Berks Spring Assault

berks-paThis weekend I went out for the Berks 40k Spring Assault in the Classic track, a 1000 point casual-oriented tournament. Unfortunately several other PAGE and Redcap’s people bailed at the last minute, but Tom M, Colin K, and Steve S were also there. The Classic track had 40 players, and the 2500 point Unleashed track another 16, so together with a bunch of organizers, judges, and spectators, there was a sizable crowd. This was actually my first time going to the Spring Assault, and I was not disappointed. Despite a couple rough games personally and winning absolutely zero of the many many raffle drawings, it was as expected a really fun day.

A few more photos from my games and just a couple of armies on display are in the photo gallery. Unfortunately there was enough going on all day, and my games busy enough, that I didn’t manage to get nearly as many photos as I usually do, particularly from the surrounding games and armies.

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kingbreakers-iconArmy

I went with something atypical for me—no Drop Pods, no Sternguard, no Knight (not permitted in this format!), no fortification, just dudes in trucks and some skimmer supports:

  • Captain Angholan (Vulkan)
  • Squad Scolirus: Tactical x10 w/ Veteran Sgt, Powerfist, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino
  • Squad Harbinger: Tactical x6 w/ Veteran Sgt, Combi-Melta, Meltabombs, Meltagun, Rhino
  • Squad Titus: Tactical x10 w/ Veteran Sgt, Chainsword, Meltabombs, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino
  • Scouts x5 w/ Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles
  • Landspeeder w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
  • Landspeeder w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer

That is a pretty traditional and fluffy Space Marine list, but has some units of dubious performance in the modern day. Landspeeders, particularly of this kit-out, are not super strong at the moment, to a large extent simply due to not getting the Salamanders’ flame re-rolls. But their high mobility can be useful in these kind of small games to grab objectives and such and I love them, so I went with it. Vulkan on the other hand is generally a very good unit for a combat-oriented Space Marine, he’s just a lot of points to sink into a single T4 infantry model at 1000pts.

The Rhinos I took over Drop Pods because I expected terrain to be slightly lighter than what we generally run, so I wanted something for my dudes to bunker up in. With such few units I was also worried about my ability to cover any Maelstrom type mission with dudes on foot after Podding in.

All in all, to foreshadow a bit, I wasn’t too shocked to struggle in two games against newer toys, and was pleased to do well in the other half of my games.

Round 1

Dawn of War, Crusade with 4 objectives, against Mark V H’s Eldar. His list had a good mix of units, I actually think it was originally designed for Highlander format as nothing repeated. I think it really hurt me this game to not have my usual Drop Pods and Sternguard. With the Pods I could have taken the fight directly to the xenos, potentially slagging his exposed D-Cannon artillery, and the Sternguard could have put poison and melta on the Wraithknight. As it was though, those barrage S10 AP2 shots tagged anything I did manage to hide from the walker and a Wave Serpent, with a Nightwing Interceptor coming in later to clean up. The Kingbreakers did take down the Wraithknight Aevethon’s Lament, but it was a pyrrhic victory just before they were swept away.

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Round 2

Vanguard Strike, Purge the Alien with old school Victory Points (1 point for each 100 pts totaled among completely destroyed units), against Louis J and his Iron Hands. This kind of mission is always tough for me, and this seemed like just a particularly bad matchup for it. His army was a bit light on units, so playing for objectives I think I would have been fine. But for kill points all my light vehicles and troops rushing across a fairly open field at him seemed like they’d be tasty targets for his large quantity of S6+ long range shooting before I could get any melta into play: Dudes with lascannons, two Razorbacks w/ twin-linked Lascannon sponsons, grav Bikers, a Contemptor, a Sicaran, and a Master of the Forge. My usual Sternguard and Drop Pods again would have been useful here, to melta-drop some opposing vehicles. So, I kinda went to left field and played for a draw by reserving almost everything and hoping to simply keep it from being killed. Scouts I buried completely out of LOS within a hut to keep me in the game. Landspeeders I put on the table but very carefully out of LOS and range to anything, as juicy targets to try and draw the Iron Hands forward.

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In the end I brought the ‘Speeders out of hiding too early and they got slagged before doing anything meaningful. Partly that was do to poor targeting priority, sending them against the bikers to protect the Scouts rather than trying to trade fire with the Razorbacks. The other Kingbreakers that came on and went right into hiding did some damage after the enemy finally came forward enough to strike at meaningfully. It wasn’t enough though and I went down to a minor loss. Potentially this goofball strategy could have worked if I’d changed the order up a bit, deploying a Rhino and flying on the Landspeeders, and overall stuck to my guns and done nothing but waited for him to come to me piecemeal. It was really difficult for me to do all that sitting around though, even as Louis was a great sport and found it hilarious that basically nothing happened for three turns. Overall I wouldn’t do this strategy again, and was probably kitted out to fight toe-to-toe with this army anyway, but it just seemed like something different to try and maybe put him off kilter and engender a major mistake tipping the balance. That almost worked, when he finally broke and started bringing units forward, but then Louis realized what was about to happen and stepped them all back just a few meaningful inches before I could bring on a solid thrust at them.

