Took the boys out to a local 1800 point tournament, the end of a step in the league they’ve got going (and that I’m not playing in, since the low point end of things wasn’t interesting to me). Three games in one day, unexpectedly including player-scored sports, comp and painting! Sadly I had brought my unpainted army …
L: Demon Prince -
MoT, level 1, third eye, roar
H: Exalted -
MoT,
BSB, talisman of endurance, ironcurse, halberd
C: 20 Warriors -
MoT, banner of eternal flame, full command, shields
C: 20 Warriors -
MoT, full command, shields
C: 5 Warhounds
C: 5 Warhounds
R: Shaggoth - additional hand weapon
R: 2 Spawn -
MoT
Simply my 2000 point list minus the level 2 with scroll, and with marks on the spawn. Really I was looking to just get some games in and continue to see what I could do with my rather divergent choices
GAME ONE: WARRIORS OF CHAOS
The tournament used ‘Ard Boyz scenarios, and this one was Battle for the Pass with some
BP conditions thrown in. Also, scree slopes everywhere. Him:
L: Lord -
MoK, sword of might, 4+ ward, shield
H: Sorcerer -
MoT, level 2, e.shield, spell familiar?
H: Exalted -
BSB, shield, barded steed
C: 14 Warriors -
MoT, full command, shields
C: 14 Warriors -
MoT, full command, shields
S: 5 Knights - full command
R: Hellcannon
R: Warshrine -
MoT
My prince rolled up gateway, his sorcerer rolled up flicker, treason, gateway. I could already guess the tune …
Gateway For The Win
I got first, sent dogs out to harass the knights on his left flank and the lord’s warriors on the right, and shuffled up. The prince mobilized to stand near the knights, slammed a gateway into his caster’s warriors, rolled 11 hits @ S11 and removed them from the table. He thought about quitting but stuck around. My prince would spend the next few turns orbiting the knights and roaring into them, eventually killing them all and popping the
BSB’s head with the constant cacophony. A gateway may have helped drop a couple but no auto-warp like before :’(
Hellcannons For Great Justice
The other half of the table saw my
BSB’s warriors engage his lord’s boys, but my flavor of tizz was stronger and rebuffed them, failing to run them down. About this point his hellcannon started to do something of note - his first shot had deviated 10” and splattered 4 war hounds - by misfiring into my non-
BSB warriors with a S10 template, killing 9 and gimping the unit while shutting off his shooting ability. Sadly this got him to put the beast into combat instead of sitting and blasting away where I wanted him, and a march later I was in a pickle, with the hellcannon right next to the rallied lord’s unit. My
BSB’s boys went in for round 2 vs. the khorne lord, and had a friendly spawn tag in for swiftstride chasing. The other spawn I had a choice to make: go into the lord’s unit for even more chasing, or grab the hellcannon and try to lock it down so my warriors could scoot by? I decided to nab the cannon and made it in. Combat comes and goes, he loses and I again have to decide whether the
BSB should chase - I wanted those points! - or leave it to the spawn’s
3D6-drop-the-lowest and reform to face the hellcannon, which had a good chance of turning and flanking/rearing the
BSB’s warriors. At this point I realized I should have done the hellcannon combat first … but my
BSB boys decide to pursue. The spawn catches the lord’s unit (…) and the
BSB’s crew do indeed expose their rear to the hell cannon, which gobbles up the spawn (just) and turned for the rear charge.
Which it does. It should be noted that his warshrine, between flanking the shaggoth (it broke but got away) and getting repeatedly broken and escaping my gimped warriors, had given the hell cannon +1A. So 6 S5 + 6 S3 (the dwarfs) attaks later, plus the t.stomp he had forgotten about but I reminded him of, my
BSB’s unit lost but held, though critically failed to reform. Next turn he actually won by less, but I double-broke and ran off the (his) board edge, and the ‘cannon reformed.
Operation: Gang Bang
At this point my big dudes had finally showed up to help the warriors, though clearly they were a bit too late. All the same shaggoth,
DP and spawn 2 stormed into the hellcannon and reduced it to spare parts. Also, the war shrine was finally caught for a turn 5? tabling.
24-2? VICTORY
GAME TWO: OGRES
After getting some lunch - our game was the fastest by an hour or so - it was time for another bashfest
L: Tyrant - wallcrusher, sword of anti-heroes, 4+ ward, brace of handguns, heavy armor
C: 16 Bulls - additional hand weapons
C: 8 Ironguts - standard (of +1M)
S: 4 Leadbelchers
S: 4 Leadbelchers
I heartily applauded the guy for taking no magic and for really going balls out with all the belchers (which were run 2x2 - the guts were 4-wide and the bulls 5-wide), though the lack of command made me my list-writing fingers itch, and his tyrant was a bit mis-equipped
IMO. He admitted the anti-hero sword didn’t do what he thought it did (i.e. add bonuses for every enemy in base, not just hero) …
My prince took flicker instead of call to glory
Divide & Conquer
I knew surviving the onslaught of blubber was going to involve splitting his two hammers apart and dealing with them one at a time. The scenario - Dawn Assault - helped this out by sticking his bulls on my right flank and one unit belchers on my left, while my own deployment really wasn’t affected, with everything central and just one puppy stuck on the right and a spawn on the left. The dogs capitalized on the bulls’ isolation by chain baiting-fleeing-diverting him and giving me time to bait in the tyrant’s guts, which headed right into the non-
BSB warriors, beat the crap out of them but were stuck when the warriors steadfasted down.
