7th Place not a bad start

Well never having played the list I was very glad I was able to get the teams event in prior to the main tourney because I didn’t know the rules for my army very well at all and subsequently got things wrong a lot, going both ways though admittedly more going my way than the other [he says embarrassingly as he looks at the ground and shuffles his feet], over the course of the team event. Also it meant I got an understanding of what the units could do.

Rather than a battle report I thought I’d give a run down on what I think performed well and what needs adjusting or dropping for future tourneys.

The results were very good for the weekend kicking off with 3 wins in the team tourney from the number 2 slot whilst team muppet road head long for victory.

A quick run down of the main event games:

Game 1. Sean Myles (savage orcs). 17-3. Got the vast majority of the points after my chaos knights luckily broke through his savage orc biguns in the final turn.

Game 2: Trevor Cowper (ogre kingdoms). 12-8. It all looked bleak when my knights got beaten by his iron guts (WTF!) but brought it all back with the miscast result on the hell cannon misfire killing off the butcher.

Game 3: Matt Willis (dark elves).16-4. It was a cut and thrust game where a failed stubborn role for matt took the game.

Game 4: Andrew Galea (dark elves). 4 – 16. Both of us had a lot of luck – Andrew’s got him more points (1400 from two big roles versus my 800 odd) and from there he used his 2 to 1 advantage against me too well. Strange game.

Game 5: Luke van Kyke (dwarfs) 18-2. In what should have been a tough match up for my knights, Luke instead had a brain explosion with deployment that took his war machines out of the game. Thanks Lukey much appreciated.

Game 6: Ken Ferris (woodies) 16 -4: In what Ken confidently called the Karma match up he got a shot at retribution for my recent cracks at his decision making responsibilities. Unfortunately the forces of the universe obviously agree with me and ken struggled to get much to go his way and didn’t add to it with a foolish charge.

Overall I came 7th which I’m happy with. Puts me off to a good start for the year and with a little more practice with the list hopefully I can improve on that start.

But anyway back to discussing what did and didn’t work, let’s start with the characters.
The level 4 and level 2 in the bunker of marauders were very effective. The only game I lost was the game where I unnecessarily put it in a 1/100 risk when keeping them alive would have allowed me magic superiority for 4 more turns (only 2DD left). My only thought is I might look at a way of getting the black tongue on one of these guys to put a little fear of god in people during their own magic phase.

The infernal muthafarking gate way basically means your opponent lets through your other spells, whilst I didn’t get the gateway off a few times nothing got “sucked in” but the 1/12 risk is just too great to let through.

The BSB with favour of the gods and armour of damnation was nothing short of sensational, in most games his ability to buff up a unit of chaos knights made it into a killing machine. Plus the armour of damnation allowed me to neutralise a fair few attacks that saved the knights skin when ever it got in a little trouble.

I don’t think I’m going to make a lot of changes here. As I said maybe the black tongue for against other magic heavy armies and also the demon steed could use a review after it chipped in for a total of zero wounds caused for the tournament.

The Impact Boys:
The 2 units of knights performance was quite mixed, in the end they have limited static res which means they are at the whim of the dice. Still they are a very reliable and effective hammer and will undoubtedly stay in the list.

The Hell Cannon:
I’m still undecided on this bad boy, he was very tough and every opponent seemed in awe of it. Sure in a few games the miscast result on the misfire chart bailed me out, but I just don’t remember any games where it shot well.

Typically he just filled the role of an anvil unit and provided a ranged threat that rarely (2 hits all weekend) came into play.

Is the threat of the cannon blast enough that it doesn’t need to hit? Maybe.

Is 205 points a good investment for a tough to kill anvil unit? Once again maybe.

Is it worth trying something else out to see if it works better? Probably.

The war shrine
Gold, absolute gold this little beauty definitely helped out the chaos knights enough to essentially win two games.

The diverters
Well surprisingly I don’t think the little unit of 10 really performed a 54 point role and will be left behind with more time to paint a better alternative [really who would of thought that!!]

But some discussion here with other players was that whilst they did perform a role they were essentially points given straight over to your opponent, meaning I was starting off giving over 270 odd points. Would it be better off to instead just take a few things that didn’t really need diverters?


What now?
So in standard post tourney mode I am currently playing around with a couple of different things and I’m entertaining running a “different” list switching out the marauder cav and hellcannon for a unit of warriors and unit of khornate marauders.

Of course this would involve me painting more little plastic guys which may or may not ever happen.