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Round 3

Dawn of War, a variant on the Relic with additional immovable objective markers, against Chris S and his Dark Eldar. The Kingbreakers swept this one fairly systematically. Scouts got sacrificed as a ploy to bring some troops forward, which then got burninated as the meltas and missile launchers took down the opposing Raiders one by one. Even the Razorwing flyer eventually took a fair amount of damage. The Rhinos in turn just churned up field until they were controlling all three objectives and the xenos tabled except for the jetfighter. Here I think the Dark Eldar mostly just couldn’t bring on enough of a concentrated force to really score some major damage before the relatively fragile units could be rolled up one by one.

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Round 4

Old-school Spearhead setup, fighting to kill and control monstrous creature Peeps, against Steve S and his Space Wolves Chaos Marines. This deployment setup is funny, and one that I actually think about a lot in coming up with new arrangements for our events. Each army gets a table quadrant to deploy in, but must be at least 12″ from table center. The thing is that it doesn’t really preserve the 24″ boundary. The corners closest to center are a fair bit closer, so you’re open to Turn 1 charges if you deploy there, first player Turn 1 charges no longer being barred by the rules AFAIK. I totally forgot about this, deployed in the forward corners, and got immediately charged by Steve’s horde of Chaos dogs, cyber dogs, and Thunderhammer-wielding lord and henchman on Juggernauts.

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That was basically ok, because a Landspeeder and Rhino went *poof* and then the whole horde was ideally placed for the entire Kingbreakers army to drop flame, meltas, bolters, missiles, and the kitchen sink on it. Being kitted out with a fair bit of flame, including Salamanders’ re-rolling flame on the infantry, was decisive in tackling the dogs. Re-rolling meltas due to Vulkan, combined with several missile launchers, plucked wounds off the Juggernauts fairly rapidly. I also got very lucky on Steve’s Stormwolf flyer not coming in until Turn 4. Earlier on it would have shifted the game back in his favor quite a bit.

As things went though, very quickly only the lords and a couple straggler dogs were left standing. Then the sugary bio-morphs arrived…

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The Peeps came in via deep strike and wielded a WS4 BS2 S6 T6 W6 I2 A3 LD10 3+ Monstrous Creature, Eternal Warrior, Feel No Pain (5+) profile with Laser Eyes R18 S6 AP4 Assault 2. I brought mine in near my encampment so that it could fight the Juggernauts and then be easily claimed by my guys. Steve also dropped his Peep by my guys as he didn’t have much on the backfield except a Rhino charging at me, and hopefully it’d be able to do some damage on its own. Really though, the Peeps wound up being largely pushovers. Each of us wound up destroying the other’s Peep in close combat, Steve with his Juggernauts and me with powerfist wielding Sgt Scolirus. I was stoked because this kind of thing totally justifies my inefficient nostalgic dedication to powerfist sergeants.

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After that there were a bunch of small combats. The lords got mopped up. Steve’s flyer arrived and together with the Rhino each delivered a handful of Chaos Marines into the battle, but by that point there were far too many Kingbreakers outnumbering them and they went down pretty easily. The Rhino managed to dash onto one of the dead Peep objectives to contest it, as we ran out of time before I could finish it off, move for Linebreaker, and so on to sweep up more points. But still the Kingbreakers had killed one Peep, held the other dead Peep, and had slain the Chaos warlord, for a doubled-points victory.

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Outcome

Final tally was that I got crushed by Eldar, took a minor loss to the Iron Hands, won a perfect game against Dark Eldar, and massacred Chaosy Space Wolves. So I lost two games I thought would be extremely difficult just based on armies (let alone players, Mark from Round 1 finished 7th overall), crushed a game I in some sense should indeed have won (newer player to this edition, with a difficult to play army), and wrapped up the day winning the game I wanted to win but could have gone either way (against Steve, a friend and good player who’s crushed me many times).

The scoring system is a little opaque, but my painting and sportsmanship must have boosted what on average seemed a middling amount of points per game, to put me 11th of 39 registered players in the final standings. Tom finished an impressive 8th, and Colin and Steve 17th and 18th for all of us to finish in the top half.

Conclusion

All in all, yet another excellent Berks tournament. Bonus points to Berks and Mike B for the best catered lunch I’ve seen at a 40k event, notably including tons of vegetarian options. I was super glad I went despite it being a crazy weekend—Friday I moved, just barely managing to keep my 40k stuff from being lost among all the unopened boxes, and Sunday I ran a small but intricate tournament. I’m definitely looking forward to next year’s Spring Assault already, and hopefully we’ll get more people to come out from Philly and enjoy such a great event.

