Results: 500 points of Victory Tournament on 1/4/2014

[Matthew]

Here are the results from today's 500 point tournament. It should be noted that this event was run as a win / loss event. After the second round players were broken up into three brackets based on their records (and VPs). From there the players played only people in their same bracket. Prizes were awarded to the top two finishers in each of the three brackets.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the event. Battleground really appreciates the continued support from the 40k community in the area.




FIRST TWO ROUNDS:





BRACKET A:




BRACKET B:




BRACKET C:



Prizes:
(prizes listed are in store credit)

Bracket A
Overall Winner – Matt Bennett – $120
Runner-up – Brenton Van Durme – $60

Bracket B
Winner – Dan Bunker – $80
Runner-up – Roger Melo – $40

Bracket C
Winner – Robb Harkins – $60
Runner-up – Bill McFadden – $30

Best Appearance: Army  – Chris Gershman – $40




Interested in more 40K fun? We have three other 40K events this month. Abington is hosting our sixth Apocalypse Megabattle on January 11th. Plainville has an Onslaught GT Primer Event on January 18th. And on January 25th, Abington has a 40K Doubles Event. You can find more information about each event by clicking the above links.

[andalucien]

I love this format!

I brought:

Bloodthirster /w/ exalted reward and greater reward
2 units of 11 daemonettes

The theory / experiment was supposed to be:  They'll be too worried about the bloodthirster to bother shooting at the daemonettes for the first turn or 2, which actually might make the daemonettes actually make it into assault, since their big problem is that they're squishy if the opponent wants to shoot them.  And, the thirster will usually take the portalglyph, dropping it off in a back corner, where hopefully it will get ignored for a while and pump out a couple extra units as the opponent shoots up the assaulty stuff.

Game 1, got mirror matched against Jared Sequeira's daemons:
320 point daemon prince (2 greater gifts, ml 3)
2 units of horrors
This was a weird and quick game... His prince got better buffs than my thirster (iron arm and re-roll invul saves, fleshbane attacks) making it an apparent threat to the thirster.  He moved his prince forward, but we BOTH rolled a 4 on Winds of Chaos, meaning no daemons have any invul saves during my turn!  So, I just charged the daemon with the thirster, thirster has I9 vs I8 so strikes first, I did 5 wounds, and there are no saves so the prince is dead.

Game 2, vs. Sir Prometheus’ Tau (he went on to win).
He had a skyray, which I knew in advance was probably the thing I LEAST want to see as it can reliably do about 3 wounds to the thirster in its “missile turn” even if he’s in flight. So, bloodthirster ALMOST lived to assault something, but not quite. The game actually got kind of interesting from there, as it was 2 relics….  my daemonettes had moved up to grab both relics and were dragging them back, plus I had managed to deposit the Portalglyph within grabbing’ range of both.  So it was dicey with Matt trying to constantly table me before the game ended….  he just barely managed to do so.

Game 3, vs. Pat Holmes’ Orks
Lootas, Big Mek with Shokk gun, shoots boys, slugga boyz / w Nob.
I got first turn which was pretty important, there was nothing here to realistically threaten the Bloodthirster if he could get in the air due to the deployment.  He had a gigantic ruin on his side and put his lootas on the top, but that let me fly up so that the lootas couldn’t even see the thirster as he was below it… so turn 2 he started chopping through Orks, as did daemonettes (who murder Orks if they’re not in area terrain).

Game 4, vs Dan Bunker’s Tau (he went on to win 2nd bracket)
Very similar to Bennett’s list except with a single broadside instead of Markerlights.  Again the Skyray was a huge issue and took my Bloodthirster down to “finishing off range”.  This time he actually survived to the point of declaring a charge, but didn’t make it through the overwatch.  From there it was cleanup.

Game 5, vs. Roger Melo’s space Wolves
2 Pods, one with a Rune Priest in it, and a unit of Long Fangs.
I was pretty out of it by this point, and Roger is my buddy so I must not have been really focusing   The “Space matt” came out to play.  The only way for the thirster to die is if he charges the Rune Priest through difficult terrain, thus letting the rune priest strike first with a wounding on 2+ Force Weapon… and that’s what I did.  Hehe.  I was actually still on the verge of winning, as my portal glyph pumped out a ton of scoring units, and he  was hard  limited to 2 scoring units, and some glyphed horrors combined with nasty warp storm tabling managed to eliminate one of those.  But, at the end of turn 5, for some reason I just didn’t move my guys onto the objective (a frequent brainfart of mine), thinking in my head it was gonna keep going… game ended so it’s a tie on objectives and he had killed like 550 points of stuff.

Great times

[shwnlyns]

So tau won every bracket. One might think that they are slightly overpowered.

[Grand Master Steve]

any one who uses Tau knows lots of Marker Lights and a Riptide win games

[MM3791]

I'm surprised Bloodthirster + 2x daemonettes didn't perform better, since that seems like the most obvious daemon list for 500 points.

[andalucien]

I'm surprised Bloodthirster + 2x daemonettes didn't perform better, since that seems like the most obvious daemon list for 500 points.

I do think it's a good army.  The last loss was just due to straight up foolishness on my part, and the other 2 were to really good players that each had a skyray.  Bloodthirster is not very good against skyrays.

[King of the Elves]

I brought, 1 farseer, 2 squads of dire avengers, 1 nightwing (flyer), and 1 fire prism.

 Game 1: took out the Guard pretty easily with the fire prism and puppet master. Won
 
 Game 2: Dark Eldar. First time playing DE, very fast moving army. Killed all of my troops turn 1. Turn 2, got in my nightwing, but by turn 3, most of my army had been wiped. Great guy to play against though!

