Battle Report on my 1st ITC

[SnakeChisler]

We do the odd comp but just local anyway our local club decided to run a proper ITC 3 round 32 player tournament event this past Sunday and with a bit of trepidation I was entered.

 

First off I wasn't into playing the WAC list game and was quite aware that I could take a bit of a pounding just taking a single codex force my plan was to draw a big fish in round 1 and chill on the lower tables.

 

1st off my list

Battalion

Azreal

Ezekiel

Company Ancient + Relic storm bolter

scouts * 3

Hellblasters * 8

Outrider Ravenwing Detachment

Sammael

Talon Master + Monster Slayer

Bike squad 4 man + 2 plasma Guns & Storm Bolter

Bike squad 3 man + 2 plasma Guns & Storm Bolter

Black Knights * 5 

DarkShroud

 

I was going to drop Ezekiel as this had been a 2k list but in the end I went for symmetry and what I felt was 2 compact wings that complemented each other.

 

Game 1 I drew new Marnius Calgar and his merry band of Primaris

My opponent new ITC and was really helpful and we started to deploy, most of the objectives were in the central area and aside from flanking scouts I kept to the middle.

I'd chosen Head Hunter, Kill Characters and defaulted to old school coz I ran out of ideas.

 

With his bubble of medic LT Psyker and re-rolls he decided to let me have 1st turn, OK fine by me I pushed forward using speed of the Raven on BK Sq1 and turboed the BK's intending to use the +1 to hit. 1st turn I was pretty much at range and made sure he couldn't go to town on my force or avoid the -1 bubble. A decent 1st turn saw me score points across the board but not really doing extensive damage, overcharged as usual and killed a unit + took some models from other units.

 

In his turn he went big on score more and poured nearly all his fire from Inceptors Hellblasters (who had Aversion cast on them) and Aggressors into the Black Knights destroying them but at the huge cost of firing his entire army at them.

 

My forces now moved forward the Hellblasters were at double tap range of his inceptors and the bike plasma also had double tap on his Hellblasters, what followed was one of the best shooting turns I've ever had, combined plasma bolter fire  ripped through both Inceptor squads, toasted the Aggressors reduced his Hellblasters from 10 to 4.

 

The next few turns were a rearguard action for the UtraMarines trying to pick off points at the end of the game he had 1 squad at the other end of the table all the characters were gone. T4 when the Hellblasters got into the characters with splitfire overcharge and WOTDA they managed to down most of them.

 

Takeaways isn't a 4++ great and go Aversion + DarkShroud downside was I was going to get a big winner from the other tables anways my 1st ITC win.

 

Round 2 saw me paired against an Ad-Mech Knight force

3 Mini-Knights (2 auto-Cannon 1 Melta) + a thermal cannon bad boy with the usual skank upgrades making it impossible to kill. His other units were fairly different and I thought his list balanced well a couple of dragoons a squad of infiltrators and a squad with the swords.

Deployment was focused on chipping away at the points, my opponent has endured Ezekiel's wrath before and didn't want to play the mind wipe aversion game.

The game played out as expected with me being on the back foot for most of it, the shroud gone 1st turn coz there was no place to truly hide it though it did absorb all the 1st round fire, with the speed of the Ravenwing element I managed to clear out a Mini Knight + Dune Crawler + the 2 Dragoons also killed one of his troop units.

Big problem was the range, the guy played well and didn't try and over extend himself just ticking over on the points.

I'd left Ezekiel in the middle with a bike squad in the end he had to fend for himself and caused absolute mayhem on the 2 infiltrating units before going down in the final turn which basically held up any push he could do as one of the mini Knights had taken 2 mind wipes (some days you get lucky and my model certainly seem to have a Knight grudge)

So small Loss but a really good game

 

Takeaways - play the points game and trust in your characters MOTM Ezekiel.

 

So round 3 saw me drawn with another winner / Looser a really nice Necron army that was pretty elite. 10 Tomb blades with -1 to hit 6 Destroyers, 6 Wraiths a C'Tan a Walker / Spider thing and a squad of fast moving guys with staffs.

