Last Man Standing Results

I had hoped to include a full write up and battle reports with this post but I was unable to for a few reasons.  The first is I forgot my camera, the second is the games went poorly enough in general there really wasn't a point in including more detailed information.  I do want to, however, provide a synopsis of each tournament round and some thoughts on my list/strategy.  For reference, the list I used can be found here.



Round 1
The first round saw me paired up against two Tyranid armies and a space wolf army.  From my perspective, going clockwise from my left it was Tyranid, SW, Tyranid.  This meant I would have to deepstrike aggressively near the SW player or wade through a sea of Tyranids.  To my left was a swarm of 60 Hormagaunts, a Venomthrope, two Primes, and two sets of 20 Genestealers.  To my right was a swarm of 20 Hormagaunts, Ymargl Genestealers, two biovores, Shrikes with Parasite, another Genestealer set and a Prime.

Looking at the armies I figured I had the best chance if I hit my right hand side opponent on the flank and then barreled into the SW player as they approached the center.  Unfortunately I did not get my preferred wave which left me with 2 sets of Daemonettes, The Masque and a Chariot.  I deepstruck conservatively in my deployment zone but I managed to scatter the Daemonettes into assault range of the right hand side stealers, the Chariot into assault range of the left hand side tyranids and I mishapped the other unit of Daemonettes with a third scatter greater than 10".  I did some running, fired the Masque who managed to hit at the Genestealers to force them more into terrain (and hopefully prevent an assault) and that was it.

The second unlucky piece of this round started when I got the chance to go last out of all the players after going first the first turn.  This meant all opponents would have two turns against me before I could do anything but DS and run.  It also meant that my Chariot was eaten, my Daemonettes were partially consumed by Genestealers (looking to hold their own until the Hormogaunt swarm enveloped them and the Masque) and I suddenly had nothing on the board!

I got in one unit of Fiends and two units of Daemonettes and DS them in the emptied Tyranid backfield.  I almost mishapped the Fiends by 1/16" with another huge scatted.  With some bad next turn luck again I was going last and had my Daemonettes blown up by combined fire of two players while my Fiends remained unscathed.  I still had not scored a KP yet in the game and it was now Turn 3, I charged with the Fiends and ate the Biovores, and DS my remaining Fiends and Seekers to line up assaults on the center of the field.

The game ended with me finally in assault, the Fiends multiassaulting with the Seekers 3 units and 3 transports and racking up some KP.  However, it was too little too late and I ended up third at the table, managing to beat out the tyranid player to my left who suffered from some atrocious luck!

Looking back at my strategy I should have held more to my deployment zone early and moved in after the Tyranid Hordes had thinned out a bit.  At the least it would have presented a less compelling target and I would have had additional flexibility to setup some better assaults.  I think the real weakness of this list, however, was Hormagaunts w/ Poison are just hard for Daemonettes to take down.  They have comparable initiative, the Gaunts wound better and there are many more bodies to absorb blows.

Round 2

This round saw me paired with (from my left clockwise) a Khorne Daemon player w/ Skarbrand, a Vanilla Marines player with Assault Terminators, some tactical, LR and Assault Marines and a SW player running 3x GH squads, two rhinos, 1 LR and a Lone wolf.  This game saw me getting turn 1 and my preferred wave of Chariot, Fiends and Seekers came in and spread out.  I had estimated distances well and I was not in easy range of any of my mounted opponents that turn.  However, Turn 2 I ended up going second to last.  I was worried it might be a repeat of the previous game but my opponents underestimated the Fiends and moved into assault with them only to be beaten back by the creatures.  I managed to setup some nice multicharges with Fiends (although I mishapped the Masque who would have turned it into a spectacular charge) and crushed most of my cross opponents army.  My Seekers in the meantime took down two 10x man units of Bloodletters (60 attacks with rerolls from Skarbrand!) and I was in commanding position.  The game continued with the Khorne player mishapping all over the place and destroying a number of his own troops while I cleaned up the Marine player and a significant portion of the SW player.

This time my list performed exactly how I had hoped, DS'ing aggressively, charging into multiple combats and using combat resolution to take down multiple units.  The only shortcoming was my inability to take down a LR that was contesting the central objective and cost me another 18-20 battle points.  I tried to glance it out with some Rending Fiends but to no avail.

Round 3

It was getting late and this game was a rematch against the SW player (not sure how) to my left, a CSM player across from me and to my right an Ork player.  It was late, I was irritable and the Ork player was a part of what I like to call IPod Culture.