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40k: Stompin’ Time—Notes on Knights

This past weekend a good-sized crew from PAGE went out to the NOVA Open. I pretty much got my face punched in throughout the Trios and Narrative tracks (reports here & here), but I learned a lot and had a great time. Even in those but especially walking around the Invitational and GT you couldn’t help but notice the multitudes of Knights: Imperial Knights, Wraithknights, Rip-knights… Gorgeous models, under-costed points, for once GW figured out how to really sell something everyone will like, as long as it’s on their side of the table. The following are some lessons I’ve learned about fighting and using Imperial Knights.

Your weapons are (all but) useless, puny fleshlings! Charles Craig's sweet Chaos-allied Knight picks a fight with Sgt Titus and his meltagunner friend.

Your weapons are (all but) useless, puny fleshlings! Charles Craig’s sweet Chaos-allied Knight picks a fight with Sgt Titus and his meltagunner friend.

War at Range

Knights have considerable effective shooting range: 36″ on their guns and 12″ movement over clear spaces. Gerantius the Forgotten Knight, a White Dwarf character that should have been in the damn codex (making for a whopping ~4 pages of rules), can additionally run and then shoot. That basically means if you want to shoot at one you’re going to need at least 36″ effective range, ideally 48″ if you want to hit it on turn one while it’s still in its backfield. For the most part that requires a vehicle, able to move and shoot, or missile launchers, which have enough range to sit & shoot. I have a multi-melta on one of my tacticals because I get a re-roll to hit (Vulkan) and it’s useful against Dreadnought Drop Pods coming down on my lines, of which there are still some in my club. The range isn’t enough though to help me fight Knights, which take far too long to walk into range, even assuming they don’t just hang back and blast away. So in the future that MM will be either swapped out for another missile launcher, or start riding down in a Drop Pod with its compadres for early melta snaps and hopeful midfield positioning.

Sir Stomps-A-Lot

Depending on which side of the machine god’s wrath you’re on, stomp attacks are either really useful or more salt in the wound. Of course they’re powerful just for clobbering whatever is currently in close combat with a Knight, particularly if it’s being tarpitted with a gaggle of weak infantry. But they also have a handy ability to reach out and touch enemies.

A stomp attack has you put down D3 blast markers. The first one goes in base-to-base with your Knight, but the others can be up to 3″ from a previously placed marker and don’t have to be placed over an enemy base. That allows you to chain the attack out and hit targets up to just under 15″ away. There are also no line of sight restrictions on placing the blasts, so even large terrain doesn’t provide protection. Nothing came of it, but in one game I was caught off guard when an opponent used that to hit a Landspeeder tucked behind terrain over a foot away, waiting for the combat to end so it could pop out and melta the Knight.

Stomps can also be useful to cause secondary casualties and force a positive combat result. In a different game I used a second and third stomp to pile wounds & then casualties onto a bunch of Blue Horrors nearby but not involved in the combat in any way. Since all unsaved wounds incurred by a side are counted in combat results, that drove the leadership way down for the Instability roll on the Daemon Prince my Knight was actually fighting. In that case it created a bunch more free wounds, but against other armies it’d be a good way to force a morale break on an otherwise stalwart unit.

So, as a Knight player, the stomps let you reach out a bit from combat for some neat tricks. Playing against a Knight, you have to be aware that units could be directly affected by the combat even at a significant distance away.

On the left, a Knight stomps its way through a warehouse and into a poor lonely Landspeeder. On the right, a Knight drives down the leadership of a Daemon Prince by stomping Horrors trying their best to avoid the combat.

On the left, a Knight stomps its way through a warehouse and into a poor lonely Landspeeder. On the right, a Knight drives down the leadership of a Daemon Prince by stomping Horrors trying their best to avoid the combat.

Huddle Up

The large blast, low AP shots rained down by a Knight are a huge problem. Getting models into cover is obviously good, but even better is not being targetable at all. Unfortunately getting and staying out of line of sight can be difficult given how tall the Knight is and how fast it moves over open terrain. However, another way to not get shot at is to huddle up close to enemy models. Blasts generally can’t be placed such that they’ll be over the shooting player’s own models. If it’s not possible to put the marker over your models without touching their own, your unit will be safe from being directly targeted.

Clearly that’s pretty situational, there’s a relatively limited set of circumstances in which you can or want to be that close to the enemy. However, one such situation that comes up fairly often is deep striking units to join an assault. The arriving unit is very exposed, typically having to stand around for a turn and get their bearings before joining the combat. When there’s the potential to be tagged by a Knight or other large blast in the interim, better than ducking into nearby cover is to use the combat itself as a shield. By getting up tight with the enemy models, those models won’t even be targetable by the blasts and will have a much better chance of living through the next round of shooting to make it into the fight.

Drop Podding Vulkan and a powerfist combat squad huddle up tight against a combat for blast protection before being able to assist their Terminator battle brothers.

Drop Podding Vulkan and a powerfist combat squad huddle up tight against a combat for blast protection before being able to assist their Terminator battle brothers.

