Escalation League - Week 4
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Warhammer 40,000 – This week I'm going to try out a list I plan on taking to RIW Hobbies Escalation Event. It's an interesting format as you start with 500 points and then add another each round. Essrntially playing a slow grow league in the course of a day. Several other local groups just did escalation leagues so it makes sense to give players a chance to test their mettle in a single day event.
Unfortunately, with the way the event is set up I had to cut the screamers from my list. While they are a great buy for power level they wind up being a little pricey in points which means I need to make up some Furies to fill the roll. The official models from GW are butt-ass ugly so I won't be using them. Since I only need five I'll be using some Reaper Bat Demons to fill in until I find a better replacement. (possibly something from Raging Heroes to match the Heralds on Disks I want to pick up eventually)
February has been a weird month, as far as availability goes for our league, it seems life found a way to get in the way for most of the group. Not a big deal as this is a game of toy soldiers and the way I set up the system accounts for non-regular play. Popping in when you can or just focusing on the hobby aspect can be rewarding on an individual basis.
This week we tried out three player carnage style game, not something we planned for but because of last minute scheduling issues we made do and tried something different. For the campaign Imperial Guard and Ad Mech are floater forces that can change sides based on who can play it helps to balance out the system and accounts for how easily Guard can be deceived or swayed and the selfish, capricious whims of the Mechanicus.
The mission was Scorched Earth, which is the Eternal War mission that allows you to score an objective each turn or burn any not in your deployment zone to get D3 victory points. With a three player carnage game deployment is an 18"x18"x24" triangle set up on two corners with the third being in the center of the opposite side. This is really the only way to balance out deployment and give everyone and equal shot at picking juicy targets. In the past we've tried other deployments but they tend to cause one player to get ganged up on from the get go which makes for an un-fun game. With this set up things tend to balance out.
The game was fun, the guard and Knight focused on shooting everything off the board. I got into the Guard players face immediately and caused a bunch casualties but he auto passed his moral test with command point. (I really need to focus on hitting multiple units at once to take advantage of moral modifiers, otherwise the Night Lords Terror Tactics is pointless.) The Knight took most of its damage from bolter fire but survived the battle on its second tier of damage.
The end result was Space Marines: 11 Chaos: 7 and Guard: 5.
I think I need to focus on smarter placement of models that deepstrike onto the board. Putting them in the enemies face on the first turn is fun and can be potentially devastating but more often than not they do a fair amount of damage and then get blasted by a full army as they fall back and shoot or do other nonsense with orders and stratagems. (Honestly the Guard player brought 7 Command Points and spent 16 over the course of the game, the combination of Warlord trait and relic allows them to spend a ridiculous amount of command points.)
