AFK Autumn Annihilation Tournament Results Summary

Recently attended an 1850 Warhammer 40k tournament at AFK in Holt MI.

So how was the tournament? Excellent

The tournament was hosted by local 40k community leader Jeff C. Jeff runs a tight tournament. Judging is fair and consistent; even supplies you with the painting rubric he uses and how he scored you.

 Sportsmanship is always important and it shows with the participants. Jeff's tournaments always start and end on time; with information about the next planned event.  I appreciate the hard work that goes into this.


You can find the list I took HERE. I will give a brief game summary and reflections on what I should have brought in my list; along with how forge world and fortifications affected the tournament and/or my army.  I did not take too many pictures as I tend to get focused on what I am doing...plus all the psychic powers I was trying to generate and use kept my poor befuddled mind pretty busy.

The missions were all standard rule book missions with standard deployment:

Game 1: KP's with short table edge deployments, this board a ton of terrain
Opponent: Lee Shirk, with an Imperial Armour Guard/Space Marine list

Lee's List:

• Legion Centurion, pw,pp
• Legion Auxiliary Command; w/auto cannon, 2 flamers
• Renegade Marauder Squad; Chief, 7 marauders, 2 brutes, Chimera camo netting
• Legion Space Marine Cohort; #20 marines, many power wp and plasma
• Legion Auxiliary (prefect + 19)
• Auxiliary Arms-men Cadre (20)
• 2 Hellhouds in a squadron
• Legion Sentry Gun Batteries (4), 2 HB, 1 Assault C, 1 Las
• Maelstrom Fleet Lighter with Hellstrike Missiles
• 2 Basilisks
• Artillery Barrage, Bombard strike

Lee is a great guy to play. It was a very fun game overall with Chaos taking a narrow win by 2KP's. It was a long way for my infantry to walk into some scary looking firepower. I say looking, because neither of us could really kill anything. However, Lee rolled "Deny the Witch" 5/7 times. I made quite a few mistakes in this game. I did not deploy or move my units aggressively enough and used the Defiler to hunt back line tanks instead of infantry. But, we muddled through it and we both had fun. My ADL (Aegis Defense Line) got more in my way than anything else.

Game 2: The Scouring (the mission with 6 objectives with hidden point values) Diagonal Deployment.
Opponent: Jeff McC. with Grey Knights and IG allies

Jeff's List:

• Coteaz
• Ordo Malleus Inq. Term Armour, psycannon
• 2 Full Purifier Squads with 4 Psycannons each, and Psybacks
• 6 min sized acolyte squads in psybacks, 2 in Chimeras
• Primaris Psyker
• Guard Blob of unknown seemingly endless quantity
• 2 Vendettas with 2 vet squads with special weapons.

Where my fist game was a ton of fun, this game was an exercise in watching my opponent roll fist fulls of dice, and then re-roll them. It took way too long for us both to figure out how to deploy diagonally.

I then chose the wrong side. We then turned over the objectives and he had me 9 to 7 with most of his units behind a large line of sight blocking terrain. I thought if I could get first blood, then get in his deployment zone or kill his HQ I could possibly tie...then my Oblit over heated on plasma, then took a wound and was killed first round of shooting. I also put 15+ wounds on the a couple squads and could not get past either a single Inq. in terminator armor or cover saves....so I kinda just went through the motions throwing a squad out to get shot here and there...then just called it turn 4. Jeff also "Denied the Witch" like every other roll as well....

This game bothered me regarding my army list, deployment, and use. I ended up writing this Post about troop units. I also see I should again have been more aggressive and charged his weak flank like a true Chaos general. I was beginning to realize that the way I was using the ADL was hurting me not helping me. So a loss here...but my army was painted and his was not...take that Jeff! And next time I will be looking for you!

Game 3: Emperor's Due (The mission where you each have 1 objective); Standard long table edge deployment.
Opponent: C.Vinton of Dark Future Games; with "Necrons of the Thousand Cuts"

You can find C.Vinton's army list HERE. Now where I was in a generalship funk in Game 2 I had woken up a bit in Game 3. Somehow I had wound up on Table 2. Table 1 had Bill Kim and his flamer/screamer Deamons vs my round two opponent. All three of them were 2-0 and I; 1-1.

