Legion of the Damned Challenge

Yet another fight club challenge has come and gone, this is the first one I have written of on the blog, but this is a bi-annual (that's the one that happens twice a year right?) event that I often make a point of attending. We call it a challenge instead of a tournament because the main goal at this event is not to win, but to have fun and share with our clubmates what we have been up to over the past 6 months in modelling and painting. We play not for prizes, but for trophies and there are 7 that we hand out. The trophies are: best overall, best sportsmanship, best general, best painted, best list, best neophyte (member who has yet to win a trophy at a challenge), and best army.

At last years fall challenge I won my first trophy for best army, with my Necrons. This weekend I won best army list.

Anyway I figure I'd give a run down of my games and give you an idea of what went right and what went wrong...

Mark dye, loss 1 pt
My first game was against long standing member Mark Dye. He was playing codex space marines with one rhino, two tac squads, a terminator squad, an assault squad, a unit of sterngaurd, and a devastator squad with 4 different heavy weapons.

I've played him many times against this very list at previous challenges and I usually have no problem with it. I use my usual castle in a corner and redeploy across the board right before the opponent gets to me tactic (jetbikes TB out while the rest veil to an open pocket somewhere. holding the rest of my warriors in reserve) Normally I am able to filter an opponent like this into a location that would leave at least one objective open or my long range weapons pepper them to get ahead by one kill point and just hold that lead. Unfortunately the challenge is all about unorthodox missions and this one had three objectives that deepstruck onto the table. All the odjectives landed in his pocket of models that were moving forward completely switching the roles as such as I was going to have to move him off the the objectives in order to get to them.

The game came down to the wire and I made a mistake moving my lord and his retinue so I was just barely in his assault squad's threat bubble and he assaulted me for the wipe taking away my turn 5 DS to claim two objectives that landed 3" apart. We went to time so there was no recovery for me. I also ended up with two negative battle modifiers and no positive resulting with me having only 1 point when a loss gives you three.... So I was off to a bad start.


Mike, Win 11 pts
My next game was against Mike, a Black Templars player. My recollection of his list is very fuzzy, although I remember him having a drop pod with termies w/ 2 assault cannons. As well as some form of power armoured units w/ a marshall inside a land raider. As well as two units that appeared to be devastatoresque and a venerable dreadnought.

This scenario is definitely one of the most oddball that I have ever played, it was kill points with a baneblade on the table as a third player. The baneblade always moves forward 6" and then fires each of it's weapons at a different target and cycles through all of it's targets in closest to farthest order.

This was my fourth time playing the mission so I knew what to expect, unfortunately this was Mike's first time and he didn't read the scenario close enough. I won the die roll and gave him first turn. He deployed everything except the drop pod. I reserved everything. The first two turns of the game involved the Baneblade lighting up his army while he scrambled for cover. The baneblade ended up wiping out his devastatoresque squads except one model each, so when my destroyers came on they were two easy kill points. My lord and scarabs TBd on when they came on then proceeded to shred the baneblade over the next couple turns ultimately claiming three kill points for me (1 for each structure point). The game pretty much involved me dodging his army and letting the baneblade do my killing for me I won 5kp to 1. With 11 battlepoints at the end (10 for the win, plus 1 bonus point)

Andy, Draw 8 pts
My last game of the day was against the ringer, Andy. He was playing a white scars all bike list with 2 vindicators and a whirlwind. This was a mission using some seriously modified sentry rules. Due to the unique nature of his list he had nothing he could take as sentries and he took defender. Essentially allowing me to deploy all of my warriors anywhere on the board as long as one was within 4" to set off the alarm to begin the actual game. Escalation rules were in effect so I started with only my three units of warriors and my foot lord on the table. I made the crucial mistake of deploying with all of my guys 4" away from his two 5-man squads of bikes and Korsarro and his retinue. I thought I could effectively castrate his list with 70 bolter shots and and a staff of light firing into his bikes before he had a chance to do anything. Unfortunately Khan's command group was very resilient and I only ended up killing one of his bike squads and one member of Khan's command group in my initial volley. Khan proceeded to assault and wipe my guys off the board in the next two turns and I phased out on turn three before my jet bikes even made it on the table. Luckily Andy was the ringer so the worst I could do was a draw for 6 points, I also ended up getting two bonus points ending with 8 battlepoints... not bad for getting phased.

