Brothers in Arms - Tournament Report and an Explanation

I haven't played a game of 40k since 28th October, but despite my lack of effort in getting back into playing, I'd like to write a bit more. As such, here is a tournament report from the last event that I went to. It was a doubles tournament, with 750pts per player.

Gone off Batrep

Just noticed that this is the 101st post of the year. Meh. Anyway, with the GT Heats coming up I'm really loath to talk about anything really. I have a super secret plan with a super secret list and super secret new toys for it. So I'm being super secretive to make sure that it doesn't get out what I'm bringing. If anyone who knows me personally posts what I'm doing in the comments section I will personally hire a bodyguard just to slap you when we next meet. After deleting the comment of course.

In other news, I bought the new Marine Codex, and went to an unvailing 'tournament' at my local store, where only loyalist Marine codecies were allowed. Everyone was using Vanilla bar me with pure Wolves. First game was the Relic. Big ass Chapter Master on bike with more Bikes, I just kept jumping on the Relic with my multitudes of Troops and dragging it back while my Lone Wolves fended off the Bikes to close out the game with a win.

Then I played a Salamanders list, discovered how terrible Assault Centurions are as Long Fangs with my Rune Priest beat them in combat and charged after them cutting them down eventually. The Lone Wolves got around the back. One smashed Vulkan in the face and the other tied up his remaining Marines. Won that.

Then played against a really nice army, which won the local Armies on Parade, in the final. Ignored the Centurions, took a turn of shooting then grabbed First Blood, before pounding forwards knocking him off his objective and claiming 2 of my own. So I won the event essentially. I'll probably be doing a Codex Analysis of them. I hate that segment now but I know Marines are popular so I'll do it.

In non-40k related news. I have a game of Fantasy tomorrow. In addition, my mates have banned me from League of Legends until my new Computer arrives. The number of 'cardboard PC' jokes is tremendous but I keep disconnecting because even League on low settings crashes my 2.2Gb 6 year old Laptop. However, my new 'Overkill PC' 16Gb Desktop arrived on Tuesday.... In Sheffield, so I have to wait until Saturday before it makes it back down to Oxford.

But back to the main topic. In May I photographed a Battle Report, and I have never got around to actually producing it. This has warranted a degree of nagging from my opponent, and now it's got to the point where I either put it up or I buy him a beer. So here you are. If it's wrong, drop a comment in the bottom but don't expect me to change it because I'm far too lazy. I also hope I've got the pictures in the right order. This should be an interesting memory exercise.

Invasion II Game 3 - Tournament Report

Going into the final game we are now on the top table, and our severe lack anti vehicular weaponry has come to sting us in the table once again, this time in the form of a dual Eldar list. It was a strong list, but not broken. The had a Spiritseer in a squad of 5 Wraithguard with D-Scythes in a Wave Serpent. They had 2 squads of Bikes, Baharroth, 10 Howling Banshees which he tanked for, a Night Spinner, Fire Prism, and that was about it.

Invasion II Game 2 - Tournament Report

In the last post I may have alluded to our list's inability to deal with vehicles, well, when you have 3 AV13 vehicles facing you across the battlefield, you definitely can't deal with vehicles. We were playing against a Chaos Marine and Necron List, comprising of a Black Mace Lord, a 5 man Nurgle squad, a 10 man standard squad, a Vindicator, 10 Immortals with Tesla, 10 Warriors, a Lord and 2 Annihilation Barges. The mission was Crusade with Dawn of War.

Cry of the Wind Tournament Report - Game 3

As a one day tournament, we were into the last game, and there were 4 players left that could still win it. A Chaos Marine Nurgle player, with some Heldrakes. A Tau player with some Space Marine Allies, a Wraithwing player, slash, AV13 wall. And me. To be honest none of those match ups sounded terrible to me. The Heldrake player didn't have 3 of them so I was confident that I could deal with them (watch the YouTube battle reports a few posts back). I've been practicing against a lot of Tau, so I wasn't too afraid of them, and then the Wraithwing isn't a terrible match up for my army, although the AV13 may cause me a problem.

We were still playing Swiss system, so with me currently sat in second place it meant that I was playing the Wraithwing. The mission was Kill Points with Dawn of War Deployment (I would have preferred to have a Hammer and Anvil mission but it's fine).

