Star Wars Legion Tournament Report - Queensland States 2022

Welcome folks,

On Saturday the 2nd of July the Queensland States for Legion was held at EPIC Games in Ipswich. I was lucky enough to get an invite and several spots opened up due to other player not being able to make it unfortunately. Aaron was the TO and Bryant from Phoenix Games supplied prizes and hearty banter throughout the tournament.

I didn't have a great deal of time to alter my list so ran the same Vader/Tank list that I did at the last Unnatural Resources event a few short weeks ago.

799/800

9 Activations

Director Orson Krennic 75

Darth Vader (Dark Lord of the Sith) 190 + 23 = 213

--Burst of Speed (3), Force Push (10), Saber Throw (5), Vigilance (5)

Snowtroopers 44

Stormtroopers 44

Stormtroopers 44 + 9 = 53

--R4 Astromech Droid (9)

3x Dewback Rider 70 + 5 = 75 x 3 = 225

--T-21 Blaster Rifle (5)

TX-225 GAVw Occupier Combat Assault Tank 140 + 5 = 145

--Governor Pryce (5)

Implacable•, Vader's Might•, New Ways to Motivate Them••, Deploy the Garrison••, Master of Evil•••, Darkness Descends•••, Standing Orders••••

Major Offensive, Advanced Positions, Roll Out, Hemmed In

Key Positions, Payload, Intercept the Transmissions, Hostage Exchange

Limited Visibility, War Weary, Supply Drop, Hostile Environment

Game 1 vs Morgan

Morgan was running a Anakin lead Clone ball backed up with Padme. It's the second time I've played a competent Clone player and boy did I pay for my mistakes!

We ended up with Sabotage the Vaporators, Major Offensive, and Clear Conditions.

Deployment was all the Empire gear lined up, Vader on his ride facing off against a Clone ball with a sniper team on a flank which would sit in that spot all game.

The opening turn saw me lose a Dewback to combined fire and fire support for no return whatsoever. This was due to a combination of inexperience and simply not paying attention to what my opponent's army can do. My return fire accounted for very little between Padme's dodges and solid dice rolls from my opponent.

Beginning of Turn 2

Beginning of Turn 2

My army kept advancing under a hail of fire and for the second turn I played New Ways to Motivate them catapulting my remaining Dewbacks into units of Clones in order to rack up some kills. It certainly didn't account for much other than a few suppression tokens and thanks for more fire support I was now down three lizards with only a few dead clones to show for it. My confidence was fleeting. Vader would fix everything right?

In turn three Vader finally hit the enemy lines with dodges and an aim. Anakin and Vader dueled and Anakin was left on three wounds whilst Vader took a revolting amount of damage after being force pushed out of combat, then a shiny light saber thrown at him backed up with fire support. Well played Morgan.

The rest of my army advanced by this stage securing two of the Vaporators whilst the Clones had one.

The fourth turn rolled around and Vader dispatched Anakin. I ended up Force Pushing a unit of activated clones into combat with me to prevent further shooting and by this stage Vader was limping around with a single wound remaining. The snipers continued to drop stormtroopers from afar and Krennic and the full strength unit of Stormtroopers lined up the uncontested Vaporator.

Morgan made a play and rushed the last Vaporator and although I killed the unit, I couldn't prevent them from removing wound tokens onto it. I pushed both my units up meaning next turn they'd be able to pile wounds back on effectively nullifying that objective.

The last turn I didn't have an answer for until it was staring me in the face in the form of Vader's Might. As you can see in the last image taken at the end of the second last turn, Padme is in range of the final objective. Vader's 1-pip card allowed me with him ensuring that I could embark allowing a greater range band to use Vader's Might to move Padme on the far side of the tank preventing her from getting into range of the objective. Blaster dodged.

The Empire very narrowly creeps through with a victory.

Morgan was a wonderful player and certainly schooled me with how Clones can be competently played. I've taken a lot of lessons away from this game.

