Chaos Black Legion at ITC: Day 2 / Game 6

Finally we’re at the last game. After a close game, but still a loss vs triple Knights/Custodes I felt like I would get a break on match ups. But instead I would hit the Deldar Airshow once again! (Similar to game 1/day 1).

My opponent’s list:

HQ: Archon x 2

Troops: Kabalite Warriors x 3

Venom x 5

Warlock + Warlock on a bike

Heavy: Fire Prism x 3

Flyer: Crimson Hunter x 2

(Saim Hann) Autarch Skyrunner

Shining Spears x 3 (x 3 Units)

We would play Dawn of War and here again was a match up where I wasn’t sure what to take, but I did go with Recon, and Kill 2 a turn and Big Game hunter which probably was a mistake. I apologize for not having many pictures of this one but really the Deldar Airshow games are similar, They kite you, and circle the board until it suits them to come inwards for either a kill or objective. The twist here was the 3 Fire Prisms which were very deadly and I think under valued.

This is well into Turn 2.

So I think this is the first time I actually won the roll to go first all weekend. And really it gave me the least because I was severely outranged. My opponent was a really nice guy but we had the most bizarre miscommunication that I’m still scratching my head about. It happened early, and I always talk my opponent over what I’m doing, and my intent, and I often get them to confirm something for me. In this case it was a very critical turn 1 assault. We both had an agreed upon understanding on the charge I needed. I asked him to measure. And he confirmed I needed 6″. I rolled a 6…. he said I was short. I thought he was joking…. but he wasn’t. So this left me in a very precarious position with a Lord Discordant, and I would lose him as a result. Like I said my opponent was a very nice guy, and we had a very pleasurable game otherwise so I’m going to chalk this up as the fault of the medication he was on. I shrugged, and said ‘ok’. I still had an advanced Venom Crawler and I exercised the Detachment ability to charge and killed a squad of Shining Spears. If my Disco Lord had made it, it would have made for quite a mess back there in T1.

My turn is otherwise… not bad. I put the Chaincannon Havocs in a not so great spot, and couldn’t fire most of them. (Half were JUST out of range on Venoms) which was my fault entirely of course. The Las/missile Havocs put down a Venom, and dented a Fire Prism.

In the Deldar turn the Fire Prisms had a pretty darn good turn, and the reroll to hit, and to wound pretty much meant I was losing a Discolord or Venom crawler every turn without fail.

On the left side Venoms zoomed up and just peppered my Havocs to death easily. To finish off the turn he takes some Shinning Spears into my right corner and attacks the Marines, and Cultists. He tries to encircle the Marines but I made the distinction of communicating to him that with the 3″ consolidation he will not be able to do so as I was pulling casualties from the front. This was important at that point in the game/table.

Lots of Pew Pew from the skies!

So in my Turn 2 I have some lascannons, and about half my crawler type vehicles. He still has a lot of Venoms so I peel off the Disco Lord and helps kill another Venom and some more dudesmen, and ends in an assault with a 2++ bubble boy Archon. I put everything on him and cross my fingers that he’s going to fail his 2++ and he does.

I take down a flyer, and one of the Fire Prisms since my Oblits have deep strike’d into action. I have the spare fire power to withdraw from close combat and kill the last Shining Spears on the table.

Some sloppy play on my part and have some tough decisions to make.

Now at the beginning of his turn he has melta’d a Venom crawler and moves his HQ with Banshee mask into a small opening I have erroneously left open. It’s a small game that I used to distinguish the difference between 2 Cultist squads and I’m going to pay the price as he is going to dual assault hitting the Obliterators, and the cultists, and I can’t overwatch.

He tries to declare Abaddon but as agreed upon before the game, he is ‘in a crater.’ The roll is pretty bad and he’s out of CP. He hits his main targets anyway. The Obliterators are killed, and in return my Dark Apostle would kill the Autarch.

Unfortunately I didn’t get last turn pictures… maybe it was because it was game 6 and I was ready to head back to the warp. But at this point he had wrapped around the back of my army with Venoms and was killing off Cultists making “Kill More” extremely hard to protect against for me. He still had one healthy, and one damaged Fire Prism. I would blow one up, and this would be when I unleash the Abaddon!

Abbaddon fired up the middle, and I had my last Lord Discordant meet him there from the left flank. I took out some troops with the Lord Discordant, and smacked into him with Abaddon and killed everything he swung at.

The Lord Discordant in the red robe loves eating space elves!

I did what I could with that hail mary swing for the fences, and it partially worked but Abaddon was hung out to dry. I reminded him that Abaddon halves all damage and really that ended up saving his bacon because he could not kill Abaddon.

At the End Game we tallied it up and I lost 19-22. Far closer than I thought, and if I simply would have gone with character killing as a secondary instead of Big Game Hunter (vehicles) I would have won.

Overall I’m pretty happy and the Deldar Airshow games are always really difficult for this list, and I faced two of them in the tournament. This was truly a fun opponent and he definitely knew how to play the army effectively. Knowing I was that close, it taught me the secondaries I should have chose weren’t the same as the other Eldar Airshow (because he hid characters). That was my mistake, but still it was an extremely close game.

On that note my record was much worse than last year’s GT, but I had a lot more fun. Maybe that’s in part because I just brought my favourite models and had hoped to stay -below- the top tables to have more enjoyable games. Regardless, I will do a valuable lessons learned re-cap and I greatly appreciate if you’ve read this far! -prot