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Bob and Ed of the Battle for Salvation held a small RTT this weekend past to validate their terrain, rules, missions and work out any kinks. I was grateful to be able to attend...Bob and Ed put together great events, and I was finally going to get to see Comic Book Heaven...I've lived 45 minutes away for 10 years and this was my first time there!

Here's a link to the blog post, including (bad) pictures: Game One - Orks

And here's Game 2!

And finally here's Game 3!

And here's the wall of text sans pictures...if you want pics, go to the blog

I attended a small tournament this weekend, a "test" run of the BFS missions, rules, and terrain for Bob and Ed (the guys that run the BFS GT) to make sure they're happy with the results of their hard work.

There were only 10 participants, but most of them were very competitive players: Simon Leen, Sean Nayden, Danny Internets to name a few. I was really curious to see what the "meta" would be, and to see if my all-Tzeentch force could compete!
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As to the former, out of 10 people I saw this:

1 Daemon

2 Chaos Marines (one Daemon ally)

2 Grey Knights (one IG ally, one SOB ally)

1 Dark Eldar (Eldar ally)

1 Ork

2 Vanilla Marine (one Deathwing ally)

1 Imperial Guard

I didn't get a real good look at most of the lists folks were using, in fact I'm so old and blonde I barely remember what my opponent's lists were! I was surprised to see very few Fliers (my army excluded, of course)...one CSM player had 2 flying Princes; one of the Marine players had two Storm Talons. The IG had 3 Vendettas...but that was it. No Necrons. No Space Wolves. No Blood Angels. Small sample size, yes...but interesting none the less.

As an aside, everyone was talking about how they're going to build their CSM army...apparently the next tournament will be held inside the Eye of Terror where all of us will be trying to see who has the coolest Chaos Marine army.

I brought the all-Tzeentch daemon army discussed here. I even had it mostly on round bases. Go me! Though sadly, my Skull bases haven't even shipped yet, so I may be in trouble there. :(

Anyway, the first game! I was paired up against Ryan Sinnot...a very skilled young player with a terrifying list...something like this:

Ghazghkull Thraka
Big Mek w/KFF
3 units each of 10 Lootas
3 units of 30 Choppa Boyz with PK Nobs
30 Shoota Boyz with PK Nob and 3 Big Shootas
10 Gretchin
and 3 units of 3 Lobbas with 3 Ammo Runts in each.

Yeah, that's a lot of bodies, and something I'm not feeling I match up well against.

The mission was modified Hammer and Anvil, same as Nova. Mission was Kill Points, Quarters, and Objectives.
Normally this is a Mission type I like, as I can save weak Kill Points (flamers and horrors) to try to push things to Quarters, where I think I do pretty well. But, I messed it all up

I won the roll and chose to go first. He deployed very nicely spaced out so that I couldn't drop in flamers and wipe stuff out. He was really rushed, as he was taking a lot of time getting his guys out and deploying, and I think he made one error here...he put his Lootas in reserve. I think he just filled up the table with stuff so fast and he just left them in reserve to not slow things down. It didn't cost him anything, unfortunately for me, but certainly not how I would have played it.

The Lobbas were all in the extreme corner out of LOS behind a big hill, and the rest of his deployment was completely full of boyz.

I wanted to get my typical FMC and Screamer first drop in. I thought I could drop them back enough to only have to take the Lobbas and one Choppa unit's shooting, to which I felt pretty strong with Fateweaver's rerolls. But alas, the Chaos Powers...they are fickle. I got the Horrors and Flamers in first. And here I had a tough choice to make right away, which is wrong...I'm supposed to be making him make tough choices, not myself!

I could drop in close enough to shoot things...suicide-drop the Flamers and put the Horrors ~18" away for good shots, but risk getting shot up back and assaulted, giving up some easy KP...or I could deep strike far back, make him come out to me, and hope to get good Turn 2 drops to chop off whatever extended and roll a flank.

I chose the former, my thoughts being I wanted to save a lot of table-space for the FMC and Screamers to drop in to. This was wrong, as it gave up the gameplan of preserving my easy killpoints to push things to Quarters. Dumb!

