Death From Above: Diabolic Duo’s on a Wednesday

On September the 6th the guys in Sint Niklaas, HQ Gaming Club, held a doubles tournament. Diabolic Duo’s! Each player brought 750 points of army or could choice to take one main army and one allied army. I went with Kobe Keymeulen, we named our self ‘The Imp and the Sell sword’. Kobe took as Main detachment Tau Empire and I went with Space Marines who took White Scars Chapter Tactics.

Missions where pretty simple 2 maelstorm missions from the book and then one with relic & a maelstorm mission where you could score eachother cards. Pretty nasty for our team but more on that later! We played this list:

The Imp – Tau (Primary)

HQ 1 : Commander (85), I.A. (25), M.S.S. (20), P.E.N. (15), V.R.T. (5), D.C. (8) [158] -W-
ELITE 1 : Riptide (180), SMS (0), Ion Accelerator (5) [185]
TROOP 1 : 10 Kroot (60), 2 Kroot Hounds (10) [51]

TROOP 2 : 10 Kroot (60), 2 Kroot Hounds (10) [51]
FAST 1 : Pirhana (40), Blacksun Filter (1) [41]
HEAVY 1 : 3 Broadsides (195), Target Locks (15), 3 Marker Drones (36) [246]

TOTAL [770]

The Sellsword – White Scars (Allied)

HQ 1 : Chapter Master (130), Shield (50), Artificer (20), Powerfist (25), Bike (20) [245]
TROOP 1 : 5 Space Marine Bikers (105), 2 Grav Guns (30), Meltabomb (5) [140]

TROOP 2 : 5 Space Marine Bikers (105), 2 Grav Guns (30), Meltabomb (5) [140]
FAST 1 : 5 Scout Bikers (90), 3 Grenade Launchers [15] [105]
HEAVY 1 : Thunderfire Cannon [100]

TOTAL [730]

First game was against Necrons and Eldar. We got first turn so we placed everything from Tau in the center and the left side of the board. My chapter master and all my bikers went on the right side. Kobe shot the wave serpent with the broadsides. First blood! My scout bikers and thunderfire cannon shot almost everything from the scarabs. Then the wraiths came a bit closer they didn’t assault yet. They run closer! Next turn I focused everything on them and shot gravguns thunderfire cannons, scout at them. Then I assaulted the squad. Result was that I lost one entire squad of bikers. So the next round of combat was going to be critical. I killed almost the entire squad then. Luckily! I hit and run out of them. So I could shoot some more at them. Kobe killed some Wraithguards and focused on some Necron warriors with the riptide and the broadsides. Then I failed a charge… Typical and it kind of cost us the game. They assault my thunderfire cannon and took an objective and scored some extra points because of it. Result 12-10 for us. Would have been more if I haven’t failed assault.

Second battle we played against Ultramarines & Space Wolves. This meant a chapter master just like mine, 2 units of bikers. One with plasma and one with grav guns. A unit of attack bikers, to get 6 wounds for the chapter master instead of the usual 5. A Thunderwolf Lord of doom! Some (annoying) grey hunters in a drop pod, long fangs, a whirlwind and a big long aegis defence line. We could have gone first but we gave first turn to them. Big error! Since I lost one unit of bikers in the first turn. Normally it would have been the other way around. So we lost first turn, it was a battle where we losing rapidly. Mostly on the maelstrom missions. But thanks to killing almost everything from there army we made it a 10-12 loss for us. One of the typical things my chapter master did was roll a 6 on his hit and run. So he could get out of his combat.

Last battle was against two mates of my local gaming club. Who brought Necrons and Orks to the battlefield. One thing I have to say is that we were extremely lucky to get objective 5 for the maelstrom mission 4 times! 2 times of ourselves and two times from our opponents. Other than that it was pretty fun game. I did underestimated the ork warbikers. Not going to do that twice. We stole the relic pretty early in the game. Scout moves and then first turn it was in our field. Last turn Kobe his drones took it. My chapter master again failed a charge. But luckily he did kill the warlord the next turn…

Like always HQ gaming club did a great job on the event. Sadly only 8 teams came, normally the place is packed so let’s hope next time there is a lot more folks! We came in 4^th of the 8^th teams. Our first game opponents jumped over us in points. Otherwise we would have been 3th. Overall a good day! Hopefully my dice rolls should be better next time.