GK vs TS (Pics)

[Archaeinox]

I promised Prot a batrep with pics.

 

I will preface with the statement that I had no idea I couldn't select Capricious Crest (The Warlord was from the Duplicity detachment). I also made a number of huge tactical errors because I focused on using the new rules and such just for the sake of trying them. Don't fall into this trap, lol. Thankfully both of us just wanted to give the book a spin so there was no stress but I learned what NOT to do in the future. 

 

As you review the pictures, note the absence of Dreadknights and TS anti-tank. We just wanted to run infantry and such in a 1500pt game because we run lots of 2k in the store. That's when the Predator tanks come out to play..

 

1500pts TS

 

Duplicity BN: 

Sorc (Warlord, Perfidious Tome) 

Sorc

9 Rubrics

9 Rubrics

9 Rubrics

 

Time Patrol: 

Ahriman

10 Scarab Occult

5 Rubrics

 

Change Patrol: 

Sorc (I spent 1 CP to take Capricious Crest.. Oops)

5 Rubrics

 

The table, with 6 Maelstrom objectives scattered about.. pretty much 1 in each tile. I take every objective I can besides Defend and Secure, for the most part, and put them in the deck. Frontal Assault deployment, or something like that.. Dawn of War but with arrows, lol. 

 

My Thousand Sons.

 

Ok, let's try the Perfidious Tome out.

 

Scarab Occult.. and 70 or so Reinforcement Points just in case I have characters in the open and I am worried about them getting tagged with a deep strike unit. 

 

The center line of my deployment. He had something like 4 strike squads in reserve, and a few terminators + a re-roll charge character. My initial concern was to hold them until terminators and whatnot showed up.

 

Maelstrom cards drawn

 

Oh, ok, I'll just give my opponent a CP. At least I go first. 

 

Rubrics walk up and add to the shots of the 5 Change rubrics that used Risen Rubricae. They ended up eating a couple small smites.. Next time I won't do it unless it's a big squad. He deployed MSU units and some purgation squads.. a 9man unit deployed up close probably would have been overkill, but i underestimated the Shadow tide ability. The 2 armies are fantastic opponents for each other, as a result of these tactical considerations. I buffed the center rubric squad up pretty hard.. Turns out it wasn't really needed yet. I was the attacker, so didn't get much use out of the duplicity warlord trait because i simply didnt want to redeploy.

 

The teleport power is pretty slick. The rapid fire didn't do much (Shadow tide). Anyways, I had a pretty nice rubric presence in the corner for a couple turns.. Unfortunately nothing else really happened and the Grey Knights whittled them down in combat.

 

Some damage done by my smites. The 24" smite is pretty solid as always. Trickle wounds on Purgation squads hurt him. Next time, he will deploy them out of line of sight. 

 

Teleport Strike units begin to show up in his first turn, to get him some objective points. One squad Gates behind me and cripples the Time detachment's squad of Rubric Marines, while claiming a Behind Enemy Lines card, meanwhile............

 

.......another unit teleports on my left flank's Objective. He can arrive so close because of his stratagem (just outside 3", cannot charge). He tried to open up on the Duplicity units protecting the Duplicity warlord in order to make sure he had more on the objective since we both had models near it. He couldn't kill enough, and I had 6 to his 5. Good gamble, though.. Would have worked out great with a few more failed saves. He was able to increase his bolt ammo's damage and AP somehow I think but I still rolled lots of 4s. Watch out for this, especially if you run MSU. His MSU will beat your MSU in lots of cases with this combo. Anyways, I rolled hot so it didn't matter for now..

 

Oh hey cool, the Cult of Time detachment's rubric unit casts Time Flux and brings a dude back. Sick.. I mean, not game-breaking, but I'm the one who has literally been emailing GW for years asking when we will get ways to bring Rubricae back.. lol.. No complaints here. 10/10, power as described haha. Guilty secret: I used a Cmd Re-roll to save the aspiring sorcerer from stormbolt fire just so I could try the spell and roll high. Turns out, he did, it just only returned the 1 rubric.

 

I teleported a 2nd Duplicity rubric unit up later, to take a rapid fire while I could and clear out some more purgation squads. 1 guy survived and hangs around for a while. I was hoping he'd take the bait and bring his characters out.. which was a gambit for me as well because he might pop into the Tide of Escalation and trust me when I say flat 2 Smites are absolutely painful.. 

