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Yesterday was the final round of the Adeptus Windy City tournament series. Lots of thanks to Zero_cool for organizing these events, and running the majority of them.

We used the Adepticon Championship primer missions yesterday. They're downloadable from http://adepticon.org, but I'll sum them up each round too.


I brought out my Emperor's Children for this one, working in a couple of new models that I'd recently painted.

HQ: Daemon Prince - MoS, Lash, Wings
HQ: Chaos Sorcerer - MoS, Lash, Personal Icon, Meltabomb
HQ: Summoned Greater Daemon

Elite: Dreadnought, CCWx2, Heavy Flamer

Troop: 6 Noise Marines w/ Blastmaster
Troop: 5 Noise Marines w/ Sonic Blaster, Champ w/ Powerfist, Doom Siren, Sonic Blaster, Rhino
Troop: 4 Noise Marines w/ Sonic Blaster, 1 w/ Blastmaster, Champ w/ Doom Siren, Power Weapon, Meltabomb, Rhino
Troop: 9 CSM, 2 Meltaguns, 1 Champion (nekkid), Rhino

Heavy: 3x Obliterators
Heavy: 3x Obliterators

I think I've got some superfluous weapons in there, and light on numbers (but that's the Emperor's Children), but if I can get Lash going, I can remove huge clumps of enemies all at once, and it's not a slouch in HtH either.




...

Round One

This is a kill-em-all mission - Kill Points, Kill All Troops, Victory Points, with a standard 12" line deployment.

My opponent is playing Space Puppies.

HQ: Njal Stormcaller
Elite: 5 Scouts, Meltagun, Power Weapon, Meltabomb
Elite: 5 Scouts, Meltagun, Power Weapon, Meltabomb
Elite: Wolf Guard: 2x combi-flamer/frost blade (they go with scouts), 2x bolters (go with small grey hunter squads), 1x powerfist (goes with big grey hunter pack)

Troops: 7 Grey Hunters, flamer, Mark of Wulfen, Power Weapon, Rhino (Njal goes here too)
Troops: 5 Grey Hunters, HB Razorback
Troops: 5 Grey Hunters, HB Razorback

Fast Attack: 5 Thunderwolves, 1 Thunderhammer
Fast Attack: 3 Land Speeders w/ HF/MM

Heavy: Predator w/ Autocannon/HB
Heavy: Predator w/ Autocannon/HB
Heavy: Predator w/ twin las/HB





I won the roll for first turn, and deployed mostly slightly left of center, leaving my dreadnought to cover my right flank. He deployed mostly opposite me, with everything in rhinos, keeping his wolves behind a building. Two of the three predators were placed to my far right.

I moved some tanks up a bit, used some smoke launchers, and took some potshots, knocking out a landspeeder. I'm keeping one unit of noise marines to take care of any scouts that show. He moved the wolves out for a charge, if he could get a fleet roll, and took some potshots at rhinos, and shakes my dread. For some reason, he kept Njal's rhino far back. And then he forgot to fleet his wolves. I'm not sure that made a whole lot of difference, because their only assault target was a rhino that had moved 12", but you never know.





Turn two, I dismount my primary noise marine unit and sorcerer (leaving the unit), as well as the CSMs. I double lash his wolves out into the open, as my wizards are out of njal's cancelling range, and melt them in the open with plasma cannons, doom siren fire and whatever else it takes. I stunned Njal's rhino too. I think I killed a MM off a speeder too, but most of my effort was on the wolves, because I can't have them running around.

Njal dismounts with his pack, and they move up. His shooting does very little. He's concentrating his heavy bolters and autocannons on oblits with a 2+ save, which is probably not the optimal shot, but the rhinos aren't much of a threat I guess. He does get a rear shot on my dread, who (with a slightly better lash roll, was going to charge the wolves). His scouts arrive. One unit sets up to charge the oblits in the back of my line, the other show up on the far right side, and hide all game. Between shooting and assault, the scouts kill one oblit, but lose 3, and then get caught and lose another to No Retreat. Njal's group is in charge range to hit my dismounted noise marines, but the path clips a mountain, so they need to check terrain, and fail, leaving them out in the open.

