Draigo (Chapter Champion)
5 Pallies with Brotherhood Banner (TDA Honorguard)
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback with SL (PA Honorguard)
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback with SL (PA Honorguard)
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback with SL (PA Honorguard)
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback with SL (PA Honorguard)
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Passback (PA Honorguard)
Stormraven with TLMM and TLPC and SL
Venerable Dread with AC and Pysbolts
Vindicare (Telion)
Dreadknight with Incinerator and Personal Teleporter (CALGAR!)
Pysfleman
Pysfleman
I spent quite a while figuring out exactly what I wanted to bring. I thought about a Libby and/or a LR and many other iterations, but this was the one that just worked out the best. I felt it gave me answers to a lot of things I might see in a tournament. The Vindicare was supposed to help be my answer to LRs supported by the Ven Dread and Passback. The heavy incinerator was supposed to help deal with 2+ coversave shenanigans. My biggest concern was the fact that my army consisted of about 40 models in a 2500 point game.
Game 1:
Deployment: Dawn of War
Objective: KPs (5 more than your opponent for Major Win)
My opponent was a great guy playing a Nid list. I had played him before with my Vanilla Marines and had a lot of fun. Admittedly, he built this list for the meta at another store that had a lot of horde armies, so he knew he was going to be in a lot of trouble against all the Power Armor and metal bawkes. His list was something like:
Swarmlord
Winged Tyrant
Tervigon
Tervigon
Devilguants with Spore
Devilguants with Spore
Genestealers with Broodlord
Doom with Spore
3 Hiveguard
3 Hiveguard
3 Biovores
3 Biovores
3 Biovores
Harpy
I won't go into a lot of detail on any of the reports. My shooting wiped out his Winged Tyrant and Harpy pretty easily, and Spores do not like Pysbacks. I charged a Tervigon and Guants with Draigo and the Pallies and ate them, but the Doom came in and did a number on them as I rolled a 16 and a 15 for my leadership rolls. Coupled with a Devilguant barrage, the Pallies were reduced to Draigo and the wounded Brotherhood Banner model. So basically the Chapter Champion and Chapter Ancient proceeded to finish off some wounded Hiveguard and set up for a climatic battle against the Swarmlord. While that was going on, Calgar flambayed genestealers on the left and received a charge from the depleted squad and broke them. The normal Honorguard squads were more than a match for the gribblies. Calgar would eventually go down trying to take out the second Tervigon, but the Swarmlord was dropped to one wound by the rest of the shooting. The Chapter Champion and Ancient prepared to charge, but the Chapter Champion's stormbolter finished him off... finally taking revenge for Cold Steel Ridge and ensuring a Major Victory. Overall it was a very laid back game with no major rules issues.
Game 2
Deployment: Spearhead
Objectives: 5 Objectives (Hold 3 more for Major Victory)
For the second game, I was matched up against another great guy that I had played before when he was running BT. However, this time he brought Blood Angels Razorspam, so I knew I was in for a rough go of it. His list was:
Mephiston
Libby with Shield/Lance
Honorguard Squad with MGx4 and Rhino
Honorguard Squad with PGx4 and Rhino
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
ASM with MG and Las/Plas Razor
Baal Pred with Assault Cannon/HBs
Baal Pred with Assault Cannon/HBs
Baal Pred with Assault Cannon/HBs
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator
Overall a very, very nasty list, as I rely on 2+ saves to keep my heavy hitters alive. I won the roll to go first and took it. Grand Strategy made Calgar, the Ven Dread, and one of the Pysflemen scoring. This game was very much a Razorspam duel, with me immobilizing most of his vehicles and leaving him bottled up in his deployment zone. The Stormraven dropped off the Pallies right in the middle of his force and wrecked several vehicles before being counter-charged by Mephiston. My goal was to simply throw them into the mix while the rest of my forces went to get objectives, so I was fully prepared to lose most of them. Mephiston proceeded to kill all the Pallies but the Banner (again). Draigo then turned around landed a blow against Mephiston and killed him when his hood failed to stop the FW. After that Draigo proceeded to camp out on his objective, soloing 3-4 ASM squads with one wound left. The Stormraven also camped out on it to contest if need be. The regular Honorguard simply tried to survive as immobilized Baal Preds demeched them and whittled them down. I almost got knocked down to a Minor Win because a Baal Pred put two normal wounds on Calgar and I proceeded to roll snake-eyes for his armor saves. I was able to get two guys onto the objective he had been camping, but they were out in the open. He also had scoring units ready to claim the objective that Draigo and the Stormraven were on if he could kill them. Luckily they all weathered the storm and the game ended on Turn 5 so I was able to hold on for the Major.
