Monday 10 November 2014

Blog wars 8 - The aftermath



I attended blog wars 8 this Saturday, and had an absolutely great time. Alex at 'from the fang' ran another spectacular event, that was alot of fun and had a great atmosphere. I faced three cool dudes in all my games, and no broken lists were involved too :). I wont write a turn by turn battle report, but will give a little run down of the games and my thoughts on how my list performed for each one.

My first game was against a great chap called Jamie, who was running a crimson fist list with inq allies. He had 2 units of sternguard in pods with combi melta's, an honour guard unit with chapter master and pedro Cantor, two units of scouts, a ven dread and a formation of storm raven and storm talon. This was a very close game and I managed to win it in the last turn by managing to take down his strom raven and destroying his honour guard and hq's the turn before. My TWC and lord were the stars of the show for this game. They single handedly destroyed both units above in combat, and the lord with Krakenbone sword was an absolute BEAST! The rest of my list was pretty so-so, with the vindicator dying without firing a shot, and the dreadnoughts all dying without doing much at all (if anything). Most of that was due to poor deployment on my part, as I was way too aggressive with them, Nd Jamie was able to either melta them in the back, or take them down with his flyers that I did not have an answer for. A narrow victory for me.

My second game was against a CSM list played by a fella called John (another nice guy and blog wars virgin). His list was all nurgle based, with typhus in a land raider with plague marines, x3 6 man squads with melta's in rhinos, oblits and two heldrakes. I played this game very poorly, making some silly mistakes in deployment and being way too aggressive with my dreadnoughts again. I lost the game turn 6 as John's heldrakes were able to annihilate me with impunity all game and then claimed my home objective last turn (which I had failed to protect, choosing to commit all my forces to the fight). I had a chance to take out his rhino turn 5 but chose to shoot his plague marines in a building with my LR. The rhino then promptly went and scored the centre objective on his turn, as I had been a numpty and forgot it was objective secured, where as my blood claws holding it were not (his heldrake also killed a load of them, making them flee from it anyways). My barrage of mistakes was then added to by misplacing murderfang on arrival on turn 5 ( he mishapped off the table turn 4) and blocking my twc from charging his unit claiming his home objective. I thoroughly deserved to lose this game as i made some very poor choices, and even though my dice rolling was pretty poor, it was no excuse for the complete lack of tactical acumen I showed this game. Fair play to John who took advantage of the situation and gave me a 30-0 drubbing. Ouch!

So for game 3 I played a lovely gent named Sam, who was taking a GK list with white scars allies. He had Draigo with a large unit of paladins, two dreadnights with swords, incinerators and teleporters and x2 5 man bike squads with melta/grav guns. His kist was pretty small model count wise but it really hit hard and worked very well for the mission we were playing. His pally unit took the centre objective early game and stayed there demolishing my troops with fire power, while his dreadknights zipped round claiming the others and racking up points. The game basically tuned into a massive ruck in the middle of the board between draigo and pals, my twc and lord, murderface and ven dread. The combat eventually ended when my lord mamaged to spear draigo on the end of his krakenbone sword and then go on to take out a dreadnight (his second), and all the pallies were wiped out in the previous round, as they had been ground down to 1 wound models across the board. It was such an epic fight, but at the end of it when the dust had settled I had come out 3 points ahead on objectives! A narrow win for me.

I made some silly mistakes during all my games, and I felt that the lack of playtesting with my list really hurt me, as I had no idea how my army would function on the tabletop, or if it would be effective in the mission set-up. I made a stupid list building mistake, forgetting that land raiders have a squad capacity of 12, as I had hought a unit of 14 blood claws to ride inside. They spent the three games foot slogging it across the board getting shot and being generally ineffective, while my land raider was pretty useless too. I really suffered from a lack of anti air fire, as two of my opponents ran flyers and were able to dominate the board with them (at the end of the tourney I bought the new SW flying brick to try and combat this in future). The star of the show was the thunder lord though. In all three games he was a massive threat, taking down dreadnights, storm ravens, hq's ect and scaring the living daylights out of my opponents. Next time I will run two units of twc as they were great too. I finished 13th overall, which is not too shabby, and I had a great time to boot :).The next blog wars is in June and I will certainly be there, hopefully with my Dark eldar this time.
Till next time

Nafnaf out!


