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Spoiler tag free game available at: http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/11/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-1-of-6.html

This year the Da Boyz GT was run at the beautiful Bristol Harbor Resort. I had the chance to room with fellow members of The Grand Strategery (Grubnards and Sinistermind) and the Beef and Wing team from Buffalo .in a cottage on the property. I arrived at around 9:00 on Friday and had a chance to have a few drinks, talk warhammer and get to bed. The room when I arrived was already filling up - but it was a nice throwback to college. Here is a shot from the morning before I ran off to register for the morning.



If you look closely on the sleeper sofa is a Beef and Winger whom I gave a hard time that morning too - he came in a bit late the night before and I was sure to wake him up! There was also some last minute painting prep going on too.

For anyone who missed my list and discussion as the Monks go to war I brought a Fleshhound heavy list featuring Fateweaver (whom I despise in spite of how good she is). Keep in mind Da Boyz has traditionally been a comped event - with the restrictions being all units are 0-2, except troops at 0-4 with a maximum of 3 flyers per army.

HQ
Fateweaver
Herald of Khorne on Juggernaut w/ Exalted Gift and Locus of Wrath

Elites
-

Troops
16x Daemonettes
10x Pink Horrors
10x Plaguebearers

Fast Attack
16x Flesh Hounds
16x Flesh Hounds
16x Seekers of Slaanesh w/ Heart Seeker

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder of Nurgle w/ Phlegm
Soul Grinder of Nurgle w/ Phlegm

Game 1
My first game was against Therkorn (This is the one name I did not write down, I know I am close - we even talked after round 6 and I am still drawing a blank) who brought a really interesting Ork w/ allied CSM army to the tournament. We hit it off pretty well from the start and we had the chance to play on a beautiful Necron board - that Necron fabrication facility is indeed lit by LED's too.



Mission/Deployment
Primary: Crusade
Secondary: Purge the Alien
Deployment: Dawn of War (how appropriate for the first game of the morning)

Opponent: Orks w/ CSM



HQ
Warboss on a Bike w/ Klaw, Cybork Body, Bosspole, Kombi-Scorcha
Daemon Princess w/ Wings, Black Mace, Mastery 2x, Mark of Tzeentch, Gift of Mutation, Spell Familiar

Elites
-

Troops
10x Orks w/ shootas
10x Orks w/ shootas
10x Cultists w/ Heavy Stubber
10x Cultists w/ Heavy Stubber
5x Biker Nobz w/ Cybork Bodies, Pain Boy, Waaagh Banner, 1x Klaw, 2x Big Choppa, Boss Pole

Fast Attack
Heldrake w/ Baleflamer
Dakkajet w/ Fight Ace
Dakkajet w/ Fight Ace

Heavy Support
Battle Wagon w/ Big Shoota, Red Paint Job, Deff Rolla
Battle Wagon w/ Big Shoota, Red Paint Job, Deff Rolla
Maulerfiend w/ Lasher Tendrils

Psychic Powers/Warlord Traits
Fateweaver: Lord of Unreality - Perfect Timing//Fire Shield: Iron Arm//Psychic Shriek
Khorne Herald: Grimoire of True Names, Axe of Khorne
Horrors: Bolt of Tzeentch

Warboss: Reroll Reserves
Daemon Princess: Doombolt, Invisibility, Icy Aura

Deployment
I win the roll for the choice of turn and choose to take the second turn - since it is an objectives game. We do not get Night Fight on turn 1. I deploy near the objective I placed on the left flank - both my opponent's objectives are placed on the same side. My second objective is off to the right near the Soul Grinder.



Turn 1
With little shooting, the Orks and CSM move forward and fail to inflict any wounds with their shooting. The Daemon Princes casts invisibility on herself and will continue to do so each turn.



Somehow this seems like not many models - but there is a lot of firepower waiting in reserve.

I attempt the Grimoire on Fateweaver so she can stay on the field and not get wrecked by flyers but fail - and then fail again with my reroll. Fate has to hop into ongoing reserves.



Everything moves forward - the blue Hounds are to be a throw away unit to hold up the Princess, Bikers and Maulerfiend while maybe taking down a Battlewagon. The Warp Storm manages to wreck the left Battlewagon for me with Khorne's Wrath netting me First Blood, and killing 5 Boyz, pinning the unit.



