vs Craftworlds Eldar

Welcome back to another installment of the Grey Knights getting absolutely dunked on! This week I once again played against Dustin's Asuryani. This was our first game since Chapter Approved 2019 and we were both eager to get our now cheaper units on the table and try out some of those tasty new missions. I wanted to play the new Maelstrom ones with Schemes of War, but I forgot my Tactical Objective deck at home like a dummy so we just rolled up Eternal War.

We settled on the mission Ascension, using Hammer and Anvil deployment. Pretty straightforward mission that places all the objectives on a center line, which I hoped was going to favor me and discourage him from using an immobile tank line.

My forces.

I brought two Dreadknights tonight! They dropped almost 50 points in CA2019, and I'm really excited to try them out. They've never been good, but maybe now they will be meh enough to not be considered an offensive choice.

This is the rough draft of the list I will be bringing to LVO in late January. The goal here is to have a very durable teleporting force that can claim objectives and hopefully hold them for a while. Almost exactly 1000 points will be sitting in deep strike, with the rest of it on the table and moving to secure midfield objectives. My biggest concern right now is that all of my anti-tank is in the form of melee weapons, with the exception of that single Razorback and its twin lascannon. I'm hoping that the melee threat will be enough, though. I have so many storm bolters to just shred any light infantry I encounter and hopefully mitigate the number of competing Troops on any objectives I try to claim.

Eldar Tanks Out The Ass

He brought so many tanks! Look at that! That's three Fire Prisms, a Wave Serpent, a... Falcon, I think, and two Hornets. I knew he was going to place those Fire Prisms on top of buildings and just use Linked Fire every turn to delete my guys. I just had to put significant pressure on him and play the objectives, try to weather that storm.

The battlefield.

The crew in deep strike.

This version of my Paladin bomb includes a Brotherhood Ancient to give more attacks, an Apothecary to cast Sanctuary and revive, a BroCap to act as Warlord and provide First to the Fray, a GMNDK to give rerolls and also draw aggro, and Inquisitor Lorea Gyzan to turn off overwatch for anything my boys need to charge. I like this one!

Everyone who started on the board.

I was slated to get first turn, but I knew that if my opponent Seized with my guys in the open like this then I'd be fucked. He got a 5 and I exhaled.

I Gated one of my Dreadknights up the field right off the bat and had him cast Vortex into Dustin's cluster of bike characters and tanks. I spent a CP to cast with 3 dice in the hopes of getting that 12+ on the psychic check, but to no avail. Even so, Vortex fuckin slaps. I killed his bike Warlock, took three wounds off of both his Autarch and his Farseer, and killed a Shining Spear. It felt like a really solid opening move and obviously made Dustin nervous. I then moved to shooting, though, and this Dreadknight whiffed all of his shots. Heavy weapons hitting on 4+ with no rerolls is not great.

I didn't snag a picture of it, but my Razorback moved to grab an objective and then missed both of his lascannon shots. So all of the enemy tanks remained undamaged.

Grabbing an objective.

On our way to the center objective.

On his turn his Falcon pooped out the Fire Dragons I had forgotten about. They moved up into the center with their eyes trained on the Dreadknight that had decimated their frontlines.

Fortunately they suck at shooting and missed everything. I was so worried about that Dreadknight, but it looked like he was going to survive!

Achilraen and the Shining Spears moving upfield to steal that objective from me

Farseer claiming the other objective.

Dustin was running a custom Craftworld, and chose the trait that gives his shuriken weapons -1 AP within 12". This proved to be extremely powerful over the course of the game. Changing a 2+ save to a 3+ is a huge detriment for me. All those small arms in the picture above just stripped away my Razorback, removing my only lascannons from the game turn one.

These guys made the charge and swarmed my Terminators.

AP -4 and D2 lances just obliterate my Troops.

His tank line.

As I thought, the Fire Prisms did what they do best and Linked Fire'd everything. The Dreadknight that had survived the abysmal rolling of the Fire Dragons was erased, and the other Dreadknight that was still moving up the field had been killed by the Autarch's fusion gun and the Shining Spears' laser lances.

