Dakka Veteran
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Just 3 quick synopses of how I did today at a little tournament (16 players) at a nearby gaming store (called Misty Mountains if anybody cares). I won't really go turn-by-turn because I didn't take notes, this is more about general list performance.
My list:
Thane of Pain
Runelord with 2 scrolls and anvil
BSB thane, 1+ rerollable armor save, and (IMPORTANT) Master Rune of Challenge
2x bolt throwers: 1S7, 1 Burning, both with engineers
Organ Gun
Gyrocopter
Cannon, rerolls misfires and burning
Grudge Thrower, rerolls scatter dice, and burning
19x Warriors with Command and shields.
19x Hammerers, immune to fear and terror, command
10x Quarrelers, shields
10x thunderers, shields
10x thunderers, shields
Game 1: Lizardmen. 2 Big saurus blocks with spears, 2 stegs (1 giant pipes and one that I never quite found out what its ability was because I shot it), Slann in temple guard, a level 2 skink priest and 2 scar-vets, and a couple units of skirmishing skinks.
Scenario: Magic flux. Every magic phase, we rolled all our power/dispel dice, and anything that came up a 1, the other player got. Also, you got to put down two objectives, and they were good for battle points if you could grab them. you could also get BPs for killing enemy mages.
In what was going to become a theme for me, I deployed wretchedly. There were some forests on the map, each one in more or less the center of the board about a foot from one side. I parked both my objectives the minimum 12" apart in the left-hand table quarter, intending to castle up. Plunked the anvil down on top of one and lined up some thunderers on the board edge on that side (I had vague ideas of anvil-marching them across the board to grab an objective marker, which he had put on the extreme far left table quarter). He had a unit of skinks across from them with a scar-vet in it (weird). In the middle between the two forest he went steg-saurus-saurus-temple guard, then another unit of skinks lined up on the forest with the last steg on the edge.
I responded with Grudge Thrower-Thunderers-Organ gun- Hammerers- Quarrelers- Big Rock (I really didn't like this table)bolt throwers, cannon, Warriors, with the gyrocopter hiding behind the rock.
It is worthy of note that in this game he miscasted on two dice THREE separate times. I really felt for him here, as he was a nice guy (ended up winning the sportsmanship award). In another devastating development for him, I killed the right-hand stegadon -the one facing my totally naked artillery cluster- with a grudge thrower hit, rolling a six to wound and then another one to deal six wounds to the big fella (and note that this was only a partial hit so I had to roll that too, and I had actually aimed at something else). Both of his saurus blocks were below half strength before they made it anywhere near my line, and I also popped his skink priest with quarreler shooting. My anvil got me a hammerer flank charge into his stegadon, which entered the combat with one wound left and finished it with one (sword and board is not cutting it against that thing, and his stubborn six kept him in combat until his six remaining saurus (out of 18) caught the hammerers in their exposed flank- they were faced back toward my table edge.) Hammerers and saurus chopped one another up for a long time, but I didn't manage to ever do an unsaved wound to the steg. My big mistake this game was my warriors, with the BSB inside, saw off a unit of skirmishing skinks on the right flank and then... sat there accomplishing nothing. Lost zero guys but I need more out of them for their points. I kept my two objectives and he left his behind, and I out-killed him by about 400. he said correctly that all my s4 armor-piercing shooting and seven free dispel dice are pretty much his nightmare list. We'll play again someday.
My Mistakes: Spreading out to allow him to attack me at various points without getting shot. Also, I didn't get as much mileage out of the anvil as I ought to have.
Game 2: Warriors of Chaos. He had a block of 5 Slaanesh Knights and a block of 5 Khorne Knights, Two sets of 5 Marauders on horseback with flails, 20 foot Marauders, a unit of 7 dogs, a Slaanesh sorceror on a disc and an undivided sorceror on foot, and a block of foot chosen. His general was on a demonic steed of some kind and had a 1+ save.
Scenario: Kill the general, keep your general alive. Also, standards were worth battle points. Everything was immune to fear, terror, and panic (!!!), and general's leadership bubble was 18" not 12".
I got badly out-deployed again, and ended up strung out across the board again. The Anvil was behind a big rock (Impassable, block LOS) With the Grudge Thrower and some thunderers next to him, Warriors were on the extreme right with both characters inside, and Hammerers in the middle. Just inside the warriors on the right were cannon, bolt thrower, bolt thrower. Organ gun was smack in the middle of the line, and Thunderers and quarrelers filled in the gaps. Importantly, his two large units of knights were on the right side of the board with my artillery, and my gyrocopter was on the far left side of the board with the anvil. Disaster looming. He rolled for eye of the gods on his chosen... +1 toughness for the game! These guys were never not going to die.
