Siege of Sussex - Tournament Prep

Warhammer World, Nottingham

Having decided to settle on a list fairly early, I had managed to get in a few good games against a mix of opponents leading up to the Siege. I had played Blood Angels three times, Eldar twice, and Imperial Guard, Space Marines (Fists) and Tau once each. Every game I felt I was learning and hopefully getting a better grasp of the rules, but as far a thorough tournament preparation goes, I was certainly lacking in experience against a large number of different opponents!

With no hope of getting any more games in, I had to rely on the trusty source of reliable information that is the internet (...) for a better understanding of what I might be facing and form at least a vague plan on how to handle typical styles of play (if not specific army builds) I might face. With this is mind, I scoured one of my favourite sites (3++) for clues.

A lot of reading later, I was a little more confident and felt at the very least that I could identify which armies I would generally need to play aggressively against (IG, Tau, any predominantly shooty army) and which armies I would expect to play more defensively against (Tyranids, Orks, any army with significantly better combat or mobility advantage).

The biggest black hole for me was Grey Knights. I was really not sure about the best way to approach these beasts. At 30" (24" + 6" move), these guys would match or better my shooting, plus be able to ignore the majority or my suppression fire (Dreads and Long Fangs) vs their vehicles. Not good. Added to this, with force weapons as standard and no doubt a large dash of I6 halberds, chasing these blighters down in combat wasn't necessarily a great option either. I came to the conclusion that if in doubt, concentrate on the mission and try not to get distracted by heavy casualties. Not a grand strategy exactly, but it was better than nothing!

Ready for War

I was happy that I had a pretty good idea of how to use my list at a basic level. Typically, Fangs in cover at the back, dreads and razors near the rear sides to maneuver to get side shots and push forward if required (dreads as optional tap pit against squads without power fists), grey hunters pile into midfield with melta/bolter/combat goodness, and the pod to target important tanks or Jaws poorly deployed squads, otherwise sit on a rear objective. Oh, and the WGBL on the Thunderwolf as a combat support unit if he didn't die to massed firepower in the first turn.

I had a reasonable (but fragile) scoring presence with four troop choices, decent anti-tank and anti-infantry spread throughout the army at a variety of different range bands, and enough redundancy and mech to take a few punches and still bite back. The army was definitely a little top heavy for my liking with three HQ choices, but as noted previously, this served the purpose of giving me a fighting chance to get the whole army painted in time!

I had just finished painting my pups to the minimum requirements (3 colours, based plus faces and hair) at 11pm the night before (thankfully this was only one guy's face, as I had managed to do the rest earlier in the week), and with a great sense of excitement, I settled down for a good (read terrible) few hours sleep before my alarm went off at 3:45am...