Mini Battle Reports - Element Games casual gaming

Hello!

Time for a special 'treat' to end the year - three mini, barely remembered battle reports in one blog entry! This is the three 'casual' games I had against regular-opponent-John at the Element Games Grand Slam that we attended in November, and the last bit of content I've got from that event.

The first two games were played on the night before the event. We both took an extra 1000 point list for casual games against randoms, but having both just come off night shifts we decided socialising was hard and just played against each other a couple of times. My list was detailed here, but in essence it was an Ork Warboss, a Weirdboy, 3 units of 20+ boyz and a Gorkanaut. This would be my first games with the new Ork book, so I was pretty excited to get use out of the new stratagems and stuff. John took a Chaos Lord, Sorcerer, 2 Helbrutes (I think they had autocannons and missile launchers), 2 Contemptors with butcher cannons and 2 decimators with storm lasers. Classic John.

Our first game was... something with objectives? Whatever it was, we lined up like this:

John went first and moved up to get shots off and cover some objectives. He killed some Orks and grabbed a central objective, in front of the Gorkanaut...

In my turn I played the ramming speed stratagem on the 'naut, and rolled that! Ugh! The boyz got in though.

They were unable to bring the dread down though, and in John's turn they were all but destroyed with his combined firepower. However, a few of them clung on...

Enough for the Green Tide stratagem! I also cast Da Jump on the Warboss, putting him in a position to charge the Lord.

The Gorkanaut waddled over to the other side of the board, looming over the dreads in that corner, while a few remaining shoota boyz held an objective.

Charges were made, but John's stompy robots made it our alive, disengaging away on their long legs. Return fire gutted the unit somewhat.

However the Gorkanaut eventually made it in, and made a right mess of one of the Helbrutes.

I remember there was an epic clash between the two warlords, both surviving the other's deadly claws against all odds. John later fell back and shot the Warboss, who managed to hang on on barely any wounds.

Eventually he charged back in to beat up the Contemptor that had escaped the Gorkanaut in turn one. I can't remember if he did kill it, but I'm pretty sure he died shortly after.

Meanwhile the Gorkanaut was very much enjoying his first outing, clearing everything for the right flank, including the other Contemptor. He is an absolute monster in melee! The game ended, with him pretty much my only model left. I'd lost on victory points, but I was happy with the carnage I'd inflicted!

Game two we set up the same armies, but using the same mission and deployment we would be using in game 1 the next morning.

We set up something like this, with me pushing forward in the centre and John's dreads spread out in a wide arc. John decided the Gorkanaut just had to die, and this time he put all of his firepower into it on turn one. It took a hell of a beating, but eventually it fell into a pile of bullet-ridden scrap.

I started moving up. I tried to use Green Tide and Da Jump to pop two units behind John's lines, but Da Jump failed. I them proceeded to fail the charge. Being unable to tie up any of the dreads, and with my hard hitting Gorkanaut dead, I conceded there and then. There was absolutely no question that unit would be destroyed in John's turn, which left me with only some shoota boyz who could either sit back and lose on objectives or charge forward/Da Jump in, and die. And actually, we were quite sleepy.

First two games with the Orks were a close loss, and a crushingly fast defeat, but I was getting a bit of a taste for how they are supposed to work and how with a few key rolls going my way I could have tied up more units, made more charges, cast more powers etc.


So, we jump ahead to the end of day 1 and we've got time for another game. We were going to play a practice game at some point with our two tournament armies, but never managed to schedule it ahead of the event, so we decided to play it halfway through, obviously. If you've been keeping track of things, you'll know that apparently this actually worked, because we both won our last two games.

I was of course running my Adeptus Mechanicus / Imperial Knight Imperium force, as seen here. Roughly speaking, it features A Ryza battalion with Tech Priest Dominus, Enginseer, 5 Rangers, 5 Vanguard, 5 Plasma Destroyers, 2 Fist Kastelans, 2 Blaster Kastelans and Datasmith, then the Knight detachment with 2 Warglaives and the Valiant.

John's list was a very tasty, very beautiful Chaos concoction. An Emperor's Children battalion with a Lord, Sorcerer, 2x10 Cultists and 18 Noise Marines, backed up by a Hellforged Spartan in a superheavy auxiliary and a Renegade Knight detachment with two 'Gallants' and a 'Warglaive'.

