Escalation League...

The local gaming club started an escalation league this year. It starts at 500 and works up to 1750 in 250 point increments. Winning/losing doesn't matter in the league as points are given for things like having a custom character, fully painted army, building terrain, making objective markers during the league, writing a fluff piece for your custom character etc... Then at the end of the league there will be a tournament at 1750 where the wins and losses do count. Prizes for best themed army, best painted, sportsmanship, the winner of the tournament. They did me a solid and allowed me to take an inquisitor as the custom character. This works out for me because I have a full army of grey knights, but nothing in the way of henchman warbands. So at 500 and 750 I have a strike squad since you are required to have one troops choice. At 1000 the restriction of "no named HQs" is lifted, and I can take Coteaz and Henchies as troops. My plan is to play the league from that point on with inquisitorial henchies, a land raider I just bought and I might get a Storm Raven. This league has been going for four weeks now and I finished my last 750 point game last night. What I've built so far:

Two boxes of Cadians turned into acolytes. Five with plasma guns, the rest with bolter and chainswords. Six plasma cannon servitors Six Jokaeros. Two boxes of dark eldar wyches turned Death Cult Assassins. A box of Brettonian Men at Arms turned crusaders. Ordo Malleus Inquisitor with bolt pistol and force sword. And my custom character, Alistair Vorenus. Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor with inferno pistol and force sword.

I'll try to get my opponents lists from now on so I can do this accurately. I still don't know a lot of my opponents armies well enough to tell you exactly what they took. My 500 point list looks something like this:

OHI - inferno pistol, force sword, psyker, power armour
Warband - Two monkeys, 3 plasma servitors, two plasma acolytes, two boltgun guys

Strike Squad, psybolt ammo and 2 psycannons

This did extremely well as I won all three games with it. Prescience with the inquisitor made the henchies just brutal. The range on the lascannon and plasma cannons really helped out. I beat some Dark Angels when I deep struck a five man combat squad of my strike squad with about a centimeter to spare from the board edge and took out his whirlwind from the rear. Then I just decimated his troops with the rest of my squad. Beat some orks just with shooting as they slowly advanced through terrain. I also took on a blood angel list that just had some scouts and boltgun marines, and an eldar list with two walkers, a jet bike and a regular squad of their regular troops.

At 750 points I brought the above list along with

OMI - bolt pistol, force sword, psyker, power armour
Warband - the same with three plasmas acolytes instead of two


First game faced the same orks. Blew up his tank when I hit it with a plasma cannon that was rending thanks to the monkeys. Complete luck. Then the rest of his army just got shot to hell as they slogged through terrain and could never make it into combat with me.

Then last night I made the stupid declaration to myself that I would no longer take prescience on my inquisitors. I just got tired of taking the same thing when the point of the league is to expand your army and use things you haven't used before. So until the tournament, no re-rolls for this list

So I took on the Necrons. His list (I think)

Overlord on some sort of barge
Destroyer lord
three squads consisting of warriors/immortals. Can't remember which he took two of.

Anyway, we deployed and I seized the initiative! Wahoo!

Turn one I move some strike squads up, shoot the hell out of his destroyer lord. Get a wound on it with a plasma cannon, he LOS!s a lascannon and another plasma cannon shot. Then I shoot it with my other warband unit. Three plasma cannons, three gets hot rolls and I rolled triple ones. Failed two armor saves. His warriors/immortals reanimate and my turn ends with me killing two of my models and inflicting one wound on his. He doesn't do any shooting his turn, just moves everything up. Flat outs his barge with his overlord to my army, moves his destroyer lord close to my strike squad.

Turn two I detach my inquisitor with the inferno pistol and get next to his barge. Then i blow it the hell up! His overlord takes a wound from the explosion I cheat on accident and forget to roll for mindlock, shoot him with that warband and then deep strike my two psycannon combat squadded unit close to my deployment zone. Shoot him with that unit. Then shoot him with the other warband. Then shoot him with my other five man squad of Grey Knights. He takes one more wound after all of this. His turn he shoots the hell out of my with his warriors/immortals. Assaults the grey knights with his destroyer lord. Assaults Inquisitor Vorenus with his overlord and makes short work of both.

By turn three I was running out of stuff as my warbands had both taken losses from his shooting phase. I was able to finally kill his overlord, but my losses were too heavy and all of his army was within rapidfire range at that point. Turn five I had nothing left on the board.

So prescience is really needed for those gets hot rolls more than anything else. It's gonna be a long league not taking that, but at least I'll get to use some other psychic powers and see what they can do.

I'll do better batreps in the future as I'm doing all of this from memory right now.

I really like the focus of this league. Character instead of just random matchmaking.

Even though your opponets might not be most suited to your force, you know that the enemy has character and some thought behind it which is more important to me in a game.