Turn Three: The CSM remount and head off to the corner where the preds are sitting to meltagun them. My noise marines with their doom siren go for Njal's unit. The noise marines in the backfield and the sorcerer go to extricate the oblits, the greater daemon arrives, and with the daemon prince, assaults the land speeders. The speeders die, the scouts die, and Njal's unit dies, leaving him engaged with my noise marine champ alone.

He moves another grey hunter squad in to help screen njal, and shoots up some stuff - dread loses and arm, and a rhino dies, but the CSM squad with the meltaguns fail their pinning test. Njal kills the PF guy, and their consolidate puts him behind a wall of grey hunters.

Turn Four: It's now at the 'get as many points as possible' phase, as the game is pretty well in hand. I shoot the grey hunters enough to clear a path for my prince to get to njal. He gets smoked in the ensuing combat. The last few turns are me trying to kill off his last transports, culminating in a greater daemon landing (in two consecutive turns) 5 pens and 2 glances, and the thing still not dying.

So, I scored the primary and tertiary, and some bonus points, but missed the secondary, and it's off to Portillos for lunch.

Game Two

Versus another Chaos Space Marine army.... until I casually ask if my opponent had the same problem killing a transport (which would be what got us the same score in round one, hence playing each other round two), and he says that he got tabled. Wait a second, that's not right - I shouldn't be playing someone who got trounced in round one. Check with the judge, and he swapped my opponent and my score from round one. We switch tables and continue...

Versus Les's Orange Templars. I played against Les's army a few months back, though I was using my daemons at the time. His list, I think, is similar, but not identical.

HQ: Emperor's Champion, w/ Accept Any Challenge
Elite: Allied Inquisitor w/ Null Rod, Psycannon, Psychic Hood, Terminator armor, Krak Grenade
Elite: Ven Dread, TL-Lascannons, extra armour
Elite: Dread, Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer, extra armour
Troop: 10 initiates, 3 neophytes, w/ power weapon & flamer, in LRC w/ Blessed Hull (Inquisitor goes here)
Troop: 7 initiates, 2 neophytes w/ power fist & meltagun, in rhino w/ extra armour (Emperor's Champion goes here)
Troop: 7 initiates, 3 neophytes w/ power fist & meltagun, in rhino w/ extra armour
Troop: 5 initiates, lascannon, plasma gun
Troop: 5 initiates, lascannon, plasma gun
Fast: Land Speeder w/ multimelta, Heavy Flamer
Fast: Land Speeder w/ multimelta, Heavy Flamer




Mission:
Primary - control terrain by having a scoring unit wholly inside it. Only scoring units may contest.
Secondary - Kill opponent's HQs
Tertiary - score 500 more victory points
Deployment: modified dawn of war (18" deployment zones, night fight on turn 1)

He ends up going first (I cannot remember if I won the roll and deferred or he won it and took it). Deploys over on the right side, with las/plas squads in a building and behind a hill. I opt to roll everything on rather than deploying anything. I believe (correctly) that if I make this a ranged gunfight initially, I've got a better chance because he's only got three guns with over 24" range. I don't want to tip my hand by deploying my first unit and letting him react to that as he rolls on.

He rolls on as I expected, with most of his units backing up that initial deployment, with the Emperor's Champion's rhino all the way to the right, and the LRC pretty far too. He has one lone dread on the left side, and the ven dread in the center.

I roll on pretty much on the right, buying my oblits the range (And time) to do some damage. My right side is the CSM rhino (who will go for the land raider), and dreadnought (who will be a target). I don't bother shooting during the night-fight turn, instead running any unit that needs to.

Turn 2, he takes some potshots with the lascannons. I think this may have stunned my dread, and taken a gun from a rhino, but no significant damage was done. I return fire, downing one speeder and taking the gun from another. I stun his non-venerable dread too. We're still feeling each other out, it seems.

