Since, I last checked in, my Dark Angels just got back from back to back weekends of 40k. The first was Butchers of Bakersfield organized by Otto’s Video Games and More. The second one, the venerable TSHFT Open, both events had about 50 players. I took the same list and had similar results. The most striking similarity was losing to Necrons using three Wraiths units! I usually am capable of handling Necrons, but the combination of good players and Wraiths did me in both times!

Both events used unmodified ITC rules, each had a high preponderance of Tau or Tau allies. They also showcased some of the new nasty stuff from Forge World Eldar Corsairs, namely tricked out Wraithknights.

Strangely, I faced the exact same armies almost in the same order at each event. First round in both events was Imperial Guard, followed by either Necrons and or Tau. In the Butchers tourney I got Tau with Riptide Wing and only won because I accidentally cheated and also made an INSANE amount of saves. I won with a single model, an Apothecary biker. Then I faced a nasty Canoptek Harvest list and played poorly, but almost magically pulled off a tie– if I would have a rolled 4+ damage result on one of three Melta bombs! With the loss I didn’t make the cut into the top 8. Battlecompany ended up winning the event, along with standard Eldar taking second, and Tau Piranha Drone spam taking third. The event was run by some nice guys, but it had some serious problems. The terrain wasn’t all that great, but more importantly we got started an hour late for the first round and almost 2 hours for the third round. It meant the final rounds didn’t get done until close to midnight! The problem stemmed from trying to beta test Battlecom new online pairing software, which totally crapped out. Events shouldn’t ever try these types of experiments with people’s tournament time.

At TSHFT, round one I got IG, got to turn 3 for a number of reasons and eked out win, second round it was Wraiths again, this time if memory serves I was winning on Turn 5, tie on Turn 6, but lost on Turn 7! I then then faced Orks with all Meganobz, the mission was Kill Points and I lucked out being able to double up on destroying transports. The fourth round was against my good friend and his Tau, I didn’t get to go first, thus not able to power up psychically and got owned! After that I decided to take the second day of the tourney off, to just hang out, take pictures and relax.

If you are curious who won, TSHFT it is posted here…

http://warscore.net/event/244/view.html?results=20160119022423

The winner ran Lost and the Damned with a Chaos Knight, Heralds of Tzeentch, and metric ton of Thud Guns! 2nd place was War Convocation Ad-Mech with robots! Third was Eldar and Dark Eldar allies. TSHFT also had pretty bad terrain with every table being a shooting gallery. Also the final match ended prematurely with a complete rage quit meltdown. I only caught part of it, but it looked epic, not going to name names, but someone better get their emotions in check next time they play with the big boys.

I was able to take a some good pictures of the armies and players. Lots of armies were well painted, but even those had problems by not being completed with folks putting unpainted models in just to be more competitive.

What did I learned watching and playing?

As I expected from both events saw Tau being just dumb, and if not for the ITC rulings would be completely broken. The Riptide Wing is insane! Expect it to be shoehorned into lots of armies, as was evident by the top table which had Daemonkin combined with it at TSHFT. The Drone spamming is also obscene. I am really glad I only have one more event before LVO, because I cannot wait to move on to another army to combat this terrible Xenos menace. Now you might say, “Tasty, Tau didn’t win these events”, while true this is just the start, talk to me in a few months if you don’t see them breaking the meta for the worse. If Forge World is the saver against them it isn’t a good sign as well.

As reminder here is the list I took once again.

TastyTaste’s Dark Angel Final Form ITC List 

I enjoy taking advantage of reserve tricks from the Ravenwing Detachment, but usually ends up as bad idea. The MSU Bike units great with all that Melta flying around to take out transports. I guess I need to avoid Wraith Necrons in addition to Tau if I want a chance to win.

So, I got one more event left before LVO at Funemonium, this will be standard RTT three game one day event. Until next time, happy dice rolling!