Control: 40k Results

I, Dalton Lewis, took some much-wanted time off to play Warhammer 40k Friday night and all day Saturday. I hadn’t played more than one game a week for the last four weeks and nothing before that for six months or so. Before this weekend I had played my ad mech for four games and lost all four. I know — I shouldn’t quit because I lost. It just seemed like I was chasing the meta by playing ad mech because they got new units and had shiny new rules. I switched back to my beloved Chaos Knights for this weekend.

I played Gregory on Friday night. He’s a friend of mine who plays me once a week when we can fit a game in. I had been losing to him the last few weeks. He plays a possessed bomb with twenty possessed. He also has three obliterators and 10 havocs, four with lascannons and four with missiles, and he hides them well. He had a daemon prince and a host of buffing characters and some cultists sitting on objectives. He also had eight or so berserkers sitting in a rhino, ready to truck around the battlefield.

He positioned his possessed bomb aggressively, hoping for a turn one charge thanks to warptime, his psychic ability to let him move twice.

“I’m sorry if there’s not enough terrain,” I said.

“No, it’s fine,” he said. He had places to hide his havocs and characters but not his possessed bomb.

I rolled to go first and won the roll.

“Good luck, have fun,” I said.

I played with three chaos knights despoiler, one with double thermal, one with double gatling, and one with double rapid fire battle cannon. I also played with a war dog with autocannons and two war dogs with thermal spears and chain cleavers. I immediately shot at the possessed bomb with my rapid fire battle cannon and avenger gatling cannon and did excellent damage, killing half the possessed or so. The thermal knight and the war dogs finished the rhino and killed a couple of the eight berserkers. All in all I liked the alphas strike my army could do against an aggressive opponent.

He fought back. His daemon prince killed a knight with diabolical strength and the relic talons. The obliterators then deep struck onto the battlefield and did some damage. Still I persisted. I managed to kill most of the havocs and then charge in and kill most of his characters — which was an important progressive objective. I stopped his berserkers from doing much because they didn’t start in the middle of the board because they didn’t have a rhino because I destroyed it.

I found that I liked my reaper chain-cleaver war dogs. They did good damage in melee and shot pretty well. I might add some more to the list. Overall the game went well. Gregory didn’t know how to play against chaos knights.

Game one: win.

The following morning I had to wake up early and forgo writing in favor of going to a wargaming tournament in Terry’s backyard. I drew the imperial knights player game one. We played under a canopy. He had a cooler with water and beer and hot dogs and brats for lunch — as well as potato chips and tortilla chips and salsa and some veggies and dip.

The imperial knights player didn’t get first turn — I got first turn again. His big knight in the middle had 26 wounds, and I did 25 wounds to him, losing me any chance of victory. I should have positioned to do more damage to him, getting into melta range or something. He then used an ability which let him act as if he wasn’t injured and did massive damage with that knight. He blew up my knight, and I exploded, killing his knight. His knight then exploded, killing a second of my three big knights and taking away too much firepower.

Game two: loss.

Then we had lunch and relaxed.

After lunch I drew one of the best players who always has excellent lists. This time the list was nine myphic blight-haulers which were designed to kill big things. My list was all big things so this was a nightmare matchup. He managed to do ridiculous damage to me. The blight haulers were resurrected if I didn’t finish off a unit of three of them — which I didn’t know. He did too much damage to me. I got 35 points but nothing near what he got. I was a little depressed after this game and expected to lose all three games.

Game three: loss.

My final game was against a necron player I always enjoy playing. We argued over who had the least points and he won. He placed out his units to have a good shot at me, but he couldn’t do very much damage — I rolled hot on my saves, he targeted a big knight, and he couldn’t finish it off. I immediately tried to take down his destroyers, which were his heavy hitters. I also shot a doom scythe with some thermal cannons because the doom scythes didn’t have a save against that. His doomsday arks didn’t do as much damage as I expected so I got lucky there. I charged in with a reaper chain-cleaver guy and my double thermal warlord, and my army fought in melee much better than his, so I bullied him off of some objectives and got the all-important domination secondary.

His destroyers didn’t kill enough before I finished them off. My autocannon war dog does three damage and they have three wounds so that was a natural target. Taking the center of the board really helped me to do well.

Game four: win.

All in all 2–2 for the weekend isn’t too bad. I’m happy with the result — I had been losing every game, and now I’m not losing every game. I just hope that I can do better going forward.

Thanks, and take care, friends.