Turn 3, stuff comes to a head. He advances his crusader and non-champion rhino, but his (minimal) shooting is ineffective again. I lash his first las-plas squad into a doom siren unit. My big daemon shows up, ready to fight his ven dread, and the melta squad get in range of the crusader, exploding it. They're sacrificed as the templars will eat them, but the dread can follow that up.

Turn 4, he shoots at the greater daemon, knocking it down to 1 wound. his crusader squad eats my CSM squad, as expected. His ven dread charges my greater daemon, and they kill each other. His dread charges into the noise marines who just killed the las-plas unit, and kills one. In return, I down the last speeder, my daemon prince kills the dread, and oblits plasma-cannon the large templar squad away. Blastmaster shots knock the other squad down to 5 men. He's down to 5 guys in the building, and the champion way off on the right, holding his forest.

Turn 5 - his shooting is therefore minimal. Cleanup mode again, and lash gets the las-plas squad out of the building, while plasma shots reduce the champion's squad. My dreadnought gets the final swing of the game, squishing the Emperor's Champion, and scoring me the secondary this round.


Game Three

This puts me on table 2, against DarthDiggler's Eldar army. It's going to be an uphill battle...

He's running:

HQ: Eldrad
HQ: Avatar
Troops: 10 Dire Avengers w/ 2 catapult exarch
Troops: 10 guardians w/ brightlance & spiritseer
Troops: 11 guardians w/ EML, spiritseer
Troops: 12 guardians w/ scatterlaser, spiritseer
Troops: 10 guardians w/ EML, spiritseer
Troops: 3 jetbikes (cannon) + warlock w/ destructor, singing spear
Fast: 10 Warp Spiders, Exarch w/ 2 spinners, power blades, withdraw
Heavy: Wraithlord w/ brightlance, wraithsword
Heavy: Wraithlord w/ EML, wraithsword
Heavy: Wraithlord w/ Starcannon, wraithsword




Mission:
One player (me) places all three objectives. The other names one as 'primary' - it's worth 11 points, the other two are 5 each. I put one dead-center and the others 18" from it along the table's center line. He nominates one of the outside one's as primary.

Spearhead deployment, and I win that roll, taking first turn to get the primary objective in my quarter. There's a huge terrain piece in the center of the table, unfortunately, which will interfere with some shots, but I deploy around it. He sets up, making sure every guy is the full 2" apart, denying my templates decent shots. I'm in the right-hand corner, he's in the opposite left-hand corner. He's got the row of warp spiders in a line, giving cover to everyone else too.

He fails to steal the initiative.

Turn 1: I push my lead two rhinos forward, sending the dread to the left. I figure that, with two shots, I should get one lash off, and I might be able to bunch up the spiders and put a dent there. Both lead to perils though. I think I wasted one oblit unit, trying to get some kills on the spiders, only to have cover hit them. That's a mistake, I think I should have concentrated on the wraithlords early, to remove that threat.

He responds by moving the spiders out, dooming my prince and guiding the spiders. She goes down in a hail of cobwebs. He uses brightlances to start picking off oblits too.

Turn 2: No big daemon. I get the CSM out of their rhino so that they can charge the spiders, and the lead noise marine unit maneuvers to get as many into the doom siren too. Between the shooting and the charge, they're dead, but my units are out in the open. I kill a wraithlord too.

He responds, as expected, by killing the noise marine unit, sorcerer and CSM unit - leaving my daemon with one champion left to possess. Dreadnought gets immobilized - it's all over but I can try to stall and block.

Turn 3: Daemon possesses the champ back near the big objective - but has nothing to do. Oblits and blastmasters knock out another wraithlord, but I have nothing to deal with a fortuned avatar, and the rest of the game sees doomed units, guided elves and dead Emperor's Children.

Darth went on to win the tournament, so good on him.

