Although the Goldensprue Cup has been a staple of the Albany, NY region and fully invested in the ITC for several years now, this was our first outing as a GT. We had 36 players sit down to throw dice with us this January. Everyone had a blast including your humble T.O. We hope to grow even bigger next year.
Format
This event was, as always, a winner-take-all using Battle Points as a tiebreaker. We allowed players to drop after day 1 to play in a 40k Friendly event on day 2 which folks really appreciated. We used the ITC list-building rules for the Goldensprue Cup as well as the ITC FAQ. Our missions are a bit different, though nothing totally alien. If you’re interested in seeing them, they’re available on the Goldensprue Cup GT website.
Best Coast Pairings
We’ve used the Best Coast Pairings app for the past couple of tournaments and I can’t recommend it more. It saves the Tournament Organizer a great deal of effort that they can otherwise be spending making sure everyone is having a good time. Thank goodness for the Best Coast Pairings app (and my wife, Wendy) because people kept buying me drinks and I was in NO shape to operate a spreadsheet on day 1!
With the new list upload feature, it’s super easy for players to take snaps of their lists and upload them to the app. It helps everyone to not only know about the army they’re about to play, but allows for peer review of lists in the event of a mistake. This feature also makes it easy for the Tournament Organizer to write articles like these after the event is over.
Challenges
Since our event was sandwiched between the Codex-Specific FAQ finalization and the LVO, there were several rules questions which were hanging in the ether, especially those regarding how Reserves enter play and the order of operations for the arrival of Genestealer Cult units. Also, day 1 featured 3-hour rounds. This is a long time between rounds, especially with an hour for lunch. Fortunately food was available immediately and, of course, there was a bar on-premises. For day one, with experienced players facing inexperienced players, I find it’s important to make sure there is no stress put on the less experienced players to perform quickly and without error. On day two, we switched to a more standard 2.5-hour game length which is not a big deal on the top tables or in the 1500pt 40k Friendly which was occurring simultaneously.
Thanks
I want to thank everyone who showed up from all over the Northeast. We had several folks from the Portal group in Connecticut, some folks from Massachusetts as far east as Boston, people from downstate New York, and a few from as far out West as Buffalo and Ontario. We hope to see you all again next time. Also thanks to our awesome local players from the Flipside Gaming 40k Club who braved some seriously tough competition in order to support the club and have a great time doing it.
The Melvin Roads American Legion was an excellent partner and a great venue. The bar was reasonably-priced and it was nice to have waitresses coming around the room taking orders for lunch. That really made the days move by smoothly!
Results
Your winners of the 2017 Goldensprue Cup GT were Nick Nanavati, Kurt Clauss, and Alexander Fennell. Check out the lists of the top 8 below.
If I’m keeping it 100 (which I always am), my expertise is more on the organizational side of things. I hope that the players themselves will help shed light on the competitive and meta impact of their lists and the missions in the comments below.
1st – Nick Nanavati
2nd – Kurt Clauss
3rd: Alexander Fennell
4th – Todd Silber
5th – Richard Martin
6th – Patrick McAneeny
7th – Sean Nayden
8th – David Koszka
The Armies
There were some gorgeous armies at this year’s event. Thanks to all of those who put effort into their armies in order to provide their opponents with the best possible experience. These are but a few examples of the excellence we saw at our event this year.
Let us know what you think or pose any questions you may have in the comments below.
Remember, Frontline Gaming sells Games Workshop product at up to 25% off, every day.
As someone who has been very torn between Rehati and a TS Cad with Omnisicient Oracles, I’d love to hear from the winner. I’m hoping he shows up in the comments at some point!
Looks like a rad event!
Do we have the rest of todds gsc list?
You can see all the lists in the BCP player app
My mistake, lists were not released for that event.
I did a bad job of reading instructions. LOL.
Here’s the other half. Sorry ’bout that.
https://goo.gl/photos/oTpLTNMds28JkFTE7
Hmm Rehati War Sect wins it’s second GT. Imagine that!
Magnus = good
Tzeentch DP with spell familiars = good
Combining the above with a formation that gives them LoS to everything and allows them to manifest powers on 3+ = really, really, really good.
