Critmas Tournament After Action
Plasma Spam hosted the second annual Critmas Tournament this weekend and attendance nearly doubled from last year. Thanks to Eric and Orion for putting in so much work baking cookies, writing custom rules, and setting up boards.
The Rules
- If you’re within an inch of a gift, you can eat it for 0AP. Roll a D3 and get a Critmas themed weapon (Snow ball, Slay ride, etc.) One of the melee weapons let you turn an incapacitated enemy operative into a cookie.
- Gingerbread counts as light terrain. Gingerbread cookies count as scramble piles. For 1CP you can eat the gingerbread to remove it from the board.
The cookies and gingerbread were delicious. Many attendees are no doubt jogging an extra mile today.
My Games
I took Talons. My lineup was the same for all games: two Custodians with Guardian Spears, four Vigilators, and one Sister Superior with a bolt gun. With the exception of game 2 my equipment was the same: five Vratine faceplates.
Game 1
First game was against Wil’s Legionaries on Capture, Sector Layout. Wil put up a good fight but this is a tough matchup for Legion and his dice didn’t cooperate.
Pushing Sisters to midboard and turning on Creeping Dread TP2 was instrumental in a 20–4 win.
Game 2
Game 2 was against Orion, my teammate and one of the best players in the world. I’ve never beat him, but I did tie him once (Talons vs pre-nerf Fellgor) so I figured the best I could do was give him a good game. Orion took Chaos Daemons, beautifully kitbashed Bloodletters that looked like Wendigos and Plaguebearers. Mission was Loot on Junction.
I swapped out the Vratine faceplate on my leader for a Psyk-Out grenade, which has a good damage profile into Psykers and Daemons.
Orion had to leave for work and thought we wouldn’t have time for a full game — but we decided to play lightning Kill Team and finished in about 35 minutes. We played so fast that both of us were made basic mistakes: for example, I put a conceal token on my Superior with the grenade and an engage token on my Vigilator, who had no chance of threatening anyone TP1 and just had to stand out in the open on engage.
But there was blood on the table and no one asked for oopsies.
We played so fast that I remember nothing about the game, other than we both had fun and Orion ate a shocking amount of cookies and gingerbread. I was able to keep it within 1 point on primaries, but Orion maxed out his secondaries and beat me 18–14.
Chaos Daemons are one of the most flavorful teams in the game: with 12 bodies on 32mm bases, they have board presence like no other team.
Game 3
Several Brooklyn Rats drove down to Maryland for the day and I hoped to get in a game against at least one. Luckily, game 3 was against George’s Wyrmblade. George is a thoughtful, cagey player and our games are among my favorites. Mission was Secure on the Front Line layout and I was excited to see what newly buffed Wyrmblade could do.
George won the roll-off and took Defender. My side felt like a no-man’s land that I had to cross to stay alive and set up TP2 charge threats.
George put a Heavy Gunner with Mining Laser and Neophyte with a Blasting charge in hiding. He also took the Sanctus Sniper and Kelermorph for specialists. I set out a Vigilator as bait behind light cover, hoping that George would take the early shot and commit his resources too soon — and also hoping that my Sister could tank the shot.
I gave George initiative TP1 because we both knew TP2 initiative would be critical. For Strat Ploys, George took One with the Shadows and his setup was masterful: with the cookies as light terrain his team was untouchable. He also took Meticulous Plan to allow his Neophytes to Secure objectives for 0AP. I took Aegis of the Emperor, knowing that I would need to turn crit damage into normal damage to tank his shooting.
George did not take the bait, and I moved my Vigilator up the board to Secure a point. We then spent many minutes measuring: how far exactly could his Neophyte throw the blasting charge? Where precisely could the Mining Laser get on the vantage near his drop zone?
And then it hit me: Custodian bases are so big that I could safely switch to engage (Infiltrate scouting option), move back 2" to be obscured by heavy terrain, be safe from shooting, yet have complete visbility on the vantage where George planned to come out of Hiding. Even if Wyrmblade played the waiting game to deny me Overwatch, Talons can take Brotherhood of the Demigods to shoot at the very end of the turning point.