In my turn 3 the trap snapped shut: a spawn flanked the leftmost belchers, the
DP slammed into the flank of the other belchers (they had both blasted the
BSB warriors for 3 dead chaos dudes, from ~50 total shots!), the
BSB’s warriors hit the left flank of the tyrant’s unit and the other spawn + shaggoth hit their right flank. The 65 point spawn flanking the belchers won by 1, broke them and ran them down (!), and the 400 points prince followed suit and beat his unit by 1 (after power-fluffing and being wounded
), broke them and ran them down. In the main event, all but three guts died, as the flanking
BSB + warriors couldn’t fit as the tyrant was in a challenge, but after the big man was done pulverizing a warrior champ (just), he broke and ran due SE. I sent the spawn and shaggoth after him, wanting to keep the warriors from getting into redirected-charge range of the bulls, but failed to catch!
It swiftly didn’t matter, as the spawn + shaggoth powered in, obliterated the remaining ironguts, breaking and running down the tyrant. T5 with a 5/4+ save don’t matter when your friends are being brutalized …
Bullstar, Ho!
So with just a buttload of bulls to deal with I was feeling pretty cheeky. My
BSB and his warriors strode up to take a charge he was sure to redirect off of some fleeing warhounds, but I didn’t anticipate how much 5 S6 impact hits + 35 S4 attaks + 5 S4 stomps would hurt. Also it should be noted: I failed every fear test my warriors had to take vs. his ogres, so he was hitting on 3+ throughout the game - I was also hitting on 5+ but my dice were so jacked up that I was getting more hits that way than I usually do at 3+
Anyway, he
just stomped the tenth warrior down, breaking my steadfast, and my unit (twice). Though my
BSB fell on his halberd rather than be taken alive (…), he did not catch the warriors. And also importantly, he had moved out of the arcs of everything I had waiting to counter-charge him.
The new plan was to tag him with a spawn on both ends of his unit, giving my
DP and shaggoth the time to turn around and rear charge him, perhaps with my other warriors flanking in (they were currently blocked by a spawn). Sadly one spawn needed 8” and rolled 6, and the other one needed 2” and just managed it. He exactly killed that spawn - using only 6 attaks to cause 3 wounds, pretty lucky - spun around to face the previously-punched by tyrant warriors and charged in on his turn. A failed fear test later and an ocean of attaks bounced off of sexy 4/5+ saves and my boys held. He was then rear-charged and flanked by both big monsters + spawn, lost by a lot and was run down, for another tabling.
24-1? VICTORY
GAME THREE: LIFE SLANN & FRIENDS
With max
BP so far I knew the last game was going to be For Real, and indeed I was up against the only other undefeated army …
L: Slann [LIFE] -
BSB, rumination, mystery, belcaming, cupped balls
C: 24 Saurus - full command, shields
C: 12 Skink Skirmishers
C: 12 Skink Skirmishers
S: 18 Temple Guard - banner of eternal flame, full command
S: 10 Camo Skinks
R: 2 Sallies - extra skinks
R: Ancient Steg
The scenario was essentially Meeting Engagement (caveat: pick 2 units, they come on in turn 3 on any board edge but your opponents, are worth extra
BP if killed or alive), my prince took flicker and I basically threw the game away. What I should have done is used my
DP to chase down all of his irritating support units and perhaps the steg, leaving his two blocks to face off with the rest of my army and eventually dweller it into nothing, as Life is at its worst if you move up and engage it in combat.
So Right, I Engaged It In Combat
With my
DP becalmed my dreams of IF dwelling the slannstar were not to be, so like an idiot I threw the prince away by tossing him + shaggoth into the temple guard. I knew I could only stop one of his augments a turn, so I always chose to crush +4T, allowing him to have regen. Sadly my flaming warriors were deployed opposite his saurus, not his
TG, and were half killed by dwellers turn one anyway. But right, big monsters hacked and stomped at the
TG, killed 1-3 for a couple turns until the burly S5
TG cut down the prince. For some reason I was surprised they tore him down so fast, but not making any 4+ wards will do that.
Anyway, the warriors ran up and charged into some saurus on the left and
TG on the right, fighting for a while but either dying (in the case of the flaming, gimped unit) or being flanked by reserving stegadon and dying (in the case of the
BSB’s new non-flaming, non-gimped unit - he had jumped ship earlier) and being run down. The shaggoth died about the time the
BSB’s boys did.
Oh and of course the game began with an ocean of poison killing the spawn I had purposely stranded on the left flank, and my warhounds reserved on in opposite corners yet such is the speed of march + blowdart that they both died. So I got 0
VP + 0
BP for a …
0-25 LOSS
A fairly unpleasant end to what was becoming a steamrolling, though I do think I could have played that last game much smarter instead of spazzing out and throwing it away. I simply realized that when playing against a life slann, a win is going to involve some extreme luck with an auto-kill spell or with an artillery blast in the right place, neither of which I was going to have - but I failed my frenzy test and instead of playing for a draw or at least a few points (which I would need for the ranking to come) by utilizing the
DP’s (rather expensively bought) abilities, I committed suicide upon the temple guard …
In the end soft scores added to my own tabling and I came 5th, with the rankings going something like this:
1) Lizardmen (Life Slann)
2) Warriors of Chaos (Chosen + 2x Warshrines)
3) Dwarfs (Friendly Anvil List)
4) Beastmen (60 Gor Horde)
5) Me
After my first game I snapped some pics of my primed army, will post up later.
- Salvage
