While I was out of action as a player for family reasons a whole new game centre opened up nearby, so I decided to try them out and signed up for their regular Thursday evening session

 

Turns out one of the players has been paired with a Kroot list for his first game of the Bristol Super-major. A match made in heaven. So I went for a practice game against Jason and his Tzeentch chaos daemons. His list is Scintillating Legion: Belakor, Kairos, a couple of lords of change with enhancements and then a scattering of minor units like flamers, screamers etc. 

 

Sweeping Engagement, Terraform, UKTC terrain

 

Deployment was more or less as expected other than me putting one unit of vespid in reserve as I was going to run out of space in my deployment zone to hide things.

 

We rolled to go first and I won. I would have rather gone second but such is the dice. I still take fixed cleanse and engage on all fronts

 

Turn 1

 

I push up onto the right side objective in force, push up a few hounds with Rampager support on the left objective. I sit just short of the middle objective with the bulk of my infantry. I have most of my krootox on the right hand flank with Shadowsun to try to get a shooting lane. No shooting, he is hidden. Maximum secondaries

 

His turn he pushes up onto my weak forces on my left flank and demonstrates the power of Sustained D3 into my rampagers. In the middle he only pushes out some Flamers. 

 

Turn 2

 

I hold my right hand objective and begin to push kroot into the middle, I have now terraformed all 3 objectives in the middle. Still very little killing going on as I plink off some flamers. With my hounds vanishing I drop some vespid into his backfield to collect table quarters and get maximum secondary again

 

He still sits back using indirect to wear me down although its not that super-effective. Still he has it and is playing another cagey game. He holds the middle objective on my left and he shoots a load of stuff into my middle to stop me holding the middle objective

 

Turn 3

 

I begin to push my 20-kroot unit and this is the first time I actually get to use that unit at all. I fail to get it onto the middle objective having left it too far back previously. I can no longer max out my secondaries, I only have 3 table quarters and can only cleanse once. Vespid shoot and whiff. Ghostkeel shoots and whiffs. Farstalkers appear in his backfield having Rejoined the Hunt but they do very little with their shooting into the unit he has camping his home objective. I do kill belakor and it was not as hard as I had expected.

 

Now he begins to really push into me, although he is still careful to clean out my vespid and begins to pummel stuff. My ghostkeel goes the way of all things and while kroot are dying I still have plenty left. He pushes a lord of change into my deployment zone to score secondaries. His last unit of screamers come in and jointly with his other unit they kill my farstalkers.

 

Turns 4 & 5

 

Leaving my big unit of kroot out of position really hurts me by this stage and with a failed charge of 7" on turn 5 they never make it. I do kill most of his stuff and by the end of my turn 5 he has 2 models really left (a slightly wounded lord of change and a single flamer camping an objective). But I am out of position to score and that is going to make the difference. 

 

He draws his secondaries, has to CP to redraw one and gets overwhelming force. For no good reason at all i had left a Lone Spear toe-in on my home objective. He kills that for enough VP to beat me by exactly one point

 

Chaos win 67-66

 

A really enjoyable fun game. Also a real learning experience for me

 

1. UKTC terrain was new to me. I didn't get the shooting lanes right and I got things so my models got in the way of each other in the middle of the game due to congestion

 

2. I was far too cautious and too worried about all those big tough monsters. Turns out I can kill them better than I expected, if I push and throw the odd grenade I can (and did) kill 2 in a turn. Also he could not kill me as well as I feared.

 

3. Diverting onto the left hand objective was a mistake. It did help with my congestion problem in the middle but I should have danced around behind the terrain to avoid direct fire shooting and to hold onto that table quarter as long as possible. 

 

4. I lapsed concentration on turn 5 and made a move (putting the lone spear touching the objective) for no reason at all. Not moving it would have won me the game

 

5. Fixed secondaries are too predictable for my opponent. Looks like I have to go back to tactical - but to be honest my play speed is coming along nicely and maybe this is not a compromise I need to take for play speed reasons.

 

Behind some of this was the fact that I was not using the app to score myself (my opponent was) so I did not have the app to pressure me to keep up with my normal scoring pace. I  fell a long way off my usual VP target. Feeling the pressure of the score by looking at the app might have brought me to my senses and got me to push more kroot onto the centre objective earlier and then I would have score more in the mid-to-high 80's that I really should be scoring in this game. 

 

List thoughts

 

I will put the list below. The main tweak here was to take some more Vespid. I think Vespid are going to be good in 11th - or at least better than they are in 10th and they are pretty good. So this is an experiment I will continue

 

The ghostkeel and shadowsun under-performed again. Inevitably into an army with 4++ and ample rerolls they would always struggle but they basically did nothing. Krootox Riders on the other hand buried those demons in dice and got the job done. Also I assaulted one demon prince and deleted it in melee with them. 

 

Much as I like the idea of the lone op effect with my list it does not really work with the ghostkeel - it simply does not have the range to attack and then stay out of danger against opposition with Fly keyword. By turn 3 or so I just can't afford to flood just one part of the table that much. Looking ahead to 11th the changed cover rules really hurt the ghostkeel - it becomes highly dependent on markerlights and squeezing those into my list for it feels like throwing more points after points which are already poorly spent. Time to put on my thinking cap

 

That big unit of 20 kroot is off-putting for many opponents. I rather think I want another of those. Meanwhile yet again I barely got any value out of the Trail shaper. I think that guy is going to be swapped out for another war shaper - once again looking ahead to 11th rules and the greater importance of being able to remove battle shock.

 

+ DETACHMENT: Kroot Hunting Pack (Hunter's Instincts)
+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1990pts
 

Commander Shadowsun (100 pts): Warlord
Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin
Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin
Kroot Lone-spear (90 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin, Enhancement: Kroothawk Flock (+10 pts)
Kroot Trail Shaper (55 pts): Kroot rifle, Shaper's blade
Kroot War Shaper (60 pts): Dart-bow and tri-blade, Enhancement: Root-carved Weapons (+10 pts)
The Twin Lance (185 pts)
 

20x Kroot Carnivores (140 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts)
 

1x Ghostkeel Battlesuit (160 pts): Battlesuit support system, Ghostkeel fists, Fusion collider, Twin fusion blaster
12x Kroot Farstalkers (85 pts)
5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts): 5 with Ripping fangs
5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts): 5 with Ripping fangs
3x Krootox Rampagers (85 pts): 3 with Hunting blades, Kroot pistol and hunting javelins, Rampager fists
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon
3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon
5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts)
5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts)
5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts)