Four Horsemen Inaugurual Tournament

Better late than never for this report. Last weekend my FLGS held its first 40k tournament, a 1500 point, three round event that lasted most of the day. Despite nearly two weeks of Tyranid list design, I decided that morning to take the Daemon force I had built up for the Escalation League this summer. I was pleasantly surprised by the results, and ended up placing 4th out of 10, just a few battle points shy of 3rd place, which went to Rarkthor of http://rarkthorshold.blogspot.com/.  I claim a moral victory over him based on the results of Game 2, however.

And now a quick breakdown.My Daemonic host, They Who Walk Upon Many Waters (and whose name might actually make sense when I finish basing them) consisted of a pair of Tzeentch heralds on Jetbikes, kitted to hunt transports, a pair of Tzeentch Daemon Princes equipped the same, a Great Unclean one, 2 groups of 10 Daemonettes, 2 groups of 5 Plaguebearers, 10 Seekers of Slaanesh, and 6 Fiends of Slaanesh.

Game 1:

For this mission I faced off against Tau in a modified KP mission with Pitched Battle deployment. KP were scored as normal, but there were 6 objectives placed across the board, 5 of which were duds and 1 of which was worth 5 KP and could be moved and held by any unit that found it. My opponent won the roll for deployment and elected to go first, stringing out his army between some Pathfinders and Firewarriors on the right flank and some infiltrating Kroot on the other. Sandwiched in between were his skimmers  and Crisis suits. His commander and suit retinue were held in reserve. Going first against Daemons is usually a bad plan, but in this case it was justified - via infiltrating Kroot, Crisis suit moves, and a flat out Piranha, he had uncovered all but one of the markers and recovered the bonus objective before I was even on the table.

Unfortunately for him it was on the left side of the board, held by one of his two Kroot squads. I got my chosen first wave and set about surrounding the Kroot and blocking off that flankfrom the rest of his army. It almost didn't work; my initial shooting whiffed, and he took out the Daemonettes who were supposed to lock the objective in place for a turn while the rest of my units got into range.  This coupled with getting only 1 unit (my second Daemon Prince) in on turn 2, made a real fight of it. Turn 3 saw some him whittle away chunks of my force, but also saw him run out of  space; the Kroot were hunkered down in a forest near the corner of the board, getting ready to hand off the objective to a Devilfish mounted squad of Fire Warriors, who I managed to shoot down and pin with a lucky shot. The subsequent assault saw the Kroot dead to the 2nd Daemon Prince and the remnants of my Fiends. From there it was all downhill. I was able to snipe a few more units in the center to offset my own losses, and the bonus 5 KP put me well out of catch-up range for the Tau. The game ended on Turn 5, with a major victory for the Daemons.

Game 2:

Fresh from devouring Tau souls, I got something a little meatier: Space Wolves. The primary objective was victory points, with bonus points for units above half strength in your opponent's DZ. My opponent spread his Long Fangs on opposite sides of the board, placing one near a rock outcropping and the other two in a forest.  From their vantage points they had most of the board well covered. His 3 Rhinos filled with Grey Hunters stuck to the center, with a pair of Speeders riding shotgun on the transports. He also elected to go first so he could use Njal's ability and force me to take Dangerous terrain tests as I arrived.

This time the Daemons came out swinging. I did little damage on my turn, but got some good positioning, and took little damage on my turn. By turn 3 his Long Fangs on the right were dead courtesy of the Great Unclean One, the squad on the left was tied up by Plaguebearers, the Rhinos of two squads were destroyed or crippled, and one of his two Wolf Scout units had been massacred. The Wolves started hitting back once the Grey Hunters and Njal came out to play, but by then they were taking losses about equal to the ones they were inflicting. The game ended with another major victory for the Daemons.

Game 3:

The final game was against the only other undefeated player, another Tau force. The win condition was objectives, with 5 unequally weighted points set across the board, while the setup was Spearhead. Going in I knew it was going to be bloody and close, and I was right. With only three scoring units, whose movement would limit his firepower, I had an advantage. Unfortunately this was offset by the mass of S5 shooting, which were hitting at BS5 thanks to his Pathfinders. What got into 12" of his army died, and I couldn't concentrate enough on one flank and hold the objectives. I decided to sacrifice my army to pin him in place while throwing my troops onto far flung objectives. It almost worked, but I ran out of units to sacrifice on Turn 5, and hadn't been able to destroy his ability to contest; I had troops on two objectives, but he managed to get an empty transport on one and a few drones near the other. My last two Daemonettes made a desperate charge against the squad of Fire Warriors advancing on the central objective, but weren't up to killing a full squad on their own. That left his last surviving Fire Warriors sitting on his home objective and gave him the victory 1 point to 0.

Overall I had a great day; although I didn't place, I got a better feel for my Daemons in competitive play and a nice tactical workout as well. More importantly I got to face off against some great players, and am looking forward to getting in some rematches.