Rampage Experiment

A couple of weeks ago I went to a tournament in Bristol run by the Battlecult guys. 1750 pts and roughly a win/loss system. After the GT I thought I would try and experiment a bit with my list and see how it would work without Coteaz.

So firstly here is the list I took:

HQ:

275 - Draigo
165 - Librarian, Warp Rift, Shrouding, Might of Titan

Troops:

55 - 1x Paladin, Daemon Hammer
55 - 1x Paladin, Daemon Hammer

Elites:

176 - Venerable Dreadnought, Multimelta, Search Light

Fast Attack:

206 - Storm Raven, Search Light
206 - Storm Raven, Search Light
206 - Storm Raven, Search Light

Heavy Support:

136 - Dreadnought, 2x Twin Linked Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition, Search Light
135 - Dreadnought, 2x Twin Linked Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition
135 - Dreadnought, 2x Twin Linked Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition

Basically I cut Coteaz and all the infantry except the Librarian and replaced them with Draigo, 2x Solodins and a venerable dreadnought.

That is an 11 model army with 11 kill points.

As it turns out, it is huge fun to play with. I have not played it against many of the more top tier lists so I can't really say how competitive it is, but unlike my normal list, you don't have to protect anything. Draigo will usually make some of the dreadnoughts scoring, taking the scoring burden off the solodins, allowing them free rein to go after deck chair units, vehicles with their hammers or act as tar pits. They performed really well in 4/6 games, getting far more than their points cost. In one game the first paladin held up a whole jet seer council for 6 rounds of combat, while the other killed a turboing falcon with his hammer.

It suffers far less from losing a storm raven early. The guys inside are tough enough to weather most things and certainly won't die in the explosion unlike assassins. I use Draigo as a pure beat stick, just turbo his storm raven at the enemy and throw him at anything. Over the 6 games he managed to take a 10 man grey hunter squad and a 10 man blood angel assault squad, both in the first round of each combat.

That said Draigo is the biggest weakness in the army. As the main offensive threat, if he dies then it allows my opponents to go on the offensive which is very difficult to counter with so few models. He is very tough so he doesn't die often and can scare a lot of opponents in to focusing on him (at one game at rapid strike he chased a full 1500 points of tyranids across the board for 6 turns). When he does die it is a major blow, the two times he died at rampage were both down to being boltered to death, as with anything that relies on a good save, all it takes is one turn of bad rolling.

For an experimental list I was really pleased with how it performed at Rampage, I won 4 games convincingly and lost 2 in very close games. One game was down to me failing the only two 2+ saves I had to make all game on a paladin on an objective and the other game was down to forgetting that tesla weapons are ap -.

I unfortunately had to submit my list to war of the roses before I could test this so I am taking a Coteaz + Raven list instead, but I enjoyed this a lot so will look to take it to the next big event I go to afterwards.

GT part 2.

I left this way too long to remember what happened on day 2 except that I had to play probably my worst match up, a near mirror match against Gaz Donnelly at kill points, TWICE. His list is very similar to mine except that where I fill my storm ravens with infantry he just takes venerable dreads. He also doesn't take the razorbacks for his acolytes. I think this means his list suffers from more bad match ups, especially armies like necrons and tau. It does however give him a massive advantage against me.

All my assassins and purifiers don't do anything against an army of only vehicles and the fact that both games were kill points pretty much gave the games away. Some dice rolls certainly didnt help though I will not suggest they were the reason that I lost (but 3 penetrating melta bombs on an already immobilized and weaponless storm raven without killing it does still stick in my mind).

The other game was against Leon Smith's tyranids, I think Leon played a bit too defensively and never really bothered with the objectives, but it did allow him to keep the vp difference down meaning a 16-4 win to me.

I came 38th overall and was pretty disappointed. Losing to Gaz twice in one day at the same mission did take the enjoyment out of the weekend as the last game was a forgone conclusion as soon as I knew the draw.

Hopefully now I have got the bitter taste of defeat out of my mouth I can actually start posting regularly. I have been to both the 1st Rampage heat and a one day tourney in reading since the GT so I will post brief reviews of those and look forward to War of the Roses at the weekend.