for Ben Z

On the 18-19th of April I attended Rataclysm, a 120ish person 6-game Warhammer 40k GT in Ballarat, Victoria. The current premier singles event in Victoria at the time of writing this post.

This year, after giving up on GSC – must to the behest of Mr. Booth – I brought my Adeptus Mechanicus, playing the Explorator Maniple detachment.

I won’t lie, I’m a bit of a dickhead. I had a list I felt better about, it had more play – marginally, I suppose, I’m actually not sure. But the vibes before the event were waning. I had been sick for about a week before list submission and although I was on break from work I had not gotten through as much painting as I needed to. As a result, an hour before list sub I span the wheel.

It came up with Explorator, so I ran that detachment. No Johns here.

I put the list together in about 5 minutes on the app, it was a mix of what I was taking in my previous list and just stuff I thought would be pretty bad and not work together. Then hit submit.

List:

• Cawl
• Cybernetica Datasmith
• Skitarii Marshal
• 3x Skatros
• Tech-Priest Dominus – Artisan
• Tech-Priest Enginseer
• 2x Skitarii Rangers
• 1x Skitarii Vanguard
• 2x Duneriders
• 1×5 Corpuscarii Electro-Priests
• 2×5 Fulgurite Electro-Priests
• 2x Kastelan Robots
• Onager Dunecrawler
• 3x Servitor Battleclade
• 1×5 Sicarian Infiltrators
• Culexus Assassin
• Eversor Assassin

I always forget that I write this blog, and that occasionally people read it, so when someone mentions it to me in person it’s a bit embarrassing because I know what I write and it’s not fab.

I received some feedback at Rataclysm from a lovely man named Ben who I had met before at a Geelong event, we didn’t get much opportunity talk – then or now – but he let me know that I didn’t go into enough detail.

“You always say like, I killed this, did that, moved over here and then won. You never actually explain how you do it.” This can be a bit disingenuous for armies like Ad Mech or GSC where there are apparently, crucial decisions that need to be made at points during the game that are impactful. Today I will be trying to go into more detail with my thoughts and approaches to each game.

As always if you have any questions, just comment, or message me on Facebook or something. I’m chronically online, I’ll keep replying to you until you stop responding.

As far as the strategy that went into my list considering synergies with my general army/army rule – this is very important for Ad Mech as each battle-round you need to consider melee/shooting focus, there are none.

As far as the strategy that went into synergising the detachment ability and stratagems with unit combinations, I didn’t really think about it.

Strategies that are available to me in this detachment/list:

• Cached Acquisition – Stratagem – Sticky objective
  This may as well have been the entire detachment rule. It wasn’t impactful in every game, but in the games it was it forced my opponent to change/adapt their playstyle to try and stop my primary scoring, or they just weren’t able to interact with it at all so they chose to ‘let’ me have the primary.

• Artisan – Enhancement – Flip 6 for hit, wound or saving throw once per phase while within range of Acquisition objective.
  This, while good in Theory to get a Melta to auto-wound or put through 2 dev damage with the priest almost never worked due to the fact this unit just wasn’t on the Acquisition Objective most of the time.

• Dunecrawler/Enginseer – Distraction Carnifex
  This unit is ridiculously strong and lived through so much. The 4+ invuln scams most big damage and then the 5+ FNP & healing D3 each turn deals with the rest.

• Trash city – A never ending supply of trash/screening units. But, they’re all slow as balls so it wasn’t that helpful.
  This was just bad.

• Vanguard Dunerider – Anti-infantry OC bomb to push forward and deny some primary from the opponent.
  It was ok

Once again, I forgot to take photos so you’re going to have to use your imagination for this one.