The drops went poorly, 1 Flamer mishapped back to reserve, one mishapped and Ryan deployed him far far away. Changeling's unit scattered a LOT closer to the Orks than I wanted him. Another horror unit scattered back too far to shoot.

All I had was some Warpfire shots at the closest unit of Choppas, but with Nightfight and the KFF (this was a huge mistake...I should have just deployed far back, as the Horror shooting was nearly worthless) I only killed a small handful of Boyz.

Even with nightfight limiting the range to 36", the Lobbas and Sluggas still did good work, destroying two units of horrors, and a unit of Flamers. As I recall he killed enough with shooting that he didn't even get to assault anything. Yippie for me!

My second turn, and the dice gods still frown. I only get in a Flamer, a screamer, Fateweaver and a Prince. I tried to drop Fateweaver so that he'd be in range of the remaining Horrors, but he scattered the full 12" and landed far far away. I put the Prince right next to him, though he scattered a few inches too, but no mishap. Screamers came down safe (and turbo-boosted to get in FW range).

The horror unit Ryan deployed hopped over to be in FW bubble. The other I suicide-dropped on top of the unit the Horrors had tried to shoot at last turn. The remaining horrors backed away, but sloppy movement left me very vulnerable to the barrages again.

The Flamers and Horrors did far better this turn, leaving Ghazghkull in a unit of only a few Boyz. I think he had 3 left at this point. I poured everything I had at them, and just couldn't finish them off! He used the Ghaz's Waaagh! to make them fearless to prevent them running away.

Hey boss, why are we way back here? And why do you have a book on a stick with a fish on top?

Bottom of 2 and the Ork shooting continues. My Horrors are blown off the table. Flamers are assaulted and killed. Ghazghkull and his 3 friends hide in some ruins hoping to not die. 2 Loota units walk on in the corner closest to me, along with some Grots that he remembered at the very end of his turn, and of course I let him just walk them on.

Top of 3 and I cheated. I got in the LoC and Prince and only one unit of Screamers, but was kind of just going through the motions and ended up dropping in both screamers. It made no difference to the game, but was lame of me. I was kind of on auto-pilot, accepting the loss and just going through the motions. It wasn't intentional, I just was taking stuff out of the box and putting it down and scattering it. Brain-dead. I have no real excuse. Sorry Ryan! I'm glad it didn't change any of the outcome!

I dropped in the Prince and Lord of Change front and center, and the Screamers back safe. Then Swooped Fateweaver up to assume my formation for maximum rerolling fun! The first Screamer unit flew up ready for a long assault on the Boyz that killed off my Flamers. All my MC foolishly shot at Ghaz and his boyz, but with Ghaz being the closest everything bounced off, only killed 2 Boyz and did nothing to Ghaz. He passed his Morale that turn. The newly-dropped Screamers turbo up to be near Fateweaver.

Screamers go in to the Boyz...I killed off enough to not take any swings back, stayed locked in combat and got wrecked on his next turn, but ripped the unit apart so that it was a non-factor.

Bottom of 3 and the Shootas take aim at Fateweaver. 1 wound, pass save, not grounded. Lootas fire at him. 2 wounds, fail both, reroll fails 1, roll an 11 for his Ld test. Sigh...bye bye, 333 points! Hey, before you go, tell us why you have a book on a stick with a fish on top! The lobbas put a few wounds on Screamers. Ghaz moved to a new "unit"...one that included more than one Boy.

Top of 4 and the surviving FMC Zoom in to the corner where all the Lootas are. I waste shooting to kill the one Boy from the first Mob I tried to shoot up, and finally kill him. I put shots on Lootas, killing enough of two squads to force morale, one of them runs off. Yeah! Flamers jump over and barbecue enough of the second mob that they are below fearless and Flee, being at 6 models left they need Insane Courage to return. Finally, I kill stuff! Only took 4 turns...

I also sent two units of Screamers in to the Shootas. I expected to kill a lot more than I did, but did manage to kill enough that he couldn't pile in at his Initiative Step to base contact, so I took no return swings, but stayed locked up with one of the Screamer units...the other consolidated away.

