Slaughterfest GT Tournament Report Game 1

Recently the gang and I went to Slaughterfest GT (which is actually a good sized Major) in Temecula, CA, ran by our buddies at the Veteran Gamer Reenlisted who have a cool podcast should you be looking for a new 40k talk show with a liberal application of adult humor!

The event was a blast and held in the absolutely beautiful venue of Pechanga, a resort and casino here in California. Everything ran smoothly, there was tons of space between tables, a bar with loads of drink options, and nice looking tables of terrain. In all, for their first big event, the crew running it did an awesome job and I highly recommend going.

They had 100 players show up for some dice rolling fun and some tough competition, too! You can see the full results of the event, here.

You may be noticing my name is not in that top 10, lol, that’s because this was perhaps not my most successful tournament outing (spoiler alerts!, lol) but I still had a blast. Here’s my list:

Khorne Daemon Battalion

• Daemon Prince of Khorne, Skull Reaver Axe
• Kharank
• Bloodletters x 20: Icon, Instrument, Banner of Blood
• Bloodletters x 20: Icon, Instrument, Banner of Blood
• Bloodletters x 17: Icon, Instrument, Banner of Blood

Black Legion Battalion

• Abaddon
• Exalted Champ: Relic Chainsword
• Cultists x 10
• Cultists x 10
• Cultists x 10

Iconoclast Chaos Knights Detachment

• Knight Despoiler: Double Battle Cannons, Ironstorm Missiles
• War Dog: melee
• War Dog: shooty

So as you can see, a very melee oriented list with lots of fun, in your face units. Back in the day, a version of this army was my Khorne Daemonkin list which I had a lot of fun playing. This army functions in sort of a similar way and a version of it I had done very well with last year at the Hammer of Wrath GT, which you can read about, here. I went 4-1 at that event and the main difference between it and this list was a LOT more Cultists. I certainly felt the lack of bodies at this event which we will chat about as we go.

But, the primary strategy of the army is to use the shooty Knights to provide ranged fire support and if there are no big threats to EL MASTADONTE, for him to go in and kick things, too. The Melee Knight and characters go up behind the feeble screen of Cultists and then the Bloodletters and try to rip things to bits in melee. The issue I found was that the Cultists just didn’t provide enough of a screen to the melee characters, particularly if I went second where they needed to last 2 turns before the Bloodletters came in. But, we’ll get to that as we go.

Game 1: Drukhari

• ITC Mission 2

Opponent’s list from memory:

• Archon
• Archon
• Succubus
• Succubus
• Warriors x 5: Blaster
• Venom
• Warriors x 5: Blaster
• Venom
• Warriors x 5: Blaster
• Venom
• Wyches x 5: Shardnet
• Venom
• Wyches x 5: Shardnet
• Venom
• Wyches x 20, Shardnets
• Hellions x 20
• Ravager: Triple Dissys
• Ravager: Triple Dissys
• Ravager: Triple Dissys
• Razrowing Jetfighter
• Razrowing Jetfighter

A very cool list and was good fun to play against. Lots of firepower to take out my infantry and my vehicles as well. This was going to be a tough game. Day 1 of the event we played all even numbered missions, which are the deploy first, go first missions. My opponent got to choose and opted to go first (all three games I ended up being forced to go second or day 1, lol). This ended up not being so bad as I was able to counter deploy very well. He put his Ravagers in a corner of the board with good terrain and I put my entire army in the other corner, out of range of them so going second really only meant I had to endure the Razorwings firepower turn 1 which isn’t back breaking.

He put the Hellions and Wyches in the Webway and off we went. His first shooting phase didn’t do much but take a few wounds off of a unit here and there as the Venoms largely hid behind a large LoS blocking terrain piece and only the Jetfighters were able to get into range. My Cultists were all hidden so he couldn’t pick up an easy kill.

The counter-deployment was clutch but also meant I was not in the best position for board control. However, I knew that would change when the Bloodletters came in, so I positioned to try and eliminate close threats quickly. I made kind of a dumb move, I had my Smash prince fly up and chop a Razorwing in half which was cool to get Kill and Kill More points but as he only had a half-assed Cultist screen, he got mulched next turn. Probably not the best exchange, honestly. I really wanted to eliminate those threats but trading a Queen for a Knight isn’t a wise move in the attrition game. Also, for lols, Abby charged a Venom, failed the charge and took 2 wounds in overwatch….a sign of how he was to perform for more of the game, haha.

