Open War 13 - Game 1

Well I figured that after my showing at the last Open War tournament (where I placed last in the 40k event) i could only do better this time. However I'd not had a lot of time to prepare, my list was largely theoretical and it had been soundly beaten the previous Thursday. At least I had taken away some good adjustments from Thursday's game so I rocked up to Warhammer World on a wet Saturday morning feeling positive about the day ahead.

My first game was Spearhead deployment, Seize Ground (5 objectives) against a Daemon list which my opponent referred to as a bit 'beardy'. I'd never played against Daemons before so this comment did not boost my confidence. I have, however, recently started listening to the 11th Company podcast and one of the hosts plays Daemons and regularly gives good insight into the lists he plays, so at least I wasn't going in completely blind!

I won the roll and elected to go first the plan was to spread out as much as possible to deny the Daemons the option to easily deploy in open ground. At the same time I was concious of setting up firing lanes and keeping them clear, I would probably only get one turn of clear shooting and I would need to make it count. As it turned out he immobilised his Soulgrinder in difficult terrain and lost a couple of bloodletters in the same vein. Later on the tactic would reap bigger rewards thanks to his Lord of Change misshapping itself to death! Good times.

Frankly I was a bit lucky in this game, the Lord of Change would have been a potential game-winner for him, if it had survived. He got no additional reserves in turn 2 and only half on turn 3 so I had plenty of chances to whittle him down in bite-size chunks. However my
shooting was pretty poor initially and his Bloodthirster managed to take out Pedro and his Sternies before I could take it down.

Lysander finally played a key part in a game for me by first lending his Bolter Drill to the Sternguard who managed to take out the remaining 14 Bloodletters in one round of shooting! He also managed to single-handedly tar-pit a large unit of Dameonettes (my opponent's last remaining troop unit at the time) stopping them from holding an objective thus guaranteeing that I could not loose.

Sadly his Daemon Prince was able to eat through the units on my 'home' objectives and contest the only objective I held out-right on the last turn of the game. It was a good, closely fought game, a perfect start to a tournament and a good intro to Daemons.

Daemon List
Lord of Change
Master of Sorcery, Breath of Chaos
Bloodthirster
Unholy Might

Bloodletters
(16) Icon of Chaos, Instrument of Chaos
Daemonettes
(12) Icon of Chaos, Instrument of Chaos
Pink Horrors
(9) Changeling, Bolt of Tzeentch

Fiends of Slaanesh
(6) Unholy Might

Soul Grinder
Phlegm
Daemon Prince
Mark of Tzeentch, Wings Daemonic Gaze

Result - Draw (0-0)
MVP - Lysander