Tournament Report – St. George’s Champion 2019 – Part 2

Introduction

Part 1

This was it - day one had gone pretty much perfectly, and day 2 was going to be my last and best chance to finish on the podium with my army in its current form. Could we make it through?

The pairings didn't go up to the morning, but thanks to the BP based scoring it was pretty clear who I was going to be up against, and sure enough, my first challenge for the day was...

Round 4 -  Tau

The Competition

Oof, yeah that sure is a Tau army. Most of this isn't wildly surprising - the huge point cuts received by Commander Shadowsun and Broadsides in Chapter Approved have made them the go-to tool for building a Tau army that can just blow the opposition off the board. The only things that stand out are the Missile Pod Coldstar, which is a potentially powerful flex unit/assassin, and that this list has gone a bit deeper on shield drones than the average.

The Mission

Retrieval Mission (4 EOG objectives worth 3 points). Not ideal - I'm likely to control a lot of space early but get whittled down, so I'd prefer progressive scoring.

Frontline warfare deployment. This is better - it gives me scope to get into him fast, while still giving me space that I'm likely to be able to deploy planes in corners and have them be out of range of some of his firepower, making it difficult for him to burst them down if he goes first.

The Plan

We can reasonably assume he's going to castle up, and we need to break into that castle. We obviously really want to go first, and our basic plan is:

1. Turn 1: Clear as many drones as possible.
2. Turn 2: clear the rest of the drones and the infantry to open up slamming a serpent into his castle.
3. Turn 3: Hurt him bad enough that by the time he clears stuff out it isn't enough for him to recover.

This is potentially easier said than done - his army throws out a prodigious amount of hurt, and as soon as he takes a turn I expect to start losing stuff. The good news is that the Night Spinners are great here - they are strong both for killing drones (thanks to D2) and for pulling chunks out of Doomed Broadsides. I also want to spread out my psychic debuffs across drone squads to maximise the rate of drone destruction - because I have Crimson Hunter Exarchs already re-rolling wounds against them, I want to throw Jinx on one squad (and blow it away with the CHEs) and Doom on another to whittle down with rate of fire. Finally, during the psychic phase I want to try and use a re-roll to make sure I land a "3" on the first D3 damage from Executioner, minimising the chance of him getting a huge swing by successfully stopping the second dice worth of damage via FNP.

My Secondaries

• Recon
• Gangbusters
• Butcher's Bill

His Secondaries

• Old School
• Big Game Hunter
• Butcher's Bill

The Summary

Here we see the pinnacle of Tau military doctrine, the Murder Heart.

I got the first turn and went for the plan as outlined, rushing my toys forward to hover just outside of 12" from the castle and opening up on the Drones. My Farseer had an outrageously good start by blowing an entire 6-model squad of Shield Drones off the board thanks to some pants FNP rolls from him. In the shooting phase, I successfully deleted a substantial proportion of those that remained.

On his turn, he popped Kauyon and his commander decided he was in no way going to be outdone by my Farseer, levelling his Missile Pods at one of my Crimson Hunters and putting an outrageous nine damage into it, leaving it ripe to be finished off by a few other things. Meanwhile, his chosen target for "Through unity Devastation" for the turn was my Hemlock and, well:

Lets just say that the skull accurately reflects the chances of survival.

Still, two planes down was honestly a result that could have been worse, and in my turn it was time for my army to do some heroics. Sadly I missed one of my debuff powers (I honestly can't remember which one), but with so many drones already dead, and my deep strikers coming in, I was able to clear the rest of the drones and most of his infantry screen. This set me up for the most important charges of the game - trying to ram wave serpents into his broadsides. I messed up with the first one - I'd unexpectedly left a single FW alive next to the suits, and could have declared a charge on that, forcing that Broadside squad to FTGG to defend itself. As it was, his first round of overwatch high-rolled hard, and the wave serpent died, with the Riptide being used up but the second Broadside squad not having to get involved. That left it down to serpent number 2 (right in front of both units and able to parallel park into both) - could it be the hero the Aeldari needed?

It surely could - his second round of overwatch was much more underwhelming, and I made the 5 I needed to charge in, locking both suits of Broadsides down.

The greatest hero the Aeldari will ever produce. (the stuff on the top right is a dead pile)

That massively shut down his second turn, and gave me a lot of breathing room, though Shadowsun did manage to blow the serpent away to prevent any repeat heroics. In my third turn I missed some key psychic again (this time executioner against a precariously low wound broadside) but still managed to take a whole squad off. Then the game descended into chaos as I carefully charged everything one tiny unit of Kabalites at a time (having first had my roving Archon burst into the Riptide from behind cover), followed by his characters heroicing out to try and stop me piling into the remaining Broadside squad.

Chaos reigns.

Eventually, after all was said and done a lucky run of saves on my Raider managed to keep it locked into the Broadsides on a single wound remaining, and that was just enough to win me the game. My Turn 4 shooting was totally pants so he did get to shoot with the remaining two suits then, but I had stuff he couldn't get at on two objectives, and his coldstar didn't manage to assassinate my archon off one, leaving that contested. We'd agreed turn 4 was the last round because time was low as we started it, and at the end I'd taken the game by an absolute whisker.

The Takeaways

My goodness is that army absolutely vicious to play against. As I currently anticipate we're all going to learn over the next months, it feels like the CA changes to Broadsides and Shadowsun might have been a bit much, as this army loses nothing in the FAQ and can blow stuff up like no-one's business.

This was definitely a good learning experience against it - my opponent was clearly a master of playing the list, and knew exactly how to get the most out of his stuff. The characters all heroicing out of the bubble caught me a bit off guard - I thought I had a good chance of having the Broadsides locked down, but it was much more precarious than I'd realised. I could have easily made it more certain if I'd seen it coming - I didn't charge with my guardian squad but easily could have, and they still had ten models so could probably (with even a half decent roll) have spread out enough to lock them down for certain.

I'm definitely going to be specifically tuning my list to play against this going forward, adding in some Howling Banshees and (as soon as I've painted it) a third Wave Serpent. With the FAQ as it is, you need to be packing a plan to crack open this kind of castle or you're going to have a very bad time in the new metagame.

The Score

Eternal War: 6-3

Secondaries: 10-11

Kill Points: 14-14

Total: 16-14

Tournament Points: 11-9

The dream was alive! Additional pressure was added of course - I really wanted a podium finish, but because scoring was battle point based and I now had two small victories, I needed a big win in the final round and to hope the other top/near top tables didn't win too hard one way or the other.

Round 5 - Imperium

The Competition

I'd seen this list pop up a few times when trying to work out next possible next round pairings and was fascinated to see it in action. It's clearly powerful (and only gets better after the FAQ), but I felt like I should be able to take it - my record against Custodes Bikes is pretty good.

The Mission

Scorched Earth (6 objectives, 1pt each at EOT or burn them for D3 if they're in your opponent's deployment zone, after which they stop scoring).

Spearhead Assault deployment.

The plan in this game is going to be to start defensively then counterattack hard. With that in mind, the mission does risk him pulling ahead, especially because he has several possible ways of sneaking in and burning an objective.

The Plan

Repeated experience has shown that on a carefully orchestrated alpha turn my army can take out an absurd number of bikes, so the goal is to let him come to me, set that up and push him in so hard on a single turn that he can't recover. The Assassins are a moderately good spoiler to this - there's a risk that if he uses them well then I'll have to spend some of the alpha turn wasting them, opening me up to missing on a big swing. However, I should also be able to pick off some of his army on the way in - even if he goes first I'll get a turn of pretty uninterrupted shooting, which should be worth maybe 3 bikes and a decent number of the sisters.

In general, this should be winnable, but needs careful play. Much like some of the previous games, because I want to play very defensively it's important to pick objectives around killing stuff rather than to try and force myself to score recon. Luckily, now that Gangbusters exists his army leaks secondaries like crazy (as his warlord is also a viable "Kingslayer" target), so this is easy to do.

My Secondaries

• Kingslayer
• Gangbusters
• Headhunter

His Secondaries

• Headhunter
• Behind Enemy Lines
• Big Game Hunter

The Summary

"We're live here from the Custodes Grand Prix where the competitors are revving up their engines..."

"...but what's this? The dastardly Aeldari are on the track planning some sort of sabotage!"

He went first, revved forward and threw some inconsequential shooting at me, and sending his rhino to camp a back-line objective. I pushed back, sending dire avengers down his less-bike filled flank to fight some Sisters of Silence, while the guardians went into his jaw to try and clear enough there to send serpent shield mortals through. That was a mistake - they didn't quite make it and it left them badly out of position, where they would have been better used in the coming turns. I also made a dumb error and misjudged the firing lanes of the Vindicare on my warlock. Finally, my Hemlock advanced right into his back-line to waste his Primaris Pskyer, compromising his ability to hold an objective, and hoping to bait a squad of bikes backward to try and fight it (which would be a mistake for him - a single squad risks not killing it through lightning fast and it leaves them horribly out of position). I also shot a couple of bikes and a decent number of sisters to death.

