A (somewhat unexpected) Dark Eldar tournament report!

Hello all, and time for yet another tournament report as I attempt to perfect my Dark Eldar list and tactics! This tournament was 1500 points, and the funny thing is, I knew Kasrkar was going to be there with his dreaded Guard, but I didn't think I'd be going. I had a prior engagement beforehand, and I figured I'd go and watch Kasrkar dominate his way to the top, and then get in a game with the man in question afterwards. However, when I showed up, the guy running the tournament said they had an odd number of guys, and that he'd let me jump in with 10 points as if I'd gotten a draw, since I missed the first round. So, I wrote up a list in 5 minutes that looked like:

Haemonculus with Shattershard, venom blade

5 Incubi with Klaivex, venom with 2 Splinter cannons

3 Trueborn with 2 Splinter Cannons, raider with Flickerfield

9 Wyches with haywires, hydra gauntlets, Hekatrix with agonizer, raider with Flickerfield

5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades, venom with 2 Splinter cannons

5 Warriors with Blaster, venom with 2 splinter cannons

5 Warriors with Blaster, venom with 2 splinter cannons

5 Warriors with Blaster, venom with 2 splinter cannons

Ravager with Flickerfield

Ravager with Flickerfield

Razorwing with Flickerfield

Like 1,499 points or something. Just under 1,500 for sure. Not one of my usual lists, trying MSU for the first time really. We'll see how it goes.

So, round 1 which I missed, Kasrkar faced a Grey Knights guy with a Land Raider of each type, a Stormraven, A dreadnaught with a Lascannon, Coteaz, a Libby, and a bunch of random henchmen. Anyway, Dawn of War, seize ground, turn 1 nothing much happened, turn 2 Kasrkar killed all the Raiders and the Stormraven. He tabled his opponent, but was prevented from achieving the secondary and tertiary. So he wound up with 15/20 points, and everyone got set for round 2...

Round 2 vs. Thomas' Crimson Fists!

His list:

Pedro

Chapter Master with Plasma Pistol, powerfist

9 Sterngard with Powerfist, plasma pistol, 2 lascannons, 2 combi-meltas

10 Tacs with Lascannon, Plasma Gun, sergeant with Plasma Pistol, Powerfist

10 Tacs with Lascannon, Plasma Gun, sergeant with Plasma Pistol, Powerfist

10 Tacs with plasma cannon, Plasma Gun, sergeant with Plasma Pistol, Powerfist

10 Tacs with plasma cannon, Plasma Gun, sergeant with Plasma Pistol, Powerfist

So, quite the large army.

Mission:

Primary: Capture and Control

Secondary: Kill the Traitor, each player gives the other a model to be the traitor, you must kill your traitor.

Tertiary: Table quarters, have the most VPs in a table quarter.

Deployment: Spearhead

So he wins the roll off, and deploys his Sterngard with the Chapter Master, and separately my traitor, in a building in his quarter, and one Lascannon tac squad next to the building, everything else in and around a crater that had his C&C marker in it. My deployment was all of my ships deployed around a building in my quarter that held my C&C marker, using my ravagers to give cover to the rest of my army, since they won't be much use this game (or so I thought).

The Game:

I try to seize, and fail! He goes right to shooting, and calls down 2 bombardments turn 1, and added in with all the lascannons, he wrecks my Razorwing, took all the weapons off a warrior venom, and immobilized the Raider with my wyches in it. My turn, I zerg up the middle, and kill half the Sterngard, and half of a squad of tacticals, who run off the table. The rest of the game is essentially me pushing forward and shooting, and him immobilizing my vehicles. He calls it turn 4, as I am about to launch a game-ending assault.

Result: Win for the Dark Eldar, 20/20 possible points!

A terrible matchup for Thomas, but he took it in stride. Kasrkar played on the table next to me this game, and his game only lasted 2 turns. It was against a wych-heavy Dark Eldar player, and he killed basically everything turn 1, and they called the game at the exact same time as we called ours. So Kasrkar was on table 1 for round 3 against some Khorne CSMs, and I was on table 2 vs:

Round 3 vs. John's Grey Knights!

His list:

Draigo (sigh)

Librarian with Vortex of doom, might of titan, sanctuary, shrouding, 2 servo-skulls

Vindicare Assassin

5 Paladins with 2 MC psycannons, 4 Halberds, 1 MC hammer

10 Strikes with MC hammer, Warding stave

Stormraven

Psybolt dread

So, not too many models. I wasn't too scared going into this game, although that opinion changed midway through the game.

