Last weekend I went out to the Harvester of Souls tournament in Spokane, Washington and managed to come away feeling pretty good about things. The tournament was held at the “new” location for the Gamer’s Haven after the old one had burned down. (I put “new” in quotations because it’s actually been around for the better part of a year, but as it’s my first visit to the store it was, at least, still new to me.) As an ITC-registered event and part of the store’s yearly tournament series (with another event, the Storm of Silence, occurring in the spring) it was a good chance to face off against some pretty strong competition while still having a good time and play on some really nice-looking tables. I ended up going defeated across the five rounds with my Necrons and took Best General, though my middling paint score (as well as the presence of some very nice-looking armies) meant that my shot at Best Overall or Best of [army] was something of a non-starter. But as I said- good times, good folks, good games. Keep reading if you want the details.



The Format

The Harvester of Souls was a five-round event, with up to 13pts scoreable per round (9pts for a win, 5pts for a draw, 2pts for a loss, 1pt each from four “bonus” objectives you could achieve) along with sportsmanship and painting being worth 60(?)pts each in addition. Painting was pretty well-handled, with a pretty explicit rubric in an attached sheet in the tournament packet listing what qualities got you what and with the paint sheets returned at the end of the tournament with comments by the judges to clarify their decisions. I found this level of transparency very refreshing even despite knowing my score would be middling from the beginning- in too many tournaments with painting scores, the numbers end up feeling very arbitrary and biased, so I was quite happy with how the Harvester handled things there. Sportsmanship was, unfortunately, a lot less transparent, although I don’t think anyone scored particularly badly in that respect.

The missions themselves were a bit interesting- each of the twenty-five tables had a unique setup and terrain and a mission to accompany it, typically based on or inspired by the missions from previous iterations of the game. So, for example, there was a mission five “relics” that players were trying to capture, a mission like the old Escalation battle type where only a small number of units could start on the board, a table where everything was considered Difficult Terrain due to the ice and snow, one where a central tower rained down magical lightning on both players over the course of the game, etc, etc. Many of the tables were very well-built and visually appealing, such as the trench warfare table or the Ork shanties one. I never got any really obnoxious missions, although having talked to other players some of the “you are forced to deploy this way” ones garnered a bit of antipathy and might be better off left by the wayside for next year. However, seeing as the event was explicitly billed as a semi-casual one with forewarning on the kooky missions being a possibility, it can’t be considered wholly unfair.

The Players and Location

The Gamer’s Haven is a pretty good-sized store, with an extensive collection of stuff on the sales side of things and also an upstairs/downstairs side of things with tons of space for gaming of all kinds. Twenty-five tables were set up, although we didn’t end up using quite all of them due to a number of last-minute drops, but even beyond that terrain and table space was still present, with the potential for pretty easily another half-dozen or more tables to be set up in there. Better yet, even with all of those tables space was still not at a premium, as the boards (mostly) had built-in space to the side for placing armies and display boards as well as plenty of room around the sides in order to prevent the dreaded Tourney ButtBumps. Add in the 20% discount on all their 40K stuff for the weekend as an incentive and pretty good prize support in the form of trophies, product, and gift certificates and the Haven came out looking like a pretty damn fine store in my eyes- though sadly, unlike some other stores in the Northwest it didn’t serve booze.

The players themselves were also a good group, although to be honest very rarely have I met many jerks at 40K tournaments. Many of them are regulars to the tournaments around the Pacific area here and so I knew from elsewhere- shout outs to Darryl, Joel, Jason, Thomas, Jeremy, and many more- but also quite a few folks I hadn’t encountered before, which is always nice. The final tally was a bit shy of forty players I believe, mostly due to the aforementioned last-minute drops from some folks, but there was still a pretty good crowd in attendance including a number of pretty strong competitors- folks who’ve gone (and scored well) at NOVA, Adepticon, etc. There was a shocking number of Knights present- I counted something like four Adamantine Lances as well as a scattering of other Knights combined with various armies, although no one fielded a pure-Knights force. Eldar, despite many expectations, were surprisingly spares on the field, though they mostly scored pretty well (as would be expected) and Necrons and CSM both made surprisingly-strong showings. IA13 was only present in limited amounts at the tournament due to its late release, but it was definitely the talk of the tournament as players mused over the possibilities it opened up and discussed rules shenanigans and interpretations, build ideas, etc. I expect the next few tournaments here in the Pacific Northwest will see a much larger share of spikey marines, especially if the TOs finally break down and start allowing Imperial Armor army lists for folks.

