WarCon at ATC or how I learned to stop worrying and accept that I suck at this army

Hello all, Josh here. This is my first post on our 40k-nerd collective, and I’ll be talking about how (not) to play War Convocation following my experiences at ATC this year.  

So, why WarCon you ask?  When GW released the new FAQs regarding drop pods, my beloved Sisters of Battle were relegated to moving around on foot or in Rhino-like vehicles that sadly, don’t come for free (fuck you Space Marines).  This meant I could no longer bring sets of four rending heavy flamers or cover ignoring melta guns right where they needed to be; and as this is a competitive tourney and my team wanted to do well, I had to look elsewhere amongst my armies.  

I have a *bit* of a 40k problem you could say; I own large armies of pretty much all factions save Chaos/their pet marines, Tyranids (sold em), and Dark Eldar (sold to Anthony).  Experience wise, I know my Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle and Blood Angels the best, but none of these armies are all too terribly good, and the Drop Pod FAQ killed my Sisters/BA alliance.  Eldar was taken, I don’t know my Tau well enough, and our Eldar player was on the fence run them or Space Marines, so both were out.  I really didn’t want to play Necrons, so competitive wise, I jumped on the free things bandwagon and took my War Convocation army with a pair of allied Inquisitors.

The list was something like this:

WarCon 1849 Points/1850 allowed

AdMech
HQ- Tech Priest with all the free shit (Warlord)

Troops

4x Kataphrons w/ Grav & Flamers

4x Kataphrons w/ Grav & Flamers

Skitarii

Troops

10x Rangers w/ 3x Sniper Rifles & free shit

10x Vanguard w/ 3x Plasma & free shit

Elites

Infiltrators x 5 (w Blasters & Taser Goads)

Ruststalkers x 5 (Razors & Chordclaws)

Ironstrider Ballistari w/ Lascannon

Onager Dunecrawler w/ Icarus Array

Imperial Knight

Knight Crusader (Battle Cannon & Avenger Gatling Cannon, Stormspear Rocket Pod, Heavy Stubber)

Inquisitorial Detachment

Inquisitor Coteaz (best 100 points ever)

Ordo Malleus Inquisitor (Level 1 Psyker, Power Armor, 2x Servo Skulls because I can’t buy him melta bombs)

So, I’m all about the free stuff, however I didn’t even know what most of the free relics did. The Phosphoenix?  S5 AP2 and the one hit causes three hits? Sure, why not, I think I used it once in six games.  The Autocadeuces of Arkhan Land on my Warlord? IWND for him and the unit?  Awesomesauce! Never got to use it.  

This silly damn thing has hundreds of points of free upgrades, and I pretty much didn’t use half of them.  You could say I wasn’t really prepared to play this army; and you would be right.  Prior to ATC, I had used the Canticles of the Omnissiah in two games.  I hadn’t even used the Skitarri’s Doctrina Imperatives until my third game into ATC.  

As a bit of background, ATC is the American Team Championships, the yankee equivalent of Europe’s ETC.  You and four of your dudebros bring five armies, not repeating any factions (IE all SM from the big book are the same faction, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves are separate).  Your team plays against another team and there is a bit of strategy involved. The captains basically roll off, you put out defenders, they pick attackers, yada yada yada, and after seeing the opposing teams’ lists you either choose to sacrifice one or figure who will be hardest for their five armies to match.  

Knowing full well that I would be on the opposite end of best Admech player, I volunteered as tribute several times, and took that sabot round to the chest.  Although I finished with an abysmal 1-5 record, I had six great games, zero dick opponents, and I think if I had played better a 5-1 would have been very reasonable.  

Game One: Adam’s Eldar.  He ran a whole bunch of bikes, three flyers and a Wraithknight. Pretty standard competitive Eldar list, beautifully painted, and a great dude.  I’ll definitely drink beers with Adam down the road.  Game was the relic, Dawn of War Deployment, and I managed to go first which enabled me to kill off his Wraithknight with my grav and wear down his bikes a bit.  As the game went on, I stuck his seer star with Invisibility in CC with my Inquisitor and some Kataphrons, they eventually won out and snatched the relic on like turn five.  We went to seven, and although I had slay the warlord, first blood and progressives by a bit, he won overall with the relic and line breaker.  I should have been way more aggressive, I could have moved some of my dunestrider dudes (+3” to all my moves? America Fuck Yeah!) to the relic then bubble wrapped it in my deployment zone for a win.  Great, fun game, and I learned a bit.  