For context, in the final standings John and his list finished 12th (and picked up second best army) while I ended up at 45th (out of 86).

I forget what mission we played, but it was on a very pretty board! I think we both knew that, though there were objectives, this was going to be all about killing stuff.

John got first turn, moving his Knights up and targeting the Valiant with the Spartan, which in classic John style, whiffed and left the Knight largely undamaged.

My first turn, and the counter punch was brutal. The Kataphrons moved up and used the Elimination Volley/Plasma Specialists combo to supercharge their plasma culverins and blasted 21 wounds off one of the Gallants. Other shooting easily finished it off, and the Valiant combined with the Armigers critically damaged the other renegade Knight, though not quite finishing it off. This is exactly the situation the Kataphrons excel at, and they absolutely did. They subsequently bought it the next turn when the Noise Marines disembarked, but they had done their job! 

The remaining 'Gallant', the Armiger and the Spartan combined on turn two to kill off one of the Armigers (I think), and put some more wounds on the Valiant, but hilariously the big knight failed it's very short charge into the Valiant after John foolishly used his last command point to rotate ion shields in his charge phase to mitigate the punishing overwatch.

In my turn the Knights cleaned up the last of their former brothers, while the Phosphor blaster robots blasted the noise marines. I think the Valiant charged the last one to slingshot itself up the board.

At this point John pretty much just had the Spartan and cultists left. The Spartan whiffed again, the Valiant finished it off, and John called it there. A convincing victory for the Imperial forces! The servitors were absolutely savage in this game, and the Valiant did the business yet again. At this stage I'm head over heels for the thing, it's absolutely my favourite unit in this army, so it and the pilot need a name.

I've decided that she is named Lady Helena, and she rides The Defiant Flame.

Element Games Grand Slam Results, Thoughts and Conclusions

Hello!

It's been a few weeks now since the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40K event, and I figured I'd write some of my concluding thoughts. First of all, I had a great time! The event was very smoothly run, even down to the staggered arrival of pizzas. All five of my opponents were sporting and entertaining to play, and there were some very pretty armies to look at. The venue is nice, and appropriate amounts of painted scenery was provided. Overall it was a good experience, even for a bit of a fluffy bunny like me. I'd definitely go back.

To recap a little. This is the list I took. My games were, in order, against Chaos, Aeldari, Chaos, Adeptus Astartes and Chaos. (Links provided). I scored 48 out of a maximum 100 tournament points, and I was aiming for 'roughly in the middle'. John on the other hand wasn't doing the maths as we went along, but he had 4 wins and 1 loss.

Before the results though, there was also a best army competition. As mentioned, there were some good looking armies out there, and mine didn't make the cut. Deservedly John was amongst the 8 nominated however, and he ended up picking up second place. (And here's the bit where I try to embed tweets from Element Games, apologies in advance if I screwed it up.)

Best Army Nominations for the 2018 40k EGGS - first half
John Swallow - Aeldari
John Walton - Chaos (Emperor’s Children)
Tim Smith - Imperium
Sam Bocock - Orks (Freebootaz)

thanks to @ArtisOpusLtd who’ve donated a custom engraved Series S Brush Set for the Best Army pic.twitter.com/OlaQEGYVmy

— Element Games (@ElementGames_) November 25, 2018

Best Army Nominations for the 2018 40k EGGS - 2nd half

Dino Kho - Death Guard
Ruben Knab - Adeptus Astartes (Ultramarines)
Nick Davies - Imperium
Michiel Kruijff - Chaos (Nurgle)

thanks to @ArtisOpusLtd who’ve donated a custom engraved Series S Brush Set for the Best Army pic.twitter.com/OvrUToee2J

— Element Games (@ElementGames_) November 25, 2018

So now, to the business end of things. The results came out. I came 45th out of 86. Pretty happy with that. John ended up sitting at 12th, which I'm sure he was very happy with, given that he was preparing himself for 5 tablings after the first game! (Regular readers may not be at all surprised by this.) When the dust settled, there were two players on the maximum 100 tournament points, so the winner was determined by clever maths. Congratulations to Josh Roberts (if, for some reason, he is reading this) who eventually topped the table. Amusingly, Josh was John's first opponent, so I guess there are bragging rights in being able to say the only person who beat him was the one who won the whole thing. It's also worth noting that the top three positions were all Aeldari armies, though Imperium, Chaos, Tau and Orks all made it into the top 10. Lots of soup everywhere, obviously, but all things considered, a good mix of armies making it to the top.

