First let me say I had a fantastic day on Sunday, lots of cool people and very cool games....
6th Edition is beginning to bed itself in......
Made a few changes to the list prior to registration, I dropped out the two flamers in favour of an autocannon in the IG mini-blob squad......the effect of this I'll cover later.
Also at the end of my review of the Tournament I'll post some info on how the list performed ....(something you don't often see often enough imo)....
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the day but if I come across any I'll post them up....
First congratulations to Mike who won the Tournament with his Mephiston pure BA list; Mephiston single handed, slayed an Ork special character to score huge boost to his tournament points in Game 1, then success in Games 2&3 saw Mike the days champion overall, so well done.
As for my own personal review:
Game 1. Daemons (no allies).....Dave (Mike's Bro)
Oh boy and using fresh White Dwarf rules for flamers too.....I have a real mixed record against daemons and generally I've found it can be as simple as which half of their army comes down first turn........in this case Dave got his chosen half so it didn't look promising, Dave won the deployment roll and elected me to go first.....
Mission: Capture 2 randomly determined objectives............from 5 objectives were set up on the board by the Guardians of Tyr (GoT) tournament organisers.
I felt reasonably confident with this mission, with most of my army beginning the game in reserve I wouldn't be vulnerable to awful Breath of Chaos templates........(a nice nerf for zooming flyers to be able to permanently avoid it too!)
First Turn...
I began the game by positioning my Land Raider on my left flank and with my 21 man mini blob squad spread out to the max in a three deep matrix trying hard to protect the Commissar as best as possible, with nothing to shoot at it was an easy turn, one of my objectives was in my deployment the other in my opponents..........the Daemons came down in the safe open ground right in the middle of the board......Lord of Change deep strike mishapped onto my Land Raider and got placed in the furthest corner away to my right.
The Flamers and Horrors opened up on the face of the blob squad reducing the squad by 12, the Lord Commissar and the remains of the squad remained resolute and stood firm...
Objectives held 1 - 1
Turn two....
Storm Raven flies in carrying the GK being sure to zoom and get all 4 weapons to open up on the Flamers.......the flamers were reduced to a single daemon with one wound remaining.......which was quickly removed by a guardsman's vengeful lasgun round.
The Land Raider delivers a lucky Las-cannon shot to the face of Soul Grinder spraying its tainted mass across the battle field, sweet..........
The first out flanking Vendetta flies over the battlefield strafing plague bearers on route to deliver the PCS to the enemy objective........
In Dave's Daemon's turn a load more deamons arrived from the immaterium with little effect
Objectives held 2 – 1
Turns Three & Four
GK disembark and start chewing through the plague bearers and horrors in a disordered assault.....some really poor knowledge of my army let me down here.......forgetting Preferred Enemy (Daemons) in both shooting and assault, forgetting hammer hand, forgetting to apply rad grenades.....not to mention forgetting psy-cannons are only Assault 2 on powered armoured guys....ooops.....but the sons of the Malleus butchered nurgle and tzeentch alike.....however it might have been quick enough to save the Lord Commissar and remnants of my carpathian guard from being assaulted and eaten by a Slaaneshi fiend......something that could well have been stopped had I remembered that one needs line of sight to charge a unit.....or in fact that they can overwatch the attacking fiend....or that a Lord Commissar gets an invulnerable save....6th Ed is taking its time to sink in.....
Game finished 1 - 2 on objectives, one more turn......if only I could have got through the assault in turn 3 a little quicker........I'm going to have to write up some flash cards with special rules on....
Game 2 Capture all 5 Objectives vs Mr Towers and his Nob Bikers/ Dakka Jets.......
Huh....turn 1 to 5 the entire army shoots the Nob bikers, the Nob bikers eventually die other weak orks on bikes seize 2 objectives, game ends in a draw 2 - 2 great game but seriously frustrating......
