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Hi all,

Back with a 3 game team tournament report. I'll start it out with a quick run-down of the army list and post up the games shortly thereafter. Apologies again for the lack of pictures, working on it!

I teamed up with Aaron, a real nice guy (who painted his entire 2250 before ever playing a game). We'd played once before, and I had a great time, so thought it'd be a fun team.

The event was described as "hobby-ish" which in Austin, TX probably doesn't mean anything at all, but with that in mind, we decided to keep it nice, so avoided a steam tank/gunline/etc. The rules required 2500 point army, with at least 1000 from each, and with units and abilities affecting friendlies based on exact wording. (i.e. Most Dwarf runes, like Strollaz or Grungni specifically refer to friendy *Dwarf* units, while the Sigmarite prayers just refer to friendly units).

We made several iterations, and using Aaron's sweet template, probably had the prettiest army list at the dance. Here's what we came up with, our concept being "Between the Rocks and the Hard Cases".

General: Arch Lector on War Altar, w/Van Horstan's Speculum, Sword of Fate, and Armor of Meteoric Iron
Warrior Priest: Heavy Armor, Shield, Barded Steed, Ring of Hellfire, Sword of Might
Thane: BSB, MR of Gromril, Rune of Resistance, Rune of Preservation, Rune of Fire, Rune of the Furnace
Thane: MR of Swiftness, Rune of Cleaving, Rune of Fury, Rune of Stone, Shield
Core:
25 Dwarf Warriors w/shields, Full command
25 Dwarf Warriors w/shields, Full command
19 Longbeards w/shields, Full command, Rune of Stoicism, Rune of Determinaton
12 Flagellants, w/Prophet of Doom
Special
5 Pistoliers, Musician, Outrider w/repeater pistol
5 Outriders, Musician, Champ w/Hochland
Great Cannon
10 Inner circle knights, Full command, Warbanner
Hellblaster Volleygun

The concept was that the Dwarf blocks with flagellants and Dwarf characters would form the core, with Arch lector and inner circle knights as the counter punch, and shooting to threaten things we didn't want to fight. The only thing anyone could possibly complain about was the Arch lector, but we felt there were enough concessions elsewhere to make this sufficiently hobby-ish.

Our first game was against the Grajedas, who brought the following Lizards and Beasts Army (roughly):

Saurus Oldblood on Carnasaur w/burning blade, bane head, reflecting shield and possibly more.
Skink Chieftan on Ancient Stegadon w/war spear
Skink Shaman on Engine of the Gods
Scar Veteran BSB on cold one, unknown kit
Core:
11 Skirmishing skinks
5 x Beast chariots, mark of undivided
Special:
4 Dragon Ogres
Rare:
Giant

For those keeping track, we matched the model count on this army with our first core unit. How did we fare? I'll let you know soonly...

RZ

Can't wait.

Looking at that first 'army' you were up against I can only chuckle at the different interpretations of hobby-ish

Looking forward to hearing how things went, and checking out all the infernal combinations your alliance of manling and stunty ran into.

- Salvage

@Boss: Yeah, really. I had to chuckle a little myself when the display tray came down. I thought it was only one half the army for a second.

So each scenario had a primary (worth 12), a secondary (worth 5), and a tertiary (worth 3). Most of the time there were bonus points available.

Each round, the primary was victory points, with a 300 point difference being required for a win.

Round one, the secondary was to put a unit of US 5 or more in the opponents deployment zone, tertiary was having more banners (captured and your own), w/a bonus point each for killing a character who generates power/dispel dice, and one who doesn't.

So, not an attractive matchup for us right off the bat. We were going to be outdeployed, given all the cheap chariot drops. Our plan was to push Dwarves down the middle with the left flank protected by a low wall to help break up chariots and slow down other nasties. All the shooting went on the right, which meant it was relatively unsupported, while the archlector, war priest and knights were dropped to the *left* of the wall at the last minute. Terrain was tight on this side, and so there was a "death alley" with the arch lector and knights facing off against the war spear ancient, the carnosaur oldblood, and a chariot. The rest of the chariots were deployed opposite our Dwarves, with the engine, dragon ogres, giant, and skinks (with BSB!) attached on our far right across from our shooting.

