I am a hardcore tournament player who has played in Rogue Trader Tournaments from Salem, Oregon, down to San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego, California. I have also played in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, Florida. Right now I am playing and living in Phoenix AZ, but the tournament scene is rather dead for a city of this size, so I might need to join a league.
I try to attend as many large tournaments as I can. Although the GW Grand Tournaments get a bad rap, I enjoy them, and my goal is to win a GT one day. Also I attended Adepticon in Chicago every year and if you are a fan of 40k, this is a must because there is no other event quite like it.
So here I am, now down to the final four! It is me, Dash of Pepper’s Dark Eldar, Tony Kopack’s Space Wolves, and Devon’s Grey Knights. I played Tony on Friday night at the invitational and I liked my chances against him. Dash is a wild card because he has a ton of shooting at strength 8 AP2, but I have shrouding that he can’t stop, and I can knock those paper airplanes out of the sky pretty easy. Objectives against him might be trouble in the primary. Then there was Devon, I said that Grey Knights are my worse match-up and his army is a fast moving assault army just like the kind that I struggle against.
So when they announce the pairings, I get Devon and his Grey Knights. He played Xaereth in round #6 before and you should read his write up of his and Devon’s game because it gives some interesting context.
Devon is from Jacksonville and while I lived there for 6 months about 3 years ago I do not think we ever crossed paths. I spent most of my 40k time down in Orlando except for a tournament or two at War Dogs, so that might be why we never ran into each other.
My List
2000 Points of Grey Knights
HQ
Draigo
Librarian w/Warding Stave, Might of Titian, Quicksilver, Sanctuary, The Shrouding
Venerable Dreadnaught w/Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer, Psyflame Ammunition.
Troops
Henchman Squad
·6 Death Cult Assassins
·5 Crusaders
·Banisher
Henchman Squad
·6 Death Cult Assassins
·5 Crusaders
Henchman Squad
·3 Warrior Acolytes w/Flamers
·2 Warrior Acolytes
Razorback w/Psybolt Ammunition
Henchman Squad
·3 Warrior Acolytes w/Melta Guns
·2 Warrior Acolytes
Razorback w/Psybolt Ammunition
5-man Grey Knight Strike Squad w/Psycannon
Razorback w/Lascannon, TL Plasmagun
Fast Attack
Stormraven
Heavy Support
Dreadnaught w/2 Autocannons,Psybolt Ammo
Dreadnaught w/2 Autocannons,Psybolt Ammo
Land Raider Crusader
Pre-game thoughts
So looking at his army I know that he is going to come after me with his DCA and jump out of his Stormraven and Land Raider all the while trying to shoot up my dreads with his dreds. So my plan is to kill those 2 vehicles so he can’t assault me and then shoot down the DCA from a safe distance. If I can do that, it should be easy for me, if I can’t I will be in trouble. Also I have learned to hate Stormravens because those stupid mindstrike missiles will kill my librarian dead, and I need him to cast sanctuary to slow down those DCA in assault.
Well my 6 week weighloss challenge came to an end today (It was about time, I was going nuts the last week).
I drove to Downtown and weighed in. I ended up losing 40 pounds in 6 weeks and ended up winning! The second place finisher lost a total of 34 pounds. I feel sorry for that guy. He lost 34 pounds and ended up with nothing. hah!
Well, another tournament season is over. It seems like the US tournament season goes from Adepticon in March-April to the November events (Mechanicon, Feast of Blades, Neoncon, etc.).
So I have the off season to work on next year’s army. There are a few events on my schedule I might go to before Adepticon like Boota Con in Mesa AZ in January, The Broadside Bash in February, and The Bay Area Open II in March before Adepticon.
So it is time to prepare for Adepticon 2012!!!
Lucky for me I jumped on the Adepticon bandwagon early because I thought that they would sell out very quickly, and what do you know? After about only 24 hours most of the 40k events have sold out!
So my question is, what army to bring to the Championships, and why am I asking this question now?
The reason why I need to ask the question now is that I am a chronic army switcher, and a slow painter and that is a bad combination. So often times I am playing with a half painted army in tournaments because I did not make up my mind until a week or two before the tournament. It is also the reason why I can win a tournament that does not have soft scores, but struggle in ones that do. The funny thing is that I am a good painter if I ever finish an army.
This year is Adepticon’s 10th anniversary and I wanted to do it right. I have had sporadic results there and I want to make an honest effort this time. Last year I took Demonhunters to Adepticon, and the year before that I took my Thousand Sons, so it is no wonder why I have had some trouble placing well in Adepticon’s Championships.
I was thinking about playing several armies and I think I will just stick with my Grey Knights. They give me the best chance to win if I want to take this event seriously. By then though, people will know the weaknesses of Paladins, and I will have more trouble winning with them but I believe in my list, and I think I will be OK. Also the Grey Knight codex will not be the new kid on the block, and the Necrons and other armies will take some of the luster off of them, so I hope I will not be one of 200 Grey Knight players there (I have a feeling I will be though).
