This last weekend I participated in the 2018 Adepticon Championship tournament. This is a five game 2000 point tournament with 164 players, currently the largest in the world for 2018. Leading up to the tournament I had decided in the fall to pick up Seraphon for the first time due to their great new rules in the GHB 2017. I saw them as very mobile and tactical with a lot of internal synergy and good counters to what I saw as a demon heavy meta. THe list I took to Adepticon was as follows: Allegiance: Seraphon Leaders Engine of the Gods (220) - Artefact: Light of Dracothion Slann Starmaster (260) - General - Trait: Great Rememberer - Artefact: Incandescent Rectrices Skink Starpriest (80) Celestant-Prime (340) Battleline 40 x Skinks (200) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers 40 x Skinks (200) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers 10 x Skinks (60) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers Units 9 x Ripperdactyl Riders (420) 1 x Salamanders (40) Battalions Shadowstrike Starhost (170) Total: 1990 / 2000 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 149 I have played with Shadowstrike at 2 previous tournaments but had been using a unit of judicators and protectors. For this tournament I switched those out for a celestant-prime (a giant ripperdactyl conversion) and bumping up my ripperdactyls from 6 to 9 in the shadowstrike unit after conferring with the tournament organizer who ruled that the bloat toad could be placed even while the rippers were off the table as it had no game effect until they came down. The salamander was actually a summoning pool so was not deployed. The army came in at 5 drops. Game One - vs. Clan Moulder: My first game was against Ben who was running a seldom seen army of Moulder for skaven. He had two hellpits and three sets of 6 rat ogres all backed up by 3 or 4 packmasters. The scenario was starstrike and i figured I had a good shot since my army could teleport around and be more mobile than his even though he hits harder in combat. I was able to out drop him and took first turn. I took the secondary objective to cause more wounds with my general than he caused with his since his general was a packmaster. The first thing i did was to teleport up my engine of the gods to zap his general with an arcane bolt from my general, killing him and scoring my secondary right off the bat. I then brought on my rippers who proceeded to take out 6 rat ogres and a hellpit on the first turn, in exchange for two rippers, which caused his flank to turn. This is his charge phase turn one On his turn, he shifted a second set of 6 rat ogres to charge into my rippers and proceeded to completely destroy every single one although he did not get any other charges off. At the beginning of turn 2 the comet lands on the center line in the far woods shown in the picture above. I won priority for turn two and bring in the celestant prime (big ripper) to take revenge on the rat ogres that killed her babies. Everything else pulls back and waits for the other comets while throwing everything into the hellpit in the middle of the table bringing it down to 3 or 4 wounds left. Knowing he could heal back most of those with a double turn I charge in the Engine of the Gods and also charge in the celestant prime against a depleted rat ogre unit hoping to finish it off. I select my Engine to attack first and get lucky and kill the hellpit without it getting back up. On his activation he piles in the rat ogres and proceeds to do all eight wounds to him before he can even swing! So much for revenge! Even so his rat ogres had taken too many casualties from shooting and flee that battlefield (although we realized later that there should have been 2 left because the prime wasnt affecting their battleshock because it was dead). On his turn 2 he moves up and secures the initial starstrike with his giant rats and continues to bring his rat ogres up toward my lines. Turn three I am able to grab the two additional objectives that land and since his force is very depleted I advance to take on his last pack of rat ogres and take the mid table objective from his giant rats. My Engine of the gods gets charged by his last pack of rat ogres but does not kill it. On my turn I charge in my Slann to see if he can kill it to get his secondary objective but he leaves the frog on one wound. While this combat is going on my skinks take the middle objective from his giant rats which effectively ends the game. Throught the game I was able to dictate where and when the action happended thanks to my speed, ability to drop from the sky and ability to do ranged damage. I have found that straight close combat blender armies like this one dont do very well against armies like mine or changehost or fyreslayers as they really only have one way to deal damage. If that is countered in any way a lot of their ability to control the board goes away as well. Ben was a great opponent and I loved chatting with him about the GW store that he runs and our mutual love of all things Skaven! I will submit my other 4 games as my schedule allows and will also look to start up a hobby blog detailing how I went about making this army. Thanks for reading and please let meknow if you have any thoughts or questions!
