‘Ard Boyz Style Tournament 03-20-2010

I played in an 'Ard Boyz style tournament this weekend and took 3^rd place. The lists were 2500 points and I took a full on World Eaters list.
My list:
HQ:
Kharn
Demon Prince w/MoK


Elite:
5 Chosen w/ Autocannon, Melta Gun, Flamer, IoCG

5 Chosen w/ Autocannon, Melta Gun x2, IoCG


Troop:
4x8 Khorne Berzerkers w/Skull Champ & Pfist, Rhino
2x10 Chaos Space Marines w/ Aspiring Champ &Pfist, 2x Melta, IoCG, Rhino


Heavy Support
3x Vindicator w/ Demonic Possession


Strategy:
Beat everything into submission. The Demon Prince was my anti-walker/anti-tank/Bullet Sponge.


Game 1: World Eaters vs Space Wolves

The mission was 5 objectives, one in the center and one in the center of each table quarter.
I played a goof fellow named Brad and in his list he had Logan Grimnar, two Rune Priests, 2 sets of terminators w/ assault cannons, 2 sets of long fangs, 3 set of grey hunters, and a group of scouts that outflanked. Everything but the scouts, who outflanked, were in drop pods. I barely glanced at his army list or even at his army after I deployed and moved on my first turn, then I noticed he had drop pods. All of my rear armor was exposed.
Strangely enough, he didn't get behind my vindicators and his shooting on his first turn was uneventful. His squad of grey hunters put a good hurt on my Chosen on one edge of the board.
On my turn (top of 2) the demon prince and a squad of Berzerkers got into position to assault some grey hunters. One of the terminator drop pods had scattered right in front of the vindicator wall and all but one lived after he made 3 invulnerable saves. The demon prince and berzerkers made quick work on the grey hunters squad, but a powerfist took out some berzerkers before the last one died on his turn.
On Brads turn he brought in some other stuff another long fangs and Logan Grimnar moved in to get close to the demon prince. His shooting killed the demon prince off leaving Grimnar open for the 6 berzerkers who took shelter.
Turn 3, the berzerkers moved in on Logan, shot bolt pistols at him, and the assault took him down, only removing one berserker. I positioned some vindicators, melted the lone terminator, shot at the other grey hunters.
Brad brought in another drop pod of terminators and a grey hunter squad, and again his shooting was ineffectual. Some berzerkers and a vindicator took out the grey hunters and the terminators that came from their drop pod were also vindicated. The CSMs I had shot and assaulted the last grey hunters squad and the two sets of berzerkers assaulted the other long fangs squad and rune priest wiping them out.
Time was short so brad got to finish his turn where pretty much all he had left was a long fangs squad. I think I finished the combats on his turn for all of his other troops and what not.
In the end I controlled 3 objectives and contested the rest, a massacre. Kharn and a squad of berzerkers never left their rhino. With bonuses I was at 22 points.