My Army



NECRON COMBINED ARMS DETACHMENT

1 Necron Overlord (Warscythe, Sempiternal Weave, Mindshackle Scarabs, Phase Shifter, Command Barge)

1 Necron Overlord (Warscythe, Sempiternal Weave, Mindshackle Scarabs, Phase Shifter, Command Barge)

2 Harbingers of Storm

2 Harbingers of Storm

5 Necron Warriors (Night Scythe)

5 Necron Warriors (Night Scythe)

1 Annihilation Barge

1 Annihilation Barge

1 Annihilation Barge

TAU FIREBASE SUPPORT CADRE

1 Riptide (Ion Accelerator, Smart Missiles, Velocity Tracker, Early Warning)

3 Broadsides (High-Yield Missiles, Early Warning; Shas’vre warlord)

3 Broadsides (high-Yield Missiles, Early Warning)

A pretty basic Necrons + Tau list, much like the one I brought to the Bay Area Open (although with some notable changes.) Its game plan is essentially to spew twin-linked Strength 7 firepower at the enemy and devastate them so badly they can’t retaliate or hold out until game’s end to score objectives while remaining resilient in the face of incoming enemy firepower by virtue of AV13 and 2+ armor. The Command Barges give it a strong melee element that can present a critical threat to Wave Serpents and static lists if left unchecked; the Stormteks give me a strong answer to Knights and other tough vehicle targets (which, as it turned out, was pretty important) and the Firebase gives me the ability to ruin Space Marines pretty hard as well as doubling down on the AT firepower.

I was definitely a bit concerned about Wraithknights with the list, as it didn’t really have many good solutions to them; a triple (or, god forbid, quadruple) Wraithknight list would’ve given me a ton of trouble, but I was reasonably confident against two or fewer of them. I knew a five-Knight list would also be tricky, although not undoable if I made proper use of terrain and positioning and it wasn’t a stupid Hammer/Anvil deployment. My low model count meant that bad rolls could see things go downhill pretty quickly if I was really unlucky, but the general immunity to many types of firepower and abundant rerolls for my shooting meant that I was reasonably comfident about things overall.

One unusual choice I ended up making was to run the Broadside Shas’vre as my Warlord rather than a Necron Overlord; the rationale behind this was actually multi-tiered. The first, and most obvious, layer was that the Overlords are designed to dive into the heart of the enemy formation and go to town on things, which usually puts them directly in harm’s way and almost inevitably means they end up dying. (Fun fact: I did not pass a single Everliving roll the entire tournament and only ever passed two Resurrection Protocols ones.) In that regard, choosing the Shas’vre meant that I would more rarely give up Slay the Warlord (and, in fact, I never did so) and make my opponent’s decisions harder. The second layer of things was that the Necron half of the army does not much benefit from Warlord traits; the Personal table is, of course, total garbage, but even beyond that the Command and Strategic tables are surprisingly lackluster for the army, as it has no units to Infiltrate with and isn’t nearly so much bothered by terrain checks for its vehicles as other armies may be. Moreover, the Necron side lacks a warlord table of its own to roll on, whereas the Tau table is actually quite good and has several very handy abilities. Of course, selecting the Tau warlord meant that not only did the majority of my force never benefit from the warlord trait but I also could not benefit from the CAD’s ability to reroll the result on the warlord table if I got a crappy one, but that was the risk I ended up taking, and I think it paid off fairly well in the end.

On to the battles themselves!

Round 1



OPPONENT: Rachel

ARMY: Tyranids

Mission: Modified Relic- five “stealable” objectives in the center of the four quarters as well as the middle of the table; Dawn of War deployment.