Game 2 vs Robert

My self appointed arch nemesis Robert appeared across the table from me. This would be my third game against Rob in local tournaments and his game plan is just on par with the amazing paint job of his army. He is fast becoming a master of the Rebel playstyle in my opinion and something I'd like to emulate one day.

Rob was running his usual setup of Op Luke, Shriv in a tooled up bus, triple wookiees in various configs and triple rebel troopers. Finally everyone's favourite (most hated) astromech rounded out the list hell bent on stealing the Empires secrets.

We ended up with Disarray, Payload, and Clear Conditions. 

Deployment

Rob split his forces up where I just anchored a single zone and then allowed a single Dewback Rider to flank the Rebel cart pushing force and start the harassment. 

I dropped some models and did some damage but I had a strong feeling that although I might win the morale victory, R2 was happy to witness the back of the Dewback nearby and wander off into the sunset.

Vader catapulted into the enemy lines whilst Luke attacked my soft spots. Although I'd prevented Roberts cart from moving and even managed to keep Luke heavily suppressed, classic Rebel misdirection meant that the objective was never going to matter.

I pushed, and I huffed and puffed but unfortunately the cart wouldn't go any faster than speed 2.

7 suppression Luke is a well behaved Luke. 

Vader jumped back onto his delivery wagon to make the last desperate play. The Dewbacks doing sneaky moving and disrupting and then shooting ensured Luke took a run to the board edge.

I played Implacable as my final defiant act. I had a great plan, the tank reversed, Vader jump out, Rebels died, he pushed, took a wound, activated again, Rebels died, he pushed ensuring I could move my cart. We measured and I was just shy of being in range two of the target and scoring any victory points whilst R2 happily cruised off into galaxy with the lone VP scoring Robert the win. What a tragedy.

Well done mate. Until next time!

Game 3 vs Callan

Intercept the Transmissions was the objective followed by other parameters I can't re-collect.

Callan was running the Shadow Collective with Maul, a tooled up unit of close range Black Sun hooking a ride on a Bus, Lots of ranged Pykes and some Mandos for good measure. In all of my wargaming history I'm normally content to be on the losing end against a new faction before somehow I can figure out how to best dispatch it. With a recent loss still fresh in my mind against Todd and his Black Sun army, I was confident of the Black Sun's abilities to remove Dewbacks as well as put gaping holes in the side of armour so they'd be high on the priority list.

Then Callan revealed he was going to infiltrate Maul and do the crazy ivan bolt at my lines hoping to take something out of action in a blaze of angry glory. I countered this hard and put my entire plan on hold for a turn anchoring a flank opposite Maul with a Dewback and Vader.

Maul on my right flank.

Deploy the Garrison was the command card for the first turn ensuring I could react well enough to keep Maul occupied. He made a play for Vader who spent his standby to move back and lob a sabre doing some wounds onto Maul. The Dewback then added to the suppression with shooting. He hit something but didn't do a great deal of damage. I charged with Vader, did some more wounds then force pushed him out of combat allowing the rest of my army to light him up giving him a healthy collection of suppression and wounds. He eventually ran off the table or died of blood loss.

Callan easily grabbed his objective and rolled onto the centre one meaning I'd have a heavy lifting to do late game and that was only if I could get Vader back into the heat of the action. The mandos took some heavy fire and withdrew onto the top of the bunker as my Dewbacks got pumped with fire before charging into the Black Suns.

The tank pulled a full reverse whilst Vader used Burst of Speed to ensure I could embark on the vehicle. The tank was taking some wounds but by the stage my R4 Astromech had repaired all he could. Some critical shots take out the remaining Mando.

Master of Evil turn was played and the tank screamed forward before Vader dumped his suppression and threw a beat stick. The Dewback was finally free after the Black Suns were dispatched but on a single wound remaining the glory was short lived. My remaining forces begun to spur and circle around the bunker to get shots onto a unit of Pykes.