I'm pleased with how my army worked in the end. I came in thinking it would be somewhat held back by the narrative restrictions I impose upon myself, and while yes, it definitely could have been more optimised, it did very well for itself. I expected to face more gunlines, but, possibly because of the amount of large, line of sight blocking terrain, the armies I faced were a bit more varied and weren't able to just delete me on turn one.

The hero for me was definitely the Valiant. Having not had chance to field it before the event, I was half expecting it to be a disappointment, but it absolutely exceeded that! I think it made it to turn 4 or 5 in every game, even surviving a couple of them. The Thundercoil Harpoon was very unreliable, but when it hit, wow, was that satisfying. The real damage came from the Conflagration cannon though, which made it a big threat to pretty much anything. I was also pleased with my choice not to make it the warlord, and instead spend command points at the start of each game to equip it with whatever relic or warlord traits seemed useful. Ion Bulwark obviously saw some use, but I think I got the most out of the Armour of Sainted Ion, which makes low ap weapons almost entirely irrelevant and is very helpful in melee. Useful for a unit you are going to just shove out in front of your opponent's whole army. The Valiant has definitely earnt his or herself a name. Any suggestions?

The Kataphron Destroyers also impressed, again, against my expectations. Being infantry, the ability to move through walls was exceptionally useful in staying out of line of sight for turn one, only to move out and blast away with the Plasma Specialists stratagem. I think perhaps their status as 'trash' units on the internet meant that they came as a bit of a surprise to some of my opponents, who missed the chance to target them early before they could do serious damage. Now that they are significantly cheaper as of chapter approved, they will be a lot easier to slot in. We might see a few more orange AdMech armies in future.

The Kastelan robots proved exceptionally tough, but in terms of damage output they weren't all that impressive. The shooty ones obviously did the business on occasion they were presented with a prime target, but frequently they were unable to get into the best positions or were tied up and unable to do anything. The fist ones were an expected disappointment, the only unit to not really achieve anything all weekend. Overall a good effort all round from the rest of the list. The did me proud.

Well that's about it. Again, I had a great weekend, thanks to everyone involved! The Element Games team run a tight ship. I'd definitely recommend future events to anyone vaguely interested. And that's the end of my EGGS related content! Or is it?

EGGS Game 5 - Imperium vs Chaos

Hello!

Here's the fifth of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

Game 5, I came up against Guy and his cool purple nurgle themed Chaos force. When I brought my army over he sighed a bit at the thought of 'another gunline', to which I assured him this was at least a gunline that would run up and try and kick him in the face as well. His list was something like:

Death Guard
HQ: 2 Daemon Princes
Troops: 3x10 Cultists
Fast attack: 3 Bloat Drones with plague spitters (or 'bin juice guns' as Guy put it)
Heavy Support: 3 Plagueburst Crawlers with plague spitters

Daemons
HQ: Epidemius, Poxbringer
Troops: 2x3 Nurgling swarms

Renegade Knights
Lord of War: 2 Helverins

I think Guy was a bit up against it here. He told me his list was built with the assumption that there would be Orks everywhere so he didn't have as much anti-tank stuff as it turned out he'd need. His army looked pretty tough and had some good damage output but with little to really hurt my Knights or Robots. I definitely didn't think this would be an easy game, but I knew Guy would have some tough choices. The missions were Retrieval and Targets of Opportunity, so the Maelstrom could be especially erratic.

I got first turn, and as was becoming standard procedure the Valiant charged up the middle, and large chunks of the army moved up with it. I'd deliberately put the Kataphron Destroyers out of line of sight of the scary 3 damage autocannons of the Renegade Armigers. I think I drew the big game hunter card, so I pointed the Plasmas, Meltas and whatever else I could find at the bloat drones. One fell, and another was damaged, plus some of the screening cultists were killed. (Hilariously, Guy removed the whole squad out of habit, and had to place some back on the table after realising they could actually pass the leadership test at the end of the turn - which they did.)

