Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 1

Now that's the longest hiatus I've had in a while, I can assure you though that I've been storing up my posts to release them in one big burst. I have a good excuse for this however. Much hobbying has been done. There hasn't really been much build up to Toy Soldier here, and there has been a good reason for this, I didn't actually decide what to take until last weekend, when I made the foolish decision to take my Chaos Space Marines.

There is a difference between this army and other Chaos Armies right now. There are no Heldrakes. With this list I specifically set out to make a Khorne army that wasn't on the bottom tables at every tournament. In addition, I wanted to try to show that the Chaos Marines Codex is great, it is not mono-build and can be competitive without the Drakes. The reason that the decision to take them to Toy Soldier was foolish was because the army was only half painted. I still needed to paint:

Bloodthirster, Land Raider, Chaos Lord, 2 Squads of Marines, Squad of Bloodletters, Aegis Defence Line plus Quad Gun, Squad of Spawn, assemble and paint a Daemon Prince and additional Spawn for Boons, and then base everything. I had 5 days.

I just about managed to accomplish this, at 11:00pm the night before the event. The downside to this was that all I did was Eat, Sleep and Paint, I didn't even have time to shower and I'm pretty certain that they could smell me on the other side of the Pennines in Stockport. I did however shower before I left. But this was the army as seen at Toy Soldier.

My Word Bearer Cult to Khorne, with some Spawned Death Guard buddies thrown in.

Time to prefix the game, me and my mate that I went with were rather late to Stockport, this was due to the Sat Nav breaking down, followed up by my shoddy directing, and then followed up by a car rolling over immediately after we turned around. Meaning that we arrived 20 minutes late, and therefore playing each other.

Setting the scene, it was crazy how much Tau there was. Every table adjacent to us, including diagonally, had Tau on it. However onto the game.

My opponent was playing Space Wolves with Grey Knight allies.

2 Rune Priests, a squad of Wolf Guard in Terminator Armour, 2 full packs of Grey Hunters, 3 packs of Long Fangs, 2 with Missiles and 1 with Lascannons, Coteaz, 2 squads of 11 Henchmen with psykers for a S7 AP2 Large Blast and a Dreadknight. The Mission was The Emperor's Will with Dawn of War, with the addition of an extra point for controlling table quarters at the end.

My opponent got first turn, and I promptly attempted to hide all of the Land Raiders, which was successful in that in the first turn I only lost 2 Bloodletters and he only lost 2 Acolytes. Second turn I barrell into his lines, on the right flank my Land Raider got in with the Axe of Blind Fury Lord, smashes into a squad of Long Fangs. First Blood was not in play but if it was then my Lord hitting himself in the face with his Daemon Weapon 2 turns on the trot before dying to a Wolfen guy for a counter charging squad of Grey Hunters would have cost me it. The Spawn were dancing around a rock in the middle before charging a squad of Henchmen whilst on the left I was being a bit more cagey due to the Dreadknight and a squad of Grey Hunters who had a Meltagun.

To set the scene for what ended up deciding the game. My opponent had killed my main threat to his objective on the right by removing the Land Raider and Marine Squad with Khorne Lord, he had also jumped his Dreadknight over to my objective turn 2 before finishing off the Bloodletter squad turn 3, as the Bloodthirster was too far away to charge him and so jumped over behind him instead. My other Marine Squad had also managed to get into combat with his Warlord's squad of Grey Hunters.

Now, I was confident of keeping my home objective. I didn't mind particularly if he charged my Bloodletters and killed them as my Cultists were still in Reserve and ready to come on behind the Aegis Line, plus his Dreadknight was going to die. What I really needed to happen, was for the Dreadknight to die turn 3. This is because it would still give my Bloodthirster 2 turns to hop onto my opponent's objective to contest turn 5, as without the Marines I'd struggle. I did also have a squad of Spawn behind the rock in the centre ready to move for it and another wandering about behind his Long Fangs after they finished off the Henchmen.

I charge the Dreadknight and kill it turn 3, which is big, the Spawn then make a break for the enemy objective, as I feel I have too many T6 wounds for my opponent to deal with with 5 remaining from the 2 squads of 3. In addition, my Warlord's squad dies to the enemy Warlord's squad, but not before I've attracted a lot of attention and killed his Warlord. So Warlord exchange, but because he looks set to claim table quarters because I have so many points invested in non denial units, I really need to contest his objective to win. The Spawn go into the Henchmen on the objective turn 4, one squad is somehow killed on overwatch from 4 Laspistols (they took a couple of wounds earlier, but there were still 2 left), so I have one squad going in, which my opponent manages to kill turn 5, somehow. This leaves the Bloodthirster, who swoops onto the objective turn 5 as I have 2nd turn. I'm now looking for the game to end, as if it does, I win 5-1 and rack up maximum tournament points.

Unfortunately the game doesn't end, and my opponent manages to down my Bloodthirster and kill it. So I lose the game 5-4. However, because we drew the Primary objective and I only lost on secondaries, I still come away with 5pts.