12 comments:

  1. Nice to meet you, I played Sam too in my second game. Draigo is a beast, Deathleaper did absolutely nothing to him with 6 ST6 Rending attacks @ WS9!

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    1. It was good to meet you too and your nids looked absolutely stunning. Yep Draigo took an incredible time to die and my only saving grace was a storm shield on my lord. The amount of psychic powers they can knock out too is insane.

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    2. I think I may be giving up on the Psychic phase. I've gone on record as enjoying the randomness of gaining your psychic powers but without Catalyst it's a real struggle for nids. It's certainly made me think about a number of blog posts and how my army will be composed in the future although there are just too many variables for nids at the moment...

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    3. Do any of the new creatures help with this? It is a shame that nids are struggling in the psychic phase, when it should be one of the armies strengths. The amount of power dice GK and demons kick out can shut down pretty much any armies powers nowadays. I personally hate the idea of a demon summoning army, as I would be powerless against it. Every time a unit does another 3 + greater demon are summoned. Insane!

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    4. The psychic phase does seem to have become very all or nothing if you want to get more than 1 or 2 powers off, especially with Tyranids when it's generally costing 170+ points for each psyker and none of them generate more than 2 dice. I was able to run fairly rampant with casting powers against both of you, but really struggled to get many off when faced with another Grey Knight army (with more dice than I had, alas!) in my first game.

      It was a pleasure to play against both of you and both games were fantastically close, coming down to the last turn or two, which always makes things more entertaining.

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    5. Yes it was a very close great game :). Your powers were just awesome, and I really struggled to get through them or even dispel any. I might look at adding a psycher to my list but not sure if just one will make any difference tbh. Hopefully catch you at the next blog wars, I really enjoyed our game, suitably epic :)

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  2. I am jealous all you guys can meet up and play. I'm a bit envious looking at these posts from the other pond when I'm constantly checking out your blogs and seeing all the fun stuffs you are doing! :) MORE PHOTOS GUYS!

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    1. Ah but you guys have awesome stuff like Nova, Lvo and adepticon that I would love to have in this country. It is cool to meet up with other bloggers though, and blog wars is a nice friendly tournament too. I epically failed to take any photos this time as I got too involved in my games to remember. I will have my blogging hat on next time though and make sure I get some. There were some nice looking armies

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  3. I still can't believe how long that combat raged on for in the middle of the board. It probably would have ended a lot sooner if Murderfang hadn't flubbed a majority of his attacks when he charged in.

    Your Thunderwolf Lord was indeed a beast though - he took down both Dreadknights and Draigo and still wouldn't die!

    Kudos for a great looking army and very entertaining and close game.

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    1. Hehe 8 just cant believe how hard as nails your paladins and draigo were. It felt like it took me the whole game to kill anything :). I was pretty bummed about murderface over the whole day tbh. He either fluffed his attacks or died before he could swing most of the time. Got to give him another chance i think and not be so aggressive with my dreads.

      My lord was an absolute beast I agree :). Most certainly be running him again. Hopefully catch you at the next blog wars

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    2. He does seem like a classic glass cannon - absolutely brutal on the attack, but just a dread defensively at the end of the day. Your Axe/Shield ven dread was much tougher to take down.

      The toughness all came back to the psychic phase really. As I said above, it's very all or nothing now and my 9 dice vs your 0 made it virtually impossible for you to stop anything. Having said that, I got very lucky getting both Sanctuary and Forewarning as they made a huge difference. It's no coincidence that the turn I failed to get either of them off was the turn my Paladins finally caved in :)

      I'll definitely be at the next blog wars and I look forward to seeing you there! :)

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    3. Aye but your powers made it a suitably epic game :). I will be there too but hoping to bring my Dark Eldar, if I can get them painted in time. Def look forward to catching you there again, and hopefully we will face off against each other again for another epic fight :)

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