Slaughterfest GT Report Game 2

Hey everyone, Reecius here with my game 2 report from the Slaughterfest GT.

You can read the game 1 report, here.

Here’s my list and you can see the event results, here.

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

I had won a close one against a cool Drukhari army round 1 and round 2 saw me paired with my toughest match-up: T’au. Any assault army player out there knows the pain, haha, you slog up the field getting blasted and then get blasted again in overwatch then kill a few drones…it’s brutal. I knew I was in for a tough game but with Khorne’s blessing hoped to pull it off.

ITC Scenario 4

My opponent’s list from memory:

• Shadowsun
• Ethereal
• Commander
• Fireblade
• Fire Warriors
• Fire Warriors
• Fire Warriors
• Riptide: max dakka
• Riptide: max dakka
• Broadsides x 3: Missiles
• Hazard Suits x 3: max burst cannons
• Drones…so many drones….

My opponent took the roll to determine who deployed first/went first and opted for it to no one’s surprise, haha. So, that sucked. Going second against T’au makes it even rougher for my army but, as with my first game I was able to counter-deploy my opponent very well, leaving him with nothing to shoot on the first turn as I deployed in a corner out of range and/or LoS of his army forcing him to use his advance ability to move everything towards me. Seeing that I had only bought myself this one turn, I decided to make my play and cautiously advanced EL MASTADONTE into a position where next turn he’d be able to shoot and get stuck in, but in range of only the two Riptides on the next shooting phase which with a 4++ would take some damage but should survive….right?!

My opponent moved towards me again to get some of his units into range and managed to get re-roll 1’s to hit on my Knight and the +1 to wound but that was it, which while very good is a relatively minor T’au fusillade. Only hitting on 4’s, re-rolling 1’s and wounding on 4’s vs. a 4++ meant I should maybe get degraded if he rolled hot, maybe not.

My opponent let me have it and put a very respectable 14 or so wounds on EL MASTADONTE with the Heavy Burst Cannons which with average dice, I should save half, take 14 damage which is rough but not the end of the world, and then counter attack quite effectively. But, lol, I made a grand total of 3 of the 14, 4++ saves….and as he’d taken a little damage before, was just enough to kill him. I used a CP re-roll to try and save him, failed it, then–joy of joys!–rolled a 6 for him to explode followed by a box car roll on the explosion radius and dealt 14 mortal wounds to my own army…lol.

WHY KHORNE, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!?!

So, that was stupidly unlucky and really, really screwed my plan up. I am not a fan of the explosion rules in general as they swing games so hard and so randomly, but hey, it happens. So I was on my back foot at this point and unfortunately for me, that was not going to change.

My opponent proceeded to start smoking units with SMS shooting and on my turn 2 when my Bloodletters came in, I was able to drop into ruins and such to avoid over-watch to a degree, but my one unit of Bloodletters that had to drop in the open to charge lost 16 Bloodleters to over-watch…fun times. Those that made it in did quite a bit of damage killing many of the Drones and along with the melee War Dog that just barely limped into combat, killed 2 of the Hazard Suits. I was able to wrap up the Broadsides with one unit so they couldn’t leave combat but everything else got blasted in the next turn as the T’au left combat and lit me up. My last gasp of hope was Abaddon making it into combat finally, where he could have gotten me some points and then he charged in with 3 wounds left, took 4 in over-watch which I thought, cool, I only have to make 2 of these to get in and actually kill some stuff….and I failed all 4 saves, lol.

Oof. I got my butt handed to me in what was an extremely frustrating game. I didn’t kill any of the main units either, the Broadsides, Hazard Suits, and Riptides were all full strength to mildly damaged by end game due to the mighty Drone protection. My opponent was awesome though, super nice and did extremely well in what was his first tournament, so good for him! He also played on stream if anyone wants to go back and check that out.

The frustration came from not only the bad dice–which I had really bad dice this game–but just in how tough it is to fight T’au with a melee army. Drones are the most annoying thing in the universe, lol. Not really of course, but it feels that way sometimes. The issue is, if you took them away from T’au they’d be a horrible army. So, they need them, but as they work now vs. a melee army it is a tough row to hoe trying to make it through the powerful shooting, amazing over-watch and incredible defense the Drones provide. it’s not an unwinnable fight but it’s certainly playing the game on hard mode. But, I knew T’au would be my toughest match going into the event and getting favorable match-ups is a huge part of winning tournaments so them there’s the breaks.

Despite the frustrating game, I still had fun and we laughed about some of the crazier nonsense in the game like the 12″ Knight explosion, lol. Also, those Hazard Suits with max Burst Cannons are really good, they put out a boatload of mobile shots. If you play T’au, give them a look. On to the next game!

Read game 3, here.