Joe, Loss, 5 pts
Day two began with a loss against the player who ended up winning the Neophyte trophy. The mission was 6 objectives on a VERY heavily terrained board where all terrain counted as difficult dangerous. He was playing nids with a pimped out Warrior prime and warrior retinue (boneswords all around, all glands, and sacs, regen on the prime). He also had two 20 strong genestealer units that had sacs, glands, and talons as well as a fully upgraded broodlord. the only other unit he could afford was a 7 strong unit of Ymgarls. This mission allowed you to pick up objectives and take them with you but you dropped them is you ran, or partook in assault. You had to be carrying an objective to score. I successfully dodged his army for most the game and at the end he was down to a unit of about 10 genestealers that was carrying 2 objectives and a warrior hiding with one wound remaining holding one objective. I had two warrior squads each holding an objective, all of my destroyers, my lord and my destroyer lord left. It ended on 5 but if it would have gone on my destroyers would have been in a position to open fire on the genestealers catching them w/o cover and wiping them out for the win. Unfortunately as it was I ended up losing with full bonus points and 1 negative point. Overall though the game was very fun and Joe ended up with my vote for best opponent.

Brandon, win, 12 pts
Unfortunately it ended up that I was paired up against the ringer again for round 5 and there was no other way to do pairings so we ended up pulling out a new ringer for my round 5 opponent. He was playing necrons with two 15 man squads of warriors, a deceiver, a lord with an orb and phylactery accompanied by 10 immortals, and 5 destroyers.

The mission was similar to the baneblade mission except that there were 3 chimeras and 2 sentinels with random loadouts and each chimera holding an objective. This mission was a very messy affair with both of us fighting on the center of the board for objectives. Since almost no models were dying and his deceiver didn't come in until turn 5 we ended up going to turn 5 and going to time. This mission involved the same carrying the objectives rules as the previous so I was able to keep my unit of warriors w/ objective back and I assaulted his unit carrying his objective resulting in him dropping it. As a result the game ended with me holding an objective and the other being on the ground (the third was destroyed since it was in a chimera that exploded) Resulting in me with full points and 2 negativc modifiers (I think, I was getting pretty tired by the end)

All in all I was far from being in the running for best general but I had a ton of fun and that is what was important.

Playing my Necrons lately has made me want to update my army to 2k points and bring that to Spocon as apposed to my Chaos Marines.

This is the list I am rolling around in my head right now:

HQ: 410
Lord: Veil, Orb (200)
D-Lord: D-body, phase shifter, chronometron, gaze of flame, phylactery, warscythe (210)
(considering changing to d-body, shifter, orb, scythe)
Elite: 384
8 Immortals: 192
8 Immortals: 192
Troop: 540
10 Warriors: 180
10 Warriors: 180
10 Warriors: 180
Fast: 428
3 destroyers: 150
3 destroyers: 150
8 Scarabs w/ D-fields: 128
Heavy: 235
Monolith: 235

Total: 1997

This list has a TON more firepower than my current list although I will be taking a hit in troops.
It would give me a big distraction for the first couple turns in the monolith as my opponent struggles to deal with it or lets me play some shenanigans with it if they ignore it. The immortals are a MUCH better unit to play Veil dodge with as they put out 18 Str 5 24" shots as apposed to the 30 Str 4 12" shots I am getting now. Allowing me much safer deep strike locations and a far more resilient (and smaller surface area) unit to put down. This is at the cost of scoring however but I have been playing around a little with sending my lord back to pick up some warriors for turn 5 deep strike fun.

Anyways my brain is going a mile a minute after this tourney and there are too many ideas going for me at once so I am going to go ahead and end this post here but stay tuned for more of my wacky adventures later.

The Legion of Despair is coming.

I am presently in the process of gearing up my Necrons for the Legion of the Damned challenge. They are unfortunately the only army I have that is even remotely close to being fully painted and soon I hope to make them fully based as well. Yes I do not run a monolith in my tournament list. The are two reasons for this, the first being that my monolith is not available to me since I decided to have it professionally painted... Two years ago by a local artist... It is still a WIP and I haven't heard anything about it for months. The second reason is that locally Monoliths are considered very cheesy (strangely enough, destroyers aren't too frowned upon, I plan on making people realize their mistake) anyway I try and avoid taking anything that my opponents dislike going up against if possible.

Just a quickie I figured I would post in case someone eventually stumbled on to my blog.
More to come!