How did it go? A strange combination of super fun games and awfully... Basically the great Lord of Skulls experiment was a massive failure - but onto that later. My list is here for you to peruse.
As normal, Alex did another great job of organising the tournament - everything went smoothly, food was good and there was a really good turnout.
Game 1 I went up against Ryan with a Sisters army - madness who runs Sisters???!! The game was kill points and it was hammer and anvil deployment. I don't think I've ever played them before - so in my mind they were Space Marines with slightly worse stats and flamers. I was wrong. I have literally never played against so much AP1. I think there was something like 16 meltas, a few multi-meltas and 3 D6 shots from Executioners tanks.
Ryan set up as far away as possible, meaning the Lord of Skulls would need a couple of turns to get into combat and lots of melta went into reserve. Needless to say, by Turn 2 the Lord of Skulls was a smoking wreck, the Obliterators were obliterated and the cultists were a fine paste. Abaddon managed to drop in kill a few guys, but there are only so many invun saves you can fail and by Turn 4 I was tabled with an appalling score of around 178 - 1950.
Game 2 and I was bottom table, but at least that's where the fun games normally are. I went up against Andy with his Imperial Guard in an objectives game. Andy had a pretty rounded and fluffy list (although I don't know IG so couldn't say why...) with a few Leman Russ', Hellhounds and Vet squads. Amusingly - no melta.
Andy immediately saw my two squishy Cultist squads and tried to target them, whereas I sent my Lord of Skulls to roll around squishing stuff - which it did with aplomb! It managed to take off a couple of units a turn in a very point and click fashion, but by the end of the game we were both sat on our own objectives and Andy managed to take the win by a couple of secondary VPs.
Game 3 and I managed to move up to second to bottom table (woot), against Daniel with his Grey Knights and Inquisition. This was Maelstrom and despite lots of hard hitting units, Daniel had pretty much nothing to touch my Lord of Skulls. Daniel managed to take an early lead, getting a few decent objectives and having the manpower and armour to grab mid-table objectives - blocking me from accessing them with my more squishy Cultists. By Turn 3 I had managed to blunt his army with the Lord of Skulls, Obliterators and Abaddon, but not in time to catch up and the rest of the game was the Lord of Skulls rolling round smashing stuff again (and ending with the full 9HPs). I ended up losing about 10-6.
These three stellar performances left me 47th out of 48...not my finest hour, but I can confidently blame it on my list looking at normal results. So, why did it go so wrong? Basically because the Lord of Skulls is stupidly overpriced; it was 1013pts, for which I could literally remove any unit I got into combat with (it consistently caused around 20 unsavable wounds/HPs). Shooting-wise it looks good, but the Baleflamer Hellstorm template didn't get used until at least Turn 2 each game, which meant that Skullhurler was being relied on. Both weapons are S9 AP3, which looks good on paper and reliably hurt vehicles, but AP3 meant that I was only ever stripping single HPs and anything with a 2+ save was laughing. Oh and 65pts for instant death with the Baleflamer wasn't used once (I shot some Dreadknights with it, but they passed their saves easily).
So, whilst the Lord of Skulls was rolling around fluffing its shooting and then overkilling in combat, the other 800pts of my army was pretty fragile, unsupported and useless at claiming/holding objectives. So basically - Lord of Skulls is getting shelved until we play more Apoc and in future I will take a sensible list...maybe next time I will take a more sensible list to a tournament.
Shame about your results, but as long as you had fun in your games, then hopefully you had a great day.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your army, it looked fantastic! (I have some pictures of yours and other great armies up on my own blog) I especially liked the glowing blue effect you had going on with the Lord of Skulls.
It appears that if a Knight was not your Lord of War, then they didn't perform that well. Fortunately, I didn't face any during the day.
It was nice to meet you, and at least you can say you beat me! ;)
ReplyDeleteAs long as you had fun that's all that matters, FLUFF and FUN over all!!!!
ReplyDeleteCheers guys - definitely agree with you there, having an enjoyable game was way more important than the tournament results ultimately. I'm sure my opponents would have preferred not facing a ridiculous death-tank, but I hope they appreciated taking one on and coming out on top by playing the missions.
ReplyDeleteloved the effects on the lord of skulls thou!
ReplyDeleteI also played that sisters player, with my two units of Meganobz, who are used to running up the field and mocking incoming fire with their 2+ save, 2 wounds, 5++ against shooting (for one unit) and 5+ FNP... Then I met the sisters. So much str 8 AP1... 2+? No. FNP? No. 2 wounds? Ha! Suffice to say it was a hard counter to me, the fact that he'd allied up with guard for extra melta plus a vendetta, I worked out he was capable of utting out up to 37 Str 8 AP1 shots per turn, plus 3 twin linked lascannons to boot. It hurt.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't knock the other guy as a player though, seemed a perfectly nice chap and had a very well written list. There were also a whole load of flamers and some wyverns that accomplished sweet FA against my army, so was quite a nice well balanced force.
Yeah Ginge - he was a nice guy and it was a change to play against sisters and be schooled that the girls can be pretty scary too...
ReplyDeleteHe did say the codex had *some* good stuff, but lacked depth, hence why he had guard allies to top it up with. I guess once you've filled your heavy slots with exorcists and your fast attack with dominion squads then you are down to stuff that doesn't pack as much punch...
ReplyDelete