Bottom of 4...the Lobbas and Lootas shoot at the unengaged screamers, finishing them off. The last full Mob, led by Ghaz and with the Big Mek, charges in to the Screamers fighting the Shootas. The Screamers fight valiantly, but can't kill off the Shoota boyz and are wiped out. I think he had about a dozen Shoota Boyz left.

His consolidate left him pretty packed together with that big mob, and I had a full unit of Flamers left...but I really didn't think I could come anywhere close to finishing off that Mob. Instead I chose to fire the Flamer's Warpfire at the bubble-wrapping Grots. This opened up a charge lane for the Lord of Change to go in to the Lootas, one Prince went to finish the Grots, the other Prince went to finish the last Lootas.

That almost went according to plan, until the Prince fighting one Grot and one Runtherd decided that things hadn't gone quite badly enough and decided to suck. Not only didn't he do any hits, he took a wound! How embarrassing!

The Prince's to-hit rolls versus a gretchin...as if it weren't bad enough...

We had just minutes, so did a real quick turn 5, where he killed off the last of the flamers and I killed the last grots and we called it a game.

The final was 11 KP for him, and 6 for me. I was very happy to have made a game of it there at the end, and I sincerely think that if we'd had time for a turn 6 I might have closed the gap to push things in to Quarters and stood a chance at winning. A small chance, but chance none-the-less!

I won't blame the dice, as I made plenty of mistakes that had more of an effect, but the dice sure didn't cooperate. Poor saves, poor scatters, poor everything. More important than the dice though were my first drop...forgetting about Night Fight + KFF meant all that stuff was wasted. I'd had been better off dropping far far away and waiting for reinforcements. Lesson learned.

Ryan was a real pleasure to play with. Easy-going, knowledgable, and fun. He took full advantage of every mistake I made and really did a great job of killing what I gave him to kill and not sticking things out too far to be isolated. His list is very solid, and I expect he'll do very well at BFS. I think he ended up on table 1, but took a bad loss to the IG...I'm guessing Manticores gave him a rough time.

Ryan took Primary, we split the secondary (we each had 1 quarter), and he had 1 objective to none. He got First Blood. I got Linebreaker. I think I had 3 points total, he had 13...ouch. Not the way to start the Tournament, but I had a fun game and learned a good lesson!

My carpool buddy Sean played against Vanilla Marines, and got a solid win. I would go on to play that Marine player in Round 2...coming soon!



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Game 2 is posted!

Link to game 2!

After a stout butt-kicking by Ryan Sinnot's Orks, I drowned my sorrows in a diet lemonade and a $5 footlong from Subway, and got ready for Round 2! I learned some lessons in the first game, and of course had a great time, so despite feeling that my pitiful score (I think I got 3 out of 27 possible?) knocked me out of contention for any kind of showing, I really wanted to push my list versus some other tough opponents!

But instead, I got paired up against Brother Captain James! I kid, I kid...James is a great guy, and despite some rules issues I have a good time playing him...on the other hand, he does not, it seems every time we get paired up I have the Rock to his Scissors and it's a really one-sided affair. This match was no different.

James was using Crimson Ultrafists with Dark Angel Deathwing allies:

Pedro Kantor
Biker Captain with Artificer, shield, relic blade
Belial
Command Squad on Bikes loaded up with Shields and Claws and Fists
10 Sternguard (2 lascannons)
10 Sternguard (2 lascannons)
10 Tactical (Missile, Melta)
10 Tactical (Missile, Melta)
5 "Special" Deathwing (Apothecary, Cyclone, I think 3 TH/SS and 2 LC...I don't think he had the Banner.)

And...that's all I can remember.

There's some things here that concern me a bit. The 2+ wounding bolter ammo on the Sternguard can shred everything with ease, so the DPs must be kept out of Rapid Fire range. The Bike squad could be a tough nut, laughing off my AP2 with their Shields...but there's only so many bodies in there, and every loss hurts.

The mission was Quarters, Objectives, KP (I think...fuzzy memory) and the deployment was Dawn of War. I won the roll and gave first turn to him. There was no turn 1 Night Fight.