I don't really know that I could have done it much differently though. Perhaps deploying further back, giving me more shots on his big guys early. But I had no way to really fish Eldrad out, so the avatar was going to be a problem, as were the fortunes, dooms and guides that he tosses around like candy.

I scored another Best Appearance for my efforts, so that's nice too. (With another army, not just milking the same one).

I ended up #4 overall for the tournament series, so will be playing in our finals on Friday of Adepticon. I'll probably go back to the daemons for that, as I've got more play experience with them than the others lately.

Thanks for the report, I always enjoy reading yours'.
Good to see that Stelek-type lists were running for top spots in the tournament scene again :-P

Nivoglibina wrote:Thanks for the report, I always enjoy reading yours'.
Good to see that Stelek-type lists were running for top spots in the tournament scene again :-P

Is that a joke? None of the lists there seemed like the kind of stuff Stelek used to put up.

That's why I added the smiley! (yes it was a joke, and I meant it in a positive way; what I meant to say that it's cool to see noise marines and infantry guardians do well.)

I don't know what do with the Eldrad/Avatar combo.

I've seen that style Eldar list in action and I too wouldn't want to line up across from it in a tournament.

Overall, nice job with the result and cool to see a mono-god Emp Children army doing pretty well.

Had you considered running your Oblits in the 3x2 config?

No, not really... I dunno - does it help? I guess I can split my fire against more targets, but that really wasn't the issue in any of my games. Sometimes, firing three lascannons is necessary to get one hit

All in my experience:
2 Oblits are easier to hide in terrain or behind tilted Rhinos than 3.
It gives your opponent less of a chance to focus fire.
If you have to DS them, a mishap hurts you less.
And they can shoot at different stuff.

wow foot eldar winning......hmph

well good bat rep, and good effort and coming in 4th. not sure how that eldar list won lol, guardians fold like a wet sack to anything. eldrad avatar is deadly, but eldrad seemed like he was alone? if thats the case hes pretty easy to kill (even insta kill), and no fortune avatar is not really scary anymore.

Eldrad was not alone, he was in a squad with 12 other models who were getting a cover save.

I'm sorry... but that table appears to be missing terrain. Was this picture taken before terrain was placed on the table?

Looks like a decent amount of terrain to me.

Thanks for the reports. Was he using Eldrad or just a Farseer?

- Blackbone

HBMC: That's what we had to work with at the store. There are a couple of pieces that you can't see due to the angle of the picture.

Blackbone: It was Eldrad. The third psychic power makes a lot of difference, as does getting all the upgrades for cheap.

Oh, OK. It looks like a normal yellow Farseer guy from the pics. Thanks for the reports.

- Blackbone

Oye... thinking over that first game I wish I hadn't failed in my tactics/ Anyhow it was a pleasure and I look forward to facing you again hopefully Friday night at Adepticon.

Indeed. I wonder how your wolf cav will stack up against bloodcrushers

As always, these are fun reports to read. I like the armies you tend to run as they tend to follow a theme and you learn to make due with what you have. Very interesting to see the mix of armies up in your area and seeing Darth's Eldar is making me wonder if the Wraithsword is worth utilizing over a 2nd heavy weapon.

Overall, thanks for sharing and looking forward to another monthly report.

I have to agreee with HBMC... that's a very sparse field out there.

Great batrep and solid paintjobs on the armies. I am definately jealous of the templar player's display board.

I love your batreps redbeard! I read every single one i find.

Solid game play with beautiful models. I couldnt ask for any more

Definitely love seeing the Emperor's Children fighting! I must admit I use more undivided units in my armies, but I do try to feature noisemarines. At 1850 I generally run 2 noisemarines, 3 regular squads.

I really thought you'd clean up against that eldar army. I probably would have gone for the risk and deepstruck the terminators. 3x2 could easily lead to 3 dead eldar units if they landed right, using those twin-linked flamers. Counterattacks from the wraithlords would be mighty annoying, but with the core of his army gutted [and any wraithlords that wanted to charge oblits unable to shoot other stuff], I think the rest of your army could get up in his face and start ruining his day. Doomsirens LOVE warp spiders.

