ARMY OF THE WEEK: November Darkside Tournament: Chaos for the Win!

This past weekend Chris and I made a trip down to Sarasota to play at Darkside Games. Chris brought along a new Blood Angel test list and I brought along a simple, bland Chaos list to dip into the waters to see how they would do.

Chaos Army List: Siege of Faith (Iron Warriors and Word Bearers) (Double FOC)

Dark Apostle, Veteran of the Long War

Warpsmith with Combi-Melta, Veteran of the Long War

4 Squads of 10 Chaos Marines: Plasma Guns x2, Veterans of the Long War, Close Combat Weapon

Havoks x5: Mark of Nurgle, Veterans of the Long War, Autocannons x2, Missile Launchers x2

Obliterators x2

Vindicators x2

Defilers x2

Aegis Defense Line (no weapon upgrade)

My first game was against another dark brother of Chaos playing the Black Legion. We joked that Horus had sent the Black Legion to bring my two warbands in line for a new crusade and they told him to sod off!

He had from memory:

Winged Demon Prince

Skulltaker (allied HQ)

2 HellBrutes with double talons

2 Units of Warp Talons

1 Unit of Chosen with assorted weapons in Rhino

2 Units of Chaos Marines in Rhinos, assorted weapons, double close combat weapons

2 Allied units of Bloodletters

We placed our objectives face down, picked sides and flipped the tokens and he failed to seize. All I can say is this game was brutal. I had a good defense pattern setup and it was rough for him right from the start. He got the wrong wave first off.

Turn 1, one HellBrute was immobile, one Rhino down

Turn 2, the other Hellbrute goes down, the Demon Prince dies, another Rhino gone, various Marines die, he deep strikes a unit of Bloodletters behind the line. All but 1 was dead at the end of my turn.

Turn 3: First unit of Warp Talons lands (dies to shooting); a second unit with Skulltaker gets gunned down to massed firepower, more CSMs dies...

Turn 4: Last Warp Talon squad lands, gunned down….I start picking off the rest of his CSMs…

Turn 5: Chosen make assault with 3 men I think, kills a few men, I hold then swamp him.

An epic moment in the game that was great laughs:

Each time that the Bloodletters appeared I could only hear the Iron Warriors going, “Check with the Word Bearers, see if they summoned any demons…” (pause) “No?” *clicks his bolt gun* “BLAST THEM!* *DAKAKAKAKAAKA*
The Dark Apostle and his Chosen in a challenge with power mauls…he took a wound off me the first round, the second round we failed to wound, the last we killed one another.

I sustained no losses in my army and won with a good score for the first round.

My opponent!

The Defence Line

The last demon standing...

Epic finish for the Dark Apostle vs the Chosen! Both dead!

Second Round: Tau and Chaos

The second round was against a regular player Matt that had a hybrid Chaos Tau mix taking it out for a spin. We had a lovely game here of Hammer and Anvil deployment and kill points. We both setup behind our Aegis lines and prepared for the gun exchange.

His list:

Tau Commander with melta and plasma rifle, darksun filter

Tau Broadside with darksun filter

Tau Broadsides (leader) both had darksun filters; I think one had the Target Lock

1 small unit of Fire Warriors

Big block of Kroot

Aegis line with Lascannon

Large block of CSM, with the fearless banner, not sure what weapons he had…

Chaos Lord with Khorne Mark, the special axe, mounted with some nasty assault buffs

Heldrake

Hammerhead with Railgun, darksun filter

Hellfiend with triple plasma cannons

Game was night fight first turn and went on how I expected. All on the dice….we both had some good luck and bad luck, plenty of saves all over. The game was a major shooting exchange as we both knew going out of our lines would have been suicide. So, the game was us taking turns shooting at one another, making morale tests and such...

Towards the end I tore up his CSM unit that came at my lines and the Lord was the only unit to make it, besides the Heldrake passing overhead.

The game ended with a solid win for me, he only had the Heldrake, the Tau Commander, and a Single Broadside left at the end….with my losses including both Vindicators and one Defiler….

Epic Game moment:

Matt’s Chaos Lord charges my Iron Warrior Chaos Marine unit, he does a challenge, squashes the Aspiring Champion, rolls on the rewards table (POOF SPAWN) Guess Chaos didn’t take kindly to a rising star being killed off. The Iron Warriors promptly turned their bolters on the Spawn standing 2” away and promptly died.

Matt got First Blood; neither of us got the other’s commander…so points were low short of the win.

Matt that twisted Tau and Chaos commander.

My deployment

Towards the end of the game, notice those two green templates near my lines? Those WERE my Vindicators!

Chaos General charges! Kills my champion.

Life is like a box of chocolates....never know what you are going to get when you roll on that Chaos boon table...Forrest Gump playing 40k

My last round was against Marines

We had the two objective (or as I call it the draw game) with Dawn of War.

His list:

Pedro Cantor

Lysander

3 Tactical Squads with Drop Pods

2 Sternguard squads with Drop Pods, assorted combi weapons

3 Thunderfire cannons

Aegis line down, we setup….off to the races! This was just a game of drop the Sternguard and Characters down first, then a game of firepower on firepower….a real drop down and drag out game. Overall it was good; we had a few annoyances with the game. Namely the table being both nice and not very level for dice rolling, there were several instances of dice balancing to see if it was flat or not, rerolls and such. Including one I thought was a hit but my opponent said it scattered. Usually, I leave dice out and try to be slow about this sort of thing but being in the finals and tired is never a good combo and I picked up my dice. He said that it rolled down in a low spot on the table after the hit came up. In any case we just agreed to a reroll to avoid argument. He was ill (he had told me earlier he had been sick and his meds was wearing off) and tired, I was just tired….

The game ended on a draw, with me winning overall by 1 point and my opponent taking second place right after me. Chris had three losses with his Blood Angels but it was a very much hit or miss list. One mission was a repeat of his last time at Darkside playing the same CronAir list on the same open table with the SAME missions (kill points). If he had the objective games he would have had a better chance, alas he is going to blow off his Chaos and polish up the Space Wolves with Blood Angel allies now.