Astronomi-con Winnipeg 2014 Review

So here is my experience from the Winnipeg Astronomi-con even this year.

First for anyone who might not know Astro is a tournament unlike any other. From the missions, to the scoring, to the people you play it is a totally unique event. I heartily encourage anyone who gets the chance to go and try it out. You can learn a bit more about the event at their webportal here.

So this is the second Astro Mike and I had gone to (the other being last summer in Vancouver). We solidified our plans to go with just over a month of time before the tournament. With this limitation in mind we both knew we probably were not going to win Best Overall. To have a chance at placing first for that you have to have "the whole package" which includes a lot of soft scores. Of special importance is appearance. Not only is it worth quite a few points, but anything not to a 3 color minimum is removed from play at the start of the turn. So we both were going for Best General which focuses strictly on composition and battle points.

With that in mind I set to fine tuning my list. I had decided to play Eldar (an army I haven't really done anything with since 3rd edition when I played Uthwe). I was designing my list around the contents of the Iyanden box set Darren had. My final list was: A farseer w/ jetbike; a Spiritseer w/ the wraithforge stone; a unit of 3 guardian jetbikes w/ one shuriken cannon; two units of wraithguard (one with d-scythes) both in wave serpents; a unit of wraithblades with axes and shields; a wraithlord with double bright lance; and a stock wraithknight who would be my warlord with the stratigic genius warlord trait. Mike and I had three playtest games before going and I thought this list was about as good as it was going to get while keeping to my theme. It also meant there would not be a terribly large number of models to paint.

Overall I was pleased how the army performed, if a little disappointed that I scored very poorly on how fun it was to play against. I think I could have brought a far more competitive list just to smash face since wraith units (espcially the troops) are not very cost effective and despite their high toughness and decent save are fragile. I will go into some more depth after all the game reports.

At this point I will mention that Mike and I were both saddened by the overall attendance of this Astro event. When we went to Vancouver the tournament had maxed out at 32 attendees. Not amazing (like adepticon or LVO) but a lot more bodies than the tournaments I am used to here in 'Toon town. This time however there were only 16 attendees. Now this might have been for a number of reasons, but I think the lack of communication for scheduling the event played the biggest part. Oh well.

This event took place in one of the conference rooms in the Holiday Inn at Polo Park. Mike and I booked accommodations in the hotel for the duration of the event. Both the venue and the rooms were nice (although dry). I will say having a room nearby is nice so you are not stuck using the public lavatories like we did last time (even better the venue included a separate bathroom right next to the conference room for guests only). Also filling up water bottles was required in my opinion. I regularly drank two bottles of water each game. Without it I am fairly sure I would have blown my voice out (which more or less happened at Vancouver).

A note on the armies that we saw in attendance. The "meta" in Winnipeg is completly different than the one in Vancouver. At the previous event we had encountered almost no fliers and a number of "flavor of the month armies" (tau especially). In Winnipeg however fliers were the name of the game. Most armies had one and some even had two. From Cestus Assault Rams to Vendettas. One player even brought double dragon with allied armor company. So the type of lists brought were totally different.

Enough blabbering! On to how the games went.

First round was of course against local legand Mike Bidyk. We both figured we would be playing each other. Somewhat irritating, but better to get it out of the way now. We luckily got a unit point mission without any special rules and proceeded to beat the tar out of each other. I got lucky on some dice rolls and managed to pull out a win with 12 points to Mike's 10. (the wins don't matter but it makes me feel special).

My second game was against a bunker based Eldar army with the "Blizzard" scenario and board. I was incredibly happy with the scenario for this opponent. His bunker consisted of 5 dark reapers all with eldar missile launchers with illiac and a farseer with an icurus lascannon (for the exarch) on the battlements and 20 guardians with a brightlance inside. The bunker itself had a single void shield. Outside the bunker were three units of rangers, and a unit of fire dragons in a scatterserpent. Most of the game devolved into me hiding beyond 36" due to the blizzard limiting los to that range and springing out last turn for table quarters. I didn't have tons left on the board at the end of the game but I won with 12 points to me and only one to two for him. He realized to late that I was going to ignore his bunker and grab table quarters last turn and the game ended perfectly for me.

