Weekend At Paul's - Day 1

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend a get-together of Deployment Zone regulars, hosted by the legendary SayHiPaul.

There was much gaming, laughter and a great deal of food consumed. Over the three days, I managed to play six games, which I can summarise (I wasn't quite up to full battle reports).

Battle #1 – Thousand Sons vs Space Marines

No messing about: I was straight in at 2000pts with my ‘best’ Thousand Sons list, that combined Cult of Prophecy (leading a pair of lascannon Helbrutes) for all the rerolls, and the Cult of Time (for resurrecting fallen Rubricae).

I was playing against Chewie and his all-primaris army: The Brotherhood of Martyrs. Their narrative is that they’re psyker-hating renegades – so the Thousand Sons was the perfect target.

Picture taken before the first Psychic phase

There was a lot of armour in this list: Gladiator, Storm Speeder, Repulsor – plus a lot of boots on the ground and a scary melee unit of a Chaplain-led Bladeguard squad. They also had the Warded trait, that would shrug off my mortal wounds on 5++

We played the Open Play mission Search and Secure (the one with disappearing objectives), and deployed in a sort-of hammer-and-anvil set-up with Thousand Sons on the narrow edge and Brotherhood of Martyrs in a corridor from the centre to the back edge. To cause trouble, I also used Risen Rubricae to sneak a squad of Rubrics into their back field.

I got the first turn, and made the most of it – buffing all my Helbrutes and Scarab Occult Terminators to blast away the Gladiator tank in one turn, followed by the Storm Speeder in the second. The Risen Rubricae were also causing problems – shooting a unit of Infiltrators off their objectives and causing the Repulsor (filled with Bladeguard) to hang back and shoot at them.

I did lose a Rhino to the counterfire, and the Outriders hit my lines, but bounced off the Rubrics and Helbrutes, and were taken out by a Spawn countercharge. With the objectives disappearing my own table half, I had to advance forward, wiping out the foot troops and eventually knocking out the Repulsor (as well as the Helbrute lascannons, the combi-meltas on the Rhinos were earning their keep).

By the time the Bladeguard and Chaplain saw action, they were the only ones left and got hit by a barrage of mortal wounds that even they couldn’t shrug off. It was a fairly lopsided result in the end – as well as having a good run on the dice, it did show exactly how powerful Thousand Sons can be against an army with no psychic defence.

Battle #2 – Thousand Sons vs Grey Knights

My next game was against fellow Horseman of the Hobbypocalypse, Sultan. He was taking Grey Knights for the first time, and having seen what my 2,000pt list had done, I elected to play a ‘friendlier’ 1500pt version (half as many Terminators, and no lascannon Helbrutes). This list was geared to pump out mortal wounds, so it was only friendly against Grey Knights, who would be shrugging one-third of them.

We played a straightforward Open War game – Domination. One point for destroying more units in a turn, and one point for holding more objectives in a turn. Nice and simple (which was good, since this was a learning game, and a crowd had formed a very noisy peanut gallery next to the table).

Sultan got the first turn and, being a Blood Angel player at heart, raced two Dreadknights into my grill. However they both failed their charge and I wiped them out in return. I was able to press this early advantage to rack up a lead in kills and objectives, but trading psychic punches with the Grey Knights was costly, and by the end game, I was running out of everything except characters and Spawn – easy prey for picking up kill points.

In the end, I stole victory in the final turn with a sneaky Tzeentch trick: I needed to draw level on holding objectives, to deny Sultan the point. So the Infernal Master activated the Unbraelific Crystal he’d been keeping all game, and jumped right onto an abandoned one.

It was too late in the day for photos (I finally win against Grey Knights and there’s no record!), so here’s a glamour shot of Sultan’s Knights of Titan.