Spartan Games Ascension Tournament 1500 pts overall review

 Heya all and welcome back to the webway!

Today I have participate in a local tournament in a store named Spartan Games Arena, as a result of several factors, but primarily due to the prospect that I may meet some people I know and also due to the beckoning of my current gaming group. Here's the pic of my army;

My army list is quite simple;

Duke Sliscus
1 squad of 9 Kabalites in a Raider with Splinter Racks, Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
1 squad of 10 Kabalites in a Raider with Splinter Racks, Grisly Trophies and Flickerfield
3 squads of 5  Wyches with Haywire Grenades in Venoms with two  Splinter Cannons
1  squad  of 9 Reavers with 3 Heat  Lances and an Arena Champion with Venom Blade
2 Ravagers with Flickerfield
1 Razorwing with Flickerfield

The list that I am using is done as a result of me being unable to secure my Eldar allied detachment models in time for a true WYSIWYG, thus forcing me to use a less powerful list for the tournament.

For this tournament there are 20 players in total participating, with a surprising mix of armies. The main thing I noticed is the fact that there are a total of three Dark Eldar players and this oddly enough made us one of the largest Xenos contingents alongside the Tau. Chaos is ever present, with the Daemon presence being rather strong as compared to the CSM side. As usual Marines of every heraldic colour were present, and some lonesome armies. This brings us to the next surprising element of the tournament; no serpent spam and no Cronair. This actually made me rather happy in a sense.

However, quite a number of top players are in the event and I am honestly a little intimidated by their presence despite the fact that I once played with a majority of them on a regular basis.

The two pics below are when the players are gathering at the store and also the TO's of the tournament. One of the TO is actually my Deepstriking guru, which already made my day that much better. Also to my surprise, I managed to meet a number of my old gaming buddies from my ex-LGS (including in this rank of players is Mr.Chaos of painting fame (yes, I know him in real -life)).

Here are the pics of my gaming group's armies.

Top to bottom: Redeye's Tau, David's Ravenwing, Wong's Flyer spam/Tiggy Combo and Chris'  Farsight/Tau Empire army. 

As you can see, my buddies actually came in with some rather brutal lists for the tournament, while my list is relatively weaker in comparison. Below are the armies of my fellow GC comrades from a long time ago (I see them from time to time, but not on the tabletop).

From top to bottom:  MrChaos' Orks, Kadir's Khornate host, Dann's Haemonculi coven and Joe's Daemons

Personally, I tend to notice that my roots as a balanced player comes from my days as a GC gamer, and it is from these people that I learned my approach to battle. That and having thematic armies. MrChaos went on to win Best Painted Army and also Best Sportsmanship, while Joe went on to becoming 2nd place in the tourney while Kadir won the biggest lucky draw of the day; the starter set for Dropzone Commander.

Of course there are also some other players as well, with a significant presence from Legio Malaysia, the premier gaming club in the nation. Things have changed since my day, and I am personally a ronin these days so fuck being part of a specific club (Lawl). Nonetheless here are pics of some of the other armies;

 My overall performance in the tournament is well beyond my expectations; I managed to earn the maximum amount of points for my first two games and managed to be one of the main contenders for winning the tournament while my buddies have rather mixed results in their games. Quite the irony when one consider that my list is perhaps the weakest among my buddies.

Top to Bottom: 1st Game: DE vs Dark Angels, 2nd Game: De vs Draigowing, 3rd game: De vs DE/Eldar 

 My first game is essentially my army doing a divide and conquer upon all his forces and I totally annihilated his army within the 5 turn bracket.  My second game is a much more annoying prospect as 20 Paladins is a pain in the ass, especially with 8 psycannons and tons of storm bolters shooting at me but I managed to win by the virtue of having a scoring unit within his deployment zone.