First turn for the nurgle force, and the remaining drones and non-warlord Prince charge up the middle to get at my fist robots. Elsewhere the Armigers lined up shots on the shooty Kastelans, but thanks to Aegis Protocols and Shroudpsalm, only one hit actually did damage (which my Datasmith insultingly fixed in my turn). In the fight phase the drones and Prince smashed one of the robots, but one still survived to punch (fairly ineffectually) back. 

Time to go in for the kill on the drones/prince. I drew Area Denial and they were the only things standing there (once the remaining cultists had been removed). I sent one of the Armigers over to a corner to try and clear cultists off an objective they were defending, while the other teamed up with the Valiant to squash the stuff in the middle. The Destroyers overcharged and popped the Plasma Specialists stratagem to blast one of the crawlers to bits. Shooting killed one drone and nearly got the other. In the stompy phase, the Armiger failed to finish off the drone while the Valiant did a jig on the prince, but thanks to suppurating plate he survived. 

At the end of the turn I actually spent command points to keep Area Denial in my hand for more points. First time for everything!

Guy's turn 2, and the Helverins decided to pick on a softer target. One of them shot the Destroyers and killed off 3 of them, putting them out of sight from the other one, forcing it to shoot elsewhere. The Robots and Armigers took a bit of damage, but the prince stayed in combat with the Valiant. His talons tore some more wounds off it, and thanks to casting Miasma of Pestilence, and that suppurating plate again, he survived his kicking once again!

Turn 3. I threw a lot of firepower at the remaining drone, just about managing to finish it off. More shooting put some damage on the Armigers, but importantly the prince finally fell to the Conflagration cannon. The Valiant was now free to run over and mess with the nurgle castle.

Guy popped the nurglings down in the corners of my deployment zone to threaten the objectives, but I thoroughly scrubbed them off eventually with Radium carbines and Phosphor blasters. I also had an Armiger on the far corner objective in his deployment zone, so I was controlling three of the 4 eternal war objectives while still claiming Maelstrom points and blocking in his movement significantly.

Getting up close and personal, the Valiant starting shooting and kicking all over the place, splitting fire, taking hits, being awesome.

Eventually both Armigers fell, along with a crawler after a successful Harpooning. Guy was far behind on points but was going for glory, determined to kill the Valiant! He threw his warlord in, along with all the firepower he could muster. The Valiant stood defiant for a while, kicking the prince to death and surviving a hit from the Poxbringer's sword with a double six on the Taranis 'feel no pain' saves, before finally falling to a smite. Given that this was pretty much the end of the game and the event, and I was far ahead on points, and because it would be really cool, I spent the command points to get it to explode, doing loads of damage and killing the poor Enginseer once again. (I like to think the Knight just fell backwards and crushed him.)

We counted up points at the end but it was a crushing victory to me, 20-0 in tournament points. Not a forgone conclusion, but not a big surprise either, especially as I was rolling pretty hot and Guy's dice were only really interested in keeping that Daemon Prince alive. It was definitely a fun game for me, and I hope Guy had a laugh as well. In the end I put him down as my most sporting opponent. I think I could have justifiably made a case for any of my opponents, but I did especially like that he took the loss in his stride and just wanted to kill the big thing at the end.

Now that I had ended the event on a high note, I checked on John. Turns out he'd just tabled his last opponent, with Imperial soup. Once again his Noise Marines made short work of some flimsy humans. With our final results, we eagerly awaited the overall standings. I was pretty sure I'd got to roughly the middle, and it would be interesting to see just how high John had climbed after his round 1 mauling.

EGGS Game 4 - Imperium vs Adeptus Astartes

Hello!

Here's the forth of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

Game 4. Day 2. With 2 Primarchs already killed, I ran into John (not the regular one) with Guilliman led Howling Griffon Primaris marines. A chance for the hat-trick! His list was something like...

Ultramarines
HQ: Jump pack/thunder hammer Captain, Primaris Librarian
Troops: 3x5 Intercessors
Elites: Primaris Apothecary, Primaris Ancient
Fast Attack: 3 Inceptors aka Jumpy dudes
Heavy Support: 2x5 Hellblasters
Lord of War: Guilliman, Spartan

I think we both knew this looked like a favorable match up for me. I had lots of high damage, high AP weapons that the Primaris would not like one bit. The missions were Resupply Drop and Tactical Escalation.

As an aside, this was a very orange game!