On his turn, he didn't take the bait with the Hemlock, correctly assessing that he needed to push forward in force. His remaining two assassins also popped up. With the Callidus, I'd judged that the best I could screen it and not compromise my plans was for him needing to roll a 3, and sadly he rolled a 2. I'd left a backup plan for this - a Crimson Hunter set up to drop "Forewarned" on her, but sadly it completely failed to harm her. This meant that I lost my warlord, and charging bikes also put down a Wave Serpent (through lightning fast, which was moderately annoying as mathmatically he should have just missed once he'd left his captain bubble) and Dire Avengers. The warlock also paid for my carelessness.

That left it now or never for the big counterpunch, and my army didn't disappoint - my Farseer wasted the Callidus in the psychic phase, popped the "extra power" strat to throw doom as well while the Hemlock flew back round with the jinx then my shooting phase picked up a huge number of bikes, leaving him with a vastly diminished force. The only major downside was that his Eversor lobbed a melta bomb into a retreating Night Spinner and took it right down to minimum profile. My Scourges also started coming in on the backline to threaten his objectives, while Dire Avengers continued an inconclusive punch/gun up with some SoS, which was fine for me because I was Obsec and he wasn't.

He was still on the "front foot" though, and with a good turn he could potentially still leave me scattered enough that he could stay ahead on progressive scoring and take the win. To do this, he correctly identified that he needed to merc my farseer now, and sent his remaining bikes to try and pull if off, while the Bike Captain tried to hold my other flank. He succeeded at part 1, which was blowing up my Wave Serpent in shooting to allow a charge through towards my Farseer, but things didn't quite work out for him. His charge roll was good, but my Archon was positioned close enough to the action that after heroic, he could only pile one bike into my Farseer. The Archon was only on one wound, having been popped by the Vindicare, but his Shadow Field held, and the one bike couldn't put my Farseer down. He did console himself by burning both the objectives in my zone, but that failure in melee was definitely the turning point.

With my planes still active, and lots of my deep strike stuff available, I could now proactively push out and start finishing his stuff off, and my turn 3 effectively dropped him below a threshold of being able to control the game, leaving him aiming to kill as many of my units as possible and maximise scoring. The fact that I had models everywhere now made this very hard for him however, and when we got to the end of my turn 5 we totted up points and I was slightly  ahead. We did this because it was random game length and had plenty of time left, and I needed to decide if I wanted to burn the two objectives in his deployment zone (which I now held) or gamble on the game continuing. My figuring was that if I was behind without burning them I should do so to avoid picking up a random loss, but if I was ahead anyway, I should keep them and burn them on 6, aiming to maximise points. I was rewarded by the game going on all the way to turn 7, which gave me one more turn of scoring all four remaining objectives (burning the two he held) then points for the remaining two plus finishing off the rest of his army in turn 7, ending up with a much more convincing win to me.

The Takeaways

A win, but I did make a couple of mistakes. I think I did a decent job of playing against the Callidus (I couldn't perfectly screen, but I set up multiple "coin flip" contingencies, they just all failed) but got distracted by that and needlessly lost my Warlock. I also didn't use my Guardians very well, throwing them away to achieve not much (and keeping them back would potentially have sewn the game up, as they could have fallen out of the serpent and blocked the charge on my Archon/Farseer.

Despite that, my overall strategy was good, and I was able to pull through quite a number of key rolls going his way early on, getting eventually paid back by the extra turns to maximise my points. My first squad of Scourges also pulled some serious heroics to keep me scoring - the final one tanked a decent number of attempts by the Rhino to shoot it/run it over.

I really liked what my opponent had done with the list and thought it was hugely nicely put together - the durable, psychic proof screen of the Sisters actually helped him a lot, and the chaos of the Assassins is a good combo with the bikes, buying time to get them up and take the opponent out of the game. He also did a great job of allocating his forces and prioritising his targets - I don't think there was any point where I felt like he'd "taken the bait" and gone after the wrong thing, which helped to keep this game on a razor's edge all the way through. Very well played to him!

The Score

Eternal War: 21-17

Secondaries: 12-10

Kill Points: 15-11 (net 4)

Total: 36-27

Tournament Points: 15-5

We got our 5-0, but this was going to be agonising - it was a decent win, but the top table had locked up 1st/2nd, and my score wasn't big enough to lock out the winners from the two tables below me from jumping above me with high scoring wins. I had a very painful hour loading stuff into the car and refreshing Down Under Pairings (which, by the way, is an absolute godsend for writing these reports compared to BCP because of how good their scorecard system is) to see if I'd managed the podium.

Final Score

Yesssssssss

Matches: 5-0

Battle Points: 78/100

3rd Place

My first podium at a major! If I have anything to say about it, it won't be the last.