I noticed your mother ripper over on TGA nice job on that. Nice report as well looking forward to the rest and your paint blog.
Thank you so much man ! I loved the battlerep, can't wait to read the rest and follow your painting blog !
For my second game, we were playing duality of death and my opponent was Mark Tobin's Sylvaneth army with Alarielle, a treeman ancient with wildwood making stuff, drycha, 3 hunters with swords, 3 hunters with bows, 20 dryads, and 2x5 tree revenants. He began the game deployed quite defensively with alarielle, hunters with bows, and the ancient surrounded by the 20 dryads and with the free woods on the center objective within buff range of the dryads. He started drycha, 3 hunters with swords, and a unit of tree revenants in reserve. I outdropped my opponent again and so decided to deploy quite offensively. I used my shadowstrike battalion to have my skinks push up the field and decided to take first turn. I knew that if I could kill the ancient he had no other wildwood generation in his army so that was priority number one. I teleport up my engine and between the engines d6 mortal wounds and the slann casting arcane bolt through it I got him down to 4 wounds. In the movement phase I brought down the rippers next to the encircling dryads and also brought the prime down on the left flank objective (i didn't realize that you had to move onto the objective to score points but it didn't matter in the end). I also moved up all my skinks in such a way as to zone out his existing wildwoods to make sure he couldnt deploy anything from the realmroots. In the shooting phase i dropped the primes scepter ability right on top of the ancient to be sure I hit him and tipped the damage dice to a 3 leaving the ancient on one wound left! I charged in my ripperdactyls and managed to get one within an inch of the ancient and managed to take him out! The rest of the rippers shredded the 20 dryads and ended the turn in combat with the 3 hunters with bows. On his first turn, the only things he had left were Alarielle, 3 bow hunters in combat, and 5 tree revenants. He teleported the revenants behind my Slann and advanced Alarielle up to charge into deadly terrain to take the central objective from my engine. He rolled quite well for his metamorphosis spell and between that and good shooting from the hunters was able to take down the engine. He charged Alarielle onto the central objective (not rolling a one for deadly terrain, bold move!) and killed some skinks (though his combat rolls were pretty bad and only killed about ten skinks or so). The only picture of this game (end of round one). Prime holds closest obj and Alarielle commands the central point At this point, I had no real way to take out Alarielle and she was able to reach out with her spells to take out my prime on the other objective (i forgot about healing every turn by the round number since he is not a behemoth). I put my skink starpriest and slann on the objective on the other side but it was too late since Alarielle had held the central point since turn one. My opponent was able to score a major victory although it was a close and cagey game. The final VP tally was 15 vs 13. It was looking grim for him when his ancient was killed turn one and he couldn't bring down 500 points from reserve all game but the scenario is made for Alarielle and he played it well. I was able to score my secondary and tertiary by running a ten pack of skinks all the way across the table and holding an objective at the end of the game with a non-monster hero. I was kicking myself for not remembering the healing for the prime but looking back at it he shouldn't have been scoring at all so it was even more of a loss than the official score. Talking afterward he was thinking about different ways to avoid getting zoned out like he did keeping those points out of the game. The great thing about the scenario is that if you have the right tool (Alarielle) then it can be a favorable matchup regardless. As I was preparing for Adepticon one of my main concerns was what to do against an opponent who screen their key pieces quite well. 9 rippers have a huge footprint and are difficult to get into the opponents backfield so I was worried that they may wind up eating chaff for a turn or two then get shot off against things like change host. This game they were able to take that last wound off the ancient which was key and got rid of the dryads which, while not critical for this mission, could have been a thorn in my side regardless. One of the critical design pieces of this list is that the rippers in reserve make people want to castle up around their key pieces but the prime punishes them for doing so with his MW shooting phase attack. This push and pull mechanic means you are already getting into peoples heads and forcing a tough choice on them even before the game begins. This is further helped by the fact that since shadowstrike is not really in the meta many of my opponents had never faced it before and were surprised with how hard it could hit. At this point, I was 12 points off max after game 2 which seemed to spell the end of any chance to podium at the event. However, I really like playing the submarine game as you dont have to face the super competitive top table folks but still have a chance to do well. I was looking forward to relaxing a bit and getting in my third game.
