Today I took the sisters and guard (paradiso spores, see
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/591677.page) to a tournament in mighty Dunfermline, run by Dunfermline Wargamers & Roleplaying Fellowship (DWARF).
I’d never been to this one before and haven’t played a great deal of 7th so was a very cheery chappy as I made my way along the side of the forth on a sunny autumn morning. But never mind that, what about the
40k?!
As anyone who has read my previous batreps (
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/586769.page) knows, I don't really 'do' spamming, as its terribly boring.
My list:
Celestine
2 units of 10 sisters in rhinos
exorcist
2 penitent engines
conclave with priest
10 repentia
10 seraphim
allies: 10 vets with plasma, command squad, 3 sentinels with
ACs
The tourney was small
40k (5 tables) tacked on to a much bigger warhammer
FB event (30 tables). I also arrived pretty late so it was time to grab a cup of tea and meet my first opponent:
Game 1
mission: crusade
deployment: vanguard strike
Andrew – had a nice Chaos list that went something like this:
Kharn & 5 Zerkers in a land raider
5 bikes
2x6 chaos marine squads
2 spawn
3 termies
Hellchicken
2 oblits
Initial thoughts: super elite army, I tend to do well against them. Hellchicken was a worry but I thought with enough
AC and exorcist shots I could maybe take it down.
Deployment.. really captures the contrast in numbers between the 2 forces!
Early doors
Andrew seized and his whole army rolled forward. Bikes and spawn on the left flank, raider through the centre.
Bikes swung round to threaten the conclave:
The chaos forces were unlucky with their early shooting, however the oblits and
LR did blow up both penitent engines.. first blood to Andrew. However the bikes flanking move did give me the opportunity for a T1 assault and the conclave gobbled up the bikes in short order, though the priest died in a challenge.
Mid game
Hellchicken showed up annoyingly early, and set about vector striking and breathing on the sisters. I attempted to bring it down with small arms, which was a terribly inefficient use of resources!
However the conclave made short work of the spawn as it charged into melee:
Kharn and his boys got out and annihilated the repentia, and Celestine too.
Andrew was sitting comfortably on an objective:
End Game
Final turn was interesting, and I guess this happens a lot in tourney play: Due to me arriving late we were running out of time and decided to only play to turn 4. So I went for some objective grabs.
Sisters went to contest the marine objective:
Rhino apparently had objective secured owing to it being dedicated to a troop unit.. seems barmy but anyway.. contest away! You can also see here a sisters objective.
Now I was sitting on a win at end turn 4. There were 10 mins til the gong, and Andrew felt a little aggrieved at the game ending, so we played a short turn 5. You can imagine how that went for me.. lots of my units getting assaulted off objectives. In honestly, there was a bit of calculation involved in my decision to grant a turn 5: there was a player with a wraithknight army who I had a good chance of facing had I won. I knew I stood no chance against his list and didn’t want a terribly boring game to be one of my 3, so in the end I was a little devious.
Result: a fairly comfortable win for Chaos.
Final thoughts on game 1:
Andrew was thoroughly decent and gave me a really good game. I struggled with the hellchicken and in retrospect ought to have ignored it. My one meltabomb seraphim only highlighted my lists inability to deal with AV14. But my main problem was Kharn consolidating out of combat in my
CC phase, allowing him to run amok. I had enough firepower to take him down, but the bugger would not come out of
CC when he was supposed to! Darn him!
++++
Game 2
mission: purge the alien
deployment: dawn of war
Barry – had brought an interesting Legion of the damned primary with a small eldar contingent
LotD Legion sarge
HQ (buffs
FNP rolls, gives unit armourbane)
4
LotD units (10man) – 2x
MM&melta, 2x Hvy flamer&flamer
Allies: Farseer on jetbike, 3 jetbikes, wraithknight with double suncannon
Initial thoughts: um.. interesting list. Er, how does it work?!
Early doors
I made a beeline for Barrys small allied contingent, that held the board until the
LotD turned up.
I actually got quite lucky and whittled the big guy down to 3 wounds before
LotD started appearing..
The guys with armourbane bolters were particularly horrific. Of course there is always a small chance of two meltas missing, but not 8 rapid firing armourbane bolters.. nasty!
The repentia got annihilated by bolter fire:
I somehow managed to avoid the exorcist blowing up, by doing this:
Mid game:
Savvy readers will have already noticed the massive kill point discrepancy between me my my opponents list. As soon as he popped a couple of rhinos it was apparent that I had to table him for a win.
A particularly nasty unit to shift was the
LotD Legion sarge
HQ, buffed to 2+
FNP by the time I got my engines in:
The coolest thing that happened in this game was in the combat above, the conclave did 34 wounds which all bounced off the 3++ 2+
FNP of the
LotD. Damn them!
End game
I think this shot sums the game up nicely, Barrys pincer move working to perfection
And Celestine, normally the bane of marines everywhere, was of course rather useless against the 3++ of
LotD:
Result: An easy win for the Legion!
Final thoughts on game 2: Mixed feelings. Winning a killpoint game against this list was always going to be difficult, as he had 7 to give and I had about double this. I could have anticipated the deep strikes better and had my forces bunched ready for a counter attack to wipe a unit at a time rather than getting stretched as I did. That said, I really enjoyed getting stuck in to these guys and had some fun close combat rounds.
++++
Game 3
mission: the relic
deployment: hammer and anvil
Mark – had brought a highly elite
GK force
Termie
HQ
3 units termies
Stormraven
2 Dreadknights
Init thoughts: tend to do well against elite armies (didn’t you say that in game 1?!)
Early doors
Mark bravely ploked down both Wraithknights in
los:
The
AC sentinels managed to put 2 wounds on one of them.
Mid game
Wrathknights shifted into my lines, as 2 termie units
DS in:
I took out the wounded WK with exorcist missiles, and the other one in
CC (it whiffed badly against the repentia, and the penitent engines tore it limb by limb!).
Here Mark had some frankly horrific luck. I sent the seraphim in against one
DS termie unit, decimated the unit with emperors deliverance, then tried a chancy assault:
Although the termies routed the seraphim, the damage had been done and they were easily finished off by the exorcist by turn 4.
On the other flank Marks luck was much worse. The regular sisters assaulted the termies and somehow managed to kill them all in
CC..
Some of the many 1’s rolled by Mark in this game:
With no models on the table, the remaining termies and 250 points worth of stormraven didn’t get the chance to enter play.
Result: victory for the sisters!
Game 3 thoughts: A good matchup for me, the stormraven could have changed everything though.
++++
General thoughts on the tourney:
Great tourney, hopefully will be back for the next one which I think is summer 2015. Also – Dunfermline is beautiful – who knew?!
