Typically, when I go to a tournament, I'll break it down into three (or four or five, depending on the tournament) Battle Reports and then do a wrap up post to finish off the series, but for Tinyhammer (a 1000 point tournament at one of the local Warhammer stores), I've opted instead to publish two posts to recap the event, one covering the pre-event lead up, as well as a post covering the event itself . This is for several reasons, but I'll let you read on.
As with any tournament, I had to decide what force I would be taking with me. For me, this decision is largely influenced by the Player Pack, as some of the armies in my collection perform much better in certain environments than others do. In this particular case, the Player Pack stated that your army would be given a painting score out of twenty and that score would be multiplied by the number of games. This is obviously a huge deal, as over a four game tournament, four major wins with all secondary event-specific objectives, would bag me 80 tournament points. Painting scores offered up to an additional 80 tournament points for the day! So, I knew if I wanted to drag any kind of success out of the bag, I had to take a fully painted and based army.
This rounded down my options to Clan Pestilens and Khorne Bloodbound, being the two fully painted armies that I was completely comfortable with, and had an abundance of options to play around with. I toyed with running either a mini-Murderhost, or even a combo Letter Bomb, which consisted of a Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster, a Stoker, and as many Letters as I could fit, but alas... All of my Bloodletters were on 25mm bases, where they're meant to be on 32mm's. Usually, people are willing to give a little lee-way, even at a tournament (if its not too bonkers), but Bloodletters on 25mm's have a significant advantage over 32mm bases, as their 1" weapons can reach through a rank, allowing for tons more potentially devastating attacks to be pushed through. As I knew that it would (at the very least) be frowned upon, and as I didn't have it in me to rebase sixty Bloodletters, I opted away from that option.
I also had some ideas for utilising the Bloodbound side of Blades of Khorne. I toyed with a Reaver horde, a Juggernaught-heavy cavalry list; the idea even crossed my mind to use a unit of six Khorgoraths! But, after sitting and pondering each list, I managed to get inside my own head and convince myself they wouldn't perform well in the meta. Would they have? Who knows...
Then my attention turned to my pet project of last year, the countless swarms of crazy religious zealot rats that make up Clan Pestilens. This fit into my New Year's Resolutions perfectly. Take Pestilens, put up a decent performance, and perhaps get into the upper end of the roster to get some of those tasty ranking points that everyone currently so desires. So I went to work to find out what I could fit into 1000 points. As it turns out, with horde armies, you can fit a metric ton of bodies on the table.
The first decision I had to make was whether I wanted a Corruptor or a Plague Furnace as my general, and I gotta say, it was an easy decision. In 1000 points, a Plague Furnace with the Liber Bubonica is something to be feared. It hands out buffs with impunity, and is no slouch in combat, with its noxious aura and foggy, furious wrecking ball of the flu! I backed up the Furnace with two Priests, knowing full well that I needed to knuckle down and get as many prayers off each turn as I could. With Heroes sorted, this left me to fill Battleline... and fill it I did!
Two units of forty and a unit of twenty Plague Monks took my model count over a hundred, and sat within the points limit allowed! I veered away from Plagueclaws, as I think one is unreliable, and two is by far too large a portion of my army. I know what Monks can do, and I know that on a 4'x4' table, a hundred bodies is gonna take some work to get through!
So, there it was. I'd settled on a list that I already had fully painted, that I was comfortable with, and that could play the scenario in most situations pretty convincingly. I then sent it out to a few people for feedback, and there in lay my unravelling. Most people were horrified by the idea of facing the list. Sure, monks die to a particularly stern glance, but most armies just didn't have the damage output to thin the horde before it hit. Most armies.
It quickly became apparent that Disciples of Tzeentch would be at the tournament in force, and I knew full well that if a Gaunt Summoner got on a Balewind (but, who puts a GS on a Balewind... right, guys? Right?), he would burn through my hordes and have my army for lunch. With that notion alone, I started scrambling. Instead of doing what a logical person would do, and tweak the list to mitigate the possibility of a bad match up, I was like a deer in the headlights of the idea of "the worst matchup". I can say this now, but I feel I should have dropped the small unit of Monks out and swapped an allied Skaven unit in. Jezzails or an Arch-Warlock might not solve all my problems, but they would have given me that ever-so-valuable long-range damage output that would have given the rest of my army some covering fire. But did I think logically? Absolutely not.
I spent several hours studying warscrolls and engineering combos, trying to find that perfect list. And I looked at every possible option. I thought about taking Chaos Dwarves, but alas, Forgeworld was not permitted at the event. I thought about taking Stormcast, but they just didn't inspire me at the time. I even considered ppurchasing and painting a Kharadron Overlord mini-Clown-Car, piling as many Balloon Bros as I could onto a Barak-Zilfin Frigate. This was the mindset I was in; just all over the place. Then a mate of mine sent me a list that caught my eye.
