On Saturday the 23rd I brought my completed daemons to a 1750 point tournament at my friendly local gaming store. I ended up finished towards the bottom of the pack but more because of the missions than anything else. The tournament was being run by a new guy..... who has a lot to learn still. I'm still a little pissed about the end results. Hopefully he either gets his shit together or they replace him. I know a few of the other players talked with him and the store owner a bit after the event, so I'm hopeful that any future events will be handled better. Anyway, on to the report.
2 Great Unclean Ones with Breath of Chaos, Cloud of Flies, and Instrument of Chaos
3 squads of 6 Fiends of Slaanesh, one with Unholy Strength
3 squads of 5 Plaguebearers
3 Daemon Princes with Mark of Nurgle, Breath of Chaos, Noxious Touch, Cloud of Flies, and Iron Hide
Game one:
This was really the best one of the day for me. My opponent was a cool guy who played extremely well. The game was down to the wire. He was playing Witch Hunters. He had a cannoness with a jump pack and eviscerator, an inquisitor lord with plasma toting friends, 2 squads of celestians with 2 meltaguns in immolators, 2 squads if sisters in rhinos, 3 exorcists, and a blob of guardsmen with autocannons and a commissar.
Deployment was Dawn of War with a king of the hill style mission. One objective was placed in the center of the table and points would be scored for each HQ or Elite unit near the objective at the end of the game. Sadly this mission was probably the best of the day, the concept was good, but having the scoring units be HQs and Elites screwed over a bunch of the armies. A couple people only had 1 HQ and no elites to try to win with. If troops had counted as scoring the mission would have been much better. Thankfully my opponent and I both had plenty of units to score with, so the game was interesting down to the end.
I won the roll and let my opponent go first. He set up the infantry blob and his inquisitor spread out near the objective at the center. The Chaos Gods frowned upon me a I got the wrong half of my force on turn one. Instead of landing with all my big monsters, I landed with my 3 groups of Fiends and 2 groups of Plaguebearers. I dropped the fiends a safe distance from his troops. One group of Plaguebearers mishaped and were placed in the far corner, they would play no part in the game. He unloaded into the fiends, killing a couple. On my turn 2 I got a few monsters in and assaulted the blob with 2 groups of Fiends, doing massive damage. My opponent could have held, but made the smart play and killed off his commissar letting the group be destroyed. This left my Fiends high and dry for a full round of shooting from his whole army. I lost most of them during his following turn, but still had enough that they dished out some more damage to the rest of his army the following turns. The rest of the game consisted of me desperately trying to get my Great Unclean Ones close to the objective. My opponents play was excellent, he maneuvered his tanks to prevent me from getting anywhere close with one of them. At the end of the game my opponent still had one celestian sitting on the objective who had passed the last 8 armour saves in a row. I had one GUO nearby and another too far out to make a difference.
End result: Draw
Post game: I felt I played pretty well really. Getting the wrong wave really screwed my plans. I wanted to have my tough stuff down early so I could preserve my elites until the end game for extra points. The only major error I felt was in charging the infantry blob with multiple groups of fiends. My best option should have probably been to charge with my group of plaguebearers, keeping my fiends back for the following turn. In the end though, my opponent just outplayed me. He played smart and pulled the draw even though I came 4 models away from tabling him. Turn 7 would have seen him wiped out. Great game, one of the hardest fought I've played in a while.
Game 2
My opponent was running Nids. He had 4 tervigons, 2 groups of gaunts, 2 groups of winged warriors, and a group of zoanthropes. I was not happy with this opponent. He's one of the slowest players I've met, and is playing a time consuming army. His first game only made it to turn 3. I rushed my turns as much as possible, and frequently pushed him to hurry up. It also didn't help that he argued every damn rule. The bit that really pissed me off was when he knocked one of my Daemon Princes off the table and didn't apologize. It broke off the base when it fell and he didn't say a word, just picked it up and put it back on the table. I was really pissed. I've had models knocked off the table before, shit happens, but to not even apologize is way past rude. If I never play against this guy again, it will be too soon.
As for the game, the mission was complete crap. Almost every game was decided by turn 3 thanks to poorly thought out mission objectives. One of my friends had lost his game on turn one, before he even got a chance to move. I won't go into the details of the mission, they're not worth repeating. Lets just call it badly designed and move on. As of turn 3 my game was already decided as a draw. I went ahead and tried to table my opponent, which I managed at the end of turn 5. Despite that the game was still ruled a draw.
End result: Draw
Post game: Missions need to be designed so that the victor isn't determined before the last turn. Having the games decided before the end ruins the experience since there's no reason to keep fighting. Hopefully the TO has learned his lesson and will at least test the missions before using them next time.
Game 3
I was up against an all biker Ork army. He was running Wazdakka, a warboss on a bike, 2 squads of nob bikers, 2 squads of normal bikers, 2 deffkoptas, and a random rocket buggy. I was pretty sure I was in deep shit before this game even started. My complete absence of strength 8 shots would mean no instant death on the bikers, and with them all tricked out for would allocation I was in for an uphill battle. The mission was kill points too, which didn't help my cause really. He was the only person at the tourney with fewer than me. And without an objective to encourage him to close with me, I can't reliably engage him with my monsters.
I got stuck with the first turn and chose to drop my 3 groups of fiends since they were the only things in my army fast enough to catch his bikes. He rolled on with both groups of nob bikers and shot down a couple fiends. On my turn I dropped a couple of big monster and spread a few wounds on the nobs with Breath. I sent a group of fiends charging into each squad of nobs hoping to hold them in place for a turn so I could get my big guys into HtH. It didn't work. He wiped out both units of fiends taking only a single casualty on each squad. On his turn he boosted to the other side of the board. I tried again with my remaining group of fiends with the same result. At that point the game was pretty much over. He could just zip around the table and shoot me to death.
Result: Massacred
Post game: I think I started off at a bit of a disadvantage on this one, but I really should have played it quite differently. My biggest mistake was underestimating the durability of the the nob bikers. Their decent save combined with FNP make them pretty tough for my army to deal with. My best bet would have been to concentrate on a single group instead of spreading the damage between the 2. Even then I'm not sure I could have pulled it off. I look forward to getting another game against his army though. It seems like it'd be a good learning experience.
Post Tournament: Sadly this event was probably the worst one I've attended in all the years I've been playing. Bad missions, a dick opponent, and some absurd painting scores (that I won't even discuss, I'm still furious about it) combined to make this much less than it should have been. I was annoyed enough that I seriously considered making it my last tournament at that store. I've been playing at that store for years and to have an experience so much worse than all my others was very disheartening. I talked with my last round opponent about a week later who talked me into giving the place, and the TO another chance. The store is running a 2k event this month that I'm planning to bring the daemons to again. Hopefully things will be better.
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