1k Sunday list

 So with the main Northern Invasion tournament over and done with, we moved on to the 1000 point fun tournament, and I decided to go something a little different. Enter the Deathwatch. 

This army had one simple core to it, Boxnoughts. Yep, I have three old skool Boxnoughts, and I wanted to run them. No they are not very good but I don't care, it's supposed to be a fun little tournament. So once I had the there Boxnoughts, I added some troops and transports and filled out the rest of the points some allies;

FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Deathwatch

DETACHMENT: Black Spear Task Force (Kill Teams)

TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 995pts

ALLIED UNITS: Agents of the Imperium

WARLORD: Watch Captain Artemis

CHARACTER

1x Watch Captain Artemis - 1x Hellfire Extremis, 1x Master-crafted power weapon, Warlord

BATTLELINE

5x Deathwatch Veterans - 2x Power weapon, 1x Black Shield blades, 2x Deathwatch thunder hammer, 2x Astartes shield

5x Deathwatch Veterans - 4x Close combat weapon, 2x Deathwatch shotgun, 1x Frag cannon, 1x Infernus heavy bolter, 1x Combi-weapon, 1x Xenophase blade

OTHER DATASHEETS

1x Dreadnought - 1x Dreadnought Combat Weapon, 1x Storm Bolter, 1x Multi-melta

1x Dreadnought - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Missile Launcher, 1x Twin Lascannon

1x Dreadnought - 1x Dreadnought Combat Weapon, 1x Storm Bolter, 1x Assault Cannon

2x Rhino - 2x Armoured Tracks, 2x Hunter-killer missile, 2x Storm Bolter

ALLIED UNITS

4x Rogue Trader Entourage - 1x Rogue Trader - 1x Household pistol, 1x Monomolecular cane-rapier, 1x Death Cult Assassin - 1x Dartmask, 1x Death Cult power blade, 1x Lectro-maester - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Voltaic pistol, Lectro-maester, 1x Rejuvenant Adept - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Laspistol, Healing Serum

6x Voidsmen-at-Arms - 1x Artificer shotgun, 5x Close combat weapon 4x Lasgun, 4x Laspistol, 1x Voidsman rotor cannon, 1x Canid

So, the plan is pretty simple, Boxnoughts trundle forward shooting and punching stuff, while the rhinos with the vets flank. The Rogue trader and voidsmen hold the home objective. I was not aiming for anything other than having fun and throwing the Boxnoughts in to as many scraps as I could. I could have taken a lot more powerful list, including a baneblade and guardsmen or knight and admech lists, but I haven't played with the Boxnoughts yet and I feel that their time (and the Deathwatch vets) is limited. 

As it happened, things went rather well!

DKoK heavy weapons

The last of the krieg are the heavy weapons teams. There are three squads here, however only two of them are Kreig heavy weapons squads, the last is a 'standard' squad, probably using cadian rules. 

First up we have the Flamers! These boys are a serious weapon, auto hitting S5 AP-1 and two damage is going to cause some really issues for most people! Sitting these back and holding the home objective could be a good move, and anything dropping in is likely to get toasted pretty good. 

The spotter is another useful addition, especially to this squad, as being T3 on a 4+ save, they are going to die very quickly and easily when shot at, so being able to shoot back is always good. 

This squad was formed from the GW box, with only head swaps. The next squads are Wargames Atlantic models with some GW bits. This squad is a heavy stunner squad, built because I think they look really cool, not because they are actually any good. 

I do really like the look of these, however there is a slight problem, as shown below.

As you can see, the gun above is fine, the gunner is looking nicely along the top of the gun, straight between the magazines. The gunner below is looking straight at the back of the gun, like full face in to the breach. It just looks a bit rubbish. Unfortunately there isn't much I can do about it, 

I think there are ways of sorting this out, firstly dropping the back but then the barrels are tilted upwards, like there trying to hit a space ship. Alternatively, shaving more off the guns base or the carriage, but this would then put the guns to low for the shield. I could have raised the gunners slightly, put them on a piece of plasitcard or something, but I didn't have any at the time. I think that is really the only sensible option but I can't be bothered to go back and change it now. I'll just say they are ducking down behind the weapon preparing for the next burst of slugs. 

The spotter is also a Wargames Atlantic models, but he has his radio and binos at the ready. 

The last group I have are the "cadian" or "catachan" teams. To be honest I don't think mortars really fit in with either group, they can be used for overwatch, but are not great and are useless against monsters and vehicles. The overwatch is the best of the options. 