 

Ahriman responds to the Strike squad in the back line. My plan to bait his characters out from their hiding place and get them to come to me was in motion, let's see if it works. A sorcerer that didn't move summoned the 10 pinks. Remember, I was worried about his upgraded smites and I'd rather the Horrors take it than Ahriman.. The Black Staff twitched with desire for blood but Ahriman kept it under control and floated around in my deployment zone. Patience!

 

The Interceptor Squad manages to weaken the 1st rubric squad I buried in his corner, and when he swaps to Tide of Escalation he easily smokes the squad. I think he rolled a 7, I just couldn't stop it with the aspiring sorcerer. Guys, this Ritual of the Damned is quite literally the difference between losing 1 guy or 2 and losing your backline foothold so yes, this boost means a lot as the game goes on. If you see a GK player trying to swap Tides, use whatever resources you have to deny the power. Because of this guy getting free, he was able to move on and take an objective.

 

Voldus, a Strike Squad using enhanced bolt ammo, and a Librarian pop out and absolutely annihilate the 9 Rubrics I had. No amount of buffs saved them, and I couldn't deny any of it due to rolling low. It looked like my plan worked.. He wanted to take advantage of the 2 mortal wounds per smite, and I wanted his characters exposed.

 

Time for the Scarabs to show.. Not much to say. Voldus and the Librarian just go away in a massive dustcloud. In hindsight, 10 with 2 hellfyre racks was overkill. At 1500pts in a friendly game I'll just take 5 and add things elsewhere in the list.

 

GK Terminators, some of their characters, and a strike squad show up on my left flank. The rubrics defending my Warlord with the Perfidious Tome are torn apart in a psi-bolt blaze of murder. He tries to charge the character but the paladin banner character is the only guy who makes it in. 

 

The sorcerer fails 2 saves and Tzeentch laughs as the paladin ancient rolls snake eyes for his damage. With a mirrored flash, Skehktis teleports to safety, leaving lots of GK in the corner on my far left flank by themselves.

 

Skehktis reveals that apparently he was in.. this building the whole time? Sure. We'll go with that. I just call it "teleport" and will always do so

 

Another instance of teleporting, cant remember if it was before or after Skehktis but certainly not in the same turn, the Firestorm/Infernal Gaze sorcerer teleported to Objective 5 near the GK deployment zone in order to get me a point before getting Smited from the table by the surviving Interceptor. I'm liking Duplicity more and more. 

 

Some shots of Ahriman's Scarab Occult phalanx. I anticipated a GK teleport in front of them, but I think he was intimidated. If he did that and made the subsequent charge, it could have been terrifying for me. I think ignoring the Scarabs was also a valid plan but he might not be able to do that in Eternal War.. 

 

Another action shot of this defensive positioning- Again, I anticipated the close arrival of terminators but turns out he didn't have the CP to show up as close as I thought he could anyway.

 

These strikes who helped kill the rubrics positioned in the center pretty much sat on an objective around the 3rd turn to get a point.

 

Sick. I get another Rubric back. Heck yeah.. 10/10 would cast again lol. None of this matters and is a waste of time because: Maelstrom. They sat on an objective for 4 turns basically. This might have tactical merit in Eternal War for someone who runs MSU rubrics, and missions where holding something every turn is very important. Don't discount it completely yet, is my takeaway.

 

Some odd smites and rapid fires clear out the GK near his deployment zone holding objectives so I can hold more or something.. Whatever, I was so lucky on cards and achieving them that I stopped counting. The points were skyrocketing for me every turn and I wasn't a tactical genius for killing the closest things, for sure. The scarabs had huge presence in such a game and Dreadknights would have really done a number on them... I got lucky, again.

 

I got bored turn 3 or so with Ahriman doing nothing and shot him deep into the center deployment zone of my opponent and caught GK chaplain alone. After all, he was holding an objective and out of line of sight so he had to be punished. He fails 2 saves and drops. He was doing a littany or two which were pretty powerful. In hindsight, I should have caught him with a squad of rubrics when I saw a teleport opening earlier (by the time Ahriman moved up to engage the Chappy, he had 2 wounds left.. I used all my CP and couldn't prevent a Perils that I took earlier). 

