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This was the first event for the new year of the AWC series and it was going to start with a 1500 point tournament. I decided to bring my Daemons as I think the Crons are a little underpowered at 1500.

My list
HQ
Herald of Tzeentch (MOS, Chariot, Bolt)
Herald of Tzeentch (same)
The Masque

Troops
13 Deamonettes
5 Plague bearers
5 Plaguebearers

Elite
4 Blodcrushers (Fury, music, icon)
4 Bloodcrushers ( same)

Fast
3 screamers
3 screamers
3 screamers

Heavy
Demon Prince (Mark of Tzeen. Bolt, Gaze)
Demon Prince (Same)


Well my theory towards deamons is make almost identical waves rather than load up on the primary wave. My waves were identical except the primary had deamonettes, and my secondary had the masque and the extra screamers.


Missions were the same as the Adepticon championships

Mission 1 Primary Kill points 2ndry Kill all troops Tertiary Win my 250 VP.

Round 1 opponent Shrike Marine list

Shrike
Chaplain w/ Jump pack

5 terminators (Assault cannon, storm bolters, sarge had power sword)

10 Tac marines w/ melta, multi melta, power fist In drop pod.
10 tac marines (same)

10 Assault marines (p. fist, double flamer)

Land speeder storm

5 Scouts (p.fist)

Drednaught w/ multi melta, H. Flamer

I win the roll off and chose to go first. He puts his entire army in reserve.

I get 2ndry wave.

I land in the center of the board with my units and run them towards each other.

He lands a drop pod and shoots up a small unit of screamers, but only kills one.

Top 2 Most of my reserves arrive and I land them off of the icon. I "dance" that unit into a unit of blood crushers and wipe them out. Screamers kill the drop pod.

Bottom 2. He drops another pod and kills the masque to bolter fire. His Dred walks on and misses with the multi melta, his storm moves flat out onto the board with the scouts.

Top 3 My deamonettes assault his next tac. squad. My shooting drops the storm but the crew is fine. Tac squad losses 3 and kils 3.

Bottom 3. Shrike arrives attached to the assault marines and chaplain, they assault my crusher squad. They kill a crusher and wound the rest, but 8 assault marines die in the process. Scouts barrel into the deamonettes to help the marines who are now whittled down to 3. A scout dies, and about 5 demonettes die.

Top 4. 2nd crusher unit hits and wipes out Shrikes squad. Demon prince hits and kills dred in melee. Screamers blow up last drop pod. After the deamonette melee there is a scout with a P fist adn a marine with a P fist against 3 deamonettes.

Bottom 4 His termies walk on and fleet into the Crushers. (He really has nothing else to do with them and nothing to lose.) The termies are nearly all killed and they break. I persue.

Top 5 I kill last Termie and demonettes kill scout but I lose 2 demonettes.

Bottom 5 My demonette kills the last marine giving me 2ndry.

I score 45/45

I think going into reserves against Deamons is a viable tactic, but if you dont have a +1 to reserves, or the deamons are going first, it can be a real gamble as the Deamons quickly gain a number advantage. His army arrived a few pieces at a time and I was able to pounce.


Game 2

Mission Primary Have scoring unit entirely in terrain features to score points. 2ndry Kill all HQ's Tertiarry Win by 500 VP

His list

Deamon HUnters,

Awesome deamons on deamon hunters..

HQ
Badass Inquistor guy in Termie armour with Force weapon that kills eternal warrioir models outright.
7 man retinue in termie armour w/ him

8 Grey knights w/ psycannon

8 Grey knights with psycannon

8 Grey knights w/ 2 psyflamers (forget what they are called)

2 dreds w/ twin linked lascannons and CCW

Dawn of War.


He deploys his retinue and 2 G. Kight squads and has first tun. Walks everything on and is in a large group center of the table but on his half.

I get 2ndry wave agian.

I drop conservatively on my half loading up on the flank across form the dreds. My shooting does nothing due to night fighting.

He marches up and kills my screamers with his dreds.