 The squad is made up of three mortars, all formed from WA Grognards bodies and heavy weapons. I do like this kit, although I should probably drill the barrels out. 

One thing you might notice is there are no lascannon from the krieg kit. This is because there is no need to build them. I have several squads of lascannon already and the bonuses from the catachan heavy weapons squad ( rerolls against monsters or vehicles ) is better than the krieg benefits. 

DKoK engineers

Next up on the build table we have the DKoK Engineers. The second of the three new Kreig units. As with the command squads, we have a mix of the new GW kit and the WA Les Grognards kit. The main change to the unit is the heads, with the engineers sporting the Adrian style helmet, marking them out from the commanders Kepi and infantry Bonnets (or Bonnet-á-poil or fur hat. I was expecting something a bit more but then again the British version is just called a Bearskin hat, because it's a hat made of bear skin.)

All the engineers

I built three squads of engineers, two with remote mines, although I only have one mine token at the moment. I will build another at some point, but that's for another day. 

The first squad is built as a close combat squad, designed to get up close and personal with the remote mine and flamer. 

Flamer and mine operator

The Sgt in this squad is armed with a plasma pistol and power sword.

Troopers and sgt

The second squad is build the same way, with a remote mine and flamer. 

Remote mine operator l and two troopers

The remote mine operator is built using wargames Atlantic parts and could easily be a Vox caster as well, if the engineers could take box casters that is. 

The Sgt in this squad has a hand flamer and a chain sword. This gives the squad a bit more horde killing and overwatch ability.

The last squad is a shotgun squad, with flamer. This is to use as more of a support unit for the other squads, giving the force a bit of extra ranged firepower. Yes, it's probably not the optimal unit type, but I don't really care about that.

Lastly we have three extra models. This is to enable larger squad to be formed. 

These three extra models mean that a ten man squad and a five man squad can be fielded instead of three five man squads, replacing a Sgt, flamer and Mine operator. I would have liked to have built all three with pistols and clubs, but I only had what was left in the kit.

10 man squad 

 

Northern invasion 2025

So, with all the tournament games done, how did I do? Actually not to bad. There were 24  players, up from the original 16, and I placed 12th overall. 

I did note down some information when I originally drafted this post, which was lucky as now I'm writing it, I can't go back on the BCP app and get any more information as I don't subscribe to it, and I'm not going to spend 40 quid a year for one event. 

Anyway, I did take a screenshot of my record. 

Placings we done on "strength of schedule" and mine was not great! I placed at the very bottom of the two wins, 13th place only won one game and I suspect may have finished above me in a different scoring system!

My opponents finished 5th, 14th and 16th in the end. The marine player I fought in the first game came in 5th but the others came 16th (my boy) and 14th (game 3). This meant that my overall score in strength of schedule was pretty low but that's fine, I'm more than happy with a mid-table finish. In some respects, I think the strength of schedule may have flattered me some what. 

Of the boys that came down, my son and his friend, they came 16th and 21st both with one win and two losses. 

My boy played Tyranids (57-95 loss), me (40-60 loss) and marines (90-34 win), coming 16th overall, not far behind me. I don't know where the other players came overall but he came right at the top of the list for those with one win, so he did well regardless. Of the games, the Tyranids match was actually a lot closer than it looks, I have written about our game previously. The last game is a bit of an odd one, the opponent conceded at the end of turn 3. My son was comfortably in the lead at that point, so a win was on the cards but probably not quite a large a victory. This will have boosted his place a little bit overall, I don't think it will have made that much of a difference. 

The other young lad played Marines (34-88 loss, the marine list I didn't want to fight), Imperial Knights (19-41 loss) and Orks (37-33 win), coming 21st overall. I know this is quite far down the order but for someone that has only been playing a couple of years and doesn't play very often I think he's doing well. He enjoyed the weekend and there was the usual talk about the next event. I think he did really well in most games. The first game was against a good player, one I believe he played last year and the opponent said he had played well but been unlucky with cards and dice, but ultimately it was a manoeuvre game that the necrons couldn't match. The game against the knights was always going to be hard as he is still limited in anti-armour and also the knowledge of how to play knights. Even so, it was a good effort. The ork game was actually really close and there was carnage across the table, with very little left at the end of T4 (where they finished the game). 

Overall, I think all three of us did very well, however, I think this will be a high point in my recent tournament statistics. Next year I will not be looking to win two games but will just settle with the aim of winning one game, but it will all depend on how things go over the summer and the probable release of 11th. 