Now I was still in a funk as I was getting my toys ready for the next game, when I heard Bill loudly announce; "Oh so who is the sacrificial lamb facing C.Vinton on Table 2?!"

"Ah, that would be me." I said tinged with good natured sarcasm.

Well, that comment, though not intended by Bill to affront or attack me, did light a 40k flame under my arse. I managed to weather the Necron storm and pull off a win with some luck and some solid play. I also came out from behind my ADL and put pressure on C.Vinton all game by attacking his objective repeatedly. I also started to use my psychic powers a little better mid and late game.

C.Vinton you can blame that loss on Bill...some times one just needs to let the sleeping Grox lay. :)

So, I ended up third. Bill took first with Deamons. C.Vinton second with Necrons.

Probably the coolest thing was meeting and playing C.Vinton and realizing he was from a blog I follow. He was a really nice guy and good player. Also found out he had read my blog and had some nice things to say about it. On top of that he is also a fellow nurse.

So, if I look at why I like to go to tournaments, as posted HERE, I can say I pretty much hit every point...a good day of gaming.

Army Review:

1. The ADL is not well suited to CSM. CSM's are aggressive, the ADL is static. Best use is a single squad to sit behind it and hold an objective...not most of your army as I tried. If you try the latter versus the former you will get in your own way, make needless difficult terrain tests and get out shot and out maneuvered. The quad gun shot down one Necron flier all day. I would say over pointed for this list.
2. Too many psychic powers for me to comprehend and use effectively. Practice would help a great deal here. But my opponents rolled insane for Deny the Witch. Game 1 and 2 saw probably 12 of 16 units deny on a 5 or 6. Psychic powers are fun for CSM...but they are not Prescience. I have reviewed the powers again and would probably go with the Slaanesh powers.
3. I liked the varied list. Kept my opponent guessing.
4. Units that did nada...Typhus (I used him poorly) Plague Marines (see last comment) Zombies, ADL, Tsons, 12 man CSM's (other than to hold an objective Game 3)
5. Units that shine: Nurgle Spawn...yeah awesome sauce again and again, Sorcerer was pretty good, but many points...the Defiler...

I had a big quandary to run this guy or take more Nurgle Spawn. He did nada Game 1 and 2, though he did draw some ordnance fire. Game three he redemed himself a bit...but Nurgle Spawn would have served me better all day.

Here is how I would tweak the list. I say tweak versus a total re-do...as I wanted to have some fun with psychic powers and use only my painted models. Now hindsight is 20/20 but I like to review my decision making.

Tweaked List:

• Tzeentch Sorcerer, Term armour,spell familiar,Lvl 3, scrolls of Magnus
• Thousand Sons (5), Asp. Chmp bare
• Typhus
• 11 Zombies
• 5 Plague Marines 2 melta
• 5 Plague Marines 2 plasma
• 4 Chaos Spawn, Mark of Nurgle
• 4 Chaos Spawn, Mark of Nurgle
• 4 Chaos Spawn, Mark of Nurgle
• 1 Oblit, Mark of Nurgle
• 1 Oblit, Mark of Nurgle
• 1 Oblit, Mark of Nurgle
• 3 Terminators, 3 combi melta, chain fist, lightening claw, force ax, Mark of Nurgle
• 3 Terminators, 3 combi flamer, chain fist, lightening claw, force ax, Mark of Nurgle

Again this list was not a complete redo, just a better list in retrospect along the same theme. If I had terminators painted in Tson theme I would switch one squad to have Mark of Tzeentch.

This would give me the option to DS with either or both HQ's. Most Chaos powers are up close, 12" or less...almost all are less than 24".

If I decide to use this theme in another game or tournament I will try this list out.

Whether to use or not use ForgeWorld is a hot topic on the interwebs. It had zero impact on this tournament other than to give everyone a chance to play with all their toys. Also no one used a Bastion, there were 2-3 ADL's total...definitely not game unbalancing by any means. Only 1 of 4 of the top finishers used a fortification (me, with ADL). 0-4 top finishers used ForgeWorld.

As always, thanks for the read.

BDS