Let’s go on to the game by game battle report, shall we?  40k Preliminary Ard Boyz missions are here.  I should mention that our T.O. had ruled, ahead of time, that Infiltrate and Scout were universal rules that were active in all missions.

Game 1:

So, I hope the kid never finds this blog, because I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but my round 1 opponent was a 17 year old puppy we’ll abbreviate as J.  And I stomped the puppy.  Nothing noble in it, but I took it for the opportunity it was to get full battle points.

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So, I went down to my local store this past weekend, where I am in fact a paying club member, to play in the 40k Ard Boyz preliminaries.  I came in second, out of a fairly small 13 people, just narrowly missing first with a 61-58 battle points ratio.  Two other folks tied for 3rd at 48 pts.  I think the day mostly went pretty well, and I’m ok with coming in second, since it qualified me for the semi-finals……but in the semi-finals I need first, so I know I have a little work ahead of me.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the list I took:

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So, I guess my first post became at least partly a rant about my painting score, not really what I meant it to be, so let’s move on to what I really care about:  Tactics. For reference, my full list that I brought can be found here:  Draigo and Stormraven List.   First, some general thoughts:

  • People targeted the Land Raider Redeemer much more aggressively than I was expecting.  I thought they would be going after Stormraven first in all cases, since it was faster, more fragile, and had a much more nasty payload.  Maybe people didn’t realize just how nasty that payload (Draigo, Paladins w/ psycannons and a BroBanner, and a dreadnought) really was?  Didn’t seem like it, though.
  • The converse of this has to be that I was using the Stormraven too conservatively.  I was always turbo boosting it, but often up the side.  I probably should have sent it right up the middle, since I had designed the paladins and dread to be able to fight well if it crashed and left them center of board.  In the end, I probably just need more practice with this list.
  • Draigo and the Paladins, were the absolute MVPs, they performed fantastically.  Of course, they have to be, they cost like 625 combined.  Still, they were just awesome to behold, and were durable as all hell.  I think I lost a paladins twice to Str 8 Instant Death, but by and large Draigo did manage to keep them safe.  Even though they often had a lot of ground to cover, they made it across open terrain, and just bashed the enemies face in.  Game 1, all else was lost, they straight up ekked out a win for me.  Game 2, I lost, but Draigo, by himself, came so close to making it a tie.  Game 4, Draigo happily fought basically her entire demon army.  Nearly died, and all the paladins did, but he pulled through.  Very thematically appropriate.  I didn’t actually get to use their psycannons as much as I hoped, I wonder if I should re-balance things between them and the terminators, weapon load-out wise.
  • GKT underperformed, a little, mostly because they got their Redeemer shot out from under them.  But, that meant their lack of a psycannon was painful.  I had meant the paladins to get shot down far from the battle line, not them.
  • Yeah, kinda like I thought, I really wish the psycannon dread in the Stormraven was a venerable dreadnought.  He performed OK, he was in a lot tough situations, often contributed, but the durability would have been super, super useful.  He almost always did die, eventually, at least twice got knocked on his butt almost immediately.  I would say from experience a venerable dread is something like twice as durable, and BS 5 never hurts.  Problem is, I just cannot see how to fit the extra 50 (it’s 60, but I’d ditch the heavy flamer, too) in this list.
  • My Grey Knight Strike Squad was kinda “meh.”  I suppose that was to be expected, they were the average guys in an other wise all-star list.
  • Psyfleman worked great, did what I wanted, though I guess he was never really needed; the first time I fought rhinos, he got knocked on his ass before he had a chance to fire, the second time, his fire output was just gravy on an otherwise slaughter fest.
  • I had some heavy metal in there–an LR, SR, rhino, 2 dreads, and all those termie models, but apparently target priority was too clear for my enemy.  I could use with more, or harder, targets.  Which leaves us right back the dual LR list, unfortunately, because I don’t know how to fit more metal into this current list.
Review of the list by item: Continue reading »
 

So, I just came back from Boston Brawlcon.  It was my first Grand Tourney, and I suppose, in the end, I should be happy with my showing.  A few things deeply frustrated me though.  I’ll give my general thoughts here, and then post detailed battle reports in a bit.

 

I did quite well with my Grey Knights, my final score was 4 wins and 1 loss, though I was randomly selected for the “bye” 5th round (annoyingly, 3 guys left, not between day 1 and 2, but between game 4 and 5, in the middle of the second day, wtf?) so that last game doesn’t count, in a way.  I would have much preferred to have fought the last game, gotten in the hardcore practice (and just have the game) that I need, then get the free 20 pts.  I also would have had more data on how my list performed, and had more battle reports for you guys.

