Last time, I talked about how we got a week to playtest things and modify our 1,000 point lists in light of the new Balance Dataslate changes. Now that I had at least played the first list, I had some ideas on how to tweak it. Now, we are back to games that matter for the league, so time to get my game face on.

First, I needed to revamp my list and give it the extra boost it needed. If you’ll recall in a previous post, I had 2 Brotherhood terminators, a Brother-Captain, a Brotherhood Librarian, and 2 Nemesis Dreadknights. I had used the Prescient Brethren Brotherhood, since their special psychic power meant that a targeted unit took damage every time it moved. Between the first 1000 point game where only the Dreadknights made it to Round 3, and the playtest game where they made great distractions, I had a plan.

Dreadknights. All the Dreadknights.

I knew that 3 Dreadknights was pretty standard for the Grey Knights “meta”. Almost every list I saw posted somewhere had at least 3 Dreadknights on them. Which is why I bought 2 between last escalation league and this one to complement the 1 I had already. I hadn’t put 3 in this 1000 point list originally because they were so expensive. However, I had said something about this at league night and someone said “Just swap out your Warlord for a Grand Master Dreadknight.”

Oh.

OH!

So Brother-Captain is gone, now replaced with a Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight. Which then gives me a whole bunch of new abilities I hadn’t had before. In previous games, I always saw people saying “Ok I need a 3+ but I reroll 1s” when they went to attack and wondered why so many armies had that ability. The Grand Master now allowed me to do that for “Core” units that were within range of the Warlord. So now I’m rolling up with 3 Dreadknights.

Another thing I noticed is that several of the tournament listings had Grey Knights with the “Swordbearers” Brotherhood. Their psychic power buffs attacks by vehicles, but I’m never really using more than 2 vehicles so I always thought it was a waste. Then I realized: Dreadknights are considered vehicles.

Oh.

OH!

Swordbearers it is. Decided to keep the Librarian, and I gotta have a squad of Terminators. That didn’t leave much left points wise, so I decided to swap out the second unit of Terminators for a Strike Squad. Spent the remaining points outfitting the librarian with a relic: Fury of Deimos. This way he could put in some decent damage while staying back and casting spells. Group photo time!

Round 6: Grey Knights vs Black Legion

I was a bit relieved that I was playing Chaos Space Marines this early in the league. Their Codex should be coming out any day now, giving them some much needed buffs. At the time of this game, his Marines were still only 1 wound a piece. Perfect for picking them apart with psychic spells and mortal wounds. Hopefully, this means I won’t have to play him again towards the end of the league when his army has plenty of new goodies.

This was also one of the first games I played after starting to read the Horus Heresy novels from Games Workshop. So when my opponent threw out his Black Legion, led by none other than Abbadon, I was excited and terrified. Excited because it was a character model that I actually knew who they were. Yet terrified because I knew this meant he would have a ton of cool special effects and powers.

You mean people don’t just drop models wherever?

This was probably the first game where I started having a strategy before I deployed my units. This might seem like an obvious thing for people who have played awhile, but I’m still pretty dumb to these things. In fact, I still managed to screw up my own strategy with my deployment. So some improvement, but still a long way to go.

The plan was to drop all the Dreadknights in the middle, then have them charge forward and be the first line against the enemy. My Grand Master Dreadknight had been upgraded with a bunch of bonuses for charging ahead. Yet, I put the other two Dreadknights in front of him, so later in the game when I realized he should be charging in first to give those buffs out, he couldn’t get around the other Dreadknights. I should have put him in the front, with the other Dreadknights behind him. Oops.

For the remaining units, I would have the terminators teleport and provide cover and/or take objectives. The strike squad and librarian would hold back and keep “our zone” secure. I screwed this up as well. I put these two units together on the same side of the board, with the terminators on the second objective. However, once I teleported the Terminators away, that side of the board was now empty and I had to get someone from the left to the right side of the board to cover that spot. Oops again.

But what about the battle?

I’m getting there. This was a battle where those hindsights were taken advantage of and basically told the story. The Black Legion moved forward, going all in on the Dreadknights as I expected him too. By Round 2, he was smoking pretty bad. Luckily, I managed to get a Gate of Infinity off to teleport in the Terminators to provide some support. However, the idea was to get them in the middle of the battlefield so they could cover the side I wasn’t charging. This way my opponent couldn’t just run up that side of the board. Yet there wasn’t much room that was 9” away from enemies in the area I wanted, so I had to do some creative positioning to get them in range.

See that ledge behind the terminators? One of the minis had to be sitting on it so that they were out of range. This photo was taken on the next turn where I was able to shift them over slightly. Keeping the Terminators in the middle of the battlefield also meant they were perfect for performing my psychic secondary objective for some points.

Having reservations about this game

What I forgot about, though, was that he had some units in reserve. This meant that he could bring them in starting on Round 2. It also meant he could put them anywhere on the board, just 9” away from any of my units. I just left him a huge hole on my side of the field, AND there was an objective marker there. Oops.

Now you see why I had to get the librarian over to that side of the board ASAP. Not only to cover that point, but to first clear the point of Chaos Marines. At least the Strike Squad was there to provide extra shooting, and the Librarian had the ability to cast 2 spells to deal out mortal wounds. Remember, each Marine was 1 wound a piece, so while frustrating, it was manageable.

Paint it Black

Time to deal with that pesky Abbadon. With one Dreadknight low on health, I kept him back to hold onto the 3rd objective marker. Also, I was able to place him offset on the marker and have him close enough to the center of the battlefield to finish the psychic ritual secondary objective. That freed up the remaining Dreadknights and the Terminator squad to charge in and engage the enemy in melee.

While I had 3 units available to attack Abbadon himself, I rolled well enough on the charge that I was able to circle him and 2 other units. Given his special abilities, I was tempted to just focus fire everyone on Abbadon, but I decided on a different approach. I started with the Terminators, hoping that everything would go my way and they'd kill the group of marines they were engaged with. It worked, so then I hoped my warlord could stop out Abbadon. Then the second Dreadknight would take out the second character he was engaged with. Worst case, I could use the second Dreadknight to finish off Abbadon.

The odds were apparently in my favor, because all 3 attacks went off as best as I could have hoped. Each unit killed the primary target it was engaged with, leaving little left of the Black Legion by the time they were done. At this point, my opponent conceded, leaving me with my second win of the league!!

What did I learn?

Having a plan is great, but that also means you have to deploy the plan correctly.
Chaos Space Marines are going to be nasty when they level up to 2 wounds.
Is Abbadon supposed to sound like "A bad one?" Or is that just me?

Have you ever been the one to screw up your own strategy? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.

I Require Additional DreadKnights: Grey Knights vs. Black Legion Battle Report