Warhammer 40k: DieCon Gateway Grand Tournament 2015 Results

Overall Winner Andy Ford's Amazing Eldar/Imperial Knight Army Converted to Appear as Necrons.

The final standings were as follows:

Overall Winner: Andy Ford (Eldar/Imperial Knights)

2nd Overall: Adam Warnecke a.k.a. Capnmoe (Eldar/Imperial Knights)

3rd Overall: (Tau/Tyranids)

Best General: Eric Darrais (Eldar)

Best Painted: Tobias (Space Marines/Imperial Knights)

Sportsmanship: Dustin Beck (Grey Knights)

Eldar and Imperial Knights ruled the day. There was even an Eldar list that had 5 Wraithknights. I must say, I expected that list to completely run away with the win. To my, and I would imagine many other's surprise, he was tabled in the first round and started the day with a 0. All of the top Eldar lists contained a Farseer, jet bikes, and a Wraithknight. While the odd man Tau/Tyranids list had 3 Riptides, 3 Skyrays, and 3 flying Hive Tyrants. All brutal lists to say the least.

Capnmoe was running his Eldar/Imperial Knights Combo

Bill Keys was running his Astra Militarum

Full lists and game summaries after the jump.

Capnmoe's List

HQ
Farseer - Jetbike, Singing Spear

Troops
3x Windrider Jebikes
3x Windrider Jebikes
3x Windrider Jebikes
3x Windrider Jebikes
4x Windrider Jebikes

Lord of War
Wraithknight

Baronial Court
Cerastus Knight-Lancer – Sanctuary
Knight Errant
Knight Paladin 

Bill Keys's List

HQ

Company Command Squad - 2x Sniper Rifle, Lascannon Team, Officer of the Fleet

Commissar

Ministorum Priest

Ministorum Priest (Warlord)

Primaris Psyker - Lv2

Troops

Infantry Platoon

• 50x Conscripts
• Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon Team
• Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon Team
• Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon Team
• Platoon Command Squad - 3x Flamer,Heavy Flamer
• Sabre Weapons Battery Lascannons - 3x Extra Crew

Veterans -  3x Meltagun

Fast Attack

Valkyrie

Vendetta

Heavy Support

Wyvern Battery - 2 Wyverns

Lord of War

Shadowsword - 2x Lascannon/Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Capnmoe's Summary of Games

The games were played with a Primary Objective, Secondary Objective, and Bonus Objectives. Primary and Secondary were worth 10 for a win, 5 for a tie, and 0 for a loss. Bonus Objectives were worth 2 points a piece for a total of 26 points. If you tabled your opponent you were awarded 5 extra points and given on more turn to capture objectives. Max points in a round were 30.

Capnmoe Game 1: Blood Angels/Space Wolves

The missions were progressive objectives in the table quarters, which you scored starting at the beginning of your turn 2, and control the center objective at the end of the game. As you can see from the picture, this army had 9 drop pods. My opponent had turn 1 and decided to drop 3 pods onto objectives and 3 pods in front of the Lancer in hopes of killing it before it got a chance to do anything. Sadly he forgot to combat squad his units before the game started so he was forced to keep them in units of 10. After all was said and done he brought the Lancer down to 1 hull points. During my turn the Errant headed over and took out the Space Wolves. He would hold that objective the rest of the game. The other 2 Imperial Knights and the Wraithknight assaulted the units of Blood Angels which they all eventually killed off. Luckily for me they were all still in combat when his second round of pods came in. He was unable to shoot me and that was his downfall. I would jump from combat to combat slowly killing off all but his flyer, a drop pod, and 1 space marine by the end of the game on turn 5. We tied the Primary because his drop pods were snagging points almost the entire game, I won Secondary, and I took all 3 Bonus Objectives. The game ended 21-5.

Capnmoe Game 2: Necrons

The missions were modified kill points and modified maelstroms. You were awarded 2 kill points for every section of the force org chart that you cleared from your opponents primary detachment as well as 1 point for each kill. Unfortunately for me that meant I gave up 8 points at the start of the game. My opponent was running 3 units of 6 wraiths plus 6 more in the Canoptek Harvest formation for a massive total of 24 Wraiths. There wasn't really much that I could do in this game other than die and pray I got some good stomps. It would be me who was stomped in the end sadly. I lost this game 4-26. I still managed to eek out line breaker and solo blood for 4 bonus points.

Capnmoe Game 3: Necrons

The mission was the relic and control table quarters at the end of the game by having more victory points worth of models in the quarter. This was an odd game to say the least. My opponent was running the Necron Decurion which gave him reanimations on a 4+ in a Silver Tide style army. It was basically just a bunch of walking Necron Warriors and Immortals. Tons of gauss weapons on the table glancing me on 6's. I figured I would loose this miserably and it was going to be the end of my chance at winning the tournament. Fortunately, I won first turn. I cast Invisibility on the Wraithknight and had him pick up the relic. Shooting would see me kill most of a unit of Warriors. After I questioned him on a couple of his rules for reanimation, he got standoffish and decided to pull the whole unit off the board. After I told him multiple times, "that wasn't necessary, I just want to make sure we have the rules straight", he insisted that he still was going to do it. In his turn he slowly started moving forward. I understand that moving all of those models takes a long time. But it was pretty obvious that he was slow playing. We were 50 minutes into the round and he decided to stop 2/3rds of the way through his movement phase to mull over where to move the last unit of 15 Warriors. After about 5 minutes of "mulling it over", he looked at me and said I quit. He promptly stood up and walked out. I called over the T.O. and told him what happened. He went out to find the gentlemen and after speaking with him, ruled it as a tabling in my favor. I was awarded 30 points for the game. I guess my opponent didn't think he had any chance of winning against an invisible Wraithknight.