We put the sword of justice target on the oldblood, the skink shaman picked up uranon's thunderbolt and portent of far, and we were off. Things got hairy right away on the right, with the dragon ogres, engine, and giant using woods to hide (mostly) and putting up the 5+ ward against our shooting. Despite the best efforts of the pistoliers, outriders, cannon, and hellblaster, we succeeded in only shaving 5 wounds from the dragon ogres, killing one, and failing to pass panic. We also jammed the volley gun... Hmmm...

The next round saw the pistoliers flee a charge from a beast chariot, panicking the outriders, who were preparing for a desperate stand and shoot reaction on the dragon ogres. The outriders barely stayed on the table, but the pistoliers were forced to flee all the way off after being contacted by the dragon ogres. Later turns saw the artillery run off by dragon ogres and giant, with the engine hanging back and trying to thunderbolt the knights on the other side of the field. The only saving grace was the outriders who eventually managed to wipe out the dragon ogres.

Meanwhile on the left, we overextended ourselves, and took a charge on the War Altar from the ancient steg. Despite a ton of impact hits, the altar survived, and held long enough to get the knights in the flank of the steg. Unfortunately, the chief challenged, effectively taking the knights and all their str 6 hatred attacks out of picture. Even still we won the combat, but cold blooded stubborn was too much, and he stayed, allowing the oldblood and *his* dinosaur into the fray. Even still, we won the next round, but both monsters held. A failure this close to the board would have been an auto-destruction and a huge boost to our chances, but it wasn't to be. Eventually the war altar was crushed, and the arch lector run down, with the knights fleeing and being dropped below rally size thanks to thunderbolts from afar. This brought the carnasaur into...

THE MIDDLE

Theoretically things were going well somewhere, right? Not exactly. The dwarf blocks advanced into the face of the chariot swarm, trying to stay close enough to prevent to many chariots from hitting any one unit. Unfortunately, as the flanks fell apart, we decided to push and try to break through with at least one unit to at least pick up the secondary objective. On the critical turn, four (4!) chariots all charged into one block, killing 14 dwarf warriors. Needing double ones to pass the check, failure was inevitable. But wait! The re-roll comes up with the snake eyes, and we have a glimmer of hope!

Longbeards and BSB head into the flank of one of the three chariots in the warriors' front. Decent rolls saw the chariot shattered, and an amazing 10" pursue managed to catch two chariots (go World's Edge Track and Field All-Stars!), while the third remaining chariot blasted itself apart by fleeing into the woods. I made something of a mistake here by pursuing with the decimated warrior unit, putting them in position to be flanked by the carnasaur. I'd been hoping to head far enough to get out of his charge arc, but it was not to be.

The resulting charge had the warriors flee the carnasaur and the longbeards take the hit in their flank. After a less than impressive assault, I was testing on re-rollable 6 or less, but that turned out to be a lot harder than snake eyes. As an afterthought I realized I could have been taking this test on 1D6, but so rarely have taken that rune, that it completely slipped my mind. Woops. Thankfully, the longbeards weren't winded yet and outran the carnasaur, right into prime position to pick up the secondary objective, until the failed to rally. We did pick it up with the warriors who held on snake eyes, using a rally reform to cross over the line.

Lessons learned here: If we'd put sword of fate's target as the ancient steg, we'd have probably killed the thing. As it was, a handful of attacks up at the skink chief in his armor plated howdah meant no problems for the steg to hold as long as it needed. Additionally, none of the segments of the army supported each other, getting picked off in badly chosen fights across the board. There were a couple chances where a good spot of luck could have turned the tide, and one of them came up aces (in the middle) but over all we decided to be a little more conservative next time.

The final run down was a full 22 possible points for the Grajedas, and a sad, sad 5 points for us. At least this would send us to a table with something a little less X-TREEM right?

Sort of...

Round 2, Fight!

After a nice lunch with the fellas that brutalized us first round, we moved to table 3 (of 5 tables- there being 10 teams entered) and faced off against JWolf of BoLS fame, and Steven, who brought Lizards and WoC to the table respectively.

