This weekend was my second local tournament using my Harlequin force. it was an 1850 point tournament without any kind of restrictions/comp score. the list I brought was (using Codex:DE names for simplicity...):
Archon - drugs, huskblade, soultrap, shadowfield, blast pistol
Heamonculus1 - WWP, venom blade
Heamonculus2 - WWP, venom blade, crucible of malediction
7 incubi - klaivex with glaives
7 harlequins - shadowseer, master, 2 fusion pistols, kisses
4 trueborn - blasters
15 wyches - leader w/agonizer, 2 shardnets, haywires
15 wyches - leader w/agonizer/, 2 razorflails, haywires
10 wyches - leader w/agonizer/blast pistol, haywires
6 reavers - heat lances, cluster caltrops
Talos - CC weapon, chainflails, haywire blaster
This is probably the list I will use at Adepticon. I like how it plays, though it is very hit or miss. when it has a bad day, it really has a bad day. I didn't go into this tournament expecting to win anything, the monthly tournaments tend to have a ton of very hard lists/good players, and the final score includes a large painting section, which I would not be claiming full points in this month (I'm getting there, but still have 30+ bases to do and ~ 10 models).
In addition, this tournament used missions taken from the Adepticon primer missions that were published a little while back. However, to keep things simpler and fit the missions in better with our normal tournament point structure, only one objective counted for w/l/d in each mission, the other objectives granted bonus points. the missions can be found at: http://www.adepticon.org/wpfiles/201...hampPrimer.pdf
I unfortunately did not bring a camera, so still no pictures of my army on the table... oh well. I promise there will be pictures soon. so far I have gotten really good feedback from people who have seen my army at the store, so thank you to all of you who have seen the army in action :-)
The Rounds
round 1:
Round 1 was against a "S6 Spamming" Eldar army. He had Eldrad, 4 squads of min avengers in serpents, 2 squads of min fire dragons in serpents (all the serpents had Scatter Lasers and cannons), 2 vypers with Scatter lasers and cannons, a falcon with (guess what?) scatter lasers and cannon, and 2 fire prisms. it was a min-maxed list designed to bring a crapload of shots and as many tanks as possible in 1850. it might not be super strong against some lists, but I knew my foot-slogging T3 army was going to have a tough time of it. I think in the entire game I only got to take 2 or 3 FnP saves.
mission was 3 objectives, pitched battle deployment. bonus points for kill points, killing an HQ and 2 extra points for killing the most expensive unit. my drug roll gave my a 1... so I got to run a little faster.
The first 4 turns were pretty nasty for my army. I took out Eldrad's serpent and a FD serpent on turn 2, but lost both my large wych squads in return. turn 3 I got into combat against Eldrad, 5 avengers and 5 fire dragons with my archon and incubi. I killed everything (and stole Eldrad's soul) and hid in a wreck but it wasn't enough. a bucket of dice later (and almost no misses with Twin Linked lasers) and all my incubi and their archon buddy were toast. the archon survived a good number of shadowfield saves, but there were too many instant death shots coming his way.
Things turned around on turn 5 with my harlequins toasting 2 serpents, my talos coming in and wrecking a serpent and my reavers harassing a prism. at the end of 5 I held one objective and contested the others. the game went on 2 more turns, and by the end of 7 my reavers and talos had mopped up all of the tanks. in the end, my opponent was down to one pinned squad of avengers and no objectives.
Round 2:
Round 2 was on table 2 against a chaos marine player. he had abbadon (who doesn't?), a lash sorcerer on bike, one of each cult squad in rhinos (in their correct numbers) and 2 3-man oblit squads. mission was spearhead with a primary objective that had us trying to hold table quarters. my drug was a bit better this time and I got +1 S, great against a marine army, and one of my favorites to get for any game.
I had first turn and dropped my gates near his oblit squad on either flank. he killed off my cheap heamonculus. the archon and a big wych squad and the small wych squad came in right away and reached both oblit squads. the archon's group killed 2 and wounded the last one for very few casualties, the small wyches lost but stuck around against the other squad. the next turn chaos piled in against the archon with berserkers, but because of models being in the way Abbadon couldn't wuite make it in. that ended up being big. the archon's group killed the last oblit and held their own against the berserkers. this ended up being the main assault in the game. eventually Abbadon got in there and killed my archon, some plague marines joined in, and my incubi came in. in the end, the last few wyches killed abbadon and survived to hold the quarter. elsewhere I managed to kill off almost all of his models, solidly holding 2 quarters. he ended the game with a single rhino full of noise marines, but it was contested by my reavers.
another win for the dark eldar, and would mean I would go into the final round on a high table. there were several blood angel and dark eldar players that had won 2 games, so I figured I would likely play one of them. instead my final round would be against Splug and his new Templar army
Round 3
Round 3 would be my first game against the new Templars. the first game in years against Templars period. I knew it was going to be a tough matchup with the help Templars got in the recent FAQs. Splug had a marshal, the champion, several brethren squads in rhinos, 2 las/plas squads and 2 terminator squads (1 shooty squad, 1 assault squad in land raider). the land raider had blessed hull...
Mission was very similar to round 1, 5 objectives with bonus points for kill points and killing the enemy commander. deployment was pitched battle. for drugs I rolled a 6 and got a bunch of pain tokens.
this game didn't go as well as the other rounds. on turn 2 I didn't get the squads I needed, and then rolled badly for fleet rolls, meaning I wouldn't be able to assault the shooty termies I had been aiming for. instead I took out a rhino, but that left my wyches in a bad open spot. Splug shot and assaulted that squad, killing most of them. my archon got 3 wounds on the marshal, but his new shiny storm shield blocked all 3 (actually, he rolled 3 6s in a row for those saves...). he also spotted my harlequin unit from 20 inches away and killed most of them.
that pretty much set the tone for the game. I came in very piecemeal, and when stuff came in they didn't do so well. the archon got some help from my incubi and killed off the marshal's squad but the marshal still survived with no problem. all of my anti-tank failed. I missed every singe shot from blasters, blast pistols, heat lances and my haywire blaster (actually the haywire hit, then rolled a dud). Through the entire game I didn't kill any vehicles. I immobilized one rhino in close combat, but then it actually managed to remobilize itself. wyches ran from a combat after losing a single wych and ran off the table.
the one minor victory was finally killing the Marshal and capturing his soul. unfotunately, in the same round of combat that he took the soul, my archon fled from combat. In the end, I was tabled by round 5
Overall I was happy with my army. Two solid wins using the Adepticon primer missions makes me feel at least somewhat confident that I won't embarass myself next month. I won't be expecting to place in Chicago, but I think I should be able to win a few rounds. When the dice are in my favor this army rocks. but when I have a bad round, Dark Eldar tend to die in droves.
Jury is still out on the Talos/Cronos debate. The Talos did ok for himself this time, but wasn't really inspiring. he broke a few wave serpents and a rhino, but bounced right off of a Land Raider. The Cronos is nice for all of the extra pain tokens he gives out. FnP on wyches before they charge in is awesome. but the Cronos itself is terrible when he gets close to the enemy. I still have at least a couple more rounds to play before the big tournament to decide. Right now I think I'm leaning towards a Cronos...
No comments:
Post a Comment