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 8^th 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!

Reports from the front: Dan/Tom's Wulfen cup game 1

With the blog in need of a bit of upsurge in content, I thought it was a perfect idea to link current gaming with blog content. It’s a shame Mordheim doesn’t fit tangential commentary or that Guild Ball players had the time to write up batreps about the system, but time is money (as I find myself, as a semi-professional freelancer; especially for Barry when he’s missing out on gaming!), and as the anointed administrator of the blog it’s kind of mandatory!

I won’t be doing more detailed reports  like Chad (or as well I expect; my excuse being I have my own writing and paid work on top of these duties and others to really!), but will try and give the reader the gist (mainly I put my miniatures down, then remove them!) and my thoughts on the game. Playing a formation of Wulfen wasn’t the wisest move for this format, so don’t expect any tactical genius!

The first game of the knockout round was decided by the order system and that meant I was drawn against Rich and what turned out to be a dreaded Imperial Knight list. I haven’t actually played Rich at 40k (having not joined the club when he was rocking his Emperor’s Children in the 1k league the Spartans had going at the new premises at the time) and I think our last games were during the Fantasy escalation league against his Sylvanian Empire army (I think!), with his love of the undead, featuring his wolf riding demigrpyph knight alternatives and other great conversion work as is expected from him. With 9^th Age becoming popular, I’m sure he’ll be dusting them off soon!

My reason for entering the cup was to get to start a catalyst to enjoying 40k again (having fallen out of love of it for a little while, but I think gaming interest peaks and wanes in phases), or at least, a spark to the flame! And also mainly to get the opportunity to play people I hadn’t before (variety is life spice as Matt says), and for me gaming is a social activity and the chance to get to know people better than I wouldn’t otherwise, is worth propping up the table as the wooden spoon (something I seem to get a lot of)!

I won the roll off to start and rashly let Rich deploy first in the slimmest (im)possible hope of being able to deploy my units in a more tactical fashion. In retrospect, it would appear utterly pointless, but having not played in ever it seemed like tactical enough at the time. Oh well! Setting the terrain without any line of sight blocking scenery also didn’t go in my favour! The scenario hampers movement, and if the set-up was 24 inches on, rather than 12, the Wulfen could really give people headaches first turn.

 

 Deploying second was a bad, very bad idea - Wulfen awaiting impending death!

 

 The board setup did little to change Rich's deployment!!

It was nice to play against such well painted miniatures and I felt rather guilty about playing my unpainted grey horde of Darwinian-transitory-sapiens-style-inspired-wolf men whose hackneyed (sure there’s a pun there...) karate posing has turned a lot of people off an interesting close combat beast into the 40k meta. Rich’s freehand is outstanding and his knights, matching his 30k Word Bearers, have been daubed in appropriate symbols and liturgies to give an inclusive overall look when he plays his knights allied in with his traitor force for 30k.

I was hoping that grey plastic would mean that the army performed better (having seen tournaments won by – the idea being that gamers too busy to paint are better gamers because they’re too busy gaming; and like a recurring pattern I’m not as it turns out!), but misreading my rules (with my habit of “I dun goofed”), didn’t exactly help the result!

 In spite of the terrible photo, you can still see the detail at work in Rich's freehand.

As expected, I was shot off the board before I could even amount to doing anything, by turn 2 as I recall.  The fixed scenario of having to gain objectives meant I had to be less aggressive as I tried to hold onto objectives to generate cards and then try and complete them. Doing the exact opposite of what my army needs to do isn’t really what I want to be doing, even if they do have a 3+ invulnerable!

In short, I moved my Wulfen eagerly up the bed in my first turn, before receiving a load of firepower in return. My warlord was vapourised quickly to give Rich those bonus points and I then continued to move around to try and hold objectives/generate cards and was basically shot off the board  (again, down to my inane ability to shoot myself in the foot at all times, hey who said difficult wasn’t fun?!!) .

The highlight for me was the stubborn remaining Wulfen valiantly trying to hold on to the objective to the last man and still going to blown away anyway. Going into the competition, setting my targets as realistically low as possible means I can at least walk away less shamefully with more knowledge about my army works! The target is to increase the longevity of games each time I play to try and survive being shot off the board each time; I can but try!

As long as I make progress every time I compete I’m happy (akin to what my driving instructor said about me advancing along – I passed second time haha!).

 Valiant Wulfen trying to outlast the untired guns, soon to be dead, very dead!!

 

 

The Knights didn't stay in the same place all game, moving forward turn 2 to get nearer objectives, just in case!  

40k Cup: Asking the organiser!

With the inaugural 40k Cup just around the corner at the club, I thought it would be a great idea to pick the brains of its running man, or should that be organiser, Peter. There's a lot of interesting building as the competition ramps up, with people finetuning their lists for the deadline. And with this in mind, I thought I'd ask to get a slightly deeper understanding for the thoughts behind running it in this format and its intentions.

 This is what Google produced, but the cup will definitely look different, 

even in spite of Steve's 8th Edition tournament winning foam cup in the early days of the club!!

So, onto the Q&A!

What was your inspiration for setting up the cup?
I'm really enjoying running the cup so far, even though we haven't even rolled any dice yet. I wanted to be involved in running an event as the last 40k league was great fun to take part in so I thought I'd get involved.

What were your motivations?
The cup format seemed like a great way to make a competitive competition that was going to be exciting whilst ensuring a minimum number of games for the players that go out in the first round.

Why the format? With a cup it whittles down players, do you feel this brings a more exciting/dynamic interest?
Having a straight knock out competition eliminates half of the players after the first game so this should be more engaging and also generate interest as other players' games will really matter to everyone.

The cup brings a more competitive element to gaming at the club. Do you think this is a good thing and why? And with more players attending tournaments it can only encourage that growth?
I'm hoping that the knockout rounds will be really competitive. Judging by some of the lists I've seen there are some really competitive armies so we should see some epic clashes.

Do you have any plans for the future? Like keeping it a regular event?
The elimination process is going to be great for bragging rights at the club too.

We'll see how the cup goes and if it's a success I'm sure there will be opportunity for the winner to defend his title!