Mafty wrote:wow foot eldar winning......hmph

not sure how that eldar list won lol

You don't know how the Eldar won? As Yoda once said, "That is why you fail."

Spellbound wrote:
I really thought you'd clean up against that eldar army. I probably would have gone for the risk and deepstruck the terminators. 3x2 could easily lead to 3 dead eldar units if they landed right, using those twin-linked flamers.

That's a lot of IFs. IF they came in soon enough. IF they landed right. And, okay, let's say each unit of oblits can take out one guardian unit. I've then managed to trade 225 points of oblits for 80-100ish points of guardians, and landed my only realistic chance of killing the wraithlords in a position for them to be quickly neutralized.

Counterattacks from the wraithlords would be mighty annoying, but with the core of his army gutted [and any wraithlords that wanted to charge oblits unable to shoot other stuff], I think the rest of your army could get up in his face and start ruining his day. Doomsirens LOVE warp spiders.

My doom siren did okay against the spiders. The problem with that plan is the fortuned avatar, who will pretty much gut anything that I get too close. My Daemon Prince can't match up with him. My greater daemon is slightly better, with higher toughness and save that the daemon prince, but even then, I'm down WS, and he's still fortuned. That was the problem that actually happened, too. I hopped guys out to handle the spiders, and got them killed by the avatar. Playing Emperor's Children, I simply don't have the bodies to play that sort of game.


No, I think the mistake I made was deploying too far forward, and then pushing further. With the most important objective in my zone, I could have deployed much further back, still used my lascannons and blastmasters at 48" range, and put some wounds on his big stuff before it threatened me. If I'd reserved my dreadnought and possibly one of my NM units to come in later, along the long edge, I could have still threatened the other objectives too. It's spearhead, my lascannons and blastmasters outrange his starcannons and brightlances by 12" - and I didn't get any advantage of this because I pushed too early. I also avoid the threat of the spiders - unless they deep strike, but even then, I'm far enough away to avoid being doomed as well. Basically, I screwed up, worrying too much about having my greater daemon being too far back, and hoping to get lash work against the runes.

DarthDiggler wrote:

Mafty wrote:wow foot eldar winning......hmph
not sure how that eldar list won lol

You don't know how the Eldar won? As Yoda once said, "That is why you fail."

Yoda is wise. Lists don't play themselves, and Darth's an excellent player. And while he's not a big fan of sharing whys, I think breaking things down can be useful.

So, first, consider the current meta-game. What's "in"? Mech is in. As a consequence, lot of lists have good anti-mech tools that aren't so good against other things. Darth's list works with that. He has no vehicles. Meltaguns are a 50/50 proposition against wraithlords, and fail against the Avatar. Autocannons are a very poor tool against wraithlords. And, people aren't fielding a ton of heavy bolter squads anymore to mow down foot sloggers, because heavy bolters tend to bounce off of rhino hulls. So, his list is resilient to the weapons most people are bringing to games. He can avoid frag missiles with spacing, and a krak missile against a guardian with cover is another 50/50 proposition to kill an eight point model.

The guardian squads are all fearless because of the avatar, so you pretty much have to kill every guy to remove their heavy weapons from the table (or to stop them scoring). And, they're backed up by the avatar and wrathlords in CC. It's easy to wipe a guardian squad if you can hit it, but you run the risk of losing a much more valuable unit to their counter-charge if you do so.

So, what you have is some models that are very tough against current metagame weapon loadouts (Darth told me, when I killed his first wraithlord, that it was the first one he'd lost all day. That kind of shows how strong they are against the typical tools that players are bringing to tournaments currently.) His other units are deceptively resilient because they're fearless, and pose a poor tradeoff for whatever might go after them.

On the attack side, again, consider the expected metagame. Every unit in his army, besides the Dire Avengers, can threaten a transport, and most can threaten even heavier tanks. Against most expected deathstar style lists, he's got the wraithlords and fortuned avatar.