Turn one I was down a squad of Terminators, two Dreadknights, and my Razorback. Quick math shows me that's almost 600 points. Oof, but not unexpected. That is how Eldar do.

Deep striking in.

At this point Dustin held two of the three objectives, and both were held by characters. In this mission (Ascension), if a single character holds a point for consecutive turns you gain increasing points. He was going to start running away with it if I didn't remove them. But I knew that splitting up my deep striking units would make each little group weaker. All of them rely on each other to reroll charges, reroll hits, and cast spells. If I split them up, they'd be slaughtered. So I had to make a decision. I figured the Farseer would be easier to kill and also was surrounded by the most meaty targets, so I sent my Paladin bomb that way. I then Gated a single squad of Terminators to deal with the Autarch and her Shining Spears.

This was a real tough decision, because I knew that the Termies were going to have a hard time taking that point alone. On top of just making the charge, that Autarch has a 4++ and could fall back and eliminate my Termies if I didn't kill her outright. Realistically, my jumble of Paladins and Characters should have gone to deal with her. But in my mind's eye I saw my Paladin bomb touching down on that objective, killing the Autarch, and then spending the rest of the game moving 5" and never reaching any other targets or objectives. At least on the Farseer side of things they had some tanks they could chop up after they did their job.

9"

But then my Gated Termies failed their charge. So the Autarch was staying where she was.

Once there was a Farseer here. 

On the other side of the battlefield, everyone failed their rerollable charges except for the GMNDK. Remember, that is 5 Grey Knights units, so 10 chances to get a 9" charge -- and I only succeeded one. Oof again. Those Paladins were going to be footslogging no matter what now.

On his turn the Shining Spears moved to take the center objective, leaving the Autarch to farm points down below.

Laser lances! Damn them!

My GMNDK was shot down to 1 wound by the Fire Prisms. I had mistakenly used my CP reroll for the phase on trying to make a 5++ for the Terminators in the previous photo, when I should have saved it to reroll my GMNDK's 3++ against the tanks. Then the banshees moved in.

So many attacks. Wounding on 6s, yes, but all at AP-3. All it took was one failed save on my part to lose my GMNDK.

My turn three. Here is where I experienced one of the most insane things I have ever had to do in 40k. Prepare yourselves.

I slogged my Paladins forward. I had to get to the point that the Banshees were on in order to try and keep up with VP. I would figure out what to do about the Autarch on the other side of the map next turn, whatever. For now I needed to get a character to this objective. I moved everyone up to easy charge range (but still more than 3" from the objective) and began my psychic phase.

I had a lot of damage dealing powers, but the Banshees were closest and I needed them to remain alive so that I could charge move onto the objective. Everyone buffed up the Paladin squad. I didn't want my Inquisitor to do nothing, so I let her do a smite to soften up the Banshees. That squad of elves had 6 wounds, so 1d3 mortals wasn't going to wipe them.

Well, my Inquisitor decided that now was her moment to shine, and she rolled an 11. A super smite. I rolled the die and watched as she dealt 6 mortal wounds to those Banshees.

I stared unbelieving. I'd been rolling like shit all game, and only now did my Inquisitor think that she was going to actually start pulling her weight. Remember: I play Grey Fucking Knights. I don't even know what a super smite is! This was legitimately the first time I had ever rolled a super smite in my entire 40k career. I had 1 CP left.

I needed to get to that objective.

I spent my last CP to try and hope to do less damage with a smite.

Fortunately, I only got a 5 on the reroll, so the Exarch remained with 1 wound.

I charged with everyone and beat the hell out of that Banshee.

On the other side, my Terminator squad failed to kill Achilraen. On his turn she fell back and zapped them into dust.

This was his turn three. I had a squad of 10 Paladins surrounding my precious characters. I wanted to deny him Warlord, and also make sure that my Brother Captain could start farming victory points. Maybe next turn I could teleport someone else over to slay his Autarch and  start denying him his points. If the game pushed into turn 6 or 7, I could catch up if I just had a single character on two different points. It was a gamble, but I could protect my guys pretty well if I kept them buried in Paladins.

He started shooting at them with his tanks and Shining Spears, and I failed fully fifteen 4++ invulnerable saves in a row. Seriously, I didn't make a single one. I dropped 8 Paladins.

