Warhounds 2 Warmasters

A 30 player 2000pt Matched Play Tournament, Guest-Starring LSW

It’s been a while since a post made it up. I’ve got several sort-of written but had been too ill to really apply anything approaching the mental finesse required to them to meet my exceedingly low, self-imposed criteria to hit the ‘publish’ button. My Quality Control method being far more hinged upon lazily waiting for feedback and critiques from several word-harpies that I have willingly chosen to surround myself with. They are always female, oddly, and take varying degrees of pleasure in metaphorically pinning me to the wall with verbal barbs for linguistic and grammatical infractions. Spoilers: Yes, I am married to one of them. She’s a good egg… harpy… harpy-egg… ka-kaaaw!

Titans!

Twisted Dice’s second offering of an Event for Adeptus Titanicus once more took place in Leighton Buzzard, home to canals, confusing roundabouts and, of course, the Great Train Robbery (no, not the annual season ticket prices).

It was touch and go as to whether I would be well enough (I’m feeling very much better and continue to improve everyday thanks) to compete (or even attend to watch) and Alex and LSW were almost joined on the front lines by a replacement more than once. As it was, I’d booked time off before and after the event to rest and had a hotel room close by to remove any stresses (mental or physical) from travelling early on the same day.

The event itself took place in the same location – and it continued to serve us well (both ways, it has a bar). Jim, Darren and chums outdid themselves with decently arrayed tables, clear instructions and tracking sheets and an event pack and faq that dealt with as many of the head-scratchers BEFORE matches began.

The format was and is fairly standard for tournaments – the day is split into 3 games/rounds with the first round being drawn at random and the next two rounds drawing based on your results (winners play winners, draws play draws and losses play losses). As the maps and objectives were set weeks before, it allowed for a certain amount of planning and preparation that I haven’t had opportunity for in my previous outings. Having a vague plan in mind for the objectives set for each map – varying dependant on whether an opponent was shooty, mobile or bastard (see my inflated loathing of Psi Titans) – really helped me to avoid Analysis Paralysis and just focus on each activation. I was pleased with my force – it was definitely NOT meta (who takes a Fortis maniple for a fast moving Melee list???) but it was strong and I played enough practice games to have a good handle on eyeballing charge distances. I was proud the models and was quietly confident that I stood a good chance of getting into top 10 – even after seeing the Rosters after the submission deadline: there were some exceptionally competitive lists! I definitely needed to adjust my approach and expectations.

My first match of the day was against a Praesagius Mandatum with a Psi Titan! I have no idea how that fit in 2k and was appalled and impressed in equal measure. I had vital cargo as a primary – 25vp to get the titan with the cargo safely off the board – and one of the Spear/Shield secondary objectives whereby I chose to 10vp for a kill equal scale with my Spear. I selected my possessed Warlord Titan, Khar’ Lakor Ire-Blood (the Bomb-lord as Alex dubbed him) and then I could earn 5vp for keeping the Shield alive – one of my Melee Reavers, Celeri Morte.

I set the Vital Cargo in my Direwolf and deployed him close to the opposing edge – a bit cheeky, but so is the existence of Psi Titans with the current rules as accepted by the community, so cheekiness was the order of the round.

Turn 1 was largely a case of positioning for everyone except the Psi Titan, who promptly destroyed my lead Reaver, Sanguis Dux, without a second thought.

I parked my Direwolf in position to extract end of Turn 2 and concealed him from the Psi Titan with a concealment barrage to ensure he survived and would get a shot at an inconvenient Warhound. He made the shot and got the shutdown.

My Warlord got a 12 on 2d6 for distance on Warp Displacement and merrily barrelled the rest of the distance into my opponents’ Warlord, smashing it pieces with a succession of impressively high-strength body-blows. 10vp secured.

Turn 2 ended and I was 35VP secured. A good start.

My opponent boosted and reclined a warhound to my edge and extracted and, whilst managed to kill all of the rest of the Warhounds, the Psi Titan killed a titan a turn until I was tabled. I won the match through objectives – my opponent had selected his Warlord as his Shield and his Psi Titan as his Spear and had place the priority in his Shield (likely reasoning that most people will throw everything at the Psi to kill it). Final Score: 35:30 to me.

Game 2 had me looking to secure 3 objective markers of my own, whilst denying my opponent his. My secondary was simple: survive with as many titans as possible… not ideal given the results of the previous match. I found myself against Oli’s Osedax Legio. They were absolutely beautiful and Oli is an exceptionally tough opponent. Oli ran a Corsair and Ferrox maniple and was VERY good with concealment barrages (plural, his Princeps trait allowed him to reuse a strat).

I’d like to take credit for this game, but the Dark Gods interceded. 2 separate instances worked to undermine Oli’s efforts (if we exclude me rolling some very hot dice).