My last game on day one was against a really awesome ork army. He had converted all of his trucks/battlewagons to look like helicopters. We ended up playing static guard which has between 3-5 objectives with more or less standard secondaries. He took a really gutsy approach and lined everything up against me except a unit of zzap guns and a single battlewagon. Everything else drove forwards as fast a possible in an attempt to bog me down in my deployment zone. If the game had ended on turn five I would have suffered a crushing defeat (his 6 points to my one). As it happened the game went to 6 and I was able to clear my deployment zone and jump on three objectives. Ended up with 13 points to his 2 or 4.

So at the end of day one I was really happy with my results. I had managed to score three really good games. So far I was definatly in the running for Best General. Although I knew there were at least 2-3 guys (Mike being one of them) that were close behind me.

Day two opened with another Unit point mission called "Sulfur flats" against a very pretty dark angles army. I knew I had the upper hand going in since he had a very balanced TAC list with a little bit of everything led by Azrael. I should have played a tighter game and finished more units completly (all three of his bike units had one model remaining which would have netted me quite a few more points). As it was I didn't end up needing it winning with a 10 to his 3 or 4.

My next two games were when everything went sideways. My fifth game was against a brutal Imperial guard army on the "Truck Stop" board. This is one of the missions I had been dreading. Getting it so late also meant I was going to be playing someone else who had done well. Thankfully my opponent didn't play the mission at all and spent all his time trying to table me. The game ended right on turn 5 when I needed it to and I was holding three of the truck objectives to his one. I managed to win 8 to 1. If the game had gone on one more turn I probably would have been tabled. My dice were absolute rubbish all game (it took me three turns to wreck a basilisk). The only upside is my opponent failed a lot of 2+ or 3+ rolls when shooting lascannons and artillery into my units.

My last game was against a "counts as" Space wolf army (they were painted up like bengal tigers so it was pretty cool). Of course it had to be the only other mission I didn't want to play "Convoy" This game I made a couple of tactical mistakes that were compounded not only by the mission but by stupid Arjac doing work. Mike had played him earlier in the tournament and suffered the same fate. I hit him with a total of 10 str 8/10 ap2 wounds over 4 rounds of close combat. He passed every 3++ storm shield save except for the last two. He managed to plough through a unit of wraithguard with D-scythes the wraithknight and the wraithlord (who did the final wound to him). If he had failed a couple of them sooner I might have had an actual chance at what I wanted. It also didn't help that his rune priest with an icarus and long fang squad rolled up perfect timing and of course prescience. This was the only game I lost and only scored two points to his 8. As it turned out this is the guy who ended up winning best Overall.

Throughout all of the games I learned quite a bit about playing an Iyanden army and how different it is from more traditional eldar.

I thought Arjac had 2 wounds...

Paz wrote:I thought Arjac had 2 wounds...

He does, but he never failed any up till the last round and then failed both at the same time. So for all four rounds I was just bouncing off of him. Was really irritating.

edit: I could have worded it better but ran out of time at work   

makes sense. I shot all my centurions, melta marines and snipers into him while playing Dana one time, and he laughed it off. so irritating for a 2 wound model

what was your opinion of the wraithblades with axes tom? worth taking or somewhat pointless? i'm on the fence about making one of my squads into them cause i like their look but im not sure if its worth the effort

As promised here is a bit of unit analysis throughout the tourney.

Farseer on Jetbike: I am definatly a fan. With him not being my warlord I was able to be more reckless with him. Although I don't think I ever did roll up Death Mission for funzies. For the most part he did what Farseers do best, cast powers and be a general pain in the butt. Any time other than at Astro I would always take the jetbike. I was able to not only contest 1-2 objectives/ table quarters with him, I did some movement shenanigans with my wraithblades as well (whom he was usually attached to). Nothing like jumping out front to get an extra 3" closer to a potential charge victim. At Astro however the jetbike was a liability on two different occasions where only infantry could start on the board. So he was essentially useless for two turns. Next Astro I'm not sure how I am going to take him. I defiantly know that he easily earned his points in every other game though.