Slann with extra power die per spell, BSB, war banner, cupped hands, know all the lore, soul of stone, likely some other things, possibly a scroll
Exalted on Juggernaut with favor of the gods, putrefacation glaive, possibly more
Level 2 Tzeentch caster, infernal puppet
Block of temple guard with banner of hard to shoot
8 Khorne Chaos knights for exalted to ride with and 5+ ward save banner
2 units of 10-ish skirmishing skinks
2 units of marauder cav with flails
Normal stegadon
2 warshrines

The list operated around a few nasty tricks, namely buffing the big cav unit, or stegadon with war shrines, and some caster-y trick that didn't have any real affect on us. It had something to do with getting a horrible miscast result on the slann and then bouncing it to an enemy caster. They got this off to pull an effective turn one win in their next game, by crippling skragg the slaughterer. Otherwise, the slann cast nasty magic, shooting things or propelling units into combat. In our case, he selected Shadow Magic (boo!).

The scenario this round awarded secondary to the team with the highest US core unit completely within 6" of the center of the table. Tertiary was earned by winning a challenge, with bonus points for table quarters and having 3 *or less* characters alive at the end of the game.

Deployment here was mostly on our left around a hill. The area was actually very tightly bracketed by terrain, with a large woods and other difficult terrain making things awkward. We had a more conservative plan of moving up with Dwarf blocks, and flagellants preparing to sacrifice one (preferably the flagellants) to redirect the frenzied knights, while keeping the war altar and knights available to ruin someone's day. Although I think we picked the right spot to make our stand, we were a little cramped, and it ended up jamming the knights up later in the game.

We won the roll off, and being able to see nothing, gave the lizard/warrior combo first turn. The opening phases had us wipe out a unit of marauder cav with our fast cav shooting, and panic the other off the board, a nice boost but not a lot of points in the bucket. We did well in the magic phases, dispelling the worst of the worst (pit of shades), and avoiding any early charges from unseen lurker. Artillery was a flop, dropping a knight and a skink- the hellblaster needing to roll to hit, was rough. At one point, 24 shots netted us 2 hits. Yikes. The stegadon got in a slap-fight with the war altar. In an attempt to slow things down, they managed to land a 4+ ward save on the steg, courtesy of the war altars. In an attempt to hurry things up, we tried to send in dwarf warriors and the warrior priest. The warriors were a little too cramped by a neighboring unit, and the warrior priest failed his fear check, pinning the knights in place. Woops. The dwarfs did arrive next turn, and 25 warriors pushed hard enough to tip the steg over and dump all the skinks out. The over run let us jog into the center of the board and sit there looking surly and basking in the secondary objective.

On the left, we managed to protect the flagellants long enough to shove them in the face of the frenzied knights. A charge from the knights *and* the temple guard later, and we had our redirect. Unfortunately, the overrun was able to clip a unit of dwarf warriors, which kind of ruined our plan. It did, however set up a nice flank charge from the longbeards plus both dwarf thanes... who promptly failed their fear check and stood by to watch. The next round of combat. The knights whiffed, though, and had me checking on a 7 re-rollable. Passed, but unfortunately, as it was our turn, they didn't last another turn and fled, giving up a banner. The longbeards instead headed into the temple guard, if nothing else, than to win a challenge for tertiary, and to keep themselves from being nailed by Pit of Shades. We managed to pick up some points by sneaking off the arch-lectors' Cleansing Flare and snagging a wound off the sorcerer who hadn't run far enough and skinks in the woods. Meanwhile the other unit of skinks out-shot both our units of fast cav, and finally had to be charged for a wet tissue fight that finally got rid of them.

Flickering fire took out our cannon, and we stopped a last chance unseen lurker (cast on a 22!) into the hellblaster that would have had an overrun into the knights. At this point, the knights were entering ridiculous stage, with 4+ ward, stubborn and strength 6 thanks to warshrines.

When points were totaled up, the primary (VP) came out to be a draw, mostly thanks to cleansing flare and timely dispels. We picked up 4 points for drawing on the primary, 5 for the secondary and 3 for the tertiary, as well as a bonus point for table quarters. This actually landed us a nice 13-8 on tournament points! Things were looking up.