So what do I do about appearance? Well if you have read this blog for a long time, and you have seen my avatar, I have been itching to do a pre-heresy Thousand Sons army. I have all of the bits and pieces for it and I also think they will look nice on the table top, as a Grey Knight army (I also won’t hurt either if GW comes out with a Chaos Legions book in the near future).
This is what I am thinking:
There is a resin Magnus the Red floating around and that would make for a good Draigo.
Librarian? Ahriman of course.
Then pre-heresy assault marines would look cool as interceptors.
Regular Marines as Grey Knights
Paladins as Magnus’s Coven
Dreads as well…dreads
The problem I have is the weapons. I need to re-check my Thousand Sons book by Graham McNeil and see what I can do about that. I need storm bolters and psycannons and I will need to think about conversions. Combi-bolters will work out well for the terminators, but the power armored marines will be an issue. It might be that I just give them bolters, and everyone knows that they are storm bolters since grey knights have no other weapons. Incinerators are easy because you just have someone doing psychic flames, but psycannons might be harder. Maybe some kind of magic effect, but I don’t know.
Well, I have been dieting an exercising for the last 5 weeks as part of a 6 week weigh loss challenge. I am now in the home stretch, and the end is in sight. Just 5 more days and I am free! Well not really free, but I will not be on such a restrictive diet that I have been on to win this challenge. As a 40k gamer I am competitive, and if you challenge me to something, I will try to win.
The winner gets a nice price of a $700 membership to Gold’s Gym in downtown Phoenix.
Here I was hiking up Squaw Peak on Saturday.
It is one heck of a climb, and I noticed that everyone on the trail was in great shape, and not a bit of fat on any of them.
And as a side note, dieting takes a lot of time! I make a lot of my own meals now since I can’t eat out, and that takes time and exorcizing takes a lot of time as well.
So I am going to Comikaze: Annihilation! this weekend and I was getting a bit tired of my Grey Knights, so the question becomes what army to play?
I saw that Ragnar (Mannahnim on Dakka) was having a lot of success with his Chaos Space Marines and so I had a brilliant idea of not only playing Chaos…but to play his list!
So I started by trying to see what models I have, and what I need for his army, and I have just about everything painted up and ready to go. The one thing I did not have though, was his termicide squad. I converted all of my chaos terminators back into Grey Knights (I used Grey Knight models for them). The good thing is that Ragnar played at 2000 points at the Battle for Salvation, and I am playing at 1750, so I have to trim a couple of units out of his list and so the terminators are getting dropped.
I would also like to remind people that I am no Chaos newbie and I am very well versed in the ways of the Warp! There are 3 armies that I would say that I am expert in and those are Grey Knights, Eldar, and Chaos (and not in that order).Still it will not be easy to win because I am playing someone else's list, and I am ..well, playing chaos. This is also an example of why I do not do consistently well at tournaments because I am always doing stupid things (like bringing Demonhunters to Adepticon)
Battlefoam RTT
So to get into the spirit, and to knock some of the dust off because I have not played my chaos in a while I took them to a local RTT. I wanted to get use to using some of his units that I normally don’t take, so I played in an RTT Saturday at Battle Foam’s Gaming Saloon, and the list I used was a close version of Ragnar's Chaos list, with some improvising with the units that I had ready.
I took:
HQ
Demon Prince w/MoS, Wings, Lash of Submission
Demon Prince w/MoS, Wings, Lash of Submission
Summoned Greater Demon
Elite
Dreadnaught w/Autocannon
Troops
9 Chaos Space Marines w/2Melta Guns
1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Fist
Rhino
9 Chaos Space Marines w/2Melta Guns
1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Fist
Rhino
7 Berzerkers
1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Weapon
Rhino w/Extra Armor
5 Summoned Demons
5 Summoned Demons
Heavy Support
3 Obliterators
3 Obliterators
2 Obliterators
I made some major changes to his list for the RTT because I was really busy this week and I was unable to finish the models. For example, all of my missile launchers (for the havocs) have broken off of the models and I have to glue them back on. I also wanted to try his chosen in a rhino, but I do not have enough melta guns. This will shock people (and especially Stelek) but I have not been a big user of Melta weaponry. So rummaging through my extensive bitz, I was able to find 4 melta guns for the troops, but that was it. I have a lot of chaos bits for my Night Lords and I thought that I bought some Iron Warriors melta guns for them, but it looks like I only bought the Iron Warriors Lascannons. I might have some space wolf ones because I think they had a plastic melta gun on the Space Wolf upgrade sprue, so I hope I can dig up 3 more.
Here is some video I shot:
Quick Batreps of the RTT
Game #1 vs. Chaos Demons
5 Objectives
Pitched Battle
So for the first round I find myself going up against Chaos Demons (where are my Grey Knights now?) and I was able to kill off his troops through shooting and tie up his last squad of bloodletters with my dreadnaught and I ended up winning 2 objectives to 0
Note: As a funny story I forgot my Greater Demon at home and I was playing 100 VPs down. I was able to run home and grab him during the lunch break.