His Shining Spears moved in and started mopping up my characters. I had three models left at the end of round 3.

I am normally super composed. I normally want to play a game out until at least turn five just to see what might happen. But I had an immobile group of three characters and I was behind by 5 points. I conceded in the shadow of his tanks.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

That was such a rough one! I didn't get to make any melee attacks with my Paladins or either of my Dreadknights the entire game. Blah! I want to say this one was an eye opener about this list, but I don't know quite what I learned from it. I definitely need more anti-tank. The Razorback didn't do enough, and the fact that he is not a psyker really hurt. I think I'll switch it out for a Dreadnought with Astral Aim. Which, like, I know is the right call, but I really like how my Razorback looks and I wanted to give it a chance.

I am... not yet convinced that the regular Dreadknights are still bad. I think I didn't play them right this game. They are each ~150 points, which feels good. I'll try them in my game next week and see if they perform better. I think this was just a bad matchup. Lots of flying heavy armor with multi-damage weapons against Terminators.

Fun game though! I always enjoy playing against Dustin's Eldar.

Nemesis Dreadknights into the Fray

I have been down on Dreadknights ever since I got into this game. They look dumb, and their rules are bad. I even went so far as to custom make my GMNDK out of a Redemptor chassis so I could avoid the baby carrier design of the Dreadknight kit. The most common request I get from people is a tutorial on how I kitbashed that GMNDK, and I plan on writing one up with a step-by-step after Christmas. But for now I am going to talk about regular old Nemesis Dreadknights.

I've had one unpainted Dreadknight sitting on a shelf for the last two years. It bears the scars of my neophytic days in this hobby: super glue bubbles, mould lines, and a terrible unmagnetized loadout. I never wanted to paint him because he sucks and looks bad. Recently, however, I was suddenly hit with a strange desire to build a second Dreadknight. I bought another kit and cut the legs apart to give him a custom pose. That's the guy on the right in the picture above. He's kind of half stepping on that fallen column. I took some Terminator legs from the Paladins box to match his pose so that it actually looks like the pilot is properly operating his Dreadknight. I didn't know this when I modeled the first one (on the left), but the suits move in the same way as the pilot, like the Jaegers from Pacific Rim.

So I built that second one, liked the pose of the legs, and now I've started painting both of them. I primed and drybrushed the both of them and then set them aside for a couple weeks. I liked the pose of my new one, but the unit still sucked and I wasn't eager to finish painting a model that I wasn't planning on fielding. But Chapter Approved came out this last weekend and Nemesis Dreadknights dropped 50 points, which is fucking huge. I'm not sure if this gets them to a point where they might be viable, but that change excited me enough to start working on these two! I painted them up last night. Obviously they are still very much works in progress, but I really like how they're coming out. And after batch painting ten Paladins doing two models at once seems like nothing.

I will be fielding both of these mecha nerds in a game against Eldar tonight. Let's see how they do!

A Eulogy for Honored Brother Ewan

Alas, poor Ewan. You were moved to Legends and now I must write you out of my LVO list. I was looking forward to you slaying so many Primaris with you magic autocannons. Now I must find someone else to fill your hefty shoes.

vs Imperial Fists

"Hey guys, I was just, uh, keeping your objective warm for you. I swear."

Tonight I had the pleasure of playing against Goonhammer's Jack Hunter and his beautiful Imperial Fists. Jack was a great dude to play against and his army is just absolutely stunning. They are clean and grungy at the same time, occupying that wonderful little space between "what a crisp paintjob" and "those Marines look like they've been through some shit." Our game was pretty close when you look at the points and he really knew his stuff, so we finished in like three hours.

Holy shit Imperial Fists are fucking strong.

There seriously wasn't a single point in this game where I felt like I had the advantage. Often my Paladins' sturdiness and Gate of Infinity will afford me some flexibility in my games, but Whirlwinds and Centurions just nullified all of that. "Now, Stefan," I hear you saying. "He's playing what is largely considered the second strongest Chapter of the exceptionally powerful Astartes books, and you're playing fucking Grey Knights. It makes sense that you got your dick stomped." To which I say, yes. On to the battle report!

Count 'em. That is 29 Terminator bodies.

