Midwest ConQuest GT

This past weekend I made my way to the Midwest ConQuesT GT in Kansas City.  It was a bit of a last minute decision and I didn’t really have an optimized army built for what you might typically expect at an ITC GT but I had three options.

First I considered my White Scars (which I’ve recently re-painted as Astral Claws – more on that in another post) but they failed me at a recent local tournament after facing ‘Nids and a scouting Eldar list and I moth-balled them for the time being.

Next I was thinking about bringing my Admech War Host Convocation with two Imperial Knights. To be honest, I haven’t really enjoyed playing the Admech very much but they can be a force to be reckoned with a favorable matchup.

Lastly, I considered and ultimately chose my Grey Knights. Here’s roughly what I brought:

Grey Knight CAD:

Librarian -  Level 3, Cuirass of Sacrifice

10 Termies, Daemon Hammer, Psycannon, Halberd

10 Strike Squad, Daemon Hammer, incinerator, Halberd

10 Strike Squad, Daemon Hammer, Psycannon, Halberd

Storm Raven

Dreadknight – Sword, psycannon, incinerator

Dreadknight – Sword, psilenceer, incinerator

Dreadknight – Hammer, psycannon, incinerator

I know that Chaos Daemons are king of the hill and I would be ready for them no matter how I split up my force and I thought I might have enough flame-punch to knock around scatbike Eldar lists too.

I went 2 – 4.  Two of my losses were ass-kickings, but two were fairly close.

My first game was against Cyle who recently took second at another ITC event with his Daemons. It was kind of close the first couple of turns as we both tested each other out but my Dreadkinghts dished out lots of pain and he conceded on turn 5 with just Fateweaver flying off the table. He was a nice player but jokingly gave me the finger the rest of the day. I hope I can play him again sometime.

My second game was against Aaron Aleong and a version of his Thunderdome.  I blitzed my Dreadknights into his line of independent characters and was unable to alpha anything special. Getting all three of my DKs so close was a mistake and they quickly fell to Aaron’s superior uber unit. My dice were also cold and just compounded a losing game from the start. Aaron was a super nice guy and was offering tips throughout the game and even stopped casting Invisibility after the second turn from his conclave because he was steamrolling me.

Besides my own bad play, the only thing I can complain about was his modeling made it hard to figure out what was what. I had always assumed that the top-tier guys had awesome armies, but his was difficult to decipher. His Azrael was Lucas the Trickster with a without a powerclaw and still painted like a Space Wolf.  His White Scars were painted like Death Wing, he had guys riding wolves that were actually bikes, and a few Hero Click wolves.  I had a hard time remembering what was what, but Aaron was always helpful when I asked questions. Very gracious but I’m afraid I may have offended him when asked if I liked his modeling and I told him it was a challenge to follow. If he wasn’t such a nice and helpful player, I’d assume he was trying to make it difficult for his opponent.

My third game was against Troy G. from the Flying Monkeys and his Ork Stompa. It was a very close game from the start, both of us throwing knockout punches. I had a bit more luck because one of my Dreadknights was able to tie-up the Stompa for a few turns and killed it on the last game turn. His Warlord Mek also died in the explosion giving me 5 points on that one die roll. Again, very pleasant player and I really enjoyed the game.

The next day I faced John H. from Oklahoma and his IG/White Scar fortress. This turned out to be a bad matchup for me because all of his long range AP 2/AP 3 blasts and grav bunkered around a void shield. I went first but was unable to alpha strike anything off the table and then he knocked out two of my Dreadknights right away putting me on the back foot for the rest of the game. My dice were a little cold and he took advantage of it. Heck, I kept failing to cast simple things like Hammerhand… John is a super friendly opponent (and even offered to give me a 3D printed rhino) but his list is super nasty, especially against my MEQ.

In the fifth round I played against another super nice player, Joe G. who brought an Ork Meganob formation that was pretty nasty. I decided to break my longstanding rule against deep-striking and tried to teleport in my Librarian and half my termies. They came in on turn 2 and misshaped EVERY turn and went into ongoing reserves. This is why I don’t deepstrike except for droppods.

Every. Turn. It was like my unit was magnetized to terrain.

It also counted as warlord kill since he was off the table at the end of the game.

The last game was against a Space Marine player named Tony who was running Raven Guard painted as Nightlords. He had a very fluffy list with a Skyhammer Annihilation Force. We played a very close game and I think I would have won on turn 5, but we played a full 7 turns and Tony ended up winning in my closest fight of the event. He lost far more models than I did, but he was able to collect more objectives than I.

I learned a lot at this tourney and it was a fun event but this is my second GT that gave away a ton of door prizes and I left empty handed again. It seemed like there were enough awards and swag for just about everyone but my tickets were never called. I drove home, licked my wounds and I’m now frantically painting my Eldar scatbikes to get ready for the Bug Eater GT in Omaha in a couple of weeks.