Game two was against a Tau list with a Stormsurge, Riptide Wing, some drones, buffmander and a couple sky rays.  I managed to steal the initiative but again, I wasn’t aggressive enough. I managed to kill the Stormsurge but I didn’t stab the shooty with my stabby and lost the game by a decent margin.  Fun player, good attitude, and I enjoyed the game. More learning.

Game three was another Tau list, this one had a Stormsurge, more Riptide wing, a buffmander and a bunch of missile Broadsides and two squads of Kroot.  I was more aggressive and I remembered that Skitarri can scout in their formation (oh yeah…) I stole the initiative again and the grav put some hurt on his Riptides, due to the Hammer/Anvil deployment, I stayed the hell out of the Broadside’s range as best as I could, put bodies on the middle table progressive and managed to wear him down, coming away with my first (and only) win.  If it weren’t for stealing the initiative I think it would have been very close.  The aggression paid off, a lesson that didn’t stick…

Day two; starting early (like 8 am or some such nonsense)

Game One:

Traitor Guard

So I had read about this list in Imperial Armour: The Siege of Vraks; basically its a bunch of plague zombies (4+ FNP, fearless FTW!), 2x3 quad mortars, 2x Basilisks, some allied daemons to sacrifice themselves/summon greater unclean ones and artillery tyrant warlord dude plus a Chaos Knight with dual avenger gatling cannons.  The basic strategy is this:  park artillery in the back, keeping aware of their minimum range; front line is a big bubble of fearless meat shields, the Pink Horrors give up first blood to bring in Great Unclean Ones to wreck face and counter charge, step two shoot things, step three profit.  I knew this would be a challenge for me; he has almost no armor saves (other than the artillery) and as such gives exactly zero fucks about my grav.  His zombies are fearless in big blobs with 4+ FNP, so anything that isn’t S6 or higher isn’t much a concern, and the quad mortars/basilisks/Chaos Knight put down wounds like motherfuckingchampions.  The artillery tyrant has this neat trick: he can drop rounds onto his own dudes in close combat.  So you get close enough to charge his fearless blobs with 4+FNP hoping to work through them? Cool, here comes the steel rain! I managed to kill one GUO but the other charged me and wrecked face, he got off Warpspeed (I think…) for crazy high initiative and instant death on his close combat attacks.  By the end of the game all my dudes were dead save the Knight, and for funsies we were playing dueling Knights; his against mine.  The loyalist won the shootout, but I conceded max points as he would have worn him down had he shot any of his remaining artillery or charged with the GUO.  Fun game, really dug the theme and it was cool to see the traitor guard/artillery tyrant on the table top.  I should have been a lot more aggressive and gotten within his minimum artillery range.  Oh well.

Game Two

Flyers. Flyers everywhere.  So we had played this team last year, and their captain, in proper Canadian fashion, was the nicest guy in the state.  The list was basically a chapter master, some grav cannons, a few troops in drop pods plus a land speeder. Everything else was flying in wings, ignoring cover or getting tank hunter or what have you.  I was sacrificed to the altar of the flying god, and it hurt.  There were at least two Stormravens and at least six Stormtalons in the formations; they came to kick my ass and succeeded.  None of our teams could handle that many flyers, so I took it standing up.  I think I put a few hull points on a couple fliers, and killed a couple marines; and got my nuts kicked squarely in.

Game Three

Iron Hands shenanigans: He had the invincible 2+ FNP chapter master with home boys on bikes, the three Vindicator Formation, 3x Land Speeders, 2x Stormtalons, and the 10th Company scout formation.  Great dude, expertly played his army.  It should have been much closer, but I wasn’t paying attention when he briefed me on the army, and his apocalyptic S10 ignores cover blast wrecked my face.  I should have killed the damn Vindicators first turn.  I scored a few points, and held his biker death star in CC for a couple turns thanks to some lucky saves, but in the end being too defensive bit me in the ass; half my grav Kataphrons just sat in the back on an end game (NOT progressive) objective, neither scoring nor killing.  Another fun, crushing loss.

Last year I went 3-3 with a Sisters of Battle/Blood Angels army.  I took a much more competitive army and went 1-5.  I think it’s safe to say the field at ATC was much more competitive than in 2015; the teams were either hard anti-meta (16 Fire Raptors?! WTF Chicago Kamikaze!) or a somewhat standard Eldar/Tau/SM/Choice4/Choice5.  As I prepare for NOVA in about a month, I have decided to run what I know: Sisters of Battle MSU with a few Inquisitors (and retinue) plus a Culexus Assassin.  It isn’t a top tier army, but I know how to play it and I know it’s tricks.  Also Repressors are fuck awesome models and this is an excuse to buy more and paint the damn things.