One of the things I really like reading is reports from tournaments. I like following the narrative of a player as he goes about his day. Win or lose, I find these articles are some of my favorites. Right up there with gloating and reviews for different brands of mass acceleration field generators. Nothing is more entertaining than watching a basketball get pushed to twice the speed of light and then decelerated without compression in time to make a basket on the moon. Man that Dyson “Grav-shover” 422 really gets you where you need to be.

But I digress.

I thought it would be fun if I discussed my experience at Adepticon 2012. With the Grey Knights out about a year and the latest bandwagon still gaining steam, the tournament was quite a bit of fun for me and my Grey Knights. One of the key differences between our timelines is the tournament point totals. Because “complaining as a hobby” never took on over on the REAL Earth, we play at 1500. I won’t go into why, but the main difference is that we get an extra game in at our tournaments. This means that that I played 5 games over the course of the day. Obviously this affects rankings quite a bit, as our missions look very different. We don’t need as many “bonus points” to differentiate the player positions. I’m not knocking your 1850 tournament scene’s missions. They work well for a tournament with fewer rounds, the bonus points make up for that lost round. It makes sense. I’m just explaining the difference you’re going to see here in my report.

So let’s start with my army. I ran a pretty typical “the kitchen sink” build with my Grey Knights. I considered taking my Chaos Marines instead, but I have more practice with the Grandmaster and his men. The typical load out, is placing the 10 Grey Knights and the Grand Master in the Storm Raven with the Dreadnought. The Vindicares get positioned in cover according to the table setup, usually I attempt to put them on the sides to hit anything with long enough range to kill the Storm Raven when it arrives.

  • Grand Master w/ Psybolt Ammunition
  • Vindicare Assassin
  • Vindicare Assassin
  • Strike Squad (10 Grey Knights, 2 Psycannons, Psybolt Ammunition & 1 Nemesis Daemon Hammer on the Justicar)
  • Strike Squad (6 Grey Knights, 1 Psycannon, Psybolt Ammunition, 1 Nemesis Daemon Hammer, Razorback w/Heavy Bolter & Psybolt Ammunition)
  • Strike Squad (6 Grey Knights, 1 Psycannon, Psybolt Ammunition, 1 Nemesis Daemon Hammer, Razorback w/Heavy Bolter & Psybolt Ammunition)
  • Storm Raven w/Assault Cannon, Multi-Melta & Psybolt Ammunition
  • Dreadnought w/Assault Cannon & Psybolt Ammunition

So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Game One – Tau

Hooray for an easy match up. He was running Tau pretty straight forward. Still stuck with an older codex, he had to make some decisions pretty quickly, and had little room for error. His list consisted of 6 Crisis Suits including the Commander (all melta/plasma), 9 Broadsides, 1 minimum squad of firewarriors and the rest were Kroot.

The mission was a “pitched battle” deployment, with 3 objectives. One in the center, and then one in each of our deployment zones (we placed the marker in each other’s zones). The one tricky part, was that we fell back towards our opponents board edge. So if I made him flee, he would have plenty of time to regroup, and he had Bonding Knives on his Broadsides.

He setup a standard firing line. He lacked the mobility to take my objective, so his plan was to shoot everything off of it and contest the center. He held the crisis teams in reserve to deepstrike, and put his Kroot in cover with the broadsides. His firewarriors went in that same line.

I placed my Vindicares together in a building on the left flank, I had clear line of site to the Broadsides, past the Kroot, but he was still in cover. The Stormraven was placed in reserve. One of my Razorbacks went in front of the objective in my deployment zone (but within 3”) and the other behind a building in position to make a run for the central objective, but with LoS to the kroot (but not the broadsides) so I could make use of my heavy bolter.

Turn 1 saw him wreck the rhino on my objective, but it was only wrecked, so it now provided convenient cover for my squad. That basically screwed him out of shooting me off the objective, a big swing my way. He was able to get line of site to one member of the squad with his remaining suits, so he took it, and killed all but 2. They passed their leadership and he was pretty done for that objective, unless he dedicated his crisis suits to killing it. I returned fire and did a bit of damage to his kroot.

His turn 2, one of his Squads dropped in. He decided to pre-empt my push for the middle, exploding my Razorback. The explosion killed a Grey Knight. The rest of his shooting went into the Vindicares (his only target) and killed them both. My Turn 2, the Stormraven didn’t come in. The Crisis suits got assaulted by Grey Knights, I slaughtered the crisis squad before he could attack back, thanks to my Force Weapons.

His Turn 3, the other Crisis came in, dropped on my lone 2 Grey Knights. He scattered towards the center, but still had LoS, but was out of plasma double tap range, and melta range, by about an inch. Didn’t matter though, he managed to hit and wound with all 3, I failed my cover saves and the squad was gone. My Turn 3 the Stormraven dropped on his line, fired into two different the broadside squads and killed 1 of them in each squad. He failed one of his leadership tests and they walked forward towards me (the fall back condition). He now had a ton of kroot and 6 broadsides.

His Turn 4 he moved the kroot forward in an attempt to get into assault range. Fired his broadsides and killed my Storm Raven. I deployed behind it, just out of assault range. He also managed to shake the Dreadnought with his last two broadside shots. The Crisis team fired at the other Grey Knights in cover, and killed 1. It was all downhill from there. My dread shook off the shaken and multi-charged the two units of kroot, the Grey Knights hit the broadsides. My other squad rushed from cover, shooting his broadsides up. He crumpled and was wiped out on turn 5. Victory Me.

