This weekend I will be playing in what to my knowledge is
the first 6th edition grand tournament in the world. Six rounds,
over one hundred participants, swag bags, and lots of other goodness will be at
hand in San Jose, California. This is my second GT I have
played in, and my first such major tournament outside of my local area. What
have I done to get ready?
Played Malifaux exclusively the last two weeks.
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| American Football=11 Players...Nidzilla=7 Monsters |
That might be a bit of a stretch, especially considering I
was out of town for six days, but the truth is that I have not touched 40K in
two weeks; no games, no serious strategizing, and not even a bit of painting.
The easy hindsight answer would be that I have been spending my time with a
casual skirmish game so that I enter this event with a light-hearted have fun
mentality, which considering some of the silly (read: both clever and
frustratingly powerful) combos and gamesmanship people have been coming up with
might be needed, but truth be told I don’t have a reason other than finding
Malifaux really refreshing. I will do some write ups about it in the coming
weeks. Needless to say DUST and Malifaux are quite enticing compared too much
of the negativity going around the 40K-sphere.
That said, here is a run down of my basic strategy for this
weekend’s event considering all of the rounds are using the standard book
missions. My list can be found here.
Crusade
Dawn of War
One of the changes The Golden Throne has made to the
rulebook is that objectives are placed prior to determining sides. This
prevents a player from getting the majority of the objectives and lining their
board edge creating an unfair advantage. My plan for placing objectives is
first and foremost to get one objective in each deployment zone which can be
held from area terrain. This guarantees that my ten termagants which are nearly
always reserved at the start of the game can come on the table and sit on an
objective. Being in area terrain is important because this guarantees that if
they fail instinctive behavior and lurk that they will stay where they need to
be to score. Next I try to place an objective in area terrain near one of the
side board edges, typically the opposite side that other objectives are more
concentrated. If I can place this objective I will outflank my termagants (as
per Hive Commander) and hope to get to place them on this table edge, far from
the enemy and safely in cover. If this is the case then I will spawn gants into
my rear objective on turn one. The last place I put an objective is in area
terrain midfield. This is the point were I will send my troop Tervigon. I try
to position this objective so that I can give synapse to my rear objective
holders, give FNP to my forward units, and sit in cover to prolong the model’s
life.
As for the other models, if deploying second I place the Carnifex unit directly across from the most vulnerable unit on their forward
deployment line. With Onslaught on the Tervigon I will almost always be able to
shoot this unit and typically (since most vulnerable will be a Rhino or
something of that nature) kill it, hopefully getting first blood. If I go first
they deploy centrally. The HQ Tervigon goes directly behind them. If going
first the Trygons will deploy one on each side of the Carnifex units and if I
go first they will deploy across from where my opponent’s rear objective is
(Unless there are 5 objectives; then they pick a target objective that is more
forward). The Tyrant if going second will either reserve (if there are a
million missiles on the table) or will position himself for a flank run. He can
help out at getting first blood if the Carnifex unit fails. My bad matchup here
is against DE. They have the shooting to get rid of my monsters and enough
mobility to be spread the objectives.
Round 2
Purge the Alien
Hammer and Anvil
This is not a mission where I want to hammer and anvil.
Naturally the gants reserve as they are my most fragile unit. That means that
since I don’t want to spawn more gants (and thus give more kill points) I will
be playing the game with just seven models – and you though 25 model grey
knight armies were elite! I have two options. I can either reserve the Tyrant
and Trygons thanks to my +1 on reserves, or I can deploy it al on the line and
rush forward.
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| In a fork all choices are lose-lose. |
There are two factors at play here. First, if my opponent is
an assault army I should put it all on the table, if they come to me there I
want all of my options on the table to trap them in their movement options
(similar to a fork in chess). If my opponent has a shooting army then I can see
reasoning to reserve, but to be honest the advantages of having more targets to
saturate the table are nothing to ignore (such as in my battle report against
Tau from July). This really depends on terrain and is a choice I think I will
only be making when going second.
My actual tactics depend on my opponent’s list. Only having
7 kill points, six of which are durable, is certainly an advantage in this type
of game. I feel if I can engage their army I will be sitting pretty. The tough
match-up here is gunline IG, gunline Tau, and foot Grey Knights. Gunlines
obviously benefit from this deployment and force weapons take away all of my durability
advantages.
Round 3
Big Guns Never Tire
Vanguard Strike
My objective placement strategy changes here. I now want as
many objectives placed in the deep backfields as I can get. I can spawn gants
into my backfield, and if my heavy units, which make up 53% of my points, are
already headed to their backfield. This means that my opponent must both kill
all of my charging monsters AND win
the roll to select deployment (in order to have more objectives a priori) or
they must traverse the whole table to get to my deep objectives while getting
past my wall of T6 that is standing in the way. Any objectives placed midfield
become the sole property of my troop Tervigon. Tough games here will be Tau and
IG as they have resilient shooting heavies. If I see Leman Russ Squadrons I may
have to rethink objective placement. Dreadknight Grey Knights could also be
tricky, especially if they have a teleporter. Horde Orks could also be tricky
here.
Tomorrow read up on my plans for rounds 4-6!
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