Game 2: World Eaters VS Slaanesh/Nurgle

Luck could not have been more in my favor. Of all the other games everyone else won a massacre and most of the bonus points putting them at 23. Because I had 22 I was at the back of the pack of the "winners". All of the losers had 0 points, except for one person who had 1 bonus point. Because of this I was to face the player with 1 bonus point. So that meant all of the others were playing seasoned veterans high on their glorious victories and I was playing an already demoralized opponent.
This mission had two moving objectives that scattered 4d6" every turn if a scoring unit was not within 3" at the start of every player turn. As luck would have it on turn 5 the objectives scattered within 6" of each other on turn 5 and I was able to spread and hold both objectives with a single troops choice.
The gentleman I played is named Ashton and he had a Terminator lord, 2 sets of terminators that were deep striking, 2 vindicators a Las/bolter predator, a nurgle demon prince with warptime, 3 squads of chaos space marines, and 1 squad of noise marines with a blastmaster, and 1 squad of plague marines. The only armor he had were the vindicators.
The first couple of turns was just moving. One of my vindicators put a hurt on some plague marine killing a couple. His vindicators did nothing as he shot at my vindicators as mine were possessed.
I don't recall all of the turn sequence and what happened in what order but here are the highlights. His plagues were wiped out by squad of berzerkers after being thinned out by a vindicator. I sacrifieced a CSM squad to be able to get my berzerkers into position and they brutally slaughtered the CSM when it was time.
One group of his terminators deep struck in and shot at a couple of things but did nothing. I moved a rhino in to be able to assault. On his turn he blew up the rhino and assaulted into the crater, going at initiative 1. The berzerkers still did a good job and tied them up until they were wiped out.
His other squad of terminators and chaos lord were a complete waste of points. They deep struck in and stunned a rhino. One vindicator swung around, fired with a direct hit, and wiped out all but one puny terminator, which was promptly melted. Oh what a world, what a world!
My vindicators blew up one of his and immobilized the other. I forgot to move the demon prince in to assault but on my next turn the demon prince was able to smash his last vindicator to bits then swooped over and did the same to his predator, and finally assisted in wiping out the blastmaster noise marine squad.
His demon prince was whittled down to one wound with the help of autocannons and Kharn's plasma pistol and was killed quite easily by a squad of berzerkers.
Of the 3 CSM squads he had two were killed by berzerkers and Kharn put all 7 of his attacks onto them wiping them out.
His last man survived while Kharn overheated and saved his plasma shot and a squad of 5 berzekers failed to cause any wounds, but then promptly pounded him into the dirt.
I completed wiped the board of Ashton's models and lost only 750 or so in victory points. I also obtained all of the bonus points to score 24 points and placing me in first place!


Game 3: World Eaters VS Orks
The game was Dawn of War, Annihilation.
I really wasn't looking forward to this game as I had never played orcs before. I played Topher who had two 30 man boyz squad with a nob leading them who had a power claw, two battle wagons and 3 or 4 trukks, 2x2 deffcoptas, and a squad of commandos. One of his HQs was a generic one and the other I don't remember. One of the boyz squads, lead by his other HQ, had feel no pain. Oh, there also two nobz squads, the ones with 2 wounds and they were all different, his other HQ was leading this squad.
I made too many errors this game. The vindicators lived only long enough to fire one shot. The berzerkers killed tons but couldn't survive the overwhelming number of powerclaws hitting back. The demon prince was smacked down with all of the ungodly amount of powerclaws, too. All I did this game was hang back and try and place my rhinos to be able to get the assault off and that didn't work out to well as I forgot/didn't pay enough attention to the battle wagons and trucks and they were able to move up, disembark, and cause some real damage. The Waagah didn't help either.


Results

I lost only to a major (or minor, I forget) victory. If either one of us had won this game with a massacre we would have gone on to win the tournament. That was not the case as I took 3^rd, Topher took 2^nd, and another fellow took first. I won $20 for my efforts, which is nothing to complain about!


Other Thoughts
I was very fortunate to be able to play the opponents in the beginning that I did. I feel that if I had more experience playing orcs I could have done better and would have used a different strategy. However, even with a great deal of more experience, a massacre and a win for the tournament would have been hard to pull off.
This was the first time I had used a Khorne Demon prince and he did pretty well for what I intended him for: acting as a bullet sponge and letting my other units get into place.
I spent a lot of time painting my Kharn model and several people gave me praise for my efforts.
I bought a drop pod with the money I won. I am going to use it for apocalypse games.

Model Review: Khârn the Betrayer

Another one of my favorite characters in WH40k is Khârn the Betrayer. Khârn is a close combat monster when everything works, but can be blasted to pieces pretty easy.

Strengths

On the charge Khârn gets 7 attacks and benefits from Furious Charge, putting his initiative and strength at 6. The special ability of his close combat weapon lets him always hit on 2+ and most everything is a 2+ to wound. All of those being power weapon means nothing much stands in Khârn's way.

Khârn uses power armor so he can use a Rhino but is probably best used in a Land Raider. Another plus of the power armor is that he can sweeping advance. With a leadership of 10 and an enemy unit going to be down a number of attacks anything that fails its morale check is going to take some hits. With the Fearless ability he isn't going to be running away from the enemy like a coward.

Another minor plus, but also a risk, is Khârn's plasma pistol. I have used him to blow speeders and other light armored items out of the sky with relative ease.

A major plus of Khârn is that he is regarded as one of the best HQs for Chaos Space Marines given his high effectiveness and relatively equal cost to a Chaos Lord.