The hounds eat the second grinder and kill off another seven boyz who flee. I now also have a wall between my units and the Maulerfiend while the Daemon Princess will have to expose herself to a lot of Rending (and a lot of Flesh Hounds) if she assaults.

Turn 2

Both Dakkajets - one not shown on the right side - and the Heldrake come in. The blue hounds eat all of the shooting from those units while my opponent calls his Waagh to really amp up the shots.



Notice the Daemon Princess and Maulerfiend are both ready to assault my Herald w/ Hounds. I made a mistake here - I had interpreted the building as impassible but when we discussed terrain I did not make it clear that I had been interpreting it that way. That left the core of my army very exposed.



The Flesh Hounds meant to be a speedbump to the Nobz and Maulerfiend only succeed on doing so to the nobz who wreck what is left in combat.



The Black Mace does its dirty work and the hounds are eaten up by the Maulerfiend and the Daemon Princess.

Turn 2

The Horrors come in - I wish they had Flickering Fire, I thought they would be hunting Battle Wagons but I should have kitted them to hunt troops. they fail to do any meaningful damage.

The Daemonettes go into the Princess to attempt to Rend her out - but she is invisible and only takes a pair of wounds. In return she does a lot of damage to the Daemonettes. The Maulerfiend whiffs on the hounds and spares them for another turn.



The Seekers pile into the Nob Bikers - I need 6's to hurt them but they had the Grimoire this turn and I was hoping to win combat and run them down. I came close as they lost by two - failed their leadership but made it with the Bosspole reroll. Not shown are the Plaguebearers who were hiding on the objective to the right side of the board. What did Fateweaver do this turn?

Turn 3

She shot down the Dakkajet - with 4d6 Flickering Fire shots.



Casualties are heavy and the Daemonettes are crushed by the Daemon Princess - but they did land 1 more wound on the Princess. The maulerfiend wipes out the rest of the Hounds with three straight failed saves. I was hoping to get 1 more turn out of the Grimoire.



Fateweaver flies over to take care of the Daemon Princess after getting off Perfect Timing to ignore Stealth/Shrouded - she succeeds with some Tzeentch shooting powers to strip the last wound.

The Horrors fail their charge on the Cultists - I was hoping to wipe the unit out by being marginally more durable and better in CC.

Turn 4

The Heldrake finishes off the Plaguebearers with a final Vector Strike and Bale Flame - I really needed them to stick around to hold that objective.

With the Cultists and other assorted troops, Fateweaver gets grounded on her second test - even with a reroll. The Maulerfiend then assaults and instant kills her with the one attack that makes it through. The Seekers decide to be heroes though and roll snake eyes to regenerate the unit!



No more pictures, but without Fateweaver I am stuck being unable to contest the right hand objective while Flcikering Fire out the unit on the left hand side. That costs me the game, although the Horrors do make good on killing some cultists in assault as a consolation prize.

Results
Primary: Loss
Secondary: Loss
First Blood: 1
Slay the Warlord: 0
Linebreaker: 1

I take 2 points in the first round of the GT, which is pretty demoralizing.

Round 1 Thoughts
My opponent played a good game and I made a ton of mistakes that really cost me in this one. I placed my objectives poorly - I should have put them midfield and deep struck onto them or as far away as possible. I also misplayed my deployment horribly. Outflanking with his objectives so close to the board edge would have been much better and required him to keep a unit back to protect his relatively weak troops. Fateweaver here should have been an ACE. She gets the Grimoire and then goes to town with Perfect Timing enabled Flicker Fire to just clear out all his troops - except the bikes, but that is a Turn 5 contest solution.

The rest of my army could have waited for him to approach - which would have been necessary since I could kill his troops more effectively than he could mine. Also, I had answers to the prince and the maulerfiend if I had actually chosen to use them in an effective manner. I really compounded the problem by not doubling back with the Seekers to take down the Maulerfiend and given them up the next turn to the Nob Bikers. With 2 Soul Grinders nearby, I had a credible threat to them - especially if the Warlord had stayed engaged with another unit.