Although she was somewhat new to 7th edition (having only played two games of it so far by her own admission), Rachel had a fairly solid defensive (!?!) Tyranid army that she had apparently done pretty well with in 6th. Lacking access to some of the new IA units and still getting used to the changes in rules came around to bite her a couple times, but overall she played things pretty well and managed to hold her own for a large portion of the game. Her list included a pair of Flyrants, 2×2 Venomthropes, a minimum unit of Termagants and three units of Warriors with Barbed Stranglers, two Crones, two Exocrines, and a unit of Biovores along with an Aegis Line (with Quad Gun) to hide behind. After the game she said she would definitely be switching over to Malanthropes in her EL slots, but I think she also would’ve benefited from running the Living Artillery Node to give her blast-spewing units rerolls to hit; it wouldn’t have mattered much in our game, but I think it would have helped her elsewhere.

I took the first turn and pretty much deployed straight across, with Broadsides on the flanks to cover objectives and Barges towards the center because I knew she had essentially nothing to hurt them. She reserved all of her FMCs, a definite mistake, and bunkered down behind her wall. I pretty much started hammering her right away, pushing the AV13 forward and killing my way through most of the Venomthropes as well as sneaking a few wounds onto other units here and there; her own shooting focused mostly on my Riptide, as she was essentially unable to hurt anything else as she quickly discovered, and managed to drop it with some very accurate Exocrine fire (and it didn’t help that I had failed to get the 3++ save I was trying for.) I got in both Scythes and managed to mitigate her Interceptor shots with careful use of terrain and then went to town with my Command Barges and massed S7, dropping both Exocrines, the last of the Venomthropes, and most of the Biovores. One CCB ended locked in combat with the last of the Biovores, the other sat with its butt to her board edge as her reserves came in rather weakly. Over the three turns she got a Tyrant, then a second Tyrant, and then finally both Crones on turn 4, allowing me to pepper them with shots and slowly whittle things down without too much worry. (It also helped that I had rolled “Skyfire for a turn” as my Warlord trait.) My CCBs turned out to be rather hot-and-cold as she sent her Warriors into assault to try and drag them down and stop them from running wild in her backfield- while one died almost immediately to a number of failed saves, the other one managed to last the whole game without ever failing a single save of any kind, eventually slaughtering two MCs, eight Warriors, and two Biovores in total and ensuring that she had neither the model count nor the Synapse coverage to hold any objectives. By the end of the game, she had gained a lot more respect for Necrons in general and the Command Barges in particular.

I ended the match with 12/13 points and proceeded to the next round.

Round 2



OPPONENT: Keith

ARMY: Chaos Demons

Mission: Modified Emperor’s Will. In addition to the two “home” objectives, a tower in the center of the field acted as a third objective. From turn 3 onwards was Night Fighting and during those turns d3 lighning strikes (a la Imotekh) would hit the tallest units on the field; Vanguard Strike deployment.

Keith was an opponent I knew tangentially from several other events; I’d seen him at TSHFT and OFCC as well as seen him on some forums, although we hadn’t specifically played each other yet at this point. He was more of a casual/hobby player than some, as evidenced by the fact that he had brought a Lord of Skulls to the tournament, but his list was far from a pushover- in addition to the superheavy, he was bringing Be’lakor, a Herald with the Grimoire, a few handfuls of Horrors to generate additional scoring units, and a large unit of Plague Drones to push forward with his vehicle. Though the mission was a distinct disadvantage for me (since my Night Scythes were easily the tallest units on the field and several of my good deployment spots were high enough up I would be above his Lord of Skulls), the general disparity of list strength meant that I wasn’t terribly worried about things. He got first turn and laid his Horrors + Herald down in some ruins and his LoS + Belakor dead across from me. I put my S7 to the corners as much as possible, my Riptide centrally, and my CCBs biased opposite the LoS from the large central tower, since I knew superheavy walkers were one of the few things they are not all that great against (especially with very little impeding terrain to give me chances to strike first.)

