Ultimate Eldar Battle Report "The Trilogy" - AlamoGT(X)Railhead Rumble(X)WargamesCon(X)19/19FINISHED

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**Smitty0305**

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Smitty, I'm not debating that moving the fire dragons flat out was wrong, it wasn't. What was wrong was putting them in the charge range of a defiler that could reach them. With numerous attacks even with 6's needed to hit he's gonna get at least one, and from experience that's all they usually need.

Serpents are only armor 10 in the rear. I never get them in charge range of anything if I can help it. Much better to use Falcons for that because of the Holo Fields mitigating the damage.

What I was saying is you could have stayed out of his melee range, still had the dragons to do stuff with, and caused more damage without risking anything.

The way you played it, you basically handed him 100 points on a silver platter, and he could have had the dragons as dessert had you failed pinning. You didn't need to do that. The same results you got could have come from just staying slightly out of his assult range and then in your next turn, moving the dragons to where they needed to go.

We all know it's much harder to kill a wave serpent at range than close combat so why give them the chance?

I avoided the charge on the right side , but on the left side I couldnt because I wouldnt of been in range of the vidicator with its position behind the hill.

**Liquidice281**

Does anyone have the ability to post some information on what armies and players were top general/overall at Railhead?

**Spellbound**

Honestly my deployment was a mistake. I always, always stick together because I know what happens when you split up: This happens.

My THINKING was to bait him in with killing the defilers and vindicator. I know the only thing he can kill them with, reliably, is his fire dragons. Problem was, I tried to get cover saves behind that large hill because habitually my opponents always roll a 6 and immobilize my defilers after getting a glancing hit. Quite annoying.

Let me add they don't roll it when they roll a 3 with a lascannon or a 4 with a missile launcher, mind you. It's the S6 weapons that get the 6 to glance that do it. Stupid parting shots that make them useless!

Anyway, instead of putting them in the open in that spot between terrain pieces, I put them behind the hill for cover. End result was he took the bait hook, line and sinker, but then my army was out of place to retaliate. General M.O. is he deploys fire dragons to kill my important targets, I kill his fire dragons, life goes on. Since I couldn't do that, he had another turn of killing things. That finished off the second defiler and my daemon princes, and stalled the advance of my troops as I tried to deal with them.

My biggest advantage is the ability to just keep advancing through hails of fire and giving my opponent too many targets to deal with. I should have deployed my entire army across from his and gone balls-out forward. Barring really good luck he can't stop all 6 rhinos and also take out the princes and the defilers. He would also at that point had to go for objectives or recon. If he hadn't done enough damage I could easily compete in recon, and I'd have objectives.

**Red Corsair**

Yea when I saw your deployment I was wracking my brain to try and figure out what your strategy was. It seemed like a baited trap except your trap was left in the shed

So you merely fed him dinner

Hey, you can't win them all and when playing a recurring general it often comes down to who makes the first mistake, here it was deployment. I hope you post some of your experience s well, I love your army!

**Smitty0305**

Game 3 vs. John C’s Grey Knights!

Spoiler:

**Iago**

Good report. See? BLOS is good, esp with eldar/de. Hehehe.

**ree11**

sound good

**hyv3mynd**

Well played indeed. That's a brutal GK list that had the tools to smash you and first turn, but you outplayed him.

Question on deployment. Could the GK player have chosen to come from the other diagonal using the walls to fully block his advance?

Your army had much more long range shooting so I would have given up firing my 2 dreads to give the rhinos and NDK's a safer advance to the middle where they are most deadly. At least that would have been me. You probably threw him through a loop with your deployment tho, so well played there also.

**Red Corsair**

Iago wrote:Good report. See? BLOS is good, esp with eldar/de. Hehehe.

BLOS terrain is necessary, book holders are stupid. Look at their footprint, fallowing the 25% rule, using that terrain, all you'd need is a chain sword.

I think that 4 of those walls also breaks the "good mix of area difficult and BLOS terrain" (not exact wording) that the rule book advocates. It really is a shame that you guys have lovey armies and are playing on such trashy tables. End rant about stupid walls. You did very well and I agree with your post game analysis, he should have in fact rushed like you said utilizing the comical terrain as hyv3mind said. But good for you you one despite the poorly written fine print

**Unholy_Martyr**

Can't crap too much on the organizers. At least they have terrain that is somewhat sensible and not books covered by felt...

**Spellbound**

I didn't have a problem with the terrain really. They needed something to block and didn't have time to make giant buildings or bunkers. It didn't look like the Fortress of Retribution or anything, but it did finally give defilerd, dreadknights, stormravens and valkyries something to hide behind, which they never get, and given the choice between black I-shaped terrain pieces and bare open killing field, I'll take the terrain thanks.

**Illumini**

Unholy_Martyr wrote:Can't crap too much on the organizers. At least they have terrain that is somewhat sensible and not books covered by felt...

That terrain isn't exactly far from books covered in felt. Those hills look older than the pope and like they've seen more action than Jenna Jameson. The omni-present book-holders/building material LOS-blockers are hideous and silly. The buildings are fine, but there is a real lack of terrain coverage. I would be seriously dissapointed if I had to play in a tourney with this kind of terrain. Having decent terrain should be a very important part of hosting a tourney.

**jwolf**

Illumini wrote:
Unholy_Martyr wrote:Can't crap too much on the organizers. At least they have terrain that is somewhat sensible and not books covered by felt...

That terrain isn't exactly far from books covered in felt. Those hills look older than the pope and like they've seen more action than Jenna Jameson. The omni-present book-holders/building material LOS-blockers are hideous and silly. The buildings are fine, but there is a real lack of terrain coverage. I would be seriously dissapointed if I had to play in a tourney with this kind of terrain. Having decent terrain should be a very important part of hosting a tourney.