All in all, a softer opposing list, and more conservative play really helped us out. Again, we would have benefited from aiming sword of fate at the steg to deal with that quicker, but things worked out alright. A little more attention to detail, and we could have preserved some 350 VPs by keeping the dwarf warriors out of the way. It was unfortunate to fail the fear for the longbeard flank charge, but we'd been lucky to only lose 5 on the charge anyhow.

Feeling better about ourselves, we were ready to see what was next...



Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Third and Final Round

This round, secondary was earned by the player with more core 20" or more from your own board edge, and tertiary by having 2 or more core units alive at the end of the game, no bonus points.

We were facing a couple of real nice fellas, and I flat out forgot to write down their names. So... sorry guys.

We were looking at:

Bloodthirster, Obsidian armor, Firestorm blade, and Immortal Fury
Nurgle herald on palanquin with BSB and perhaps other things
Level 1 sorceress with 2 scrolls
The Masque
Assassin with manbane and killing blow
16 Plague bearers, with icon of something or other
10 repeater xbow warriors
7 shades with champ, x-bows, great weapons
5 harpies
5 dark riders with xbows and musician
19 Blackguard with ASF banner and full command, ring of hotek on the champ.
2 Reaper bolt throwers
6 Flamers of Tzeentch

So... kinda rough. Pretty much, our best weapon here was the War Altar. He could try to keep the Bloodthirster in check, and we put Sword of Fate on the BSB to give us a chance if that match up looked like it was going to happen. We were going to get bound off since the army was relying on the ring of Hotek to provide magic defense.

Aaron was amazing with his cannon guesses all game- with turn one smearing two crossbows and mashing a bolt thrower (for only two wounds, unfortunately). Second shot scraped three black guard off as well. Unfortunately, when the opportunity arose for a shot at the Bloodthirster, it self destructed.

The left was a pretty cool running brawl, with pistoliers, warrior priest, knights and hellblaster tangling with the dark riders, shades, assasin and masque. The Blood Thirster was an ever present nearby menace. The warrior priest did a great job of drawing dispel dice and making a nuisance of himself before being taken down by reapers. The knights charged the shades, intending to run them off to keep the middle healthy, and were surprised by a hold reaction. The assassin leapt out, killed two, with a third taken down by another shade, but casualties and static ran the knights right through them, and on into the Masque (which neither side noticed). A couple rounds later, and she too went down for the count.

On the right, reapers shredded outriders who fled, never to return, and wiped out flagellants. Harpies flew around making it really tough for us to pick up the secondary.

The center was another fun game of maneuver, with three dwarf blocks and the war altar playing chicken with the black guard, plague bearers and flamers. It got off to a bad start with an IF Black Horror killing 7 longbeards and dragging a wound off of the BSB. Both thanes promptly bailed out to the warriors... The flamers eventually, charged the war altar to pin it in place, took a counter charge from a full warrior block and were then helped by the plague bearer block and blood thirster. We'd actually gotten the perfect matchup- here was the Bloodthirster, fighting the war altar! I'm not sure they realized that VHS was going to make this a great matchup for us. And a challenge from the plaguebearer champ created a bizarre situation where the bloodthirster in the flank of the war altar couldn't fight at all. The dwarf warriors took one casualty and ran for it, leaving the war altar fighting all three demon units, but in a perpetual slapfight with the plague bearer champ. This turned out to be great, as he kept dropping soulfire and cleansing flare, eventually killing the bloodthirster and dropping the flamers below half.

Even the dwarfs got to win a fight, though it took 25 warriors, a BSB, a thane, and a flank charge from the remaining longbeards to take down 16 black guard and a sorceress. By the end there were only a scant handful of warriors left from the unit.

By final count, we ended up with a healthy win on primary, loss on secondary and a win, and picked up tertiary for a nice 15-5.

We patted ourselves on the back for getting better as the day went on, and figuring out how not to get too spread out. The real surprise came when we heard we'd picked up second place (behind our 2nd round opponents). We must have gotten a good soft score boost (worth 10 points per round) because I know there were folks with a lot more battle points than we. The painting and the hobby-ish list paid off.

And that was that- a lot of fun, though it is quite a buzz-saw here in Austin, TX, even in "hobby-ish" events.