Round 1 – Ben’s Aeldari

Scorched Earth, Tipping Point

Ben’s list (Serpent’s Brood): Lhykhis, Solitaire, 3x Troupe Master: Weaver’s Wail, Key of Ghosts, 1x Storm Guardians, 5×5 Troupe, 4x Starweaver, Falcon, 2×5 Rangers, 2×4 Skyweavers

I looked at my first round pairing, Ben, someone who I had played many times before and is a friend I’ve made through attending events. I walked up to the table and he gave me a huge bear hug. Immaculate vibes to start the event.

I had played against Serpent’s Brood at an RTT a few months ago so I had some idea of what I would be up against.

My approach to this match up would be to double/triple stack a few units onto my expansion objective and make it incredibly difficult for Ben to attack so I could secure 10 primary each turn. This meant screening ahead of my expansion so Ben couldn’t rapid and move onto it, as well as keeping the Kastelan Robots within heroic range of whatever was holding onto the objective. A unit of Troupe’s isn’t going to kill the Kastelans, and they will die in return.

We were playing on Layout 1. Ben deployed quite far back to avoid my potential shooting into his light transports and low toughness bikes. However, the Rangers were infiltrated behind his large L ruin, with my Infiltrators behind mine.

I knew how much potential value Eldar get out of rangers. They can almost play the first 2 battle rounds without having to commit anything other than rangers depending on secondaries.

The only real game plan I have with this list is to force bad trades from my opponent into my low cost units, and force them to engage into my army else I sticky objectives and run away with primary.

I was going first.

I scouted my Eversor 9″ up towards the Rangers, popped his go crazy and moved him in the middle of both Ranger groups. Ben reactive moved both of them a little bit away from the Eversor, but still very much within charge range.

I staged up behind my big L, poked out the infiltrators to sticky the mid, moved my Dunecrawler to get LOS through the middle of the board – even though it had no targets – and advanced a Dunerider full of Vanguard behind Ben’s L so that it could just see the rangers inside the ruin (they weren’t targetable before his reactive, but he moved them somewhere the Dunerider could see them), but not be seen unless Ben cleared it on his far side of the board. Due to him deploying so safely, this wouldn’t be an issue, which more or less meant he wasn’t going to get a 10 next turn and had to remain mostly hidden.

The boat killed one Ranger unit, while the Eversor charged the other and consolidated towards the middle objective afterwards. Removing these scoring units was huge, and meant Ben would immediately be required to use his damage dealing units, agile manoeuvres to stop overwatch, and transports to contest primary and score secondaries from his first turn. I was more than happy to trade the Eversor for this as all its good targets are in transports anyway.

Thanks to my aggressive position Ben didn’t move up that far in his turn and didn’t get area denial thanks to some infiltrators living in the middle of the board.

In my turn I doubled down on the aggression, charging his staged units behind the L ruin on his side of the board from both sides, while also moving my Dunecrawler onto the centre objective and starting to burn it. By this point, I was set to hold Ben to a 5 again and he made some pretty risky plays in his turn as he felt like he was getting behind on scoring.

I returned the favour in my turn, doing some pretty dumb and unnecessary overextending that made the game a lot closer than it needed to be. I gave up my defensive position on my expansion and pushed out too far on my home objective.

We didn’t get to play the 5th battle round but even after burning my home the game was mine by 3 points, so we quickly talked out the last turn and hugged it out.

Thanks for the great game Ben, I look forward to playing you again.

Round 2 – Merric’s 1k Sons

Purge the Foe, Crucible of battle

Merric’s list (Grand Coven): Exalted Sorcerer: Incandaeum, Umbralefic Crystal, Infernal Master: Eldritch Vortex of E’Taph, Magnus, Sorcerer, 4×5 Rubric Marines, Chaos Rhino, 1×2 Chaos Spawn, Forgefiend (for Duncan), Mutalith Vortex Beast, Sekhetar Robots, 1×3 Tzaangor Enlightened, 1×6 Bowgoats, 1×10 Tzaangors

My second round pairing would be into Merric’s thousand sons. Merric is a team mate and we played at Rataclysm last year, his army is beautiful and he is a joy to play against.

On Purge the Foe, especially going second there isn’t much incentive to push out onto a 3rd objective, or even attempt to hold it if your opponent isn’t – barring secondaries. Now you may not believe me, but Explorator Maniple does have a strength when it comes to Purge the Foe.

Cached Acquisition – allowing you to sticky an objective on death – forces your opponent to commit at least one unit to the middle objective each turn or, let you sticky the middle point and get an extra 4 points on primary. This can be incredible advantageous when going first, and annoying when going second.

I was going second. Merric and I chatted about this, and he was confident Vortex Beast could overwatch and kill a 60 point servitor unit, but cached acquisition can be used in any phase so, he pushed the beast onto the middle and staged up.

I drew Bring it Down, Overwhelming force and my only option for kill 1 was, well, the Beast. Wherein my other Ad Mech lists would annihilate this unit, it was pretty grim. Cawl didn’t do any damage and I had to commit quite a few units from across the board to take it down. Duneriders with 18 shots and twin-linked are insane, just quietly.

He then yeeted Magnus and got the game started. Unfortunately my 5+ FNP Dunecrawler died to the exact wound in Merric’s turn. Had that not have happened I think the game may have been even closer. In my turn I committed my entire army and took Magnus down, but failed to eliminate a squad of Rubric marines at the top of the board. I probably could have committed more to this unit but the Eversor once again failed me, that’s the way it goes (Pic below is post Magnus Yeet).

Merric ended up running away with the primary scoring from here with his remaining Rubric units but was a bit let down on secondaries making the game closer than it should have been. Still, I was happy with 74-82 against a great player with a list/detachment I’d never played before into a practiced and competitive thousand sons list. I’d hate to think what the score would look like if I went first, lol.

Thanks for the game Merric, can’t wait for our rematch at Rataclysm next year.

Round 3 – Cooper’s T’au

Hidden Supplies, Search and Destroy

Cooper’s list (Kroot Hunting Pack): Ethereal, Twin Lance, Kroot Flesh Shaper, 1×20 & 4×10 Kroot Carnivores, 1×10 Pathfinder, 1×5 Stealth Battlesuits, 2×6 Krootox Rampagers, 2×3 Krootox Riders, 1×5 Vespid Stingwings, 2×1 Riptide Battlesuit, 1x Hammerhead Gunship

It took until game 3 to play against someone I hadn’t played before, and also a detachment I hadn’t played before.

Game 3 would be against Cooper’s hunting pack. Once again cached acquisiton would mean Cooper would need to walk onto objectives to take them off me, but that’s what his list does anyway so I wouldn’t see much value out of that stratagem in this game.

Unfortunately for Cooper my army is one that deals with his incredibly well. For the cost of a Dunerider & Servitor unit I can almost entirely kill a 20-body Kroot unit that has Invocation of Machine Vengeance.

My gameplan for this was to screen Cooper’s shooting units & Rampagers while pushing him to a 5 on primary each turn using my cheap as chips units and recouping some points towards the end of the game. I also planned to use the 5+ FNP Dunecrawler as bait for Riptide & Hammerhead shooting.

I was going second.

I thought the Vanguard/Marshal unit would be incredible powerful in this game, but I had to use it early to remove the sticky objectives Cooper establishing with scouting Kroot in his first turn. This is because I started with the Vanguard in a Dunerider, and the Servitors behind it making them too far away to move onto his closest middle Hidden Supplies objective.

I knew he would be doing this had he gone first, and so could have planned accordingly. I found across my games there was flexibility with starting my stronger units in transports, or having the Fulgurites/Servitors in them for extra movement/scoring/move blocking. A better player would know.

Both of our secondaries were fairly mid, and Cooper allowed me to rapid ingress my Culexus onto a NMS objective turn 2 to get an extra 5 on primary. From here it was up to him to push as I’d established the 5-point lead early on in the game.