Spiritseer with the wraithforge stone: For the most part I like the Spiritseer. I realized after the tournament I hadn't really been making use of the spiritmark ability which was a bit of a mistake on my part. I don't think it would have mattered much since I was tossing prescience and guide from the Farseer each turn. The wraithforge stone was interesting, but again could probably lose it. Most of the time at 1500 points if one of your wraith constructs is going down, it is going down hard. There are only two things I am not really a fan of. First is the Spiritseer being LD9. I cannot stress enough how crummy that is. Second with random powers and not having access to conceal/reveal was frustrating at times. I really like the Iyanden primaris power, but why is it warp charge 2? Also not having a ghost helm is kinda crummy since one game I periled turn one and then didn't cast anything the rest of the game since I didn't want to give up his unit points.

Wraithguard (with and without D-Scythes): Definitely some of the most interesting and in my opinion fun to play with "troops" in the game. They are much slower than most Eldar infantry since they don't come with battle focus. This requires them to either be in larger squads (I'd guess in the 8-10 model range) or be in a transport. They are very tough being t6 with a 3+ save. Most of my opponents were shooting anti-tank/plasma at them to get consistent results. Most standard anti-infantry weapons just bounce off of them. The D-Scythes are much more impressive of a weapon, but they require a lot more planning to get results with. I think if you are going to use them a spiritseer with Voice of Twighlight is necessary to get the extra run distance for the flamer templates. The standard wraithcannon is fun as always. People don't like getting shot with str10 ap2 guns.

Wraithblades with Axes and Shields: I have to say that I love these models from an aesthetic point of view. They look super badass/intimidating while still looking Eldarish. From a gameing standpoint I really want to like them. The biggest problem is the low number of attacks they produce. So you have to be super careful of what they engage in melee. Anything with a large number of bodies will simply tarpit them for the rest of the game. That said, holy turds are these dudes tough. They just simply shrug their way through the nastiest stuff your opponent throws at them. Carring an invulnerable save with them means they don't have to skulk in cover either. And if their attacks do connect, whatever they are swinging at feels the pain. In all my games at Astro they performed well. I don't know if I'll be bringing them again, but they are totally fun to play with. They just need a little something extra to make them competitive (either an extra attack, a better armor save, or being in the 28 point range).

Wraithlord: Honestly I don't know what to think of him. I really want to like him (he was one of the first Eldar models I bought when starting 40k back in 3rd edition). But he has a number of issues that make him not quite competitive. He is really slow for Eldar, again not having battle focus. While tough with T8, only having a 3+ save is not cool. He really needs a cheap option for a 4+ invulnerable save to be worth his points. He also had the fun of generally missing with his two bright lances so I might just be cranky about that. I will say having T8 isn't as much as it used to be with all the stuff that just ignores toughness these days (monstrous creatures smash, grav, poison, etc). The highlight of his time was punching Arjac in the face and finally killing him. Also being a character is nice if you roll 6's to hit for the precision shots/melee attacks. I think if he had access to an invul, had 4 attacks base, or had WS5 he'd be much improved.

Wraithknight aka Big Daddy: Performed more or less how I expected him to. He jumped around and was a pain for almost all of my opponents. He did die in three of my games, although I think in one of them it was my fault (I was far to aggressive with him moving him directly forward turn one and two and got hit with a bunch of rad grenades/plasma talons). One other time he probably shouldn't have died (fighting Arjac, if my opponent would have just failed some saves). The last time was against IG and just keep soaking up shooting attacks for several turns. His highlights were smoking a Land Raider turn 1 and blowing up the Eldar players bunker on turn 5. I think I'd like to try the shield+suncannon version just for a comparison. I don't think it'd work in my list since I need the tank busting from the Heavy wraithcannons.

All in all Iyanden is a really fun army to play with. Like all Eldar you have to be really aggressive and attack your opponent (and know how to deal with threats appropriately). Although you exchange frailty in your units for low model count.

Guard guy sounds dickish from your description.

2 questions: what types of units gave you problems (and why).

Second, any specifics on that Dark Angels list? I'd be interested to know what he took.

He was a cool enough guy but decided early that he'd "have no chance" so set out to table me. I dunno. A lot of the guys didn't think about the missions super hard.