An effect of Khârn's close combat weapon is to use 2d6 for armor penetration. With the number of attack he gets stationary vehicles are toast.

Khârn is blessed by Khorne himself and psychic attacks are useless against him. In addition to that force weapons are downgraded to power weapons against him.

Weaknesses

By far the most glaring weakness of Khârn is his lack of Eternal Warrior and toughness 4. One unsaved swing of a powerfist in the first round of combat and it is lights out for this 10,000+ year old warrior.

Khârn is a team killer and the chances of him killing a friendly is 73% on the charge.

Khârn is primarily effective in close combat. If he doesn't get there and get the charge then the points and effort has been wasted.

The 2+ ability of Khârn's axe only works on models with a weapon skill so that Land Raider that moved more than 6" is still going to be hard to hit.

Tactics:

When running Khârn the biggest threat is instant death. Put him with a squad in a vehicle and make sure that vehicle gets to where it is going as best as possible. I usually use a Land Raider for the most survivability and to assault what I can when I get there.

When possible and when I know I can get an assault off I disembark the squad from one hatch of the land raider and disembark Khârn from the other. Next, the squad goes after one unit while Khârn goes after another. This ensures that the target isn't wiped out and your forces aren't left to be shot at on the enemy's turn.

Also by breaking Khârn off from the group it may be possible to target a unit that does not have a powerfist type implement. Obviously that opportunity is invaluable.

A strategy I have read about being used is to employ the use of Khârn with models that have an invulnerable save. The available units are Possessed Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Terminators.

Terminators aren't Fearless and negate a sweeping advance and limit Khârn to the use of a Land Raider. Thousand Sons are slow and purposeful so putting an assault character with them is be foolish. Possessed CSMs are the strongest option of the 3 and can use a Rhino but suffer from their random ability tablee being mostly useless.

In my personal opinion this tactic could be viable but with proper use of tactics Khârn can be highly effective without having to buy ineffectual units.

Be smart with Khârn and he will deliver results.

My Experiences

Granted I haven't played this game as much as others but I have used Khârn to great effect almost every time I have used him.

Once when battling some Tau I used the tactic as described above to break Khârn apart from his squad and charge 4 or 5 crisis suits with one of them being a strong HQ choice. I chose to put Khârn's attacks into the squad instead of the commander and with a crappy roll 4 dice missed. 3 wounds later the unit failed it's leadership test and ran off the board. Khârn consolidated off the board in an attempt to attack a tank but the tank was destroyed by a supporting Defiler.

Another time in a somewhat large combat Khârn charged a squad of Space Marines. One of Khârn's to hit rolls was a 1 and the closest unit was a Defiler. Strength 6 + 2d6 later and a 6 on the damage chart meant one drastically dead Defiler.

Statistics

Some say that using Khârn is too much of a risk. Killing your own models is a waste of points. Who knows, that one model could have gone on to win the game.

In an effort to see just how detrimental Khârn can be I ran a simulation using MS Excel. The simulation assumes that Khârn is on the charge and gets his 7 attacks. Using the RANDBETWEEN function to randomly pick a number between 1 and 6 and duplicating this functionality across 7 columns and 1000 rows this effectively simulates what Khârn's rolls would be on 1000 charges.

Out of 1000 charges 275 of them, or approximately 28% of the time, Khârn rolled 2+ for his to hit rolls. That also means that approximately 72% of the time a friendly model is going to take a hit.

Now the question is, "How many friendly models are going to get hit 72% of the time?" A 40% chance exists that only one model will be hit, 24% chance that two models will be hit, 7% chance that three models will be hit, and a 1% chance that four models will be hit. 5 ones being thrown in one roll is a 1 in 7,776 chance. This case happened once out of the simulated 1000 throws.

Of the 1000 charge simulations no instance exists of 6 ones rolled or 7 ones rolled so this case is infinitesimal. For 6 ones the chance is 1 in 46,656 and for 7 once the chance is 1 in 279,936. If you ever roll either one of these two go buy a lottery ticket.

Conclusion

In my opinion the chances of Khârn hitting friendly models is acceptable. Hard lessons learned like the one above with the Defiler go a long way to learning what tactics to use when positioning Khârn for the assault.

When using Khârn repeat the phrase, "KILL! MAIM! BURN! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"