Naturally, I did none of those things and instead took a crushing defeat and paying the price for trying to power through the opposing army.

Round 2 to come because if I made my opponents endure my pictures, I better post them up!

Just a quick comment. I find it surprising that your soul grinders have phlegm and are of nurgle. I wonder if Slaanesh with the torrent weapon was better suited with the rest of your army?

Nice battle report. Sorry it went so poorly for you.

Awesome battle report. I enjoyed your opponent's list. You have pretty much the only army his maulerfiend could do good against.

Great report, sorry to hear about the loss.

I really enjoyed this report and look forward to the rest.

herpguy wrote:
Awesome battle report. I enjoyed your opponent's list. You have pretty much the only army his maulerfiend could do good against.

Actually... My mauler fiend did well in 5/6 games kill hounds, battlewagons, demon princes, dread knights and greyknights.... Only died to bad terrain vs a very good eldar player who didn't let me hide it :(

Thanks for the write up man! Sorry we both didn't really understand the terrain the same way... I was under the impression that since it was less than 6 inches tall it was not impassable.... But that just means next year we need to drink a beer together and play the match up again playing the terrain as impassable!

 frgsinwntr wrote:

herpguy wrote:
Awesome battle report. I enjoyed your opponent's list. You have pretty much the only army his maulerfiend could do good against.

Actually... My mauler fiend did well in 5/6 games kill hounds, battlewagons, demon princes, dread knights and greyknights.... Only died to bad terrain vs a very good eldar player who didn't let me hide it :(

Thanks for the write up man! Sorry we both didn't really understand the terrain the same way... I was under the impression that since it was less than 6 inches tall it was not impassable.... But that just means next year we need to drink a beer together and play the match up again playing the terrain as impassable!

My experience with the Maulerfiend (in a mixed Chaos and Daemons list) is awesome and perfectly competative as well.

The latter comment displays the right spirit. Cool :-)

Cilithan

Naw wrote:

Just a quick comment. I find it surprising that your soul grinders have phlegm and are of nurgle. I wonder if Slaanesh with the torrent weapon was better suited with the rest of your army?

This is a great observation - I am going to come back around to it again after I went through the rest of the games. I found that the Nurgle grinders were too slow to move up effectively with the rest of the army and the Phlegm blast really never did that much damage - or set me up to do much damage by blowing up vehicles. Their skyfire option was also just a tease, and never managed to knock down a flyer.

frgsinwntr wrote:
Thanks for the write up man! Sorry we both didn't really understand the terrain the same way... I was under the impression that since it was less than 6 inches tall it was not impassable.... But that just means next year we need to drink a beer together and play the match up again playing the terrain as impassable!

You were right on this one, and that mistake really just compounded all the other mistakes I made in the deployment phase. I would definitely love to get another game though - maybe one not at 9 AM so I can avoid feeling bad for drinking before noon, it is fun getting to go head to head with people who really know their army and are strong generals. I really liked how different your army was too from what I have played before - and that made for a unique challenge.

Also, I had no idea that this was your Dakka id, it makes me feel less bad about getting crushed

You can view the game in its native form at: http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/11/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-2-of-6.html

If you missed my performance in the first round - and my final army list - you can still catch the write up here. After my first round - notice there are no spoilers until you click into the article - I was paired up against an Eldar player with a fairly strong Iyadan list. I am glad he actually had the Iyadan Yellow and Blue to make it work too.



As I am writing this too, I realized that we completely forgot Ancient Doom for the entire game. I am not sure if I assaulted any of his guys with the rule using Slaanesh Daemons, but it is one to remember.

Game 2
My opponent for this game was Nick Parrett. As I look at the results too I see that I think our game was scored incorrectly. Due to some confusion in the round starting, we got a bit of a late start, but made the best of it.