Really I designed my army to have at least tools for every kind of opponent. The biggest challange was against the ork player. While I have a lot of tools to deal with hordes they are all shooting options. Once I'm in combat I don't have tons of options to get through a lot of models. Other than that the worst matchup was against the bunker Eldar. I think I could win quite easily against him, however the mission was table quarters. So I had to keep units alive to control them. If it was unit points I would have rushed his bunker with both serpents and the wraithknight. He'll probably kill one of them with the shooting. But whatever is left wrecks the bunker and kills anything that comes out. Everything else more or less worked like it was supposed to. The guard player did so well against me since all my dudes were running around trying to bash the trucks open for objectives and my serpents, wraithknight, wraithlord, jetseer and jetbikes all started off the board. Even with strategic genius my reserves were not all on right away. Meanwhile he just sat in his deployment zone and shot at whatever moved on my side.

Thankfully I didn't have to play either of the armies I didn't want to play a Dark Eldar mech army with lots of poison and the double dragon with armored company allies. Although I got both missions I didn't want to play so it evened out IMO.

The DA list was Azrael, 10 tactical dudes, two minimum sized bike squads, a 5 man deathwing squad, 5 black knighs with two grenade launchers and 3 plasma talons, a 5 man sniper scout squad, a speeder (with the missile launcher), and a land raider.

There really wasn't anything I was overly worried about. It went from bad to worse for him since the board was fairly flat with two hills and 30-40% of the board was difficult terrain that confers 6+ cover save. Then first turn I popped his Land Raider with my wraithknight. Luckily for him I made a number of tactical blunders, so he still earned some points. Day two I didn't play nearly as well as I did day one.

Just to add.

its a miracle i placed as well as i did, because at the end of 4 out of 6 games, i had less than 10 models on the table. bikes are fun, but very fragile, White scars bikes are awesome, but in a shooting edition where everything thats good ignores cover or has access to divination... blah due to the nature of my list, i had an advantage in just about ever mission, however. as my bikes were troops except the command squad, and Drop Pod assault gets arround most of the reserves shenanigans those missions play. In most cases you were faceing all 26 bikes and 20 marines on foot turn one. Also captain with shield eternal and a fist or a hammer on a bike is a monster. This guy won me most of my games at the end.

Tom in the first round. Always feels like i'm losing against this list. small arms fire is useless against T6 and 3+ saves and then serpents and Wraithknight... so yeah, super frustrating to see most of your guns bounce off his units, and then with divination and army-wide twin linked guns, every time he shoots a weapon it does what its supposed to do - unless you have an invulnerable save, which my captain used.. a Lot. also, every model is a threat. every gun in the army hurts marines mad, ap2 flamers, str 10 is everywhere. Its just scary and there are no squishy bits to pick on.
Anyway - kill points, so i ran at him and tried to kill stuff. mobility isnt an issue for iether of our lists, so best i could do is try to get some VPs for the tournament, was fairly sure going in that tom was going to win this one, especially since he got first turn. Turned out as expected.

Orks in round two. the second of two awesome ork armies in this tournament. lots of boys in converted battle wagons that actually fit all the boys. command squad on bikes to smash stuff, lootas, etc. unfortunately it was an objectives mission with the staggered reserves rules. so basically i got 80% of my army turn one, and his trickled in over 4 turns. Helped in large part due to my Super Dick Move Warlord trait, Divide to Conquer which reduced his reserve rolls by 1. so yeah, i got to fight 1/3 of his army at a time as it showed up and i basically smashed him hard because of it.

Round three was vs the space wolves guy who won. This one was very close, the guy won best overall and his list was fairly good. I don't like the mission because it was an attacker vs defender mission where he started with some tanks and got points for the number of turns he kept them, and i only got points for blowing them up. Fortunately my Grey hunters in pods had melta and i got a head start on blowing shit up first turn. unfortunatly i got cocky with a drop pod and it scattered 10 inches off the table. the result was him being able to place the pod and he put it midfield and then proceeded to Cheat and drop Arjack and a unit of terminators in a drop pod on them next turn. against Tom he put a tac squad in the pod, and I'm fairly certain you can't do that. Anyway, Arjack won him this game, he hit with everything, made every save, and made TWO, TWO i say, 10 inch charges to get into combat with my Grav bike squads that were maintaining (i thought) max distance and whittling away at him. believe this one ended 10-6.

