The Road to Astronomi-Con 2014 (page 8 Inq Warband Complete)

[Emperors Immortals]

Ive been following the thread but this is my first post.

 

DKoK was my first guard army, I think you are playing them very well. I cant wait to see more batreps and wish you luck with the Hydra!

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Yes I realized after my last game that a Crusader or Redeemer would have been a better option. Too late for this tournament but if I ever see one cheap on ebay I will invest in an alternate ride.

[scatmandoo]

As an alternative and if you want to, there is a crusader upgrade sprue available from the gw site and then convert the one you own to be all 3?

[WarriorFish]

True glory comes from conquering adversary from wherever it comes Nico! Good luck in your game, I'm sure your list will do well :)

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

I'm posting a bunch of stuff to my Facebook page during the day because it's too difficult to upload pics to B&C from an iPhone. Here's the link:

 

www.facebook.com/swordsandspace

[scatmandoo]

As said many times before, your army looks amazing. I hope that the luck goes with with you soon as you deserve it.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Well I'm 0-2 so far but both games were a blast and did not feel like losses. The most recent game was decided in the last turn and could have very easily gone the other way. I've been taking pics best I can for batreps.

[scatmandoo]

Gutted you are losing again. I am glad you are enjoying it though.

 

You have any updates for the second game? Be interesting to see how it went wrong last turn

[lionofjudah]

I love games that are fun and informative enough to feel good no matter what side of the column you rack the points.

I will check you out on FB to see your pics.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

0-2-1 after three games.

 

I'll be posting batreps once all is said and done, but in brief, game 1 was basically a kill point mission against sisters of battle with added bonus points for killing alien creatures that popped up all over the board. It felt like a draw as I had killed way more of the aliens than him (I'm calling my Hydra " the beastslayer" as it accounted for one a turn. However I had a lot more kill points on offer and when we added it up he won.

 

Game two was versus mechanized Imperial Guard. The winner was determined by who held more supply crates scattered over the field at game's end. I held many more than him all battle and my platoon accounted for two Russes and a hellhound with krak grenades. But my opponent had wisely chosen to go second and he was able to get one more crate right at the end turning victory to defeat. His army with 2 Hellhounds and heavy flamers on his four chimeras was almost tailor-made to face other guard armies.

 

Game three was glorious. Finally a battle against chaos. It was a very complex mission. We were only allowed to deploy a very small part of our forces. He rolled poorly for reserves but it actually worked out alright because I got stranded with nothing to kill then he alpha struck me hard when a bunch of stuff arrived automatically in turn 4. That's the main reason it was a draw I think (combined with outrageously bad difficult terrain and run moves on my part). It was another kill point mission which went to my opponent's benefit. The glory came in the assaults. First platoon went toe-to-toe with chaos marines with the mark of Khorne and wiped them out. And the inquisitorial warband owned his chaos sorcerer and accompanying chaos marine unit. My tanks were pathetic that game and unable to kill even rhinos let alone his defiler, however. The Hydra which had been rolling like a champ against ground targets in games 1 & 2 kind of pooped the bed against the Helldrake. I penetrated it once but couldn't roll anything useful as I learned that it ignores crew stunned and shaken.

[scatmandoo]

Sounds a great and imaginative tournament.

 

I hope you have turned the corner now and find glorious success soon.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Oy I really thought I had game 5 but made one crucial error failing to multicharge with my inquisitorial warband in circumstances where they could have laid a huge hurt on two squads. But it was ANOTHER kill point mission so I lost again.

 

Last game coming up let's see if I can pull out a win!

 

Another fun and close game though.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

I have to say I didn't remember Astronomi-con having this many kill point missions. I've had 3/4 games were kill point. I don't think my army (or my generalship) is as bad as it looks on paper but DKoK are really not suited to kill points. Guard in general are not but Death Korps especially.

 

Most importantly it's been fun and I've learned a lot. I am already plotting my army for 2015 based on lessons learned.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Well, that was humbling. 0-4-1 on the tournament.

 

However I think I did a lot better than it looks on paper. In the final battle, for example, ostensibly the mission was to hold a certain building but was kill points. I had an unscathed platoon squad, my grenadiers, and command squad all holding it and had neutralized the Orks' assault element such that if the game continued he could have never taken it. But I did it the Krieg way by throwing units at his attackers so I lost on kill points (he had a 10 ork meganob squad and a 30 ork bitz squad to my death riders, inquisitorial warband, PCS, and storm troopers). So that really was a victory in my mind. I achieved my objective; he failed in his. Plus killing 10 meganobs -- half of them in close combat is at the very least a major moral victory. My opponents buddy who watched the game was incredulous when we added up KPs and Orks were declared winners.