 Game 3: Chaos Deamons. Killed his HQ turn 1, but as his plaguebearers approached, they just had too much cover, and will not die, for me to do anything worth while to them. Loss

 Game 4. Best game of the day, played against Bill and his chaos marines. Killed his HQ turn 2, but not before taking out the main gun on my prism, which has all the templates on it. After that it was all about killing cultists, but couldn't kill enough before the timer went off. Lost by a narrow 23 VPs, but still a great game.

 Game 5: Bye.

Closing thoughts, farseer was a waste of 500 points, better off buying dire avengers. Same with the nightwing, if anything I should of taken the bomber. But hey, you live n' you learn.

 First time to the Plainville store, and it looks GREAT!. Can't wait for the next 500pt event, and the doubles in Abington! 

[Sir_Prometheus]

So tau won every bracket. One might think that they are slightly overpowered.

any one who uses Tau knows lots of Marker Lights and a Riptide win games

Well, at least the whole A bracket wasn't Tau.  Tau just fit pretty well in 500 pts, I won one of these (the first BG did, I think) with Tau before the new codex came out, when they were supposedly the "worst" 40k army.  Conversely, I don't think I can make any Grey Knight 500 pt list that even vaguely works, I've tried.

And, as I've always said, it's not the Riptide, it's the markerlights.  I could replace the Riptide with soem plasma Crisis suits, and I think that would work fine.  Notably, I beat John, who had TWO Riptides, mostly I think because I had markerlights and he didn't (he also got like 3 one's on armor saves).  I also had more variety with other units, etc, but the point is more riptides didn't = winning. 

I've come around to the idea that FW tetras may be broken.  I used to think they were merely "good", slightly preferrable to pathfinders, but no, they are way, waaaaaayyyy better. They're 35 pts for an AV10, open topped model, with a single twinlinked pulse rifle and a 2 shot, twinlinked markerlight. They're also fast skimmers and have scout.  That makes them a little less efficient than pathfinders for markerlight generation, but of course they are always right where you need them, and they're a lot more durable. 

I'm surprised Bloodthirster + 2x daemonettes didn't perform better, since that seems like the most obvious daemon list for 500 points.

I do think it's a good army.  The last loss was just due to straight up foolishness on my part, and the other 2 were to really good players that each had a skyray.  Bloodthirster is not very good against skyrays.

Well, I brought a skyray mostly because of things like blood thirsters.   

[andalucien]

Well, I brought a skyray mostly because of things like blood thirsters.   

... and so did Dan, I'll reckon.  Yeah, I guess if we can say that there is a "metagame" now, (with basically the same army having won the last 2 events, and also having won the 2nd bracket in this event), any army that relies on an expensive flyer flying monstrous creature is not likely to win the top spot, so that makes the army actually "not so good" if you think about it that way.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Well, you could reserve the FMC, and bring something like a soul grinder (which I have always thought were awesome for their points) to pound the skyray.  That leaves you super tight with points for the troops, but I bet you could do it. 

[andalucien]

Well, you could reserve the FMC, and bring something like a soul grinder (which I have always thought were awesome for their points) to pound the skyray.  That leaves you super tight with points for the troops, but I bet you could do it.

Actually.... it doesn't work.  The Bloodthirster is 300 points (280 if I don't buy the greater reward).  With 2 units of scoring troops (180 min) that leaves 40 points to play with.   I could scratch out 90 more by going to zero scoring units other than the portalglyph, replacing daemonettes with nurglings... but still not enough for a soul grinder...    And, maybe it's just me, but I can just never get nurglings to do ANYTHING for me.  They just feel like "tax" points whereas daemonettes do seem like in the right situation they can get some real work done.

I'm probably missing something but the best hope for me in that matchup seems to be to try to get lucky:  go first, get a meaningful Greater Reward on the thirster (like 4+ FNP would actually give him a very good chance of getting mixed in), get lucky with grounding checks and saves. 

[Sir_Prometheus]

Well, there are cheaper options than the bloodthirster.  I dunno how important scoring really is in 500 pts, seems like you can go for tabling pretty often. 

[andalucien]

Believe it or not, I chose the bloodthirster because he was the cheapest option to get a FMC with his level of durability (comes with a 3+ armour save built in which matters against most threats to a flying monster, but unfortunately not against skyrays).   A kitted out lord of change or or Daemon Prince would be even more expensive.

My problem with Nurglings isn't so much that they don't score, it's that they don't seem to do anything at all.  They can't even really tie up a squad of long fangs for a turn, they lose combat and then evaporate due to daemonic instability.  90 points is quite a lot of points to just throw away in a 500pt army.

[Chase]

I am strongly considering not allowing MCs and skimmers / flyers for the next 500 pointer.  I received this suggestion in an email after the event (by a prime offender), and I agree with him when he says he thinks that kind of limitation might produce something different than what we've seen winning these things lately.

I think Bill won the very first 500 pointer, although I forget what he took.  Since then I think MCs + flyers / skimmers have been in all of the winning lists.

Spitballing.

[Benjamin]

Souza won the first 500 playing Daemons, but his list I believe did not include any MCs. He had a Herald of Tzeench, Fiends, Bloodcrushers, Bloodletters and Plaguebearers IIRC. Very balanced list.

There's just one real issue with banning MCs, and that hurts Tyranids. Banning specifically Flying MCs and Flyers is what I think could return balance to 500. I'd say leave that in place until most armies have an affordable answer ala Tau.