Mission:

Primary: VPs, need to win by at least 200

Secondary: Eliminate highest point enemy HQ

Tertiary: Table your opponent

Deployment: Pitched battle

So he wins the roll-off, and, bizarrely it seemed, decided to go second. Perplexed, I set up in the center of my deployment zone, set up for the alpha-strike. Then in his deployment, he said he was deepstriking everything. I probably should have seen that coming, but oh well. He set up his servo-skulls down the center line of the table. He then infiltrated his Vindicare in a ruin in the middle of the table.

The Game:

He tries to seize, and fails. First turn I move up and lance the Vindicare to death, and in my second turn I turbo far away from his servo skulls. Well, turn 2 he rolls for reserves, and gets nothing. Turn 3, I turbo again. His turn 3, everything comes on, and all hell breaks loose. Everything lands on target, Draigo with the Pallies, and the Dread and strikes with the Libby hopping out of the raven. Shooting, he kills one ravager, and the Raider with my wyches in it. My turn, it is time for retribution! I set both squads of wyches up to assault the strikes, and everything else moves away from the Paladins. Shooting, I fire a lot of stuff into the paladins, and kill 1 paladin outright, wound the rest, and put 2 wounds on Draigo. Shattershard takes care of the Libby and 2 strikes, and splinter fire accounts for 1 more strike. Raven is immobilized by blasterfire from the warriors.

The rest of the game is the wyches assaulting the strikes and them doing jack to each other, the raven and dread killing my vehicles, and the paladins eating 200+ splinter shots and 15 lances, and there were still 2 wounded paladins and draigo on 1 wound left. As it turned out, I won primary by like 300 VPs, and we tied secondary and tertiary. Had it gone into extra turns, I would have tabled him for sure. John was a good guy, and very good player, and no matter how many guys I killed, he was a great sport.

Result: Win for the Dark Eldar, 15/20 points!

That last game turned out to be pretty tight down the stretch. Oh yeah, and Kasrkar killed the CSMs. Just blew apart defilers and dreads without a second thought. Pretty crazy.

Tournament results:

I was hoping Karkar would draw, and I would massacre, meaning I would leapfrog him, and get the top spot, but that didn't happen. So I had to contend with second, whilst Kasrkar took the top spot. Kasrkar's round 1 opponent took 3rd. In addition to other prizes, Kasrkar got the 25th anniversary special model. I got anther box of warriors, destined to become Trueborn, so that I can kill tanks for once.

So, anther tournament over. Any comments? Criticisms? Witticisms? Any kind of -cisms?

Building an Uber-army

I'm sure all of you (as long as you aren't extreme noobs) have heard of such deadly army lists as the Alpha-strike, the Leafblower, and The Kult of Speed, and I'm also sure that some of you have no idea how to construct an excellent tournament list. Well, today, I will help you on your way to becoming the next Phil Kelly, aka, being able to win games at will. There are three schools of thought on how to make a competitive tournament list. The first one is the way that most gamers in Europe tend to use, which is achieved by getting, in every unit, the best value for your points. Such as, if you need tank killing, and you can get a land raider, or a squad of devastators with missile launchers. Both would be about the same in effectiveness (using mathhammer), but the Land raider is considerably more expensive. There, problem solved. The second way is a tactic used mostly by players in the US, and is much more straightforward. It relies on getting about a million super units, to act as wrecking balls, that tear through the enemy army in an unstoppable tornado of las-bolts and chainswords. These types of armies rely heavily on such units as Nob bikers, Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield terminators, and the like. The third and final way to do it is my favorite, and probably the best, as well as being the most fun. The third choice is to find a special character in your army list who gives your army some special ability or other, or makes certain unit types better, or troops, and them milk him for all he is worth. I have several examples for this. Take Sammael, from the Dark Angels codex, for instance. He is a pretty good character, and can be put in a 14 14 10 land speeder for free. But his main ability is to make all Ravenwing attack squadrons become troops. If you choose to base an army around him, you will have a small but elite force of bikers and attack bikers, all able to capture objectives, and all able to make use of the Outflank rule, thanks to the Scout special rule. It will also be extremely hard to kill, with each of the scoring models having toughness 5. Another example is another Space Marine character: Vulkan He'stan. By taking him, all flamers, heavy flamers, meltaguns and multi-meltas become twin-linked, and all Thunder Hammers become master-crafted. Due to the amount of mech in 5th edition, having all meltaguns twin-linked for free is practically to good to be true. The rest of the army them becomes very easy to build: Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield terminators, melta-maxed tactical squads, and multi-melta/heavy flamer land speeders. So you see, not too hard to make a good army list. Even if you aren't Space Marines, there are plenty of other characters that benefit your army, such as Epidemius for the Chaos Daemons, Wazdakka for the Orks, etc. Well, that's all for today, see you all soon, and may your dice ever roll 6s!