Cry of the Wind Tournament Report - Game 2

I spent the lunch break eating burritos with the friend that I went to the tournament with. He had just faced the Dark Eldar list that I really didn't want to face. The guy who was running it thought that facing my army wouldn't be as clear cut as I thought it would be, however I remember the last time I faced this kind of army, when I first met Nathan at Battlefield Birmingham (I was tabled turn 4). All the Dark Eldar player would have to do would be to kill my Long Fangs then sit at 36" range sipping tea and shooting things. In addition, we had both scored 9 points in our previous game, so I knew that a showdown was highly likely.

Luckily however, we were joint for 2nd place at the time, meaning that one of us would have to fight it out against a Wraithwing army on table 1. This meant that I would not be facing Dark Eldar this round. Instead, Space Wolves with Allies. Almost a mirror match, Vanguard Strike deployment, the Emperor's Will mission.

Cry of the Wind Tournament Report - Game 1

There may have been a lack of posting over the last couple of days. The reason for this is that I attended a tournament yesterday, and went with a friend, so I spent the previous evening prepping and making sure everything was ready to go. Plus I was at the club getting some last minute practice in.

The tournament in question was the Cry of the Wind event at the Outpost in Sheffield, a gaming store with a good gaming space upstairs where they hold tournaments. Kind of like a mini-Maelstrom. The tournament itself was a 20 player event, at 1,750pts with pre-determined missions. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't get onto their website the evening before so had no real idea what I was doing. I was taking a variation of my GT list, I was a little more fluffy the last time I went which cost me when I actually discovered what everyone else was running so this time I went for hardcore. The list was as follows:

Space Wolves vs Chaos Marines Video Battle Report Part 4

The final part of the game. This part encompasses more than one game turn.

Space Wolves vs Chaos Marines Video Battle Report Part 3

Getting into the meat of this game now.

Space Wolves vs Chaos Marines Video Battle Report Part 2

Here is part 2 of the battle report. I did make a bit of a mistake with how many Guardsmen died in the combat but that is highlighted.

Space Wolves vs Chaos Marines Video Battle Report Part 1

On the left of this page you may see a little icon which links to a YouTube channel entitled, 'DarkListGaming'. This is a channel dedicated to Chaos Space Marines run by my friend John. The last time I played him was at the Steel City Wargaming tournament back in August, where I won to secure a top 5 finish.

However, with the new Chaos Marines Codex out, and with us both back in Sheffield temporarily over Easter, we decided to organise a rematch, and this time it wasn't interrupted by snow. The stakes were still high however, as the game would be forever immortalised on the internet - although these may have been a little higher for John as if he lost he would be forced to watch it during production.

The battle report itself is split into 4 parts, and as for some reason the videos don't show up on a search to embed them into the post, they'll have to go in one by one. The parts are: Deployment and Turn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3, and Endgame. Here is the first part. (I am running the Space Wolves with Imperial Guard allies).

Guard Blob Vs Black Mace

Weekly batrep today, this game was from Friday, where I played against a Chaos Space Marine player, who we shall call G for now, at 1,800pts.

Before getting into lists and other details important to the game, there is a bit of backstory to this game. It was being played at Steel City Wargaming, the club that I attend in Sheffield, UK. In the last 40k tournament that they ran there, I played G on table 2 in the 2^nd round, playing with my Space Wolves which had just returned from their first proper outing at July's Throne of Skulls. Due to a hefty lack of terrain on this board, and a few dumbass mistakes on my part, G won the game, and this has been a gloating point for him ever since. He then went on to lose on table 1 whilst I was knocked to table 4 where I got a big win meaning that we finished 4^th and 5^th respectively. Therefore, this was a chance to even the score, properly.

UK 40k GT Army List

It has struck me that I haven't actually posted up the list that I used, so here it is:

Battlefield Birmingham Army List

Something a little different today, I'm thinking that maybe posting something other than a Dark Angels analysis will break the sloppiness of my writing, I keep missing little bits. The latest mistake post wasn't quite as bad as the previous one, GW releasing a £30 book full of typos didn't help, but that's not an excuse.

With Battlefield Birmingham coming up in 2 weeks time I've finally decided to lock down my list, so that I get familiar with it and how it works together, I already know what everything does but I don't like last minute changes. So, in this post I'm going to be going through what I'm taking and why.