Turn 2 Bottom I use the masque to spin both dreds and get reaer shots but both herlads and my demon prince do not get a single glance or pen. My prince charges one and wrecks it.

Top 3. He moves his retinue within 12" of the Crushers and hits the crushers with the other dred, causing two wounds.

Bottom 3 I charge the dred with my prince hoping to wreck it to free the crushers but it does not work, I do immobilize it though. My Other prince lands and I put him near the melee to help out when the retinue inevitably charges. It shoots at some Grey knights on a hill and along with the heralds all the AP 1 and 3 shooting wipes out the 8 man Grey Knight Squad.

Top 4 He charges My crushers and my prince in the open with the retinue. His force weapon kills the deamon prince and he kills all the crushers except one has a wound left. I in turn kill 3 termies. His two last units fall back from the fight to go grab terrain.

Bottom 4. My 2nd Crushers and my deamonettes barrle into the melee and the high Initiative helps a lot. I kill 3 more termies and wound the inquisitor before he gets to swing. He finishes a Crusher w/ the Froce weapon but loses the rest of his HQ.

Top 5 he hugs terrain

Bottom 5 I grab terraqin as well but I have 3 pieces and he has two. He has a tough choice of sitting where he was and know he would lose, or try and mount an offensive against a lot of tough demon units yet. Also the masque was now within range to start making the units dance out of the features every turn.

He conceeds and we call the game.

I score 44/45


This was a tough list but luckily the scenerio helped me win as he had few units and he had to pull them out of the fight to go grab terrain and he needed those units to put the pressure on my army. I dont think he did anything wrong, he was just faced with a tough dilemma and it didnt pan out for him.


Game 3

Mission Primary Grab 3 objectives, one was worth 11 the other two were 5 each. 2ndry Have a unit in evry table quarter, terrtiary win by 750 VP.

This is the top table and I have yet to put together a complete three game sweep in the AWC series. This would be my tird attempt at fighting for the top table.

My opponent


Inquisitor with mystics in Chimera

2 Vendettas each with Veterans inside

3 chimera or so w/ vets (flamers)

2 psyker squads in chimeras

3 foot units w/ lascannons.

2 hydra flak tanks

command squad with 4 flamers in chimera

Jeesh .... well I was planning on fighting this sort of list so here we go.

Table quarter deployment. He goes first and spreads out of his table quarter so as not to get boxed in.

I roll and get 2ndry wave again!

I drop crushers in front of one flank along with the demaon prince. My shooting kills the chimera with the Inquisitor inside.

Top 2 He fires every gun in the army and kills the crushers.

Bottom 2, I get the deamonetes, P. bearers, and last screamer unit. I turboboost all my screamers htat I can so I can hit his vehicles next turn. Shooting gets me nothing.

Top 3. He uses most of his shooting to kill the screamers near his vehicles. Puts a wound on my herald and prince.

Bottom 3 no reserves unlock. I assault a squad with my demonettes and kill them, shooting does not do much.

Top 4 He shoots everything at my Prince and even though my reserve rolls are bad I make about 8/10 4+ saves to keep him around. Herald is shot to death though.

Bottom 4 Demon prince arrives, scatters 10" and mishaps so he is placed in the corner away from the battle. Crushers finally arrive and put pressure on the flank near his deployment and the objective on his side. I kill a chimera with shooting.

Top 5 He unlods everything into my prince until it is dead and fires whats left at my crushers but manages to wound all but kill none. He makes a break for the objectives piling several squads and vehicles at the two he can reach. My herald arives and shoots down a Vendetta. P. bearers assault the vets in the center objective and wipe them out in melee. Blood crushers smash through a psyker squad meant to stall them and I consolidate 6" onto his objective. My other P. bearer squad who was hiding all game wandered onto one of my objectives.

We have about 10 minutes left so we call the game as we probably cant finish anothr turn. I score 21/45 while holding him to 18/45.