The final turn saw me play Implacable again. Vader disembarked, swung and pushed. The tank went boom, Dewbacks charged and ate things and Vader went again. Lots died and I moved Krennic and Stormtrooper units into the bunker ensuring I scored the middle objective. I drew on objective points so it went to points destroyed and I scraped through a victory.

Once again, a lot of lessons learned from this game and I'm only really starting to learn how to use Dewbacks properly as opposed just to walking target practice for the opposing army. Having them move through enemy units twice to gain suppression tokens and then finally get some shots off for a third suppression token is an amazing way to help the Master of Evil turn be much more beneficial. 

Conclusion

I placed 8th from 16 players. Although I'm my worst critic and it was my third tournament I don't suppose its too bad. My biggest take away from this day was however I didn't manage to play the entire six turns out in any of the games. An extra turn in Roberts game could have been crucial but alas it was not meant to be. 

This is something I'll have to make a conscientious effort to improve my decision and reasoning skills for a faster outcome. For this army, more turns means Vader is playing more command cards which often means more enemy units dying which I'm not upset about.

Thanks for reading.

Star Wars Legion Tournament Report - Phoenix Games Unnatural Resources

Welcome folks,

Bryant at Phoenix Games put on another great event at Comics Plus in Annerley which I was lucky enough to attend and drag my son along to. 8 players attended with a variety off different lists. I was the only player using Empire, the Rebels were represented by 2 players as were the Republic. Finally the dirty droids made up 3 players.

It was an 800 point event using the scenario rules for Unnatural Resources which is here: 

As you can read from above, it was simply going to be a lot of tennis style back and forth lobbing of the Dianoga. Of course with the Dewbacks ability to spur they could often double tap it each turn to cause maximum effect.

I'd run this list a few times over the last fortnight and was getting pretty happy with it:

799/800

9 Activations

Director Orson Krennic 75

Darth Vader (Dark Lord of the Sith) 190 + 23 = 213

--Burst of Speed (3), Force Push (10), Saber Throw (5), Vigilance (5)

Stormtroopers 44

Snowtroopers 44

Stormtroopers 44 + 9 = 53

--R4 Astromech Droid (9)

3x Dewback Rider 70 + 5 = 75 x 3 = 225

--T-21 Blaster Rifle (5)

TX-225 GAVw Occupier Combat Assault Tank 140 + 5 = 145

--Governor Pryce (5)

Vader's Might•, Implacable•, New Ways to Motivate Them••, Deploy the Garrison••, Master of Evil•••, Darkness Descends•••, Standing Orders••••

Vader getting closer to the enemy in a tank backed up by 3 Dewbacks under the watchful compelling gaze of Director Krennic ensured they would always get where they needed to be, and wouldn't panic because of being overloaded with suppression tokens. I did experiment with Tenacity on them but found having the white dice ranged attacks helped in the initial turns when they weren't in combat, and for sneaking a few wounds through onto targets of opportunity.

Finally having Pryce on the tank was a good way to ensure Vader had an aim token for maximum damage on the Sabre throw or hitting things in combat.

Generally, the orders went something like Darkness Descends, Deploy the Garrison (Vader + Dewback), then a combination of whatever I felt like.

Game 1 vs Richard

This was Richards first tournament which was great, but the best part was his 10 year old son Oscar was also playing. I didn't play Oscar but from observation he seemed to have a really good grasp of the rules and loved the game which is so cool to see at his age. Parenting done right!

Richard was running Grievous backed up with a T Series and Magnaguard. A heap of B1's filling out the core choices, a sniper team and rounded out with an AAT.

I deployed all of my army hugging the short table edge whilst Richard ensured his core was going to get to the objectives and start scoring victory points as quickly as possible.

The first turn was mainly pushing up with all forces whilst the armoured threats faced off against one another. Richard managed to put a wound or two onto my tank but in reply between the tank, dewbacks and Vader's sabre throw it took an unhealthy amount of damage in return sitting on 6 wounds. The Dianoga also played havoc throwing some suppression around which was going to be largely mitigated because of my armies commander. The end of the round saw both players hold a single objective.

