Games Workshop Store Tournament: Round 3

The third and final round of the Games Workshop store tournament series was on July 24^th. I was there. there, but I was having trouble determining which list I will play. In fact I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the Eldar or the Dark Eldar. Doing all three rounds of the tournament with the same army makes sense. Taking a different army of the same race did sound appealing though. Since nobody really plays Dark Eldar I would have an element of surprise. Not to mention I really want to play with them.

The Dark Eldar are fast, mobile and can pack a punch at range. The 1750 point list I came up with has An Archon with retinue, a Wych Dracite with retinue, three warrior raider squads and three ravagers. The list packs a lot of punch and is fast. The big thing is, Aspect warriors aside, Dark Eldar are better at shooting. They all have a ballistic skill of 4 and a weapon skill of 4. Granted they are still toughness ans strength 3 but I am use to this. I don't have psychic powers though. Since I run double Farseers most of the time it will be a challenge running with no psychic powers and really only one way of dealing with pyskers. Granted I did not take the Crucible of Malediction in the list but I may swap things around to include it just in case.

So I have a fast, mobile and shooty list of Dark Eldar prepped and I have an Eldar list slightly modified from last time. I dropped the swooping hawks and second Farseer and added a wraithlord for a total of 2. I also increased the warlock retinue size to 9.

I should have taken the Dark Eldar. My opponent was a Blood Angels player who brought a mech list. 2 tactical squads in rhinos, 2 Baal Predators, a Vindicator and a Storm Raven chuck full of assault terminators, the Sanguinor and a Furioso Dreadnought. Things started well but went south fast after I destroyed the vindicator. I could not roll worth a darn for armor penetration and I was light on bright lances. All I know is that the Storm Raven should be more points. It has more abilities than a land raider and is basically a flying one.

So I got hammered 9 kill points to 4. Sad I know but I should have taken the Dark Eldar list I prepped as its killing power, especially on vehicles, was better. I lacked power weapons and AP 3 weapons which are essential to kill space marines. I was 70% sure I would be facing marines but apparently I had a ditz moment and did not prep an appropriate list. Eldrad's unit did well tying up the Sanguinor, terminators and a tac squad for 3 turns until a lucky thunder hammer hit took out the venerable Farseer. Despite having Fortune active my dice were against me. I lost the Fire Dragons to the dreadnought after they slagged the Vindicator. I should have had a bigger squad that included Fuegan. The Furioso would have thought twice about charging a Phoenix Lord that hits like a monstrous creature.

On the plus hand side I got a peek at the Isle of Blood boxed set for fantasy. It has 76 figures half of which are Skaven. Roughly 40 clan rats, a warlord, which looks nice, a rat ogre, look like some kind of shooty unit and that’s all I saw. I was more interested in the high elves. I wish they had allowed me to take a picture of the lord on the griffon. It was gorgeous. It is very aggressively posed. You also get a decent size unit of Sea Guard and some plastic Sword masters of Hoeth. All the new stuff looks nice and might actually get me back into fantasy when the box set is available.

So next time I play in a tournament I am going to plan the list a little better or just use the dark Eldar. I am going to be concentrating on getting 1850 points of Dark Eldar painted up to my standards for tournament use. Until the codex comes out in November that is. Then its new model time.

Our next installment will be about the current campaign we are doing at the store. We had our first round this past Wednesday and it was fun. So more on that next time

Until Then..........

Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!