August Weekday Munera RTT

 I actually participated in the August Weekday Munera Rogue Trader Tournament on Monday (August 23rd), but I didn't have time to write a battle report on it because I was busy with other stuff. Add to that, I developed a headache after the RTT and so I basically went to bed the moment I reached home, and was distracted by my other projects when Tuesday arrived. Nonetheless, my load has lightened up a little and I decided to drop one of my writing projects to focus on another (which was how I could write the conclusion to the Argent Crusade yesterday), so I thought I would write a quick writeup of the RTT on Monday before I return to work.

This time, I decided to play with my Thousand Sons and try them out because of their new codex. Because I'm more of a fluff player, I was fielding Ignatius along with a bunch of Daemon Engines. I love Daemon Engines. So my list isn't very optimized, but I don't think anyone was expecting something like mine.

Thousand Sons Battalion (Cult of Magic)

Sorcerer in Terminator Armor (Seeker After Shadows, Arcane Focus)

Exalted Sorcerer on Disc (Athenaean Scrolls, Devastating Sorcery)

Infernal Master

5 Rubric Marines with inferno boltguns

10 Rubric Marines with warpflamer and warpflame pistol

10 Chaos Cultists with flamer

2 x 5 Scarab Occult Terminators with soulreaper cannons and Hellfyre missile racks

2 Forgefiends with Hades autocannons

Forgefiend with 3 Ectoplasma cannons

2 Heldrakes with baleflamer

You might look at the list and wonder, why the hell do I have so many daemon engines? Well, simply because I love daemon engines. Dinobots...ahem, Forgefiends and Helldrakes look so awesome. Who wouldn't want to field them? I certainly do!

My first game was against a Chaos Daemons player who fielded like...I think 4 Exalted Daemons, so Exalted Keeper of Secrets, Exalted Bloodthirster, Exalted Great Unclean One and Exalted Lord of Change. They were accompanied by Shalaxi Hellbane and Belakor himself. I think he had a single squad of Bloodletters and 2 squads of Nurglings.

The first turn went to him, and I think he pretty much advanced, charged up the table and tore my guys apart. My Forgefiends tried to shoot his Daemons down while my Heldrakes charged up the table and torched the Bloodletters, but other than that I couldn't really do anything. Oh, well. In the end, I succeeded in slaying Shalaxi Hellbane and the Great Unclean One, and basically leaving just one wound on the Keeper of Secrets (though she recovered a couple more after killing my Cultists) and severely injuring the Bloodthirster. It wasn't enough, though, and I got tabled. Whoops. Still a fun game, though, and I wish I brought my Knights. It would have been so fun to see Knights fight against Greater Daemons. Giant robots versus giant monsters. Damn, wasted opportunity! Oh, well, it was still fun, though. I managed to take 41 points to my opponent's 90, so it wasn't too big of a loss, ha ha.

My second game was against White Scars. I honestly have no idea what happened, but I managed to table him. It wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't send all his Vanguard Veterans and Assault Terminators to kill one squad of Scarab Occult Terminators that I had deep struck in the corner of his table, but he got distracted, fell for the bait that I didn't even know I laid out, and then got shot off the board by my Forgefiends. Those daemon engines were doing some serious work for me! I won that game 87 to 54 points.

My third game was against Adeptus Mechanicus, Mars Skitarii Veteran Cohort. I already knew I was going to lose this, so I focused on taking out his Ironstrider Ballistarii and Fulisaves out before they could blow my daemon engines off the table. As it turned out, I failed to kill one Fulisave. I was almost tabled, with only two of my Forgefiends left on the table (I think). But I did some serious damage, and to my surprise, in terms of points, it was a much closer game than I thought. Turned out I managed to grab quite a lot of secondaries. I lost the game 65-75, which was a lot closer than I thought it would be. Perhaps if I played the game right and made several decisions differently, I might even have won the game. Nice.

In conclusion, I think the Thousand Sons have a lot of potential. Doing relatively well when this was th first time I played Thousands in 9th edition (and after a long time), I think I like them. I just need to learn and adjust. The codex is new, I have to experiment and find out what's good and what works. I find that the Daemon Engines work really well for me, so I'm keeping them. Well, the Heldrakes and the Hades autocannon Forgefiends, anyway. Probably I should stop suiciding my Heldrakes to the front (Ha ha) and find better ways of using them, but they really help me with Engage on all Fronts. Between them and my Scarab Occult Terminators, I find that I can max out on that very easily. I also have to think about my other objectives more clearly, I suppose.

To be honest, I prefer playing Knights (and Adeptus Mechanicus). They are much simpler to play, I don't have to worry about a bazillion spells, they are tougher, I have less models to move about, and they simply play faster. Oh, well. Anyway, that's cool. We'll see how it works, I guess. I'm definitely bringing Knights to the Renegade Servitor Appreciation GT in Roseville next week. I doubt they will do much better, but they're definitely more fun to play with.