He spread out across the entire table, with Tacticals in the middle, Deathwing middle-left; Bikes middle-right. Sternguard were combat-squadded in the corners.
He moved the bikers up full speed to cover a lot of the right side of the table, while the Deathwing waddled slowly towards the left.

I dropped in the Flying Circus and the Screamers, getting the wave I wanted this time. I decided to take advantage of his deployment and drop in where the large Bastion blocking table-center line of sight would take half his army out of the equation for awhile. Fateweaver scattered quite a bit farther back than I'd wanted, but still in shooting range. Crazy Ivan deep strike saw one Prince scatter off a bit, but the others landed on target right next to Fatey. The Screamers dropped away safe, and Turbo'd near Fateweaver, set up for turn 2 fun!

Shooting went well, blowing a Combat Squad of Sternguard off the table and killing one of another. This game really made me happy I had the Gaze instead of Breath on the DPs...being able to kill of MEQ at range is gold, IMO. Especially those pesky Grey Knights!

He took full advantage of one of my Princes being too far from Fateweaver. He moved up the Deathwing ready to assault it, grounded it with bolter fire (TL-Bolters from the bikes, actually), then killed it with mass shooting before he got to assault. Unfortunately for him this left his Bikes and Terminators ready to be hit by Screamers next turn!

My Turn 2, and I got all 3 flamers and 3 horror units in! What a nice change from last game! I dropped Horrors out of LOS near Objectives...their shooting isn't much use vs. MEQ, I'd rather keep them safe to get Objectives and help with Quarters! The Flamers I tried to drop in to roast the Terminators. None landed dead on, but all landed in decent enough spots...two could still hit Terminators, and one had shots at bikes.

Here we had a pretty ugly rule dispute. James insisted that after the second deep-striking model was placed, the third had to be in base-to-base with both the first model and the second, as this is the only way in which you can attempt to form a circle. I pointed out that this does not create a circle, but rather a triangle, that there was no way to form a circle with less than 6, and that as long as the requirement of being in base with the initial placed model is met, then the letter of the rule is met. I'd never heard anyone complain about deploying small deep-strike units in a straight line before (see pic above for what I mean). The TO (Bobby) was there, as we were quite loud (I must say I was pretty agitated by what I felt was petty rules lawyering) and after reviewing the book decided that I was meeting the intent.

One screamer unit moved up to assault Bikes, another to assault Terminators. All the FMC swooped, with FW and a DP hiding behind the Bastion (where Fatey's rerolls would help the Screamers on Terminators), while the LOC flew deep in to his back left to try to finish off the Sternguard holding the back left quarter.

Shooting killed 2 of the Sternguard (all the LoC could see) and a few of the Terminators. I decided to not shoot at the bikes as killing the closest model would take my charge distance from 5" to 8", and I'd rather get them tied up.

Screamers killed the Terminators with ease, but the Bikers were a tougher nut. Those Shields made things very difficult, and I'd forgotten the were S5, making wounding them a bit trickier (20 attacks, 10 hits, 5 wounds, 3++ and FNP = 1 dead!).

His turn he charged Belial in to the Screamers, and rapid-fired down a unit of Flamers...nothing else to be shot at.

I moved flamers up to roast the last of his Tactical, and sent a Prince in to help the Screamers with the Bikes while the Lord of Change ate the Sternguard in the back right. I got the rest of the Horrors in, with the Changeling's group making for the middle objective and the last holding the bottom right...I had 4 untouched horror units on 4 of 5 objectives, 3 FMC, 2 depleted Screamer units and a Flamer unit left. Screamers finished off Belial (after I tried to turn him in to a Spawn, another rules argument over my ability to do this to him while he was engaged....sigh).

I vector-striked Kantor dead, and shot down one of the Sternguard combat squads. At this point he had one combat squad lurking in ruins in the back right quarter, and he conceded the game.

Other than the rules arguments, this was a fun game. I felt I played smart using the Bastion well to keep half his shooting off me, as well as good Flamer use keeping them alive a lot longer than normal. Screamers did what they needed, as did the FMC, and the Horrors looked pretty as they sat out of LOS holding Objectives!