Bubblewrap

In my local scene there’s a bunch of meltagun Drop Pods, with their 6″ armor penetration bonus, as well as Screamers of Tzeentch, which have armourbane on their bite attack, so bubblewrapping key vehicles is important. One thing to note is that unlike a normal vehicle, with any reasonable amount of terrain on the board it’s quite a bit easier to bubble wrap a Knight on the move without sacrificing its mobility since it moves as normal infantry—so slow!—through terrain and the base is so big it’s bound to hit some wherever it’s going.

To protect my Knight I’ve been vacillating between cheap Imperial Guard and expensive storm shield Terminators. There’s a clear tradeoff between the two: For ~100 points I can bring enough Guardsmen to wrap completely around the Knight and protect it from all angles, but in a purely sacrificial way. Something else, possibly the Knight itself, needs to step in to actually remove the threat, and quickly so before all the Guard are eaten through. On the other hand, for 225 points a squad of thunder-shields can clobber most assault threats, or at least tarpit on their own for quite some time. That handful of models though has a tough time maintaining an effective wall against mobile threats like Screamers that will just do an end run around it. Which approach is better in general is tough for me to say, but in many tournaments, as at NOVA, restrictions on detachments, allies, or sources may force your hand. Similarly, Come the Apocalypse allies won’t really be able to wrap at all against an alpha strike.

This bubblewrapping successfully protected my Knight against incoming dangerous assaults. Note that the opposing Knight is basically not shielded at all, because it had to deploy 12" from CtA allies.

This bubblewrapping successfully protected my Knight against incoming dangerous assaults. Note that the opposing Knight is not shielded at all, because it had to deploy 12″ from CtA allies.

It worked out ok in the end and the Knight lived on the rest of the game, but this bubblewrapping has failed completely and the Knight should die. Screamers have a ton of ability to just fly over and around low model count walls.

It worked out ok in the end and the Knight lived on the rest of the game, but this bubblewrapping has failed completely and the Knight should die. Screamers have a ton of ability to just fly over and around low model count walls.

Tarpits

Similarly but on the flip side, an important tactic fighting Knights is tarpitting. Every turn it spends stomping expendable troops is a turn it’s not dropping pie plate blasts or mega-chainsword swipes on critical units. In thinking about doing so, it’s easy to overestimate how killy a Knight is in close combat.

Like many big models, with the 7th edition Destroyer weapon table and the Knight’s basic statline, it’s more efficient and effective going after big targets than little ones. Successful D weapon hits put multiple wounds/hull points on models, not units, so they clobber vehicles and monsters but are way overkill and not more effective than a standard powerweapon or monstrous creature against typical infantry. In ongoing combat, a Knight is only going to kill 1.25 MEQs per round with its base attacks (3 attacks, 4s to hit, 2+ to wound at AP2). The effect of the stomp attacks is fairly situational because the hits are determined by blasts and thus dependent on precise positioning. But, if I’m doing my math right, each MEQ has a 65% chance of surviving each hit (2/3 chance of Ker-runch effect times 5/6 chance of wounding at S6 times 1/3 chance of dying on 3+ save plus a 1/6 chance of the Overrun effect is 35% chance of an unsaved wound per stomp blast over a MEQ). Each Marine thus has a 45% chance of surviving a stomp attack (1/3 for 1 blast times .65 plus 1/3 for 2 blasts times .65^2 plus 1/3 for 3 blasts times .65^3). So even if a full combat squad is bunched up to be wholly placed under a blast, it should expect to lose “only” 2.75 guys per round to stomps, and remember that the guy killed by the base attacks can’t be hit by the stomps.

All in all, that’s pretty good for the MEQs! Even a few lowly Tacticals can tarpit and hold up to one of the Martian C’Tan’s warmachines for a bit. They might even do some damage, because their krak grenades and melta bombs if they have them will strike simultaneously with the Knight’s base and stomp attacks respectively. In the photo at the top of the article, those two Tacticals tied up that Knight for several critical rounds of combat, leaving my other forces free to deal with other threats.

Don’t Get Shot!

Against longer range shooting attacks, bubblewrapping and protecting a Knight can be difficult. The model’s just so big that almost no models and only the biggest, purpose-built LOS blocking terrain will give it a cover save. Its ion shield of course will give it a save, but only against one facing. It’s therefore important to try to force incoming shooting into one arc, and to otherwise minimize the damage through range and any available LOS blocks as well as the board edges.

In a recent game against Necrons, I set up my Knight as in the picture below. Without Drop Podding melta or fast assaults to worry about, I placed my Knight aggressively in hopes of moving forward quickly and clearing the central LOS blockers for more shooting options. In actuality though this Knight was dead before my first turn: I got literally caught off guard by having the initiative seized, and then caught off guard again by a Cryptek and Vargard Obyron teleporting ~30 Necron Warriors on top of me in double tap range. The two blobs went into two separate arcs, rendering my ion shield applicable to just one. Either way though, no Knight’s going to stand up long against 60 gauss weapon shots and it promptly exploded.

The game begins, and I've already made horrible mistakes!

The game begins, and I’ve already made horrible mistakes!

