Tourney Report: April Throne of Skulls 2011

[Chaplain Admetus]

Hey guys,

As some of you may know, this weekend just gone was the April GT here in the UK, and having never been before I decided to rock up along with a couple of mates and my beloved Angels Sanguine and see how I got on. Played some great games, and five awesome opponents, and had an absolute blast! Also got to meet a couple of notable fellow B&C members - IronFatherRik (who I went with) and his Sons of Medusa, Captain Idaho and his Ultramarines, and Insane Psychopath and his Space Wolves.

So, without further ado, I'll present my list, followed by the round by round matchups and results! (yes, I'll keep you on tenterhooks as to how I did, because I'm just that cruel :P)

 

The list:

HQ

Brother Librarian Raphael - Librarian with Jump Pack, Shield of Sanguinius and Unleash Rage

 

Elites

Sternguard Squad Anael - Sergeant with boltgun and power fist, 3 vets with combi-meltas, 1 vet with meltagun, 2 vets with boltgun, drop pod

Sanguinary Priest Jophiel - Sanguinary Priest with bolt pistol, chainsword and blood chalice

Sanguinary Priest Zerachiel - Sanguinary Priest with bolt pistol, power weapon, jump pack and blood chalice

 

Troops

Tactical Squad Gabriel - 10 marines, power fist, meltagun, multi-melta, rhino

Assault Squad Uriel - 10 marines, thunder hammer, jump packs

Assault Squad Cassiel - 9 marines, power fist, flamer, plasma pistol, rhino

 

Fast Attack

Baal Predator Ramiel - t-l assault cannon and heavy bolter sponsons

 

Heavy Support

Devastator Squad Sachiel - 5 devastators, 4 missile launchers

 

Yeah, I know its nothing remotely like a power list, and that Blood Angels have plenty more powerful army options available to them, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see how well the list performed in the end :). I like that it doesn't use any of the typically "beardy" or much feared BA units, instead relying on typical marine style with the force multipliers of the librarian and dual priest.

 

Round One - Trial By Fire

Opponent: Paul with Salamanders. Mission: Annhilation, Dawn of War

My opponent at my very first GT game was a friendly Salamanders player by the name of Paul. He kindly watched the table whilst I grabbed some breakfast, and they rolled for mission before I got back through. Turns out, the deployment and mission type that are weakest for my army - fantastic. His list from memory: Vulkan, terminator librarian with null zone and gate of infinity, 5 hammernators, thunderfire cannon in a pod, dread with multi-melta and heavy flamer in a pod, tac squad with meltagun, multi-melta (I think, not certain), fist (I think) and combi-melta in a pod, tactical squad with combi melta, fist, plasma cannon in a rhino, and a vindicator.

 

After about 5 successive ties, someone finally won the roll-off and Paul ended up taking first turn (can't remember who won, but I was going to give him first turn if he got it). He deployed the rhino squad in a ruin in his deployment zone, I deployed my tac squad behind a forest in their rhino. My flying assault squad and devastators succumbed to the red thirst, and I declined to sieze the initiative. Turn 1, his pods with dread and tac squad dropped in by my rhino (oops... deployment cock up on my part there, I put it down to tiredness), the thunderfire moved on without its pod, the rhino moved out of terrain to be replaced by the vindicator, and vulkan and the hammernators came on walking towards my rhino. In the shooting phase, despite having the re-rolls from Vulkan and 3 meltaguns pointed at it, he managed to rip the storm bolter off my rhino, stun it and immobilise it, but the metal box held strong! In my turn, the devastators moved on and took up position on a hill, the 2 assault squads came on in prime position to assault his tacticals, the sternguard podded in and meltad the vindicator in the back, destroying it. The rhino for the assault squad moved round behind a hill near his pods. I planned on moving out of the tactical rhino, meltaing then fisting the dread, then assaulting it, but decided to stay in the safety of my box. Then my opponent quite rightly pointed out I couldn't shoot from it because it was stunned. Fail. The tactical squad broke from shooting, and were escorted off the table by my empty rhino (it got slagged later on, but by this point another squad was able to do it). On his turn 2, hell broke loose, with the dread assaulting my big squad, and combat over several turns taking down my priest and librarian, but the thunder hammer got it in the end. Over the course of the game, all the hammernators got shot to death, and vulkan and the librarian got down to 1 wound each, but were then assaulted by both assault squad simulataneously (yeah, they didn't like that and died horribly and in much pain). Given that we both had a lot of easy to kill transports, the game was quite bloody, but once vulkan, librarian and hammernators were down, I had the game in the bag. Despite playing like a muppet for deployment and turn 1, I ground it out to win 10-7, him only having a techmarine, tac squad, and rhino left alive at the end of the game. An auspicious start, and off to game 2!

