Good day everyone! Last weekend on both the Saturday and the Sunday I was playing in a competative Tournament of Warhammer 40,000 in the current 9th edition of the game. The Tournament's name is the King of the Cape. The general experience at the tournament was covered in this post HERE.

This post is specifically a deep dive into the happenings of the 3rd match against Thomas, the Emperor's Children player.

As I had last been playing in 5th Edition (And 1 game of 6th edition) I had only recently been playing again and this would literally make my 3rd 2000pt game! So I did not have too much of a hope against this particular type of opponent.

What the people at the tournament might not realize is that I am Old Guard and old habits and practices began to surface in my brain woken up by the recent battles.

My aim in this tournament was to get into the game properly, learn all the new rules and have fun! My veteran experience told me that THIS opponent was competitive and he would be playing for advantage with all his deployments, stratagems, unit selections and the manner in which he advanced on to the board.

That's what I get for winning in my last match! A good player! And he has a chess clock, so he was quite serious about time wasters. It might be something that I should consider because it is something that might be useful against players that are time wasters.

You see, with my Space Wolves, being the rugged Viking-Werewolf-Superhuman soldiers, they shine in the Assault Doctrine! All Space Marines use Combat Doctrines. In the first turn, you start in Devastator Doctrine, where Heavy Weapons and Grenades are better. Second turn you may advance to Tactical Doctrine, where Rapid Fire and Assault Weapons are better. Then, finally in turn 3 and beyond, my beloved Space Wolves are in the Assault Doctrine, where Melee weapons and Pistols are better.

Beyond the Melee weapons, all Space Marines would get bonuses for, the Space Wolves gain additional abilities in all combats and then in combats in the Assault Doctrine. Thus it is vitally important to the performance of my army to get into the Assault Doctrine.

I thought to myself, this is great. Let me analyze this opponent of mine. I am certain that he has tricks up his sleeve and the way that he will be taking strategic points on the map and how he reacts to threats in my army will teach me a lot about the game!

By the way, even though they are called Emperor's Children, these are Chaos Space Marines. Servants of the Ruinous Powers, specifically that of Slaanesh - the God of Excess.

An army-wide rule for him was - Always fights first!

As a quick run-down of his army as I remember it:

• Daemon Prince (The one with the wings above)
• Lucuis the Eternal (This is a named character)
• Chaos Sorceror
• Master of Executions
• One large squad of Chaos Terminators
• Venom Crawler (The other big beastie with the bubble butt)
• 5 Smallish squads of Noise Marines (These are the Slaanesh specialists much like Plague Marines are Nurgle specialists. They Schtick is that they have weapons called Blast Masters which is a sonic weapon!)
• A Chaos Spawn

So let's get into the game!

In the picture right at the top you can see 80% of his army all deployed behind a large ruin of a building. Effectively they were all out of sight. In the picture above you will see another two squads and the Master of Executions hiding behind a ruin on my right flank.

Thomas kept another 2 squads of Noise Marines in Strategic Reserve so that he can bring them on in future turns later in tha battle. This is to exploit weaknesses in my flanks and possibly take over points further back.

Also, there was a Chaos Spawn. This was the one thing that he did not bother to hide... so I ignored it. This seemed to vex my opponent and I knew I had made a good decision! You see, the Spawn is a Daemon, meaning it has something called an Invulnerable Save. It gets to roll to prevent damage from anything. It also regains all its lost Wounds to full at the end of the turn if I do not kill it. Thus I would be wasting shots at it if I was not certain of killing it in one turn. (I did kill it, when it was a certain thing and it did not manage to hurt anything in my army - good job!)

His deployment and Strategic Reserves is the first sign that this experienced player was reacting to my army. I could see the plans tick over behind his brow - The Space Wolf player is highly Mechanised. He will possibly leave gaps open behind him as he rolls those vehicles forward.

He was not wrong! I could not exactly hold back for two tiny squads of Noise Marines and be hemmed into my own quarter!

So the Venom Crawler is something that I could likely have killed fast and I am not quite sure how good it is at dishing out damage because he used this unit to hang back and hold his home Objective the whole game.

He might have thought the same thing - My anti-tank is strong and his weapons might not have been suited to be that useful in our battle. Perhaps it was better against infantry armies.

His Characters, including his Daemon Prince hugged the terrain and he used them for leader boosts and Psychic abilities that he mostly used to boost the huge blob of Chaos Terminators.

This was his trump card: 10 Terminators with a Relic that lowers your ability to damage them significantly and psychic powers used to make their Toughness higher! They took up centre field on the centre objective while smaller units went for the flanks.

I had my own units that would take to the flansk and then I had to commit a lot of the firepower of my army to try take down some of these tough Terminators.

I could definately not ignore them and they were definately what you call an Anvil unit. They were also a Hammer, but they had additional Hammers behind them in the shape of Characters and a Daemon Prince. All the while his Noise Marines advanced and shot at my army.

My Wolf Guard contested the center and took the fight to the Terminators. They managed to kill some of them before being killed themselves. This was a necessary action on my part as it had to slow those Terminators down.

If I did not cut some down, they would advance into my table quarter and a Noise Marine squad would follow up and claim the center objective in their place.

Thus his army functioned exactly the way that he intended.

I also learned something extra: I did not know that units arriving from Strategic Reserved from the sides could Charge into close combat on the turn they arrived. These reserves must arrive outside of 9" of the enemy and this made such a charge difficult but this discovery led me to use my Wolf Guard (who have no ranged weapons) to Outflank, specifically using a Space Wolf Stratagem called Cunning of the Wolf.

All in all, there were units destroyed on both sides. I did not fair too badly, but Thomas had also completed various Secondary objectives, such as Warp Ritual to give him an edge in points!

Emperor's Children win!

Well done to Thomas. He really played a killer game and deserves all the kudos on this win.

My only surprise as to find out that Thomas did not attend the second day of the event! He could just as well have lost his game against me if he was going to drop out! 🤣🤣🤣

It was an enjoyable game and I learned plenty from it!

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa