New Years RTT with Firestorm 2.0

From my 3rd game: Grand Masters clash!

Having done some theoryhammer on list building, I was eager to try the modified version of my Firestorm list.  I got a chance on my birthday, as it happens, because The Portal in Manchester CT was hosting its New Year's RTT. The Portal is the closest location to where I live that regularly hosts 40K events, just a little short of an hour's drive, so I had me some birthday 40K!

The list I used was the one that added a Land Raider Crusader full of Eradicators. It's the second one in my Firestorm: Evolving The List post. If you haven't already seen it, you can click on the link to check it out. The TLDR version: Azrael+Lieutenant+10 Hellblasters in a Land Raider, LRC full of Eradicators, Infernus Squad riding an Impulsor, multimelta Devs riding in a Razorback, 2 squads of Scouts, 2 squads of Inceptors, and a squad of Heavy Intercessors to mind the backfield objective.

Victor's deployment

My first game was against Victor, who was a first-time tournament player playing his very first tournament game. That put the pressure on me to make sure he enjoyed his game while not throwing the game. He played a Space Marine list cobbled together out of eBay purchases, so it wasn't exactly optimal. It was an Ironstorm Spearhead, so it was chock full of vehicles. As such, I decided to play Fixed Secondaries for the first time in 10th, obviously taking Bring It Down, with Cleanse as my other choice. Victor played Tactical secondaries. The game was Take & Hold with table quarters deployment, so nice and simple for Victor's first ever tournament game.

Land Raiders laying claim to the center objective

I'm not going to crow about my strategic brilliance on this one. Victor was playing a list full of vehicles. I have a list that's pretty good at taking out vehicles. I only missed maxing Bring It Down by 1 point, but by the end of the game I'd have been hard pressed to take out Victor's last Predator with what I had left, so it wasn't exactly a walkover. I misunderstood how Cleanse works and didn't really pay much attention to it, so I only scored 6 points on that. I did max Primary though. For his part, Victor scored 19 points on Secondaries, and since he was struggling to score Primary points, he opted to play a Gambit, winding up with Delaying Tactics, which he pulled off, giving him 35 total Primary points. The final score wound up being an 87-64 in my favor.

My second game was against Tony and his Space Marine Vanguard. This wound up being my loss for the day. The mission was Priority targets, with the triangular deployment zones. Both of us played Tactical secondaries.

Those DevCents didn't stay in the corner long.

The sauce to Tony's list was a full brick of Devastator Centurions he could pick up at the end of every one of my turns by playing Guerilla Tactics for 1 CP and have them come back in from Reserves to get angles to delete 1-2 of my units a turn. He could give the unit Deep Strike with Uriel Ventris, but he didn't really need to. The unit's guns can basically cover the whole table, and being able to come in from anywhere on the long board edges let him give them the angles he wanted any time he wanted them. He also had Marneus Calgar and a brick of Aggressors, plus 15 Plasma Inceptors, so he was not lacking for options when it came to offense.

Tony got first turn, but played it cagey, keeping his units back where I wouldn't be able to get angles on them. That required me to play the first turn cagey too, but I did have to go out onto objectives, but I held back some key units and kept everything in the tracks. Tony pulled the DevCent Shuffle and deleted a couple of my tracks from outside the range the units inside could reply from, but he did come forward with Marneus and the boys, which let me bring Azrael and his pals up and delete them, but from then on in I was trading down. I wasn't able to score much Primary, and all the Secondary points in the world aren't going to matter much if your opponent runs away with Primary AND does well on his Secondaries. The score wound up being 100-51 in Tony's favor.

That DevCent lying down isn't dead, just resting.

I'm making some changes to the list I'll detail below as a result of this game, but if I had to play it again with the exact list I played on the 30th, what I think I'd do is put my Devastators and my Eradicators in Reserves and just put the LRC on the table empty (or with a squad of Scouts in it). Then I'd make Tony's DevCents my Oath target and have my reserve units pop out and put a bunch of melta into them. They're pretty tough models, but nothing is so tough it walks through 14 melta shots unscathed.

My third and final oppoonent was Jeff, who brought the Adeptus Custodes to the table. The mission was Vital Ground, again with the triangular deployment zones extending a line from the middle of the table's long edges to the corner on the opposite side. Both of us played Tactical secondaries.

Hellblasters about to blast some hell

This game demonstrated that Custodes are not in a great place right now. It wound up being my most decisive victory. On my first turn, I was able to line up angles on Jeff's neato grav tank and one of his Custodian Guard squads and just deleted them. From there it was an uphill battle for Jeff, particularly due to the fact that without his tank, his only solution for tanks was to run up and punch them. Not that Custodes can't punch out tanks, but it limits their threat range, so I enjoyed a considerable range advantage over Jeff the whole game. Because he was struggling to score Primary, Jeff also went for a Gambit. In his case, he wound up with Orbital Strike Coordinates, but wasn't able to make it work. I wound up winning 95-32.0

I ended the day having gone 2-1, coming in 11th out of 25, and I got the 3rd place prize for painting score! Not a bad day by any stretch. My prize was a little more in store credit than I paid to enter the tournament, and the Portal offers a discount on GW products on tournament days, so I walked out with Iron Father Feirros, who I'm going to paint up red and use as a Techmarine so I have 2 for an Ironstorm Spearhead.

Earlier I mentioned my intention to adjust the list. What I've come up with is dropping the LRC, the Gravis Captain, and a Scout Squad so I can afford duplicates of my Devastator and Infernus Squads and their respective transports while retaining the 6 Eradicators, breaking them up into 2 squads of 3, with the intention of putting them in Strategic Reserve and having them come out to put some hurt on backfield threats, which is something I've struggled with thus far. I don't want to spam the blog with too many posts about this Firestorm list, so I'll post the full thing below.

There is one more little change I want to mention. I'm giving the Lieutenant the Champion of Humanity upgrade, which lets the unit he's attached to ignore modifiers to their characteristics - including the Damage characteristic of their plasma incinerators. Not having effects chop their supercharged damage in half will go a long way towards keeping them a threat to anything on the table.

Here's the list in its current form:

+++ DA 2K FAF v3.0 (Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition) [2,000pts] +++

++ Army Roster (Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Dark Angels) ++

+ Configuration +

Battle Size: 2. Strike Force (2000 Point limit)

Detachment: Firestorm Assault Force

+ Epic Hero +

Azrael: Warlord

+ Character +

Lieutenant: Champion of Humanity

. Neo-volkite pistol, Master-crafted Power Sword & Storm Shield

+ Battleline +

Heavy intercessor Squad

. Heavy Intercessor Sergeant

. 4x Heavy Intercessors: 4x Bolt Pistol, 4x Close Combat Weapon, 4x Heavy Bolt Rifle

+ Infantry +

Devastator Squad

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Sergeant: Plasma Pistol, Power Fist

Devastator Squad

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Marine w/ Heavy Weapon: Multi-melta

. Devastator Sergeant: Plasma Pistol, Power Fist

Eradicator Squad

. 2x Eradicator: 2x Bolt Pistol, 2x Close Combat Weapon, 2x Melta Rifle

. Eradicator Sergeant

Eradicator Squad

. 2x Eradicator: 2x Bolt Pistol, 2x Close Combat Weapon, 2x Melta Rifle

. Eradicator Sergeant

Hellblaster Squad: Plasma Pistol

. 9x Hellblaster: 9x Close Combat Weapon, 9x Plasma Incinerator

. Hellblaster Sergeant

Inceptor Squad: Assault Bolters

. 2x Inceptor: 2x Close Combat Weapon

. Inceptor Sergeant

Inceptor Squad: Plasma Exterminators

. 2x Inceptor: 2x Close Combat Weapon

. Inceptor Sergeant

Infernus Squad

. 4x Infernus Marines: 4x Bolt Pistol, 4x Close Combat Weapon, 4x Pyreblaster

. Infernus Sergeant

Infernus Squad

. 4x Infernus Marines: 4x Bolt Pistol, 4x Close Combat Weapon, 4x Pyreblaster

. Infernus Sergeant

Scout Squad

. Scout Sergeant: Boltgun

. Scout w/ Heavy Weapon: Missile Launcher

. Scout w/ Scout Sniper Rifle

. 2x Scouts w/ Boltgun: 2x Bolt Pistol, 2x Boltgun, 2x Close Combat Weapon

+ Vehicle +

Land Raider: Hunter Killer Missile, Multi-melta

+ Dedicated Transport +

Impulsor: 2 Storm Bolters, Bellicatus Missile Array, Ironhail Heavy Stubber

Impulsor: 2 Storm Bolters, Bellicatus Missile Array, Ironhail Heavy Stubber

Razorback: Hunter Killer Missile, Storm Bolter, Twin Lascannon

Razorback: Hunter Killer Missile, Storm Bolter, Twin Lascannon

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