Game 3
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Objectives: Capture and Control (Control more Objectives for Major, VPs for Minor)
My opponent for the final game was another great guy with a beautiful Marine army. It was fairly fluffy but still competitive. The only thing that I thought it lacked was mobility. It was:
Khan
Chaplain
Tech Marine
Sniper Scouts with Telion and ML
Tactical Squad with MG, Combi-Melta, ML, and Rhino
Tactical Squad with MG, Combi-Melta, ML, and Rhino
8 CC Scouts with Combi-Melta, PF, and Homer
Assault Squad with PF and Plasmas
MM AB x2
MM AB
TLLC Dread
Terminators with Assault Cannon
Devestator Squad with Lascannons
Whirlwind
He won the roll to go first and placed his objective in a ruins in a corner that his techmarine reinforced. I put my objective at the 12" line in the middle of the board. He combat Squaded his Tacticals and castled on his objective. He selected the Bikes and Assault Squad to outflank and the Sniper Scouts to Infiltrate. He had enough shooting to make it dangerous for me to deploy the Stormraven in the open, so I went full reserve. This would also give me a chance to see where the ABs and Assault Squad would come in. I decided to infilitrate Telion and won the roll to deploy him first. I tried to hide him out of sight of his firebase, but did not do a very good job of it. The first two turns saw my opponent kill Telion and roll in with the Assault Squad near his FB and the two MM ABs came in on the far side of the board. I ended up getting everything but two Pysbacks in from reserve, and rolled in directly across from his castle and popped smoke on the Razors. The Stormraven turboed in front of his LR while Calgar shunted as close as he could to my opponent's castle. The idea was to use Calgar to suck up fire that would have been shot towards the Stormraven, but I had forgot about the Plasma pistols on the Assault Squad. I also made my biggest mistake of the day, as I put my 1000+ point bus of doom where it could be completely encircled. The Pysflemen took out the ABs and Calgar roasted some Sniper Scouts.
On his next turn his Terminators deep struck next to the LR (using the homer) and his Death Star hopped out and surrounded the Stormraven. I had put myself in a position where I could basically lose the game in one turn. His very first shot was a pen and he quickly rolled the damage result and it came up a Wreck. As I was seeing the game go down the drain he reminded me of my Flat-out save. I then rolled and passed it! The rest of the turn was very tense as a combination of flubbed rolls and cover saves allowed the Stormraven to weather all of his firing and the charge of the Tech Marine and PF Scout (who had rerolls). The Assault Squad took two wounds off of Calgar and charged, but lost combat and passed morale. Once the Stormraven and Calgar both survived (and the Stormraven passed Fortitude), we both knew that was pretty much the game.
Draigo and the Pallies proceeded to wipe out his entire castle/firebase in a series of multi-charges over several turns. The Ven Dread ended up bailing out Calgar, the Stormraven killed the LR after a couple of turns, and small arms fire eventually took care of the Death Star/Termies. We called it during Turn 5 once I had parked Pallies on his objective and got two GKSS in combat with the Combat Squad trying to push towards my objective. I ended up winning the tournament with full Battle Points. However, I will be the first to admit that I probably should have lost the third game. I got complacent/sloppy and almost paid for it.
Overall I was fairly happy with the list. I thought the Passback/Venerable Dread performed fairly well and may try to incoporate them into my 1500-2K lists. I did not use the Vindicare effectively at all (he also missed not once but twice) and he went the whole day without killing a single model. He also doesn't fit well in the list as he is extremely static while the rest of the list is fairly mobile. If I wasn't done with 2500 point tournaments forever, I would consider dropping the Vindicare and Heavy Incinerator for a MM Venerable Dread or some Interceptors. I loved seeing just what crazy situations Calgar and the Chapter Champion could survive. They pulled off some seriously epic feats, which is why I love taking beatstick characters.
I picked up some GKTs with my store credit and plan on redoing the Pallies to make them look more like Honorguard. However, I am still plugging away at the Necrons and will post pics as soon as I make some more progress.
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