Yeah I'm really enjoying it so far. And it's given me the incentive to use about half of the codex I haven't really used before.

Alright, last night at a thousand points I took:

OHI power armour, inferno pistol, psyker

2 jokaero, 3 plasma cannon, 3 plasma gun

Coteaz

2 jokaero, 3 plasma cannon, 3 plasma gun

jokaero, three bolter acolytes

LRC psybolt ammo and multi melta deployed with these embarkees:

8 DCA, 3 crusaders, daemonhost

turn one he blows up the landraider with dark lance. First time I've ever fielded one and it gets destroyed before I even get to move it. 9 are wounded and I lose five even taking the first three wounds on the 3++ the crusaders give. He does the vector strike like attack with his bikes and takes out three of the OHI's unit.

My turn I'm able to take out a single jetbike. The end.

His turn he destroys almost everything I had and I'm tabled at the end of three. I killed two models of his, the bike and his worthless HQ who is the guy that he has to reserve then deepstrikes wherever without scattering. Horrible game. Horrible rolling, but I couldn't have beat his list with what I brought. I really had no chance from the beginning, and he wasted no time doing damage to me.

New toys always blow up

Don't give up on the Land Raider. At 1k points, it just hurts to lose a quarter of your army turn 1 to a stray Lance.

Vecuu wrote:New toys always blow up

Don't give up on the Land Raider. At 1k points, it just hurts to lose a quarter of your army turn 1 to a stray Lance.

Yup. Always hurts when that happens, epecially at lower point games. If your tank made it to its kill range though, I'm quite sure it would have wreaked a lot of damage

Yeah I'm going reserve judgement on all these new units I'm bringing until the end of the league. And I don't mind losing of course, just frustrating to get the thing put together and painted then the only thing it does is blow up and kill half of the unit inside of it .

I think my 1k is the weakest list in the league. At 1250 I'm bringing some psykers and stormbolter acolytes so it will have a little more punch, but will still be pretty weak.

I love your deamonhunter human list... Maybe a vindicare could be more efficient than the Psykers ?
And don't worry... Sh*t happens !! LRs are worth their points ... Generally !
Aubec

Keep the reports coming Thrax - i'm very interested to see how your getting on with the henchmen units

Thanks for the kind words brothers, I am enjoying this league.

Aubec, I agree a vindicare would be more effective. But I've had a vindicare in my army since I started it and I'm only using new units I haven't tried before in this league.

Ok that's cool and fine by me... Just don't forget to report to Titan what was the success or failure of those new units !
Aubec

If you have any ideas for the objective markers i am supposed to make, please share them. They re supposed to fit the theme of the army, but i am at a complete loss as to what to make.

Sounds awesome, I wish they did that stuff here, I tried to get friends into it with no luck!

For objective markers use servo skulls, swords stuck in the ground through daemons, etc.

Dark Eldar are also amazing at 1k points, at 1500 it goes rapidly downhill for them as all their good units have been maxed out since 1000 points and they are just adding rubbish.

LR's are a lot of eggs in one basket, they normally work amazingly or terribly. Thats why people take two!

Your list isn't optimised either, so don't take it too hard, it is better to try all that stuff out (especially plasma for 6th) and see how to make it work.
You could get a super optimised list from the forum but what would you gain... wins aren't worth anything if you haven't learnt from your mistakes.

Keep up the good work!

I was thinking of just using books on a base to represent grmoire of true names and the terminus decree and other books the grey knights may have access to.

Thraxdown wrote:I was thinking of just using books on a base to represent grmoire of true names and the terminus decree and other books the grey knights may have access to.

Books sound like a great idea.

Using the books sounds like an awesome idea. Maybe you could also uses some Chaos weapons as artifacts, too. Or maybe a chaos cultist to represent the heretic that you are chasing.

Books sound like an awesome idea, since they're appear a fair bit in Gk stuff. If you can source one the Ravenwing upgrade sprue has a nice big book that would look pretty sweet.

Well, hell I wrote a batrep of my last game against Necrons and my computer restarted when i was in the midst of writing turn 6. So much for that then. We made a video so when my opponent posts I'll link it here.

The club kind of quit on this league. We had a tournament we hosted short notice, so there were terrain building days instead of league play and a lot of the guys just lost interest. Sucks, but it is what it is. I have everything built for this league, but I still need to paint my bastion, about 15 acolytes and I need to finish painting my psykers. storm raven and LRC are almost fully painted. Still need to build objective markers, servo-skulls and I'm gonna write the back story. I'll post some pics when everything is finished, though I gotta be honest I've been going for speed over quality with my painting this time around.

Here's part 1. Part 2 is currently blocked for copyright restriction I have no idea what that's about. Maybe the song he put to it? Dunno. Anyway sorry if the audio sucked, this was a spur of the moment video batrep and I wasn't really prepared.