However, it was in the third game that I met my match, and the Serpent is arguably the MVP of my opponent as it does as it pleases against my army. I had a chance to kill it off with  haywire grenades and also killing another Ravager in turn, but alas the dice gods decided that this battle will be where I fall hard. Thus I was almost annihilated as a result of the Serpent raping my stuff left and right. Unfortunately for me, this also means that I lost my chance of becoming the tournament champion, as my last battle is the battle between the two highest scoring generals. Due to the crushing defeat, I am pushed down to 7th place out of 20 players. Nonetheless as a result of the number of players, I am still one of the top players in the tournament at the time.

The top three armies for the tournament are;

1)Dark Eldar/Eldar
2)Daemons
3)Tau

Other than the Dark Eldar/Eldar, the other armies' position are consistent with the current meta of the game.

My overall experience in this tournament tells me that as a pure force, Dark Eldar has a lot going for them but to really win the tournament I must ally in some Eldar stuff to become a force to be reckoned with. In addition, I find myself a little too rash in some of my decisions which may work for me or against me. Some form of temperance is needed in my method of war.

Also, I am rather surprised in my performance today as this is one of my better runs in a tournament with my Dark Eldar. This makes me rather glad that I came for this tournament, as I am able to test the waters for the tournament in Malaysia and allow myself a little bit of knowledge of some of the top players in the nation since I have left the country.

Last but not least, I got some goodies for participating. For a fee of 10 USD, I got myself these few things as part of the goody bag. Trophies are overrated in my opinion, but things I can really use in real-life is much better for me.

And now for me to lick my wounds, and enjoy its dull sensation of pain and ecstasy..........see ya all next time!

First round of playing with the Dark-Eldar Eldar alliance

Heya all and welcome back to the webway!

Yesterday at my game store, fully half of the players are all playing Eldar in many incarnations (including myself playing them as allies) and I must say that there are a lot of things that sparked my interest.While I was waiting for a game, I managed to take a sneak peek at some of the capabilities of the Eldar against IG and Dark Angels Greenwing Dakka banner line.

I saw how two Wraithlords ignored an IG gunline and just bashed their brains out senseless while in the other game I saw how the scorpions literally shred the Greenwing lines before they could even strike back, collapsing the entire formation. Also in both of those games I saw how amazing Warp Spiders were as they jump, Battle Focus, and then jump some more and how Wave Serpents literally became the bane of transports with their weird shield weapon + scatter laser combo. So far I have not seen any of the new toys except the Spiritseer, and even then I can see that the Spiritseer could work in certain builds.

As for my own experiences with Eldar; 

1) Prescience and Guide are the shiznit for Dark Eldar! in my game against a Footdar, I never seen my ravagers shot so beautifully, and 24  BS 4 twin-linked scatter lasers is just outright brutal.

 2) Scorpion mandiblasters are a very big annoyance towards my Incubi squad. Those things could potentially whittle me down little by little as the combat drags on. Luckily for me, I managed to kill two squads of 10 -men scorpions with my squad of 6 Incubi and kitted-out Archon with a venom blade.

Unfortunately attrition is such that only my Archon is left with a single wound and three pain token.The main reasons why I survived the way I did is all thanks to the pain tokens and the fact that my Incubi strike at the same initiative as the Scorpions, but with a better WS and a Str 4 AP2 weapon.  The FNP bonus from the Haemonculus' pain tokens also helped in surviving the Mandiblaster shots. Have to be more careful when facing against Scorpions again.

3) Battle focus makes Footdar even more viable than before, and makes harassment tactics even more painful than before. Throughout my game, my War Walkers and my Eldar opponent's Warp Spiders have been harassing each other's flanks to hell and back.

Allthough I feel that the book has some issues with external balances, but overall the book is good for Dark Eldar if you know what you really want from your allied detachment. In my case, mine is more to have a force-multiplier to make my Dark Eldar function in a more consistent manner. I will be testing it out further to create a fun but at the same time strong list.

