FLG League San Diego Finals Bat Rep

Hey everyone, Reecius here to recap the FLG League Finals game between my Biel-Tan Eldar and Paul’s Imperial Soup army!

The first FLG League has been played to completion and we had a lot of fun. After 6 rounds of play there were two of us left that had gone undefeated. Myself with a Biel-Tan Swordwind army and Paul with a nasty Imperial Soup army. So, we played for all the marbles in a championships game!

Here’s my list: The Mighty, Mighty Footdar!

Unit	Force Org	Cost	#	Total	Weapons	Cost	#	Total	Total	Notes
Biel-Tan Brigade	Eldar				Command Points	9			965
Asurmen	HQ	175	1	175				0
Avatar	HQ	250	1	250				0
Farseer	HQ	100	1	100				0		Natural Leader
Warlock Council	HQ	30	4	120				0
Dire Avengers	Troops	8	5	40	Shuriken Catapult	4	6	24
Dire Avengers	Troops	8	5	40	Shuriken Catapult	4	6	24
Dire Avengers	Troops	8	5	40	Shuriken Catapult	4	6	24
Dire Avengers	Troops	8	5	40	Shuriken Catapult	4	6	24
Dire Avengers	Troops	8	5	40	Shuriken Catapult	4	6	24
Storm Guardians	Troops	7	12	84				0
Swooping Hawks	Fast	6	5	30	Lasblaster	7	4	28
				0	Hawk’s Talon	10	1	10
Warp Spiders	Fast	10	5	50	Death Spinners	8	6	48
Shining Spears	Fast	18	3	54	Twin Shuriken Catapult	5	3	15
				0	Laser Lance	8	2	16
				0	Star Lance	10	1	10
Howling Banshees	Elite	9	9	81	Power Sword	4	8	32
				0	Executioner	7	1	7
Striking Scorpions	Elite	13	6	78	Scorpion Chainsword	1	6	6
				0	Scorpion’s Claw	12	1	12
Fire Dragons	Elite	7	6	42	Fusion Gun	17	6	102
Dark Reapers	Heavy	5	7	35	Reaper Launcher	22	7	154
War Walker	Heavy	50	1	50	Shuriken Cannons	10	2	20
War Walker	Heavy	50	1	50	Shuriken Cannons	10	2	20
Totals			87	1399				600	1999
Command Points:	12				Detachments:	1

And here’s Paul’s list from memory: Imperial Soup

Raven Guard Battalion

• Captain: Master Crafted Bolter
• Lieutenant
• Ancient: Relic Banner
• Scouts x 5
• Scouts x 5
• Scouts x 5
• Devastators x 8: M.Launcher, L.Cannon x 2, H.Bolter, Cherub
• Devastators x 8: M.Launcher, L.Cannon x 2, H.Bolter, Cherub
• Devastators x 7: M.Launcher x 2, L.Cannon x 2, Cherub

Imperial Soup Battalion

• Celestine
• Primaris Psyker
• Seraphim x 8: M.Pistols x 4
• Grey Knight Strike Squad x 5
• Grey Knight Strike Squad x 5
• Grey Knight Strike Squad x 5

Valhallan Battalion

• Primaris Psyker
• Primaris Psyker
• Platoon Commander: Relic Pistol
• Astropath
• Conscripts x 30
• Infantry Squad x 10: Mortar
• Infantry Squad x 10: Mortar
• Infantry Squad x 10: Mortar

 

Nasty list! This was going to be a tough game and Paul had actually scored more points during the league than I had so he’d really been creaming his opponents. I knew this would be a challenging game.

We rolled up ITC Champion’s Mission 5, Crucible of Champions. This was good for me as lots of objectives favored my army’s play-style, which has units coming in from all angles to fight small, one on one battles where my aspect warriors can often defeat other small units.

However, even more importantly I won the roll to choose deployment zones as it allowed me to put Paul in a zone with the least number of fields of fire, and keeping the big line of sight blocking building between me and his cover. This limited his deployment options quite a bit.

Here’s the secondary missions we chose:

Eldar:

• Head Hunter
• Recon
• King Slayer: Celestine

Imperial Soup:

• Old School
• Recon
• Death by 1,000 Cuts

Despite having less units, I lost the roll to go first and Paul decided to take first turn which was fine by me as I would have opted to go second had I won the roll, anyway. I had deployed in such a way to go first or second, using the Phantasm stratagem to redeploy as needed to either press the advantage of going first or readjust to going second. As I was going second I redeployed to defend from deep strikers and prepared to take a punch.

The Imperial units moved forward and dropped down a unit of Strikes who got lucky and managed to get Vortex of Doom off on some closely packed Dire Avengers and Asurmen who took some heavy damage, and two of the units were subsequently finished off by small arms fire. However, as most of my army was hidden behind the large building in the center or out of range, I was able to weather the storm taking relatively little damage.

With my counter attack, I was able to kill the same number of units my opponent had by taking out the Grey Knights and using the Matchless Agility stratagem to auto-advance my Banshees 6″ and then using the Biel-Tan Court of the Young King stratagem to increase their charge distance with a re-roll granted by the Avatar to smoke a unit of Scouts that were quite a ways away in a building. They then hid there, out of LoS but in striking distance of my opponent’s lines for my next turn. Banshees are incredibly good in a Biel-Tan list if you have even decent terrain.