Mission/Deployment
Primary: Emperor's Will
Secondary: The Relic
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

My opponent's list for this game included:

HQ
Wraithknight - Warlord
The Avatar
Spirit Seer
Spirit Seer

Elites
-

Troops
6x Jetbikes
5x Wraithguard w/ D Scythes in Wave Serpent w/ Scatter Lasers, Holo Fields
5x Wraithguard w/ Wraithcannons in Wave Serpent w/ Scatter Lasers Holo Fields
10x Dire Avengers
10x Dire Avengers

Fast Attack
Crimson Hunter w/ Exarch

Heavy Support
Fire Prism w/ Holo Fields

Psychic Powers/Warlord Traits
Fateweaver: Perfect Timing/Fire Shielf :: Iron Arm/Invisibility
Herald of Khorne: Grimoire of True Names
Horrors: Flickering Fire

Wraithknight: 6+ FNP within 12" of Warlord
Spirit Seer: Renewer/Destructor, (Battle Focus to Wraithguard)
Spirit Seer: Renewer/Destructor, (Battle Focus to Wraithguard)

Deployment
I lost the roll to go first but my opponent opted to give me the second turn - which is what I wanted in the first place.



I took this before he changed his deployment slightly, by putting the Wraithknight in the center of the board.

I respond by using the central wall to block line of sight. My objective is dead center where my troops can walk onto it. I reserve the Horrors to Deep Strike and the Plaguebearers to walk on.



We have Night Fight for Turn 1, so Fateweaver is in the back corner far out of range of everything.

Turn 1
I decline to seize and Nick moves up very aggressively with his units. He is surprised to find out that the hounds each have 2 wounds.



Preliminary shooting knocks down a few hounds but fail to cause any major damage. He is aggressively positioned with his vehicles and I think I can wreck some of them in assault. Also, the cockpits on all his Wave Serpents look awesome.



Battle Focus moves some Dire Avengers backwards into the protective embrace of the Avatar and Wraightknight.

I move up aggressively, planning to knock over some vehicles and leave my Seekers nearby as a counter assault threat. The purple dogs get Invisibility, Fateweaver Grimoires herself - you can just see her wings below as she hides near a tree - the dice shows her Iron Arm, which made me brave enough to move her up. She will cast Iron Arm every turn.



The Serpent and Fire Prism is removed. I also manage to take out the other Serpent with a luck hit from a Phlegm Bombardment.

Turn 2
The Crimson Hunter declines to come in this turn, but that is okay because Battle Focus on his D-Scythes lets him take some shots at the Seekers. I lose eight of them, and they are sad to be gone but happy the Avatar has a 12" charge.



The Wraithknight is planning to have a tickle fight with the Hounds - he succeeds and smashes more of them than I would have liked. The Herald luckily survives.

The relic is far away still, but there is a lot of open space left here.



This is my turn but as you can see the Avatar made his charge into the Seekers on triple 6's. I then fail miserably to wound and lose some more to instability. My own poor placement of the Heartseeker meant she was sniped before I could use her to eat the first round of attacks by the Avatar.



Naturally the Daemonettes are going in to take down The Avatar. I throw out 50+ attacks at WS 5, but only do a pair of wounds to the Avatar.



Fateweaver fares slightly better or she would have if I had not totally forgotten to shoot her. This was a huge mistake as the Dire Avengers should have been dead this turn. Pictures are scarce this game due to how fast we had to play.

Turn 3/4
The Crimson Hunter comes in and shoots, but fails to do any meaningful damage. The Jetbikes hop in next to the Horrors that are on his Objective next to Fateweaver, The Wraithguard are on The Relic but had to run to get there - which means they cannot pick it up this turn.



I am still stuck in combat with The Avatar somehow - he also gets hit with double renewer to bump him up which just compounds the number of times I have whiffed.

Luckily, I have the far objective by Fateweaver - I cleared it with her and some Horrors while the Jetbikes did not have room to move onto it. The Plagues have walked onto my objective which is untouchable at this point and with Fate nearby and bearing Iron Arm and Invisibility there is no way to remove her effectively.

The rest of his units are smashing hounds to pieces bit by bit, but will be there for a few more turns.

Results
Primary: Win 1 - 0
Secondary: Draw - no one has The Relic
First Blood: 1
Slay the Warlord: 0
Linebreaker: 1

I redeem myself slightly with a Major Win taking 27 points from the round. I noticed just now that it was scored as 22 points on Torrent of Fire. We were very close to the deadline on rounds for turning in the sheets, so it must have been a simple oversight - but it reminds me that I need to get a smartphone to check these kinds of things.