John got first turn, and mostly spent it advancing into position. Shots from the Spartan bounced off Aegis/Shroudpsalm robots, dealing 3 wounds to me and 3 mortal wounds bounced back to him. Some marines, including the Librarian, had moved into a close position behind the middle brown wall, while the rest formed a firing line.

In response, I moved up and made sure my deployment zone was pretty much screened out from the smash captain and jumpy dudes. The Valiant wasn't in range with most of it's weapons, but the rest of my force fired with deadly effect. Many marines were killed, while both Armigers got hits off on the Spartan, dropping it right down to about 6 wounds.

Time for heroes from the Howling Griffons. The Librarian and his one remaining Intercessor buddy ran out in front of the Knights and cast Null Zone. Shooting eventually took down the Armiger, some good saves forcing John to fire all the lascannons from the Spartan at it, just to make sure. The Jumpy dudes also found a spot to land and heavy boltered the Rangers into a fine mist. The Valiant, being a character due to spending command points at the start, heroically intervened into the Librarian. The mighty psyker struck the Knight twice with his force sword, once before, and once after getting kicked in the head.

More firepower from my force blasted away, killing off the recently arrived Inceptors and gutting most of the remaining Primaris squads. Thanks to the ancient, the Hellblasters proved to be more deadly in my turn than in John's, putting wounds on the Armiger and killing one of the Kataphrons. The remaining Warglaive charged in and killed the Apothecary.

With few models left, John dropped the smash captain in for a heroic charge on the Valiant, while Guilliman picked up some maelstrom points by finishing off the Armiger. He just about survived the overwatch and swung away with the Thunder hammer. The Valiant stood on him, but with his last gasps of air, he fought one more time, taking out the Dominus class! I had however saved plenty of command points for this, and thanks to 'Our Darkest Hour', it struggled back up to it's feet!

At this stage we were both picking up Maelstrom points, but with the Eternal War objectives revealed on turn 3 and the board control I had, it looked like I was going to be firmly in the lead. I pushed forward with the Valiant and Kastelans, looking to land a knock out blow. Many Marines fell, and the Valiant took out the Spartan with the Thundercoil harpoon.

Guilliman decided he had had enough of the Valiant, and shot the last wounds off it with his gauntlet. I used Nobel Sacrifice to get it to explode, but sadly it did minimal damage to the Primarch (though it did kill off the Tech-priest Enginseer who had been running after it.) Bobby G then went over to slice the last fist robot in half as well.

The Ancient soon fell, leaving just Guilliman alive for John. He was however still picking up the odd point here and there. To avoid being tabled, and giving me an automatic 20-0 victory, Guilliman hid behind a wall for the remaining turns. I was unable to entice him out and kill him, which gave me a solid, if not complete victory, 15-5. Courage and Honour indeed!

We had plenty of time left, so we played out what would have happened, if Bobby G had charged out on turn 7 for a glorious stab and grabbing some more victory points. It turned out he would have killed my shooting robots and grabbed an objective, before being shot down by Kataphrons. He then would have got back up again, and survived. John worked out that had that all happened, he probably would have scored enough points to draw the game. I think without the benefit of hindsight, he made the right choice though, it would have been a big risk to make that play when it was 'live'. Sadly my dream of 3 dead primarchs was denied either way, but a win is a win, and I happily took the 15 points.

On another table John (the regular opponent one) was playing out an epic Chaos vs Chaos clash, where his Noise Marines had done a number on an awful lot of cultists. The game ended when his opponent, with just Abaddon left on one wound, called that he would kill himself with his daemon sword. And he did. We laughed about that one all day, but importantly that gave John 20 points and put him well up the leaderboard for the final game. I was still pretty far down, but my scored were still progressing positively, and I knew that a solid victory in the last game would put me comfortably mid table.

EGGS Game 3 - Imperium vs Chaos

Hello!

Here's the third of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

Game 3 was against Liam with a Chaos list featuring a couple of Primarchs and their daemon buddies. This looked quite scary to me, though Liam was very concerned about the Valiant, apparently having been on the receiving end of a pair of them recently! His list was something like this:

Thousand Sons:
HQ: 3 Daemon Princes
Lord of War: Magnus

Death Guard:
HQ: Daemon Prince
Troops: 2x10 Cultists
Fast Attack: Spawn, 2 Bloat-drones with Fleshmowers
Lord of War: Mortarion

The missions were Dominate and Destroy and Contact Lost. That meant scoring for both missions would take place all game long, and with the event's kill point difference score, killing units effectively scored double points. This was destined to be a bloodbath.