Game #2 vs. My Nova Open Grey Knights
Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Pitched Battle
You heard me..this was an exact copy of my Nova Open list! Now the real bad news is that I got to beat it in an Annihilation mission. This will not be pretty.
He ends up deepstrking his whole army other than his dreadnaughts. I get in a gunnery duel with them with my Oblits, and it is mostly a slap fight. My army is mostly in the center of the board and he got all of his units on in turn #2 and deepstrikes all of his army on my left. Well, I know that he has short range shooting, and is killer in assault so I do what every chaos player should do and I ran! I used plasma cannons to do a lot of damage to his strikes/interceptors and crippled them early. I also managed to lash the Paladins and move them back even father.
In the end I had a lot of trouble killing his dreadnaughts and I had to send my Demon Princes after them. Even then I ended up in combat for a long time and I just whiffed like crazy and killed just one of them.
At the end of the game he killed 2 of my rhinos and one of my chaos space marine squads (mostly when he dropped down). I killed his strike squad, his interceptor squad, and 2 dreadnaughts.
Game #3 vs. (wait for it) Grey Knights!
Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Dawn of War
This is an odd build. He had the Libarian, and a Grandmaster and then he took 5 Paladins, 2x5 Termiantors, 2x10 Purgation Squads w/4 Psycannons.
For some reason I got really aggressive (and I am not an aggressive player because my dice hate me) and I started by lashing 5 of his terminators to me and shot them and do nothing to them, and then I charge with my Demon Prince and my Berserkers and I get my teeth kicked in. He kills my DP and he kills one in return. Then my Berserkers hit him and kill a couple. Then in the next round he kills some berserkers and they kill the last 2 terminators. Then I move my Berzerkers to his objective marker and I get the greater demon on. I choose to pop him out of my berserkers and he goes after 5 terminators+librarian and the berzerkers goes after a purgation squad. The bezerkers are in a close fight with the purgation squad, and then the Greater Demon takes 3 unsaved wounds, and then he gets to attack with his 6 attacks with his WS8 and Str 6 and misses with all 6 attacks! That made me sad. I was hoping to kill a few of them so I could shoot down the rest, but that whiff killed the GD and he did nothing in return.I have nothing near my objective marker, and I deepstrike a demon squad on them. Then he counters and drops his paladin squad near them. I was hoping he would get his paladins in sooner, so he would place them somewhere else, but that did not happen. Lucky for me he does not have psycannons and only kills 3 of my Demons. Then on my turn I unload into the paladin squad with 8 Lascannons from the oblits, and they kill all of them but the Grand Master (who they finish off next turn). My CSM squads have their rhinos shot up by the purgation squads, and then they start to get chewed up by them. My berserkers finish off his Pergation squad and have 2 left, and then I shoot and charge his terminators and I kill a couple from shooting, and I was able to do enough with my attacks that I was able to kill them. Then what models I have left were shot off of the objective by his last purgation squad. Then I unload my Oblits into them and I wipe them out in turn #7 for a tabling by me. I had my one objective, and he was gone.
So I went 3-0 and took 2nd place. I learned a lot, and that is why I went to the RTT, for practice with CSM (and my video camera) for the big GT in LA next weekend and also to win some store credit for a Battle Foam Pack Air.
My greater demon did nothing in all three games and I blame the fact that he was angry because I left him at home for game #1.
So now I need to get the army together, and pair it down to 1750 points.
There has been a lot of talk about Da Boyz GT and there comp system. I came close to going back to their event, but I have traveled enough, and decided not to spend the money and just kick back at home.
So I made a list using there comp system and this is what I would have taken:
HQ
Grandmaster w/Rad Gernades, Psychotroke Gernades
Librarian w/Sanctuary, Shrouding, Might of Titian
Because of the comp hit you take from having a special character (especially one as expensive as Draigo), I had to drop him and take a Grandmaster. This helps out a little in assault because of the grenades, but it loses some of the durability from shooting.
Elites
Venerable Dreadnaught w/TL Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo
10 Paladins w/4 Psycannons (Swords, Halberds, Hanmmers, and the Brotherhood Banner)
Because of the loss of Draigo I would now have to use Grand Strategy a lot to make the Paladins scoring.
Troops
5 GK Strike Squad w/Psycannon
Razorback w/Psybolt Ammo
5 GK Strike Squad w/Psycannon
Razorback w/Psybolt Ammo
At Da Boyz, they hate duplication, but love mini-maxing.
Fast Attack
5 GK Interceptors w/Demonhammer, Psycannon
Heavy Support
Dreadnaught w/TL Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo
Because of Comp, I can’t duplicate my choices, so I had to drop one dreadnaught and move one into Elites.It costs me numbers, but it gave me a little durability (I would still prefer to have 3 Dreads that are Heavy Supports).
This list would have come in at a perfect 80 Comp points (I think), and I am pretty happy with it.
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