[Chaplain Admetus]

Round Two - Vengeance for a Fallen Brother

In round two, they matched everyone up against the same race as best they could. I'd been speaking to Iron Father Rik afterwards (after watching the end of his game) and it turned out he'd been beaten 10 kill points to 2 (his army does NOT like DoW Annhilation), and I found out that my opponent for round 2 was Keiren, the same player that had beaten him in round 1! So, with trepidation (IronFatherRik is a competent player and it sounded like a 1 sided match), I attempted to seek vengeance for a fallen friend.

Keiren's list (again, from memory): Tycho, Sternguard, Stormraven, 5 DC with some bling, rhino, Lemartes, 5 Sanguinary Guard, Multi-melta attack bike, and 5 assault marines. Oh, and a DC furioso with Blood Talons.

Mission: Pitched Battle - Sieze ground (3 objectives).

I was confident on objectives, since he only had 5 scoring models in his entire army, however I was worried about being wiped out by assault power. However, it turns out Keiren didn't quite have a handle on how his army worked. He started with Tycho and the Sternguard deployed in the raven, dread inside as well, on the left (all directions are from my perspective). Sanguinary guard on the right, near the attack bike, assault squad on the left on an objective, and the rhino with DC inside in the middle. However, it was at this point I became aware of the presence of Lemartes, as he placed him behind the rhino. It turns out that Keiren was under the impression that Lemartes was an Independent Character, but I corrected him that he was in fact an upgrade character. Was a perfectly honest mistake, and he seemed happy to be corrected. The problem is, in order for the DC to be less than rubbish, he had to put them in the raven, and Tycho and the sternguard had to start on foot (he couldn't deploy in the rhino because it was a dedicated transport), but I told him there was nothing to stop him from starting behind it and moving in turn 1. Anyway, this changed the dynamic of the army completely.

His first turn he moved the raven and shot at me, but the shield of sanguinius prevented me from losing more than 1 marine. Everything else came at me except the assault marines. My sternguard podded in where they had the option to shoot the assault squad, or the raven if the devs failed. Turns out the devs failed to do anything to it, so I tried the sternguards combi meltas. 8 S8 shots at a stormraven in total. End result: no lascannon. Fortunately he wasn't very aggressive with it, and I wrecked it turn 2, the baal was then able to kite the DC into a useless corner, and the assault squad charged and battered the sanguinary guard into oblivion. The multi-melta from the tac squad melted the attack bike, and the sternguard continued protracted assault with the squad (keiren had charged in his second turn). Over the rest of the game, the assault squad then killed Tycho and his sternguard, my sternguard beat the assault squad (meant I couldn't lose), and I slowly took his army apart. The game went all the way to turn 7, but I held all 3 objectives, and with the final shot of the game my last remaining devastator fired a krak missile to kill lemartes, for the wipeout. Given that his mistake changed his army dynamic and he was quite model-light, I was able to outmanoevre and defeat him. I was worried up until the point where the stormraven got dropped, but beyond there it was plain-sailing.

 

I'm absolutely exhausted now, but I'll be back later today or tomorrow to add the remaining 3 reports!

[SincaiN]

Nice work.. congrats on the 2 wins so far

[Glendor]

I am sorry but I am really lazy and would like to know the points value at the tournament. Sounds like you did a great job and I like your list

[Chaplain Admetus]

Woops, sorry, should maybe have made that clear - the UK GTs are 1500 points, but going up to 1750 from October onwards (unless thats a failed experiment and they revert back). Anyway, I've recuperated from the long journey so I'm going to blast out the next three and an overall summary.

