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Adepticon has come and gone, and it's back to the monthly AWC tournament series, now entering our second season.

Turnout was decent for a Sunday, with 30 players. Our fearless leader got transfered to Memphis, and so we didn't have new missions for the event, we just used the Adepticon championship missions, only at 1500 points, rather than 1850.

I took a modified version of my Adepticon championship army. The 350 lost points ended up being a dreadnought, a warboss, a buggy, and a couple of nobs and their gear. Losing scoring status on the nobs was less than optimal, but cuts must be made where they must be made. Adding a warboss would cost me three nobs, and I think that's a lot of hitting power to lose.


So, my list was:

HQ: Mek w/ ubiquitous Kustom Force Field, and Cybork Body.
Elite: 10 Lootas
Elite: 8 Cybork Nobs, 3 plain, 1 dok, 1 w/ kombi-skorcha, 1 w/ powerklaw & waagh banner, 1 w/ powerklaw & bosspole, 1 w/ powerklaw
Transport: Battlewagon, red paint, armour plates, deff-rolla, boarding plank, 2 big shootas
Troops: 20 Shoota boyz, PK Nob w/ Bosspole, 2 Big Shootas
Troops: 20 Slugga Boyz, PK Nob w/ Bosspole
Troops: 10 Grots, Slaver
Heavy: Battlewagon, 2 big shootas, deff rolla, boarding plank
Heavy: Battlewagon, 2 big shootas, deff rolla, boarding plank
Heavy: Battlewagon, 2 big shootas, killkannon, reinforced ram




Round One
Essentially a kill-point mission w/ pitched battle deployment.

I face Kareem's Abbadon list;

HQ: Abaddon
HQ: Lash Sorcerer
HQ: Greater Daemon
Elite: 3 terminators, 2 combi-meltas, chainfist, heavy flamer
Elite: 3 terminators, 2 combi-meltas, chainfist, heavy flamer
Troops: 7 plague marines, PF, 2 meltaguns
Troops: 5 Noise Marines, blastmaster & champion
Troops: 5 Lesser Daemons
Heavy: Land Raider



He deploys, I don't, opting to come in from reserve and keep his noise marines mostly out of the fight by refusing that flank. We kind of stare at each other for a few turns, trying to establish better position. I end up killing his two terminator units with some shoota-boy action. And then it is on...



Abbadon's Land Raider delivers him and the plague marines into the fight. They melta the shoota-boyz wagon. I end up watching my slugga wagon destroy itself as it rams the land raider and Kareem rolls '6' '6' to glance and then destroy it. I charge the shoota boyz who survived the explosion, and my nobs into abaddon and the plague marines. Abaddon goes nuts, kills 5 boyz (he's not fighting the nobs yet). The nobs and boyz put a wound on abbadon and kill all the plaguers, combat ends up tied. Next round, Abbadon kills 5 nobs, my powerklaws fail to finish him off, and I lose combat by enough to kill the rest of the nobs and shoota boyz. At this point, I've got 3 KP (termis, termies, plaguers), he's got 4 (nobs, shootas, 2x battlewagons). Fortunately, my loota wagon finally shows up on turn 5, and kills his rhino to make it even at 4-4, and we tie on all the mission objectives.


Round Two

Against Marcus's Space Marines.

HQ: Librarian w/ Null Zone & Vortex of Doom
Elite: Terminator assault squad (TH/SS), in Land Raider w/ Multimelta
Troop: 5 sniper scouts
Troop: 5 sniper scouts
Heavy: Land Raider Redeemer w/ Multimelta
Heavy: Land Raider Redeemer w/ Multimelta
Heavy: Land Raider w/ Multimelta



So, here we have 4 battlewagons against 4 land raiders. But I've got better guys in the transports, if I can get there. The mission is to have any unit wholly within a terrain piece to control it. It's Dawn of War, so we both roll on turn one. My forcefield protects me from shooting in round one, but I start losing wagons shortly after. For the second game in a roll, I lose a wagon to a '6' '6' roll when I ram a land raider, but this time, I take it down with me.



After a few turns, I've got guys in a few terrain pieces, and he's backing up to avoid my assaults. It pretty much ends that way. He killed a couple hundred points more of my stuff, but I've got the primary objective, with five terrain elements held, including the grots, doing what they do best, cowering a long way from the action.




Game Three

Against Phil's Mechdar:

HQ: Eldrad
HQ: Farseer w/ Guide
Elites: 7 Fire Dragons, Flamer Exarch, Starcannon Wave Serpent
Troop: 10 Guardians, shuriken cannon, Brightlance Wave Serpent
Troop: 10 Guardians, shuriken cannon, Brightlance Wave Serpent
Heavy: Fire Prism
Heavy: Fire Prism
Heavy: Fire Prism



This is the mission with the three objectives, one of which is worth more points than the other two. I win the roll to place them, but defer to Phil, who makes a triangle. I pick the one furthest from the others as the important one. It's a spearhead deployment, Phil's going first and deploys a little back from the table center. I put my three deff rolla wagons out front, ready to charge out. Turn one is largely uneventful, except my lootas down one of the guardian's waveserpents, leaving them in the open.