Congratulations to Mike Porter, who finished 1st, and Konrad Bartkiewicz who took second.

Army Thoughts

I'm delighted with how the army performed, but with the advent of the Big FAQ, it obviously now needs to change.

The Scourges, after six months of good service, are now going to be retired. The (entirely justified) nerf to doom, combined with the removal of 3++ Knights means there's no point having them in the army any more. If I ever get a serious burst of energy I might try and reconfigure some to have Shredders, since a squad with those could still just about plausibly have value in some metagames, but they're basically going on the bench for the forseeable. Goodnight my beautiful winged children.

Imagine some really sad music playing. Honestly, it's heartbreaking.

A lot of the rest of the army remains viable though - losing move blocking on fliers is a blow, but not as much of a blow as it is to people all-in on the 7+ flier lists. The most critical thing my fliers did for me at this event in terms of zone control was screening out Deep Strikes, which they can still do pretty much just as well, as they still have massive bases and can't be charged by ground units. Most of the rest of my Drukari force is, at least tentatively, staying for now - my list thrives on building up a lead and disrupting opposing attempts to unpick it, and access to Vect to counter an opponent's "big plays" is a critical part of that, as is having sufficient CP, which Drukari supply much more cost-efficiently than Craftworlds. On that note, the change to "Vect" means if I want it I need to keep using the full Black Heart detachment version of my Drukari stuff  (as I did in this list). Sadly, that means my Succubus and Haemoculus probably go on the shelf for now as well (hopefully to emerge in Kill Team).

That mostly covers things I want less of. In terms of things I want more of, the answer is mostly:

• Wave Serpents
• Howling Banshees

90% of Tau players literally have nightmares about these

I haven't used the Banshees for a while despite them being a very useful part of my highly successful run at the AoC open. As you will know if you've read TheChirurgeon and my review of the Big FAQ (which is also my excuse for why this is so late), I expect Tau and to a lesser extent Guard tanks to be on the uptick, and those are the two matchups that a well placed unit of Banshees can absolutely destroy. In a fit of enthusiasm around the Eldar Codex review I bought one of the made to order Banshee Exarchs, and she's going to finally be coming out of the blister pack to lead up a second squad.

Wave Serpents are, again, extremely good in those two matchups (as we saw in this report), and flexible enough to be good pretty much all the time. I again have most of one new on sprue and ready to paint up, so will be aiming to have a third ready to go for future events.

In terms of my calendar, I have three things coming up:

• Twisted Dice RTT
• Bolter Drill RTT
• LWG Bad Moon Series (2-day)

I have solemnly promised that I am taking a very silly Necron list to Bolter Drill (so Necron fans check back in around the 27th May for a write-up), and I've got two stages of changes to my Aeldari list planned out for the other two (based on available painting/writing time):



This works with what I've got and only commits me to finishing a second squad of Banshees on top of the Necron things I need to paint. I think this is a decent evolution of my current list, with which my only concern is that I might miss the board coverage aspect the Scourges gave me in some matchups. If that does happen, I can potentially consider bringing some Swooping hawks in, or could split the two "forward" Kabalite squads over two Venoms rather than a Raider. That also takes it below the 8 threshold for BGH and MFD, though honestly after this event I'm a bit less bothered about that - in pretty much every game, picking both would have been a mistake for my opponent.

With a bit more time to prep, for the LWG event I'm hoping to run this:



This goes all in on Wave Serpents, which I think is going to be a good look in the new metagame - they're phenomenal against both Tau and Guard, and are so resilient that they're never irrelevant to what my army is trying to do.

The Storm Guardians are a bit more of an experiment. I haven't found myself missing the guardian bomb (it's mostly in the TF list because it's painted and available and at least fine) but exactly how to use the smaller squad has been an ongoing experiment. I'm wondering if this flamer configuration (thanks to the cut they got in CA) might actually be good - it throws out about the same average number of S4 hits if the flamers are in range, and is crucially a lot better against things like Orks, Plaguebearers or really anything else that wants to take them out via a charge. It might go nowhere, but I think it's worth trying out, and it was a way to free up the last few points I needed to make the numbers on this work.

Wrap Up

I'm thrilled with this result, as I feel like it really does represent the culmination of 6 months of practice and iteration with versions of this list. I'd also like to say a big thank you to everyone who's read these reports - writing them is hugely rewarding and I feel like it's been a major help improving my game, and people chatting to me about these and our other strategy articles at events really keeps the energy going!

I'm hugely excited to game in the post-FAQ world, and as outlined above, you'll be able to hear about how my first forays into the new metagame go later in May. Finally, check back in next week as I review the exciting new Ynnari Index that's just released in this month's White Dwarf.

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