 

Round 3 - An Enemy in the Shadows

For this round, I was playing against a chap named Adam with a very nice looking Raven Guard army. And I'm going to go on record - Adam is quite possibly the nicest opponent I've ever faced. Friendly, good sportsman, had a smile on his face throughout even when the dice were going against him, took everything with good grace. His list was captain with dual claws, librarian with null zone and avenger (the 2 marine players I played with librarians both had null zone, which is utterly useless against my army, I think I was a bit fortunate in that regard), 10 tacticals with fist, melta, combi melta and multimelta in a pod (joined by the 2 characters), some sternguard in a pod (forget how many), another tactical squad in a pod (not certain on weapon load out, I think there was a melta), 10 assault marines with a thunder hammer, a typhoon squadron (2 landspeeders), a land speeder storm, and 5 scouts with shotguns and a combi-melta on the sarge. Mission was capture and control spearhead. Adam won the roll and elected to allow me to go first, I deployed my objective in the boards only ruin on the top floor, guarded by a combat squad of tacticals with a multimelta (the only combat squad I did all tournament), with devastators on the middle floor for fire support. The rest of my army deployed on the edge of my zone, going straight for his objective near a hill roughly on the halfway line, over on the right hand side of the table (my objective was on the left). Adam left everything in reserve, with the scouts in the storm outflanking.

Turn 1, I went all out for his objective, popping smoke on my vehicles. The sternguard attempted to pod in right next to the objective, but scattered a full 11" back towards the middle of the board. With nothing to shoot, it was his first turn. He podded in his sternguard near mine, and the tac squad with characters near my assault squad. he combat squadded, with the meltas in one half shooting my Baal (but the smoke saved it), and the characters in the other. He attempted to avenger my assault squad, but Brother Librarian Raphael was having none of that and hooded it. The sternguard unloaded vengeance rounds and took my sternguard down to 3 models. Turn 2, my baal and sternguard shot his to ribbons, and my assault squads made short work of his 2 combat squads with attached characters. Adam's turn 2 is where things started to go wrong for him, with just the storm turning up. The combi melta missed, but the heavy bolter ripped into the back of my Baal and blew it to pieces. In my third turn, I advanced on his objective some more, shot at the offending speeder, and then took some gratuitous shots at the pods that were hanging around in the absence of anything better to do with my time. On his turn 3, the assault squad turned up from his board edge and began the long, lonely trek to my objective, rolling a terrible run roll. The storm decided discretion was key and buggered off to the corner. Turn 4 was again me consolidating on his objective, and taking pot shots at the assault marines. Then things got interesting with the arrival of Adams second tac squad, right near the ruin. As the assault squad advanced, it was suddenly 10 against almost 20 as I valiantly attempted to defend my objective, with shooting killing a few models, and the assault squad getting ever closer. Turn 5, potentially the final turn, and I fanned out my large assault squad in a ring roughly 3" away from Adams objective, in an attempt to prevent the storm or typhoon from being able to contest it, with the foot squad plugging a gap at the back and holding it. I took some pot shots at the tacticals encroaching on my position. Adams typhoons came on, and instead of trying to blow me off his objective, he put all he had at mine, desperately trying to ruin my brave marines. The tactical squad moved up, shot my tacticals, and the flamers from the assault squad as well as pistols ruined my devastators, and his few remaining tactical marines rolled 1 too short to make it up a level into combat with mine. Adam rolled for the game to continue, and his spate of low numbers insisted on happening and he got a 1, with the game ending. He was very unlucky with his reserve rolls, but that meant I had to play around it right at the end. Still, a wins a win, and I finished day 1 on 3 wins. The pairings for the next day went up before we went home, and I asked around and found that on day 2 I'd start on the dizzying heights of table 2, against Henry and his mech Guard

[Chaplain Admetus]

Round 4 - The Iron Curtain

This game, I was up against Henry and an extremely powerful Mech Guard army. His list revolved around 2 hydras, 2 punishers, a manticore, 2 foot guardsmen squads, some squads with melta and plasma in chimeras, a vendetta, and some psykers in a chimera. The mission was Dawn of War, sieze ground (4 objectives). I won the roll and decided to go second.

This game was by far the least interesting of the 5, so I won't go into much detail. Pure and simple, I got absolutely caned. A strong player with a strong list, and my army can't deal with such a high concentration of armour values. Henry played flawlessly, and spanked me into the middle of next week, aided by me making a few mistakes. I conceded on turn 5 when it became obvious that I could no longer tie, with only 3 models left (drop pod, rhino, lone assault marine) having done next to no damage to his army. There was one particular lowlight where my tactical squad rhino got exploded, he wounded 6 models, and I failed all 6 saves (more 1s than binary...) and the ensuing pinning check. I was too busy laughing to even facepalm. I only mention that incident, because its slightly important for game 5...