Tonight we used the Schemes of War game mode that was in a White Dwarf issue earlier this year. For those unaware, Schemes of War is a modification of the Maelstrom missions where you form your own deck of 18 Tactical Objectives and draw up to 5 cards every turn, making a "hand" of objectives that you then choose your active Tactical Objectives from. It is essentially a refined version of typical Maelstrom games with a lot of the "ah, fuck, I'm a Necron and I drew Master the Warp" taken out. I really like it and, from what I hear, it is the form that all of this year's Chapter Approved Maelstrom missions will be taking.

Schemes of War interacts weirdly with the current Maelstrom missions, so we elected to just do the most basic version possible. We set up 6 objectives on the battlefield, rolled for deployment, and commenced. 3 active objectives every turn, chosen from our hands of cards. Easy peasy.

Imperial Fists in various states of completion. Look at those Whirlwinds!

Jack won the roll-off to choose sides and picked his without even a second's hesitation. I set up my whole army on the other side of the board.

Everyone on the ground. The plan is to fling my GMNDK across the board and fuck shit up, as always.

Everyone in space. This is pretty close to exactly 1000 points.

I think I've almost nailed down the potency of my Paladin bomb. Those guys do incredible work every game, I just need to figure out the cast of characters that will accompany them in the teleportarium. Tonight I brought a Brotherhood Ancient to give everyone more attacks and wield the Banner of Refining Flame, a Brother-Captain to extend the range of the Banner and also provide FttF as my Warlord, an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor to remove overwatch and free up my Paladins for the charge, and Grand Master Simandus acting as Kaldor Draigo so everyone could reroll like crazy. This combination seems to be working pretty good!

Jack then deployed his whole army and I immediately saw why he chose the side he did.

There was zero chance I was going to get up there. I was only vaguely familiar with the potential of Centurions, but I knew that the Imperial Fists flavor are spoken of only in hushed whispers in Warhammer circles. I have a personal rule that I won't research the capabilities of an army the first time I play against them -- it's more fun for me if I go into a new matchup blind. But even then I knew that these guys were reputed to be motherfuckers. My Paladins ruin things in melee, but I couldn't get up into that ruin. There just wasn't the room, and too many units in the way. I internally resolved to just ignore them.

Turns out that is impossible.

The overview.

I went first and played Supremacy, Secure Objective 3, and Area Denial, which were all immediately achievable so long as I could grab Objective 3 in the middle. I yeeted my GMNDK across the table and told him to stay still for those sweet, easy points.

My GMNDK did not survive his shooting phase, even with a 3++. Hell, he didn't even survive the first volley. Those Centurions were part of a Siegebreaker Cohort so they dealt mortal wounds to vehicles on 6s. This would've been nasty by itself, but also Imperial Fists hit twice with bolt weapons on 6s, and also also they hit 3 times on 6s when they are feeling particularly spicy. My Grand Master took enough mortal wounds from those five Centurions that I didn't even bother rolling his saves. He was just erased. Then Jack focused his Whirlwinds on my Ven Dread in the back and blasted him to atoms.

Taking cover is literally pointless against Imperial Fists, so I dropped my Paladin bomb right into his frontline. The plan was to charge his Intercessors, kill them, pile into his Contemptor and fight again to kill it, then consolidate up the stairs and maybe hopefully entangle his Centurions.

Pictured: A good plan.

I buffed my Paladins with Astral Aim, Hammerhand, and Sanctuary, and successfully terrified the Intercessors. I decided to unload 40 storm bolter shots upgraded with Psybolt Ammunition into his Eliminators to try and secure some safety for my characters.

I also think I perpetually hate these guys because of Derek's Raven Guard successors.

The Eliminators died quick because their cover was denied and a lot of my shots seemed wasted. But, honestly, I couldn't think of anywhere better to put those storm bolter shots. The Centurions are T5 with 2+ saves; they would not have given a shit about my Psybolt Ammunition. Even if I killed one Centurion, Jack had a Chief Apothecary hanging out behind them. In my previous turn I killed one with a lascannon, and Jack's Apothecary just rezzed it and healed it back to full. I think the Eliminators were my best choice.