 

So a GK unit that I had stranded on my far left flank attempted to Gate of Infinity to Ahriman and kill him.. Here are the cards he had for the final turn. He got an 11 and the Scarab Occult sorcerer rolled a 12. As a result, all of these cards shown were unable to be achieved. I almost let it go off in good sport because I forgot about Ahriman despite just killing the Chaplain with him.... I only rolled to Deny out of reflex, really. He was so far behind in points he just called it at 4 because we saw what the center looked like and it would take a while for terminators on my left flank to get into any meaningful combat. I was almost to 30 VPs so we maintained our focus on just learning the new options available to us. 

 

Ok some takeaways: 

 

1. Just the right amount of rubrics.. but don't do the Patrol detachment thing to try and get multiple cults.. Next time just run double battalion with 2 cults, or a battalion with the Magic Supreme that everyone is talking about. Although I believe in rubric MSU, it's not worth it just to take a relic and now I'm not even sure we can take another cult's relic besides the one the warlord is a part of so that's moot. Be aware of how it works, unlike me..

 

2. Cult of Time is cute but I wouldn't worry about it at 1500. Maybe if you run 10 Scarabs at 2000pts, where you can be certain they'll take damage.

 

3. Tide of Shadows or whatever it's called ain't no joke.. Do not spend stratagems on units shooting unless you get a bonus to hit or re-rolls to help out. GK should always use this during opening turns 1 and maybe 2.. and they should make sure that if they want to change Tide, they make sure the cast goes off.. This is the one power we want to STOP.

 

4. Save 1 CP to use the Ignore Perils strat. Gk also have a staff which makes you perils if you roll doubles, I think. It's dangerous but only effective if the GK player plays aggressively and puts the stave where it needs to be.

 

5. Don't use Risen Rubricae strat on a small MSU unit when your opponent is teleporting a bunch of stuff in lol. Their presence won't do anything. Save that for the 20man brick.

 

6. Perfidious Tome isn't a relic I'll be using again, but I'm glad I tried it. I gave my opponent 3 CP in total, and in the 4th round I rolled a "3" and no one got anything so lol. GK player took 2 battalions or so, maybe a supreme as well, but I would have been rolling a lot more with the Helm of the Third Eye so I dunno. I've heard of people online rolling hot and getting a CP much more so I guess it's dice. In any case, looks like I won't be doing this for a while like I said.

 

7. Don't forget about Gift of Chaos. I didn't use it, but there opportunities I could have. Most GK characters are T4 and that's a viable target if you have the chance to attempt the power. If I was a GK player, I would always reserve a command point to try and make sure you deny Gift of Chaos because theres not much they can do if you roll hot and they just take d3+3 mortals. Obviously Dreadknights don't care.. They should still be used vs. TS.

 

8. Capricious Crest is nice. It was used twice in 4 rounds and each time it was the difference between a pass and a fail. It works, I won't argue that. I'm not sure it's worth making an entire detachment for it, still, though.. 

 

9. And of course, there must be 9 takeaways because: Tzeentch, right? My last thing is that the threat of some stuff being able to show just outside 3" is incredibly heavy dangerous. Be always aware of this. It made me think twice of where my characters were and what openings he had.. I expect GK players to use this stratagem at least once every game.

 

 

Feel free to ask any questions- i'll try to remember the game and answer in more detail. 

 

Regarding GK: They went from a "eh.. i'll probably be ok" army to fight to "Dang, this guy doesn't even have dreadknights and this stuff is terrifying" so that's great to be honest. My opinion is that we are now evenly matched and we will be stepping this up to 2k soon.

 

-Arch 

Edited January 26, 2020 by Archaeinox

[Dolchiate Remembrancer]

Thanks for this Arch!

You have convinced me that the best route is a single battalion with 9 man squads and maybe a supreme command. I think that's what I'm going to build to.(maybe with a heavy support detachment)

[Archaeinox]

I think I might go double battalion at 2000, i think i can still have a large rubric unit and then the 5 small required ones.. plus predator tanks as support

[BrainFireBob]

Double comtemptors?

[Archaeinox]

If i can find some contemptors for cheap I'd try em, i just cant spend any $ on anything else for TS right now :(

[JamesI]

Thanks for this Arch!

You have convinced me that the best route is a single battalion with 9 man squads and maybe a supreme command. I think that's what I'm going to build to.(maybe with a heavy support detachment)

This is basically my plan as well, battalion, supreme command, spearhead detachment,