My First Tournament

[Mordas]

Last weekend I participated in my first tournament, my local gaming club runs a two day event were we play 5 games. Having painted a lot of the Necrons from Indom I entered and thought I would share with you guys how I and my fellow overlords faired. While this tournament isn't a GT event or anything we did have a healthy mix of competitive players and those just wanting to have a good time.

 

The club has really beautiful terrain but with the changes to 9th they arent always the best for the new way 40k is heading. Not enough line of sight blocking items etc..

 

Being my first tournament I had no idea what to expect and I went in with the initial goal of avoiding a whitewash and just win 1 game, as I can be competitive but normally prefer fun games.

 

My list: @ 1800pts

 

Overlord - staff of light and VoD

Chronomancer - Entropic Lance

2x Cryptothralls

 

10x Warriors with Reapers

10x Warriors with Reapers

5x Immortals with Guass Blasters

 

4x Scarab

5x Wraith with whipcoils

 

5x Flayed Ones

5x Skorpekh Destroyers

1x C'tan - the Nightbringer

 

1x Lokhurst Heavy Destroyer - Gauss Destructor

1x Lokhurst Heavy Destroyer - Gauss Destructor

2x Lokhurst Heavy Destroyer - Gauss Destructor

 

1x Ghost Ark

 

Circumstance of Awakening: Relentlessly Expansionist

Dynastic Tradition: Superior Artisans

 

The plan was to always take Purge the Vermin, Retrieve Data and then decide on the 3rd secondary when I see the opponent. The flayed ones would start in reserve and come on T2/T3 to do the scan action, T1 the cryptothralls would scan and chronomancer would buff the skorpekhs. 10 Warriors would stick in the ghost ark to move up the board and get into position and the overlord would take the other squad where needed.

 

Sadly I didn't get as many photos as I would like as I was caught up in the moments and the score sheets haven't been released yet so I can only say how close the wins where from memory - will try to do more next time :D

 

Game 1 - Space Wolves

The first game and we were situated on a lovely Necron themed board, my opponent had 3 thunderwolf calvary units, gladiator and 2 impulsors with assault intercessors led by a captain and two lieutenants.

 

We both deployed aggressively right up to the edge of the deployment zone, who went first would have a big impact on the game. Thankfully I won the roll of and began with the 6" pre game move, by the end of my t1 my lokhursts had destroyed an impulsor and hurt his gladiator, the c'tan with his scarab escort brought up the 2nd wave and the Skorpekhs and Wraiths managed a t1 charge. The Skorpekhs managed to wipe out a single unit of thunderwolf calvary - I rolled really well and my opponent couldn't make any saves when he needed. The wraiths entered into what would be known as the endless combat on the other flank. On his turn 1 everything that could shoot hit the skorpekhs hard - as they where now in his lines with no backup, having tanked all his shooting his captain and a lieutenant came in to finish them off. His 2nd unit of thunderwolf calvary failed to charge the scarabs and C'tan. Their cc hits hard!

 

My C'tan then wipes out the 2nd squad of thunderwolf with his two powers and an awesome display in combat, the destroyers take out his gladiator tank and the wraiths continue the endless fight on the flanks. The SW decide they have nothing to deal with the C'tan and focus on my other units, the Thunderwolf calvary tear through the Ghost Ark and then into 3/4 of my destroyers neautralising their shooting (should have moved them back but this would have only delayed their slaughter). With the SW in cc I started to lose units very quickly and had to consolidate units onto objectives to make sure I kept scoring.

 

By the end of the game he had some assault intercessors, his captain and one thunderwolf calvary model left on the board and I was left with a heavy destroyer, my overlord and what was left of 10 warriors and the untouched c'tan. It was an absolutely brutal game and I managed to creep ahead on points by maxing my primary winning by 10 points!

 

 

Game 2 - Harlequins

Having a Harlequin army myself I knew this could be tough, my opponent had 2x5 man units of bikers with haywire and 4 transports with a good mix of troupe units.