I got max-points for this game, as I won all three missions, got Linebreaker, first blood, and warlord! Go Daemons! This is exactly the kind of list that I think I do best against, as the massive number of AP2/3/ignore damage output I have makes marines on foot nearly worthless!

You were definitely in the right on the rules argument. I understand not wanting to have 3x Flamers drop down and fry the snot out of your units, but the circle requirement simply means form a ring around the base - in any order of your choice!

Also, this is the kind of list that the new Screamers and Flamers really shine against - no vehicles, slow and in the open ready to be eaten.

And Game 3 is posted!

I've been to several tournaments, big and small, and it's become almost a given that any time Sean and I attend a tournament together, we end up paired against each other at some point.

This tournament was no exception.

After beating up the Space Marines, I got a coffee and an ice cream from McDonalds (literally steps away from the tables!) and sat with Sean to rest my feet and discuss our games. He'd just had a fun-sounding game vs. CSM with Lash Princes that inexplicably gave up Lash for book powers...

...and we heard Bob making announcements, and ran out to hear that we were, as expected, paired up for the final round!

The good news, games with Sean are always loose, fun, and low-stress. The bad news, one of us was going to get knocked out of 'placing'.

Sean likes to use unusual lists that bring things that folks aren't familiar with. He breaks the Meta. Since I typically build lists to combat the mean things I expect to see, his lists are usually tough for me to handle.

He had something like this:

Urian Rakarth
Eldrad
5 units of 3 Wracks
2 units of 3 Guardian Jetbikes
5 "Master" Grotesques (including one Abberation with Flesh Gauntlet)
2 units of 9 Harlequin with Shadowseers (5 Kisses in each)
Wraithlord with Flamers, Scatter Laser, and Shuriken Cannon
3 Talos with Haywire Blasters
and 2 units of Beasts with 3 Beastmasters and 5 Razorwing Flocks in each

The mission was Objectives, Kill Points, and Quarters. Deployment was the triangley one. Sean won the roll and chose to go first.

Sean started all the Wracks and Jebikes in reserve. Everything else spread out across his triangle's hypotenuse...yeah, I said hypotenuse! The Grots were kind of aiming at my right...the Harlies were central, and a Bird squad was left. The second Bird squad took the rear.

Sean pushed forward to center table, taking away a lot of room for deep-striking safely...but I wasn't interested in safety for this game! I selected the Circus and the Flamers as my primary drop...I really wanted to flame down those Harlequin before the FMC got down on the ground. I got the drop I wanted, thankfully. Getting the wrong one in this game would be have been extraordinarily bad. S4 shooting does nothing to him, and his beasts would munch thru everything no matter where I dropped them!

Fateweaver scattered backwards a bit, the LOC and one Prince landed fine, with one Prince scattering off a bit out of FW range.

The Flamers I wanted to focus on Harlequin, the first scattered on top of them...a bit too close, lads!...and went back to reserve. The other two landed just fine, and the flaming commenced. I killed all but one Harlie in one unit, and I think I clipped and killed one from the other. I was content. The Circus unloaded on the nearest Beast squad. I was hoping to knock down the Beastmasters (the closest targets) with the first few shots then hope to kill of some birds with the ID S8 shots. I think I managed to leave one Beastmaster alive and kill off 2 Flocks. Not horrible!

Most importantly, I was far enough away from the Grotesquest that if I got knocked down, I'd not have to endure them charging me!

Top of turn 2, and looking back at the pictures I don't think Sean did his reserves this turn. I don't know if it would have changed anything, just something I noticed.

He dog-piled things on to my Flamer units that cooked the Harlequin. I killed the last Harley of the first unit with Overwatch (he was the OW absorber so the other unit would be ok), and did a few wounds to birds. He moved a Talos and the reduced Bird squad up hoping to assault a Prince if he could knock it down.

Luckily for me he did not knock it down, but the Flamers were toast...

Bottom of 2, I got everything in except one unit of horrors. I tried to get fancy with the Screamers, dropping them behind him to turbo-boost and slash attack over him, but lost a squad to mishap. The Horrors tried to drop in corners to sit on objectives, with the Changeling's unit scattering up towards the middle of the table...right in harm's way, sadly.