He did push, but not hard or fast enough. I think he underutilised the Twin Lance and prioritised going for my home objective even though it wouldn’t really deny me any primary.

to game 1, I had a turn where I over exposed a few units when I didn’t need to and had them killed by Riptides. I was able to get some solid of secondaries on turn 4 sniping an Ethereal with my Dominus led Servitor unit and cleansing with a Skatros.

The real strength I had in this match up was being able to easily destroy the Kroot units with my trash and clean up other units with my limited heavy shooting. The Dunecrawler also soaked a lot of Riptide and Hammerhead shooting, shrugging the damage off with a 4+ Invuln and 5+ FNP. He shouldn’t have even bothered shooting it tbh.

Thanks for the game Cooper! It was a fun one.

Round 4 – Patrick’s Imperial Knights

Terraform, Crucible of Battle

Patrick’s list (Freeblade Company): Lancer: Bringer of Justice, Castellan: Hunter’s Eye, Crusader: Mysterious Guardian, 2x Errant

Patrick! Another individual I’ve played multiple times before, and played on almost this exact same list a couple of weeks prior at an RTT. Although, I was on a different (better) Ad Mech list then.

Now I only realllly had enough damage to kill 2 big knights, maybe 3 if I was lucky, and I was lucky, but also, not lucky.

There isn’t that much to write about this one, I mean it was 5 bigs. He just walks towards me. Although Patrick was playing Freeblade now which meant he did not have sticky objectives, making the game slightly easier for me as he would have to hold a knight or two back to hold his home and expansion.

I was going first. In my first turn, I pushed pretty hard and Terraformed all 3 objectives, nice. I was going to need to push a lead early if I wanted to have any chance of winning. In Patrick’s turn he pushed the Lancer up and charged some trash on the mid which he ended up killing so the Lancer Terraformed the mid, and pushed a Crusader up the side to push me off my expansion objective.

Now, I can kill a big, but I’d need to get incredibly lucky to kill 2. Cawl failed to get any wounds through against the Crusader, which was criminal, and after the rest of my shooting/fighting it was left on 3 wounds, flip. The Lancer, on the other hand, I was able to get down to 17 wounds by the time the Kastelan Robots were fighting.

The Kastelan’s got through 7 wounds, and Patrick failed 6 4+ invulns, he CP re-rolled one, and failed it. He then made 0 6+ FNPs.

Absolutely disgusting. The Lancer went down. This was pretty funny.

I managed to kill the Crusader in my next turn, but not before it 1-hit Cawl with it’s Melta. This more or less meant I wouldn’t be able to kill anymore of Patrick’s Knights. Without Invocation of Machine Vengeance and the Solar Atomiser I was lost.

It was still looking okish for me but after an awful turn of secondaries in BR 4, and a pretty great turn for Patrick he ended up with the game by a single point.

Thanks for the great game Patrick, I look forward to playing you again.

Round 5 – James’ Death Guard

Linchpin, Search and Destroy

James’ list (Virulent Vectorium): Lord of Contagion, Lord of Virulence, 2×5 Plague Marines, 1×10 Blightlord Terminators, Chaos Rhino, 2×2 Chaos Spawn, 1×3 Deathshroud Terminators, 2x Defiler, 1x Bloat Drone w/ heavy blight launcher, 3×10 Poxwalkers

Game 5 would be against James’ Death Guard, a player I hadn’t played before, but an army that I have played against a LOT.

This game was definitely closer on the score than it probably should have been. I went looking for data to demonstrate that Ad Mech actually has a tough matchup into DG but couldn’t find any. Guess it’s just a skill issue. Although, according to the tabletop battles app, the 6 previous games I’d played into DG I had a 100% WR going second.

I was going first.

There wasn’t much I could really do against this many Defiler. I pushed a boat filled with dudes forward on the top of the board to contest James’ primary in turn 2, and put some rangers on the middle to force James out of his castle.