Liam finished deploying first by virtue of placing the first unit, and got first turn. His force lined up across the board with a big blob of scary daemons slightly offset to the right. I popped the Valiant down last, hiding it off to the left (and out of shot on the picture above - also note, this was after deployment but Liam had just moved the first Bloat-drone.)

The Daemons moved up, psychic powers went off, and Mortarion warp-timed right into my face. He murdered the fist Kastelans in short order, putting mortal wounds out elsewhere with his aura. Consolidation into the shooting bots shut down a chunk of my counter attack.

On my turn, I only really had one option - Mortarion must die! My remaining units surrounded him, including the Valiant moving into harpoon range, and I pulled the trigger. It took pretty much everything, but when the dust settled the daemon primarch had been blasted back to the warp! Unfortunately there was another one on the way.

Liam's turn 2 was brutal. Magnus and a pair of princes, accompanied by one of the mower-drones, moved up into close range. Between smites and melee, the Kataphrons and both Armigers fell, leaving me with few units remaining in the fight. Seems like I'd have to rely on the Valiant to destroy Magnus...

And this is where he stood! The Valiant opened up and a second primarch was felled. Take that, warpspawn! Shooting from the Kastelans also put some hurt on a prince, but I still felt like I was being overwhelmed.

Over the next few turns, the Valiant went about proving that it was, as they say, an absolute unit. Smites, fleshmowers and daemonic talons chipped away at it, but the mighty war machine stood tall, and eventually killed off all the drones and princes!

By this stage, we had both been accumulating maelstrom points and been claiming out home objectives with our troops units (and the spawn), and on points it was very, very close. Now that I had cleared all the big daemons, I was able to start firing some long range shots over, destroying one unit of cultists with the remaining Kastelan. Then the game ended after turn 5. Tallying up the points, Liam had just held on to the lead by about 4 points. With the Valiant still standing and a 'defend objective' card mid way through to completion in my hand, I think if the game had gone on, I would have claimed it.

Liam's narrow victory gave him 12 tournament points to my 8. This was a fantastic game that went right to the wire. I'd like to think I played this one pretty well under the pressure of a wave of giant daemons crashing against my lines, but in reality I panicked and just threw the Valiant at the problem. And it worked! Elsewhere John defeated another Imperium army, putting him into a decent position for day 2. I was now sitting on 3 losses, but I was scoring progressively more points so I was still hopeful that I could make up some ground.

EGGS Game 2 - Imperium vs Aeldari

Hello!

Here's the second of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

Game 2 was against Tess and his Aeldari. We were on table 36, out of 40-something, which cheered me up a bit, suggesting plenty of people got tabled in round one! The pointy eared foe opposite me was less of a reason to cheer. A tough soup list that Tess confessed was dirty, he had just been on the receiving end of another scary Eldar list to get down to the bottom half for game 2. From memory, and please forgive that I do not know the space elves very well...

Ynnari
HQ: Yvraine, Farseer on jetbike
Troops: 3x5 Dire Avengers
Fast Attack: Shining Spears
Heavy Support: Dark Reapers

Alaitoc
HQ: 2 Warlocks
Troops: 5 Dire Avengers, 2x5 Rangers
Transport: Wave Serpent

Black Heart
HQ: Archon
Heavy Support: 3 Disintegrator Ravagers

Can't remember how many were in some of the squads, but it was a sizable number of aspect warriors, a good range of psychic powers and synergies, and lots of mobility. It would also hit hard at range and in melee. I've not really played Eldar much at all in 8th, so I wasn't quite sure how this would go, only that if all the powers went off at the right times, I was probably in trouble!

The missions were Big Guns Never Tire and Deadlock.

We both deployed with many of our units out of line of sight or far away from the front lines, with the main exception of the Valiant that got plonked down front and center. I got first turn, and moved up to get some shots off. The punchy robots going around the wall following the Armiger. Some long range shots hit the Ravagers, plinking off a few wounds without doing any serious damage. I think I picked up some points for holding objectives, but did not achieve too much.

