Monday, 16 May 2011

Rapid Strike 2011 - Review

I attended Spiky clubs 1 day, 40K tournament Rapid strike 2011 on Sunday and came a, what I consider, respectable 20th out of 44. The day consisted of three games at 1500 points. I achieved 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw.


Game 1 - Jen Chapman – IG
Jen had – Griffin, punisher, demolisher, valkery with command squad, outflanking stormtroopers, outflanking ‘blob’ squad with al harim
Capture and control – dawn of war
Result – Draw, I achieved all 3 bonus points. (kill enemy HQ, be nearest centre, have a scoring unit in enemy deployment zone)
Highlights – at one point in the game my dreadknight killed 32 imperial guardsmen, which had outflanked, in 1 go.


Game 2 – Leo Midwinter – Dark Eldar
Leo had lance and poison spam
Sieze ground (4 objectives) – Spearhead
Almost got tabled – 2 bonus points
Highlight – Leo stole initiative. I couldn’t pen armour, and when I did, I couldn’t damage vehicles. My dreadknight died for the first time. 1st time in 7 games, and people said he’d die easily!


Game 3 - Andrew Bampton – Ork Warbikes
Adam had – 2 big nob biker squads, each led by warboss
Annihilation – pitched battle
Big win
Highlights – my first shot from the assassin killed a painboy, he killed assassin and dreadnought then turbo boosted around the table. I ran after him and shot lots. He conceded mid turn 7

All in all a good tournament and a fun day.

Sunday, 15 May 2011

It's been awhile

It’s been a while since I posted so this might be a big one (post that is!)
I’ve decided that I’m going to attend a local 1 day tournament, which happens to be this Sunday! I was thinking I take my marine to this as I wouldn’t have much time to play test my grey Knight and also I didn’t really want to paint a whole army in a month! When I got my hands on the new ‘dex and models though I changed my mind.

So far I’ve managed to play 5 ‘test’ games and even though my win/ loss record isn’t that good they’ve all taught me something.

Game 1 – Ben’s Imperial Guard – Big Loss
Ben’s army wasn’t the standard leafblower but did have griffon and contain a couple of leman tanks.
I had only just got my ‘official’ copy of the codex and none of the new models yet. As such I was using a list I’d quickly thrown together:
Grand master
Brotherhood champion
10 purifiers
10 terminators
5 terminators
Dreadnought – 2x TL autocannon, with psybolts (psyfleman)
Ben stole the initiative, lemen russ shot killed all 10 purifiers. Terminators made their way across the battle field and killed a couple of units.
What I learnt – Termintors are beast in close combat, I need stuff to take down big tanks, GM’s not that good.

Game 2 – Paul’s Chaos Deamons – Loss
Paul’s army was a mix of daemons including a soulgrinder
As I had now read the codex, and got my new models, I started tailoring my list, mainly for anti daemon:
Libby
Big squad of terminators
2x small strike squad in razor back
5 purifiers
Dreadknight
Psyfleman
Paul got, and took, first turn so I couldn’t warp quake him. I decided to stand back and shoot. Paul came towards me and killed most of my men. At one point my purifiers cast cleansing flame and suffered a perils of the warp!
What I learnt – Don’t stand back and shoot, GK’s kill daemons in CC. Libby is GREAT (especially sanctuary power), dreadknight is pretty good.

Game 3 – Bert’s ‘nids – Big Loss
Bert is one of, if not the, best gamers at the club.
Bert’s army – mix of big guys and little guys. Stuff of not was doom of malentai, deathleeper, tervigon, and quite a few spores.
My army was the same as game 2.
I won, and took first turn, got warp quake off which forced Bert to drop his spore away from me. Deathleeper at a lot of shots, and survived, than ate quite a few terminators. I force weaponed a few big dudes, basically threw the dreadknight away, my dreadnought instant killed doom, the rest of the guys swamed over me.
What I learnt – purifiers aren’t that good, got killed too easily!  Dreadknights personal teleporter isn’t that good.

Game 4 – Simon’s Ultramarines – Big win
Simon run a fairly standard SM list – assault terminators and captain in land raider, vidicator, couple of dreadnoughts.
My list –
Libby
Big squad of terminators
2x small strike squad in razor back
Vindicare assassin
Dreadknight
Psyfleman
I’d decided to drop the purifiers for a vindicare assassin, I also swapped around some wargear.
Everything went to plan, terminators and dreadknight DS on time, turn 2, and on target, tanks to servo skully. Although in took the assassin several turns to kill the vidicator, he did hold it up all game, also managed to blow the turret off a predator. The dreadknight was an absolute handful for Simon. With a heavy incinerator and heavy psycannon the tactical squads were no problem, then finished off the predator with his sword.
What I learnt – sever skulls are great for pin point teleports, dreadknight is even better than I thought, vincare is good, can be excellent (I got a penetration of 29 for 1 shot!)

Game 5 – John’s Chaos Space Marines – Loss (almost draw)
John’s another big player at the club, he’s very knowledgeable, more than happy to share this knowledge which makes games ‘v’ him very educational.
Johns army – Kahn and daemon prince leading 2x 10 man CSM squads (1 in rhino), 9 Tzeench terminators, 2x oblitirators
My army – As game 4
Daemon prince ran towards me killed stuff then died, CSM squad died when my dreadknight showed up (deep struck turn 4), terminator arrived (deepstruck turn3) killed an obliterator then died to mass plasma from the terminators. Instant killed Kahn with dreadnought
What I learnt – DS’ing is not reliable, doesn’t turn up when you want, reinforced that servo skulls are needed for accurate teleport, reinforced how good the dreadknight is.

Summery
Librarian is a must for his force multiplying powers.
Assassin is most for anti vehicle.
Dreadknight is a must if you want your opponent dead.
Psyfleman is a must for light vehicle killing and special character instant killing.
Don’t stand back and shoot.
Think A LOT before deciding to DS, terminator and dreadknight need to be killing stuff not sitting off board.