Lord Kroak
Skink Starpriest
10 Skinks
10 Skinks
2 Razordons
3 Salamanders
150 points in reinforcements.
Basically, the whole list was built around Lord Kroak teleporting into the centre of the board, jumping up on a Balewind and then going apocalyptic with his magical arsenal. And while he and his Balewind weigh in at a horrifying 550 points, it was hard to deny his sheer destructive capabilities and tenacity with his bizarre wound mechanic. With Mystic Shield and Starlight (from the priest), he sits pretty at a 2+ save atop the balewind, with -1 to Hit. Many armies simply don't have the tools to deal with him at 1000 points. The other advantage is that he can Unbind spells board-wide. This means that he can sit outside of 18" of enemy wizards, completely dampen their magic phase and then cast at his leisure, uncontested.
The skinks were in there, because not only are they fantastically cheap and infuriating to pin down in combat, but they are FAST!
Razordons offered some consistent shooting to trim down larger units, or blitz a character who might find himself unguarded. They also have a natural 4+, so with some buffs, they can pose a real roadblock!
This leaves the Salamanders. Typically, I would use my turn one Seraphon Teleport on Kroak, but turn two, I'd slingshot these guys at the biggest, scariest unit I can see, and try and Fireball them to death. And this is where the cheeky 50 points of summoning comes into it. When a Seraphon unit teleports, they must be 9" away, and can't move unless the dice comes up as a 6. With their shooting attack only being 8" range, this obviously poses a slight... reliability problem. That's where Skink Handlers shine. They are 40 points for 3, can be summoned on a 4+ (also 9" away from enemies, but Salamanders within 3" extend the range of their shooting attack to 12". This means that, if I roll a 6 for their teleport, they can safely move into range in the movement phase, but if they don't, I can use one of Kroak's four casting attempts to summon some cheeky handlers and burninate the countryside!
While all that sounds scary on paper, the real sting of the list comes from Kroak's command ablilty, which allows him to generate an "Insight" for every 4+ rolled on 3 dice. These Insights can then be used to re-roll any dice until my next hero phase (with the exception of the Priority Roll, as per Rule of One). Any dice. A casting attempt, a botched teleport roll, a damage roll for a spell or shooting attack... Powerful, right? But then I thought... Any Dice? My opponent's dice? Enemy charges, successful casting attempts, reserve rolls for Stormcast. Destiny Dice? DESTINY DICE!
After much studying, debate and deliberation, we came to the understanding (and if you can disprove this, please do so, because it seems pretty amazing), that when a Destiny Dice is used in one of its many ways, I can force my opponent to re-roll that dice. Substitute in a 6 to push through a spell? Sub in a 1 on a Battleshock test for your Pink Horrors? Nah, how about a re-roll!
It completely changes the dynamic of your opponent's turn because they know that the 'moment' they need to happen can be affected by something other than pure probability. Success is a further reach. If I possibly could, I would keep an Insight in the bag for my opponent's turn, sometimes even forgoing an opportunity in my own turn, just to keep that psychological edge, and to have a very large spanner to throw in the works if needed.
Now, it's not all rainbows and lolliipops. This list has two blinding weaknesses. Model count and hordes. With my whole army being solely dependant on a single model, this fell very heavily into the "All Eggs in One Basket" area; something I usually avoid like the Plague (unless I'm playing... wait for it... Pestilens! That was a bad one, I'm sorry). This means that if I either lose him, or he is ignored, the rest of my army is going to eat dirt in a heartbeat. The other issue that I had was the apparent inability to handle massive regiments. Kroak excels at nuking elite, MSU-style armies (Stormcast and Tzeentch spring to mind), but throw 40 Skeletons at him, and there's not a lot he's going to do. Scenarios and match ups would make or break this tournament for me.
With the list settled upon, I made short work of painting it, managing to crank out the entire army in under a week. This was an incredibly important element, as Paint Scores played such a large part of the player pack. I knew if I wanted to do well, I'd need to crank out a cohesive. And I even managed to fit in two practice games in, both against Disciples of Tzeentch. The first was right down to the wire, and I managed to win Duality of Death 1-0. The second, was quite the opposite, as I rolled the hottest dice of my life, and managed to nuke my opponent off the table in two turns.
These two games gave me the confidence that this list had legs, and might actually get me over the line. Two games against great match ups? What could go wrong!
Check back in on Sunday for my overview of the tournament itself!
What's your go-to 1000 point list?
Thanks for reading,
Gabe
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