He pretty much barreled straight at me, like he’s gotta, and suited up Be’lakor with a 2++ (but didn’t go flying for some reason) as well as the LoS with Invisibility. He spawned some stuff and passed it to me. I wiped out the new units, did some damage to the Plague Drones and damn near dropped Be’lakor in my first volley as he failed three saves in very short succession. His last wound, however, refused to budge, and on his turn he damaged a Broadside squad and wiped out the Riptide and an Annihilation Barge with his charges. (Bizarrely, his LoS went after the Barge rather than the Broadsides.) Plague Drones, due to being a bit slow and lazy, didn’t have a good charge this turn and just drifted. I got in both Night Scythes and blasted Be’lakor off the table; due to what I think was a miscalculation of Warp Charge he hadn’t managed to throw Invis on the Lord this turn, although it ended up protected from a lot of my firepower by terrain. The Haywire blasted it apart in pretty short order, though, especially combined with the other Str 7, and both Command Barges started doing their usual thing on his backfield units. By the end of turn three his Plague Drones had killed off one of my squads of Warriors, but I had all but cleaned him from the field and the next turn turns were just me finishing off the last few models in his army and scoring the remaining bonus points to finish the round. Keith, sadly, didn’t do very well at the tournament despite his win in the first round of things, but playing two of the top five armies there I’m sure didn’t help things any in that regard.

25/26 possible points, and on to the next round.

Round 3



OPPONENT: Jason

ARMY: Eldar/IG

MISSION: Seven buildings spread roughly equidistant across the table, each counting as an objective. Once a building was “claimed” by a player it remained claimed until the opponent “cleared” it with one of their own units. Dawn of War deployment.

Jason was a pretty cool guy and a solid player; his game against me was probably one of the most interesting of the weekend and really showcased the way that some very small factors can make a huge difference in how a game plays out. Unfortunately I don’t have pics of the battle, as I wanted to make sure I was finishing games on time (and was pretty tired following the seven-hour drive over), but the map itself is actually not the most important focus. He had a Spiritseer, two Serpents full of Wraithguard, three Jetbike units (two large, one small), Pask with two Executioner buddies, and a Psyker + Veterans contingent. He had a number of good tools against my list- Serpents for my Serpents, Wraithguard for the Barges, Executioners for the Tau, etc- but with an overall firepower advantage I felt like I definitely had good game against him. Still, getting cocky could make things very bad here and with his strong scoring contingent he could always sneak out a win at the end of the game if I wasn’t careful.

We rolled powers and traits and sides and such, but two critical things here defined pretty much the entire rest of the flow of the game: I got Infiltrate for my warlord trait, which meant that my Broadsides and Riptide could end up pretty much anywhere on the board; he, unfortunately, misjudged this and after winning the roll-off for first turn, chose to give me the top. This allowed me to deploy my Necrons in more or less the usual fashion, see him put his guys down (Pask in one corner, Serpents to center, Bikes spread around out of sight) and then put out my Tau in places where I was guaranteed to get LOS for my first turn’s shooting without needing to move. And, indeed, that was exactly what happened- my Broadsides hammered his Serpents down, denying him a lot of firepower and stranding his Wraithguard in his deployment zone while the rest of my army was essentially free to go where it needed to. He had a few bad rolls (such as failing a bunch of cover saves from Smoke + Camo Nets on his Russ squadron when all my Haywire came in and thus losing Pask) but it really didn’t matter a lot- it was basically a long slide downhill as I chopped up his forces bit by bit. He grasped his mistake pretty quickly and tried to make up for it with a few daring moves- like a full Jetbike assault on one of my Broadside units that didn’t quite push enough damage through to do the job- but in the end he had just placed himself in too bad of a position to change things without a major intervention of the dice gods.

We talked for a while after the game end about where things had gone wrong and tweaks to his list to improve it a bit as well as other stuff, but most of the focus was on those couple of early bits where he had gone a bit into default mode (“I outrange him and I won the roll-off during an objective mission; I should go second.”) rather than recognizing the significance of my warlord trait in that situation. He played admirably, though, so hopefully we’ll get matched up again in the near future and he can try his hand at giving me more of a run for my money.

37/39pts, and done for the day. Some friends and I headed out for steak dinner and a rousing round of political discussion late into the evening before retiring for the next day’s battles.

Round 4



OPPONENT: Joel

ARMY: CSM/Knights

MISSION: Table quarters and a central “archaeotech” building that has a permanent game effect that is rolled randomly for the first time a unit gets near it (most of the results are based off the 6E Archaeotech items table.) Quarters are held by any scoring unit and contested by any enemy scoring unit in them. Vanguard Strike deployment.

