The Lists From Adepticon!

Greetings all.  SeerK here with another after report from Adepticon 2016.  This time we are bringing you the top 5 lists from The Schaumburg Prime Offensive.  We had Aquans in the top three spots this year.  This was a major change from last year, as we had no Aquans in the field in the inaugural tournament.  This year we upped the points from 900 to 1000.  We are looking at the data, the feedback from the players and  feedback from the community at large to evaluate what effects this had on the tournament if any.  Initial discussions and data is pointing to possibly going down to 900 points.  This of course does not take into account the new Task Force ships or the new fleet entries for them.  The Task Force ships as escort vessels is also a factor that will come into play.

I plan on talking about the Task Force vessels in FSA more in depth once the rules are 90% stable and I get the chance to play with them a lot more.  The new escort rules, especially with the Relthoza, really change things for me.  I have many more tools and avenues in my fleet construction.  I digress though.  Lets take a look at the lists!

The Clash At Epsilon Indy: Sunday Tournament Results

This past Sunday at Evolution games The Clash At Epsilon Indy went down.  Spellduckwrong once again was our T.O. and Uber Vanguard. We had 10 players this time around and again we had a decent mix of Kurak Alliance and Zenian League fleets. If you are curious as to how the battle log went and any trends popping up I am pretty sure Spellduckwrong has the full statistical work up over at the Spartan Games Community, or will be putting it up soon if he has not posted it.  I am sure you are a bit curious as to who our top finishers are though.

So this time around the winners were....

1st. Dave Wangen aka "SMD_Vogrin", Directorate
2nd.  Austin  Proux aka "Demomaster", Sorylians
3rd Josh Linde aka "SeerK" , Rense System Navy

That is right I placed this time round.  Booya!  I played Demomaster in round three and it was rough.  We had hold the Waygate for a mission and he had almost maxed out his tier three choices.  I had so many small ships to deal with it was borderline ridiculous.  I ran two different lists, as is customary when tournaments take place in this particular area.  I ran the same list in round one and round three, both times against Sorylians.  I am still confused with why many on the interwebs hate on the Sorylians.  They are a solid faction with a lot of variety and killing power.  In fact, the frigates have earned my number 2 spot in most hated ship in the Kurak Alliance.  Right behind the Hawker light cruiser....I mean Frigate.

Those of you curious about what I ran , here you go.  The tournament, and me thinks our future ones, was 900 points.  you can bring two lists.  Both lists must use the same primary Fleet.  I, of course, ran RSN.

List 1

Spectre Battleship x1
-1 turn
Special Forces
+2AP


Cerberus Heavy Cruisers x3

Cerberus Heavy Cruisers x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

List 2

Banshee Dreadnought x1
-1 turn
+1 shield
Special Forces

Spook Cruisers x3

Spook Cruisers x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

Bulwark Frigates x3


I was trying to go for a balance between number of activation's and fire power.  This can prove difficult for RSN fleets.  Many Kurak Factions outnumber and our gun you .  The real weak points in both lists were the three ship squadrons of Bulwarks.  In groups of three they loose effectiveness for some reason.  I think I may do two minimal squadrons and use the tac card that allows you to combine like ships to make one uni then have a squadron of Works Raptor corvettes to add some scout to the list.

I am finding it is very handy to have scout to redeploy units.  You can use a valuable unit to bait your opponent into bringing his big guns into whatever location you want basically.  The real trick is not to make it to obvious that is what you are doing.

I am also finding it very annoying that Sorylian frigate squadrons can contain 5 frigates and have pack hunter as an option.  This seems a little unnecessary to me.  The dice pool is pretty big and not duplicated by any small ships in the Zenian League that I am aware of.  Makes the Frigate squadrons very deadly to cruiser sized vessels, in fact it makes them kind of deadly to larger vessels as well.

The one game I used the list two in was actually against another RSN player.  It was very informative match though.  I think from now on my spooks will be traveling in packs of 6.  Operating in concert, my two squadrons manged to inflict quite a bit of damage despite my lackluster rolls in the first two turns with the torpedoes.  I hammered a squadron of Cerberus Cruisers with the torpedoes until I reached beam range and then dropped the cloaks and went full bore.  One heavy did manage to survive until the bitter end though.  I always for get what its like to be on the receiving end of a Cerberus squadron.  Spooks on their own are not bad but lack the one two punch when you have just one squadron.  The two squadrons ganging up on one target really was effective, especially once I reached beam range.