Day 2

Game 4 is against the Blue Ork Airforce and its a "guard the pilot as he runs for the valkary" mission, where my marines are the defender. I like this guys army a lot, its 80% scratch built. but the mission didn't play to his strengths, his entire force was in reserve and had to come on the table turn 1 on random table edges. I clumped up my dudes and basically just made a circle around the middle of the table killing all of his units with my bikes while my command squad escorted the pilot to his ride. 14-1 in my favor.

game 5... this game pissed me off and i've never come so close to violence over a game. I waited 15 minutes for this guy to show up from lunch, so we start late, once we get playing he takes another 10 minute piss break between turn 1 and 2. Was against the very very pretty dark angels army Tom describes above. mission was The Bridge. which is a table quarters mission with a bridge in the center that is worth 4 Victory points. his army is pretty TAC as described, and not very good in general. Anyway, we roll off to deploy and he wins first go... and i'm immediately at a disadvantage because the mission rules give a VP for the first unit to touch the bridge. his Snipers Infiltrate onto the bridge.. woot. he then Drops Azraels squad next to the Bridge. now Azrael gets to choose his Warlord Trait, so he picks FNP for his squad when within 3" of an objective.. which is what the bridge is. So... yeah, I'm starting in a bad spot, but i can pull it out. My first turn, i drop pods next to his land raider and melt it down. rest of my army Boosts forward to take advantage of cover saves. his turn 2 is pretty much a big bunch of nothing, couple reserves come on the table and fire ineffectively at my 2+ cover saves due to Dense forests. my turn 2 i delete most of his bikes, i charge into his command squad with my command squad and kill a bunch of marines, Azreal and my Eternal Bike Captain exchange blows, Azreal 4++/FNP's a couple of saves to stay alive and waves his ap3 sword ineffectively against 2+ armour. his turn 3 his terminators and his black knights show up and kill some of my bikes. Plasma Talons hurt. My turn 3 i kill off some of his terminators with grav guns and remove the rest of his scoring from the board. I charge into the black knights with some bikes to stop them from ripping me up with plasma. we stay locked in combat. his turn 4 Azreal dies in combat, i have firm control of the board except for the small skirmish of black knights on bikers, slap fight keeps some of those models alive. Bottom of turn 4, Time is called...last turn everyone. DA player has exactly 3 models left as we head into combat. I kill 2 of them he kills 2 of my bikes, we stay locked in combat.. This fucker then Hit and runs out of combat and ends up with the corn of his base on the Bridge with my Command Squad. It gains him nothing, but denies me the 4 VPs for the game and the rest of the tournament. I ask if we can play turn 5 and vaporize the last biker, but i am denied by Christian. so yeah, I'm unhappy. i should have had an extra 25 minutes to win that game, but instead i got slow played and punked at the last minute. i still got 10 points for the game, but it should have been 14..... blah.

Game 6 vs Bunkered up DE/Eldar guy. bunkers don't like drop pods or melta, so yeah, he got melted and i swept up the rest of his army fairly handily with my bikes. the only bump being his guardian squad. i had no idea just how many shots these guys get and Rending? jebus. anyway, he obliterated a squad of bikes before my captain rushed in and smashed thier faces.

the end.

sorry about walls of text

Just an aside, Tom: the DA player knights had only 5 guys, and 2 were grenade launchers? That's not legal. They're one for every 3 bikes

might have been 6 bikes.

mike- classic slow player. Guy pulled a Dallas on ya.  

Space wolf dude- greyhunters/blood claws in a pod is legal, but it ain't like a rhino, you can't leave it empty and another squad hitches a ride. Sounds like he had one and was switching.

That said you guys finished 1-2 in best general, so I don't think you can complain TOO much:)

I'd love to shoot for one next year, hopefully work won't be as crazy as it has been.