 

This table had a lot of LOS blocking terrain, giving us a good amount of channels to funnel through. Once again I managed to win the roll off for the first turn and managed to put the wraith, skorpekh into the center of the board taking the middle objective, the c'tan moved up more cautiously due to 2x shadow seers being able to smite the scarabs being very clingy to him this game! With so much invested in haywire his list wasn't a great matchup against mine, throughout the game his shooting wasn't really effective but he was able to keep taking / denying primary points, his shadowseers worked in unison to mentally interrogate the c'tan and smite him whilst falling back slightly. But in the end the battle of attrition won the day, once I eliminated his bikes and kept hold of some objectives the points quickly started to swing back in my favour. The C'tan sadly didn't make his points back in this game having chased units around the board for most of the game and whiffing on his powers before being taking out by the troupe master. I also lost the warrior squad protecting my overlord so he had to peg it over to the immortals to VoD to get the Data scan done. But in the end I managed to win out my 2nd game by around 20-30pts.

 

Game 3 - Admech

I think you all know what happened here, I found out that I had actually managed to get to table 1. This was a huge surprise for me as I had just come for fun. The list entry dates where before the FAQ and this was the match up I was dreading. The table also only had 2 LoS blocking terrain items and neither where in our deployment zones. My opponents list was very similar to the recent GT winning lists and I don't know much about admech to tell you more.

 

It all came down to the 1st turn roll off, If I could get first turn then I could make charges with the wraith, skorpekh and the c'tan and make a game of it. This is when my dice which had been rolling very hot all tournament went stone cold. I had rolled a 1! I had to sit there and take the pure firepower of the admech, watching in horror as all the buffing cards got put next to all the units (our protocols look crap in comparison) I lost half my army in turn 1. This was the third game of the day and I was pretty exhausted and could only laugh as I was essentially packing up as this game went. The only defining moment from me was when I rolled a random power strat on the C'tan and got times arrow and nuked his buffing character. Sadly this was too little too late and by turn 4 I had to concede. This is the only game score I remember but it was a brutal 97-33 loss.

 

Whilst disappointing at the end of day 1 I finished dead middle of the table. Having already beat my goal of winning 1 game I was going to head into day 2 with the goal of at least 3-2.

 

Game 4 - Orks

Still very tired I went into this game with the Ork mentality - I just want to fight :D Lucky my opponent felt the same! He had a buggy heavy list backed up by a gorkanaught and a bonecrusher.

 

Managing to get the 1st turn I took out the bonecrusher and grabbed all 4 objectives in the middle of the board, ready to fight! and totally forgetting that his buggies can teleport, they quickly snuck into my back lines and took out all the LHD in one go! in the heat of battle he wiped out the scarabs protecting the c'tan and forgot he only managed to do 2 wounds to the c'tan in the shooting phase! His warboss charged in dealing 3 mortal wounds and fought first thinking he had me beat only to realise the error until it was too late! The C'tan obliterated him in return, but the sneaky warboss was able to fight again on death and took out the skorpekhs.

 

Both sides where bloody and bruised at this point I charged the wraiths into the gorky to prevent him overwatching my 2 wound c'tan and then followed in with the nightbringer. In glorious combat the nightbringer brought it down - abite a little too well as it exploded! killing the c'tan a wraith a buggy and a few other loose models in what must be the most brutal explosion of the tournament (it was glorious!). With a massive hole in the table we struggled to hold objectives and keep the fight going, but I managed to edge ahead again as he had no way to deal with the infantry that I had left.

 

Game 5 - Tyranids

My opponent was running two hive fleets here and mainly fielded zoanthropes / hive guard / exocrines / genestealers / swarmlord and some smaller bugs.

 

Once again I managed to get the 1st turn and with the pregame move managed to get into a great position, the skorpekhs on the left flank and the ghost ark and wraiths on the right flank. The ghostark rapid fired into the small bugs and allowed the wraith to get a turn 1 charge into the genestealers. The skorpekhs having failed their t1 charge (needed an 11) where shot by everything wiping them out - those hiveguard and exocrines hurt! The swarmlord decided the wraith needed to go and wiped them out.

 

By turn 2 the c'tan laid eyes on the swarmlord and despite all my opponents best efforts to shield him the c'tan made a 10" charge and eliminated him in what all my opponents say is just brutal combat when he gets in. One of the Exocrine was lit up by the Lokhurst  and many more bugs where squished. The Zoanthropes just refused to die with the 3++, the ghost ark and warriors all trying to take them down. In his turn 2 the c'tan was taken down by the broodlord and the hiveguards shooting and disappointingly he once again failed to explode on death. In turn 3 I managed to take out the other exocrine with the destroyers and was holding most of the objectives leaving my opponent with the never killable zoanthropes and his hive guard and broodlord. By turn 5 he only had one hive guard model left on the table. Losing the swarmlord so early was a real killer for his army and he was penned in pretty early allowing me to score heavy.