Capnmoe Game 4: Eldar

The mission was modified maelstroms and straight up kill points. The Knights did some work this game and I killed off all but 3 of my opponents units. The Lancer held up his Wraithknight in combat for 3 rounds before he cut it down. That allowed my other units to roam the board destroying everything without having to worry about the dirty D weapons the Wraithknight had. I won my last game 26-0.

My total game points for the day were 81. I knew there were other people ahead of me in points so I figured I was out of the running. When they announced the winners I was completely stunned to hear my named called as 2nd place overall. How did I manage this you may be asking yourself, I know I was. Turns out that painting your models well really pays off. My armies painting score had boosted me almost all the way to the top. I got a sweet trophy and took home some great prizes. My luck at DieCon continued as this was the 3rd year in a row that I was somewhere in the winners bracket. Maybe next year I can bring home 1st place.

Bill Keys's Summary of Games

​Game 1: Eldar

This game would be the downfall of the tournament for me (as far as having a shot at winning).  Things were looking fine as we deployed and then he siezed.  On his first turn he moved forward with some Jetbikes, a Wraith Knight, and two Wave Serpents.  In his shooting phase he choose to first shoot one shot of his Wraith Knight at my super heavy and one shot at a Wyvern.  He proceded to one shot my Shadowsword which then blew up, scattered, and took out my warlord in the thirty man blob.  They mostly died and the rest ran off the table.  That single shot was 44% of my army points wise.  He then shot the rest of his army.  Ugh!  On turn 3 I had a single flyer left on the board and I conceded the game.  Score was 0-30.

Game 2: White Scars

My game 2 was vs Alex Naumann and his White Scars bike spam list.  This game went much better than game 1.  It turns out gaurdsman with a 5+ are pretty good againt grav bikes.  To top matters off, the Shadowsword decided to trully shine and wipped out his Librian turn 1.  The true star of this game, however, was the Wyverns.  The wyverns killed no less one unit per turn (usually a full unit of bikes).  I tabled my opponent on turn 5 and was able to achieve max points for a score of 30-0.

Game 3: Gaurd on Gaurd action

I was most pleased to be facing the closest thing to another pure gaurd list at the entire event.  A gentleman named Mark (usually plays at Heroic) brought a Pask list, a few Basiliks, some Chimeras, some Tauruxes, and some Inquisition (Coteaz!!!).  The mission was Relic and table quarters.  My Conscripts with the brave and fearless priest ran to the relix and held it the entire game.  Things were fairly dicey at first as his tanks and artillery unloaded into the super heavy and brought it to one hull point by turn two.  Superheavies are much faster than the title implies though and I was able to keep it alive for two more turns and, while doing so, use its D blast to kill Pask and his basiliks.  He still kept in the fight and was able to charge into the consripts with Coteaz, now weakened to one wound by perils of the warp, and very nearly wipe them out and take the relic.  The game was then decided by my Platoon command squad charging in on the last turn and getting to lay alot of attacks into Coteaz with his single remaining wound.  Coteaz died and the enemy squad ran.  This game ended with me winning 26-0 or 26-2 (he might have had linebreaker).  

Game 4: Triple Knights with Gaurd

My final game was vs Joesph.  Joesph was playing three knights, one of which was something i was praying not to face: The Acheron.  The Acheron features a hell storm template str 7 ap 3 blob roasting flame cannon.  Thats not good when you are running 80+ toughness 3 models with a 5+ save.  No cover, no armor, no nothing.  Just death.  I won the roll to decide who was to set up first and I made him set up first.  Joesph made then, what I feel, was a fatal error.  He set up his knights fairly evenly spaced accross his dawn of war deployment zone with the Acheron on a far flank.  Seeing this, I decided to throw my normal deployment plan for the mission out the window and instead castled up on an objective that was as far from this abonomation as possible.  To keep my forces even safer, I outflanked a priest with the 50 conscripts so they would have no chance to be roasted early on.  Joesph decided he wanted to go first and I rolled a 6 and stole that right from him.  I put a few hull points on the Acheron turn 1 and killed it turn 2.  The beast never got a single shot off!  The rest of the game featured my manuvaring of the super heavy slowly away from the rest of army as two knights came head long for it.  His warlord knight did finally kill it but was destroyed by the resulting explsion.  At this point the only thing that saved him from being tabled was his charging of his last knight into my now on the table consript blob.  A fearless 50 man unit will tie up a knight for a long time and prevent anything from shotting said knight for just as long.  While those units fought, I cleared the rest of the table and captured every point possible.  In the end I won maelstorm by a landside, kill points by a very small margin (2 I believe), and had all three bonus objectives.  Final score was 26-0.

Overall I am very happy with my showing.  I brought a single source CAD of, what I think many would agree, a not tip top book (gaurd is good but it is not Eldar, Space Marines, Deamons, etc).  I finished with 82 battle points (1 more than Adam in case you didn't notice) and either 5th or 6th place overall.  My painting held me back as I had many models that were at a 3 color stage with 2 more colors on the base.  I had more models on the table than any other player (total of 119, next closest was an ork player with just shy of 100 models).  I had a blast and minus one horrible bit of luck in game 1 I think I did very well.  Next year, my painting will not hold me back.  I promise this to myself and to everyone.

Bonus Pics from the Weekend