Tess moved the Serpent out after it had dropped off it's cargo. Dire Avengers moved to claim objectives and the Dark Reapers poked out from behind the blue wall to blast the Armiger/Robots. The Spears zoomed over to behind the wall, but a lackluster psychic phase meant the were unable to move again twice and get into position to charge, so opted to stay behind the wall instead. Combined fire from the Ravagers and Reapers killed off the Armiger at the top of the board and wounded one of the fist Kastelans. First blood and some points, but I got lucky enough to save me from Shining Spears for a turn.

Sensing this was my opportunity to put the pressure on, the Valiant went balls-to-the-wall, marching down the middle of the board and splitting fire over the Eldar lines. Armiger moved to try and clear Avengers off an objective in order to defend it, while the fist bots moved up to punch some more aspect warriors. Destroyers and the dakka bots opened up and downed a couple of damaged Ravagers, before the Valiant stripped some wounds of the Serpent and set fire to the Spears. I got a little unlucky and only killed 2 or 3 of them, leaving the unit still strong enough the threaten my gun line. The Armiger and Robots both failed to remove their respective Avengers.

The Eldar responded to the Imperial aggression with similar gusto. The Spears moved up and jumped over the servitors, finding themselves in range to blast my characters. Elsewhere the Rangers arrived in a far corner away from most of my forces. The Eldar psykers began casting their spells, but one of the Warlocks managed to get a perils that caused him to explode with enough force to kill off a couple of the Reapers and the other Warlock! Apparently the warp was very fickle today. Between the Reapers and the remaining Ravager, the punchy robots fell. Shooting and melee from the laser lances of the Shining Spears took out both of my Tech-priests, the Kataphrons and one of the phosphor bots. Ouch! The remaining robot was locked in the Protector protocols so would be unable to move away, denying me the chance to burn the Spears again. It did manage to take down a wounded Spear in combat though. I forget how I did it, but towards the end of the turn I used a stratagem that Tess tried to deny with Agents of Vect, but he rolled a one so failed and left himself with one command point.

Turn 3, and now all stratagems cost double! I'd managed to save four command points, so that would be two stratagems. Tess only had one left so he was effectively out. The Armiger rounded the corner to kill off the Avengers and defend the objective while ending up outside of line of sight. The Valiant did some flaming before moving in to kick those jetbikes! Across the board, my 5 Rangers marched up with the Chant of the Remorseless Fist ringing in their ears, and moved to engage the 10 Eldar Rangers. Good shooting dropped one of the units to 1 model, that they finished off in combat, but they were unable to drive their pointy eared equivalents off a defended objective. In combat the Valiant took out a few more spears, but left them outside of melee range, enabling them to charge back in.

Which they did in the Eldar turn, along with the Wave Serpent, after it got peppered by disintegrators and reaper launchers. Eventually the Dominus class was brought down to only a few wounds. 

With Machine Spirit Resurgent, the Valiant went off on a wounded rampage! It flamed the Reapers, harpooned the Ravager and kicked Yvraine in the face. In Tess's turn the Knight finally fell, and I used Noble Sacrifice to cause it to explode, killing off the last of the Reapers and wounding the remaining characters. It was glorious. In other news my Rangers won the battle of the Rangers, finishing off the Eldar in combat.

At this stage we were getting close to the end, in turn 5 and almost neck and neck on points. Then Tess drew Domination. With his remaining units and their mobility, he was able to score all 6 objectives and claim 5 maelstrom points, then the game ended and he also picked up all the Eternal War objectives. A big swing his way at the end gave him a solid victory. I think it was 15-5 in his favour.

This was a really fun game, and it felt like I was right in it until the end. I'd lost again, but I felt a lot better about it, and I was certainly not going to end up with 0 points! John had done better still, picking up a win against the Adepta Sororitas, having to kill Celestine twice!

EGGS Game 1 - Imperium vs Chaos

Hello!

Here's the first of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

My opponent for the first game was Jonathan, who had brought a mixed chaos force of Heretic Astartes, Thousand Sons and Daemons with lots of bodies. Off the top of my head, it was something like this:

Black Legion:
HQ: Abaddon, Exalted Champion, Sorcerer
Troops: 40 Cultists, 2x10 Cultists
Elites: 8 Berserkers, 3 Obliterators
Transport: Rhino

Thousand Sons:
HQ: Ahriman, Terminator Sorcerer, Daemon Prince
Troops: 30 Tzaangors, 2x10 Cultists

Daemons:
HQ: Herald of Slaanesh
Troops: 3 Nurgling swarms.