Turn 2 saw the rearguard of Richard's B1's all advance accounting for another 3 victory points at the end of the round. I played Deploy the Garrison meaning the moment the AAT flinched Vader lobbed his sabre throw at it, destroying it. My army begun building up suppression tokens on to his commander and magnaguard through the Dianoga and when Master of Evil was played it ensure his key units each had 9+ suppression tokens and they started to rush for the table edges.

By turn 4 I was pushing my forces whilst capturing objectives and just edged out on victory points having only lost a single Dewback and a few Snowtroopers edging out the win.

Both Richard and Oscar went on to have a great day of Legion and fingers crossed they'll be at future events.

Game 2 vs Robert

I previously played against Robert in March at the BVC Tournament and was a pleasure to play against. Sporting his Rebels again in their visually appealing scheme he was running a solid group of core with a Rebel Officer, Op Luke, a Speeder Truck and Wookiees.

Robert played cagey (to his strengths) and hid most of his core until it was time to strike securing objectives early in the piece. Op Luke sat in the truck taking his time whilst I didn't do enough damage to it before it was close enough to unload its cargo. Two dewbacks died fairly quickly to the Dianoga which smashed my lines for wounds and suppression.

By the time Vader was in a position to do anything he'd already suffered 2-3 wounds and was whacked ceremoniously by his son. I tried to play for a morale victory either killing the bus or Luke but it just wasn't to be.

Congrats to Robert for a well played game and deserved victory.

I did learn some lessons from this game and it was perhaps to be more patient. The terrain didn't help me much but I feel as though I had the tools to tackle his list, but didn't execute it well enough.

Game 3 vs Bryan

I've played against Bryan years ago on the X-Wing circuit and he was the fellow who taught me Armada so it was good to see a familiar face. He was running a Rebel gunline supported with Leia and a pair of Tauntaun Riders to harass my lines.

I deployed to capture the objectives with my core, whilst pushing the advance with Dewbacks and Vader to the centre objective. My biggest problem was going to be the Tauns screaming down the opposite table edge picking off my core on the gas vents. I was anticipating sending Dewbacks after them as well as Vader sabre throwing from atop the tank.

Fortunately as luck would have it, what happened to me in the second game was replicated to Bryan's Tauntaun Riders. They advanced to the centre and the tennis match of hitting the Dianoga back and forth begun. Because I had more units he came off worse losing a Tauntaun rider mini and both units being heavily suppressed.

Deploy the Garrison ensured that Vader's standby triggered before they had much more of a say in the game and his activation then charged the second unit removing them. This allowed him to lob the Dianoaga towards the Rebel forces.

Bryan decided to concede cutting his losses as I hadn't lost anything at this stage and had the full weight of my army bearing down on him with Vader a turn away and about to jump out of line of sight of his army. This gave me my second victory of the day going 2-1 rewarding me with 3rd place.

Everyone picked up some good swag in the form of new minis, upgrade packs, alt art cards and dice trays/bags. Once again thanks to my opponents for the games and Bryant for his continued persistence in building a local community for Star Wars Legion.

Thanks for reading.

Vengeance Rising - Battle 13 - 2500 TK EBTS vs WOC - The Battle for Milliardo Valley 30/6/12

 'The Battle for Milliardo Valley' 

Game 2 of the day saw me running an EBTS list in a standard battle line scenario requested by ~Milliardo~ on the Ulthuan forums. I previously haven't been that successful with these lists but was keen to revisit the idea and see if I could make improvements.

My opponent and I didn't bother changing the table up and he used the same list as the previous battle only switching to lore of heavens.