In his turn he had to advance a unit of Spawn to get them onto the objective, and he pushed a Defiler out to shoot my Rangers, as well as staging a few units. When the dust settled, 2 Rangers were alive and the objective was mine.

This gave me a 13 on primary in turn 2 which was huge. As I was able to push James back to a 3 in his turn. If I was able to hold onto 8’s and keep pushing James off points I may have a chance in this game.

This just in, I got overwhelmed pretty easily. Due to the general up-close nature of my list and damage, if I was in Protector, I was hitting on 5’s in combat, and if I was in Conqueror, I was hitting on 5’s in shooting thanks to James’ contagion. Not great.

I gave it my best shot, screened James from my expansion objective and tried to hold on but went down, to still a close margin having gone first of 8 points. James was up 6 on secondaries so anything could have happened, but it was still a fun game.

It was James’ first GT and he was getting pretty tired by this game and so was I. It was a chill game and he was fun to play against.

Thanks James!

Round 6 – Nick’s T’au

Take and Hold, Tipping Point

Nick’s list (Mont’ka): Ethereal: Strike Swiftly, Ethereal, Twin Lance, 1×10 Breacher Team, 2×1 Broadside Battlesuits, 1x Devilfish, 1x Ghostkeel Battlesuit, 1×10 Kroot Carnivores, 3×10 Pathfinder Team, 1x Piranhas, 3×1 Riptide Battlesuit, 2×5 Stealth Battlesuits

It’s game 6, I was exhausted of playing this list, and I also get really lazy with my write ups towards the end of each blog post so, here we go, we can get through this together.

This game would be against Nick’s Tau, Nick turned out to be a really lovely dude and was great to play against. He was definitely a bit more casual than the normal tournament opponent I play against and was not abusing the terrain/board as much as he should have.

My gameplan was to go second, I was going second.

It was a classic take and hold and I figured I would just hold two, make it awful for Nick to engage with me then score 15 at the end and win. But, by the end of BR 2 he was 9 up on me for secondaries, so I had to do something. I did some shuffling turn 2 and on turn 3 I yeeted the Vanguard forward to charge a Ghostkeel and Broadside on his expansion objective.

This took 5 primary off him and forced him to do something. Nick however, left it too late and I was able to pull the win out by a single point.

Sorry Ben, I kind of gave up 1/2 way through that write up, but that’s what happens when you wait 10 days after a tournament to start writing.

Recap on my list strategies:

• Cached Acquisition – Incredible, the entire detachment may as well have been this rule.
• Artisan – Useless, I was never on the objective with the Dominus.
• Dunecrawler/Enginseer – Unreal, soaked up so much shooting and worked as the perfect distraction Carnifex.
• Trash city – I was always trading up and forcing my opponent to overcommit to getting rid of 9, 4+, 6++ 1 wound bodies.
• Vanguard Dunerider – Felt awkward, never wanted to really use it – probably because I had other, cheaper trash I could use instead.

6 good games with 6 really cool people, what more could you ask for? Rataclysm is set as a 3-day tournament next year. I look forward to attending again.

Also, the top 3 at the event were all awesome, genuine, and incredible deserving people. What a great event!

Overall, Rataclysm was good and it’s always fun engaging with the game in a novel way. This led to different games, play patterns, and problems that I had to solve meaning each game was different in a meaningful way. It also meant my opponents had to engage with my army in a way they don’t normally have to.

I understand that not everyone wants to be a fucking idiot. People have limited time, money, and enthusiasm to dedicate to this hobby. But as Rataclysm was my 4th GT of the year – and I was fairly competitive in the previous 3 – I was ready to be a dumb bitch.

Would I do this again? Ask me in 6 months.

If you have any questions/comments on any of the games please let me know. I plan on playing Eradication Cohort with a decent list at Terracon in a month or so with Thulia and a couple of Hastarii units which will be cool. I’m sure that write up will be better.

Thanks for reading, love you x