 

The results

In a surprise run I had managed to get 4 wins and 1 loss, which was to the tournament winner. I am over the moon with this performance but there is a lot I will take away from this. One of them is trying to maximise the secondaries, when the full results came out you can clearly see that this is where I fall down scoring the least on primaries and secondaries (primaries was just due to game 3 where i only scored 15 points for this) compared to everyone else who got a 4-1 result. I also feel I was very lucky with my match ups avoiding some of the other hard hitting lists that where going around. But somehow I had finished 6th!

 

The other Overlords

Out of the 36 players we had 5 of us playing Necrons, 3 of us all came up against the tournament and two of us got pasted and one chap managed to score 76pts and still lost in the final! But every Necron player finished with a positive score line (2x 4-1 and 3x 3-2) with quite different lists. So while the top 3 players where: 1) Admech 2) Iron Hands 3) FW Imperial Knights. It does look like we held our own and even getting to the final was an amazing achievement for the faction. Powercreep is starting to show but seems that for the moment with a bit of luck and using all the tricks we seem to be holding in there for the moment.

 

 

 

P.S - Will try to get the few images I have uploaded shortly.

 

 

 

 

[Miek]

Very well done, I really like your list and it looks like you played it well. What would you change if you had to do it all again, if anything?

[MithrilForge]

Well done, 

It's hard playing tourneys and not getting tired(even when you win) all that focus and concentration just saps you (even when it's fun  )

Nice list and nice to see most of your battles were even fights, Unfortunately everyone ends up having a battle like your ad-mech one  ...

still i'd rather 5 good battles and one bad than the other way round  ...

 

Look forwards to seeing some battle shots!!

 

Cheers, Mithril

[Captain Idaho]

Very interesting report, many thanks!

 

The Nightbringer is a beast but as you detailed he requires a little finesse or will die failed consistently. I find he is quite a balanced unit.

 

Don't worry too much about Adeptus Mechanicus. It's GW broken sauce as usual. Not much to do but just sigh and chalk the game as a loss. I once took on them in a tournament on a board that had literally no obscuring terrain and thus was wiped out before I took my first turn, save single character and unit. Lame.

 

You did well I consider.

 

How did you find the Skorpekh and Wraiths generally performed?

[Mordas]

Thanks guys, on a training course still so not had the chance to get photos from my opponents just yet but they will come!

 

So yes would I change anything, I think I may drop the C'tan from the list going forwards, I love him and the ability to just remove units is great but really he is too easy to take out if your opponent knows what they are doing. Though I will miss the look on their faces when I tell them no invulnerable saves and FnP. Once thing I struggled with was scoring the retrieve data for the 4th time and just holding more objectives. I think another cryptek and cryptothralls are needed where they can be put into reserve and then score it on another table quarter for me. I would be tempted to also try for another ghost ark and warrior squad inside as these where a pain to shift.

 

1800 points is a odd point to play at, if I scaled up to 2000 I would look at either a CCB or losing one heavy destroyer and getting some standard lokhurst destroyers to help screen.

 

If anyone hasn't been to a tournament, my advice is just throw yourself into it and have fun, I made a lovely single page cheat sheet with all the stats and strategems I needed and that was a huge timesaver for me.

 

I am not worried about the Admech too much at the moment, it was a bad matchup and knew it was a possibility, if I had first turn it may have been a different game entirely.

 

For the wraiths - love them but hate how unstable the model is, they got 1st turn charge off in 3 games. The Admech obliterated them and the Harlequins where too far away. I run them with whip coils which is great for 1W t3-4 models. Against any marines or anything tougher they just don't kill them but are excellent disruption units that are equally hard to shift.

 

The Skorpekh's are lovely but they really need the chronomancer buff to survive. Seems that everyone knows what they can do and targets them accordingly, if they had a built in invulnerable save I would drop the wraiths and just go all Skorpekh's - I still may try this down the line. The Admech, Orks and Nids all hit them hard but with better suited terrain they should be able to get up the board with more cover and do my most favourite trick which is to charge through ruin walls as they are infantry which no one expects :D

[xommul]

Great write up on the tournament. 

 

Really pleased for you. 

 

Look forward to getting another one. 

 

Which of your wins could have gone the other way easiily?