Warriors of Chaos:

Level 3 - Heavens
BSB
10 Warriors of Khorne - XHW
10 Warriors of Slaanesh - Halberds
15 Warriors of Tzeentch - Hw/Shield
6 Knights of Tzeentch
5 Knights of Tzeentch
5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh
Hellcannon
4 Trolls
2 x Warshrines of Slaanesh

Tomb Kings:

Hierophant
Necrotect
2 x 20 Archers - Std
4 Chariots - Std, Flaming
2 x 5 Horse Archers
6 x Necropolis Knights - Std, Mus
2 x 3 Entombed Necropolis Knights
2 x 3 Stalkers
1 Tomb Scorpion
Casket
2 x SSC

The basic idea for this list was to create enough distance between my battle line and my opponents, do as much damage as possible with ranged firepower, use the knights to protect my Hierophant and fingers crossed the entombed units would arrive to destroy the enemy artillery and supporting units whilst the Necroknights threatened the rear of the combat blocks. Sounds great on paper but would be turn out like that?

Deployment:

Spells:

Hierophant - smiting, desert wind, desiccation, vengeance
Level 3 - comet, curse midnight, second sign,

WOC win the roll off.

WOC 1

Comet fails.

Warriors of tzeen - +1 T and +1AS

Hellcannon kills one archer.

TK1

Shooting kills Marauder horses.

SSC hits warriors does one wound and they panic with a re-roll.

WOC2

Warriors fail to rally and near table edge.

Khorne warriors get +1 AS.

TK2

One unit of stalkers arrive behind knights.

Light of Death kills one warrior. Vengeance is cast on knights with BSB.

Stalkers kill 4 knights. SSC kills one. Other SSC misfires and dies.

WOC3

Knights with BSB charge into catapult and make it taking 2 casualties from Vengeance spell. The Trolls, warshrines and warriors charge into knights unfortunately one Warshine is too slow. Slaanesh warrriors charge into horse archers making it easily.

Warriors finally rally bringing them back into the game.

A Large comet attempt is dispelled in the magic phase.

Hellcannon kills 2 archers.

Knights kill SSC, take 1 from DT, overrun into chariots. The Warriors kill the horse archers and reform to face the Necropolis Knights flank.

Lone knight kills 2 archers, archers reform into block.

Necropolis knights manage to kill enough warriors to cause them to break, trolls folloow suite. Warshrine remains behind to fight.

TK3

Stalkers arrive next to the hellcannon, one unit of knights in front of the trolls and the scorpion arrives to flank the Knights.

Light of Death kills the fleeing khorne warrior, wounds the warshrine, wounds some trolls (who then get a roll on the Eye of the Gods table!), and finally drops 2 slaanesh warriors.

Shooting drops 2 warriors, and puts 2 wounds on the hellcannon at the expense of a stalker falling.

Necro knights wound WS - holds.

Knights smash chariots, crumble a few but combat holds.

Lone knight kill a few archers, crumble but hold.

WOC 4

The Slaanesh Warriors charge into the flank of knights.

Trolls run, warriors march forward.

Harmonic convergence off on warriors.

Warriors get +1 AS.

Hellcannon kills 2 archers through misfire and can't shoot anymore.

BSB kills chariots reforms to face scoriopn

knight draws combat with archers.

Knight crumble, Warriors reform to face archers, WS overruns into building.

TK4

Last Necro Knights still don't arrive.

Necro Knights charge into rear of warriors. HA into Trolls who continue to flee.

Reform archers, Hierophant leave archers and heads to get behind buildings.

Light of Death does nothing, smiting goes off on knights. Desiccation on warriors by 3 dropping them to toughness/stregth 1. I did throw 6 dice at this, IF and ended up losing a single level and that spell.

Stalkers kill knights and BSB on 1 wound. Hellcannon dead from stalkers.

Archers kill the last knight.

Necro knights kill Warriors and reforms to face larger block (not shown).

WOC5

BSB charges Stalkers.

comet dispelled.

Stalker crumbles.

Tk 5

Scorpion charges into rear of BSB.