Once again, the missions can be found this posting about Brawlcon.  My scores were 17 (mission 1, it was very hard not to tie the secondary objective), 0, 20, 20, 20 (which was the bye).  I came in 5th overall, out of 26, which I guess doesn’t include the 3 people who rage-quit.

Here’s the results:

Ben Molie      102     Best overall
Ragnar Arnenson   101     Best General and Volunteer of the Year award!!!!
Alex Fennell   97
Wyatt Traina   91
Matt Bennett   85  <– I guess for those of you who can’t count from the top, this is me.
Sam Gould      80
ryan deane      75
Matt Cassidy   75
Rick James       68
Simon Leen      67  Best Painted
Graham Rockwell   65
Chris Bradley   64
Tom Greene   61    Best Sport
Troy Esposito   60    Best kick ass Beard!!!! Not a real award but needed to be said!
Will Souza  60   Players Choice and well deserved!!! Took a silver as well in the painting comp.
Gil Fuhr      53   Silver in the painting comp
Keith Bonneau   52
Tyler Gilbert   50
Alicia Ling      43
Rob Cline      41

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This is it, this is The List.  The List with which I hope to win fame and fortune at the Boston Brawlcon.

I’m very thrilled with it, actually, it has all the things I want; It can hit like a mobile flying truck, has sufficient anti-tank, and great scoring potential.  It only has 9 Kill points, total, which is also pretty sweet.  I was going to do 4 of these posts, with 4 different lists, running through the options, starting with that 3 LR list I posted last week, but nah, this is it, I’m done.

It’s like falling in love, sometimes you just know, y’know?

It doesn’t hurt that I did really pretty well against exactly the guy and exactly the list I most feared:  Frank, with his really heavy Dark Lance Dark Eldar over at the ‘Arvard ‘Ard Boyz in cambridge (they play out of the Pandemonium book store in Central Square).  Expect a mini Battle Report on that in the next few days, but the bottom line is I had a little bit, but not a huge amount of dice luck, and I nearly tabled him, so I’m pretty happy with it.  I still hope Frank, who is going to Brawlcon, stays the hell away from me, I don’t want to fight him if I can help it, but it was still a good sign.

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This gets mentioned a lot:  Draigo is expenisve.  Actually, the internets put it more along the lines of “OMG, he is soooooo expensive, why would you ever take such a beast?”  or “GK are so expensive, you have to save points and get the cheapest HQ possible.”  A sort of typical quote is Zjoekov on Kirby’s 3++, ”My gawd, 275 points for a model with a 12″ threat range unless you take a 200+ transport for him?”

People also seem think it’s all about the paladins with Draigo, just as you get Crowe specifically for purifiers.  But that isn’t really fair of course, Crowe himself is nearly useless, and while purifiers are pretty easy to find (multiple) uses for, paladins seem hard to find applications that will justify their cost.

But while Draigo makes fun little things like dropping down a 55 pt scorer possible, it doesn’t seem to me that’s necessarily why you might get him.  Because it seems to me that he does everything a regular Grand Master does, but better.

 

Let’s compare the options.  What do we get with a regular GM?

  • He’s got the same stat-line as regular SM captain in terminator armor (a rare choice, to be sure).
  • You could basically have this stat-line with a GK brother captain. (1 point of BS aside) for 150 pts, so we know we’re paying about the same as we would with the SM captain.  Actually, when you count in the Aegis, psy-out grenades, psychic powers, and the Nemesis Force Weapon, you actually have to figure we’re getting a pretty big discount.  Makes me laugh, since people complain about how expensive GK HQs are.
  • We pay 25 pts more for the Grand Master, the only real difference being that he gets Grand Strategy. Which is fine, that’s totally worth it, so much so almost no one would buy a plain Brother Captain.
  • Just like the SM captain, he ain’t exactly a combat monster for his points, which is why so many people take a look at Librarians. But, GMs have Grand Strategy, which really does affect the entire army in positive ways.

That’s what we get for 175 pts. There’s a few options that most people agree are must haves:

  • There’s the three big “I win” grenades: Blind, rad, and pyschotroke.  These grenades have a huge multiplicative effect on the effectiveness of the unit the GM is with, making it unlikely for whatever hard-ass unit you’re fighting to be able to fight back effectively.
  • Digital weapons.  Cheap, you’re probably going to fail to wound, you’re going to get use out of this.
  • Mastercrafted weapon.  Really the same deal, you’re going to miss, it’s another bite at the apple.

But, look, now the GM costs 220 pts.  Yes, you get a lot for that.  But it’s also really expensive.

 

Soooo……..what do we get with Draigo? Continue reading »

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