Again after much trigonometry we agreed this would work — but! George pointed out that the gingerbread was tall enough to obscure the angle to vantage, and it didn’t matter that the gingerbread was light terrain because he had taken One with Shadows.
The only solution was to Eat the Gingerbread for 1CP, thus clearing the way for an open line of shooting to his Vantage. We split the gingerbread and played on. The threat of the Custodian was enough to keep the Heavy Gunner from deploying on Vantage, and the Custodian’s work was done: he kept all but one of the Sisters safe from attack. We ended TP1 each with three points from primaries, and each having lost 1 model.
I won the TP2 initiative roll-off, and I focused on killing as many of his models as I could, even at the cost of losing objectives, since I figured I could claw them back later. This turn I took Creeping Dread to worsen his ballistic and weapons skill, and Aegis to turn crit damage into regular damage. By the end of TP2 Wyrmblade controlled 4 objectives and Talons controlled only 2, but with Custodians getting reliable 2 for 1 trades and Sisters suppressing Wyrmblade’s close range effectiveness, Talons were poised to push across the board in TP3 — and TP3 ended with Talons controlling 4 objectives to Wyrmblade’s 2.
George incapacitated a Sister and turned her into a cookie, aka a new scramble pile where one had not existed before.
With so few bodies remaining TP4, Wyrmblade only had the strength to recapture one objective, but a Custodian pushed through the Wyrmblade lines with a Charge / Fight / Secure to claim a backfield objective and end TP4 with 4–2 once again.
The end game came down to each denying the other secondaries:
- Talons took Executioner, Eliminate Guards, and Rob and Ransack. Wyrmblade was able to deny me any points from Executioner and it turned out this was a bad pick. I ended the game with 3 from secondaries.
- Wyrmblade took Stalk Target, Perfect Ambush, and Implant. Stalk Target was easy to play around: if you get close to a Talon you’re going to get whacked. Wyrmblade maxed out Implant, but at the cost of giving up a lot of chip damage. George also ended the game with 3 from secondaries.
Overall a thrilling game with Talons taking it 16–14.
Lessons learned:
- Talons: taking Executioner against Wyrmblade is a risky pick. It’s just too easy to flip back to conceal or run away, and if your opponent has strong positional play you are at risk of scoring 0 from Executioner.
- Wyrmblade: Infiltrate is a tough archetype to take into Talons. Wyrmblade is now killy enough that Seek and Destroy might be the better pick. If Wyrmblade had taken S&D the game would have likely ended in a tie.
- Wyrmblade might have misplayed by not sacrificing the Heavy Gunner TP1. We both would have ended TP1 down by 2 bodies instead of 1, and that math works in Wyrmblade’s favor. Too many 1 for 1 trades in TP1 is death for an elite team.
Thoughts on teams post dataslate
- Talons of the Emperor are still competitive and still my pick for best beginner team. Aegis of the Emperor and Creeping Dread are so strong, and so simple, that you can focus on the basics of positional play and layered threats and forget about fiddly team rules.
- Wyrmblade is now a strong team: fun to play, hard to play well, and fun to play against. With Coiled Serpent and the tweak to Cult Ambush, George was constantly re-rolling dice. I think even Crossfire will finally see play. Getting the benefits of Cult Ambush when you come out of hiding finally makes Wyrmblade feel like a team of ambushing revolutionaries. I predict Wyrmblade will become a gatekeeper team, like 10 genestealers early in this edition. Figuring out how to counter Wyrmblade will become a rite of passage for new and intermediate players.
- Pathfinders. Oy. What was GW thnking by buffing Pathies just prior to releasing Bheta-Decima? Some local metas will have a soft ban. (To be clear, while Pathfinders took 1st and 3rd at Critmas, the players who took them are so good they would have placed at the top with trash tier teams).
- Kasrkin now have the most reliable shooting in the game. You hate rolling dice and don’t want to play Novitiates? Take Karskin. Want to lock down an ITD room with guard and a Foregrip? Take Kasrkin.
And that’s the wrap up. If you live on the East Coast USA it’s worth a trip for Critmas next year. Thanks again to everyone who hosted, traveled, and played!