Finally, there's Eldrad, the best force multiplier in the game, giving those little boosts where needed, guiding a squad here, dooming a target, and turning the Avatar from a nasty threat into one of the best combatants in the game.

Why can't you see this list winning is possibly a better question...

Redbeard wrote:
Yoda is wise. Lists don't play themselves, and Darth's an excellent player. And while he's not a big fan of sharing whys, I think breaking things down can be useful.

So, first, consider the current meta-game. What's "in"? Mech is in. As a consequence, lot of lists have good anti-mech tools that aren't so good against other things. Darth's list works with that. He has no vehicles. Meltaguns are a 50/50 proposition against wraithlords, and fail against the Avatar. Autocannons are a very poor tool against wraithlords. And, people aren't fielding a ton of heavy bolter squads anymore to mow down foot sloggers, because heavy bolters tend to bounce off of rhino hulls. So, his list is resilient to the weapons most people are bringing to games. He can avoid frag missiles with spacing, and a krak missile against a guardian with cover is another 50/50 proposition to kill an eight point model.

The guardian squads are all fearless because of the avatar, so you pretty much have to kill every guy to remove their heavy weapons from the table (or to stop them scoring). And, they're backed up by the avatar and wrathlords in CC. It's easy to wipe a guardian squad if you can hit it, but you run the risk of losing a much more valuable unit to their counter-charge if you do so.

So, what you have is some models that are very tough against current metagame weapon loadouts (Darth told me, when I killed his first wraithlord, that it was the first one he'd lost all day. That kind of shows how strong they are against the typical tools that players are bringing to tournaments currently.) His other units are deceptively resilient because they're fearless, and pose a poor tradeoff for whatever might go after them.

On the attack side, again, consider the expected metagame. Every unit in his army, besides the Dire Avengers, can threaten a transport, and most can threaten even heavier tanks. Against most expected deathstar style lists, he's got the wraithlords and fortuned avatar.

Finally, there's Eldrad, the best force multiplier in the game, giving those little boosts where needed, guiding a squad here, dooming a target, and turning the Avatar from a nasty threat into one of the best combatants in the game.

Why can't you see this list winning is possibly a better question...

Whats funny is that I don't see any of these so called "metagame lists" even being played. How exactly does Darth deal with all these fully mech armies that aren't even there? (if anything it looks like he mad a bad metagame call)

I'm sorry but it looks like he has about 7 anti tank weapons in his entire list. How does he deal with someone who drops 12 chimeras, 9 razorbacks or 8 eldar tanks on him?

Well, I don't know where you live, but the only important metagame is the one local to where you happen to be playing.

In the AWC series that we're playing in, the mech lists are more rhino-based. No one is really running the guard list - I've seen one or two of them, but either the players aren't that good with them, and they're not getting very far, or the builds aren't optimal, and they're not getting very far.... either way, they're not a big thing on the radar.

There is one guy running a light-mech eldar list with lots of warwalkers and vypers, but no one is really running a AV12 skimmer list.

There are several lists with marines in rhinos, with dreads, preds and speeders floating around. One mech dark eldar list...

As for anti-tank in the eldar list, there are 3 guns on the wraithlords, plus their hth. The avatar has a meltagun, plus hth. Each guardian squad has a platform. Warp Spiders fire enough S6 shots to down a lot of things. The jetbikes have their cannon, and a singing spear (the other guardian squads have S9 cc attacks too, with their warlocks). Even eldrad can get in on that action.

I'm not saying you're wrong about it being able to handle 12 chimeras (although do you think 12 chimeras can drop three wraithlords either), but no one is running a 12 chimera list in our environment, so that's not a concern.

Wasn't is a practice for adepticon? Why would you meta game against your locals in order to get ready for a national tournament?

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it if you just want to win the tournament, but it seems kinda dumb if your trying to prepare for adepticon.

Timmah wrote:Wasn't is a practice for adepticon? Why would you meta game against your locals in order to get ready for a national tournament?