T1 went ok but not brilliant I didn't get 1st strike and got the staff guys down to 2 and killed a couple of wraiths, his counter was pretty brutal taking out quite a few bikes, at this point I was in a bit of a hole anyways focused down on the wraiths finally removing them and got the C'Tan down to 4 wounds.

C'tan and staff guys hit back and the destroyers were now in position to lend a hand so now all the bikes were gone + the DS.

At this point I was loosing too many models and decided to go for broke, the Talon Master and Sammeal Jumped over the carnage into the Destroyers faces there was no way I'd survive another fusillade of fire from these guys.

Well the Emperor protects they did a complete number the necrons both C'Tan and staff guys were dead from the hail of fire from the speeders and some backup from the Hellblasters and the assault on the Destroyers killed all 6 Sam's flat damage 2 sword doing a 5 from 5.

From being on the cusp of defeat the Dark Angels were pulling back. The 2 speeders had also been able to pile into the walker.

My opponent went for broke and brought the the tomb blades in close to try and hose down the Hellblasters of which he got 6 then came his big mistake he charged them to try wipe them out, Cue Ezekiel & Azreal with a Heroic intervention. 6 dead tomb blades later he was looking a little ashen as Sammael and the Talon Master had stripped 10 wounds of the Spider to add insult to injury.

 

To add salt into the wounds Azreal finished them off in the next round of combat and Sammael and the Talon Master mopped up backfield while the Ancient decided to get in on the action and killed a load of necron scarabs.

 

My opponent conceded at that point he had 2 scarabs and a cryptek left

 

Takeaways - what swung the game where the characters going big especially the deadly speeder duo, also the solid core of Ezekiel and Azreal are fairly hard case in combat again 2 & 3 damage Plasma ripped through elite high priced models.

 

Overall I finished 9th out of 32 which was a real surprise Top of the pile was Imperial Knights with an Astra /Smash Captain mix 2nd also on 3 wins were 2 Drukhari / Yenarrai lists another of those types of lists was 5th. There were quite a few Knights based lists but the Dark Elves have some sort of Mortal wound output on vehicles which was slagging the big guys left and right.

 

There was another couple of DA Players 1 had 3 flyers they were 14 & 26th.

 

Their's not much I thought I could do with my list to deal with a Mech heavy army which is why I took what I did n the end it was a super durable force that held in and the points gleaned from my Knight - Ad-Mech loss were pivotal in gaining such a high placing .

 

Ezekiel was 135 points well spent in the end aversion being a key factor as well as his combat ability and 2+ armour and the speed of the Black Knights with the added stratagems put a real fear in my opponents. 

[Maxxreloaded]

Great write up , pleasure to read and congrats on the results

[zacret]

+1. Really injoyed it aswell!

[aura_enchanted]

+1 for big zeke. ezekiel is woefully underplayed

[SnakeChisler]

+1 for big zeke. ezekiel is woefully underplayed

I got into fielding him in club games to tone down my lists a bit and run Battalion style stuff but he always pulled his weight while ld 9 the banner pushes it to 10.

 

I've lost count of the number of times my opponent has gone "are you sure" when faced with his stat line and I've a Post-it on his page for quick reference.

 

He is downright odd and I don't blame any opponent one bit for going "what" he's WS & BS 2+ for a start add the artificer 2+ armour & 4++ again his weapons are non standard s5 sword and -1 2D pistol, he's also 5 wounds instead of the standard 4

Your also getting 2 denies as well as a the book of salvation

 

Also any one who has endured Aversion + the Shroud with a marquee squad or unit tends to be overcautios my opponent in the 1St match was running a banner but the Hellblaster's who could shoot back when they died were hitting on 5's

 

I'd advise any DA player to really give him a go

[zacret]

Does Ezekiels book stack with the infantry banner?

[librisrouge]

There were quite a few Knights based lists but the Dark Elves have some sort of Mortal wound output on vehicles which was slagging the big guys left and right.

You're probably looking at the bike units of the ynnari. They have haywire cannons that can easily smoke a knight in one turn. DE also have access to haywire as well. Knight really struggle in my local meta because those guns are so good against knights but also pump out a number of shots so they don't slack off vs. hordes either. Every local tournament we have lately seems to include 1-2 players with them just messing up opponents.