Round 2 Thoughts
I took a win, but it was not due to any particularly good play on my part. I threw away the hounds again against the Wraithknight and the Wraithguard - I should have moved them out to assault the Dire Avengers instead. I also needed to play the grinders more aggressively to get near the relic and threaten the Wraithguard there. It was really luck that the game ended on Turn 4 with my opponents Jetbikes out of position and him unable to pickup The Relic.

Overall I regret that we were so cramped for time in this game, I am sure that my opponent left with a sour taste from it - especially upon learning that you cannot run on top of and pickup The Relic on the same turn. If you can - and I checked the rule in the game - then the game was scored correctly and there is no harm done.

After this round I am really not happy with the list I brought, it is not playing the way I thought it would and the Hounds have been almost useless in games. I wish I could swap it mid tournament, but I am stuck with the army I made. I am also a little disappointed I killed myself to get the army painted when it has performed so poorly. Wait, let me correct that - I have been such a poor general using it thus far.

calypso2 wrote:

You were right on this one, and that mistake really just compounded all the other mistakes I made in the deployment phase. I would definitely love to get another game though - maybe one not at 9 AM so I can avoid feeling bad for drinking before noon, it is fun getting to go head to head with people who really know their army and are strong generals. I really liked how different your army was too from what I have played before - and that made for a unique challenge.

Also, I had no idea that this was your Dakka id, it makes me feel less bad about getting crushed

well now.... i had no idea i was internet famous!

good report for game 2! you have a much better memory than I do for these sorts of things....

The complete game 3 is posted at http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/11/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-3-of-6.html

As a teaser here is the matchup for the game:

If you missed the action from the first two games then you can check out Game 1 and Game 2. For game 3 I was paired against a Slaanesh themed CSM army with Daemon allies run by Beth. I had the chance to play Beth in the team tournament locally back in the spring - so I had a pretty good idea what list she was bringing.



As it turns out, she made some modifications that made her list much stronger for the GT - which is to be expected!


Game 3
This is the halfway mark of the GT, although it seems like it has just begun at this point. I only had to move a few tables up and I got to play on another table that I was pretty familiar with - it had been created by Hyv3 and I have played on it four or five times at our local tournaments. Upon reflection, it is a fairly significant advantage to get a chance to play on your home turf when it comes to a GT.

Mission/Deployment
Primary: Big Guns Never Tire
Secondary: The Scouring
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Beth brought the following CSM w/ Daemons allies for this game.



HQ
CSM Lord on a Bike w/ Mark of Slaanesh, Power Weapon
Herald of Slaanesh on Seeker Mount w/ Greater Gift

Elites
-

Troops
10x Noise Marines w/ Sonic Weapons, Blast Master, Icon of Excess
10x Noise Marines w/ Sonic Weapons, Blast Master, Icon of Excess
10x Noise Marines w/ Sonic Weapons, Doom Siren, Icon of Excess in Rhino
16x Daemonettes
10x Daemonettes

Fast Attack
Heldrake w/ Bale Flamer
Heldrake w/ Bale Flamer
10x Seekers of Slaanesh

Heavy Support
Obliterator w/ Mark of Nurgle
Obliterator w/ Mark of Nurgle

Psychic Powers/Warlord Traits
Fateweaver: Prescience/Fiery Form :: Hemorrhage/Terrify (I should have swapped Fiery Form and Hemorrhage for the Primaris)
Herald of Khorne - Grimoire of True Names

CSM Lord: Hatred for his unit

Deployment
We place the Scouring and Big Guns Objectives and they end up spread across the board. I push my Scouring objectives forward knowing that my Fast Attack options are also my mechanism to dislodge Beth's scoring units



Beth deploys strong centrally and takes advantage of cover to present a strong right flank.



Although cover is almost meaningless in this game - those Noise Marines simply ignore it for most of their shooting. However, I want to stay away from at least one of those Noise Marine units.



The Hounds scout forward and attempt to get a Turn 1 charge off against the Noise Marines in the center - and maybe the Seekers if they are in range. I make a rules blunder here and forget the Seekers can charge me if they like - Beth is great about my error and we work it out.

