Redcap’s January tournament just barely happened. Slipping and sliding across every intersection in a just-begun snowfall, I almost turned back several points, especially when Colin texted in that he was bailing due to the road conditions. Fortunately though I made it safely and 5 other guys were there, just enough for a real tournament. This was the first tournament at Redcap’s with Escalation and Stronghold Assault in play. My more general observations on that are in a separate post.

Sadly I did not get around to the other tables due to numerous rules questions and three busy games, but a few more photos than those here are in the Flickr gallery.

Army

For a while now I’ve been playing only fully painted lists.  That’s left me with armies that are pretty so-so and very static, oriented around castling up.  That’s not really my style and I was expecting superheavies and gargantuans so here I switched it up quite a bit, back more toward traditional Kingbreakers style:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Librarian Rorschach—Generic Librarian (ML 1, Power Armor)
• Sternguard x10 w/ 6x Combi-Meltas and Powersword in Drop Pod
• Tacticals x7 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Drop Pod
• Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Drop Pod
• Tacticals x10 w/ Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Missile Launcher
• Scouts x5 w/ Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles, Heavy Bolter w/ Hellfire Shells (poison 2+ blast)
• Devastators x5 w/ 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Predators x2 w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons
• Landspeeders x3 in squadron w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
• Imperial Bunker w/ Quad-gun, Void Shield

Notable changes include:

• Librarian dropped his Terminator Armor and the Epistolary upgrade (ML2) I’d been experimenting with off and on to trim down and play a less aggressive, more supporting role;
• Tacticals dropped a bunch of items to be more task specific, and only the front line got Veteran Sgt upgrades;
• Drop Pods and Combi-Melta Sternguard returned in style;
• Scouts made a new appearance in my tournament list;
• Landspeeders got put into a squadron for the inevitable kill points mission;
• The Aegis Defense Line got dropped for an Imperial Bunker;
• In each mission I chose the Librarian as my Warlord, rather than Angholan (Vulkan) as I have for ages previously, in order to play Angholan more aggressively and not sacrifice any VPs or BPs for Slay the Warlord;
• I rolled the Librarian’s power on the Telepathy table each game, hoping for either Puppet War to use against a super or Dominate against infantry.

To large extent this was thinking more about the style and feel I want rather than tactics.  But, there is a bunch of kit here to go monster hunting, combined with a defensive rear group and a bunch of Troops to hold some objectives.

Round 1

First off I faced Jeremy and his Chaos Daemons. We met in the third round of the December tournament and had a very close game that he won in the end, so I guess this was a rematch. The mission was Vanguard Strike deployment for Big Guns Never Tire with 4 objectives, and bonus points for Slay the Warlord and having an elite unit survive. Most notably, Jeremy brought a Lord of Skulls backed up by Fateweaver, three squads of dogs, and two squads of Plaguebearers. We both deployed along our Vanguard lines, questionable on my part as his Scout moves then moved his dogs pretty close. Otherwise though I would have had a limited shooting window anyway due to large buildings blocking line of sight in my corner.

One squad of Plaguebearers deployed directly into a building on one of Chaos’ objectives. My Scouts also deployed directly into a building to camp out near an objective and utilize a sweet enfilade+defilade combo on any dogs running at my bunker and other objective. An early major loss to me was a Turn 1 Warp Storm mutated Librarian Rorschach into a Plaguebearer before he could do anything. That was particularly sore because he was well positioned to use Dominate, and that yielded both a substantial two VP (First Blood and Slay) as well as a BP. I just didn’t think about that being a possibility and had him on the battlements for LOS instead of in the bunker.

On my turn, Angholan and a bunch of Tacticals Drop Podded onto the enemy rear to take out a bunch of dogs and a Herald on Juggernaught, and hopefully survive to claim Chaos’ open objective, which is pretty much how it eventually worked out. Sternguard came down front and center and combat squadded in hopes of going after either Fateweaver or the Lord if the former died early. I had decided early that Fateweaver was the priority, both for the VP and BP, and to stop him from casting Prescience on the gargantuan and other ridiculousness. Most of my other shooting was ineffective, but did drop the bird to the ground to be dispatched by the Sternguard in Turn 1.

After that, regular shooting and assaults took care of the dogs. Devastators wiped out the reserved Plaguebearers when they arrived. The Lord ran around smashing buildings and wiped out the units on my home objective, but couldn’t do so fast enough to also kill my scoring units on the other objectives. Notably, I was saved in this regard by Heavies being a scoring unit in this mission when a building collapse killed my Scouts but left the Devastators intact. Landspeeders managed to get the Lord down to 6 hull points but he regenerated one, costing me that VP. My third pod of Tacticals dropped directly on top of the Chaos home objective and fought a protracted rooftop combat with the Plaguebearers there to contest it.

Outcome & Analysis

Crushing victory and a bonus point for the Kingbreakers, with 2 objectives and two secondaries (Slay and Line) versus a single secondary and a bonus point. This game was both really good and yet marred by an absurd number of rules lookups with four buildings being actively fought over and a Chaos superheavy in play. I was super drained afterward.

Tactically though, everything went about as well as I could hope. As planned, the Tacticals in Drop Pods were able to either claim or contest objectives, Sternguard took down a critical target before expiring, and I defeated the Lord of Skulls by outnumbering substantially on scoring units with a bunch of objectives in play. The Emperor asks not for what you live, but rather for what you die.