Mid-table, I was able to hit Celestine with Restrain from 36″ away using the Concordance of Power and Seer Council strats for +1 to cast and doubling range which was extremely useful to keep her out of my lines for a turn. The Warlock Council is amazing when used properly. I also jumped on to more objectives than my opponent with some careful model positioning to jump up on the scoreboard.

The game then came down to a brawl in the middle of the table as I continued to pour reserves into Celestine and the Seraphim to stop them from punching through to my back-lines. Seraphim wreck me when played right and I did everything I could to keep those melta pistols off of my characters which meant bringing in the Scorpions from reserves and then with the Avatar and the Biel-Tan stratagem (Court of the Young King) for a 6″ charge out of reserves with a re-roll, they tend to make it reliably and then do a surprising amount of damage in melee. I have really come to love using the Scorpions. They and Asurman and the Avatar all died in the process (poor Avatar tried to kill the Seraphim but the two melta pistol equipped Sisters survived and he ate 4 hits and wounds to the face and that was that, lol) but held up the Imperial assault up the gut which when combined with the Dark Reapers targeting Astra Militarum infantry units that were on objectives and Banshees making it into the Conscripts who’d been Doomed, were able to smoke them and take away the majority of my opponent’s tools for grabbing objectives.

This combat in the middle had really stalled my opponent who was frustrated by his lack of targets for his heavy hitting Devastators to attack. It had also allowed me to consistently score more objectives than him, giving me an extra point over him on the primary almost every turn (although he usually killed the same or more units than me). He started to advance with Devastators to get back into the game but the tipping point was when the Banshees suicide charged into his lines and tagged three units (killing another units of Grey Knights!) and stopping them from being able to move forward much or shoot, which was critical. They got killed in the next turn but buying me that time was what won me the game as it stopped his heavy fire power from being able to lay into me as they couldn’t move forward and it jammed up all of his units behind those that had gotten tagged in combat. Simultaneously, I hit my Warp Spiders with Quicken to leap into my opponent’s backfield and ace two characters for a big jump on Head Hunter. They also died after that but the sacrifice was 100% worth it.

In my backfield, my opponent had tried to make a last attack with his remaining Grey Knights and through a comical display of hot dice for him and bad dice for me they took out my Shinning Spears, Storm Guardians and almost my Warlock Council before I finally killed them, lol. This left me very low on models to defend my backfield and when Celestine finally got killed and then deep-struck into my backfield with her second life I was down to just 7 models on the table where my opponent still had more than half his army left in regards to points (almost all of the Astra Militarum were dead by this point). While I was certainly getting beat up I had been sacrificing units every turn to slow him down, grab secondary mission points and jump on just enough objectives to consistently score at least equal if not more points on the primary. That is why going second in our missions is so strong, you know exactly what to do to win on the scoreboard. So, despite the inequities in model count, I was way ahead on the scoreboard coming in to the last turn.

To try and swoop up some points, my opponent sent Celestine after my Farseer for Warlord, a kill point and Last Blood for a big swing in points in his favor but as fate would have it my dice which had been pretty cold all game, went red hot and my Farseer tanked every hit, backed up, smited her and one of my last models left, a Fire Dragon, blasted her for the last 5 damage taking her out and giving me a KP, and full points for King Slayer.

Great game!

Final Score: 30-18, Biel-Tan win!

The terrain was hugely important in this game and as we’ve said time after time: in 8th ed to have fun games you have to have lots of LoS blocking terrain. We were using the Orc ITC Terrain which we make! You can grab some here if you are interested in checking it out.

For me, the unit of note was most assuredly the Howling Banshees. They are so useful tactically it is silly. They’re crazy fast but when combined with the Biel-Tan stratagem and Matchless Agility, they fly up the table. And as you cannot overwatch them, you just declare everything within 15″ as a target for their charges and see what you can catch in their net. This game they also actually did a lot of damage, too, which often they do not. Doom and the re-rolls to hit from the Court of the young King stratagem were key in that regard. The Avatar, while not doing too much damage himself this game, was critical for catapulting many of my units into long charges they would not have otherwise made due to his re-roll charge aura and leveraging the Biel-Tan stratagem. These charges were critical as they allowed me to stall units at times that I needed them to not be able to act freely. The Warlock Conclave was also clutch with their crazy long ranged debuffs or buffs which can change the flow of the game.

My opponent realized his critical mistake was not playing more aggressively with his shooting units which didn’t shoot much at all during the course of the game. However, his Conscripts with all of the various buffs available to them with stratagems and psychic buffs were great and had it not been for the Howling Banshees who ignore nearly all of the buffs (as they apply only to shooting in most instances) they would have almost completely stopped my advance into his lines.

I ended up going 7-0 in the league and will now be scheduling a game with Jordan Stein, who won the Orange County league! Also, big shout out to Andy T. who was voted best hobbyist in our league and we will be doing a photo-shoot of his army soon so you can all see how awesome it looks. Sense it would be lame for me to collect any prize support from our league, I am giving all my prizes to Paul as he was next in line in regards to Generalship.

If you want to participate in the next FLG League, we will be gearing up in mid-February, looking to start the first week of March. Everyone is welcome to participate.

And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!