Once again, sorry for the recent lack of posts/content-I've been really busy with getting ready for the LSAT/School and future law school (so I can be a rules lawyer). I do, however still have a lot in the works and a pretty awesome update regarding my performance in the 'ard boyz semi finals that just happened yesterday.
I played in the 'ard boyz preliminary round last month, got first and since then have been toying around with some various lists and ideas for the semi finals. The semi finals were yesterday and after the smoke and dust cleared, I came out in first place for the Southern California location, so yay. I chose Grey Knights for my army but don't worry, I'm not planning on jumping on the 6 psyrifle dreads and purifier spam netlist bandwagon I just want them to convert into thousand sons for my oldschool CSM thousand son army =).
So with all of that said, there was a sort of wide range of armies there, out of 42 people. I think there were IG, all the SM variants, Orks, DE, Nids and of course my Eldar. The majority of the armies present were netlists (not a surprise) but there were a few armies that stood out as far as pushing the envelope of cheese lol.
The list I took had the following in it:
HQ: 405
Eldrad 210
Maugen Ra 195
Elites: 636
2X5 Fire Dragons with Exarch and Crackshot/Firepike upgrades in Wave Serpents with Shiruken Cannon turret/Spirit stones 430
8 Harlequins with kisses and a Shadow Seer 206
Troops: 958
10 Wraithguard with enhance 396
3X5 Dire Avengers in 2 Wave Serpents with Scatter Lasers/Spirit Stones (the 3rd DA unit went in Falcon) 430
2X3 Guardian Jetbikes 132
Heavy Support:
Falcon with Scatter Laser, Spirit Stones, Holofields and Star Engines 190
2XWraithlords with EML/BL 310
2499 total
I'll post a rundown of my games in a day or so (working on that post simultaneously) but I played IG my first round, SW my second and Deathwing my third. The last game had me sweating the most as he had 8 TH/SS terminator units but I managed to pull out a massacre.
The funny thing about this tournament was that Dave Fay was playing a vicious Black Templar army (30 missile shots with 12 lascannons) and tied my score after getting 3 massacres himself and the tiebreaker which was bonus battle points was also tied. The tie breaker came down to strength of schedule and my opponents in the end had a higher score than his so I got the army and first place title. To make it official, though, Dave and I played Rock Paper Scissors for it and I won so yeah.
I had 69 battle points, Dave had 69 battle points and some random Ork player with 5 battle wagons had 65 battle points with special mention to Levi Joos (grimgob on dakkadakka.com) who came in 4th barely missing out 3rd. Poor Levi had to play leafblower IG twice in a row =(. Anyway, hope you enjoy the post and upcoming tournament overview.
Holy crap! Great job on first! How does the army selection thing work? Like do you write a list? Or what.
ReplyDeleteThank you, I give all the credit to my wife who was sitting next to me every game praying for my dice rolls lol, she had fun reading a book so it was all good for her. Regarding what army you get, you just tell them what army you want and then are at the mercy of GW lol... So I have NO idea what to expect but I'll post on what was provided.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the win man. How did your wraithguard perform? I take it eldrad ran with the wraithguard and they were screened by the harlequins and maugan ra. I've had little success running wraithguard my self.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the LSAT. I found the best way to prep for it was to once a week write the test under the time restrictions to be expected. Then during the week write the test taking all the time in the world and try and get as many questions right as possible. Get as many old exams as possible and write them. After awile you will start to see the patterns in the questions thereby improving your time to write the test. This is especially true of the logic games section of the test. Good luck with it anyway.
I would have to say that the wraithguard played a major role in winning all of my games. The key really is to using them properly and being familiar with what they can and can not do
ReplyDeleteI screened them with harlequins and actually kept Maugen Ra in the unit with Eldrad. I used Maugen's 2+ fortuned save to eat up krack missile shots that might come towards the WG and Eldrad took any plasma related shooting.
In my test games (against IG/DE) I found that against overwhelming shooting, I could just keep everything in reserves except my WG/Harlequins and maybe my Wraithlords and have the wraithguard go to ground while Eldrad/Maugen hung out in the harlequin squad (which can't be targeted at range) and just kept on fortuning the WG/Harlequins until reserves come on and pounce.
In practice, the WG just make for a great points denial unit and are a tough scoring unit that can take a lot of punishment. I use them to get a good round of ap 2 shooting at a squad before charging in with harlequins and they are no slouches in CC either since they are only really vulnerable to powerfists. I DO make it a point to keep them away from any squad with more than one powerfist in it.
In the 'ard boys games, against IG they just escorted Maugen/Eldrad across the board and really nothing shot at them since my opponent had bigger things to shoot at (like my tanks and firedragons/harlequins). So they had free reign.
My second game was pretty much the same as the first regarding my WG, their threat range kept any assaulty units from getting too close and I didn't even shoot them I don't think, just charged them into a grey hunter pack and held the middle while my harlequins/wraithlords did all of the killing.
The third game was against a deathwing army-8 TH/SH terminator units each with a cyclone missile launcher. I had to be careful here as he could wipe the WG unit with just one of his units so I basically kept backing up while taking pot shots until he got more spread out.
Basically, my opponent had to either shoot and only move 6" never really catching my WG or run towards them (he chose to run most of his units towards my WG). The thing is, if he just moves 6" and shoots, big deal I just move and run farther away but if he runs, every squad runs at a different pace so eventually every squad is staggered and some are closer than others. With that said, soon as one squad was closer than any other, I made a move to get my WG in range to shoot while not in charge range of any other squad and then charged in my harlequins to wipe the squad. I repeated this and basically at the end he only had 3 scoring terminator units and 1 elite terminator unit left in the game.
So in short, they make great damage sponges (with the right support) and they can do very clutch amounts of damage. I've been using wraithguard since early 3rd edition so maybe I just have a lot of practice with them =). I sort of build my army around the fact that I will be using wraithguard also-enough mech so that if they focus on WG my mech has a field day and if they focus on my mech, my WG do so it's a win win =).
How do you think the wraithguard squad would have done with karandrus over maugan ra for the +1 cover save?
ReplyDeleteI don't really think the +1 cover save would have made a difference (or ever really will) compared to what Maugen offers the army. Seriously, 4 s6 shots with rending that ignore cover will do a lot for taking out any av 10/11 vehicle relying on cover to survive (like land speeders and so on). It also is great for taking out IG heavy weapon teams and other infantry units with a weak armor save. I don't think there really is a comparison in utility.
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