while I would slaughter the other part. I siren songed the unit of Dryads to the Keeper. The six-limbed dark lady killed five and pursuited the rest to death. Seriously, I don't think my opponents ever get to roll anything except double 1 to hold because of Despair and Masque. The Wild Riders charged a unit of Horrors and the Treeman charged another. The Wild Riders went straight through and overran to the second but only by clipping it with one model. They did bring the Warbanner though so the second Horror unit was almost wiped out too.
The second Treeman on the left was now visible to the Hounds so I charged it. I moved the Keeper behind the Treeman so if the Hounds failed I could rear charge it the following turn. The Hounds didn't fail and they won combat by two, and stubborn isn't all that good when you have LD4 so the Treeman broke and ran into the Keeper standing right behind it. The Elves destroyed all the Horrors shortly after, and the Hounds that pursuited off the table came back to kill another unit of Archers before pursuiting off the table again to avoid archer fire from the last unit. I boxed the Wardancers in with Flamers, Herald, Masque and Greater Daemon, and destroyed them before the game ended. I had 9 kill points to my opponent's 3 from my Horrors, but it was a reasonably tight game victory points wise.
So the tournament was in the bag. It felt good to essentially win every game as the draw against siren Daemons was a bigger win victory points wise than the real wins against Wood Elves and High Elves which had both played tight against me. 5 wins and a draw was enough for a split first place tournament points wise. The only other player with the same record was the Daemon guy I got the 2-2 draw against. Unfortunately, he had been a little more lucky than me with his other opponents and had scored something like 10K victory points from the five other games. Atleast one of his opponents had conceded a game against him. He only got 90VP from me. If people stop playing and start gifting victory points, VPs really aren't the right way to resolve tie-breaker situations, but this was GW's way and we all knew it in advance so no reason to whine.
The prizes were pretty cool. The winners all got XBOX 360's, and the runner-ups like me got Imperial Guard Valkyrie kits. I didn't pay attention to the LOTR tournament, but the 40K GT on the other side of the hall was won with two lash DPs and 8 Obliterators. Surprisingly, High Elves were the most played army on the Warhammer side, and seemingly 90% of them had Star Dragons.
It took me two hours to write this all down and there's probably plenty more to say but I'll just add it later in the form of replies. Thanks for reading.
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