Jeremy Chamblee's Necrons are about to take this Knight down, and how.

Jeremy Chamblee’s Necrons are about to take this Knight down, and how.

What I probably should have done is set the Knight hard into a corner with just its front facing exposed, enabling the ion shield to protect the whole exposed area. Further, I should have used various units to build a wider diameter bubblewrap around the Knight, leveraging the two board edges in the corner to minimize the models needed. I’m so used to protecting against melta Pods and assaults that I was thinking there was little I could do about longer range gauss shooting. In reality though, I could have forced them to teleport in beyond double tap range, literally halving the number of shots the Knight would have to survive.

Notable there is that with melta Pods I worry about bubblewrapping a 6″ radius with a tight cordon so dudes can’t work their way into bonus range on disembarking. Against double tapping gauss or other weapons the bubble has to be much wider, pushing them out beyond twelve inches. Making that easier though, the wrap doesn’t have to be as tight. Individual shots sneaking through aren’t as lethal as melta, and a large blob like these tens of Warriors will have a large deep strike mishap footprint that stands a good chance of hitting a loose curtain wall if they’re dropped aggressively or scatter badly.

Pincer Attack

Conversely from the defender wanting to force all shooting onto one ion shielded facing, I think the most important tactic in going after an Imperial Knight is being able to hit more than one facing at once. This seems to be overlooked by many/most tacticas and maybe overlooked by many people but is fairly easy to apply, at least in theory.

The Knight’s ion shield confers a 4+ save, 3+ if it’s a Seneschal or Gerantius, and a re-rollable one if deployed in the Adamantium Lance formation. It’s limited to one facing though, chosen at the start of shooting. The best way to leverage that limitation and mitigate a key part of the Knight’s defense is simply to hit multiple facings at once, ideally with a roughly equal spread of power, leaving it able to shield only a portion of the attacks. This is going to be more effective than a mere large number of shots alone.

My lonely Knight is taken down yet again, this time by Joe Johnson's gorgeous army of Knights+Eldar buddies.

My lonely Knight is taken down yet again, this time by Joe Johnson’s gorgeous army of Knights+Eldar buddies.

To do so, the attackers need multiple units capable of hurting the Knight, and the mobility to get them into multiple arcs. Flyers and skimmers are a good option for this as they can’t be blocked as easily from getting into position by terrain and other units. To me, Crimson Hunters seem particularly ideal as the Knight can’t shoot back at them effectively at all, mitigating their AV10 weakness, and their Vector Dancer USR enables them to loiter around a battlefield longer and deliver shots on target much better than most flyers.

For the ground pounding Drop Pod set, hitting multiple arcs realistically means either multiple Pods or two combat squads coming out of a single Pod bearing roughly equal amounts of vehicle killing power, presumably melta. The combat squads are cheaper in points, take up less FOC slots, and in many cases are easier to deliver onto target. Multiple Pods though give flexibility if there for once isn’t a Knight or other single major target to pile up on, as well as potentially being able to constrain future movement of the target and create some cover for your own guys. Either way, the key thing is moving those guys into more than one arc on the drop.

Kingbreakers Marines attacking from all angles.

Kingbreakers Marines attacking from all angles.

Facing

Finally, to that note, facing is not a completely straightforward issue. The Imperial Knight has a fairly complex model & shape, and many get posed with the base, legs, and torso all at different angles, all of which can lead to different interpretations and intuitive takes on what is actually part of the hull, what is not, and how to determine facing angles.

In the picture below, Sternguard with a couple combi-meltas have dropped from the skies to destroy the traitor Knight. They’ve disembarked as far as they can. I looked at that quickly and my intuitive read was that they were in the Knight’s rear facing. My opponent just as quickly thought they were on the side armor but wasn’t completely confident. It was kind of a big deal, I had two other melta shots coming in from the right side out of picture so I really wanted these guys on the rear armor and there was a good chance to do a lot of damage (Vulkan giving me re-rolls on to-hits for meltas). It wasn’t worth a big thing though and we could each see the other’s view so we just rolled for the couple on which he was in doubt to decide their quadrant; they wound up on the side armor and both units got ion shielded.

Combi-melta Sternguard disembark as hard as they can toward the rear armor of their target.

Combi-melta Sternguard disembark as hard as they can toward the rear armor of their target.

Looking at it more closely from that photo, I’d also now lean toward side armor but there’s definitely some gray area. In the annotated picture below, yellow is the hull bounding box and associated facing line if you include the Knight’s shoulders. Previously this was roughly my intuitive approximate take on facing for Knights. The pink line is the facing divider from the leftmost to the rightmost corners of just the main body. The green line goes from the leftmost corner of the main body to the angled corner of the main body behind the smoke stacks. I didn’t have time to ask, but assume my opponent’s interpretation was something like those two. The blue line goes from the leftmost to the bottommost point in that corner of the main body. Finally, the red is the bounding box and associated divider of the main body. There’s quite a difference among all those slight variations!

Various hull bounding boxes & extremal points and the dividing lines they entail for facing.