I have to say I am never running my big ships without escorts of some kind ever again.  It really never occurred to me how much fire they actually draw.  The Siren is also pretty robust for an escort so that helps.  My big ships took a fair bit of fire being all by themselves.

I am still working with good ways of taking down point defense to really make my torpedo attacks count.  Since there is a lot of cloaking shield equipped ships out there.  I have not been using a lot of SRS craft for the same reason, at least when on the attack.  That will be the experiment for the coming weeks until the next tournament.  Well that does it for my current thoughts post tournament

Next time I will be continuing with the Ships Of The Rense.  The Argus is up as our first Tier 1 vessel.  I also plan on doing an unboxing of Rivet Wars.  Evolution games gave me their demo copy to open up and read up on so Farseer Re-rolls and I can give the game a whirl.  More on that next week.


Until then crush the alliance and as always



REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!

Terrans: Making Long-Range Work

It's Dreadbeard with a alternative way to play your favorite rock'em sock'em spaceships.

The Road to Adepticon: The Themed List Development

As I prepare for the epic war that is Adepticon, I find myself putting a lot of time and effort into developing a list. The tournament circuit is pretty competitive and I have taken it upon myself to play, what many call an uncompetitive kind of army list. The purely themed list. In an atmosphere of massed las/plas razorbacks, imperial guard mechanized armies and general min maxed army flagrancy I have given myself a monumental task.

So I ask myself what elements are needed for a competitive list and what do I need to do to keep it in the theme. These two things are not diametrically opposed as some would think. Sadly you can make some strongly themed lists that are still min maxed with some of the codex’s out there, Space Wolves, and I have to take that into consideration as well

What I need for the competitive side of the list is enough troops choices to take and hold objectives. I also need to be able to kill armor and be able to withstand assaults. Basically I need to be able to get kill points and not give them up. In a purely themes Ulthwe list I need to be Guardian heavy and lite on Aspect Warriors.

With that in mind I designed a nice guardian heavy army centered around 3 Guardian units, one of which was on bikes. I bolster the Guardians with Warlocks and The Avatar. I have a nice size Seer council as well.

This is just known as “The List” I don't want to give away details as I don't want to see any carbon copies and its still under development. I did get a chance to use “The List” Yesterday though. The Judge and I squared off. Unknown to me was the fact The Judge was trying out a Space Wolves list. Lots of Long Fangs and Grey Hunters in drop pods . It was a take and hold spear head deployment. The Judge Got the First turn. I deployed all my forces with the exception of one unit out flanking. I set up nice a spread out leaving no gas for drop pods to come in. This forced The Judge to land his first 3 pods in front of my army. The long fangs took out Eldrads wave serpent and the prism cannon off one of the fire prisms. All in all it was not bad. Eldrad and the Avatar rallied the troops and gave a retort to the space wolves attack. Shooting saw numerous Grey Hunter killed and a Long Fang pack wiped from the board. In the Assault phase 2 Grey Hunter packs were wiped out by Eldrad and his Warlocks and the Avatar. Turn two saw the arrival of a dreadnought. He engaged the Guardians holding my objective with his heavy flamer. The long fangs continued their barrage. They apparently had gone senile as their aim was off and the superior technology of the Eldar prevailed over the silly rockets of the Mon-keigh. Eldrad moved in support of the Bike squad that was sadly wiped out in the pace wolves assault phase, but not before taking 4 Grey hunters with them. Eldrad and his warlocks saw to the death of the remaining Mon-Keigh swine. The fire Prism laid into a long fang pack and killed a a couple of them. The avatar started destroying drop pods as no targets were in range to vent his rage upon. Eldrad moved towards the dreadnought as did the Avatar in the wake of the assault phase.