The Prince that was out of formation Glided to be ready to assault either the Talos or the Razorwing. The other three did Vector strikes over the Razorwings...S6 caused ID on the Razor flocks, killing the unit off. The whole circus then fired Bolts at the Talos, killing it. I think I had some Flamers that had scattered too, and put shots on the Grots, doing a few wounds.

Top of 3, and three Wrack units and some Jetbikes walk on. All the Wracks go in the back left corner, where I had some Horrors, while the Jetbikes fly up the other end of the table towards my bottom right corner, also where some Horrors are.

Sean got over my head with this next move, as he tried to get in to multi-assaults but ended up blocking his own charge lane. He was not happy with himself. He managed to get the Razorwings in to the Gliding Prince, and the Grotesques went in to the Terrified Screamers. I think the non-Terrified screamers also had to attack themselves from Hallucination. Ouch.

The Prince held his own, thanks to the rerolling saves he only took one wound, and killed one of the Beastmasters. The Screamers did a few wounds to the Grots, but lost combat by a ton and were killed in Sweeping Advance after failing their Morale test. Terrify is a really mean power!
 
Bottom of 3, and I keep on swooping. I was slow this turn...I really considered gliding all my FMC over to the Grots and Smashing them to death, but didn't want to get stuck fighting Urien and Eldrad for the rest of the game, so went after the other things first. I got my last Horror unit in, and it went to the back right objective, in Sean's deployment zone.

Fate, Change, and Prince did Vector Strikes on the Harlequin. The Screamers flew back to deal with Wracks. The Pink Horrors shot at the Jetbikes, killing one, and they failed Morale. The Purple Horrors moved up on the hill and shot and killed a unit of Wracks. Vector Strikes, Fate's Breath, and Gaze left only 2 Harlequin alive. Screamers killed a unit of Wracks. The Prince fighting the Razorwing challenges...I didn't want to take a million bird attacks, and he didn't want to lose a bunch of birds to ID. Boring combat...I think I killed the Beastmaster, but they were Fearless from...whatever that power is that makes them Fearless. Stupid Eldrad!

Top of 4. The Grotesques move to assault the Changeling's unit, more Wracks and Bikes come on. All the wracks go in the same place, the back left corner where I had one Horror unit and some Screamers. The other Bikes went back to the corner in my deployment zone, hiding...

The Wraithlord and a Talos moved in to the middle forest, aiming for my Flamers. The other Talos and the surviving Harlequin went to rescue the Razorwings from my Prince.

The Talos and Harlequin made it in to the Prince fine. The Grots took a few wounds from Horrors Overwatch. The Talos that charged the Flamers was killed! I rolled 4 hits with the two surviving Flamers and got 3 wounds! I love Flamers! The Wraithlord tried to go in to the Flamers too, but needing 8" through terrain he failed. A unit of Wracks went in to the Horrors too, losing none to overwatch.

The Grotesques unsurprisingly plowed over the Horrors. The Wracks killed 2 Horrors, losing none. The Prince challenged again, and the challenge was taken by the Shadowseer who died doing no wounds.

Bottom of 4, the Flamers and LOC go after the Wraithlord, the last Prince goes to save his Brother from the big mean Talos. The Screamers are affected by a Hallucination preventing them from running, charging, or shooting...but I turbo-boost them over a unit of Wrack and kill them with Slash attacks.

The Horrors that shot up the Bikes last turn shoot them again, killing them. The Flamers and Lord of Change kill the Wraithlord. The surrounded Prince challenges again. He kills the last Beastmaster, while the other Prince takes several wounds from the Talos, only doing 1 to it. The Wracks fighting the Horrors do 4 wounds, I save them all! Rawr!!

Top of 5, and the game hangs in the balance here. The Grotesque unit moves up to hit Fateweaver. Eldrad Terrifies the Lord of Change, who fails his Morale test and starts running. Uhoh!