I decline to Seize and we are off to the Races...

http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/11/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-3-of-6.html

This will be the last game of Day 1 for the GT. I had the chance to play on the board that won the players vote for best board - this thing lights up and really looks great. On top of that I had a chance to play against the army that had the highest, or one of the highest painting scores.

(Also available at The Mandulian Chapel)



It is hard to tell here, but Francois's army is beautiful and chock full of cool conversions and Kit Bashes.


Game 3

Francois though was not content to simply have a beautiful army, he had a strong list with a ton of firepower, objective grabbing potential and a killer assault unit. His army becomes even more intimidating when considering the mission set:

Mission/Deployment:
Primary: Scouring
Secondary: The Relic
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

The reason this mission will be particularly difficult is the nearly indestructible scoring unit he has to pickup the Relic. Here is his Necrons/GK army list list:

HQ
Overlord - no upgrades
Draigo

Elites
-

Troops
5x Warriors in Night Scythe
5x Warriors in Night Scythe
5x Warriors in Night Scythe
10x Paladins w/ Apothecary, Brotherhood Banner, 4x Psycannons, 3x Daemon Hammers, 2x Halbreds
1x Paladin w/ Daemon Hammer

Fast Attack
-

Heavy Support
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge

Even better than bringing a cool army and playing on a cool board - Francois insisted on buying a pitcher of beer for us to share. In case anyone misses it later on, this was my favorite game of the tournament and if I could have ranked Francois twice for best opponent I would have.

Psychic Powers/Warlord Traits
Fateweaver: Perfect Timing/Fire Breath :: Life Leech/Hallucination
Herald of Khorne: Grimoire of True Names

Necron Overlord: Outflankers get Acute Senses (i.e. useless)

Deployment
Francois rolls for Grand Strategy and gets to give 3 of his units Scout. Luckily he only has 2 units, so the Paladins grab Scout and deploy in a broad front across the board. The Psycannons are centrally placed, which makes avoiding them difficult. The Annihilation Barges anchor the other flank, I think they are here to give them room to backup and avoid my Hounds. In reserve are 1 Paladin and the 3 Night Scythes.



I really want to reserve my whole army, but unfortunately I need to deploy at least half. I drop down both Grinders - which are a safe distance away and have 2+ cover saves and the Grimoire hound unit. Fateweaver is facing the back of the board because she is just within 24" if Francois makes it to the Relic.



In reserve are the Daemonettes, Horrors, Seekers, Hounds, and Plaguebearers. Both the Hounds and the Seekers are set to Outflank.

We roll off for scout moves - this one is huge because I want to push forward my hounds to take away his 6" scout within grabbing distance of The Relic to force him to wait a turn to get it. Instead he wins and I have to Scout second. This means I move everything laterally to avoid the psycannons and to attempt to get in range of his Barges.

Turn 1
Unless otherwise noted, the Warp Storm did not play an appreciable role in this game.

There is nothing I can do to prevent Francois from seizing The Relic, so he gets a 6" difficult terrain move and picks it up. The Paladins now have possession of it, which I really wanted to prevent for at least a little while.



Otherwise Francois's shooting is unremarkable - only a single psycannon is in range of anything and it fails to hurt Fateweaver. I take some shots from the Annihilation Barges, but only lose 1 or 2 puppies.

Fateweaver casts Hallucination on the Paladins - but they succeed in Denying it. I was hoping to get some Daemon Hammers to blow up Paladins for me, or to freeze the unit in place for a turn. The puppies get the Grimorie and Fateweaver flies off the board.

This picture was taken just at the start of Francois's turn, but shows my position after run moves with the hounds. I do manage to knock the Shields off one Annihilation Barge, which takes it down to AV 11.



Turn 2
The paladins shuffle around but I really denied them any shooting and they can only move 6" a turn. A wall of Tesla comes in and takes aim at the Hounds as Francois snags all of his reinforcements, including his Soladin. The Soladin drops down as bait near one of my objectives, but I have no plan to go visit him yet.

Overall I lose 8 Hounds to shooting - which is pretty good for the amount of firepower that came in.



