Hardshell Crab - Talking 4-1 at Clash with IDK

Introduction

Hi there everyone! I hope you all had a lovely weekend and if you're experiencing high temperature staying safe. Remember that SPF, stay hydrated and take regular breaks from the sun. Heat stroke is no joke!

I'm back from having an absolute blast at Clash which took place over two days in Cardiff. As some of you might know from Twitter it was a pretty successful weekend with a solid 4-1 result for my IDK, best Deepkin, second best order (on pure gaming scores) and a painting nomination.

The social side of things was not only amazing fun, but extremely uplifting given what I'd mentioned in my last post. I'll be talking more about that in a follow up post "Soft shell crab".

The List

Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin

- Enclave: Ionrach

- Grand Strategy: The Creeping Gloomtide

- Triumphs:

Leaders

Volturnos, High King of the Deep (290)*

Akhelian King (250)*

- General

- Bladed Polearm

- Command Trait: Unstoppable Fury

- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)

- Mount Trait: Voidchill Darkness

- Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon

Battleline

6 x Akhelian Morrsarr Guard (390)*

- Reinforced x 1

3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (195)**

3 x Akhelian Morrsarr Guard (195)*

Units

2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)**

- Razorshell Harpoon

- Reinforced x 1

2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)**

- Razorshell Harpoon

- Reinforced x 1

Core Battalions

*Battle Regiment

**Bounty Hunters

Total: 1980 / 2000

Reinforced Units: 3 / 4

Allies: 0 / 400

Wounds: 95

Drops: 4

Having tried out Galletian Veterans previously, I wanted to run a list that completely eskewed them in favour for pure combat power.

I'd previously found Ionrach to be extremely effective when I played them at the sunshine coast and I wanted to double down on the best bits of that list.

As a note I didn't put Morrsarr in Bounty Hunters as I was a bit confused as to if they could benefit from the damage due to the new FAQ. I'm pretty sure they do now so I'll be testing that shortly.

The Ionrach sub faction provides you with an additional heroic action where an akhelian hero (Volturnos or the King) can give an akhelian unit (everything) wholly within 12 run and charge, run and shoot, retreat and charge or retreat and shoot.

Because you have both Volturnos and the King you can deploy and move in separate groups while keeping this option available. This means all your units can effectively move 20 inches plus a charge, or a unit that gains damage and rend on the charge (king and Morrsarr) can be pulled out of combat ready to go in again.

Heroes

Volturnos provides a once per game + 3 attacks to 3 different units effected by High Tide. So either on turn 3 or when the King uses his once per game. He also has a 3+ spell ignore, a 12 inch +1 to hit aura and provides a reasonable amount of damage. His 8 wounds also make him slightly more survivable to shooting or mortal wounds than the regular king.

The Akhelian King is the so called Smash King. I won't spend long on that as it's well known by now, but effectively he gains extra attacks on his powerful weapons in line with the number of enemy units within 3. The recent FAQ prevents the Polearm reaching 4 damage, however casting flaming weapon onto his falchion (which also gains attacks) is a solid counter to NH and low save units.

Battleline

6 Morrsarr are fast, durable and hit hard. They have a built in +1 to charge from the horn and with the banner sit at a solid 8 bravery. The once per game mortal wounds ability is swingy, but provides a rare source of mortal wounds in an army reliant on rend. Most importantly Ionrach allows you to withdraw them and charge again, meaning they can still fight with their best profile even against more durable units. A double turn when hit by this is almost impossible to recover from.

3 Morrsarr provides you with a relatively fighty unit that can be used for accomplishing secondary tasks. For instance, moving quickly to capture an under guarded objective or popping over to a terrain feature for a battle tactic. They can also be used as a screen to protect more valuable parts of the list when fighting aggressive alpha combat armies.

3 Ishlaen are great. If your opponent has a scary monster, like an Incarnate, vampire lord or Morathi, you can usually rely on them to survive a turn in combat. They are also really effective at soaking unleash hell thereby allowing you to get the fragile king into combat safely.

Finally the two units of sharks. Most importantly they give you a shooting element that can be used to pick off support heroes such as skink priests or battlemages, clear screens or simply deal damage when going into combat isn't necessarily favourable. In bounty hunters the damage output of the crew attacks turn them into deathrollers. A single unit can output 24 damage from the jaws and 24 damage from the crew at -2 and -1 rend respectively. They also benefit from a great alpha ability which puts half their attacks on 2s to hit without any buffs required.

Game One - Win

I had the opportunity to play the lovely Nathan Prescott from The Honest Wargamer team. Seeing his little Look King crown and the genuine glee he has in playing his Gitz was adorable. He's honestly a very warm guy and I couldn't have asked for a better opponent to kick off the day.

Although Gitz are generally considered to be one of the weaker armies in the game, I knew this could be a hard match up. Nathan is one of the best Gitz players around, running a great list and benefiting from the new buffs the army received. I'm also playing an extremely low model count.