Tournament game 3

 My last game of the tournament was against orks again, although this list was quite different from my son's. This list included a Stompa! 

Now, I had no way of dealing with the stompa, so my only real option was to just ignore it and play the cards. 

This was a really fun game, the stompa was very much a point and delete weapon, although it needed to throw everything at one target, split firing was not really an option given it's accuracy!

The game itself was quite close, with both of us scoring highly through out the game. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures, I was having to much fun and I was pretty knackered by this point as well. 

High points was the blade guard smacking around various ork boyz squads and the sanguinary guard dropping in and wiping a squad of boys before getting splatted by the stompa.

I'm sure some mistakes were made during the game but I don't think there was anything that would have fundamentally changed the game. One thing that could have changed the game was painting. At 81 to 78 it was a narrow victory for me but it should have been a 88 to 81 loss for me. Even if I had lost this game, I would have been quite happy as it was probably the best game of the tournament.

As you can see by the score sheet, it was a very close game, with primary being tied right up until the last turn and secondaries being close all game. A couple of poor cards on my side made a bit of a difference but not significantly. 

DKoK command

With the marines done, it's time to move into the guard, or more specifically the Krieg. This is the new Krieg command squad box and I have to say, they are really nice models, but I still don't like the mono-pose nature of them, there is some flexibility but not masses. 

Command squad

This squad was build with plasma all round and will most likely end up joining the big Krieg squad with plasma and grenades, to boost up the plasma output to four pistols and three guns.

Commissar and baby commissar

Vox, gunner and medic

The medic (or Alchemyk) ability is ok, but a straight 6+ FNP would have been nicer. The vox is useful but 95% of the time he'll just be issuing orders to his own squad.

Standard

The standard model looks really nice, as they all do these days. There is just something about a big bright standard right in the middle of your infantry that looks amazing. 

The second squad is a kitbash of Wargames Atlantic and GW bits. 

Command squad no.2 with repurposed Marshall.

Commissar and baby commissar 

The Commissar has since been rebased on to the right size base, as when I was building him I only had 25mm bases. The Commissar was made using the alternative build for the Commissar and a modified WA head, taking a gasmask and pairing it with a Bicorne hat for some extra panache, as befitting an officer. The other model is a repurposed DKoK Marshall, from before command squads existed. 

Both models are armed with plasma pistols, because why wouldn't you, plus the Commissar has a powerfist. 

The rest of the squad is heavily WA parts, 

Vox, medic and gunner

The vox is pure WA parts but I still like how he looks. The medic is mostly WA parts but with laspistol and the gunner is the same, with WA arms and a gun swap to the melta. 

The standard is the only model that is obviously visually different to the other version, as he has a eagle rather than a full flag style standard. I would have liked to have a more flag like standard but WA don't do one and I didn't have a spare in the bits box. 

Secondary standard

Once these squads are painted up they will join the other Krieg squads, with the first one joining the plasma\grenade squad and the other joining the flamer\melta squad. These squads offer some good bonuses to the squads, being able to use stratagems and retaining OC even when battle shocked is very useful, as is orders continuing to take effect even after being battle shocked. This means that the big squads of Krieg become very difficult to deal with.

 

Tournament game 2

So, as usual, you travel all the way to a tournament and end up playing your own son! Yep, played a game I could have and did play at home! this time however, it went a little differently.

The lists were the full 2000 point lists, and we played a different mission as well, Terraform in this case. 

Deployment

The deployment was fairly standard, with my son weighting his left flank to my more even deployment. 

Deployment

The game went fairly evenly, with the primary score being fairly low, with neither of us actually terraforming any objectives, as neither of us had the opportunity or the control to do so. 

Turn 3 or 4

The key points of the game were the Blade Guard taking on the commandos and a Boyz squad plus some other bits up on my left hand objective. The Sanguinary Guard also did a good job in the bottom corner, chopping their way through some more boyz. The Ork Deffkopters also did a good job against the Assault Intercessors, with the Apothecary coming into his own in response. 

Turn 3 or 4

All in all, this was actually a very close game and there was no clear winner at any point of the game.

Boyz

Gretchin

While the game ended 60 to 40, if painted scores were the same (i.e. my son had his army painted) the score would have been 60 to 50. The secondary scores were very close, with just two points in it but the primary had a greater gap, although it was still low, with me scoring just 20 points, eight of them in the final turn. 

This was a really close and good game, one that went back and forth a bit, although I never felt that I was on the back foot at all. I was pleased with the win and was happy having gone 1 and 1 at this point.