The Road to Renegade: The Swine-venture Continues

Hello everyone! Welcome to part two of our adventure to the Renegade Open (part 1 is here for those of you interested). The Renegade Open 2019 Grand Tournament starts on Saturday, Nov 23rd, which means there’s just under a week before we will be enthralled in the heat of battle of another Major for the year. After looking around, I believe this is one of the last majors before the fabled Las Vegas Open (LVO). As you may remember from our last Road to Renegade write-up, Cyle and I were perfecting our lists and I had some hobby work to do still. So like any good gamer, instead of finishing my modeling work, I took my list to a local RTT this past Saturday just to confirm I wanted to take all of this anyway.

Progress Check!

So leading into this, something to know is that there is a hard list cut off for the GT. In my last write up, I was really going into my super tech unit – the Land Raider Achilles. It still needed some paint and when I had built it I missed some normal building steps when I didn’t file down any part of the model, leaving what I would call some generous gaps. While I was taking the time to prep for the event I just didn’t want to sit down and paint my life away, thankfully I had some spray paint and an RTT to go to! Maximum laziness mode engage.

So. As you can see, I need a little bit more work on this labor of love. Also, I found out that the things causing the gaps don’t even need to be on the model. Normal Land Raiders have assault launchers that do mortals when they charge in. The Achilles does not have that, so I may just have to break off this heavy armor to help the aesthetics of the model. That’s what I’ll be working on for the rest of this week.  But for now… IT’S GAME TIME!!

The List: A Tough Angel to Crack

Dark Angels Battalion (+5 CP)

HQ
Ezekiel
Master in Gravis Armor (Shroud of Heroes)
TR
Scouts (Combat Knife)
Scouts (Combat Knife)
Scouts (Combat Knife)
EL
1x Company Champion

Dark Angels Spearhead (+1 CP)
HQ
LT in Phobos Armor
FA
3x Inceptors (plasma)
HS
Eliminator Squad
Land Raider Achilles (Still here. Still kicking butt.)
Relic Leviathan Dread (Storm Cannon Array x2 3x HK Missile)

Dark Angels Spearhead (+1 CP)
HQ
Techmarine (Full Harness, Power Axe)

HS
Eliminator Squad
Eliminator Squad
Relic Leviathan Dread (Storm Cannon Array x2 3x HK Missile)

The Two Rivers RTT – Proving Grounds

The Two Rivers chain of events is based in North Dakota as a traveling RTT. The man who runs it is a recent addition to the Hog herd, Sean Lengenfelder. Sean is a Knights player who has been trying to cultivate a competitive tournament chain throughout this tundra, going from towns that people have heard of like Fargo, to other smaller towns like Minot or Jamestown. This RTT was being held in the former of those locations, Fargo, ND, in a local game store called Little Big Wars. It’s always interesting playing in different locations because each LGS has a different gaming eco-system it seems. I’m sure you’ve noticed this yourself, some stores having a more card game based environment, or even a more casual even narrative game style when it comes to wargaming.

Little Big Wars is just down the road from what I call Hog Town, Grand Forks, North Dakota, and this store has a high count of hobbyists and card gamers. There are some great artists in the area and I always try and make an effort to see if there’s anything new in their show cabinets, or even see what those local artists are working on. Being only an hour away from us in Grand Forks, any event they hold suddenly gets swarmed by the competitive groups that are nearby, drawing people from Canada to 5 hours away from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. It makes for very Hog-filled waters, causing our RTTs to feel like day-two top tables, every game.

With such difficult waters ahead, I pressed forward with my Renegade list to lock down one more RTT score before crashing this list headlong into Renegades grueling trials. So we’re gonna look at two of my games, in different short-form ways.

Micro-Battle Report time!

The Field Test

So a little bit of an HMOC throwback here, my first game at this event was against Billy Payne. The last time I had faced Billy, we had a rockem-sockem drag-out game. He brought 180 Plaguebearers in our last game, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to run into right here. It ended up being… Well… Blood Angels…

Robots?

The Oil of Billy Payne, click to expand

The Mission

I was pretty excited when I saw this match up! I mean look at what his army has to do, it has to come right at me. I have meltas, I have storm cannons, I have a Gravis Captain who wants to punch anything and everyone! I was feeling pretty good right away. Last time we played he brought 180 Plaguebearers and I thought this was a good match-up for me. When we rolled off to see who would go first, it was his robot army that got to take the initiative.  Billy’s strategy was… aggressive, to say the least. He decided that to face all of my guns with his supreme close combat options, he would run every single one of his dreads and then popped his smoke on all of them, investing in his turn two.

I could go into depth with my turn, but I feel like I would rather describe it in the following medium.

“Halting the Means of Production” Digital – Medium: Dark Angel Leviathans

And that was the game.

Gunum Win:  36 to 10. 

ROUND TWO!

So my second game was against fellow Warhog, Cody Boe! Cody Boe, from here on known as Boe, is a Necrons player to his core. He has been playing Necrons for as long as I’ve known him, and we affectionately dubbed him with the nickname of “The Lich” to match his undying attitude towards his gruesome greenies.

I felt this was going to be a pretty tough matchup. Boe is Good. He’s also very skilled with ‘Crons. And specifically, it’s Necrons with Quantum Shielding and that is currently any Marine army’s least favorite thing.

Shields up!, click to expand

As I am trying to keep these write-ups a bit on the short side, I decided I would show off my artistic skills to tell you how this game went.