I was able to take advantage of going second throughout the game to keep activating objectives that were advantageous to me, whilst splitting the Gitz and forcing them to go into unfavourable positions in order to score primaries.

I was able to put the smash king into a very favourable combat at the bottom of round 2, getting +12 attacks and dealing collosal damage going into hide tide. The bounty hunters also did a considerable amount of work in slicing through the big blocks of Gitz faster than they could recover.

It was the longest game of my weekend and definitely mentally taxing. I think there is play with the new Gitz and look forward to the community exploring them.

Game Two - Loss

Oh Daughters of Khaine how Games Workshop love thee so! Having seen the prominence of the Femdom Hard Rock band Morathi and the Bow Snakes dominating events around the world, they decided to make some big changes.

Unfortunately those changes seem to have made DoK even better! This was my first loss at an event where I really struggled to pin point my mistakes or how I could have approached the game differently.

Luckily, my opponent Jack, happened to be a wonderful human being and a fellow war gaymer. We had great fun at the pub the night before and that definitely took the sting out of the loss.

I was able to take first turn and opted to go for a strong alpha strike push. My reasoning being that if DoK were to go first they would be able to shoot me twice with the bow snakes likely eliminating at least 400 points of my army without combat taking place. They would also then cast the Fist endless spell (or prayer?) Putting my army at -1 damage. Given almost everything in the list relies on damage 2, this would be game over.

I am confident going first was the correct choice. I was able to eliminate all the bow snakes, the shadow stalkers and do wounds into the ironscale and Morathi. Sadly, the dice were not with me.

A big 6 inch redploy on the combat snakes made it impossible for me to fight them. Meanwhile, Volturnos managed to take 8 wounds from little Morathi despite sitting on a 2+ save and immediately died. My Ishlaen guard, who had been sent to pin Big Morathi for that combat phase and her hero phase CA, rolled all 2s and 1s on their unrendable 3+s and died. This then allowed her to get into the small unit of Morrsarr (who had been put there to take her combat phase activation on the bottom of 2) during her hero phase.

The fist was promptly summoned, Morathi moved up and killed the 6 eels. The snakes killed the king and I lost priority into 2. Morathi popped off 2 more sharks leaving me with only 2 sharks for my turn 2.

They were able to kill the combat snakes and leave Morathi with only 3 wounds remaining into round 3. I won priority and attempted to use fight first to eliminate Morathi, giving me a slim chance of staying in the game. Alas it was not to be as they left her alive on a single wound and were killed in return.

Game Three - Win

I won't spend long on this match as it was silly. I was drawn against a brute heavy Ironjawz list on a battleplan where killing a GV gave 2 points or 3 if they were on an objective.

I was able to effectively win the game by turn 2 just from scoring GV points from killing brutes with my bounty hunters and king.

The rest of the game just involved me throwing everything into combat for a laugh as I knew I would win by more than 10 points no matter what.

In hindsight this was a mistake as the event used battle tactics and grand strats as a tie breaker rather than a differential. Had I taken this seriously and played for maximum scoring on tactics I might have podiumed! Ah hubris!

At least it made the game more fun for my poor opponent who was utterly cheated by the draw.

Game Four - Win

A fairly standard win for IDK against a Nighthaunt list that didn't really offer a threat to my IDK. My only regret is failing a battle tactic due to 4+ ethereal saves. In hindsight I would have avoided picking any "kill x," options due to the swingy nature of these saves.

I will say a quick well done to my opponent Andy from Team Angel. Despite losing this one he was able to go 3/2 for his best ever finish! He's also an austounding painter working on one of the best Khorne armies I've ever seen.

I'm sure once he finishes it he'll be taking in those painting trophies.

Game Five - Win

My final game saw off a very tanky Soulblight list featuring a ton of blood knights, Vordrai, Manfred and a Venga Boy. It aimed to level high base saves with wound and rend debuffs whilst also packing plenty of damage and healing.

It was a pretty close game all the way through. Even with my lists immense combat potential I really struggled to clear through.

Luck played a role here as I'm not sure I would have been able to stay in the game had I lost priority into round 2.

George absolutely knew how to get the best out of those blood knights and would have been well deserving of a 4-1 finish on another day.

Final bonus shout out to Volturnos who clearly wanted to be on a summer holiday and once again checked out early with some of the worst saves I've seen.

Conclusion

The gaming was great fun despite some wacky battleplans and it was really exciting to see the diversity of lists performing well. Only one army, Nighthaunt, went 5-0 and all the armies in the 4-1 bracket were from different factions.

I'm especially excited to see more of sylvaneth who seem to have a real wealth of builds that can all perform.

Despite that, the real highlight of the event was the social side. There is a lot to talk about in my follow up post tomorrow, but my faith in the AoS community has never been stronger.

Thank you so much to the TO, venue and everyone else who made the event great.

Check back tomorrow for some mushy personal thoughts, then Sunday for a review of War in the Mortal Realms!

Much love, Hazel x