1700pt. Tournie Recap

Last weekend I attended a 3 game tournie and just wanted to touch on a few points my experiences. I'm only going to re-cap main events as to recall and put in chronological order the blow by blow events is beyond the realm of my capability. The first thing I noticed when I went in was there were 2 other GK players present. In the 3 years I've been playing I've never ever seen another GK army played. To be expected I guess. Thru the entire morning set-up I had a grin as the words, 'Grey Knights' constantly came up in the idle chatter. I went in fully prepared with my 1700 point DH list but to my delight found out the organizer had allowed the new dex to be played as long as we got our opponent's consent. All three of my sporting adversaries gave me the green light.

My list was:
GM w/3 skulls, rad grenades
Brotherhood Champ
Purifier Squad w/hammer, 6 x halberds, 'cinnie
GKT Squad w/3 x halberds, 2 x swords, psycannon
Strike Squad/m-c hammer, 7 x halberds, 2 x psycannons
Interceptor Squad w/m-c hammer, 3 x halberds, psycannon
2 x LR's w/psymmo

The scenarios were unique. At the start players randomly (and secretly) drew for their primary victory objectives. This made the games more interesting as you never knew what your opponent's main goal was. Every game also had 1 marker in each table quarter as the secondary objectives.

Game 1 was a total slug-fest vs. an all deep-striking BA army lead by Dante. The Brotherhood Champion and the Purifiers he was attached to were absolute beasts. They chewed through an Assault squad, an Honor Guard unit and a six-man Sanguinary Guard with The Knight of the Flame misting Dante into oblivion with his daemon hammer. At one point the Brotherhood Champion was by himself and totally surrounded by the Sanguinary Guard and took them all down. Up until that final fight I had totally forgotten about the re-rolls that the BC had. We realized though after the game that I was only allowed to make his re-rolls to hit if he had charged that phase. This was really important as my opponent's primary objective was to kill both my HQ's and my GM had gone down earlier. Since the BC/SG fight was the very last thing we did in the game I offered to re-do it. Of course, without the re-rolls to hit I managed only 3 kills this time and the BC went down. We tied on the primary objectives but I came through with the victory by having the secondary objective as well.

The 2nd game was against Chaos Space Marines. I made the mistake of deploying my GM and his Termie squad too far forward. The CSM army had a bucket-load of auto-cannons and they, and almost every other bolter in his army, minced the squad down to 1 Termie and my GM to a single wound. The worst part is I rolled an 11 for a pinning test and my GM was stuck in front of 3/4's of his army that had range. Since killing my HQ's might have been his primary objective I pulled units out of the line to run interference for him to buy some time. This of course took the initiative out of my hands and greatly screwed up my plans. The BC and Purifiers proved their worth again by wiping out an 8 man Havoc squad. This left them exposed but in a position to charge next turn a full CSM squad sitting on an objective marker. He unloaded on me at range causing 9-10 wounds which I proceeded to fail every single one including rolling a single pip for my BC. Bye, bye squad. We ended up tying on the primary, him keeping his HQ alive and me having 2 Troops still on the board. By making the Interceptor squad a Troop choose with Grand Strategy really saved my bacon as they were one of the two Troops I had left alive. I'm extremely ashamed to admit this but I had the biggest most majorly epic brain fart since I started playing 40K. On the last turn I stood my LR still to shoot the full complement of weapons at the CSM squad holding one of the secondary objectives. Why it never dawned on me to tank shock them in order to contest for the win will always remain a mystery to me. Because of my stupidity the game ended in a draw. In this game I failed two pinning tests which to my chagrin I found really hard to swallow.