Thanks for reading, and sorry again for the lack of pics...

RZ

Congratz on second. It's a shame more people don't understand hobby-ish.

Thanks for the report.

Red_Zeke wrote:The painting and the hobby-ish list paid off.

Amen to that

Nice work on second, particularly after seeing the vomitous third army you were up against - and beat! So ridiculous, but way to smash your way out and live to tell about it.

- Salvage

I'm confused. You brought a textbook infantry line supported by war machines and headed by the standard popemobile. It's straight out of central casting. Why the contempt for your foes? Your list is more optimized than theirs, and far less "hobby-ish", as you've only infantry blocks and one centerpiece model (the War Alter, a wretched sculpt). You competed hard, had fun, and almost won.

Why the insecurity? No one will think less of you for losing, it's far more shameful to be unable to respect your opponent's contribution to your apparently pleasant experience.

@40kenthusiast. I seem to be missing the part where Zeke showed any contempt to his opponents, at the tournament or in these battle reports, unless you are refering to the lunch they had with the team that brutalized them in the first game. Maybe you should be directing your comments towards me and Boss.

Now I will admit I am not familiar with a lot of the armies, but I believe the first list had at least 4 terror causing monsters, with a few more fear causing units, and a crap load of chariots. I guess that is pretty standard.

I also understand from a fluff stand point, why the dwarfs and empire would team up and even the DE and Daemons, but not so sure about the lizardmen teaming with either beasts of chaos or warriors of chaos. I thought lizardmen despised chaos. IMHO I think fluff is a part of the hobby.

Hmm, maybe it's oversensitivity on my part. The OP describes his enemy's list as X-TREEM. His own list is "the prettiest list at the ball", and contains "concessions", to make up for his popemobile. The event is supposed to be "hobby-ish", but their foes, collectively, are a "buzz-saw". I got a strong sense of annoyance from the poster that the unwritten rules he adhered to had not been recognized by his opponents.

I hate that noise. To my mind, bring what you want, and play the game you want to play. If I was only imagining an alternate viewpoint in this post, then that's my bad.

Wrote a long post, lost it, decided to summarize thusly:

40kenthusiast wrote:maybe it's oversensitivity on my part.

Yes, it is.

40kenthusiast wrote:His own list is "the prettiest list at the ball"

Refers to my teammate's custom made, full color, double sided, gloss printed actual, physical army list. I'm not some ridiculous preening jackass.


Thanks for reading.

RZ


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ahhhh, let me add to that, I guess. To be clear, I don't think I've disparaged anyone here. All I'm saying is that some of the lists were harder than what I thought the admittedly vague "hobby-ish" was alluding to. I don't think it's out of line to develop some kind of expectation though.

I mean, if you were having a pick up game, and asked your opponent to bring something 'compy' and they brought their 'Ard Boyz Kairos list, you'd be surprised right?

All, I'm trying to get across is that we ran into tougher lists than I expected, had a great tournament, and specifically mentioned that our opponents were gentlemen and good sportsmen.

If we were going to bring a hard list, it sure as hell would've looked a lot different. And if you think blocks of dwarf warriors are some kind of super-bad-ass build, I just don't know what to say.

I've got nothing but respect for the guys we played, and would gladly play them again anytime. I would hope the previous entries in this series have made that clear. If I had "insecurity" issues, I sure as hell wouldn't be posting up all the massacres I've been on the end of.

If you think I could have better expressed myself w/regards to respect for opponents vs. flinching at the lists, then I apologize, but I really think you're reading a lot more into this than there is.

Frankly, I'm surprised by, and don't understand your hostility.

RZ

Very nice reports, thanks a lot for sharing. Congratulations on your sterling performance!

40kenthusiast wrote:I'm confused. You brought a textbook infantry line supported by war machines and headed by the standard popemobile.

I really don't see why you are confused. The list is a far cry from the copy-and-paste tournament build (singular) of either Empire or Dwarves. Slow infantry blocks are hardly taken in multiples if anyone can help it except maybe to protect a Wizard. The War Altar is one of the few strong models the Empire has, so I wonder how taking *one* strong unit makes this an optimized list.