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

Just a quick note because it late right now. Was great meeting yourself during the tournament & gutted you miss on BA award.

 

I'll have a check on your tournament report tomorrow. My own posted somewhere on the fourms along with a few other topics on the event.

 

IP

[Chaplain Admetus]

Game 5 - The Last Stand of Sergeant Anael

So, we were finally here, end of the tournament, and I found myself against a familiar face - Glen, one of the Aberdeen players, and his brutal Dark Eldar army. The mission was pure and simple - pitched battle annhilation. Glen is a truly superb player (his eldar won 5 games at the November GT), and knows his way around the Dark Eldar, so this was going to be an uphill struggle. His army had a haemonculus with webway portal, unit of wyches on a raider with dark lance (this is all that started on-table). In reserves were a blaster squad, cronos, 2 ravagers, beastmasters leading a huge unit of razorwings (that won Most Infamous Unit for binning a Trygon in a single round of combat), a venom with some splinter cannon dudes in it, a 6 man jetbike squad with meltaguns, a unit of 10 wracks with 2 flamers, and a big unit of hellions led by the baron. Ouch. Double ouch, being that he rolled a 7 for deployment and first turn (baron adds 1 to the roll for this), meaning that unless I could sieze the initative I was in for a world of pain. I scouted my baal to a prominent position and popped smoke, and emphatically failed to sieze the initiative. And thus the stage was set for the final, and best game of the whole weekend. The haemonculus disembarked, giving his pain tokens to the wyches, which moved and ran into a forest. The raider attempted to lance my baal, but the smoke denied him. On my turn I moved to a more advantageous position, sternguard podded in near the wyches. The devastators blasted the raider out of the sky, the baal opened fire with all its weapons and turned the haemonculus into an unpleasant smear on the snow-locked battlefield. Finally, the sternguard rapid fired into the wyches with the no-cover-saves round (prompting a good natured comment of "dirty b@$^@£d" from Glen), killing all but 1 who promptly proceeded to run away. From here, its a blur what turned up where and when, so I'll give a run down of the heroic moments. The baal got turned to slag by a ravager at some point. The wracks turned up, came towards my sternguard, and shot them down to one man - Sergeant Anael. Now, the title of this post might suggest that Anael was about to do something beyond ridiculous, and oh you have NO idea. Anael took the charge from 10 wracks, and suffered 6 wounds. Upon this, I told Glen about me failing 6 of 6 saves in the last game, and jokingly said that karma dictated I'd probably make all 6 of these. Lo and behold, 6 passed saves! This bought time for the assault squad to join the fray, and kill most of the wracks, 2 that were left attacked Anael, and the hero survived AGAIN. Later on (after bubblewrapping the webway with a tac squad, forcing the razorwings to go on from his table edge and go for a less juicy target than intended), the hellions popped out, and assaulted the tacticals, killing all but 1. Glen elected to hit and run before the assault squad turned up to help, but didn't get far away. The lone tactical marine hopped back into a rhino and hid, which later got blasted by the jetbikes but cruically he survived (and would be very instrumental later). Now, we must return to Sergeant Anael, hero of the day. On turn 4 the 2 splinter cannons from the venom squad, and one from the venom itself (I blew one off with a plasma pistol), all unloaded into him. Anael duly passed all his armour saves. At this point, the red mist truly descended upon Glen, and BOTH ravagers unloaded their dark lances at him. Anael passed all his cover saves and survived AGAIN. On turn 5, Glen truly had had enough of this model, and launched all his splinter cannons. Anael laughed in their faces. He then shrugged off the dark lances from ravager 1, and then finally, boldly fell to the last splinter cannon from ravager #2. He single-handedly sponged an entire 2 turns of dark eldar shooting before capitulating. At the end of turn 5, I was ahead 7 kill points to 6 (having beaten the wyches, wracks, raider, haemonculus, blaster squad, hellions, and the cronus -meltad by the sternguard- , for the loss of a rhino, one assault squad, one priest, the devastators, the baal, and the sternguard). I rolled for the game to end and....a 2! The lone surviving tactical marine, combined with Anaels stubborn refusal to roll over and die, had given me the most unlikely of victories. If Glen hadn't been so hell-bent on killing Anael, he could have focussed the dark lances on easier targets (my remaining rhino, and my drop pod somehow contrived to survive the whole game), he could probably have won. All in all, a tight, fantastic game against a great opponent.