Game 3 was against another CSM opponent. I had never gone up against a dual Lash list before so I naively didn't clue into what two Daemon Princes, two Defilers and two Obliterators in his list might entail until it was too late. Before I could even say cheese, my Termie squad was lashed into the two Daemon Princes and my GM into the embracing arms of a Defiler with 4 close combat arms. The Termies got toasted and the GM spent the next 3 turns making his 3+ invuls all the while uselessly pinging krak grenades off the Defiler's hide like they were so many ripe tomatoes. He too went down. Once again the Brotherhood Champ and Purifiers raged on, totally wiping one and half squads of Berzerkers in a single combat. Unfortunately, next turn they also got the Lash treatment. He strung out the unit in about 14" line with the BC at the back. The two DP's then attacked the front of the line and my BC of course was too far away to consolidate into the combat. The squad and the BC proceeded to get totally misted. Once again I was thankful I had made my Interceptor squad Troops as they did a late game shunt to claim a secondary objective. There was to be no epic brain fart this game as once again one of my LR's was in position to make a last turn run at a secondary objective for the win. All that stood in the way of glorious victory was a single 3" wall which my mega-ton behemoth hurtled towards with unleashed ferocity, bent on crushing it underneath like a grandma's rotten picket fence...
...we ended up tied on both the primaries and secondary's which gave us a draw.

All in all it was a great local event and I had a fun time. I was tickled to be able to blood my new-look GK in a tournie setting. I ended up with 1 win and 2 draws finishing 8th out of 30 players. I wonder how things would have been different if I never had the brain fart and didn't fail the LR immobilization test. That would have given me 3 wins. Anyhow, here are some of my thoughts:

-the Brotherhood Champion and the Purifiers he led were an absolute wrecking crew. They alone took out no less than six units and all in the first round of combat. His granting re-rolls to hit on the charge more than make up for the WS4 the Purifiers have.

-every single game I rolled just a 1 or 2 for the GM's Grand Strategy. All three times I made my Interceptor squad Troops and 2 out of the 3 games they seized objectives to prevent a loss. Their shunt move brings extreme flexibility to the battlefield.

-daemon hammers are a must in every squad. Find the points. One took down Dante and another easily trashed a contesting Rhino.

-GKT''s are a shadow of their former selves. Albeit my GM and GKT squad were caught early in difficult positions all 3 games, they did very little damage in return before being wiped out. It might have helped a bit if I remembered that I had given my GM rad grenades. Doh!

-also totally forgot that I had master-crafted most of my daemon hammers. Double Doh!

-didn't get to use my psycannons a lot but I did get a couple of rends.

-servo skulls are a waste of points if you don't deepstrike in any of the games nor do any of the opponents you go up against have any infiltrators/scouts.

Nice report - a couple of questions:

- You report that GKT are below standard. Could you elaborate a bit on that? Do you play them differently than you did before, is it the unit-composition that didn't work out for you, or something completely different that made you feel blue about the termies?

- When I initially saw your list, I thought that you would use DS as deployment method. Which proved nopt to be the case. Did you foot slog everything and how costly was that?

Great report and congrats on placing in the top ten...and that's with the self inflicted missed opportunities you mentioned. I'm sure you would have place even higher if you were completely used to all our new stuff

I hear you on the GKT's. That's why even though it's costing me more, I use paladins. The extra WS and wound IMO goes a long way in making them more than doubly effective.
I'm assuming BC + purifiers in one LR and GM + GKT's in the other LR?
If you can find the points, I think adding psychostroke grenades to your GM is totally worth it.

It seem from the report (at least in game two) that the GM+termies was deployed in the open. If so - then a termie count of 5 seems a little low - even with a GM attached. I would in that scenario go to at least 7 or 8.

Nevertheless, out of the box our terminators have takes a kick in the cc-teeth. I guess that is the price we pay for adaptability. At least we can kit them out to be true cc monsters if we want to.

Normally I would have the GM and Termies in one of the LR's but since in two of the games my primary objective was to keep two Troop choices alive by endgame I had combat-squaded my Strike squad. Being 5 in number and more fragile I opted to put one squad in one of the LR's instead. The BC and Purifiers ran in the other. Don't get me wrong, being the main target of an initial BA deepstrike, being deployed too far forward in front a CSM auto-cannon gunline and being Lashed to oblivion put my GM and Termies at a disadvantage all three games. The problem I had was in close combat. At WS4 and S5 they weren't doing nowhere near the damage output they used to do. They were always my main assault boys but now the Purifiers do it much better with the added fact they can run down units after combat as well.

