Thoughts on the tournament and moving forward

Ok, so I've played 4 games since my last Battle Report. Originally I had planned to write up a full report as I'd previously done, but the thing is, that eats a ton of time and effort. And that is time and effort I could spend on painting, modeling and planning. The point of this blog is to keep me focused, not on updating the blog but on getting my army as awesome as I can. As such, I will only be writing up full Battle Reports on specific games. For this entry I'll just be discussing the last 4 games I was involved in, including the tournament on Sunday.

Before the tournament, I played an Eldar army that looked fantastic. It was obvious a lot of love and care went into painting the army, and my opponent had even used magnets on the figures to attach them to their base. Very cool looking stuff. Other than the Imperial Guard, I hadn't yet run into an army with as much shooting as the Eldar. They demolished my Quad-gun right out of the gate. They then moved in to get the Relic. I moved in with my Chaos Bikers and liberated the Relic from the Eldar's grasp. It was a short-lived victory, however, as the amount of shots the Eldar fired quickly whittled my army to ribbons. At the end of Turn 5, if the game had ended, the Chaos Space Marines would have carried the day. Sadly, that was not the case, and the Eldar left the battlefield triumphant in Turn 6.

The tournament was similar. It seems like the only way for a Chaos Space Marine list can be competitive, is to have 3 fliers, and flood the board with Units of 35 Cultists. I didn't want to be so cheesy, but the cost of the Plague Marines is just too high to have very many on the field and still have Heavy Support and Fast Attack options. The first 2 games of the tournament went fairly well. I lost both of them, but I took out some key Units and had fun. The third game was against another CSM force, and it was nasty. Heldrake, Landraider, Defiler, Daemon Prince, Khorne Berserkers, were all present and gave me a run for my money. My opponent in game 3 also did something I thought was very un-sportsman-like, but oh well. In the end, all three games were lost and I was 2nd to last place in the standings. It just doesn't seem like the list I've been nurturing can stand up to the lists being played in tournaments.

So, onto what can win. I've worked up a new list and have ordered a couple of models that should be here early next week. Once they get in, it'll be time to shift focus. I've enjoyed the Nurgle army I had, and for a fluff army it did ok. But I'm in it to win it. And the next Chaos Space Marine army I take to the local tournaments will be merciless. Until then, see you on the battlefield!