Welcome to a another guest post by Togashi Shinkaze. You can catch him lurking about over at Laughter of the Thirsting Gods talking about “metas” and “fun 40k”. Worth a read!
This one’s about his ‘Ard Boyz Semis victory over the weekend, and since I choked round one, well I gotta get you coverage somehow!
So last Saturday I played 3 good players with my 3 Psydread, 60 Purifiers, 5 Rhinos and Crowe list. Here’s my battle report (or as much as I can remember of it).
First Game Space Wolf Drop Pods with 2 Plasma Cannon Dreads and the 18 Long Fangs with Njal and Rune Priest. Blasted the Long Fangs pretty quick, he failed a massive amount of saves.
It wasn’t that crazy though because they all were probably going down on turn 3 anyways since they were heavily outgunned. Terminator Njal did die to his first two saves but I would have concentrated fire on him until he dropped. Dread flamed and plasma cannoned a squad killing 4-5 but immobilized my Messenger Rhino with the Flamer!
I would have been in the deployment zone top of turn 2! Psydread shot the Plasma dread in the back. I was spread out and would take a little damage whenever a Grey Hunter would drop down but return fire and assault from 1-2 squads would finish them off immediately. My messenger got out and walked into deployment and I ended up with a massacre.
Crowe did practically nothing besides hijack a rhino and kill a Grey Hunter.
Game 2 I’m playing a Venom heavy DE player by the name of Chris. He’s a really strong player so I know it will be very helpful to go first. I do win the roll and combat squad to 12 scoring units for grabbing the center objective.
I get few shots off at first but manage to blow off a couple dark lances and stun the Razorwing. I lose a couple of rhinos and a squad of 5. Starting on turn 2 lots of Psycannons take their toll and the dreads really start pounding. Baron and max beasts charges a squad and I fail Cleansing flame. He rolls a 1 for consolidate but I don’t think he could have gotten away.
I charged with 4 squads successfully triggering 4 cleansing flames and do something like 15 wounds, then 12, 9, 5. Also I had multi charged a 5 man warrior and the 4 flames whittled them down to 1 guy who my 1 Halberdman slayed. If I had gone second it would have been much rougher but I think I still would have taken the center since GK are a bad match up for DE, especially with 12 squads of Purifiers to take care of the Warp Beast hammer.
Once again, Crowe did nothing though I could have charged him into the Warp Beasts but wisely decided to run him for no particular reason. Not being a IC he would have needed a 5 to get into HtH and that probably wasn’t going to happen.
Game 3 Is against a guy named Nick also with DE. He is also a tough player to beat, we have been tying lately in tournaments I think. He wins the roll and since this mission could be anything and he put me on the side with 3 of the 5 pieces of terrain I happily start my dreads in the corner where they will escape a round of shooting and everything else in reserves.
I come on with two rhino squads and my foot squad combat squading out of the rhinos. Basically I do some damage and get beaten up in return fairly viciously over the the course of turns 2,3 and 4 with my reserves coming on and combat squading to take on all the skimmers and the scoring units inside. Turn 3 we find out it is quarters and now the hunt for his scoring units is on! I manage to knock off Dark Lances, immobilize and stun tons of raiders but it ends up working out when the Baron and max Beasts charge in a tightly packed corridor. I kill 6 with Cleansing Flame and then lose 1 in return. Baron and his peeps dip out and another smaller squad of Beasts was also sent packing.
The game ends up with me blazing away on a bottom of 5 in over time killing off all but 4 scoring models of his. I have a dread poised to charge in against one of the squads and if he kills them I get a minor win. Both break and I end up with a major and no tiebreakers while Nick has 2. This ends up putting me one point ahead of him and taking first place. Pretty sick that he could have lost to me and still won the tournament. If both squads hadn’t broke and it hadn’t ended then he was definitely done but I know well that there is no shame in winning on the bottom of 5. You can’t say anything about that but well done sir.
We do a firm shake and I am left sweaty and feeling damn lucky. I had just won a tournament the day before having won the roll to go first 3 times, and now twice today and losing it when I wanted to go second. Lots and lots of luck were needed to do so well this weekend but you also have to make consistently good plays and list choices to take advantage of that.
That kind of edge is what allows veteran players to do well. I just hope I keep ironing out my game, it finally feels like I am clicking after so many years of consistently poor choices in game.
Grats to Togashi Shinkaze on his second round win!- MBG
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits In 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
Bio: Spikey Bits started with Rob trying to stay motivated to hobby on his backlog of projects and share his knowledge with others during the early blogging era. Virginia restless, miniature painter & cat dad. He blames LEGOs as there was something about those little-colored blocks that started it all.
Scale model hobbyist in the 80s, miniature wargamer, and trading card player ever since. He’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy since 5th Edition, but Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and minatures made of both pewter and resin.