2 Vendettas, an assault cannon Storm Raven with psy-cannon bolts and hurricane bolters, 10 GKs and a blob squad shooting the crap out of a bunch of smoke clouded 2 wound feel no pain suck ass characters......geez it was a real slog T5, Armour, Cover and then feel no pain after that....again didn't make good use of Hammer Hand or rad Grenades, lost the Justicar to Overwatch in sloppy attempt to single out the pain boy....and they're characters....so it didn't make a difference....
Game 3 Good Ol' fashioned annihilation vs a 4 M/C with Doom of Malan'tai.....
This final game was close to a breeze, 3 Untouchable flyers zoomed around the board shooting the crap out of the MC's.....the annihilation rules held back my opponents urge to run his tervigon spawn spam which allowed me to concentrate fire onto the big guys..... won 6 - 3 in turn 4 due to reaching the time limit.....I put the slow game down to my opponents excessively heavy monstous creatures....it certainly took a long time to move them once they stared dying.........
In terms of unit performance lets review my list:
Lord Commissar ......although it was never the intention Mr Commissar found his way into fisty cuffs alot.....one thing I'd not accounted for is that he can no longer be singled out (by a non-character anyway) so in future a powerfist wouldn't go a miss, this is a massive change from 5th Ed...a Lord Commissar is now the cheapest HQ in the IG codex well if one was taking a Commissar anyway.....and he can get a str 6 ap 2 unwieldy weapon for 15 points...not bad, with WS5 and Ld 10 aura of discipline he's a nice option.
Blob squad.....was a massive fire magnet, I really underestimated how much people are drawn to its squishiness.....I play my unit quite aggressively and tend to ignore cover for favour of pushing the squad forwards.....perhaps making them up to 30 men would be an idea....however the idea of downsizing to another vets squad and releasing some points to upgrade the Land Raider to another Storm Raven well I think I can do better....for me in 6th Ed the blob has a job as a fire magnet but it will die in droves.....taking special weapons is difficult flamers are going to be lost in your first round taking wounds if they're nearer the edges of your unit....plasma guns are the way forwards....desperately trying to find a way to get a blob squad preferred enemy....
Vets and Vendettas......like in 5th but invulnerable to all but the luckiest of opponents...take as many as you can afford.....take heavy bolters, one needs another weapon to shoot at 18+ inches, at less than 12 they provide an anti-troop option......don't be shy take the upgrade
Inquisitor very cool, I'm always surprised to see just how many attacks this guy can get......gunslingers is fun with 2x ap2 weapons.........however there seems to be so much stuff that gets an invulnerable save, an incumbent cover save or feel no pain that even ap2 is not what it once was.....sticking with one of then isn't a bad idea.....but with the abundance of T5+ things out there the scythian venom talon is equally appealing with 5 attacks on the charge wounding on 2+ is quite attractive....a force weapon could be a reasonable buy too with rad grenades and hammerhand giving the +2 strength effect....gunslingers is just for fun and not for tourneys.
GK with psy-cannon bolts are amazing (even when one forgets to reroll 1's vs daemons....)
Land Raider....is nice but the Storm Raven is sooo much better now......the Raven's superior in every aspect....and then some....yes they can get taken down by Vendettas...but coming on from reserve blasting away with 4 weapons at one target and a twin linked multi melta at another target is quite amazing.....Sorry old faithful there's a new kid on the block and he's coming all guns blazing
Storm Raven.....as mentioned he's amazing.......with psycannon bolts and hurricane bolters this bad boy has the equivalent of 4 T/L heavy bolters at inside 12".....add the rending Str7 assault cannon....the Blood Angels version doesn't suit the same anti-troop role I see it as dedicated anti-armour with a T/L las, plus gets to fire off 2x str 8 ap1 rockets and a twin linked multi melta on the first two turns from when it arrives......the beauty of coming on from reserve with so much fire power is that one can take out most of the serious opposition before it gets to shoot back.......
My full reserve list will be coming back....with a whoooooooossshhhhhh neeeeeaaaaawwwooooww dakka dakka dakka :0)
A long report thanks for reading this far.......
.JPG)
.JPG)