Game Two – Eldar

This was a rough game. As the Eldar haven’t had a new codex in a while, the players still holding onto Eldar do very well. Sure the armies are starting to look the same, but those runes of warding really hamper my force. Luckily he was running a bike elder, and my preponderance of Str 5 shooting was really going to help… or so I thought. He was running a lot of bikes…

I went long on that Tau review, so I’ll make this one short. It was Kill points and he got me good. I deployed first, he put everything in reserve. My reserves came in before his, I turbo boosted the raven on (at an angle so I was like 4” from my table edge). He came in, shot up all my transports and earned a quick 3 KP. He spent the rest of the game turbo boosting away from me or moving 12” and assaulting my Vindicares. I managed to take out 3 units of his bikes despite all of this, including his farseer. He beat me 5 KP to 4.

Game Three – Necrons

My opponent was a returning vet from the U.N. sanctioning actions in Canada, so he had been out of the game a while. He came back to discover his Necron army was viable again. He hadn’t bought anything new, but his Apocalypse size selection of old models made for a force that was pretty darn strong. He was my favorite opponent of the day and it turned out he only lived about an hour away from me. So we exchanged emails. We ended up becoming gaming buddies; we play about twice a month now. The words you’re looking for are “awe, shucks that’s cute”.

So his army today included a 1 Skimmer Lord, Lords for the Squads, 1 C’Tan, 9 destroyers and an obscene number of warriors in 5 squads (I think he had about 50 on the table). I was surprised that he didn’t bring any Scarabs, but also relieved, they would have eaten my transports alive.

Our mission was a five objective job, but every turn you held an objective you got a Mission Point. Whoever had the most at the end of the game would win. One was automatically in the center, and the other four we took turns deploying, but only one per table quarter. We had a spearhead deployment. I put one in my deployment as near the center as I could, and the other in the other corner along my edge, as close to the center as I could. He placed his two in terrain in the quarters.

I deployed first, placing the Raven in reserve and the rest of my army as close to the center as I could. The Vindicares made the flanks rough, especially for the lord and C’Tan, holding back to far for the destroyers to get too, but making sure to be a threat if anything came to far forward.

He failed to seize, and I held my ground, pumping as many shots as I could into the C’Tan. I managed two get three wounds onto it between my Vindicares and Str 6 heavy bolters. I got two points (having moved onto the second objective in the center).

My opponent moved to his second objective, splitting his warriors a bit. I took a lot of Str 6 shooting but managed to survive the combined fire. All of his necrons not holding an objective marched forward, took a few shots but didn’t do anything else.

My turn two the raven came in. I pushed hard for the objective I put near the middle but out of my quarter. I got to it (moving flat out) and managed to take the C’Tan down with the Assault Cannon. I then took shots at with the vindicares, and using my ability to pick models hurt the lords buried in two of the squads.

I held my ground, weathering a lot of fire for a few rounds, knocking his lord out of the air and hitting him where I could from range. Holding my three objectives till round 4 won me the game.

In the coming months he picked up some of the new kits and rounded is force out a lot more, and is quite a challenge to play against. He routinely makes Mech Guard players who haven’t adapted to the new metagame cry foul with his Scarabs and multiple C’Tan.

Game Four – Space Wolves

This player was a bit of a dick. I don’t mind saying so, cus he is in another universe and won’t really read this. I’m pretty sure he cheated too, jumping his Rune Priest from one squad to another while I wasn’t looking, using the building terrain to stop me from seeing it happen.

His army was: 3 Rune Priests, all with Living Lightning and one other power. He put them in his Rocket Longfangs squads (which each had a Laserback) as a firing base. He included two squads of Grey Hunters with meltaguns, mark and a power weapon in Rhino’s.

We had a Dawn of War deployment with Night Fight extended to turn 2. The mission was Kill-Points with the most expensive HQ worth 3 KP, he had one of his HQ’s with a bit of wargear, so that was my target. It did NOT go well for me. Re-rolls on his turn combine with a lot of rules arguments meant that he shot things multiple times. I had to call a judge over, who hadn’t been there to watch the shooting phase, so he made us dice off. He failed to do anything with this second time shooting so it really didn’t matter much in the end.

I’m pretty sure he would have beat me had he not been obnoxious, nothing we argued over was important, mostly LOS debates that shouldn’t have been debates. He was just trying to see what he could get away with against me. I dumped his sportsmanship, I’m sure he did the same to me.

Game Five – Dark Eldar

Oh the Wyches… SO MANY WYCHES! He ran 6 wyches in Raiders, relying on them for his tank hunting. He had Lilith in the mix too with a unit of Syrens in a Raider. He ran everything bare bones, a blast pistol on the Hekatrix and the save upgrade for his Raiders, that was it. His Syrens ran two nets.

I got obliterated. It was bad… it was REALLY BAD. I won the roll to go first and deployed in a reserved position to force him to come to me. There were only two objectives on the table and I had to push hard for his. I deployed in a forward position (Pitched Battle). He placed at about 40 inches from me and then proceeded to seize the initiative. Round one I lost all 3 of my transports and the Dread. Round two I made a small recovery with a pair of wounds to Lilith courtesy of my Vindicares. Then everything got assaulted by a ton of witches. He positioned the Shardnets on my Grand Master and Lilith dragged him down. That same unit got hit by another unit of Wyches, and 20 wyches isn’t something I can really deal with well.

I was tabled on turn 5 after one lone Vindicare held out the entirety of turn 4 against 6 Lances! Despite getting face rolled I had a good time on my last game, my opponent was courteous and a really cool guy. Seizing the initiative really ended me, so now I’m a lot more careful with deployment.

Next time, I’m gonna run Purewing, I really feel a more redundant force would have worked better, considering the objectives. I’ve had some good results with my Grey Knights in the past, and since this tournament, but I really think it’s a good example of what to expect in the upcoming metagame.

Next time, I’ll try to put together a more detailed battle report against my Necron friend.