Knights finally arrive behind the last warriors.

Light of death goes off however does nothing on the warshrines. Desert wind goes off healing some damage and allowing the Hierophant some extra room.

Stalkers do some wound on trolls.

2 wounds to the Warshrine from shooting.

BSB is killed by the stalkers before the scorpion even gets to swing! Scorpion overruns.

WOC 6

Level 4 leaves unit of warriors and moves warriors off towards trolls. My opponent was simply trying to minimise his losses here by dividing his forces and to try and muck up my order of charges next turn. I think I would have done this differently however if he didn't move he would have possibly been hit with both units of knights and a scorpion had I rolled high enough.

Harmonic Connvergence on level 4.

TK6

Charge sequence is as follows: Horse archers declare charge on warriors flank and after electing to flee they're cut down. Necroknights then have clear way to declare onto Level 4.

Stalkers kill warshrine with their gaze attack.

Light of death does nothing to last warshrine.

The knights easily Kill the remaining level 4.

Result - TK Victory.

Conclusion:

Well 3 games over the weekend and all 3 victories so I feel very chuffed. Once again another list concept that was totally experimental and a single victory doesn't always mean it's a great build. I certainly did enjoy playing this build though, there is something about playing an entombed list and ambushing the enemy that just feels so fitting to the Tomb Kings play style.

I won't go too heavily into detail but just some preliminary thoughts of the overall feel of the army.

Firstly on magic - I certainly did miss not having the larger menu so to speak of a second level 4 however given my track record of miscasting lately perhaps that's a blessing in disguise! As soon as you take a second priest then its beneficial to take the Hierotitan and I just simply wouldn't be able to find the points for it.

Necrotect was a waste and only included because of the remaining points I had. I think I'd perhaps drop him and find some points to include either a BSB or even a level 1 death.

Core seemed to work well and do what it does, I probably didn't use the chariots well (at all) however I've been guilty of that in the past many times.

On the special choices or the real work horses of the army. The knights as always performed and did exactly what they needed to do. Firstly the large unit started to drop pretty quick when I couldn't get a desiccation off on the flanking warriors otherwise they would have hung around for another turn but as it turns out the 8 wounds they took spelled their doom. Necrotect did only 2 regeneration saves this game and I don't have enough constructs close to him to justify keeping him.

Stalkers were awesome, two units I think is the only way to run them and their gaze attacks were directly attributed to taking out knights, hellcannon, warshrine, wounding the BSB (not to mention killing him in combat!) and of course putting wounds on the trolls. They ended up taking two casualties each from misfires but it's eventually going to happen. Perhaps they performed above average for me but needless to say both my opponent and I were fairly impressed. He was a little shocked that I put the first unit that came up near the knights rather than the hell cannon but I'm confident it was the right call to make.

On the scorpion this battle didn't really showcase it's capabilities, didn't even get to swing at the BSB unfortunately but maybe next time! 

SSC's didn't really do a great deal for me in the first turns they were around however that's always going to be the case against heavily armoured opponents. I didn't dedicate them onto the trolls because they weren't an immediate threat and secondly my opponent was anticipating I'd pour every available S3 shot into them which turns them into powerhouses when you start rolling doubles on the eye of the gods chart which happened a few times but luckily for me nothing significant. I think against any other army the SSC's would have performed no doubt cutting down infantry.

The casket was fantastic as usual, it's a great investment for really turning your average magic phase (say a 3/4 split into all of a sudden you've got 10 PD and your opponent is fighting you with a tiny 4DD) into something very powerful. I was mainly 6 dicing Light of death but unfortunately my opponent was rolling very low on the leadership rolls.

Anyway if you've got this far then I thank you for reading, I'm not sure when the next battle will be with a list like this however it's certainly the most fun game I've had in a long time and I really want to thank my opponent Todd who is basically my warhammer sparring partner and he puts up with my personality so he's a great wargamer.

Thoughts and comments forever appreciated.