The Preferred Enemy

So coming up in three weeks will be Dudracon, where I'm fairly sure I'll go play in the one day 1500 40k tournament.  I mentioned this earlier but here is the context of the event trimmed from the website.

Create an army of no more than 1,500 points with one Standard Force Organization chart. Allies, fortifications, and Forgeworld rules will not be allowed.

Tournament scoring will be based on the following:
Battle Points
Army Appearance
Sportsmanship

Battle Points are the accumulation of the Victory Points earned by each player over the three rounds of play. Army Appearance will be scored by voting of the tournament players. Sportsmanship will be scored based on ranking of the opponents played over the course of the (3) round tournament.

Awards will be given in the following categories:

Best General: Most wins over the course of the tournament with accumulation of Victory Points being the tie-breaker.

Best Army: Player with the most points accumulated for army appearance voting.

Best Sportsman: Player with the most points accumulated from opponents played with accumulation of Victory Points being the tie-breaker.

So no allies and fortifications has a few different implications.  There will not be a super harlie star.  We will see less farseers.   There will be no walls, and that means many armies may struggle with Fliers.  A lot of lists that people have been running are simply going to have to be reworked.

Also there is no OVERALL winner.  For me this makes a difference in what I army I would bring.   My bikes might give me a good shot of winning three games, but probably is not going to win best army votes.  If there was an overall where all three aspects were accumulated I don't think my 'paint' score would hurt me, but it is simply not going to be the best army there.  My thousand sons might net me some best army votes, but it has less chance of winning 3 games.  Plus it isn't just when 3 games, you have to do a lot of killing to accumulate those VPs.  So could I make take an army purely based on looks and go for that catagory and just give up on winning games?  :p

So first on my plate is to look at the Space Marine Bike army and see what we need to do.

Here is the 1750 list.

Captain, Bike, PF, Adamantite, Storm Shield
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
5 Scouts, Camo cloaks, Missile Launcher, Sniper Rifles, Telion
3 Attack Bikes (MM)
3 Attack Bikes (MM)
Eldar Farseer, Jetbike, Runes
3 Garudian Jetbikes
Aegis with Quad Gun

The Captain is pretty resilient but I wouldn't call him a beast in CC at all.  It has 6 scoring units, 5 of them fairly fast.  It has Anti Teq/Meq and bolters for hordes, plus enough MM for vehicles.   The quad gun helps with fliers as does the rest of the shooting.  The Farseer is wonderful anti psy.

Here are a few things I've noticed in the last year of playing this list competitively.

-Armies that drop on top of you can be problems.  Daemons, Drop Pods, and Spore mines have caused me problems.   I probably just need to remember to zoom zoom away but it always isn't that easy.

-The wall can be an unhelpful anchor that I'm unwilling to zoom away from when units drop on me.   It is a 250 pt investment, the most expensive 'unit' if you look at it this way.  So in some ways I wonder if I need to 'free myself of the wall.'

-The quad gun has seen some high points (scaring fatewaver off the board on the drop), and done ok a few games, but largely is inconsequential.  There is nothing more frustrating that not having a target to shoot, or worse, seeing the quad gun killed turn one before the opponents fliers show on the board.

-The farseer is amazing against bugs.  Against other eldar he is helpful, but since usually that means Eldrad usually the key Fortune is going to go off in two tries.  Against most other armies he is just not so helpful with the bikes because either there is no Psycher or the powers that help the most (like GK) are for CC.  If I'm in CC with GKs the farseer is not going to save me.

-The attack bikes have been less and less helpful as we move through 6th edition.  I have seen FAR more list that have 2 or less vehicles on the ground.  That makes that attack bike spam a bit less helpful.

Ok you say, given the above reasoning and the 'rules' we've been given let's pull the Eldar and the Aegis.  We've just saved 291 points, or brought our list down to 1559.

Captain, Bike, PF, Adamantite, Storm Shield
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
5 Scouts, Camo cloaks, Missile Launcher, Sniper Rifles, Telion
3 Attack Bikes (MM)
3 Attack Bikes (MM)

The question that remains is are the scouts still valuable?  They do add a 5th scoring unit, but without the wall we are going to have to hope for some good cover.  That's not unlikely in a tournament but given the non mobility of the unit, and the fact that Telion's super usefull BS 5 for the quad gun are not needed, we could drop them and save another 150 points roughly.

Captain, Bike, PF, Adamantite, Storm Shield
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
3 Attack Bikes (MM)
3 Attack Bikes (MM)

The questions now become:
Do I have enough scoring at 1500?
Can I down fliers reliably?
Do the Attack bikes do enough?

So off the bat if we just drop the Attack bikes altogether that is another 300 points.   That means we've got several things we can consider.

Libby on a bike- with Biomancy he can be nasty himself, or just help his squad stay alive that much longer.

More troops- adding another troop squad seems to always answer problems!

Add a Storm Talon- I really never looked at this guy much and had my first game against one the other week where it preformed admirably.  For roughly 150 points you get some decent fire power in the form of a flier.  It is only AV11 so that stinks, but it can put out enough pain to deal with armor or troops alike which is appealing.  It could add a little anti air that I've lost with no quad gun.  AND in this mission we know it wont get shot down on my turn it arrives.

Captain, Bike, PF, Adamantite, Storm Shield
Libby, Bike, Power Axe
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
4 Bikes (2 Plasma, 1 Combi Plasma) + 1 Attack Bike (MM)
Storm Talon, Lascannons

1500 points on the nose.  I think it works for this event pretty well.  It brings the firepower, has scoring bodies, can shoot bodies and armor, and has two HQs that add some depth to the list.  It also isn't a huge departure from what I've been playing the last 12 months so that is always helpful.

I'm hoping I'll get in a test game before the event, but the best part is what I need to paint.

The librarian I decided to knock out last week.  He's looking ok, but Frankie's Pys Hood conversion is definitely more ghetto now that it is painted.

Then I need to paint 4 more bikes.  Easy peasy, I'll work on that now.

And lastly the Storm Talon.  As I pointed out yesterday this is already airbrushed so that is pretty much the hard part.  At worst I can paint some details, the Pilot, add a few decals, base it, and it will probably look great.  I'm not sure if I want to even try to do some of the lining I did on the guys as it will probably look silly with the airbrush work.

I'm hoping I can knock that all out this week and this will be my plan A for Dundracon.

Coming up next... what about a Dual Helldrake army?