Aug 25th - Other Worlds 1500 pt 40k NOVA Tourname

Heya all, I do not know if you guys play around the Portland area like I do, but if you do I would like to promote the Other Worlds Games version of the NOVA style Tournament. Although I will be unable to make it for this tournament as I will be out of town to visit my sister, but nonetheless as a person who truly supports my LGS I would like for others to come in and have some fun with this tournament format.

P.S: The wording on the promotional event sheet is meant for all point levels, so do not be worried that there is double FOC in 1500 pts as the event will definitely follow the guidelines from the rulebook.

Aug 25th - Other Worlds 1500 pt 40k NOVA Tournament

Other Worlds Games
6350 SW Capitol Highway Portland, OR
(503)244-0290

We'll be using 2012 NOVA open style missions for each game with army lists of 1500 points.

We are also using the GW FAQS, NOVA FAQ and our own FAQ:OWG FAQ

We are only using the missions format from the NOVA Open. We are not using the other rules from the NOVA Primer.

That means:
Fortifications - In!
Allies - In!
Double Focs - In!
Mysterious Objectives - In!
Warlord Traits - In!
Random Psychic power selection - In!

Terrain & Fortifications:
Terrain will be set-up ahead of time by the T.O. because of time constraints on the tournament. When deploying fortifications, the players will deploy their fortifications on the table by starting with the player that deployed first and alternating between each player until all fortifications are deployed. Fortifications must replace a similar amount of terrain features on the table to the area that the fortification takes up. The removed terrain should be placed to the side of the table to be collected by the T.O. Fortifications can only be placed in their controlling player's deployment zone.

Power Weapons:
In any case where a model is equipped with one or more Power Weapons, you must both MODEL the weapon to the appropriate type (Sword, Ax, Maul, Lance), and list which weapon is equipped on that particular model within your Army List.

We will be playing three 2 hour games with the following time conditions:
- All games go at least 6 turns, or until time runs out.
- At the end of game turn 6, roll a d6: on a 1- 3, the game ends; on a 4-6, play a 7th turn until time runs out.
- Do not begin a new game turn of any kind if there are less than 20 minutes remaining in the round.

All players must bring 5 typed copies of their army lists to the tournament. There is no minimum standard of painting required, non-GW models are welcome to the board, all scratch built models must be approved by the T.O. prior to the tournament. All models must be as WISYWG as possible.

T.O. email: rosecityminis@gmail.com

Buy in is $15 dollars and all prizes will once again be in the form of store credit! First place will have the option to use part of their prize to buy one of the few remaining 25th Anniversary Space Marine Models!

In order to reserve your spot, you must register and pay for the tournament otherwise you just may miss out on a seat.

Doors will open at 11am and play will begin as close to 12:00pm as possible. Play will continue until 6pm or as close to that as we can get.

There are no scheduled breaks during this tournament. You can of course bring food in or order it to the store. Please no outside sodas in the store as we sell several kinds. Bringing in you own coffee, tea, or water is perfectly fine.

The Outcast's Challenge - Dark Eldar Vs Eldar 1500 pts

Heya all, and now without further ado, my newest battle report. Read on.....

Vespera has finally recuperated, or to be exact reformed after her unfortunate incident with the Space Marine whom she now knows as Draigo. She was essentially dead in body, but alive in spirit when they came back to the Dark City, and she was forced into one of the Coven's sarcophagi to heal her injuries in full. A destroyed liver, severed intestines, a ruptured lung, broken ribs....those injuries would have killed a lesser Dark Eldar. But of course she is not a lesser Dark Eldar. Nonetheless The Haemonculus of the Giggling Suffering have told her tat she should not push her body too much, and instead enjoy the little things in life.

Take What is Ours - Dark Eldar Vs Chaos Space Marines 1500 pts Battle Report

It's been a while since I have written a battle report, and I am now writing one of my more memorable battle reports, as it is a while since I have played a 1500 pts game. Too bad I did not take any pics, as I was kinda in the mood after a few months worth of 40k abstinence/withdrawal. 

Without further ado here's the battle report.