Sean actually pulls a funky combo-assault here where he ties in the Grots with the big Razorwing combat, so everything's in one giant scrum now. Urien challenges, Fateweaver accepts, they wiff at each other (damned Clone field!) There was a lot of simultaneous combat happening here, and I'm a bit fuzzy on how it all went down, but one Prince wrecked a bunch of Razorwings with his S6; the other Smashed and killed several Grotesques with ID, but then died himself to the attack from the Talos. The Fearless Urien and Talos were all that was left. The Horror unit took 3 wounds from the Wracks, and passed all them too! Rawr!

Bottom of 5, the Screamers move to kill off the last Wrack unit (reading back, I'm not sure how the 5th one died...I'm sorry, I lost track. Need better photos!) that's been fighting the Horrors, to free them up. The last two Flamers go to try to kill the last Jetbike unit camping an objective in my deployment zone (Linebreaker!).

Fateweaver turns Eldrad in to a Spawn, takes a wound from Urien but passes his Ld test. The Talos does a wound to the Prince, who leaves that Talos with a single wound.

And that was game! The Instant Death I was able to cause thru the game really broke his units, and my little objective grabbing units did a better job of hanging on to objectives than his. Eldrad being a Spawn was amusing, but didn't have an effect on the game.

I grabbed 2 objectives, Sean had 1 (the Flamers failing to do anything to the last Jetbike unit). I also had all 4 quarters, and KP was 12-7, so I got max points again. Quite a comeback from the first round's butt-woopin!

Sean was a great opponent as always, staying upbeat through a game that was very close and tense until the top of Turn 5. I think his lack of ability to shoot down my Fliers allowed me to dictate who fought what where, and was decisive. I got the luck I needed with the Harlie roasting early-game, and that put him on his back foot right away, playing catch-up against flying things you can't combat isn't easy!

We went back to McDonald's for a seat after packing up our toys, talked Fantasy a little, chatted with Bishop the store owner a bit, and the final scores came out...

Sean was tied for 3rd, and they used Strength of Schedule, with Sean losing out to...ya know, I don't even remember. I suck.

I ended up second overall! Very surprised after the horrible round 1 loss, but very pleased that my Flying Circus did the trick!

First went to Danny Internets and his Imperial Guard!

Thanks to Sean for driving and the fun game. Thanks to James and Ryan for the good games! And a super big thanks to Bobby and Ed for putting on the event! I'm really excited for the BFS GT! Hope to see everyone there!

List thoughts here. Feedback welcome!

Back here I discussed my thoughts for this list, and how I expected stuff to work.

Now I want to talk about what did/didn't work, what I might consider changing (though not much time to do so!), and hopefully get some feedback!


I had a few big questions using this list:


-Is 4 Troop units (of only 5 models, even worse!) enough?
-Is 4 FMC too many?
-Are units of 3 Flamers enough?
-Do the Princes/LOC need Breath? Might?

Unfortunately I didn't fight the kinds of armies I really expect to see most prevalent at the big GTs. I expect to see Necrons; MEQ with Guard Blobs; IG with their own Blobs or all-mech. I didn't fight anything with tons of shooting.

So, in a nut-shell, I didn't get the answers I was hoping for.

But, I do have more ideas.


So, first...Is 4 troop units of 5 models enough?

In the only game where my Horrors came in first, they were wiped out. BUT...a) objectives was the tertiary mission; b) most importantly, I was reckless with them and paid the price.

I think I could have deployed them far far away, even getting some out of LOS, and forced him to move away from his firebase to come for me. It would have ceded control of the table-middle to him, but would have not put me down on KP so easily so early.

In the other two missions, they were able to drop in unmolested as the opponents were for the most part more concerned about the parts of my army that were killing them, even though Objectives was the primary mission.

As of now I'm sticking with 4, there are no good Troop choices in the codex, so minimizing the suckage is best. While Horrors are the most expensive, I also think they're the ones that are most able to affect the battle (note the battle vs. Sean and the Orks, where they were able to kill stuff!) instead of sitting somewhere hoping to not die (I hate plaguebearers!).

Answer: Yes...maybe. It's so random with Daemons, it's hard to say. If I can get them where I want, I'm pretty happy. If not, I'll lose. Stupid Daemonic Assault!

-Is 4 FMC too many?