Various hull bounding boxes & extremal points and the dividing lines they entail for facing.

So, there’s a couple questions here: Do you use the bounding box for vehicle facing, or a specific point on the hull body? My impression is that almost everyone uses some sort of intuitive bounding box for rounded vehicles like Wave Serpents. With the boxy but not quite regular shape of the Knight’s main body though, a lot of people might be using a specific point on there. The follow-up is then, of course, are the shoulders considered part of the hull? What if someone has assembled their model without the shoulder covers? I was pretty close to doing that with mine just to get a different, more mechanical look. There’s probably a variety of opinions on including the shoulders. From my end, I’ll only say that everyone is more than happy to tag the sponson wings on my Predators as part of the hull when shooting at them, and ditto the shoulders of my Knight. I would guess though many Knight owners getting shot at would not consider the shoulder covers as part of the hull, and/or aren’t including them in determining facing, making the front and rear arcs much more narrow than they otherwise would be.

I don’t (yet) have a strongly held take on what should be the correct arc lines. More important though than the actual “correct” answers to those questions is nailing down with your opponent the answers that will be in play for a given match before beginning a game and finding yourselves with different interpretations at a clutch moment. From now on I’m definitely going to include them in my ever-growing list of topics I try to remember to discuss with new opponents before matches.

Conclusion

All in all, the Imperial Knight’s an interesting model/unit. It’s almost certainly under-costed in points but I can’t quite decide what point value I think it should be. In particular, it’s very robust but you can’t just throw it out there willy-nilly either. A large variety of units and attacks can make it pop quite quickly. Similarly, it can do a ton of damage in both shooting and assault, but is also prone to being tarpitted or held up in terrain and not actually delivering much. One thing’s for sure though, there’s bound to be a ton of them on tabletops for the foreseeable future, so please share your attack and defense ideas in the comments!

Nothing can stop us! No, seriously, nothing.

Nothing can stop us! No, seriously, nothing.

NOVA Open 40k Narrative Recap

kingbreakers-iconHot on the heels of the NOVA Open 40k Trios Tournament, Carl, Colin, Jason, John, and I plunged into the 40k Narrative Warlords and Nightfighters tracks. This is a quick look at them and especially my personal campaign. Many, many more photos from my games are in the Flickr gallery.

Kramer Doyle, humanity's commander, sends the Kingbreakers off to space to do battle against unimaginable enemies and impossible odds.

One of the Warlords’ strategy sessions. Kramer Doyle, humanity’s commander, sends the Kingbreakers off to space to do battle against unimaginable enemies and impossible odds.

Scorched Earth

The narrative tracks are essentially an ongoing NOVA campaign in which a coalition of forces, the Virtue, have invaded Earth and another coalition, the Humans/UN, is fighting back. It’s not set in the 40k universe, which is a little weird and possibly not quite as compelling as it could be, but does give the organizers—Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer—a lot of leeway to have a motley, random collection of forces fighting on either side.

This year’s campaign was fought for control of three areas: Cities, Space, and Wastelands, with a number of boards associated with each though they only varied a bit, mostly in look, as each followed the standard NOVA table setup. The teams also nominated secondary discretionary objectives that would be available each round to earn bonus points toward the campaign, but also entailed a long list of various board and terrain rules that would be in play in the different areas. For example, having the first couple discretionaries available meant space boards would have meteors dropping at the top of each player turn. In each round after the first, the team falling behind would be secretly given covert mission objectives that they could work toward in order to gain a substantial amount of campaign points and even things up. The teams were also given a bunch of special stratagem cards to distribute among their players to help tip the scales in various matchups.

Players split off into Virtue or Human as part of registering, and then the organizers brought in a bunch of ringers as needed to balance each session. Nightfighters played a game each evening. After the first night those players were paired based on Nightfighting results so far, and then the teams alternated picking an area for that match. So, for example, a matchup where a team felt doomed might be put into either an area where the team was either untouchably far ahead or had already given up, to minimize the negative effects of a loss on overall control of that area. For the Warlords games a modified team championship style matching was used, with teams alternating putting forward a player and an area and the other responding with a match. Mid-day strategy sessions among the Warlords invested a lot of thought and discussion towards contingency planning for areas and matchups, though more effort was probably put toward drinking. Before each round there was a brief session to recap the preceding results, narrate the resultant story progression so far, and work out the final pairings and locations.

A pre-round campaign progress briefing from Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer.

A pre-round campaign progress briefing from Owen Beste, Steve Carey, and Bob Birrer.

Games

Competing in both tracks of the narrative I got in a full 7 2000pt games. Combined with 3 more for the Trios and an additional Recon Squad game, it was a lot of 40k over the long weekend! These are quick summaries of each narrative match.