My third game was up against Gabe Usry and his Stormcast Eternals. The scenario was Take and Hold which is a tough one to score a major victory on because you have to hold both your own objective and theirs with the objectives going live in round 3. His list included 10 liberators and 5 judicators defending the objective and a stardrake with staunch defender a relictor, castellant and 10 retributors all deployed on his right flank. On his left flank, he had a venator and another 5 judicators. Once again I was able to finish deploying before he did and so deployed somewhat aggressively and took the first turn. Right away I was not doing great as my Engine didn't get off its d6 MW ability after teleporting it forward. Seeing this poor display and the rest of the hero phase being underwhelming I decided to pull back everything and try to wait out a possible double turn while placing my bloat toad right on his objective Nothing he had could reach me on his first turn but if he doubled me things could get messy. I figured since objectives didn't matter until turn three I could pull him out of position by me falling back and then when my celestant and rippers came in on his objective he would be stuck deciding which way to go. On his first turn he did a general advance against my flank with the retributors (he failed to pray for lightning chariot) and stardrake. THere was a bit of shooting but nothing too impactful. I won priority and on my second turn I brought down the rippers and celestant right on top of his 10 liberators and 5 judicators holding his objective. I used my mortal wound output to snipe his relictor and ran away from his retributor block, effectively removing them from the game (along with his poor run rolls for them). My rippers killed off all his liberators and 6 were in range of his objective. On his turn two, he had a tough choice of continuing forward with the stardrake or turning around to protect his own objective. He decided to turn back to his own with the drake while advancing again with his judicators and retributors. His did not have much luck and only managed to kill 2 or so rippers. Even more importantly his stardrake was stuck in place due to the nearby forest, keeping him from getting it within 6 inches of his own objective. If he had been able to plant his stardrake there I would not have been able to shift him very easily. the board at the end of the game that tree by his stardrake kept him from reaching the objective I believe I won the priority again on turn three and put everything I had into the 5 judicators holding his objective bringing them down to one and then I charged in with the prime and took out that last one. His stardrake had the chance to take out enough rippers to keep me from holding the objective but was not able to deal enough damage and so the game ended as a major win to me. Thinking back over the game I was worried about my first bad hero phase but I knew that the Seraphon were maneuverable enough to get to where they needed to be even if I pulled back off the line for a turn or two. This was one of the tactics I had in mind with this list as I could deploy everything far back in my deployment zone but still be anywhere I wanted at pretty much any time thanks to teleports, speed, and the rippers and prime dropping down exactly where and when I needed them. Whenever I see a big scary piece like a stardrake I just have to remind myself that they can only be one place at a time and have to look to split their attention to make their decision to commit somewhere a difficult one. I was pretty happy to get a major win as the scenario usually leads to minor victories. THis keeps me moving up the ladder into day 2!
Get in, Currently at work but looking forward to reading through this muchly! Grats Adam on your Seraphon successes
I came in 20th with an Archaon in a Nurgle list. I only wanted to put things in his daemon sword Was a lot of fun using the big man. trouble is the list I am running him in tends to take advantage of bad deployment or movement and was winning games in the first turn.. No one really enjoys being beaten that quickly, so no soft scores for me and that's what GW events are about. We got 3 majors, a minor win and a loss (to KO on duality, so no way to protect Archaon, lost priority and 2 turns of KO shooting is grim. Don't mind losing when there's nothing you can do about it).
Used them at Bloodtithe Team came 2nd overall and my Kroak list got the highest individual score overall