To the great surprise of everyone, my Paladins succeeded in their charge! We crashed into the Intercessors and tagged the Dreadnought. Plan was going well so far. I did 6 wounds to the Contemptor and killed 6 Intercessors, leaving 2 alive after having earlier killed 2 in the psychic phase. I was going to Honor the Chapter at the end of the phase and fight again, but his power fist sergeant took out three of my Paladins, and a fourth fell to just random punches from that last remaining no name Intercessor.

Seriously. Why do we even wear Terminator armor?

We didn't kill the Dreadnought and the inevitable happened. Jack fell back and I just had to pray that my Paladins could weather the storm of bolter fire that was coming their way. They couldn't!

The commanders look on in horror.

His gunline absolutely annihilated 500 points of Paladins like they were nothing. The bonus AP from Devastator Doctrine turns Heavy Bolters into TDA killing nightmares. My Paladins died almost entirely to the Centurions alone.

Somewhere amidst all this, 20 Intercessors with Stalker Bolt Rifles erased two squads of Terminators that were trying to hold objectives.

I had to make a decision. I had to push, even though the Paladins were gone. I had Blood and Guts in play, and four fairly competent melee characters. I also had Secure Objective 2, which was back in my deployment. I gated my Grand Master back to grab that, and then pushed the other three characters forward to slay those last two Intercessors.

Only my Brother-Captain made it in, but he made short work of the Astartes on that objective.

On Jack's turn his characters finally decided to come out and play.

They surrounded and murdered my Brother-Captain, giving Jack Warlord. But my BroCap had done his job. It was clear to me at this point that I was definitely going to lose my entire army -- what I needed to focus on was having my units grab what points they could while they were still alive.

My Grand Master watches as everyone else is mercilessly cut down by bolter fire.

At the start of turn 4 I had one model left on the table. Grand Master Simandus had snuck back to grab an objective and had survived the mass executions that the Imperial Fists were performing on my troops and HQs. Jack actually forgot that Simandus was hiding back there. I was sitting at 15 victory points, and he at 16. On my turn I drew up to 5 objectives, and I saw my chance.

The Emperor's gifts.

Simandus knew Gate of Infinity. Jack had a squad of Intercessors sitting on Objective 5. If I teleported into his deployment zone and then made that 9" charge, I could get enough points to shoot myself into the lead.

On the plus side, Grand Master Simandus was outside of line of sight of the Centurions. On my turn 5 I ran Simandus forward, made the charge, and secured my Tactical Objectives, but at that point Jack had had an entire turn to overtake me in points. We called it there.

He tried his best.

Oh my word, Imperial Fists are good. They hit so hard! A lot! They have so any shots and my pitiful Terminator armor just cannot withstand it. His Stalker Bolt Rifles had AP-3 and did flat 2 damage, which just erases my 41 point troops. Plinking my dinky storm bolters off of all that impregnable yellow armor felt so hollow. It makes me think I should've brought less bodies and more heavy armor, but part of his Combat Doctrines says that all of his heavy weapons do +1 damage against vehicles so my Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts would've just been obliterated right out of the gate. Frankly, I'm not sure what I could've brought to counter this army.

Sportsmanship points to Jack, though. When I dropped in my Paladins he very kindly said, "maybe you want to push them back a bit. So they are outside of 12" from my Centurions. Auspex Scan." I thanked him profusely and scooted my boys into a safe zone. He definitely didn't have to warn me about that, and it was super cool of him to give me a heads up.

In the end, I think I played this game really well. It looks like I got slaughtered but, honestly, it was a pretty close one at the end there. I was hemorrhaging Grey Knights but they were doing what they were supposed to do while they were alive, and that's all I can ask of them! Jack was an excellent opponent and I look forward to playing against him in the future. I will take the lessons learned today and find some way to either outshoot his Imperial Fists or force them into melee where I have the advantage. Maybe next time I'll just not include any ruins at all on the table. Negate cover for both of us.

As a final note, I really love this game. I know most of my reports end with me losing horribly, but every single game that I play I look at my Grey Knights and I just think, "man, I love these little silver boys." They are so cool and they are so fun to play, even if they aren't even remotely competitive. They just... they feel like they're mine, you know?