Twisted Dice GT, Tournament Review

This past weekend I took a revised version of my current infantry list.

Unfortunately while I managed to go 3-2, it felt like playing on hard mode, my three winning games had me exhausting all my player skill reducing my opponents scores while I also had a hard time scoring that high.

Game 1 vs Ynarri

Secondaries:

Reality Rebels-8

RND-4

Psychic Interrogation-6

So game 1 was against an amazing player in Clement Tournade (the event winner).

He had a horrible Ynarri list consisting of 27 Harlie players, the Ynarne, scorpions, banshees, warlocks, a couple psykers and a bunch of swooping hawks.

This didn't go well, he consistently screened me out using the terrain to prevent my reserves from getting to anything juicy and my Flamers were forced to just hit what he wanted them too. Overall I suffered with swooping hawks jumping out, killing a unit and then jumping back behind other units screening them. I made some very poor decisions with both Secondaries plus my positioning which cost me badly but overall gt severely outplayed.

RND was an incredibly poor choice, I knew I shouldn't have gone with it once I selected it. I got unlucky with Interrogation due to mid rolls and high denies. 

93-40 loss

Game 2 vs Sisters:

Secondaries:

Reality Rebels-13

Grind them down-6

Banners-14

I knew this was going to be a hard game, we played data-scry which I'm not a huge fan of this mission as I have to keep a unit of Daemonettes back to do the action. 

My opponent had 3 large units of Repentia (one in a rhino), 3 large units of zephirym and 3 melta retributor squads with some sisters and vahl.

My opponent basicly deployed in the building on his side and then heavily towards the midfield objectives in his territory. I exploited this by sending my reserves down that side to keep denying him primary and forcing him to have to send units to claim his shrine objective.

Meanwhile I was able to banner the objectives in my territory and then pick off the unit of sisters that could cause me any issues with my objectives.

The fateskimmer managed to kill about 40 girls on his own over the course of the game in psychic, the daemonettes where also fantastic here countering his advances, killing what they touched and nicking the objectives. 

I had an issue with Grind which made the game abit hard, but with his 5+ and 4+ deny, I didn't want to risk any psychic secondary and his no prisoners points wasn't worth it. (In hind sight I would have scored higher than grind). 

85-66 win

Game 3 vs Chaos Knights

Secondaries:

Reality Rebels-15

Bring it down-15

Warp Ritual-12

A list played very well with one desecrator and a mix of stalkers, karnivors, brigands and helverins.

I wish I had reserved Belly in this game, he took two turns of shooting from meltas and the desecrators big gun, though he did kill a karnivore while knocking a second down to 2 wounds before dying which helped my on a flank.

The combo between Fateskimmer and Flamers plus bloodletters allowed me to just down his wardogs at a fast rate which made the game quite difficult for my opponent.

I played fairly reserved turn 1, though wasn't aware he could get an angle on my Daemonette unit holding my backfield objective which he wiped turn 1 killing my primary for turn 2.

I struggled vs those obsec 5 wardogs ganging up on objectives too.

Overall I got the win but felt I made this more difficult than it should have been.

82-74 win

Game 4 vs Guard and knights

Secondaries:

Banners-10

Warp Ritual-3

Reality Rebels-13

I was very excited for this game vs my mate Alex with his Guard with pask, a tank commander, manticore, a bunch of infantry, a banesword and 3 armigers. Alex is a very good Guard player so I knew this was going to be difficult game.

We played scouring which was a good mission for me in this match up as Alex had to come to the middle to score primary. My whole plan was to set up banners and then throw my obsec on to the two objectives in his half, prevent him from getting banners and primary for aslong as possible.

I did reserve Belly this time as he was just going to die otherwise. I used daemonettes on one flank and Bloodletters on the other to deny his primary for turn 2, and not letting him score more than 4 until the end of the game (where he got 12) I knew this was an uphill battle for him not being able to move out of his half until turn 4 which I knew I need to exploit before I died from mortars and mass Las shots.

Be'lakor dropped turn 3 with the idea of killing his last armiger, take the middle to score Rebels, give him another zero primary turn and just have a better position for next turn. Belly had other ideas though failing a 7" charge twice with a 4 and then a 5. Belly did survive the oncoming barrage where he would get that armiger in the next turn before being blown to pieces.

Alex killed the hell out of me, but struggled due to me keeping him down on primary and banners and forcing him back into his deployment.

I ballsed up with ritual being afraid to move to the middle and not having Belly around to shrouded step the fluxmaster, should of gone with Interrogation but was frightened Alex would hold his characters back if I did.

78-64 win

Game 5 vs GSC

Secondaries:

Reality Rebels-7

No Prisoners-15

Psychic Interrogation-9

Now I completely misjudged this game, not realising the ridiculously good alpha strike this list had. Running 3 big squads of bikes and a bunch of acolytes squads with cannons wirh three rock grinders. Plus the smattering of characters including one that pushed my reserves out to 18", which kills daemons hard.

I decided to just reserve 20 letters (should have done all 30.)

In hindsight, I should hav deployed one unit of nettes as a line up to the terrain on the front of deployment and then the 10 blues down the other side, forcing his bikes to hit that front line and then I could respond by jumping out and hitting him with 30 nettes and 15 Flamers, instead I deployed abit back, lost 20 nettes with the 10 blues and Belly lost 10 wounds to a squad of cannons... them ignoring hit roll modifiers and being able to get additions to wound just ruins Be'lakor. I jumped out into my turn 1 and pretty much bounced, a whiff and a decent amount of good feel no pain saves made this depressing.

I spent the whole game clearing everything out of my lines, forcing a couple of his trucks back by using a unit of letters to clear a 5 man acolyte squad on his back field and then just trying to score what I could from there.

One big mistake from me cost me the entire game, though I still managed to pull out points, it was a super disappointing end to a hard weekend.

I did have a fun game though vs my opponent Will so of course that was a huge upside.

93-62 loss

I am super disappointed with this weekend, every game felt like a super hard slog, I didn't really play amazing, seemed to just score poorly and had a difficult time overall. While I had great opponents, my feeling from this weekend is being super down on the Daemon codex.

If anything though, I probably needed this weekend to ground me and show me the weaknesses in my play. I actually found reflecting back on the games I have a better understanding of the list and the playstyle I need to adopt more while playing it.

My take-aways is that I need to reserve Belly more, wishing I had game 3 and 5, and to take my time just a little bit more in deployment instead of rushing it, as I'm finding that is the weakest point of my overall game.

I have another GT this weekend in my neck of the woods here in Kent, I'll be running the same list and hopefully I can shake off my weekend blues and pull out a good result!