 

Still and all, it was a very fun tournament and overall good experience. The kill points were a new experimental addition in response to 7th edition and player feedback. I think they may have overcompensated and will tweak the scoring next year. I know I was not the only one unhappy with the KPs as I overheard the organizers mention this and plans to change that. It was also just plain bad luck of the draw because opponents I spoke to says KP missions were in the minority for them versus 4/5 missions for me.

 

I scored very respectably on painting but there was some truly astounding work on display so I doubt I made the top 10. I definitely bested my scores from the last time I attended. My army would have won best paint job 10 years (last time I attended ) ago but there is lots more skill coming to this tournament now.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

P.S. I think part of the problem is also that DKoK are not competitively costed despite their bonuses also. There is something wrong when everything works just how you want it and nothing is a dud yet you still lose that many games with no wins. They were a mountain of fun to play though so I would not have taken regular AM even if I knew before the tourney what I know now.

[scatmandoo]

Ah great I am glad you enjoyed it and more importantly the army.

 

I agree that the 5th battle was a win too. I think it is a bit off about them all mostly being kill points. That system makes it hard for any guard army especially platoon armys as we can pack so many units for the points.

 

 

Congrats though on an imaginative army, great paint scheme and boldly doing it differently.

 

What units would you change/replace/upgrade if you were to do it again?

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

The main thing I would change is the inquisitorial warband. The land raider, while fantastic at getting them into hand-to-hand just made them too many eggs in one basket. I would also make the deep striking scions 5 men instead or make them DKoK grenadiers and put them in a chimera (although the grenadiers were a mixed bag -- some games they were champs and some games died horribly very early ).

 

With the points saved I'd bring a second platoon maybe (as you'll see from batreps those guys hit above their weight most games), or more tanks and a few more death riders.

 

As I mull things over and once I start writing batreps I think I was mostly a victim of bad mission draws rather than bad generalship (although I made a few mistakes for sure).

 

Most surprising unit was the hydra. It did something useful every game. Nothing was a dud though hence my thought that DKoK is simply not competitive. The crusaders in my warband were insane. They made so many 3++ saves it was ridiculous.

 

Next year I'm going to double-down on the inquisition theme and go with a Militarum Tempestus primary detachment and inquisitional detachment. This is probably insanity given that army would be worse for both kill points and over costed units, but with lessons learned I feel I can craft something that will do better than 0-4-1 but won't be top tier.

 

I don't think guard can do well. I played a pretty hard guard army with 4x chimeltavets, Paskunisher, and two Hellhounds but this guys army was in the bottom third ( everyone I played was). I was debating bringing my Blood Angels instead of DKoK this time last year and I wonder how they would have done.

[WarriorFish]

At least you enjoyed yourself as that's what counts the most. Damn kill points though, they make for an unnecessary penalty for certain armies :(

[scatmandoo]

I agree that kill points kill games. Though I would be annoyed that you managed to hold the objectives though still lost. poor planning Imo as guard and even orks don't care about numbers.

 

I think your list could work though with tweaks.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

I think the list did work fairly well actually I just think there were issues with the mission scoring plus I was rather rusty -- first tournament in 10 years and no regular games for two years.

 

I'm going to start writing up the batreps today and I think you'll see that I did a lot better than it looked on paper.

[WarriorFish]

Never mind rusty, I think buried might be a better analogy! :lol: That's a long time and much will have changed, so you did well all things considered. Especially the kill points as that has always been and will always be a terrible rule. Really can't state that enough: kill points are bad and whoever added them should feel bad.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

The final results for the tournament were released today. I ranked 36/51 after all was said and done. I thought this was quite respectable, especially since I had to forfeit one of the six games, resulting in straight zero scores for battle, sportsmanship, and theme on that game. Even on pure battle score, ignoring the "soft" categories like painting I ranked about 45/51 at a quick count which considering no one else forfeited any games is not bad. I guess even though I lost all my games, I secured enough secondary objectives that my battle score was still decent.

 

For those of you who enjoyed this thread, I've started a new thread for my progress getting ready for 2015 here: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/294433-the-road-to-astronomi-con-2015-plog/

 

Didn't know how the mods would feel about clone threads in two different fora, so for now just have the GK forum one. I hope you guys will visit and offer your input since the Inquisition people are fairly thin on the ground over there.

[WarriorFish]

You shouldn't have duplicate topics, so keep it to the most relevant section You should put a link in your sig to help us find it easily too I agree that you did well, I think it's more than respectable so you should be pleased. The only way is up now as you get more games in and brush off those cobwebs

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

That's what I thought so therefore went with a single topic and the GK forum seemed the most relevant since it's all =][= theme. Good idea about the sig, I'll do that later when I have access to a computer (on my iPhone right now).