1. I failed a charge by about an inch from Sanguis Dux to a Warhound. As Oli began to hammer Sanguis’ shields, I boosted for rerolls on 1s. I rolled awakened machine spirit, failed the command roll and as I had taken Singular Purpose, my melee Reaver did as all of my corrupted titans were bade: he turned to closest enemy, advanced d6 and hit him with his weapon. The Warhound was critically wounded and Sanguis added insult to this injury by passing his shield saves. As it was now my activation, I apologised for what was about to transpire and proceeded to activate Sanguis and finish off the crippled Warhound – before it could activate thus denying it and it’s squadmate co ordinated strikes. I wholeheartedly agree with Oli that Sanguis would have been destroyed/crippled had that come to pass.
2. Sabotage. Oli played Sabotage on Khar’ Lakor in a bid to remove his Charge Order (he was lined up to charge and murdify Oli’s Princeps Senioris). Oli played the strat and my heart sank, it had been a good run. Oli took up the Orders dice and rolled it – whatever result would now be applied to my Warlord. There was a 1 in 6 chance it would be a shutdown. By rights, that also means there was a 1 in 6 chance it could also be the same order I already had in place – it was. The charge went off and Oli’s Princeps was so finely ground out that nearby barristas gathered to collect and sell this most rarest of produce; Titan Milk.

With few (1) losses of my own and mounting casualties the tide tipped away and I was able to secure more (but not all!) of the objective markers to win the Primary for 15VP and to have survived enough to score max points on the Secondary for a further 15VP. I’ll take the time to recommend anyone, given the opportunity, to play Oli. He is a gentleman, a great sport and an absolutely challenging Princeps – but for some unlikely events I am sure that match would have been a draw, if not a loss.

Game 3

Tired but enthused, I approached the final match. For objectives I had to keep hold of an honour banner (makes sense… I guess…) on one of my titans and for a secondary I had to kill as many of the enemy as I could – finally something for Khorne to be proud of!

I was playing Ashley who was running a Mandatum and Venator maniple. We’d chatted once or twice on FB and I think he was at the previous Twisted event. He fielded his Legio Venator and I saw Titan Hunter Infantry and Cerastus Knights with the Outflank Strat. This would be tough.

Ashley poured an ungodsly (there are 4 in the chaotic pantheon) amount of fire at my titans, all the while back-pedalling and I lost Immitis Venor in Turn 1. Realising I couldn’t afford to lose anymore titans without thinning the opposition, I pulled the War Lust strat for extra movement and then Warp Displaced a Reaver up the flank and then boosted his movement and charged directly into his Venator maniple Reaver, removing him from the proceedings.

I moved Khar’ Lakor up the opposing flank – alone now that Immitis had fallen – and then began a series of turns to get Sanguis up to Ashley’s Warlord that was camping the top right corner and pounding the everliving-scrap out of my Warlord.

I managed to get my Warlord to survive long enough to charge and kill a Warhound – finishing its squadmate in the following combat phase. Sanguis eventually made his move and punched and hacked the much larger opponent to death – even managing to survive the turn-collisions from a wildfire result and then also being fallen on! Sanguis claimed the enemy banner and denied Ashley 25VP. This just about made up for his Game 1, Turn 1 failure to survive.

Celeri Morte chased down the final Warhound after it survived Celeri’s previous charge – something no other titan had had the temerity to do on the day!

Unfortunately, Ashley’s outflanking Knights hadn’t been idle and surrounded and butched my Direwolf – removing any hope of attaining my Primary objective.

I won the match with only 15vp and a lot of sweat. Ashley and I passed the time chatting whilst we waited for other to finish and for the scores to be totalled.

MEANWHILE

LSW was in attendance and was playing her Swarm list (6 Hounds, 2 Direwolves LOTS of aggression).

I was too wrapped up in my own games, but I had enough of a debrief after to learn she lost her first game as she got greedy and tried to get a shot off with her Vital Cargo carrying Direwolf. It was surrounded and murdered – in a not dissimilar fashion to my own in Game 3. Her second game ran like clockwork and she won, scoring maximum points and her final game found her facing… Oli! Their match was a brutal affair and I have heard that her Direwolves performed their role of shutting down the opposition – literally – with aplomb. This was, I think, LSW’s first time experiencing a cataclysmic chain of explosions and the centre-board saw 4 or 5 engines cook off in that most glorious of Adeptus Titanicus events.

She scored close to full points in a further win. As the day wound itself down, she was exhausted but elated and was glad she had lost the first game as it removed the stress from the day for her and allowed her to play aggressively and without fetters.

I placed second – which I was thrilled for – and LSW placed 8th! Her first tournament and she found herself in a very competitive environment and she held her own.