Round 2

Next I faced Owen and his Imperial Guard in an Emperor’s Will mission with bonus points for your opponent having no Heavy Supports survive, and having no enemy units within 12″ of any of your units. He crushed me last month with his Blood Angels (which had a Contemptor Mortis that I think turns out to be not permitted for Blood Angels), so I guess this was a half rematch. As expected he brought along a Shadowsword and a whole bunch of Quadguns via an ADL and a handful of Sabre Defence Platforms. Improbably, I rolled for the best possible Psychic Power and Escalation Warlord Trait: Puppet War, and no scatter for my Deep Strikers within 6″ of his superheavy.

On deployment he bubble wrapped his Shadowsword with a bunch of Guardsmen but I was able to just barely squeeze both my Drop Podding Melta-Sternguard and a Melta-equipped Tactical within bonus range. Sadly though the numbers game did not work out and they were ripped to pieces by his plethora of Interceptors. Later I was able to do the same with Deep Striking Landspeeders, but the Defence Platforms again ripped them up. Puppet War absolutely failed me. I essentially threw away the Librarian Warlord in a Drop Pod in order to get him close enough, managed to get him through two turns alive and in range, successfully took over the Shadowsword twice, and… killed maybe 10 Guardsmen out of a huge huddle of dozens. In particular, the D blast scattered very poorly both times.

Any way you cut it, I just didn’t have much ability to go after those guns tucked way back in his rear field and on improbably small ruin spires. I was hoping my Deep Strikers would survive just enough to get meaningful Melta fire through, but I was only ever able to knock off enough hull points to claim a victory point. Walking or flying up to it would have just meant getting pummeled by both the Shadowsword’s D blasts and Owen’s other heavy artillery, so I felt I had to go for it despite the numbers.

With all that slowly resolving in the Guard’s favor, Owen’s artillery and the Shadowsword just kept pounding my home objective. Eventually Marbo came in for the coup de grâce and the last Kingbreakers outside the Drop Pods were eliminated.

Outcome and Analysis

Crushing loss for the Kingbreakers and no bonus points. The Guard, especially with Forgeworld’s love for them, just have too much going for them.  The Shadowsword I could probably take down, but not covered by so many Interceptor units. Then, once my alpha strike is dealt with, the extreme long range of his artillery means he’s free to pummel my rear field with impunity. Even taking down his one plane and not having any transports, he didn’t even need to move toward my objective, instead just clearing it off from across the table. With indirect fire, even more LOS blocking wouldn’t help a ton here other than mitigating the Shadowsword a bit.

Round 3

Finally I faced John and his Iron Hands, using the Clan Raukaan supplement, in a Purge the Alien mission with bonuses for heavy supports in the opponent’s deployment and another for scoring at least two secondaries. This was a bit of a mirror match as we both had a bunch of Pods and some Scouts, but he brought some kind of Interceptor dual-TL-Lascannon Dreadnought, 3 shooty Centurions, and a Stormwing formation (a dataslate for a Stormraven and 2 Stormtalons, giving the former BS5 at ground targets).

The board was Redcap’s cathedral/dockyard set so it was very crowded, particularly once we both podded down into one of his table corners. Sternguard took out the Dreadnought right away while Angholan and Tacticals engaged the Centurions and opposing Warlord Librarian. Landspeeders spent several turns precariously flying in and around dangerous ruins to burn out the opposing Scouts then took out another Dreadnought. My remaining Tacticals came down to wipe out and chase after opposing Sternguard and Tacticals. My backfield kind of sat around pinging at the flyers until the Devastators broke for the opposing side to claim Linebreaker.

Really though, this whole game was dominated by a sprawling, evolving combat. The damn Centurions just wouldn’t die, but neither would they kill anything! Throughout the course of the game this fight embroiled all of my Sternguard, Angholan, and Tacticals against his Librarian, Centurions, and Tacticals, and was still going at the end of the game. Fortunately for me though, at different points my guys were kicked out one way or another and were able to do other things: Vulkan and a Powerfist Sgt popped out and blew up a Drop Pod before charging back in, Sternguard popped out and Morale Checked some Scouts off the board before doing the same. Otherwise I would have gotten barely any kill points out of this whole mess.

Outcome and Analysis

Crushing victory for the Kingbreakers, with both bonus points. Only some opposing Sternguard and two of the flyers were left on the table, plus some Tacticals in the never-ending combat. The Centurions were interesting. Pretty lethal if you let them shoot and super hard to kill through either shooting or close combat, but easy to lock up forever in combat. I was super glad though I keep around that Powerfist Sergeant, he was pretty much the only thing hurting those guys. The flyers could have been more problematic, but with so much terrain and dudes either locked in combat or all over the place they weren’t super effective. I was worried at first because I misplayed my shooting prioritization as well as overestimating my ability to take out the Centurions, but eventually the kill points tipped in my favor and I gained a good lead.

General Thoughts

All told the Kingbreakers did well, sneaking in for 2nd place with that final crush and bonus points. Owen’s IG + Baneblade took 1st place. It was a solid day of gaming and a good group to hang out with so I did have a lot of fun. On the other hand the rapidly escalating units, powers, and rules left me super discouraged even as I was doing well against them this day. I think against any one thing my army, with some tweaks, could do pretty well against most of what I saw being played around the shop, even most of the whole lists. I don’t really know what to do against some of the actual and potential combos though, particularly the IG’s superheavy + long range artillery + spammed Interceptors. All I can think of is to also shoot back at range, but that’s an arms race really only the IG and maybe the Tau can play well, on top of being a totally different play style and army collection. So where I go from here depends a lot on how the community, both around Redcap’s and in general, evolve.

As a final note, Librarians: So close, and yet so far! Finally almost super useful throughout this tournament, with near ideal rolls for powers… and yet he accomplished almost nothing. It would have been sort of funny when he became a gibbering Plaguebearer, but giving up 2 VP for the privilege made it hilarious…

Again, a few more photos from my games are in the Flickr gallery.