EL MASTADONTE fired up the Battle Cannons and on the first shot only rolled a whopping 6 shots, lol. That’s the downside of the Battle Cannons, they’re so swingy. But, that was the only turn that game he did so, as from there on out he went on an absolute tear, killing two units a turn for the rest of the game. With the ignores negative modifiers to hit and massive range of the Battle Cannons, he was able to take out 2 Ravagers, a Razorwing, and most of the Venoms in addition to finishing off several infantry squads on his own while staying out of range of return fire. He was an absolute all-star this game and saved me from getting my butt whipped as you will read. Plus, as threats were eliminated and he was able to also go into melee it became a route. So, he took a turn to warm up, but the old boy pulled his weight massively this game!

My opponent kept the pressure up on turns 2 and 3, bringing in the Venoms loaded with Warriors, the Wyches and the Hellions who were awesome. That unit is really strong, they do tons of damage, shoot well, are crazy fast, can come in where you need them via the Webway and can leave combat and still charge. I was extremely impressed with them! They did a ton of damage to me before dying. If it had not been for a unit of Bloodletters dropping in and giving them what for in a good round of assault, they would have been the death of me. As it was, the surviving Hellions of the Bloodletter charge did a ton of damage back to them, left combat, blasted the Bloodletters with shooting and still went on to cause havoc in my backfield, lol. Thankfully though, I was able to contain them before they took me out. If you’re a Drukhari player out there, I highly recommend giving Hellions played in this way a shot.

As stated, EL MASTADONTE had been able to blast 2 Ravagers to bits before they could really do anything, and Bloodletters came in and finished off the last, forcing my opponent to send units back to deal with them or lose his home objective to them. That left him really only with Blasters to try and take on my big units which is tough and they can be avoided fairly easily.

Mid field, Abaddon finally did something useful as his Cultist screens and Exalted Champ buddy melted around him and went into the big unit of Wyches where he was able to keep them busy until they were reduced down to low enough numbers that they were no longer a threat. My melee War Dog had done his best but in an environment full of high threat weapons, he wasn’t long for the world, lol. He did take out a Venom though and applied a lot of pressure to the Drukhari lines, going right into the heart of their formation and forcing their Character support back, eating a lot of fire that might have gone at scarier targets.

The game was a ton of fun and early it looked like the Drukhari were going to take it as due to sheer volume of units I was struggling to keep up on the attrition game, but when EL MASTADONTE got warmed up and started harvesting skulls for the skull throne like a true servant of Khorne should, the Blood God’s blessing fell upon me and I was able to take the day…although there wasn’t a whole lot left standing when the dust settled!

Chaos Victory: 33-22

Kharnak, or Little Bow Wow as I call him, was also great. While I primarily take him for psychic defense, he was very effective at going in and chomping on some troublesome Hellions and then holding an objective for several turns of the game to keep me form falling behind on objectives after the Cultists and War Dog on it were dropped. I found throughout the event that he was best used in that roll: grabbing mission objectives and then attacking when the enemy came close. When played offensively he often wasn’t able to perform as I hoped.

EL MASTADONTE was easily the MVP of this game. His first shooting phase was disappointing but after that he was a monster, and the ability to ignore modifiers to hit, shoot units out of LoS with the missiles, pump out tons of flak fire for finishing off infantry units and powerful melee were a potent combination. Chaos Knights are going to be a legitimate threat in the meta, IMO. Without him and specifically the Battle Cannon configuration, I would have gotten smoked in this game. Gatling Cannons as I was saying the entire event, are easily the better gun on paper, but in practice I found frequently the extra range and strength of the Battle Cannons was a life saver even with the random number of shots. In this game I would have had to come into Ravager and Blaster range to shoot, meaning I likely do not survive the counter attack. With Battle Cannons, I was able to go totally unscathed early game as I was imply not in range to be shot back.

As mentioned in the article above, 3 units of 10 Cultists immediately become evident to me as simply not being enough to do what I wanted them to do. They just got obliterated before contributing and that was a problem in almost every game of the event. They also gave easy kills to my opponent which is something you have to think about.

Next up, Chaos takes on the mighty T’au! Read that game report, here.

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