Joel was another guy I knew from many of the other tournies in the area as well as the internets and he and I had talked quite a bit the previous two days about the impact of IA13 on the faction and the game as a whole. We have our disagreements, but he’s definitely a knowledgeable player with very solid skills. His list is unconventional, but in many ways pretty strong- a naked Lord, two units of Terminators with Combi-Meltas, two units of Cultists, two Heldrakes, and an Adamantine Lance to back it all up. The Lance gives him a lot of aggressive hitting power if he needs it and the Heldrakes and Terminators give him a surprising amount of alpha strike potential against many targets. I knew this would be a tough game, and indeed it was, but I definitely had the tools to keep him on his toes and his model count and scoring presence was even weaker than mine, so the possibility was very much there.

Neither of us rolled anything special for pregame stuff and he gave me the first turn, so I set up my shooty stuff to the corners as much as possible and prepared for the worst. He deployed his Knights very defensively, actually out of range of most all of my guns on the first turn, which I’m not sure if it was a mistake or not; on the one hand it meant that I could do essentially nothing to him turn 1, but it also meant he could do very little in return and gave me plenty of time to continue spreading out my position in order to hit him from multiple sides at once. My CCBs pushed up aggressively behind some terrain, ready to try and slow his advance further (also maybe a mistake?) and on turn 2 a combined assault from the whole formation reduced them to rubble mostly before the combat had even begun (Exploding me with Hammer of Wrath hits, etc.) He also got in a Heldrake and some Terminators, which I proceeded to smoke pretty hard. The couple of remaining bodies threw shots at my Annihilation Barges, but Jink saves carried the day. By turn 3 my own Night Scythes had circled into position behind his Knights (which was part of the reason I had gone up with the CCBs) and I unleashed on them, scoring… oh crap, next to nothing. With sixteen Haywire and twenty Gauss shots, I managed to do two Hull Points to him- and that was mostly even firing into positions where his Shield didn’t apply as he passed 5+ cover saves like a baus and put me seriously off my game. The remainder of my shooting saw a couple more HP fall off the Knights and finally the center one went down, leaving his two remaining with five and six HP left respectively. Crap. He then proceeded to destroy the two Necron units (and, as was standard, ALL my Everliving rolls failed) and I was looking pretty sketchy on things. Turn 4 was a bit of a blessing for me, though, as I damaged the second Heldrake, wiped out most of his Cultists (as well as kill his Lord) and stripped several more HP off each of the Knights even despite the Shields. He also had both of them essentially stuck in his back corner still and needing to cross the whole field to get to me- which, of course, Knights are good at, but he was still on a press for time. His Heldrake left that turn (meaning even on T5 it wouldn’t be able to hold anything, as it had to enter in Zoom mode) and both Knights went on the offensive, pushing towards my half of things. I was quite worried at this point, since I didn’t have a ton of firepower left to handle the Knights and much of it was in danger of dying soon.

Turn 5 was a godsend for me as I finally dropped a second Knight with focused shooting and finished off the last of the Cultists with a sneaky Riptide that was scooting deep into his backfield (actually Novaing for the 4d6″ move, a rare occurrence.) His own assault wiped out a Broadside unit, at the cost of another HP gone, but at this point he was hard-pressed to do much more to me- he could get a draw, but couldn’t realistically win. The game went on to turn 6 and I shot down his last Heldrake before the game ended- I had three of the table quarters and he can only keep me out of one of them (units can’t hold multiple quarters at once), plus I had the bonus points from killing his Heldrakes. We shook over a good, if a bit nerve-wracking, game. Afterwords, we discussed Joel’s plans for his list- he had actually been borrowing the three Knights by way of a friend in order to test out the concept. While he was reasonably happy with its performance at the tourney, he definitely noted his weakness against things like Barges and Serpents and planned to build a pair of Sicarans to replace the Terminators and one Heldrake, which I think is a lot more threatening of a list overall. Sicarans are just brutal.

