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Post by thesanityassassin on Jun 28, 2012 21:13:38 GMT -5
Ughh...that 3rd game sounds painful. I always have half a mind to just give players like that the win and walk away from the table if they're so inclined to be jerks. I've seen it in Warmachine a number of times, counting people "luckily" finding the damage done to warjacks leaving a single box of Cortex or whatnot.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:32:20 GMT -5
Game Five:
Well all good things come to an end, and this was clearly the case for my ill-fated game five. I was so worried about facing the grey knights (I did not realize that both grey knight players had hit mid to low pack in the tourney!) that I was caught off guard when I faced the other army I had feared to face – Dark Eldar. Now this army normally gives my daemons fits (shakes fist in Randy’s general direction) as I have no where near the saves to stand up to concentrated fire from venoms, wyches out initiative and outfight me, and lances make my grinders die a nasty death early.
My opponent ran four venoms with warriors, two raiders with wyches, Vect, two ravagers and inexplicably a Talos… I think that was there to pin things in place perhaps? I wasn’t worried about the Talos, but everything else was pretty much my worst nightmare to face as daemons. He could zip around and shoot me with impunity, and if his flicker fields held the first turn shooting, he could dismantle my shooting elements easily and then everything else couldn’t catch him.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:33:36 GMT -5
To make matters even worse, as you’ll see from the pictures, we were playing on a table with small bits of terrain, and lots and lots of open space, basically making it so there was one spot possible to gain some cover (a building on one flank) but the grinders were sitting ducks no matter where they went.
The mission was victory points and table quarters (a common theme for many of my games!) with “price of failure” deductions for losing all your scoring units and having something killed by Ambulls who randomly scattered around trying to kill you.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:34:52 GMT -5
whoops, got those last two pictures out of order!
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:35:50 GMT -5
Well I got my preferred wave and elected to go first. I had one shot to ground as many of those venoms as possible before they started scooting around wiping my entire army. I knew I couldn’t stop all the dark lances, but I figured once the grinders were dead, his lances didn’t actually do that much to me (same chance of saving a wound as against his anti-infantry shots – there was just less of them!). So priority one was venoms, and I only had five shots to make a dent or I was in serious trouble. I couldn’t hang back with my shooters as when I deepstrike in I can’t move and have to shoot where I land – and Dark Eldar have a habit of shortening your range! (heralds dropping to 18” is not good!) At the end of my turn one, I had destroyed one. Sigh. This was NOT good.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:36:34 GMT -5
So my opponent decided to disembark his wyches and Vect to handle my heralds, which he did so without difficulty obviously (the threat range is insane with these guys, especially when he rolls the super fleet combat drugs!) while the dark lances eliminated all three grinders first turn. What followed was pretty elementary. With no shooting to oppose him, the venoms and lances ran around and shot me up well out of range, while Vect and his friends moved from squad to squad killing them. I realized that there was no way I could win this fairly quickly, so moved to try and pick up some bonus points by ensuring that I killed at least one troops unit (which I was able to do with the fiends / bloodcrushers, along with taking out two more venoms - the ones off their stands in the pictures).
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 14:38:09 GMT -5
In the end I had a depleted unit of fiends left on the board when the game rolled for ending. My opponent wasn’t able to table me, but he certainly tried to, targeting the plaguebearers (who were seriously just hiding in whatever cover they could gain, trying to survive) and ensuring he eliminated them all. In the end I was a couple models away from being completely tabled. I’m not sure why he went that hard core, given he had max points guaranteed by the second or third turn max. Oh well, you can’t win them all, and my army had a really good run otherwise, so there was no sense fretting about it. I wasn’t sure what else I could have done given the circumstances. My opponent went on to win best general, beating me by 3 points for his 11th best general title at Astro.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 15:09:13 GMT -5
Game Six:
Well to be honest, after the trouncing I just received I figured might as well just relax and have fun as I was pretty much out of the running after that! (there’s a certain amount of pressure when you’re doing really well several games in a row that just goes away when you finally lose and you realize you can just have fun now, pressure’s off!)
My opponent looked pretty tired to be honest, and he apologized afterwards that he thought he was being grouchy. I actually thought he had a pretty good sense of humour and really took some bad dice luck really well, so I actually gave him top sportsmanship marks.
So we were in a city fight table, basically a daemonic deep strike nightmare. Further, the mission was lost patrol, and I had to nominate a unit to start on the board at my opponent’s board edge that was worth more victory points to me if I got it to my table edge, and more for my opponent to kill it. We had to ask a tournament organizer what to do with this as I was daemons. They said I could start with a unit on the board, so I choose one of my heralds. He chose a unit of plague marines in a chaos rhino. Against anyone else that would be a really solid choice, but given this table, and how I could just drop my stuff wherever I wanted, there was no way that rhino was going to get a clear path back to home base.
