Gents,
The Castle Assault weekend has come and gone, I'm so very glad that it was everything and more that i'd looked forward to for many, many months.
I finished the weekend with 2 wins and 3 losses ending up in 11th place.
Now i'm going to need to apologise in advance as i didn't do the best job at recording the games i just noted high points and unfortunately as i look at my notes im realisng i didnt record what victory conditions were achieved however i'll do my best.
Game one: Nathan Saunders - Codex Astartes
The Iyanden got pretty lucky with a very decisive and destructive first turn, after the first couple of activations i was able to shoot and prep his landraider formation with night spinners, retain and engage them, intermingling his spread out scout formation with one of my vampire raiders full of wraithblades, combat went heavily in my favor, the LR's broke with 1 surviving, also breaking the scouts, the blades consolidated into cover and were holding the blitz.
Nathans warhounds wreaked havoc depleting and breaking seveal units like my falcons & fire prisms over the course of the game and in turn 2 when my space craft activated to fire on a juicy target of a warhound sitting on the blitz, sheilds stripped, rolling a 1 to hit - "son of a..."
my other vampire raider full of wraithguard air assaulted his BTS in a clipping engagement and got very lucky causing a significant amount of damage to break them.
Nathan came very close to getting my BTS which was depleted down to a single wave serpent and wraithguard sup com, who certainly made the most of a double move the hell out of dodge.
The game ended in turn 3 with a 3-0 win for my Iyanden. (I *think* VC's were BTS, TSNP & BLITZ)
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Game two : Aaron Callister - Space Wolves
A fantastic, fun game with plenty of frustration from dice rolls and what seemed a near unstoppable reaver titan.
Cal got the initiative and made the most of it with his reaver moving up and shooting my poorly deployed BTS killing 2 Wave serpants and 2 WG units breaking them.
My first air assault unit, the wraithblades bounced hard off his land raiders fluffing my combat resolution rolls and i trotted off in shame.
In a moment of excellence I managed to get the Reaver down to 3DC and score 2 criticals, from the combined efforts of falcons & fire prisms which saw the reaver destroyed from crit rolls in the end phase. even though my space craft activated for a pin point and rolled 1 yet again!
The space wolves great company moved to the center of the table claiming multiple objectives and holding some serious ground.
Cal's terminators air assaulted via thunderhawk my jetbike unit who unfortunately were intermingled with my rangers, killing the bikes and breaking the rangers who proceeded to fail to rally for the rest of the game. the terminators were in a prime position holind my blitz.
Essentially everything that was on the board that was iyanden was broken by the end of turn 2.
end of turn 3 the great company engage my BTS who failed a clipping assault on them in a previous activation but didnt move too far away as i needed units in his half to deny TSNP i got punished in this assault and broke away again leaving 1 model alive and it pushed to turn 4 as we were 1 all on VC's.
Cal managed to get my BTS which pushed it to 2-1 and lead to the Space wolf victory. (dont remember exact VC's)
Game three : Steve Gibb - Minervans
Steve was a good opponent who's had an awful lot of experience vsing Iyanden and knew exactly what was coming.
I on the other hand have never faced Minervans and had very little idea of how i was supposed to deal with his list. it literally felt like i was throwing myself at a brick wall, haha. I think i'm just going to copy and paste steves run down of our game as i couldnt put it any better.
Quote:
Finishing up the day was Fudd (Sam Allan's) Iyanden which, having played against Mick's Iyanden a few times I fully expected would be a hard match up. I was super BS lucky to not cop big death from Sam's space based 4BP pie plates after he forced me into a corner that my army basically fills and even more impressed with my dice after his retained vampire full of wraithgaurd bounced off my shadowswords... A combination of Blasties taken from flak, inspiring commisars and just Fudd's shit dice (this was the same unit that bounced off land raiders in assault just the game before...) saw this first combat go heavily my way. The rest of the game played out much as every Iyanden game I've played has. The eldar roped off a no go zone half a table wide where my tanks decided it would be suicide to advance into combos of indirect disrupt artillery, skimming fire prism lances and ruins full of wraithgaurd love. I played a super cagey game where over watch and cautious advances while being constantly conscious of my AA bubble were the bywords of the day. The other vampire unit bounced off my Leman Russ's but the wave serpents full of wraithgaurd did a great job with jetbike support to break more Russ's. My support salamanders, hydras and planes basically focussed down anything that they could hurt and so went the jet bikes and rangers with the fireprism units going basically unscathed (except two that copped death strikes...) Ultimately I focussed on breaking/surviving wraithgaurd units and killed a grand total of 4/12 of the buggers but managed to push him out for a 2-0 with take and hold and capture the flag. I still have no answer for how to Kill Iyanden, but this isn't a game where killing is the only way to win now is it! Man of the match goes to RA4+ armour in general, we both had so much of it that I it really was only the "other" stuff that was dying.