Slind, I did have the GM andTermies in cover. I just deployed them too far forward and the sheer amount of shots is what did them in. As for deepstriking, the first board had an insane amount of terrain on it and even with only a 6" scatter I didn't think it was worth the risk. For the other two games, with keeping two Troop choices alive as my primary objective I didn't need to be aggressive enough to have to deepstrike. Also, in the two games the secondary objectives were bunched more to my side of the field and my Interceptors having the shunt move gave me the edge where I didn't think ds'ing was needed.

Did you have to use warpquake at all? Or did your opponent not even bother DSing near you?

Great report, congrats on the top ten too.

I have a question. What changes are you planning to make after this initial tourny?

great report
purifiers + BC seems to be a must in our lists now
as brother Rivan i prefer (on paper cause i don't make a battle by now) the Paladins for the same reasons and even if they are costly ... but i'm still not sure about the apothecary...
what's your opinion from the battle field brothers ??
Aubec

In the two games I played against daemons I was able shrug off several wounds and avoid losing any paladins in both games courtesy of the Apothecary.

DonFer: The list I played here wasn't actually intended for the tournie. It was one for some open play we were going to do in the evening after the event. I basically mixed as many different units in just to see how each played out so there'll be a number of changes. I'd like to try this list a few more times and give the GKT a fair shake. I know the BC, Purifiers and Interceptor squads will be core for me.

Rivan: I Warp Quaked a lot in the first game which threw my BA opponent off since he was entirely deepstriking. Unfortunately I didn't have the area covered where my GM and Termies were and his drops were spot on. They had to take the brunt of the first wave. My opponent had no ds'ing units in the 2nd game. The third game I used WQ about every other turn as I kept forgetting to use it. Lucky for me he rolled bady for his Obliterators to come on and when they did they mishaped and died.

A footnote on the third game: Although he didn't argue it strenuously, my opponent wasn't really sure about his DAEMON princes and summonded lesser DAEMONS being actual daemons because it didn't say they were in the book. I didn't want to push the age-old issue so I let it ride. I slapped my forhead after the game as I realized I'd forgotten that psyk-out grenades worked on psykers as well. By taking Lash both DP's WERE psykers. That part IS in the book.

Yea, that is one thing about our new book. Even though it doesn't specially say that they are Daemons in their rules (There names say otherwise), just by being a Psyker, they are still susceptible to both the Psyk-out Grenades and Daemonbane. Only Chaos Undivided and Khrone Daemon Princes would be safe, but then they are fairly weak at that point.

Understood. It's nice to know you are keeping the Interceptors. Let us know if you make any changes. I'm particularly interested since I still havn't got my minis to start a real army And until then, articles such as this are very useful for me. Cheers!

Nemesis, you still like keeping both godhammer LR's? Or do you think one of them can be switched out for a LRC/LRR?

Godhammers for now. I'm going to see how the Stormraven pans out and how the new psycannons do against armor. If they comfortably provide me with the anti-vehicle I need game in and game out I'll be then looking to a Redeemer. I've always wanted have one those bad boys.

Excellent report and congratulations on placing so high. I didn't realise how good a BC and Purifiers can be, I'll have to make sure I get them in more of my lists.

Yes, definitely at least give them a try. If not for the brain fart and bad die roll I would have finished 4th. Doh! Just for interest, the other two GK players placed 20th and 28th out of 30. The guy who placed 20th actually had more battle points than I did. He lost out on the bonus points for not submitting his list early and got a zero for painting as all his models were just undercoated or not undercoated at all. If he had submitted his list and factoring in an average painting score, he would have most likely finished ahead of me. Of note, the other GK player had a large portion of =I= units in his force.