He motored forward with the works, of course, including marauders and his slaanesh sorceror on the disc. My right flank guys were quaking in their stumpy little boots as all that heavy metal headed toward them (2x knights, marauders, slaanesh sorceror). In the middle was his infantry, the warshrine, and his general was hiding behind a rock to avoid dying. Some more Marauders sprinted charged down the left toward the anvil behind the rock.
Copter was having a really wonderful game until turn 3, and then hilarity ensued. Turn 1, copter sizzled some marauders, rolled 4+ on all five partials, and did 3 wounds! They passed their panic test, which was good because they were immune to it due to the scenario but we forgot. Then, the chaos lord couldn't resist and charged it, meaning he was no longer behind his rock and I could shoot at him. The copter fled, rallied, and headed out into the middle of the board, finding a lovely spot between four of his units. Little did I know that the crews of all my other warmachines had joined Gyrocopter Haters Anonymous when I wasn't looking? I guessed a fairly decent guess with my cannon, then rolled a ten for the overshoot and another ten for the bounce! That missed everything except the copter >_<. Oh Dear. I roll to wound... A ONE! HE CAUGHT IT!. After taking off our lollerskates, we resolved the grudge thrower. Awesome guess, right in the middle of the big marauder block! Scatter... 8 inches directly away from me. Naturally it hit the copter. And nothing else. Well that's ok, I'll just reroll it with the rune of accuracy! And it... didn't... change... at all. So I shot my own gyrocopter with, not one, but both of my most powerful war machines. It couldn't catch the rock and died, shouting "they came from behind!"
This game's other epic developments were: after anvil-marching the warriors forward again on my second turn, I popped the MRo challenge on his disc-riding tzeentch sorceror. Some marauders were nearby and they charged too, hoping to save him. This meant that they were also beaten in combat (actually, nobody did any wounds to anybody, but ranks, banner, bsb, numbers, and my iron thane challenging his choppiest guy to keep him from wounding were plenty). The marauders hit some impassible terrain and popped, and disc jockey (heh heh) never rallied, fleeing off the board 2 turns later. So that's what THAT rune is for.
His chaos lord, having been organ-gunned, thundered, and otherwise mauled down to one wound, charged my leftmost thunderer line, supported by the two marauders that the gyrocopter had not previously sizzled. The doughty thunderers held out for FOUR rounds of combat, which actually saved his general's life, as by the time he overran off the board and then showed back up, it was too late to shoot him again with the totally untouched organ gun. I rolled, in succession, an 8, a 5, a 5, and then double 1's to hold, and the thunderers never broke.
When the dust settled, I had lost by about 300 points, as his knights crumpled up my artillery line from the side. However, two cannons and a bolt thrower actually survived one round of combat each, and passed their stubborn checks, so 9 artillery crew held up 8 chaos knights. He never even managed to nick one of my characters, and the hammerers were in combat with the chosen for long enough that there were only 5 of them left.
Third Game: Brets. His was actually a fairly soft list, with 3 large units of errants, some weird foot peasants with ward saves (don't remember the name), and 75 peasants with a mounted yeoman block. He had more or less no magic phase. However, the Scenario was "get your messenger off the far side of the board..." aw heck, I have to MOVE.
A guy wandering over to our table, not playing in this tourney, summarized this game neatly. "Brettonians," he said, "they got there." In other words, pretty much everything died. My BSB was in the warriors, which held one errant unit for a long time (3 consecutive turns of tied combat, down to musicians), and my hammerer block anvil-marched all the way up the side of the board with the messenger. They scared off two units and got into combat with a unit of peasants less than a foot from his table edge, with the messenger watching contentedly and munching a cookie. After killing six peasants and whipping them soundly in combat, my hammerers failed to restrain. They ran the peasants down, but my messenger was suddenly right in the sights of his newly-rallied unit of mounted yeomen (previously they fled from a hammerer charge) and was duly trampled into a fine paste, failing all 5 3+ ward saves. His messenger had made it off my board edge totally untouched, so that was thirty battle points for him. (Massacres went for 20) Also in this game, my bolt throwers fired a total of ten shots for a total of one wound, and I guessed wretchedly with the cannon. In short, anything that ignored those nasty 2+ saves wasn't working for me, and I lost by 950 points of kills. Notable here was that my BSB (1+ rerollable save) and one of his paladins (2+ save) fought a challenge that went six rounds before I finally got him. During this time, errants and dwarf warriors also kept making armor saves, and nobody lost combat by enough to flee (although I did have to re-roll one failed panic test). Brets are not a good list, as most of my shooting is the fail.
So that's my tournament story. I have a lot to learn, clearly, especially about deploying... who wants to post some tips about deploying dwarfs? It didn't help that I had ZERO games with a hill in my DZ that anything could stand on.
I am happy with this list, which isn't strictly a "gunline," and has enough chop to make things interesting vs lists that are likely to swarm me. Things that are speedy still cause me great stress, however. Don't see much I can do about that, except get better at using the gyrocopter to make them go awkward directions.
Thanks for reading, comments welcome!
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