Grey Knights AND Thousand Sons? 2v2 Playtesting Battle Report
Last time, I talked about how I went about making my 1000 point Grey Knights list. I also talked about how I really didn’t get to use it, as I got swept away pretty quickly. Luckily for me, the Balance Dataslate came out, tweaking a bunch of abilities for various units. For me, it now means that my Grey Knights have better saving rolls as they reduce the armor penetration of weapons against them by 1.
With the Dataslate changes, and the fact that it came out like 2 days before our league night, we decided to skip a week and have a “playtesting” week. Then, whatever list we used the next week would be our “locked in” list. Awesome. Since I didn’t really get to try my list, I took advantage of this and wanted to try the list again before making any changes. Just a reminder of what I brought to the table:
Brother-Captain
Brotherhood Librarian
Brotherhood Terminator Squad x2
Dreadknights x2
Playtesting Round: 2v2 Psyker Fest
Since we were playtesting, we decided to make things fun - a 2v2 battle! I thought it would be hilarious to pair up with the Thousand Sons player I played in Round 2 against 2 Aeldari players. You know, two forces that *totally* would work together, those Grey Knights and Thousand Sons…
We also decided to try out the new Tempest of War cards that Games Workshop has put out. These cards let you randomize different layouts and primary objectives for when you play. Then, you draw up a “battle rule”, which is a change to the normal rules for just this game. For instance, re-rolls cost 2 CP instead of 1 CP. Stuff like that. For us, we just got an extra objective on the board to deal with. The next part of the Tempest of War cards are that each side gets a “Secondary Objectives” deck. At the end of each turn, you can discard the secondary objectives that you have and draw new ones next turn. Really neat concept.
The board setup was not that different from last week: we deploy in opposite corners, with one objective in each deployment zone. Normally, there would be 1 objective in the center and one in the other two corners, but because of the Tempest cards we had another objective in that “No Man’s Land”. This time, I decided to deploy everything at the start and not hold anything back.
What do you mean, no invuln save?
One of the Aeldari players had a tank, and they moved in position to strike. Naturally, my 2 Dreadknights steal the show as everyone wants to get rid of them as soon as possible, so he targets one of them. Normally I’m not super worried as the Dreadknights are pretty tough, but the opponent uses CP for a stratagem that makes his tank’s gun blast not capable for an invuln save. For those who don’t play 40K, a lot of the heavy weapons have penalties to armor saves that would normally make it possible to roll high enough on a D6. Invuln save is for those armored units that can take a bit more than normal units.
So the tank slices right through one of my Dreadknights. Doesn’t kill it…yet, but it is very close. Once it gets to our turn, my sights are now set on the tank. Anything that can cleave through a Dreadknight like that needs to die immediately. Plus, the secondary objectives we drew that turn wanted us to take an objective in our opponent’s deployment zone.
Did someone say Gate of Infinity?
Heck yeah - time to teleport some units to the other side of the field. Randomness strikes again though, and only the Librarian makes it to the deployment zone. See that lone figure in the distance of that tank picture? Yeah…not looking good for him. I don’t remember if I managed to completely take out the tank, but the librarian did put a hurting on him thanks to a couple of new psychic powers that give me bonuses attacking units when they go off. So he still packed a decent punch, but he *is* a Terminator, so what do you expect?
Speaking of Terminators, at this point I decide to go with the mob mentality. Thousand Sons are moving into “No Mans Land”. He pushes a bunch of Terminators and Rubric Marines towards the objective close to us while targeting the Aeldari that are on the next closest point. I decided to back him up with the rest of my list. So now there’s a crap load of Terminators and 2 Dreadknights pointed at this objective.
Did someone say Terminators?
That objective was cleared pretty quickly. But, remember how my Dreadknights are giant targets? One of them was already smoking and the other one is now on an objective marker, so under a lot of focus fire they were quickly knocked out. The Aeldari players tried to take out my Brotherhood Terminator Squad that was on the point too, but one Terminator remained on the field to hold the point. That guy was a resilient one, as several other attacks went his way but he managed to survive long enough for the Thousand Sons Terminators to move in and provide backup.
Where was my second squad of Terminators? We needed objective markers, and that squad was still in range of the centermost point. So I pivoted them towards the center to take out some Aeldari hovercraft thingies. Or at least I was going to try to…
It was at this point the store had to close. Really hard to tell at this point who was “winning” since there were a lot of units left on the board and pretty even on the objectives front. So we’ll chalk this up to a draw. Was still a ton of fun to play regardless.
What did I learn?
The list is pretty good, but could use a few more tweaks
The Tempest of War deck is really fun! A great way to play the game if you are just meeting up and playing with some folks. Now I just need to get a set for myself.
Doesn’t really matter if it makes sense lore wise if everyone’s having fun (I lied, I already knew this, but it's worth saying anyways).
What's the matchup that's the weirdest to play from a lore perspective? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.