The War Dolls - Girls Game Too!

Our local gaming store put on a teams tournament for Valentine’s Day. Since my husband and I are not super into the sappy holiday, we decided to participate, although the large amount of added restrictions put us into a different mindset than we usually have.

So, our friendly local game store [FLGS] decided to put on a teams tournament. We got pretty active in the rules of it since the announcement got posted pretty early, and the number of restrictions really got us into the idea of doing something we usually do not do.

The rules for making our two 1000 point lists were as follows:

• No formations
• No allied detachments
• No super heavies or gargantuans
• No Forgeworld
• No 30k rules
• No fortifications
• No single models worth 350 points or more
• No vehicles with combined AV of 36 or higher
• No Gathering Storm models
• No repeat named characters

On top of this, we learned that teams would be effected by the allies chart, so we decided to just do two Eldar armies since Allies of Convenience rules hurt, Harlequins are pretty boned by the above restrictions, and I do not have enough Dark Eldar models to field a whole army yet (with the rules in Fracture of Biel-Tan, my aim to create a small Corsairs force has changed to collecting and using some models for both Corsairs and Dark Eldar depending on weapons – it also gives me the excuse to have more than just Corsair-compatible Dark Eldar). All in all, we ended up with a strange theme: dual Avatars of Khaine backed by Windriders, a number of Aspect Warriors, a Farseer, and a Crimson Hunter.

I would say our lists worked well although the scenarios were somewhat unbalanced and the organizer added in turn two surprises on every table that could harshly tip the balance.

Match 1

Grey Knights + Tyranids: triple Dreadknight with dual flying dakka Tyrants and a bunch of gribblies

I would say that this was our most difficult match, mostly because neither of us were particularly familiar with the newer Grey Knights and had never run into Dreadknight spam before. It also went long as our opponents were not regular players and were a bit rusty on their rules; we got in a total of two turns in the hour and a half allotted. Because of this, we were allowed to ignore the turn two effect as it probably would have taken us forever since it dealt with psychic powers.

The overall idea (we went second) was to hit hard against the Tyranids and roll the flank, but deploying on the long edge made that more difficult as two of the Dreadknights popped teleporters right away and were within charging distance ASAP. Still, going second gave us a turn of shooting and first charge, killing off one dreadknight for first blood and dropping the other to one wound after they popped our Falcon and a few jetbikes. Tyranids meanwhile began evaporating as the second avatar sweeping advanced an entire squad of ‘Gaunts and the jetbikes picked off the warriors that granted most of the army’s synapse.

After that, we got a time warning, leading us to focus fire the warlord flying Tyrant down and scatter our jetbikes onto every objective we could reach. Objective secured clinched 5 of the 6 markers and an avatar in backfield gave us linebreaker.

Knights and Tyranids: 3 | Biel-Tan: 8

Match 2

Khorne Daemonkin + Chaos Marines: triple mauler fiend with berserker/hound/spawn backup and Thousand Sons rubric marines with dual hellbrutes

This game did not go well; the scenario stacked up pretty hard against our opponents, who had predominantly melee-based lists. We deployed on short edges (only 12″ deep zones) on an incredibly terrain-heavy board and had VIP models (represented by ork warbosses) that each team had to break out of an AV10 fortress behind the enemy deployment zone.

We went second again, choosing not to attempt to seize the initiative, and spent the next two turns dishing ranged punishment that whittled down the slowly approaching army. Turn two saw a squad of rubric terminators and two sets of Khorne berserkers deep strike behind us, but they were destroyed for the cost of five Dark Reapers. The surprise on this board was pretty nasty, making all terrain dangerous and dealing S6 AP3 hits to those caught in it when the effect started on the roll of a one; but our opponents were not utilizing the terrain. We got lucky and lost only two jetbikes.

Another time warning went out, so we rushed the fortress while the avatars remained behind to sweep up what little remained of our opponents’ troops. The fortress cracked open, and we secured the VIP before the game ended.

Daemons 0 | Biel-Tan 7

Match 3

Dark Angels + Eldar: Ravenwing bikes and Wraiths with Aspect/Jetbike support

While we did really well in this game, our score ended up being dismal based on the board scenario. The objective was to capture a relic, which started in the middle of the board, and take it back to our deployment zone. The only problem was, if time ran out, no one got points for the relic if it was anywhere else on the board. Our opponents assured us that the relic could only be moved 6″ per phase, so with 48″ of board space to cover it would take more than the entire game to get it there, although I should note that at the end of the game, the tournament organizer stated that this was false.

Anyway, our opponents began the game with a scout squad infiltrating directly on the relic with the bikers moving up fast to support it. We got first blood by wiping a ranger squad, but the rest of the enemy Eldar were far enough back that our primary targets were the Dark Angels, who we managed to keep jinking through sustained fire. The player was convinced that the bikes would do just fine this way and would jink at every shooting attack, which we used to our advantage. His snap shots amounted to pretty much nothing for the next few turns. Eventually, as time drew to a close, we disgorged a squad of Fire Dragons, led by Phoenix Lord Fuegan, to take out the scouts and seize the relic. They did, but only after we spent an entire turn shooting. Thus, we had to weather an entire turn of shooting ourselves, but managed to with Fuegan out front rerolling his 2+ armor save since my Farseer had cast Fortune on him.

The match ended with pretty much nothing. It was clear that we would have won since most of the Dark Angels were gone and the enemy Eldar were trickle-feeding into our more mobile massed firepower, but we were only awarded one bonus point since we could have easily taken linebreaker with our jetbikes moving 48″ per turn.

Dark Angels + Eldar 0 | Biel-Tan 2

Conclusion

Overall we won although the points were very close; the tournament organizer said he had to roll a die to determine first and second place. I found the tournament scenarios a bit odd since they all maxxed-out at different points values: 10 for the match 1 table, 15 for the match 2 table, and 6 for the match 3 table. Another issue was the two long-edge scenarios took away the standard 24″ gap between deployment zones in favor of 36″ and 48″; this had no small hand in hurting the Daemon players and other melee-heavy armies, who spent far longer chasing assault range than usual.

Still, we had fun and made some new friends. It was just a bonus that we got some models out of the deal.