1,750pts: Space Wolves and Imperial Guard

Chaos Marine Analysis - Mutilators

 Before getting into the swing of the post, I feel like this blog needs a picture in it. So here is some of my progress to my tournament army. I'm aiming to have it all done by 10^th January. To avoid that mad painting rush for both Perils of the Warp 2 and Throne of Skulls. But anyway.

Getting the 2+ save section of the Codex finished today I've decided to move onto Mutilators as the topic of today's post. Now these have definitely been the subject of internet hate, but are they really that bad?

Well, at first glance they appear to be an attempt to make a Chaos Marine equivalent to the Paladin. They are 2 wound Terminators and they have the same points cost per model as a Paladin, but there are a few key differences. Firstly, they only have a 5+ invulnerable save, generated from being a Daemon. Secondly, there is absolutely no capacity in the Codex to take them as Troops. Thirdly, their wargear options are extremely limited, and so have no capacity to take anything that shoots whatsoever. Fourthly, they can't churn out as many attacks as Paladins and when they do they are restricted to a maximum of initiative 4. Fifthly, you can only take a maximum of 3 in a squad. And finally, they have a pretty low leadership and a bang average weapon skill. So not like Paladins at all then.

The problem with Mutilators is that you look at their statline and see all of the cool gear that they can morph, making you think, 'if I can maybe get at least 5 of these and get into my enemy's lines I could cause some real damage here'. The problem then comes in the fact that you can't do that, as you're limited to such small squads.

Let's say that you have 3 Mutilators, completely naked, charge a squad of 10 tactical marines. You break out the dual lightning claws. 4 attacks each on the charge, 12, 6 hits, re-rolls, 9 hits. 4.5 dead tactical marines. 64 points worth. No problem, now I'm locked in the combat until next turn so I don't get shot at. 11 tac marine attacks at the same time. 5.5 hits, 2.75 wounds, you should be fine.

Next round of assault comes around. 9 attacks, but now you're probably going to be using Chainfists, you'll also probably have lost a wound by now to tactical marine hits. 9 attacks, 4.5 hits, 3.75 dead tactical marines. In 2 rounds of combat you have killed 8.25 of some of the most standard Troops in the game. You'll kill the remainder in your turn and then your opponent can turn their guns on you if they really want to. It has taken you 3 assault phases to get through that.

Now you can give them veterans of the long war, which would probably have you done with the Marines in 2 assault phases, but this doesn't help you get through not Marine armies and it almost bumps you up to 60pts per model. However, I would still take it just for the Leadership bonus, as the moment you lose a Mutilator is the moment that you take a test on an Imperial Guard Sergeant's Leadership otherwise.

There are a couple of things that you can do to reduce the chances of losing guys, the Marks of Tzeentch and Nurgle are again the main proprietors of this. T5 is useful as it prevents you from getting doubled out very often, although it is spendy, but so is Tzeentch, again improving your invulnerable save. But this isn't making them any more of a threat, all you're doing is inflating their points cost to make them more durable. I made this point with the Defiler, durability isn't really their problem, especially after securing their LD a little bit more, the problem is that they simply don't hit hard enough.

Moving onto Slaanesh and Khorne. You can skip over Slaanesh to some degree as you don't really care whether or not your Initiative is buffed as you can take the hits anyway (See Chaos Terminators). So Khorne is the choice here, an additional +1 attack on the charge. So 3 more attacks against that tac marine squad. 1.5 hits, 2.25 hits after re-rolls, 1.125 additional wounds. It's still not doing the business, and by now your Mutilators are hitting almost 65pts after Vets.

Then you face the problem of getting them into combat. You can deep strike them, which gives your opponent another turn to point their guns at you, or move their guys away as Mutilators aren't particularly fast. Or you could put them in a Land Raider, in which case you will be paying almost 400pts for this squad. Fantastic.

So, in answer to the question at the start, yes. Yes they are.

That said, I'm afraid I'm going to have to steal an idea from somewhere else at the minute, although as a student I should really know how to reference. I was listening to the 40kUk Podcast the other day, the episode entitled, 'The Big Fight III' and they were interviewing the player that came 3^rd in the most recent GT qualifier with Chaos Space Marines, and one of his Elites choices were Mutilators.

And what he was doing was what I thought a really good idea. He was just using a lone Mutilator, and dropping it into his opponent's backfield to score a linebreaker point, hiding it after the deep strike. It's not threatening enough to warrant shooting at, and any shots that do come its way it can generally shrug off.

So, if you're going to run Mutilators, as far as I've seen that's probably the way to go.