Its a good fun trip, I enjoyed it every bit as much as Vancouver, probably more, because the hotel was nicer and i had the option of not leaving the building at all. the terrain is top notch, the missions are fun(if sometimes completely lopsided) and its something to prepare and paint for, so I'm not unhappy i went. 26 bikes and 3 drop pods did get built and painted in a 3 week period.

I can't even fault the DA player that much if i take the game as a one-off. hes trying to win that single game, or reduce the amount he lost by. Which is legit.
But since i had gone to Vancouver, i understood how important battle points were in the big scheme of things and I was worried about the tournament as whole, not that game. So i found it to be a prick move that gained him nothing and took something from me.

Rhaevyn wrote:So i found it to be a prick move that gained him nothing and took something from me.

That's the one issue I have with Astro (although, it's super fun!), is some people do stuff that gains them nothing, but screws you over (1497pt army, completely subjective sportsmanship // theme scores)

I'd be *soooo* tempted to go and just plan on losing, but with a smash face table all the things army of dumbness.

Like, 4 Wave Serpents level of dumb.
(Edit, Although my Highlander list would be competitive and still smash a respectable amount of fayce!)

Paz wrote:mike- classic slow player. Guy pulled a Dallas on ya.  

Well IMO it is just a dick move. For the tournament time is very tight. They are only two hour rounds, which wouldn't be bad except both people are trying to learn and play a brand new scenario at the same time. Especially since Mike and I were there basically the whole time.

Also when at a tournament eat healthy! Keeps those bathroom breaks to a minimum! (sort of serious)

Like I said before, the tournament itself is really different and if you get a chance you should go. However like all comp'd/unique mission events the meta is really different and can boner you in a hurry. I highly recommend at least one, preferably more than one, way to manipulate reserves. Also having 4 scoring units is very light at Astro. You really want to have 6ish if you want to score 15s throughout the tournament.

"Feel the wrath of Skeletors' Breakfast Burrito!"

I've always found it funny how their comp works. Not as in right or wrong, but more meta like. Between the comp and missions, you can't have enough scoring, and they really have it in for builds that switch force orgs (nob bikers, deathwing, SM bikers, CS possessed, etc), but there is no real comp penalty for ScreamerStar/JetSeer type builds other than point limits. It doesn't really fit like comp, it's more like walking into a different store and carrying to fit into their meta.

Well that is the problem with every comp system that I've seen though. It really just changes what is crazy good rather than fixing the problem. People still bring stuff to smash face. Look at what Dallas brought to my Astro-light event. He scored 16/20 comp and tabled every opponent. If I had brought the same list to Astro I probably would have done the same. It is a really good list that gives up 4 points on composition to win all your games. Even the reserve missions wouldn't be that much of an issue I don't think.

Although both of the builds you mention could be fixed rather quickly. Get rid of fortune as a power and make is so that you only get the Tzeentch re-roll on their "natural" demon save (whatever one they come with. i.e. if you cast the grimore on some pink horrors you could either have a 5++ re-roll ones or a 3++). Eldar don't need Fortune to be competitive and I think Demons wouldn't be as stupid if they just did away with the grimore all together, but this fixes the 2++ re-roll that drives people crazy.

Also I will point out the same thing Mike said all weekend. A lot of the guys there read a lot on the internet and have some really weird pre-conceptions of what is broken. For whatever reason Mike's list was deemed the most broken list at the event? When really it is just a bunch of dudes on bikes and two grey hunter squads in pods. Honestly it is good, but not broken. It isn't like he brought the centurionstar or something bananas, just good units. And again I'd point out the two people who were 1st and 2nd for best general had the two lowest scoring "fun to play against" armies. I find that really hard to believe.

The "fun to play" is simply sandbagging by another name. That and a proliferation of straight 10s are the reason I try not to include a subjective sports score.

Mikes list prob got crap because of the Superfriends build making the rounds. BTW what was your comp Tom? Wraith guard fall under the "we don't like force org changes" banner.

Well I managed to game the system a bit for 18/20. Astro doesn't hate foc swaps as long as you don't take more than 600 points of them. It sucks for chaos/deathwing since you tend to have to for scoring. I lost one point for more than 300 of Heavy and another for more than 300 of dedicated transports.

If I had taken blocks of wraithguard (something I am considering for next year) I'd probably suffer more.