 

So, for my first tournament I finished with 4 wins out of 5, narrowly missing out on best Blood Angels player to a chap with a Lamenters force, who also had 4 wins but edged me out by 2 points, with 1 more favourite army vote than I had. But still, given that it was my very first tournament, and I didn't take a power-game force, I just picked up my regular gaming night army that I've been using for the last few months, and wanted to see how I did, I'm absolutely delighted. The guard player who tanked me (pun intended) took 5 wins and best guard player, and Glen went home with best DE player, so I had 2 really tough games day 2. I had a brilliant time at the weekend, and would thoroughly recommend the GT to anyone who'd like to play 5 games of great warhammer and have some fun. I hope you've enjoyed reading this, and its not been too long, and any comments on the list or the games are greatly appreciated.

 

At the end of the day, 4/5 is perfectly respectable (I think), and second place with a popular army is more than I expected, so I hope I've brought some glory home to the forums and my fellow Sons of Sanguinius :P

[VAGABOND]

Well done on the wins mate, good to see the Blood Angels giving it big licks in style :P

 

Cracking reports mate, I'm seriously considering the GT this October with my Sanguinary Guard.

 

:rolleyes:

[1Drop]

You did extremely well especially for your first tournament, your list to me as well didn't seam that vicious but you prevailed, well done bro.

[Chaplain Admetus]

Thanks guys :huh:. @ Insane Psycopath, it was great to meet you too, I'm glad your army got one of the best painted nominations, it looked absolutely cracking in the cabinet and I hope to see it and you at a future event. Vagabond, there were a couple of Sangy Guard armies there, one I know got 3 wins out of 5, and a second was in the "best painted" nominations (but I don't know how it performed), and I'm sure you'll be able to fit another unit it at the higher points limit. Thanks for the props 1Drop, I can't help but feel I got a little bit lucky (or that my opponents were unlucky, for that matter) with the dice, but I've been told I'm not giving myself enough credit...I'm absolutely delighted with that for my first tourney, and I'm more happy that I got 4 fantastic games against 5 fantastic opponents, which to me is what the games all about - hence the non-power gamey, non-beatstick list! I'm just glad to show that BA can compete at the top level without resorting to Mephiston, Storm Ravens, Razorspam and the other much feared units, there was a razorspam list that got pasted by Eldar in round 1 and I have no idea where it finished...the top 3 BA lists were mine, the guy with meph, corbulo, assault termies in a land raider, 2 assault squads in razorbacks, and a couple of autolas preds (both finished 4 out of 5), and I believe an Italian guy (who was surrounded with controversy for a lot of his games) with an assault squad, librarian, priest, some tanks and a lot of MM attack bikes.

[Captain Idaho]

I must say, I was particularly impressed to see you were doing so well with what I would call a "traditional" balanced army list.

 

You were so close to being top Blood Angels player so next time you will be a contender again, I'm sure.

 

I hope to see you in October for the next Throne of Skulls, which will be a new beast considering the size increase in lists.

 

Incidently I played that Italian fella. He did play loosely as evidenced by the final result of his weekend, but I got on quite well with him and hope he comes to the next ToS and shows everyone else his character. :P

[Iron Father Rik]

You don't give yourself enough credit mate, as I kept telling you. You didn't believe me that you had a chance at winning the Blood Angels, and I am so happy that you proved me right! Not for the sake of me being right, but for the sake of your record. Well done mate.

 

I believe that it is simply because you didn't try to max out on cheesy BA stuff that you won. Like my Sons of Medusa (who sadly didn't do so well this time round), your army is scary simply because of the number of T4 power armoured bodies it has. 44 infantry and 4 vehicles, coupled with the smattering of feel no pain just to give them a BA feel. BA are a codex chapter after all, apart from their gene-flaws, so they don't NEED to be packed full of cheesy BA stuff to be a BA army, as you prove.

 

@Captain Idaho (since I've said this to IP already), it was great meeting you at the tournament. Haven't had the chance to meet many B&C members (that I knew of) let alone ones as prominent as you.

The next GT is actually July, not October. I'm hoping to go to both though. July with my SoM, and October with Exorcists.

[VAGABOND]

C'mon Beckett you know me, just a little too well.

 

:P

[Iron Father Rik]

I can only assume that is you, Mr Stevenson.

[VAGABOND]

And there was me thinking you didn't know my surname aswell.

 

Damn