Well, Loq and I did fairly well in the league by my reckoning at least… Playing the first few weeks with a very outdated/just plain bad codex (if you were playing Grey Knights at least) really threw off our results I think. Still, we wound up positive in the standings, setting us up for the Tournament ranked in the middle, more or less… The Tournament will follow the same format, 1000 points/player, fixed lists for the whole event… The Tournament will be run over the course of 2 Monday nights, with us skipping next week to set up the teams, etc…
Last night's game wound up a win on the "automatic draw" mission… Seizing the imitative while they were lining up for their first round of shooting meant we splashed the Vendetta and destroyed their Artillery before they did anything. Over the next turn or so, concentrating on the closer IG we were able to remove them before Tom's Eldar could do more than harass our flank… Loq's troops in cover did make a good number of saves against the Star Cannons and the like, allowing a few of them to survive to get into HtH with some IG Vets… And her EC actually survived the whole game :-)… My big Terminator squad backed by the Xenos Inquisitor for the "Oh, you thought you'd bring Plasma… I'm sorry" wargear (Actually I think of it as "Fuck Plasma", but the first sounds nicer) sat in the building with the objective choosing Duty over Glory to guarantee at the least a draw for us… ~600 points of "Come and Take Them" to really discourage anyone thinking they could actually come force us off of our objective… The Psycannon are REALLY quite powerful, especially if your dice are a bit hot… Justicar Thawn was leading out that squad and never really did anything, so I'll have to run him again at some point to get a more successful test of his abilities. I think he's going to be really useful, but based on the performance last night, I cannot really say…
Does bring up a question… I didn't buy the Psy Ammo for the squad with the points being as tight as they were, but if I had, would he get the effect, and would he keep it if he were killed and subsequently resurrected? I'd say he should, but he is also a named character, and you normally cannot buy upgrades or alter them in any way…
Purifiers in a full squad of 10 with 4 Psycannon were an unholy terror. I combat squadded them, half with 2 Psycannon in the squad's Rhino and the other half deployed into cover at the front of our DZ… Between them, they accounted for several Chimeras (Chimerii? :-) not sure the Latin plural, not one of the languages I speak well), some Wave Serpents and other casualties… Not sure how much better they really were than just getting a few "line squads" of the Strike Squads, but the ability to throw down the mini Devastator squad with 4 Psycannon backed by the other 5 lads to be a real anti horde/fast attacker threat should at least cause folks to think seriously about trying to take them down…
Tom's Eldar did fairly well, though I still think his Pathfinders would have been a better choice, at least against us… Since we brought 1 Rhino, the squad of Melta Doom was really not going to do a lot (Our Terminators were in cover pretty much the whole game)… Though his killing one of Black Templar Sword Brethren and forcing a morale check to have the 500 point squad run off of the board was an excellent shot, but not something I'd count on happening often :-)… The War Walkers, I might have had them flank and come in from reserves, but even that with our army being so tiny (lots of those expensive Terminators) I'm not sure it would have helped… The Walkers actually did quite well all things considered… His Doom Seer really did a number on the BTs out on the front line, pretty sure I'd have run Guardians over Dire Avengers in the Wave Serpents just for the heavy weapons, but I've been on a "bring lots of HWs" kick for a while. The Shuriken Catapult, while a decent Infantry weapon is not really enough to take down heavy infantry, and I'd consider Marines as the lower end of "Heavy Infantry", Terminators being probably the upper end of the scale… Just too many things that shrug off the Str 4, or cannot be affected by it, like AV11+… But just my opinions as always, they did fairly well as they were…
yeah, even 5 minutes before we played i was going back and forth about the pathfinders. I do like them...a lot. Especially when they are in cover with a 2+ save. I did think about putting three shuriken cannon on each Wave Serpent. Not sure if that would have done any better. Also thought about the list I ran two weeks ago, with two fire prisms. Oh well, it was fun and I think I learned a thing or two.
ReplyDeleteTom
:-) I'm a big fan of Fire Prisms and Pathfinders... They're not the most points efficient I guess, and there are a few armies that those things simply do not work well against... Pathfinders at least, the tanks seem damn solid against "whatever"... Shame they cannot be run in squadrons like the IG ones...
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I haven't played Eldar in a long time, but I was moving more toward the Shuriken Cannon upgrade for the Serpens and either missile launcher, Bright Lances or Scatter Lasers for the turret mount... Tended to use them as Medium Tanks that happened to carry Dire Avengers or Guardians to claim objectives... The Eldar wins I see tended to be with them reserving a lot or all of their Mech force, then hoping for a late entry to the field where they could claim/contest a few objectives and maybe kill off a few things... I tended NOT to play that way, so my Warp Spiders deep striking and Scorpions flanking to harass while my Pathfinders hopefully pin or kill a few things... Prisms and Serpents to engage the enemy armor and force the troops inside of transports to get out and walk through sniper fire... :-) Sometimes it even worked...