I definitely thought his list was more optimised than mine, and I've not really had much experience against this kind of army, so I wasn't expecting it to go well. Regardless, I didn't think it was a complete forgone conclusion. The missions running simultaneously were Scouring and Tactical Gambit.

Unsurprisingly I finished deployment first and ended up going first. I used my troops to screen out the back of my deployment zone from deep strikers, aware that Jonathan had placed several units in reserve and had the Dark Matter Crystal available to jump the Tzaangors into my lines. Line of sight was severely restricted and the chaos forces made good use of the cover available to force my shooting to target mostly cultists. The Armigers drew a bead on the Rhino full of 'zerkers but failed to destroy it, and the Valiant and robots killed some cultists.

In response, the Chaos forces moved up cautiously, keeping the reserves off the board and staying out of line of sight where possible. Then the crystal activated and the Tzaangors materialised 9 inches from one of the Armigers. A command re-roll was used to get them into combat, and the successfully tied down the Warglaive and the Rangers hiding in the ruin behind it.

In turn 2, I made my biggest mistake. I decided the Tzaangors had to be dealt with, and threw the punchy robots and my characters in to fight them. I also moved my shooty robots to get line of sight on the Rhino, which brought them close enough to be consolidated into. Very foolish of me! In hindsight, thanks to buffs from psychic powers and fearlessness from Abaddon, the Tzaangors were never going anywhere with the few attacks I could throw at them. I definitely should have moved everything that could the opposite direction, as far away from them as possible! Elsewhere the Valiant set fire to some cultists, but I assumed (correctly) that they would return shortly with Tide of Traitors. It also launched a missile at the Black Legion Sorcerer with Oathbreaker Guidance System, but apparently the missile hit a wall instead as the Sorcerer rolled a 6 for his save in cover.

Jonathan's turn 2 and the trap is sprung! Obliterators popped down to target the Valiant, the cultists faded away and turned up in the far corner of my deployment zone, the Berserkers got out and headed to all my units locked up in combat, and a series of sorcerers lined up to Smite the Valiant. Thanks to some stratagem use and some mediocre rolls, the Valiant came off lightly, but the 'zerkers hit like a truck and removed the fist robots, one of which exploded with Machine Spirit's Revenge. The Cultists failed their charge in to the Kataphron Destroyers, but they were ideally positioned to chase them down for the rest of the game, and with the dakka bots all tied up, I didn't really have anything to stop them.

My turn 3, and the Maelstrom cards looked interesting. Witch Hunter and Blood and Guts were in my hand, plus a possibly achievable objective, so I gambled for 3 points, with the Slaanesh Herald in sight of the Valiant. It lined up to blast the Obliterators, but that cheeky herald pulled out a relic gem that caused it to be unable to shoot! These Chaos guys have got some sweet loot! I opted to blast the Oblits with supercharged, Plasma Specialist Destroyers, but rolled poorly to only kill a single model, even doing 3 damage with each wound! The free Armiger tried to snipe the Terminator Sorcerer with it's thermal spear, but failed. Finally both Knights charged the Herald, and whiffed. To add insult to injury, the Herald killed the already injured Armiger and consolidation from the big Tzaangor fight claimed the objective I was trying to secure. This put me firmly on the back foot!

The rest of the game was mostly the story of Jonathan's forces wrapping up most of my army and slowly grinding it down. The Valiant stood firm against a charge from Abaddon and friends, who then ran away from it, in case it exploded, after his sword rebelled a couple of times. It eventually fell, I think after I finally stomped on that Herald, but by that point I was far, far behind on points. I managed to end turn 5 as time ran out with some models remaining on the board, but with the scored added up, a convincing victory for Chaos, and 20 tournament points to Jonathan, 0 to me.

It was a tough match, and I really needed my dice and my brain to give me some help. Sadly neither really stepped up, and I didn't manage to put up much of a fight. It was somewhat comforting to learn John had also lost badly, his Emperor's Children/Renegade Knights being tabled by an Aeldari list with four flyers.

Not a great start, but with 4 games left to play, my lofty goal of 'somewhere in the middle' was still achievable.