40k League - 11th - Season 1 - Round 2 - Division 3

Round 1 of the mid league is in the bag, and I’m sure all of brains have melted in this never-ending bastarding heat, so I’ll to use small words.

Dan (Death Guard / Purge) Vs Joe (Votann / Priority):

I originally thought this game was going to be Purge into Purge as we didn’t know Joe’s disposition at the time of the predictions blog, but it turns out Joe picked Priority Assets, so it was nice to not play Meatgrinder for the 728^th time. (And yes, I know I can’t complain about all the Purge players out there when I play Purge but shhhhhh).

Kudos to Joe for jumping straight into this league without having played a single game of 11^th edition, or even a single game with Votann! I can’t tell if he’s an absolute maverick or just a smooth brain like the rest of us, but he certainly gave me one hell of a fight. Joe is also incredibly tall for a Votann player, so enjoy that juxtaposition.

Purge into Priority is tricky when the Priority player can delete lots of your units! And I don’t understand why Votann players aren’t using the Steeljacks more often. Overwatching on 4’s with a million shots just seems like squat stonks to me…

Special shout out to my Land Raider for being absolutely useless beyond transporting my brick of Plague Marines to the centre of the board. Maybe one day you’ll hit with your Lascannons champ.

Prediction: Me

Winner: Me (84 to 74)

Josh (Chaos Knights / Purge) vs Matt (Necrons / Take and Hold):

Woof. I didn’t have a chance to chat to these guys about their game beyond asking Josh if his Porphyrion was able to one-shot a C’tan, and his response was “the exact opposite, in fact LOL”. It seems that split fire once again proved why it’s about as reliable as a command point re-roll, but is the smooth brain play of choice.

This was always going to be an uphill struggle for Josh considering he has like two units and Matt has a billion. Purge, on paper, looks quite good going into Take and Hold, but if he wasn’t getting the damage output, the result is going to be fairly academic.

Well done to Matt for the win, and in the nicest possible way I hope Necrons get nerfed into the floor in a few days 😉

Prediction: Matt

Winner: Matt (99 to 35)

 Craig (Death Guard / Recon) vs Jamie (Imperial Knights / Purge):

The way I saw this game going was that Jamie would dish out a lot of damage, racking up lots of points for Purge, but Craig would have just enough action monkeys left to out-think his way to a win. Seemed like a fairly safe prediction to me…

 In my first incorrect prediction of the league, (cheers Craig), Jamie ended up killing too many of Craig’s action monkeys, and despite a very close score, it ended up going in Jamie’s favour.

The way Craig tells it, the pivotal reason was that his Myphitic Blight Haulers, which get +1 to hit and wound against Vehicles and Monsters, failed to hit with their Multi Meltas pretty much the whole game. Absolute snakes. Fumin.

Prediction: Craig

Winner: Jamie (93 to 86)

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Onto Round 2… People have won, people have lost and one person hasn’t played a league game yet…UNTIL NOW!!! (insert dramatic music).

As we might get a balance patch that potentially changes everyone’s’ lists, these predictions could be all over the place, but at least they hopefully make for some good reading.

Fixtures:

Matt (Necrons / Take and Hold) vs Jamie (Imperial Knights / Purge)

Dan (Death Guard / Purge) vs Weir (Dark Angels / Recon)

Craig (Death Guard / Recon) vs Joe (Votann / Priority Assets)

Josh - BYE

Matt vs Jamie:

Jamie’s list (currently) has more gun platforms to shoot at the Necrons than Josh did…but I can’t help but assume the result is going to be broadly similar to last time. I feel like Necrons naturally excel at Take and Hold, because all they’ve got to do is what they do best – stand still, refuse to die and hit you back way harder than they have any right to.

Imperial Knights do shoot better than their heretic equivalents though, and if Jamie can neutralise the C’Tans and/or Wraiths early, he might pull off the win. I didn’t back Jamie last time, so maybe I should reconsider? All I’ll say is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JAMIE DON’T SPLIT FIRE LIKE JOSH DID, IT WON’T END WELL.

Prediction: Jamie

 Dan vs Weir:

I’ve played Weir in 9^th edition, I’ve played Weir in 10^th edition and I’ve even played Weir in Necromunda – the result is always the same; Weir sweatlords his way to victory while claiming to be a purely narrative player.

However, this is 11^th edition, and while Weir has jumped straight in on the sweatiest meta chasing Dark Angels bikes and speeders list he can muster, I’ve played more games than he has, and I know Death Guard far better than he does, as he never bothers to play them – which is a real shame, because Weir’s Death Guard are fucking gorgeous. Way better than his generic, sometimes headless, Space Marines. Although I do enjoy the stolen xenos wargear.

I’ve got to play Consecrate, which is the more thinky of the Purge missions – appropriate considering I’m going up against an Alienware laptop. Meanwhile Weir has to make a bunch of triangles or something, I dunno. Consecrate is ok for me I think, my current list doesn’t mind sitting on a bunch of objectives and killing stuff.

Prediction: Dan

Craig vs Joe:

Joe’s second game of 11^th edition, second game with Votann and second game against DG, it’s Groundhog Day!

It’s going to be different this time though, both players have missions that require thought and planning, so this might come down to who has gotten the most sleep the night before.

Joe’s list has some serious killing power, and enough units to deal with Craig’s masses of action zombie monkeys. Craig can slap back hard, and the Land Fortresses will go down to focussed firepower…provided the Blight Haulers hit this time.

I think this is going to be another close game, and I’m having a hard time deciding who I think is gonna win it. I’ll go with my rotten gut.

Prediction: Craig

Josh has the BYE this week, which gives him plenty of time to rejig his Chaos Knights list. I would imagine the toddler sized Porphyrion is probably hitting the shelf for its sins. Just don’t slam it down, it’ll fall straight through the shelf. What an absolute unit of a unit.