Nightfight 1: Eric Hoerger’s massive Imperial Guard blob lead by White Scars bikers. He wound up getting the 4th highest battle points in the GT with this army, though he took a loss in the middle and thus didn’t make it to the top bracket. This was a pretty grueling end to a long day/several days. The bulk of the army was two 50 man Guardsman blobs, with attached Scars bikers that would pile them into assault super quick. It was ridiculous how fast the blobs were moving across the board. In the end I was almost entirely crushed on units but more or less held 2 objectives to Eric’s 3, but he also claimed 6 more points by maxing out discretionaries.

Just after deployment. Yes, in technical terms that is a metric butt ton of Guardsmen.

Just after deployment. Yes, in technical terms that is a metric butt ton of Guardsmen.

The vanguard approaches.

The vanguard approaches.

Warlord 1: Jeremy Chamblee’s Necrons. My Knight got evaporated on turn 1 by 60 Gauss shots after Jeremy seized the initiative and I had not accounted well for teleporting Warrior blobs. After that I scored a bunch of objective points on the first few turns and fought dearly to hold those but slowly got whittled down and lost control going into the asymmetric end-game scoring. Final score was 8 to 9 on objectives in Jeremy’s favor but he claimed 5 more points on discretionaries. I still felt pretty ok about this game though, battling back reasonably well after the substantial first turn set back when the Knight exploded. It was also pretty cool to meet and play someone I recognized from blogs & forums.

Scouts watching the shit go down.

Scouts watching the shit go down.

Wraiths multicharge anything and everything.

Wraiths multicharge anything and everything.

Deathmarks lurking in the shadows.

Deathmarks lurking in the shadows.

Nightfight 2: Jason Spinnern’s Tzeentch. This must have been a physically brutal game for Jason, immediately following the first day of the GT, just like the first Nightfight round was for me immediately following the Trios. I felt pretty good about the matchup, I’ve been doing well against Tzeentch. My current stock army has enough shooting to ground and take out some FMCs, expendable units and an assault blocker to tarpit and tackle Screamers and remaining daemons if I can get in position, and enough blasts and general shots to quickly whittle down horrors and start reducing psychic dice. In the end I claimed max points for this on the regular game, holding all 6 objectives as well as taking 6 points for the discretionaries, though I did not manage to claim the Human covert mission as well.

Caw! Caw!

Caw! Caw!

Like ships passing in the night...

Like ships passing in the night…

Chomp! Chomp!

Chomp! Chomp!

Warlord 2: Connor Carey’s Tyranid/Eldar combo. I took a risk by taking the fight deep into the enemy ranks at the back of the long axis, hoping to take out the core of his Synapse early. A single Zoanthrope survived with a remaining wound after the alpha strike however, the death of which would have really swung the game my way. As it was my backfield shooting took care of the Gaunt hordes pretty handily and I felt well up for a while. But the opposing Wraithknight and Wraithguard started piling S10 shots into my Drop Pods for easy kill points. To make it worse, the asymmetric mission rules handicapped my ability to claim KPs as each of my units could only score once. I did ok at spreading kills around, but it still cost me points compared to what I actually eliminated. Final score was 5 to 11 in his favor as a result and we both picked up 5 more on discretionaries.

Into the heart of darkness!

Into the heart of darkness!

Tyranid infest the local ecclesiarchy church.

Tyranid infest the local ecclesiarchy church.

Forward, ho!

Forward, ho!

Nightfight 3: Joe Johnson’s Adamantium Lance triple Knights with Eldar Crimson Hunter and Wave Serpent escorts. This was a pretty ridiculous list. A bunch of us on the human team spent a lot of time talking about it, but no one really had great answers. The Adamantium Lance formation grants re-rollable saves on the Knights’ Ion Shields as well as D3 Hammer of Wrath attacks and re-rollable charge distance, for no extra points cost, provided they stay within 3″ of the Seneschal (Warlord). Crimson Hunters are awesome escorts for Knights because they have an extra turn and thus don’t fly off the table easily, and are equipped to take out opposing Knights & armour or can go after opposing flyers. Wave Serpents of course are basically one-model gunlines all on their own. I got completely rolled in this game, gaining zero points and giving up the max. One unfortunate thing was that another table revealed the covert mission to the Virtue pretty early, and since that objective was killing things in midfield and running the resulting marker back to the enemy deployment, Joe was able to deny it by just moving his most vulnerable units (single Dire Avengers) back into their zone.

Yep. Trouble ahead.

Yep. Trouble ahead.

Dooooooooom!

Dooooooooom!

Nightfight 4: Craig Valvano’s Eldar, featuring a Revenant Titan! Actually a morning fight due to a schedule flip on the last day. This was kind of a weird game because he was pretty up front about playing for the Infamous Warlord standings, running his Wraightknight off the board from the start, and going for the covert mission, which he achieved. The mission scoring also had a built-in two point imbalance toward the opposing team. Craig went first and rendered the Revenant Invisible, so I took my melta alpha strike elsewhere and basically ignored the big guy as best I could other than scrounging for cover and pinging at it with my Knight until the latter was pulsared into oblivion. Wave Serpents held on tenaciously and wound up being a huge problem, mopping up Tactical stragglers as they ran about trying to tag terrain for the mission. In the end the 2pt imbalance turned the game into a 5-5 draw on objectives, both of us taking 4 discretionaries but him nabbing the covert for a big team boost.

Yep.

Yep.

Dire Avengers leap out to scrub an objective but instead get scrubbed themselves.

Dire Avengers leap out to scrub an objective but instead get scrubbed themselves.

Scouts warily approach an Imperial double agent (for the covert mission this guy flipped sides).

Scouts warily approach an Imperial double agent returning with critical information (for the covert mission this assassin flipped sides but was immediately executed by the Eldar).

Sgt Harbinger stands alone.

Sgt Harbinger stands alone.

Warlord 3: Charles Craig’s Tzeentch. This was a great game to wrap up the campaign. At the bottom of turn one I thought I was about to be rolled off the board: Screamers and Daemon Princes all over my front lines, a Knight Errant coming around my flanks, it was grim. Human team passers-by were giving me condolences. But the Kingbreakers fought back valiantly. After the alpha strike on the traitor Knight did little damage, a bunch of Tacticals and a Landspeeder held on to tarpit and then destroy it. Terminators finally ran a solid wall and tied up the Screamers the whole game until Angholan and Scolirus could drop in and take the Relic off them. The backfield combat squads and Predators took down the most threatening Daemon Prince early after a lucky break on a grounding check. Scouts and the Thunderfire Cannon wiped Pink Horrors off a home objective and then supported the regrouped alpha strike combat squads to whittle down and push back a blob of Horrors on the far edge. We ran out of time against the awards ceremony and called the game on turn 4, scoring it 2 points to 3 in his favor, and a discretionary point or two to him. If we’d played out a couple more turns though I think I could have dealt with the remaining DP and scored a few more points on both objectives and discretionaries while taking away 2 of his; when we ended I’d killed some 1150 points while only losing ~650, and had good positioning as well as the momentum. A great game either way though.

Your weapons are useless, fleshlings!

Your weapons are useless, fleshlings!

Huuuwwwrrr!

Huuuwwwrrr!

Scouts hold down the left flank.

Scouts hold down the left flank.

Captain Angholan and Sgt Scolirus drop in to assist their Terminator brethren and claim the Relic.

Captain Angholan and Sgt Scolirus drop in to assist their Terminator brethren and claim the Relic.

Summary

So, all in all I went a measly 1 for 7 on victories. On the other hand, despite the losses I managed to score enough points throughout to keep myself up in the standings and getting paired against tough armies & players. Until getting obliterated by the triple Knights going into the last half of the campaign I was holding in 4th of 15 or so among the humans. Making things even rougher, my list is fairly balanced and in theory has at least some tools for basically any opponent, so I kept getting put forward as a defending player for the Virtue to throw their best possible army matchup against. Long story short, it felt terrible throughout and things were pretty grim at a couple points, but more objectively I guess I did reasonably and was definitely happy with some of my play toward the end of the campaign.

Dan Boyd, John Lamanna, Carl McLaughlin, Colin Kielick, and Jason Woolf lose their minds over the vintage model bins.

Dan Boyd, John Lamanna, Carl McLaughlin, Colin Kielick, and Jason Woolf lose their minds over the vintage model bins.

Conclusion

Despite the grueling schedule and some bleak points in my personal campaign this was an awesome event and a ton of fun with a good bunch of people. It could use a little more strategic input and decision making from the warlords, campaigning over a map, explicit progression tree, or something like that. The very abstract form of fighting for the three areas though gives a lot of room for dungeon mastering behind the scenes to keep the sides fairly even, and compensating for missing players and so on.

The biggest area to improve I would suggest is that the overall tone is very mixed and could use some additional structure. Pretty much everyone is going into the event with a fairly casual, devil may care attitude. But not everyone’s going into it with casual, fluffy lists. In the Nightfighting track a bunch of guys just brought their GT armies plus 150 points of stuff. In the Warlords track, most guys had pretty standard lists while a bunch basically dropped mini-Apocalypse armies, with a Transcendant C’Tan, Eldar Revenant Titan, and an Adamantium Lance triple-Knight list all making appearances. There were definitely some mismatched expectations and assumptions. I think it’d be good to do something like have two tracks, one for more casual & smaller lists—in particular, so people can’t just play their GT lists—and another for anything-goes Apocalypse at higher points, with people opting into one or the other or potentially bringing a list for each and focusing on one or the other on the fly. The rules and missions could also use a fair bit of editing, which we’d be happy to help with, as well as some streamlining. For example, it’d probably be better to have special rules associated with particular tables rather than the large, easy to forget set of rules based on the discretionaries.

All in all though a fantastic time. I’ve already got it on my calendar for next year!

Again, many more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Steve Carey, Owen Beste, and Bob Birrer give the final narrative briefing at the closing awards ceremony.

Steve Carey, Owen Beste, and Bob Birrer give the final narrative briefing at the closing awards ceremony.

Till next year!

Till next year!