Turn 3 saw the arrival of the wolf guard battle leader and the 4^th pack of Grey Hunters, now the last pack. The second dreadnought also arrived. Sadly the combined fire of the dreads followed by an assault by one wiped out my severely depleted unit of Guardians on my objective. After a mass of shuriken fire the last Guardian unit charged the Grey hunters and the battle leader. This was to delay them until the Avatar and Eldrad could get there. I should have moved them away to preserve my remaining troops choice. They held out until turn 4. Sadly a really bad roll for difficult terrain by the Avatar costed me the game. He failed to get to the Grey Hunter pack so the Guardians were wiped out and the treacherous and sneaky battle leader lead his squad in a cowardly retreat towards my objective. Apparently I was to consumed with the battle lust of Khaine to remember that the Grey hunters were troops. So with that as his only unit on the board, besides one drop pod, The Judge managed to win as we did not get a turn 6.

I am pretty happy with how the list did. It was purely tactical errors that caused my loss. I think I may change it a bit. The jet bike squad may get shrunken and turned into a late game contestor or support unit. I may just remove it and put in some close combat troops as well or even some dark reapers. We will see. I plan on trying it out Saturday.

So next time another bat rep and some more Dark Eldar talk. I am going to cover my favorite new toy. The Void Raven Bomber.

Until Then......

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

Flow Like Water: List Development

List development for Adepticon continues. I have version three of my list and I have gotten three good games in with it. The guys at Evolution games are a good bunch to play with. Austin and his Chaos Marines have played the list twice. He has played version two and version three. Papa Nurgle played me with his loathsome plague infested horde last night against version 3. 2 victories and 2 ties. So far in the lists development. Papa Nurgle and Old school Terminators nids have tied me and I have defeated the forces of the traitor legions twice. I think I need to see if the local Warboss's want to throw down this coming week. One advantage to playing at Evolution Games is we have a pretty esoteric mix of armies and players. We actually don't have the horde of space marines you would expect to find. I have determined I need to face off against some orks and Blood Angels as well as some Space wolves.

Playing a lot of games versus all the different armies is key in developing a tournament style list. You have certain perceptions about how a list is going to do before you use it. These perceptions mean nothing until you play the list. The more opponents you play the more you learn about its strengths and weaknesses. You must expose the weaknesses so they are not a surprise in the middle of a game.

You can deal with a deficiency in a couple different ways.

• You adjust your list to fully of partially compensate for the weakness. For example, you have trouble dealing with lots of tanks. You can swap weapons on your Wave serpents to bright lances. You can add a unit of fire dragons. Basically a minor tweak. You drop a unit or some options to add a unit. I like to do this with my lists as long as they have a solid foundation.
• You totally rebuild the list from the ground up making sure you cover all your bases. This means you start with a solid core and a specific goal. This means you make the list to take objectives and or kill units. The units you use must work as one towards this goal and provide mutual overlapping support. I know its like beating a dead horse but you cannot play an Eldar army like a space marine army. Your units are specialized and must work in conjunction with the others. For objectives I look at it as all the other units are there to protect the troops units and engage the enemy forces as to support the taking and holding of objectives even at the cost of the unit. Granted you don't want to needlessly sacrifice units, but you have to play aggressively and throw caution to the wind. Make your opponent completely forget about the objectives.

If a list performed poorly you must determine why it performed poorly. This is the part most players fail at. They cannot identify why a list failed. People will play a list they believe to be infallible and invincible only to see it utterly destroyed. I see people online posting lists and saying how invincible they are. One man's gold is another man’s garbage. Just because it works well for one person does not mean it will fit the playing style you use. Farseer Re-roll’s over at Dark Future Games and I both play Eldar. We have very different playing styles though. He uses lots of Pathfinders and Warp Spiders. He also uses 2 regular Farseers that are rather minimalistic. I use Eldrad Ulthran quite a bit and one huge seer council. I also like to use Swooping hawks and hordes of Guardians. I also use the Avatar quite a bit. So our approach to the same situations is different.

Basically what I am trying to say is play what feels right and realize when something is not working. Even if you think its an awesome unit, if it does not work with the rest of the list drop it, or build a list that works with it. The later can be very risky though as you generally end up with a very specialized list. A great man was quoted as saying

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Bruce Lee was referring to Martial Arts training during his time. There is truth in the statement though. You must be adaptable. Eldar armies must flow. Then they can Crash into the enemy like a great wave.

Next time we begin the Seven Deadly Venom’s series. The Avatar of Khaine and the Phoenix Lords.

Until then..........

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