Monday 30 May 2016

Reports from the front: Dan/Tom's cup game 2


My second game of the knockout stage rounds was against Lawrence and his ‘blaggy’ Corsairs list (as he likes to call them!). As we discussed, the list has the power and ability to reach the final stages of the cup and the D weapons offer a hard counter to invisible Wraithknights and the like. Corsairs are an army I’ve played myself and the update has bright them in line with their Craftworld cousins’ power levels.

Again, I have never actually played Lawrence at the club and it was the perfect opportunity to get a game in without having to make much of an effort arranging a game (with the cup sorting that for me!). With the format of the competition changing, I’m planning on surging through fixtures as quickly as possible to get time for 30k and a change in pace to competitive gaming, whilst allowing me to choose who to play in which order, to at least try and get the worst of it out the way first!

Lawrence has gone for an Iyanden scheme for his Corsairs; a fitting tribute to the fluff about Prince Yriel and a wise move in gaming terms as he can get list flexibility out of running them in a normal list or Corsairs list without the need to buy and paint up more models! I used to run a full jetpack infantry Corsairs army, and may just have to plagiarise the idea (they say copying is the highest form of flattery ;)!). For me, the misadvertising of the Skathach Wraithknight on the Forgeworld site and not being fully part of a Corsairs CAD, along with the potential cheese against some armies, without investing in Venoms or jetpack infantry, has put me off running them casually for the time being at least.

His list is a variation of what he's playing at the moment, with the Corsair coterie detachment providing more flexibility in choosing what he can bring to the table. He's playing them in another club tournament (at the South London Warlords I presume) and is using a CAD, which is more restrictive in what's available. Only being able to take the single Warp Hunter is a pretty big tax for them.

The jetbikes, Lynx, Warp Hunter and Hornets, gloriously painted, before deployment.

I won the roll-off for the second concurrent game and decided to go first, obviously not wanting to give away the chance to be shot at. With the objectives being so important to the cup games, it really skews the effectiveness of close quarters beasts the Wulfen. That and playing against the Corsairs who get their free move away via “Reckless Abandon” to get out away once an opponent’s unit are in their threat range. From a combat standpoint, this allegorically works a lot like charging a fast cav unit in 8th Edition Fantasy, with them fleeing and then looking for the auto-rally to stay out of being tarpitted or charged, as seen in popular tournament lists (John – mainly – and Felix can both attest to this!).

The Wulfen then prepared for a kicking, and the D shots from the Lynx and Warp Hunter made a world of difference for insta-gibbing them rather than just taking a wound off with re-rolls on scatpack bikes from the Corsair’s psychic phase adding to the firestorm. I felt if I could have been more aggressive charging up the board to get to the other side in two turns, this may have changed things. But even then, Lawrence could have moved his jetbikes away from me to score objectives on the other side of the board!

There has been a lot of talk about the Wulfen being a glass hammer unit (hitting hard but not staying around for long – I think Harlequins do that the most, though a shortage of AP attacks with kisses means they do less damage arguably), but I’ve found them to be less glassy than I was expecting .

Now you see it, now you don't; Wulfen squad taking out a Hornet, for all of their kills total!

For the amount of firepower that was being dished out by the Corsairs, standing up to four turns of shooting seemed quite a feat, as expected to be packing my stuff up after turn 1; so I’ll take that as a moral victory! The storm shields, FNP and toughness value v.s. Eldar shooting were really useful against the Corsairs, with Lawrence pointing out how much harder it made tabling me straight away; it’s just a case of getting them into combat to do their work!

I can see Invisibility being useful for rushing Wulfen across the board, whilst Gate of Infinity and something to move them around would be ideal. But against Corsairs, they just don’t have the mobility. Beating them would come down to a shooting game (which I obviously don’t have!) and goes against elite killy units.

With the lock-in of the lists being pivotal, it’s no wonder the list is as powerful as it is. The D basis of the list is designed to take on the powerful lists at use in the competition and they will definitely be a problem for others when Lawrence gets through into the later stages!With John’s 3 Riptide list, all knights lists, wraithknights and so on in the meta, mobile D is a game changer. The jetbikes are perfect for scoring objectives and give a boost in shooting.
 Lights out for the Wulfen, as the scat-bikes zoom across the board taking all objectives.

Either way it was great fun and there were loads of pointers to take away from the game. And playing such an experienced opponent like Lawrence meant for a richer experience. I can see him progressing well and after seeing him win the Christmas tournament organised by Will, expect him to be looking to repeat the feat!

No comments:

Post a Comment