49/52pts, and on to the final round. I already know who my opponent is, though, because it was predestined from the beginning…

Round 5



OPPONENT: Jeremy

ARMY: SM/SW

MISSION: Modified Crusade. Five(?) objectives placed by players as well as a number of “Ork towers” as part of the terrain on the field. Towers are AV12 HP3 buildings with battlements but no capacity. Objectives are 3pts, destroying a tower is 1pt. Hammer/Anvil deployment.

My ride over to the tournament, the French Overlord! A very experienced player of several armies- including SM, Tau, Eldar, and Daemons- Jeremy has scored top 10 at NOVA and other events and is easily one of the best players in the region and arguably one of the better-ranked ones in the country, as his standings in ITC and TSHFT can attest. However, we seem to have the most damnable luck when playing against each other; we’ve each carried away a couple victories, but the dice always seem to fall very strangely between us and this time was no exception. Recently he has been doing quite well with A White Scars army allied into Space Wolves with a heavy deathstar component- Khan on his bike, Chapter Smasher with all the usual fixin’s, a Command Squad with Apothecary, five Bike units (three with Grav, two with Melta) of reasonable size, a Wolf Lord with the 2+/IWND armor and strong melee capacity on a Thunderwolf and two Iron Priests on Thunderwolves means that his army is rather… compact and focused, but it also means that if his deathstar gets into combat with you he’ll usually roll things pretty hard. The mission is a bit of an advantage for me and he’s got no way to deal with my flyers, which is good, but if he just passes a bunch of saves I can be in REAL trouble in short order.

I won the roll-off and chose to take first, deploying in a fairly standard line at the edge of my zone. Jeremy took advantage of the short range of my guns by deploying back a bit to where I couldn’t target him, with a lot with the Command Squad + HQ characters hanging together; the rest of his army reserved (a favorite tactic of his and one he uses to good effect against many players) with a few of them in normal reserve but most outflanking, including the two Iron Priests hanging with squads. This was a pretty risky tactic give all my Interceptor, but if it payed off he could’ve cut down a lot of my firepower very quickly with Meltas and Grav and still been able to move his deathstar up into position to threaten the rest of my army. Unfortunately for both of us, the aforementioned dumb luck decided to intervene- while I did very little turn 1 (plinking a couple wounds off his deathstar, killing some of the towers for the mission) his reserves on turn 2 were awful (only one outflank squad and one normal reserve squad arrived) and he knew he couldn’t keep delaying forever. My main-phase shooting did WAY more damage than it should have to his Command Squad, knocking quite a few wounds off the characters and taking out one of the derps while my Interceptor shots on his next turn annihilated his Outflanking unit before they could even act. He could see things slipping away very quickly and brought his deathstar to bear against me, but by the time we’d rolled through my turn 3 shooting he was ready to toss in the towel, as I disintegrated the thing almost completely even before the Bargelords went for their charges. We called the game there with his six models 48″ away from me and armed with Meltaguns and his oncoming reserves about to suffer a very similar fate to the previous ones.

I ended the tournament with 61/65 possible battle points and the only 5-0 record, winning Best General. Jeremy got Best Painted for his White Scars (they really are quite beautiful, very clean and stark); Jason, Rachel, and Joel all took Best Of awards for their respective factions as well, and all around the tournament was a great time.

Wrapup

If you’re in the Northwest area of the USA and don’t mind coming out to Spokane- admittedly a bit of a trip, though very scenic for much of the way- I’d highly recommend the Harvester as well as its sister tournament the Storm (which is a bit more competition-focused, with a higher percentage of battle points and somewhat more conventional missions.) Gamer’s Haven is a very nice store and, unlike many FLGS, is well-run, has tons of nice terrain and tables (seriously, one of them had an Emperor titan on it) and a great staff and none of the usual breed of smelly creeps that sometimes populate such locales. Check out their Facebook if you want some more photos and info on stuff.

Hopefully I’ll also have a tournament report coming on the Guardian Cup in Portland, OR, next weekend as well as some more battle reports by myself and some other local players who are looking to get that stuff organized. I’ll also be putting up the Armies in 7th series soon, for reals, as my schedule has gotten a little less stupid recently. Holiday gifts for all!