Sidebar
I know the people like their music and IPods but do we need to be constantly entertained?  WH 40k is a social game, so it is rude when someone comes up wearing their headphones (unprepared to play as well with models strewn across their previous game table) in their own little world oblivious to others.  We waited almost 30 minutes while this player deployed and figured out what was going on, with his headphones knocking over his models as one ear bud stayed in and the other dangled about...Sometimes it would be nice if people just sat back and appreciated the moment they have now...
/Sidebar

Regardless, I made the Ork player my primary target to thin out his models mainly because he played slow, took forever to move and was conveniently there.  I once again failed my preferred wave and got The Masque, Chariot and two units of Daemonettes.  I should have taken all three units of Daemonettes in the second wave, but that is a discussion for later.  I DS with moderate scatted but not mishaps and was ready to go after Masquing the nearest Ork Boyz unit back an inch.  (I suggested he just swap his front rank to the back and slide his front models up a bit - there were 5 or 6 of them total - since the were no IC or SW in it, but he insisted on moving every model back 1")

I was lucky enough this time to get the first turn for Turn 2, although I failed to get any reserves in at all.  I then charge the 30 man boyz squad which was about 5 models across in the choke point.  I also Masqued them to throw them back 5" to minimize return swings.  Somehow, every single model managed to swing from his Mob (I am amazed that 6" react - 5" pavane enabled him to be within 2" of an engaged model while his entire mob took up 5-8").  To compound my annoyance, I wiffed horribly with my attacks - I had charged in 20 Daemonettes and a Charior (80 S3 Rending and 7 S4 Rending) managing to kill 3 orks (80 attacks - 40 hits - ~13 wounds).  The return swings guaranteed I would lose that combat and I also failed all of the saves I was required to make.  My opponent then informed me he had always been good at rolling dice.

In spite of the setback we struggled on, the CSM player was having worse luck than me while the SW sat on the objective getting points.  I finally got the rest of my army Turn 4 and setup a huge multicharge that hit two boyz Mobs, two units of Grey Hunters and linked in a combat with Raptors, Greater Daemon, Lone Wolf, and Sorcerer.  I felt pretty good about it and won combat by a bucket of dice (I inflicted over 30 combined casualties - 18 to the Ork player alone) and started racking up the Kill Points.  Miraculously, however, the Ork player managed to make all of his 6+ armor saves and did not lose any models to No Retreat! saves...

With that we had to end the game the next turn and with everyone locked in combat we took swings, tried to take out some more models and called it a night.

Summary
Overall I liked the format and we discussed some potential changes to it (I think maybe 1000 point lists would be a better option at this level). The winner was the Tyranid player who came in 4th at our first table (he managed to rack up over 60 points at a lower table when an average winning score for a table was around 25-30) and second was the Khorne Daemon player who managed to wrack up 50+ points in similar fashion. As for my list - it was untested and there are some changes I would have made.

HQ's The Masque performed adequately but on such small board it seemed she was redundant in many cases as fleet provided more than enough range.I also really missed having a heavy hitter (Keeper of Secrets?) in the list.  The Herald was supposed to partially fulfill that role and I was disappointed by her performance.  She was also whiff city on her attacks which did not help - I usually use her as an Icon with good mobility and a decent ability to take down Long Fangs or other annoyances.  I think next time I would try to fit in a Greater Daemon or I might throw a mounted herald with the Seekers and cut the Masque to burn points elsewhere.  It was just 200 points of HQ units that did not pull their weight.

Armor I avoided armor because I thought there would be a proliferation of Meltas, Lascannons, Missiles, et cetera.  Sadly, there were a total of 4x Meltas and 4x lascannons in all the games I played.  I think some Soulgrinders would have played well in this game, especially if they were given Phlegm to take some shots at the huge Ork Hordes that were present.  They also would have helped clear out some of the armor with their S10 attacks and S8 shooting.

Daemonettes - I was disappointed by them this time.  I need them if I am to play a Slaanesh themed army, but they just do not seem to be that effective.  They are better at killing MEQ than hordes in spite of their high number of attacks but Seekers are much better (that extra attack and 12" charge makes a huge difference).  I will probably cut them down next time since any type of unit can hold objectives.  I have been experimenting with some 6x units for larger games to camp on objectives, stay out of LoS and generally go to ground.  I might have been better off in this game using minimum troop requirements.