Observe:

A Gunum Quick Battle Report, click to expand

YES!! You’re seeing that right. Three Croissants used a planet-destroying laser to decimate my Leviathans and my Lieutenant.

They may have also killed any hopes or dreams I had about doing well at this RTT.

I LOST: 11 to 38. 

It was a really hard game. I did everything I could, but I never came back from his opening volley. He used the Necron Stratagem to put over 22 wounds on my battle pile. When it came right down to it, I just didn’t respect the aircraft enough. I’m used to being able to knock out one of the planes and be safe from their PUNISHING special moves. That was not the case this game and Boe was just able to shut down any offense.

Not only that, but +1 Damage plasma guns are trash against shields… Guh.

Here’s Cyle. I have 4 hours to figure out if this is the list I wanna take this weekend…

(I won my last game – 34 – 8. 2-1 is fine. In case you were wondering.)

Naramyth: How can I have this many boxes.

As you can see dear reader, I’ve had all sorts of hobby time since our last update. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had time to grind on alternate list ideas while moving every box that has ever been made up and downstairs. I did have a bit of a “Hear Me Out Chase” moment involving X-101 but when Chase said “Like, this isn’t a guy even I would play” I realized maybe what isn’t broke shouldn’t be fixed. What I would like to talk about are some alternate viable add-ins I’ve considered but discarded with some of my thoughts behind why I’m playing this exact version of Admech.

Stygies VIII Priests/Drills

A common question I get when I field this list, especially since I am in a double Battalion, is why I’m not using Stygies VIII to do some turn one charging. My reason is two-fold: The stratagem Clandestine Infiltration is cheap; you have to use it every time you place the transport. That means if you wind up going second you are still out the CP, and since priests are CP thirsty I frequently run out after having them use Zealous Congregation and/or Acquisition At Any Cost. Also, that would mean the other 3 heavy slots I use for the Disintegrators or Crawlers would be Stygies and would not be able to benefit from Cawl. Finally repairs done by Enginseers are actually dogma locked, so they cannot repair for each other.

Ballistarii Brick

This is a very popular addition to the Ad Mech toolkit. The shtick is you take a brick of 6 Ballistarii with a mix of autocannons and lascannons and use them as a screen and midfield presence by advancing and firing with Rage of the Machines. If they get charged you use Cognis Overwatch to fire at full BS and shred anything trying to get into Cawl’s castle. It is pretty effective and would slot in nicely instead of the priests and their transports, however, a squad would give up a Gangbusters point on every base lost, and I would almost completely lose any forward pressure or the ability to counter charge, which is what my priests generally do. Also, I’d have to build and paint three more Ironstriders and I just don’t have it in me.

Kataphrons

Both Breachers and Destroyers are very popular. A squad of Ryza Destroyers can delete most units in the game, and Breachers are a very real threat to most things in the game and are a great screen. Destroyers have the same problem as the Stygies issue: breaking up detachments.  While I’ve played the Breachers earlier this year and while I did like how effective they were I didn’t like how slow they were. I frequently had games where they also never shot after turn one since they would be touched and locked up in combat.  They also give up Gangbusters. Now, leaning into Kataphrons AND Ballistarii could be a thing, but I enjoy mechanized play too much.

Krastsader

An easy add, can be a Knight of the Cog target to have a 1+ save, I have a 3^rd detachment, it’s a serious melee threat, and with the relics, you can customize! I do agree, a Knight is a huge addition that can hold down a flank by its self while the rest of my gunline hammers away. I also played a Knight for about 4 months until the Skorpius chassis came out and while I did like having it floating around, so many lists have the tools to tear down a Knight before it can act, I just couldn’t keep justifying playing it. It was also a CP hog, fragile in combat, was very streaky on its damage output, and impossible to hide. Also, if the previous options are bad for Gangbusters, a Knight gives up Kingslayer instantly.

Hoplites

The FW guys with spears, a 5++ and a cost of 9 points a guy instead of 16 compared to the priests. These guys aren’t bad: 2 swings, S6, -1, d3 against vehicles. And they also have a 12” shooting attack with the same profile. Priests are also S5 so it’s not like they are wounding vehicles any different. However, 1 damage, no mortal wounds, and the inability to fight twice really hold these guys back from being super useful. They do free up ~130 points but I don’t know what I would add.  I already have an assassin, and upgrading an Enginseer to a Dominus or Manipulus seems dubious. I suppose I could upgrade a couple of Duneriders to Drills or add 12 plasma guns throughout the troops but it doesn’t feel great. I don’t like having my fragile troops be damage dealers. They should be hiding holding objectives or I should have a lot more of them.

Inquisitor

I’d love to add one! Double-tapping mortals and turning off overwatch for one of the most fragile assault units in the game that already gets delivered in a mode of transport would be awesome! However, in the ITC it would break me down to the Imperium faction.

That is far too many words for “I didn’t get any hobby done, and my list isn’t changing.” Until next time!

The Adventure Continues

And so the adventure continues for our intrepid hogs! Will Chase ever fill those horrifyingly large gaps on his Land Raider Achilles? Will Cyle be able to move all those boxes or will they tumble down on to him comically when he opens a closet? Will Games Workshop find a way to release even more new rules that buff Space Marine armies in time to be used for the event? Find out the answers to these questions and more next time, when our ROAD TO RENEGADE series continues!

And as always, if you have any feedback, questions, or comments for the lads, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.