First Unbound in a Tournament Experience

[Caitsidhe]

So one of my local gaming stores ran a 1500pt Tournament where everything 7th Edition was allowed, including Unbound. The experience was interesting. I haven't been champing at the bit to play Unbound (or avoiding it). There were some particularly nasty lists I could have built, but I settled on the one I figured would let me fight the most different armies at that point level. I ran:

Be'lakor (per Dataslate of course)

(CSM Codex) Winged Nurgle Daemon Prince w/Black Mace, Spell Familiar, Combat Familiar, Mastery Level-3

(Chaos Daemons) Winged Nurgle Daemon Prince w/Book of the Truenames, Balesword, and Mastery Level-3

4x (1) Man Obliterator Units

1x Helldrake w/Baleflamer

*I brought along numerous basic Chaos Daemons as I fully expected to take the Malefic Primaris and summon a few in games that warranted it. Before summoning my army was a mere eight models total. On the plus side, everything had the option of being in reserve, so I could maximize my effectiveness against certain armies. I could have built this list Battle Forged y losing the Helldrake or two of the Obliterators of course, bringing in some Nurglings and Cultists, but I was throwing caution to the wind.

I didn't find the lack of Objective secured a huge issue, at least not at this lower points level. I didn't find any of my opponents upset about my list or finding it any harder to fight against than the various Battle Forged lists. There were lists there that were not Unbound that went well beyond anything I could do one way or the other. Balance is thus, really not much of an argument against this type of list. I won two out of three of my games. The one I lost (I lost soundly) but up until the middle of it I had just as much a chance of rolling him as him me. Sometimes the dice gods are cruel. I fought one Imperial Guard list of the new Mechanized lists (a new parking lot of sorts). That is the one I lost. Sadly my deep striking obliterators managed to miss point blank with twin-linked Melta guns multiple times. Life turns on a dime. I fought a Grey Knight w/Imperial Guard allies and a Knight list which was particularly nasty as well as being Battle Forged. I beat this one solidly largely due to tactics than anything else. This interesting combination sits a Skyshield with Dreadnaughts, a Stormraven, an an HQ and someone calling in Orbital Bombardmants. It also had a Vendetta carrying some kind of Guard unit, same as the Stormraven. He essentially would start the Stormraven on the board castled up with the Dreads on the Skyshield (using Psyker powers to increase everyone's Invulnerable save there) blasting away with the guns while the Knight shot the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon (fighting when the odds in his favor). Eventually (if necessary) the planes would move forward. It was quite the min/max list. I enjoyed taking it on. I enjoyed beating it even more. I had to take it on pretty much as I do any Tau or Eldar list, with calculated drop & pop after luring his Knight forward and hiding what few models I started on the table outside of LOS. The other list I played was pure Imperial Guard min/maxed to take maximum advantage of the low points and objective based nature of the game. The guy literally, like Orks, cover his entire deployment zone with infantry units and even when he had moved forward to the halfway mark, still covered it only not looking so dense. He was going with pure volume of fire, orders to ignore cover, and figured most of us would be too few to deal with his Objective secured. In other words, he intended to just grab objectives and survive to the end where we couldn't kill him fast enough. It apparently worked against his other two opponents. He looked pretty confident going against me and my army of eight models. Fortunately I was a bit more tactical about which units I hit and didn't bother trying to kill his whole army concentrated (like him) on those that could get to the objectives. I ended up with four out of five of them.

In reviewing this (and not for tactical reasons) I have to analyze how different (if at all) the battles would have gone had I gone Battle Forged versus Unbound. My fight against the rather min/maxed GK/IG/Knight list would have probably been different. The Obliterators and Helldrake all were fairly key (the Daemon Princes not so much). Battle Forged would have cut them back. Oddly enough, against the giant Imperial Foot army I would have been better served by a Battle Forged version. Against the Mechanized IG I would have lost and not had a chance (whereas I did lose but I felt it could go either way).

[Rory Wildwards]

Cool, that was fun to read
Do you think you would lean away from 3 big nastys in future, say drop one to take something else?
Or were they performing for you?

[Caitsidhe]

Cool, that was fun to read
Do you think you would lean away from 3 big nastys in future, say drop one to take something else?
Or were they performing for you?

It all depends on the points. They performed great.

[JimmyWolf]

Thank you for sharing, it's really interesting to get views on how Unbound functions in a tournament setting, given everyones initial reaction to it.

By the sounds of it, people seemed to know where certain boundaries were. No one you played took units from distinctly different codexes (Eldar + Orks or Imperial + Chaos for example). The armies made sense within the context of the fluff but were just totally crazy by the standards of previous editions (GK+IG+IK is a lot of different rulebooks, but they would work together in pretty much any situation). You did the same.

It certainly makes me more confident in suggesting ignoring the general consensus that Unbound is impossible to properly police. I mean, it may need limits for tournaments, but you had no limits and none of those armies made me go HERESY!

[jmimbs]

Thanks for sharing this. I would absolutely love to recreate the Battle for Helsreach, but that would entail Black Templars with Grimaldus, hordes of Steel Legion IG, and a contingent of Sisters of Battle. Totally unbound per the rules, but also straight from the fluff and probably not broken in the least.