If you were wondering what the Paladins were doing, here is them rocking out, Draigo is in front to tank wounds as necessary.



I get in 1 unit of Seekers, but that is it. I am glad everything is staying off - since it all scores in this mission for the Scouring. The Seekers hide behind the Tau building and try to be unobtrusive. Fateweaver comes in and gets ready to take aim at one of the Night Scythes. I then make a huge, game breaking mistake. I forget to Grimoire Fateweaver like I had planned, and instead do nothing.



My shooting wrecks one barge for First Blood - it had also immobilized itself on terrain and I only managed to strip a single Hull point with the Grinders. Another grinder Stuns one of the flying Croissants. I charge the second barge and take it down with the Flesh Hounds.

Turn 3
One Night Scythe flys off the board, while the other two take aim. The first manages only two wounds on Fateweaver. The second stunned Night Scythe rolls up four hits. We then realize it was stunned and it had rolled only one 6. Francois rerolls and gets a 6 - 6 - 6 - 6. Predictably Fateweaver goes down to the shots! Maybe stunning the Night Scythe was a bad idea.



I respond by taking some ineffective shots with the Grinders at the Night Scythes and the Flesh Hounds move into area terrain as close to the board edge as possible - trying to escape the Paladins. My reserves remain good and I only get the second hound unit, which I run up my board edge.

Turn 4/5
Pictures get a little sparse here as the game was heating up - especially after the loss of Fateweaver - who was my Ace against the Night Scythes. The Scythe reappears and drops off its cargo - doing so on Turn 5 shown here. My Horrors had arrived on Turn 4.



The small Hounds unit remaining in the woods had survived the Paladins full shooting attacks by going to ground. I made 16 of 18 3+ saves on the unit to keep it there and require the Paladins to do something about it.

My other hounds came in along the board edge and stayed out of range of the paladins.



The first Night Scythe dropped off the Overlord and the Warriors within 3" of the objective on a battlement. I would throw down 5 wounds on the unit due to the Warp Storm (Khornes Wrath) and removed the Overlord. Francois let me know I had broken his toy (Overlord) and it was up to me to try to fix it. I fail to do so with a 2, and the Overlord stays down.

The Grinder moves in to finish off the Warriors, while the plagues work their way toward the far objective.



The warriors here are in a rough spot - the Seekers are making a break for it with the hounds. I want to get the Seekers into combat with both the Warriors and his Paladin - and then try to break one or both units.

My Daemonettes and Horrors clean up the Warriors on the left hand objectives. The Paladins are actually forced to charge the Flesh Hounds - they survive another fusillade of shooting - to remove them from the objective.



It is not a pretty sight for the Paladin and the Warriors - both are removed in assault and I am claiming 3 of my Scouring objectives plus 2 of Francois's.



Results
Primary: 11 - 1 Victory
Secondary: 0 - 3 Loss
First Blood: 1
Slay the Warlord: 1
Linebreaker: 1

I finish up the day with a really fun, and really challenging game against Francois. This was really an ideal warhammer game - it was interesting, intense and had an awesome opponent army/player/board to play on. Overall Torrent of Fire has me at at least 40th place - based on the fact Round 5 would be on table 20.

Round 4 Thoughts
I think when I look back at 6th edition and the new Daemons, I am going to think of this game as a turning point. I really could not power through the army that Francois brought - the Paladins would have murdered anything I threw at them. Even an assault with all 3 of my fast units probably would have ended with a lost combat for me after Force Weapons took their toll on my Flesh Hounds.

Instead, I played the mission that I could win - Scouring - and recognized that The Relic was probably out of reach this game. It is tough to concede one of the missions so early - my plan had been to attempt to get in with Fate on Turn 5 and get a Precision Strike Smash onto the Relic Bearer but I blew that with my mistake on Turn 2. I was also lucky that after I lost Fate, the Warp Storm was kind to me for those turns.

Game 5 has me paired against a 6 Venom Dark Eldar army, all bearing maxed out Blasters (I know 6 Venoms is technically against the composition rubric, but an exception was granted in this case.)