This game is pretty much decided on turn two. Phil essentially goes "all in", as his pushes all of his pieces to the middle of the table, gets all of his infantry out of their tanks, and opens up. First, Eldrad hits my two lead wagons with the 'spin you around' power, getting their rear armour facing his guns. But, his luck runs out there, as his shots either miss, fail to penetrate my armour, or are discarded by my forcefield. I might have lost a big shoota or two somewhere, but it's really over now, all his guys are out in the open, and in charge range. I use my rollas because I can, and end up killing a serpent with them*. My charges kill all his infantry, and he's left with 3 prisms and a serpent, with one of the prisms shaken.

Without the firepower, or scoring units, he's forced to fight while moving away, and I am able to get my guys where they need. In the last turn, he moves his last two skimmers out to contest two objectives, but they don't last, and I get the massacre.


* We played it, lacking any sort of FAQ, that if he dodged the Ram, the deff rolla didn't activate, in case anyone was wondering. But his dodge rolls came up '2's a few times as well.

Conclusion

I learned a couple of things. 1) Don't ram land raiders if they're over eight inches away. 2) No, I mean it, don't ram land raiders if they're over eight inches away. 3) Abaddon doesn't like orks. (We don't like him either). 4) It's unwise for Eldrad to get out of his spaceship within charging range of a bunch of orks who are sick of seeing his ugly panzee face on every craftworld they plunder.

I ended up scoring 4th place (both battle and overall), and win another Best Appearance plaque to cover the cracks in my basement walls (got a guy coming out Wednesday to look at my foundation's issues, wish me luck, cause this is going to be expensive...)

Next month is also going to be 1500 points, and I'll take any suggestions for what to bring next.

Thanks for the reports - very clear and concise.

The photography is very good too (although I would really like to see some close ups of your excellent Orks)

And a 4 LR list - yikes!

I've never seen such bad luck with Deff Rollas; ugly. Then again, I've never seen 4 Land Raiders in a 1500 point army.

Great pics of the armies and as usual, an interesting read.

How much time do you all allot for 1500 games?

Redbeard wrote:
I learned a couple of things. 1) Don't ram land raiders if they're over eight inches away. 2) No, I mean it, don't ram land raiders if they're over eight inches away.

Addition: Or LRBTs, had the exact same thing happen to me yesterday in an event.

I like your concise reports, and cool armies all around.

Wow. A Lash list, (albit only one lash), a 4 Raider List (at 1500pts...) and an all mech eldrad list with a second farseer... Is it just me or is your meta really extremely competitive?

In our local, you will see a few lists like these but it would be unlikely to run into 3 such extreme lists in a row....( the chaos one might not have been too bad...)

For 1500 games, I think we were playing in 1:30 yesterday.

Never had a problem finishing a game, so I guess that was enough time.

As for the meta, people bring what they like. People like their special characters, and while some of these armies seem really tough, you'll note that all three of the people I played against were really light on scoring units. The most scoring models I played against was 20, and that was all T3/5+ models.

Russell - None of those lists have won. A Dark Eldar Raider spam list keeps winning and you would think someone would figure that out and lay off the expensive low model count army for a day, but no.

Alex bring something with at least 4 units of troops with heavy weapons (min 10-man sized). The rest with whatever and wait for the DE matchup.

Alex - Way to go pulling out the victories. I'll try and make it tournament (date please), it must be years since you and I have played.

Darth - I played Tony's spam army with the same army Marcus was play. Land Raiders chew up Raider very VERY fast. We did neutralize each other, but that was more about the mission than anything. But I do agree with you about people not learning about how those 'top' armies keep winning; guess you'll have to learn them. If you can't, then maybe a few vets will have to make their way out of retirement...

3ft 2, no disrespect, you’re currently Johnny Walker gold right now, just keep out for the blue…

-Tyler

Eh I think its a mistake to gear to fight the Dark Eldar list since if you don't get luck of the draw first round and can't fight whomever you draw... then whats the point of the geared army??

Bring an army well rounded to deal with all opponents (or enough) and hopefully your generalship will win you the day (and not 5th).

I agree not to build an army just to fight the DE but an army that deals with the DE well also deals with Mech IG, and the Razor spam out there. Luckily these armies are not the norm at the AWC series, but they are making their way in, and more and more marine lists these days look like dakka preds, speeders, small squads of marines and lots of mech. A list that deals with these types of armies will usually fair well at the tournament.