I think the FMC in every game did the bulk of the heavy lifting. I expected it to be the screamers and flamers, but it was the big guys. Will the survive against a massively shooting list (I think of Stelek's ultra-shooty MSU GK with ~100 shots at 24"...), though the Ork list had a fair amount of shooting and that was weathered pretty well.

Against the Orks the FMC able to swoop quickly to the firebase were what got me the few KP I earned, and if things had gone another turn would have been able to finish off a decimated Boyz unit and get in to the Lobbas. No, I think 4 is just fine.

Could 3 work? Probably. You can add a lot for ~250 points...maybe load up to three units of six Screamers, 3 units of 5-6 Flamers. It might even be more powerful, but 4 seems to work, so I'm sticking with it!

Answer: No...maybe. 4 seems to be enough to really kill stuff and impact the game, particularly with the Shooting I have, but the things gained from going to 3 may make up for the loss.

-Are units of 3 Flamers enough?

I was actually a bit disappointed in the damage output of the flamers. What I said about them in the previous post really held true: 4-5 templates will wipe out a unit, 3 ALMOST wipes out a unit.

On the other hand, in the last game I dropped 6 templates on some (well spread out) Harlequin, and only killed 8...so maybe not that big a deal.

The one thing that really pushes me in to wanting more is that if I have 5-6 in a unit, if they lose a few to shooting the Overwatch is still pretty scary, at least to 'normal' units...giant blobs don't really care.

It's ironic, actually, that the giant blobs are really the things that I'm less inclined to go after with the flamers. Consider a well-spread out unit of Orks...if I can only get 3 boyz under the template, then a unit of 5 only kills 7-8. That's barely a quarter of the unit, and even 5 Flamers will probably die to their shoota fire.

Bottom line, though, in every match I felt like I wanted more Flamers.

Answer: No...not really. 3 drops them in to Distraction/suicide units. I hope for more


And last, -Do the Princes/LOC need Breath? Might?


Two questions really. I had a hard time deciding between Gaze and Breath. Breath is 10 points more, and I went with Gaze to save those points and to allow bashing from range without having to commit.

I think this was a good choice, as in all three games I was able to put fire on things from what would have been outside Breath range while staying safely away from things that I didn't want to get assaulted by should I get grounded. If it were free, I'd have both and use them both, but how I drop in, I want that range!

And Might? Yeah, I think that was a great investment. Wounding the SM Bikes on 3s; Vector Strikes wounding on 2s; Vector Strikes and melee causing ID to T3; meaner Hammer of Wrath. All things that I was grateful I had. Withouth Might, I would have lost game 3. Enough said!

Answer: No to Breath; Yes to might.

So where does that leave my list? I like everything about it except I want more flamers. I think 4 would be the ideal number for how I use them, so I'd need to free up 69 points...

Unless I drop something else that I like, I don't know how I'd do it. I could drop a Prince or the LOC, and add a lot more Screamers, Flamers, and Horrors...but I won't, because I like the dynamic of those 4 big meanies

 calypso2ts wrote:
You were definitely in the right on the rules argument. I understand not wanting to have 3x Flamers drop down and fry the snot out of your units, but the circle requirement simply means form a ring around the base - in any order of your choice!

Also, this is the kind of list that the new Screamers and Flamers really shine against - no vehicles, slow and in the open ready to be eaten.

I agree on both counts!

But would add the Screamers and Flamers don't do too bad against vehicle-heavy stuff either. Munch!

great bat reps! I almost brought my Novacrons to this tournament. I wish I was able to make it out because it seemed like a fun event.

Thanks for the feedback!

It was a fun, low-stress, low-key event. I've been to a lot of events put on by Bob and Ed, and they've all been a lot of fun!

Glad you enjoyed the reps!

I'm thinking that might is generally not worth it. It doesn't affect Vector Strike, and you can smash if you really need the higher strength. Granted, you'll have fewer attacks, but you'll wound just about anything on a 2+, which might make up for it.

I agree by RAW it does not affect VS, but by NOVA FAW (and the BFS one also), it does affect VS. That changes the equation quite a bit, and pushed me to include it.