To round out the tournament I wrote up game 5 and 6 on my The Manduiian Chapel

Game 5 against DE
http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/12/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-5-of-6.html

Game 6 against Tau/SM (Justin Cook for those interested!)
http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2013/12/calypso2ts-da-boyz-gt-6-of-6.html

Well done and very impressive! Congratulations on placing in the top ten.

Congrats. That is quite an achievement with some of the mistakes you made in your games and with an army build that isn't quite optimized.

So how did frgsinwntr and Justin ended up doing at DaBoyz?

I didn't do all that hot, finished 3-3 and middle of the pack overall. I lost a minor to white scars played by Brandon Vallee after failing 2 consecutive ld10 pinning checks on my deathstar, among some other anti-clutch rolling. I then lost games 5 and 6 to deamons played by Bill Kim and Calypso respectively. The list I took wasnt exceptionally strong vs deamons since grav is meh vs them. Calypso played this game really well and I forgot that I could line off my left board edge with my 20 outflanking kroot to keep the seekers and hounds from outflanking there.

Those are some strong players you played against, Justin. Both Brandon and Bill were on my team at the ATC. Along with Mike Mutscheller and Kevin Brown (aka dakka's very own Janthkin), we took 1st at the ATC 2013.

 jy2 wrote:
Those are some strong players you played against, Justin. Both Brandon and Bill were on my team at the ATC. Along with Mike Mutscheller and Kevin Brown (aka dakka's very own Janthkin), we took 1st at the ATC 2013.

Yeah me and Brandon are long time friends and we talk almost every day between list development, banter etc. I also played Mike at adepticon this year. No easy games, unless the dice get stupid.

thanatos67 wrote:I I then lost games 5 and 6 to deamons played by Bill Kim and Calypso respectively. The list I took wasnt exceptionally strong vs deamons since grav is meh vs them. Calypso played this game really well and I forgot that I could line off my left board edge with my 20 outflanking kroot to keep the seekers and hounds from outflanking there.

I was pleasantly surprised you did not block off the board edge - it would have definitely caused some problems getting to the Emperor's Will objective for me. Overall I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned tough matchups against Daemons. It is unfortunate that you ended up drawing two of them in the last two rounds - I think you army had the tools to blow most other armies right off the board.

jy2 wrote:Congrats. That is quite an achievement with some of the mistakes you made in your games and with an army build that isn't quite optimized.

So how did frgsinwntr and Justin ended up doing at DaBoyz?

The results for Da Boyz are up at Torrent of Fire http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/DaBoyz-GT/3/leaderboard I am not sure on Frgs real name, but if you know it you can find him.

Remember the composition restrictions did prevent some of the normal 'optimizations' for the armies at Da Boyz. I ditched the grinders at a local tournament in favor of more bodies last week and I really liked the results. Out of principle I refuse to play a FMC or Screamerstar list - I really do not enjoy playing them and noone I have played against enjoyed playing against them.

Dozer Blades wrote:Well done and very impressive! Congratulations on placing in the top ten.

Thanks, it was more than I expected after the first few rounds. It really emphasizes that unlike a tournament at your LGS, you really need to come in having played at least 3 or 4 games with your GT army.

 calypso2ts wrote:

thanatos67 wrote:I I then lost games 5 and 6 to deamons played by Bill Kim and Calypso respectively. The list I took wasnt exceptionally strong vs deamons since grav is meh vs them. Calypso played this game really well and I forgot that I could line off my left board edge with my 20 outflanking kroot to keep the seekers and hounds from outflanking there.

I was pleasantly surprised you did not block off the board edge - it would have definitely caused some problems getting to the Emperor's Will objective for me. Overall I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned tough matchups against Daemons. It is unfortunate that you ended up drawing two of them in the last two rounds - I think you army had the tools to blow most other armies right off the board.

.

Yeah I was really hoping to play seer council, I feel like my list was a fairly hard counter to it. For anyone interested the lynchpin unit was 5 grav centurions with missile launchers and an omniscope, I bike chapter master with eternal shield and pfist, a buff commander and shadowsun. So the whole thing infiltrates with stealth and shrouded and all the normal tau buffy shenanigans. I know its legal for tournaments using the IGTC faq and not legal in Nova faq tournaments due to the difference in ruling between IC's being able to join and confer infiltrate to units.