I would like to hear how he divied up his powers, though. As far as I know you still have to roll on the Tzeentch table at least once for Daemon Princes. But I’m guessing he choose to go Daemonology with some of them.
The new FAQ automatically gives them Daemon Focus for their god, yeah?
Would that give them their Primaris from Change or Tzeentch?
Q: If a Chaos Daemon Psyker generates all of their powers froma single discipline from Warhammer 40,000: The Rules,
does he benefit from Psychic Focus in addition to Chaos Psychic Focus (as the mandatory primaris power from Chaos Psychic Focus isn’t generated as such)?
A: Yes.
I could be wrong, however.
They are required to roll at least once on Tzeentch table (in addition to getting the Primaris for free), making it impossible for them to benefit from Psychic Focus.
They do not have access to the Change discipline at all, as they are drawn from the CSM codex.
Solid enough. Thanks for clarifying!
That’s a silly mistake on my part. It’s what I get for being to hyped about the new LoC, made me tunnel vision on Daemons, forgetting Rehati was a CSM formation for a minute.
Yes, it is as abusepuppy says.
If you took a DP from a *daemon* formation then you would still get both chaos focus and regular focus.
Unfortunately, CSM princes are still bound to the “must generate at least one power” from the codex. Which essentially robs you of two rolls on other tables (the roll you have to make on Tzeentch table + the lost primaris because of it).
Then again CSM princes have access to some pretty cool tools like spell familiars.
Yeah, now that Tzeentch is no longer a garbage table for idiots I feel like being forced to roll on it isn’t _that_ bad when you get the Spell Familiar as compensation. Harnessing on a 3+ and rerolling failed tests lets you be a lot more skimpy with your warp charge expenditures, and that basically means you get to cast more spells (and thus affect the field more) each turn.
Being CSM also means they have access to an additional set of disciplines that Daemons don’t. You won’t use them a lot (since Telepathy and Maelific are so good), but the option is there.
Have been pretty excited about that list since release. I need to get some games in to see if I can make it work for the DPs without wings… because that is the models I have lol.
I’m curious about the inclusion of mask. I also assume he went with brimstone horror spam for objectives instead of utilizing splitting from pink horrors?
Im not sure about mask either, as i would assume a good option is to just add in a tzeentch herald with paradox to allow 1 other easy summon unit.
The reason why i think he did the brimstone spam instead of horror split, is that the modified ITC missions generally had 2 “primary” objectives worth 11pts each round. One, generally, favored deathstars, while the other favored MSU (I.E. one is hold objectives and another is kill points). If he had gone the pink horror split rule it would have allowed an enemy to easily kill 3 units of daemons rather than just 1.
Princes without Wings are just meat. I’d grab some third-party ones or see if your opponents are okay with using them as-is. (Or run Exalted Sorcs instead.)
The Masque is in there specifically because of deathstars. Her ability requires no test, can’t be negated, and COMPLETELY shuts down any enemy unit so long as you stay more than 6″ away from it, which is absolutely brutal to big units that want to assault. As the meta has moved strongly towards “pure” deathstars that have no shooting support components, this often leaves them totally unable to do anything for the duration of a game.
The masque is amazing against deathstars which is something this list would not be very good against. Her ability to completely negate them with no counterplay is fantastic.
IMO the idea behind brimstones is their cost-effectiveness. He spent 123 points on brimstones. That gets him *four* units and four warp charges. So he can put them in four different places in the deployment zone and cover much more of the board.
All he could have managed was a single pink squad at that points cost (plus one more unit of brims, I guess). So he would have had half the warp charges and half the units on the board.
Pinks are great if you have the points for a few units of them, but this list did not. He needed to use all but 200 of his points for the Rehati War Sect + aegis line. That left with just enough for the masque and a few squad of brims.
I presume the ADL/comms was there in case he did not get first turn? Or do you think usually left the rehati off the board against drop pod armies but run the risk of losing brimstone horrors?
The list should actually do okay against deathstars. Magnus has a D beam which negates jinking deathstars, or anything T5 or lower. Summoning daemonettes also helps out a little bit as they can easily amass for easy hits/kills.
