Throne of Skulls, August 2017

So over the weekend of the 19th and 20th I went up to Warhammer world with my Talons of the Emperor force to take part in the Heresy throne of skulls. Here is a quick post on the games that I took part in and the army that I took with me.

All 3.3k of Talons of the Emperor that I own painted, fully painted is for closers and all that jazz

My Army

So as an excuse to get my Talons force done I decided that I was going to take them a couple of weeks before event, meaning I had to paint up a whole bunch of sisters of silence plus some other bits and pieces. As my HQs I decided to take Jenita Crowl and a Custodes Shield Captain. Then in my troops I had 3 squads of Custodes, 2 with spear and 1 with shields and 2 units of 10 bolter sisters of silence. In my elites choices I had the Achillus Pattern Dreadnought, 3 Hetaron Guard, and a 10 man Raptor Squad. 2 Pallus Grav attack craft made up my fast attack and the Gallatus Pattern Dreadnought gave me a single Heavy Support Choice. I do have some other models but I decided I didn't want to play 3k over the weekend so the Army in the photo is my 2.5k list. With my 2k list dropping out the Shield custodes and the shield captain.

Game 1

So my first game of the Saturday was against an ultramarines army fielded by Mike. Neither of us had played for a while so it was a bit of a slow start, but a nice easing back into 7th and Heresy. Mike was good fun to play against and somehow I managed to outnumber the army (a theme of the weekend surprisingly).  A lucky shot took out the leviathan early on in the game which helped out massively. Gulliman and his boys got stuck in with my 'command squad' which after a bit of a slug fest ended up with my command squad winning and then the 2 remaining models got promptly blown to pieces by a land raider. The game was a bit of blast and completely bloody ending in a 16-13 win to myself, surprisingly close seeing as Mike had 1 model left on the board at time. 

Game 2

Game 2 ended up being against a Staff knight list as someone couldn't make it. So in this game it was down to 2k meaning I had very little in the way of antitank. The only thing my army can't quite deal with is a full Knight list and I'm glad that Adam didn't have of the massive forge world knights. In this game I did manage to kill two of the knights (thanks to the 3 Hetaron guard and their S10 master crafted powerfists) and took one down to half health (although I think I could have killed it as I'm pretty sure that I forgot melta bombs where AP1). Overall this game was a good challenge and a game of how to minimise being killed and playing the mission. This game ended as a 21-10 loss to me, although the loss wasn't a surprising result which I was expecting.

Game 3

Last game of day one was against John and his imperial fists. This game started out very one sided. I got some lucky rolls and blew up a fair amount of rhinos and my raptor guard ripped apart a jetbike squad in combat. Then sigismund got out of his rhino and the slug fest started, and boy is sigismund a beast. I think it took 6 rounds of combat from two custodes squads, a dread and my characters to bring him and his command squad down. I can't remember a huge amount about this game as I was quite tired at this point but I remember it was nail biting and came down to a close 12-11 win for myself with John making a very smart move in the last turn of the game denying me his objective. Overall a really good game.

Game 4

Game 4 was against Chris and his Night Lords (who went on to win best painted). This game just did not go my way at all. I rolled so badly. There where a number of situations that would have been much closer had I rolled even marginally better (like making 2 out of 4 4+ saves, rather than rolling 3 3s and a 2....). However it was good game, which thanks to Chris wasn't bad at all even though I got completely Crushed. Stars of the game where the raptor squad who did more damage to Curze than any other unit in the game, managing to score two wounds (thank god for AP2 swords). The game ended in a crushing 22-3 loss.

Game 5

The last game of the weekend was against David and his space wolves (who are else where on this blog if you want to see some more of his work). This was a brilliant game, probably the best of the weekend. The sort of game where we weren't sure of who was winning until we counted up at the end. First things I learnt is that Russ is a beast in combat (so glad he's in the build pile at the moment). I managed to tie Russ up on one side of the board for most of the game, feeding him expensive units whilst I mopped up the rest of the Dave's army. Highlight of the game was when the raptor guard (notice a theme here?) ate a deathsworn squad after the blitzed their fellow sisters. At the end of the game David had Russ and I have 16 models left on the table. When the dust settled and we added up victory points it came out as a 20-19 loss so the perfect result for the best game of the weekend.

Thoughts

So overall I really enjoyed the weekend. My stars of my army where the 30 Sisters of Silence. although they didn't do as much work as some of the other units over the weekend they always punched above their weight and massively helped out boost the numbers in the army. Although squishier than custodes they are not squishier than marines which provided a massive boost to the army. The only real let down of the weekend was the fact that I had to explain over and over again that I was running a Talons of the emperor force not just custodes, which surprised a good number of people.

A photo just to give you an idea of how much space this army can cover on the thin end of a 4ft wide table

I Will definitely be running this list again as it was a lot of fun to play with. I'd love to add some more sisters units to the army, so next up for these guys is some transports, a command squad and a flamer team. However next up on the list to finish are the space wolves for Path2Confrontation in November. 

Philip