Game 4 : John Hammond - Dark Angels
So, memory from this game is vague, both John and I were rather hung over from a crazy night of shennanigans but i think i'll dot point stuff i remember?
- john opened up his turn 1 3 teleporting units of terminators who used commander to do a combined assault on my falcons, deleting that formation. unfortunately for john that left him wide open for me to start picking his termiators off and depleting them, there was some crazy dice rolls throughout the game, including my passing of saves on a very important air assault that hand been CAP'd and also copping 2 hunters. requiring 4~5 5+RA saves, i rolled all 6's and instantly felt like a jerk.
John came within a single amour save of takin gout my BTS which was also his "hunt the fallen" objective which would have secured 2 instant victory points for him.
This game was close even at the end of turn 3 and was pushed to turn 4 which game me enough time to position and clean up his formations about the place where needed and I secured a turn 4 5-0 victory and claimed 2,800 victory points to 1500.
Very messy indeed, although i had a great game with john and he was a pleasure to play. we were both apologetic for our scatter brain state.
Game 5 : Kendall Williams - Emperors Children
What a cagey game! Kendall was yet another great opponent but we both played a very cagey corners game.
My plotted orbital bombardment went off achieving nothing more than placing a blast marker on his BTS unit which had the potential to cause some serious damage, with the amount of units that fell under the template.
My vampire raider with Wraith guard were CAP'd and killed before i could engage one of his marine units.
His bombers killed my night spinners which did a fantastic job and stopping him from entering their 90cm threat zone, which seemed to have him a lot more concerned than i thought it would.
I got a successful engagement off with my wraitblades air assaulting his subjugators, killing 2 and breaking the formation which i eventually killed with fire prisms.
our game wrapped up in turn 3 (i think it was 3-0?)
Overall the castle assault tournament was a huge success.
I am honestly a huge fan of the scoring system that Mic chose to use, its a new take on how to do things and I would encourage any TO looking at organising an event to take it on board, or at least consider it. there seems like there's a lot of stubborn people out there but, this system is based on a similar system used for warhammer fantasy tournaments which has proven itself to be very successful.
As far as Iyanden goes, in all honesty, i'd hardly had the practice i feel i required leading up to the even. i'm still very new to eldar in general and making the most of their special rules.
I don't believe my list was the strongest available build. At this stage after the tournament where i'm left with the army using the list as a foundation for future lists, i am completely out of love with the space craft, I think i can get more effectiveness within the army with the additional 150pts from dropping that.
I'm very much leaning towards trying 2 formations of single storm serpents over the two vampire raiders. the air assault generally results in far too much heart ache.
I'm 50/50 with wraithblades, they feel almost useless after an engagement, more so if they're unsuccessful in the engagement which i know all too well
For anyone that might have missed it, the list i took this past weekend is:
Quote:
SPIRIT WRAITHGUARD WARHOST [575]
4x Wraithguard units, Wraithseer, 4 Wave Serpent
SPIRIT WRAITHGUARD WARHOST [275]
4x Wraithguard units, Spiritseer
SPIRIT WRAITHBLADE WARHOST [225]
4x Wraithblade units, Spiritseer
SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [300]
4 Falcons, 2 Fire Storm
WINDRIDER TROUPE [200]
5 Jetbike, Vyper
WINDRIDER TROUPE [200]
5 Jetbike, Vyper
RANGER TROUPE [125]
5 Ranger
SPACECRAFT [150]
Wraithship
VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]
VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]
AVATAR [0]
SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [375]
5 Fire Prism, Fire Storm
NIGHT SPINNER TROUPE [175]
3x Night Spinner units
I am also hoping that we have more than enough batreps so if we do have a drama down the track then we are covered, otherwise its just more data for the board to examine to get a truer picture.