I want to try my own variant of this list at some point. Maybe without Masque, but i see the benefit of summoning it in and using that ability against an enemy deathstar and then retreating/running 6 inches away always (run is D6+3 for slanaash so its completely feasible)
I’m not sure exactly how he uses the Aegis. I could think of a few uses:
1) Protects a squad of brims on a map when an objective is in open space
2) Reserves control allows you to ensure the masque comes down precisely when you need her (probably turn 2 in most battles). Her ability range isn’t super long and you don’t want to leave her open to fire across the map. So it’s best to deep strike her in so you know she can get the ability off without dying. But you don’t want to try DSing her and then she never comes in…
3) Reserves control for the brims. You may want to leave a squad off the map and you can use the comms relay to re-roll successful reserves rolls in an attempt to keep something off the board until the end of the game.
Hey I see my army there!!! This was a fantastic event. Loopy did such an awesome job!!!
Question for the GSC player, if he checks in – what’s the thinking behind the Acolyte and Metamorph leaders? I’ve always thought an 10pts for another attack and a point of leadership wasn’t worth it. What am I missing?
Not Tsilber, but having a character in an assault unit can help out a bit, primairly by look out sir wounds back to other models so positioning is maintained. Doing so gives you a better chance of maintaining your position for assaults. There’s also some minor bumps for having higher ld, like psychic shriek, losing combat, etc. The attack just makes the 10 points a bit more palatable. Personally not sure I’d take a leader in every GSC unit but I can see merit in something that has to make its charges like a tooled up metamorph squad.
Could be also he just needed to fill out points cause he didn’t get a bunch of models done in time. Been there lol
Hi guys, great event. So with my list I ran bigger squads, so I thought It was worth having 1 point higher leader ship. After all if you have a squad of 5 and they take some wounds it might not be worth it, but units of 10 or more you might want that extra leader ship. To me leadership is one of the top 3 most important basis to cover in 40k, thats just my way of thinking. A character for challenges is also good, but has minimal effect on this army list IMO.
Played for 2nd place in my final round, got first turn, had enough 5’s to deploy and blow holes in the screening lines. To then deploy my 6’s and have a first turn charge against all 3 of his riptides. (one unit charges all 3, takes all the over watch, then the other 2 units go in to finish them). In either case, Kurt got the seize and with my army standing in front of him, he did the work! We all know seizes happen, I had a 5 in 6 chance of winning, he had a 1 in 6. It was funny and worth the risk!
Army is crazy, the book is crazy, and for the first time in 20 years in this hobby, I actually felt bad playing it. So it was my first and last GT with GSC, after 4 practice games, and 6 games over the tourney, I already put my army up for sale. Its not my cup of tea. Buyer beware, its a hate-orade magnet!
Hey guys, I was the guy who won the GT this past weekend.
You guys pretty much hit the nail on the head on my list in the comments. To give some clarity though, I had a general rue of thumb of 1 tz (have to) 1 telepathy, 1 summoning on each of my princes in that order. There are of course many exceptions to that and many circumstances where I deviated from that simplistic formula.
As far as brims, I need a strong null deployment option to make sure I don’t get tabled when I reserve my big guys to protect them from an alpha. Aside from that having tons of bodies over 4 units allows me to screen really widely against GSC which has proven to be really helpful. Also 4 ob sec units is nice to have the ability to actually play maelstrom and objectives decently enough. 4 Warp charges in the process doesn’t suck either.
Let me know if you have any questions!
-Nick
Having been playing with the Rehati, what are your thoughts on Magnus alongside Omniscient Oracles(Fatey and 1-3 LoC), opposed to strictly used in a Rehati?
Since you end up taking the CAD and essentially lighting 200 points on fire via taxes it’s not really worth it. Also you don’t generate value out of oracles. They don’t cast nearly as well as the princes which means they are dice intensive as opposed to dice efficient. They also can’t cast 1 die powers reliably like the princes can, and thats really how you start creating value via siphon. Overall I think it’s alright simply because it’s a bunch of strong things that fly. But there’s no real synergy to it which is why it’s just not as good.
Thanks nerd!
Appreciate the feedback. Been trying to decide the two.
Thanks for the info! I have had a hard-on for both rehati and oracles together somehow, but now I know to just give up on those big new beautiful birds and focus on the princes.