So I got my preferred wave (yay – 5 out of 6 games!) and also got to go first (won the roll off and chose to go first). I managed to drop in without taking a single wound on the crushers and herald and I didn’t immobilize or mishap with any of the grinders! My herald jumped 12” back towards my table edge and ran for more distance. My entire army opened up on the rhino… and took off a weapon! At this point I truly wished we had hull points!!! My opponent began bringing on his force, which included a nurgle blight drone, plague hulk, more plague marines, a vindicator and a predator.
He got into position and tried to jockey to a good position with his lost patrol rhino, but it was boxed in pretty bad, so he just grabbed some cover in some ruins and hoped to clear a path. His shooting was pretty uneventful and the couple wounds inflicted were either saved by the ton of cover, or in the case of the grinders, ignored because of the 1-2 on the chart. This one rule seriously saved me so many times this weekend it’s not even funny.
Two of my grinders headed over to threaten at the armor, trusting my handy blood crushers to take on the plague marines on his end of the board, so they ran forward. I should have known better, completely forgetting plague hulks are also fleet! My herald bounced back even further, taking a shot as he retreated back to my board edge. I was able to immobilize the lost patrol’s rhino but that was it! (grrr hull points where are you???) My grinder in the back field assaulted and wrecked the rhino.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 15:11:47 GMT -5
Plague marines opened up with melta… which apparently all my soul grinders were immune to? Either he missed or failed to do anything significant at all. This was completely frustrating to be sure. The plague hulk charged the crushers and totally dreadlocked them, almost wiping them entirely. I charged the enemy lost patrol with fiends and a grinder, totally wrecking them. My nurgle soul grinder tried to fleet into charging position on the vindicator / predator combo and rolled a 1. I was ½ inch short of making the charge! My Khorne grinder charged the plague hulk, which is thankfully initiative 2. Bye bye hulk. The last remaining blood crusher consolidated away from the battle ready to run away and preserve what little victory points he had remaining. His armor and remaining melta opened up and managed to immobilize the nurgle grinder preventing him from taking out the vindicator and predator. It also lost it’s maw cannon so was basically a piece of terrain at this point. He was able to immobilize the Khorne grinder as well. I opened up and killed the other rhino and some marines. Unfortunately because of the terrain and how my grinders were positioned when they were immobilized, I pretty much cut off my army from getting to where it needed to be to get what was left for him! In the end I grabbed the victory points needed for the win, and had the table quarter advantage thanks to my plague bearers, which dropped in and hid for the entire game! So five big wins and one big loss… all in all not a bad showing for chaos daemons at all! In the end was a lot of fun… if we had a better hotel and learned to pick better restaurants I’m sure the weekend would have been a lot smoother… but all the adversity just made us all fight even harder! See you next year Astro… with either my clockwork necrons or my ork biker gang… or something else I haven't thought of yet!
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Post by redshirt2375 on Jun 29, 2012 17:57:21 GMT -5
Dark Eldar. Now this army normally gives my daemons fits (shakes fist in Randy’s general direction) It also doesn't help that I also play Daemons too so I have a good idea of what they can do and which things I need to kill first 5 wins is an impressive showing for Daemons, especially since they do struggle against a lot of the top armies you usually see at tournaments (especially when you don't get the 1st wave you wanted)
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jun 29, 2012 20:05:40 GMT -5
I was able to catch some lucky breaks... plus Astro didn't have a lot of heavy mech given it was 1500 points... I think Daemons do well at the lower point levels as they don't have to weather as much weight of fire... but if I had brought daemon princes and a greater daemon (like the other daemon player there) I'd have run out of points far too quickly and not had the numbers to stay alive to that crucial turn three where I want everything in combat...
I think what helped alot was making sure I didn't waste points on upgrades at all and just ran everything quite lean to get the most bodies I could at this point level... also the small squads of plague bearers didn't do much for my victory point grab, but they were perfect for securing table quarters and objectives as well as pinning units for a turn. I think they're one of the most point efficient scoring units in the game due to their survivability... although 6th is going to hurt them a bit is seems....
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Post by redshirt2375 on Jun 29, 2012 21:10:03 GMT -5
I'd have to agree. I know I didn't spend a lot of points on upgrades with my Daemons, even at 1850. For Daemons, more is better since they already struggle with low numbers, especially when you start bringing the heavy hitters (GDs and DPs) which can take up as many points as entire units
I think if 6th does lead to a reduction in the amount of Mech, Daemons may have an easier time facing some of their tougher opponents.
Plus with the much more forgiving DS Mishap chart, you can afford to be a little more aggressive with them.
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Post by thesanityassassin on Jun 29, 2012 21:18:19 GMT -5
Thanks for the awesome reports! It always seems to be the case in those big tourneys that you'll run into one army+scenario combo that's just brutal to deal with (IE Tommy's guard camped on that big wall!).
Hopefully I'll be able to come up with you next year and bring all bikes all the time!
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