So, last weekend was another 1850 tournament held by NjT in Espoo. It was a nice venue, the tourney fee included food (which received some critic for being "basic food" but I really liked it) and overall it was pretty well handled in my opinion. I played almost the exact same list I've been playing up until now:
Fatey
LoC, ml3, 2x greater rewards
11 Horrors, 1 extra, champ
10 Daemonettes, champ
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, ml3, wings, armour, greater and exalted rewards
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, ml3, wings, armour, greater and exalted rewards
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, ml3, wings, armour, 2x greater rewards
Game 1
Game one was against one of the ex-captains of the Finnish ETC team, Pekka. He was running pseudo Daemons (csm/dae) with a csm prince, fatey, grimoire prince, 2x cultists, 2x daemonettes, 2x drakes (one hades) and screamers. Oh, he also had a bastion with comms. The missions were all BAO, this was Big Guns, Relic with Hammer and Anvil.
Pekka made me go first and the start of the game was pretty uneventful. Pekka got outflank for his warlord and managed to keep him off until t4. That really restricted me and his screamers did a good job of preventing me from getting the relic. I went aggressive with fatey t4 despite not having the grimoire, and got punished. Then I vector struck some helldrakes only to realize that now I couldn't fire 2 witchfires at his grimoire prince (which I was looking to kill). Silly mistakes on my part but Pekka also forgot GtG when I took FB from his nettes t2 and left a gap for my DP to run and contest the last objective t7. I won Big Guns because of killing the grimoire prince and otherwise the secondaries were a draw. 14-6. I caught a huge break.
Game 2
My opponent was playing a DE/ELD list. It wasn't really optimal and the game was pretty much over before it began. He also wanted to go first because he feared I would fly up and smash his bastion holding scourges inside. Not much to comment on in this game. I don't want to sound arrogant but he was playing with a borrowed army that he wasn't as familiar with, which wasn't on the same level as my own. I waited until t4 and secured the missions (purge and scouring). He managed to keep linebreaker, I had all the secondaries. 19-1.
Game 3
I was up against Roni. He had NEC/TAU. D-lord with wraiths, overlord and haywire-tek, 3 scythes with warriors, 2 anhi barges, buff commander, riptide, 15 sniper kroots and 2 broadsides with missile drones. Mission was big guns, relic, vanguard strike.
I got to go second but Roni put 2 wounds to my grimoire prince with his ion accelerator. T2 the grimoire came back behind some losblocking terrain with his buddies, but the riptide ripplefired with the buff commander scoring 7/8 hits and killing him off. Not a great start. The glyph prince died to one scythe and an anhibarge on t5. Overall I managed to limit what he could shoot and he left one objective with just a barge to hold it. Despite being a scoring unit, it still isn't a denial unit, so my Daemon prince snatched it from him earning me a 13-7 victory.
Game 4
Jukka is a veteran CSM player. He's been around the block for all the ETCs. This time he had CSM/NEC. sorceror with spawns, 3 cultist squads, 2 baledrakes, 3 oblits, d-lord with wraiths, 2 warrior scythes and an anhibarge. Mission was Scouring, Purge, Hammer and Anvil.
Jukka made me go first and I deployed aggressively. The tourney used the actual rulebook scouring, so ofcourse Jukka got the 4-pointer in the back of his deployment zone :/. He deployed the wraiths and spawn behind a fortress of redemption (it was just as terrain) and his barge on the opposite flank. I pushed 4 MCs up next to his spawns and fatey towards the barge. His spawns and wraiths fell back, realizing slay the warlord and first blood might be right around the corner, but the barge decided to move up and snapshot a prince. I gambled with fatey and moved up to fire rear shots while the other guys flew off. Destroyed the barge and luckily the wraiths failed their 8" charge to fatey after he'd been grounded by cultists coming from reserves.
The crucial moment came my t5 when his last scythe with 1 hp left denied 3 times in a row. The warriors zoomed up to harass my horrors and eventually take their objective, earning Jukka scouring. I won Purge and got slay the warlord off the warpstorm table. Both had linebreaker. 11-9.
Game 5
Last round was against the same guy as in the last tourney report I did here, Allu. He had the exact same Taudar list. Buff commander, 2 riptides (one skyfire burst, one ion), 2x kroots (one big), broadsides with missile drones, farseer on bike, 2x5 avengers in serpents and a wraithknight. Mission was crusade, emperor's will and dawn of war (only dawn of war in the entire tourney).
Allu made me go first. The game started like the last one but this time allu pushed very aggressively towards my deployment zone. The table had a nice row of impassable terrain to jump on top. It kept fatey safe, but it also kept the riptides and wraithknight free with Allu going second. T2 fatey puppet mastered the iontide to shoot at the broadsides with farseer. Result: 1 broadside and 1 drone left. Nice! T5 allu would have snatched a win with crusade (managed to clear one objective) but it went on to t6 where I forced the draw on both missions and snatched all the secondaries. Allu had linebreaker so 12-8 for the Daemons.
End result? Won all my games and came in 3rd. Oh well, gotta love battlepoints. Jukka ended up drawing with Eetu on points so their was a quiz regarding the Winter War (which was the theme of the tournament) to decide the winner. Eetu was off by about a year regarding when the Winter War broke out, whilst Jukka was only 2 weeks. It was actually a pretty funny way to decide the winner, we had a good laugh about it.
Some final thoughts. I was forced to go first 3/5 matches and still won them all. So Daemons aren't dependant on going second. My wins were never big (well if we leave out round 2) which is probably because I hide away for most of the game. The list is really strong and wins all the time, but it can't really smack the other guys head in when given a good matchup. I used the winnings I got to buy a bastion, but I'm also considering revisiting the screamer star. You can use it conservatively (hanging out and shooting stuff) and break it off to 4 contesting units t5, but you can also jam it at the other guy if he can't deal with it. I do loose FMCs in the trade, which means more limited flickering fires (FMCs are more manouverable) and less skyfire. The screamers would just add a threat onto the table, have more manouverability with contesting (not being limited by facings and actually making most of their move in the shooting phase, after you've cleared bubblewrap) and provide that autowin button if you happen to stumble into the right matchup. Dunno if it'll be better. So far I've always returned back to the good old 5 fmc list.
Fatey
Herald with ml3, exalted locus and disc
Herald with ml2, exalted reward and disc
Herald with ml2
10 Horrors
10 Daemonettes
8 Screamers
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch with ml3, wings, armour, exalted and greater reward
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch with ml3, wings, armour, exalted and greater reward
Bastion, comms