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it if you just want to win the tournament, but it seems kinda dumb if your trying to prepare for adepticon.

They are playing in Chicago, and Adepticon draws a disproportional amount of players from the the local area.

So the Chicago meta game is more often than not the Adepticon meta game.

I don't know so much about that Blackmoor. We've been running this tournament series for seven months now, and capped at about 32 players. Adepticon is going to have 240 in the championships? I don't think the Chicago metagame will have that much impact on Adepticon's.

That said, however, to address Timmah's question, we're playtesting the adepticon missions, but if no one has 12 painted Chimeras, no one can bring 12 painted chimeras to a tournament.

I think that what a lot of people forget when discussing lists and choices is that for most people, you cannot make huge sweeping changes to your army at the drop of a hat. Most people simply don't have the models, or don't have them painted, or don't have the money to buy them, or time to paint them.

The 40k metagame moves much more slowly than, say, M:tG's does, because when you're playing in real tournaments (that is to say, tournaments that require painting, and have soft scores), you cannot simply drop a few bucks for the latest tech, and if the latest tech is an entirely different army than what you've been playing, that few bucks is generally $1000+, with a time factor for painting.

To give you an idea, even with Adepticon only two months away, and even though this tournament was to be the last local Chicago area tournament before Adepticon, there was not one nid army present. There were maybe two Space Wolf armies in the mix, neither of which were razorback spamming. Even if people have those armies/builds in mind, they're probably not finished yet, because the big event that people are building/painting towards is Adepticon, not the February AWC event.

We play with the same guys month after month in this series. Some of us, like me, have multiple armies and lot of units to choose from. Most of the players don't. If Phil signs up, you know he's running light-mech eldar, if Greg signs up, you know he's got biker marines, and if Kareem signs up, you know Abaddon's riding a land raider somewhere.

Regardless of what we expect in the Adepticon metagame, the armies we'll face in this tournament are the Chicago-area metagame armies. Bringing a list for the expected Adepticon metagame wouldn't help that much; that would be the poor metagame selection.

Timmah wrote:Wasn't is a practice for adepticon? Why would you meta game against your locals in order to get ready for a national tournament?

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it if you just want to win the tournament, but it seems kinda dumb if your trying to prepare for adepticon.

Actually the AWC series is a monthly tournament series with different point levels each month. This month they used the AWC championship primers. Some people practiced for the Adepticon championships, but not all, I just wanted to do well for the monthly tournament.

As for the list I think it has a decent amount of antitank. The key is the durability of all these attacks. None of them can be killed or stopped with one shot. These weapons will keep firing and attacking until the last wound or the last man in the squad is dead. I have been surprised at how long the shooting can last when things really heat up. In round 2 I played against a fully mech Nurgle list. 2 Rhino's, 2 Land Raiders, Defiler and 2 winged DP's. By turn 5 the only vehicle left was one immobile LR I believe and it was left to shoot a twin-las at Dire Avengers in cover.

I agree with Timmah that I would have had some concerns if I expected to see a huge, finely tuned IG mech list. I have played them twice in practice and I'm 3-2. As Redbeard said, however, I do not expect to see those IG lists at the AWC tournament event. There are a few lists that regualrly show up to this event that will trash those Mech IG lists. There is also at least one KP mission somewhere which can severely hamper those mech IG and Mech SW lists. There is one guy who always does really well and he brings Biker Marines which can trash all Mech Guard. There is also 1-2 Eldar council lists each month which can also trash the parking lot lists, especially in the KP mission. The DE lance spam list might be a 50-50 proposition against the Mech Guard. I feel safer playing the foot eldar against each one of those. I've got a Mech IG list that I'd like to try out at the tournament, but with those lists running around I don't want to bring it yet.

Redbeard wrote:I don't know so much about that Blackmoor. We've been running this tournament series for seven months now, and capped at about 32 players. Adepticon is going to have 240 in the championships? I don't think the Chicago metagame will have that much impact on Adepticon's.

I was thinking Midwest and wrote Chicago.