I needed to knock out more of his transports but most of my shooting sat in reserves. I also needed those other crushers o put more pressure on him. When the guard just have 1 or 2 threats a turn they will usually win. I think you need to put a lot of pressure on them to have any real chance.

I think my startegy of making two essentialy same waves also paid off. I got the 2ndry wave all three games. Had I overloaded the front half I would have had a bad tourney experience this last wekend. I thought the army faired well and it gave me a shot at the top table and I cant ask for more than that. If I had won big I would have won the weekend so I cant complain too much, I just couldnt pull it off vs those dam IG.

Finaly a win at the top table, but not by much. Only problem is one of the guys on table two got a massacre and jumped past my score. I finished the weekend in 2nd out of 30 competetors. I was 2nd in battle points as well as overall. It was a fun tournament with all three opponents being a lot of fun to play against. I was also happy to get to square off with deamonhunters as they are missing in the tournament scene lately.

I dont know if I could have tweeked my army any better. I thought it perormed well, I just needed those reserves to come in a little quicker. Of course thats every game for the deamons.

Ouch wrong wave for all 3. Have you ever noticed that you don't have reserves problems until you get to the really important games, at least thats how it seems to happen to me.

Do you have the daemonettes in there to make it
somewhat fluffy with the Masque being in the list?

On a side note, I prefer smaller games with Necrons seems like people can't just run over you as fast!

Thnx Norbu, great report as usual.

A point about tweaking lists, not to say that it would be an improvement, but stil: the Masque costs 100 points right? (havent got my Codex with me) For 110 points you get a Slaanesh Prince with 4 wounds, 5++ save and a BS 5 Pavane. You mention the value of multiple threats in your game vs. the nasty IG. Wouldnt a Prince like that rate well? It's cheap enough to throw around, has 4 EW wounds and can still threaten Infantry and Tanks in CC...

Love the list however.

Also, you did very well again vs. a variation of (more or less) competative lists. Great job. Indeed the first opponent took a chance by putting evrything in reserves. I did the same last Dutch GT against the two CD lists I faced and it's a mixed blessing: yes you can react to a comparitively static army (remove the counterstrike advantage CD has) but you become very dependent on reserve rolls yourself.

Cheers, Cilithan

An interesting point I hadnt considered ws the cheap 110 point prince with Pavane.

The Masque has a 3++ to the 5+ but has 2 less wounds. Neither can be in a squad. The Masque is T3 to the Prince T5. Masque has 3 pavanes, DP has 1.

Definately a possability. Should keep that in the back of my mind for later, also for a few more points I could give it Gaze of Flame and I have a new shooting threat.

I like the input, thanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ Warmaster

No the deamonettes are there for a fast unit that can deepstrike reletively far away and approach quickly using fleet to lock onto an opponent, chew them up and move into the opponents deployment zone.
Game 1 they killed a tac squad and a scout squad
Game 2 they played a key role in killing 3 G. Knight termies before they swung back.
Game 3 they killed a 100 point unit before being blown away. I needed more threats that game because if your opponent focuses on the deamonettes, they get smashed pretty easy.

I find the unit is also great for grabbing a drednaught or walker and tying it up so as to keep it from hiting the crushers. They rend so they can bust arms off or immobilize the dreds as well.

Great report, but for me it also highlights the weakness of daemonettes. In pretty much every fight they got in, bloodletters would have done better. I saw this in game after game before finally taking them out of my list.

Poor Daemonhunter player, bet he was delighted to be playing you until he saw the mission criteria !! Worst possible mission for him, small no. of scoring units versus deepstrikers, ouch !! Great reports, cheers

Great job Norbu!!! This serves as an excellent example that CD if in the hands of a good general can overcome the randomness a lot of lesser experienced players often cite as a major drawback to the army in general. You only had one mishap and still went on to massacre that game. Very well done indeed!

G

Bah I wish I hadn't lost my HQ in round 2 and would of had a chance to play you in the final round. Granted your crushers would of massacred my Thunderwolves but it would of been nice to give it a go.

Grats on best general and a well played round of games.