Putting good, functional, and attractive terrain together is pretty hard for organizers unless they are very lucky. We're in our fourth year and we've built another ton of terrain, with very little of it being really awesome. Adepticon just had their tenth year, built a ton of terrain, and is building more terrain for next year.

Large pieces are especially problematic. Buildings are very prone to break while in storage, take a lot of space to store, and somewhat expensive to buy / build / paint. Large hills are a lot easier to build and don't break as often, but have their own issues and still are a pain to store.

Railhead had what? 35 players? And I think this is their second year. Even if the whole venue was free and they gave away almost no prizes, getting buildings for 18 tables would break the bank. (Though for economy, function, and ease of assembly / storage, I recommend Amera Plastic Moldings from the UK). Hills would be doable, but storing large hills for next year would use a big chunk of someone's garage or cost several hundred dollars in storage fees, not to mention a couple hundred dollars for storage bins. Railhead made an effort and did the best they could to address the need for large pieces with a very limited budget, and I applaud them for it.

I know we all like more attractive terrain, and we expect a lot from tournaments. Just keep in mind that TOs are not all actually crazy rich guys who have infinite resources; mostly we're just gamers who give up a lot of time and take a lot of financial risk to give other gamers the best gaming experience we can afford.

**Illumini**

jwolf wrote:Putting good, functional, and attractive terrain together is pretty hard for organizers unless they are very lucky.

I totally agree that it is a lot of work and that it does require a significant investment $-wise. However, it should be probably priority #3 after location and boards to get a decent amount of terrain up. Lots of terrain can be made quickly and cheaply, like craters and hills. Other terrain, like buildings, take longer and is more expensive. However, you don't have to buy new buildings for each time you hold the tourney, so it is a diminishing investment needed in terrain for each time. You can also up the entry price to cover more terrain. I think most wargamers would be happy to pay a little extra to have more and better terrain.

Attractive terrain is further down the priority list, themed boards and really cool terrain pieces would be absolutely awesome, but a good amount of functional and decent terrain should be in place first.

Maybe the organizers should reduce the number of tables if they do not have enough terrain to cover them.

**crazyredpraetorian**

I was at the event, and the terrain was fine, as Spellbound pointed out. It may have been bland but it did present some interesting LOS dilemas. I would have preferred a little more variance in the sizes and heights of the terrain. But, it worked out just fine.

Also, jwolf is correct the Amera terrain is the way to go for good cheap buildings. I should know I've painted enough of the dang things......

**Red Corsair**

Illumini wrote:
jwolf wrote:Putting good, functional, and attractive terrain together is pretty hard for organizers unless they are very lucky.

I totally agree that it is a lot of work and that it does require a significant investment $-wise. However, it should be probably priority #3 after location and boards to get a decent amount of terrain up. Lots of terrain can be made quickly and cheaply, like craters and hills. Other terrain, like buildings, take longer and is more expensive. However, you don't have to buy new buildings for each time you hold the tourney, so it is a diminishing investment needed in terrain for each time. You can also up the entry price to cover more terrain. I think most wargamers would be happy to pay a little extra to have more and better terrain.

Attractive terrain is further down the priority list, themed boards and really cool terrain pieces would be absolutely awesome, but a good amount of functional and decent terrain should be in place first.

Maybe the organizers should reduce the number of tables if they do not have enough terrain to cover them.

^This.

I hate the excuse that, it's harte making and storing terrain. Charge the fair price for fair tables and don't over book the event. It's called responsibility, I run a restaurant and I only reserve tables I have or can turn over. I can't put fold up tables in the middle of service and ask them to share tables. The same applies for these events, this is why they have registration.

And using the excuse that it's their second year is gak too. So what there is a ten year learning curve we are supposed to be understanding with? It's like getting a back rub from Lenny the abrasiveness and clumbsy giant one year out of school so it's OK if he breaks your back, so long as he gets better later. And I can understand one or maybe two of those ugly things, but his last game had FOUR! there was 50% of that crap, and no defilers, DK, storm Ravens and Valkyries don't need terrain they can hide behind on any given point of a table. They are designed to be near impossible to hide because with the exception of the defiler (big surprise) all of these are enormous threats that need to be shot at with daunting amounts of firepower to eliminate.

I don't want to side rail the thread more then I have but it had to be said as I am seeing more and more cheap terrain at events and it really is a shame. The last game when I saw four of those I couldn't believe it, whats on table one, 8 book holders? Next year as Illumini said they should reduce their tables or increase the fee. If I traveled to this event I would be pissed. 6 months army prep and hours of travel and you might as well play in the lot on the hood of your cars.

**Smitty0305**

I dont care how the terrain looks, although it did look kinda dumb.

What I did care about, was the placement of the terrain, was that the terrain was deciding the movement and play out of alot of games. People (like me) were deploying more based on the terrain than on the actual game/army I was playing against. I dont think 2 walls should dictate that much of a game.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spellbound wrote:I didn't have a problem with the terrain really. They needed something to block and didn't have time to make giant buildings or bunkers. It didn't look like the Fortress of Retribution or anything, but it did finally give defilerd, dreadknights, stormravens and valkyries something to hide behind, which they never get, and given the choice between black I-shaped terrain pieces and bare open killing field, I'll take the terrain thanks.

It also gives your army a huge advantage lol.

I dont mind the BLOS terrain, I just mind the height, placement, the fact that it was passible (it should have been impassible) to avoid Pik-a-boo shenanigans. Alot of games I played there were virtually no firing lanes AT ALL, which was horrible.

**Red Corsair**

Impassible?! imagine tau crisis spam behind one of those.... Heck even passable those walls are their wet dream. Ha ha ha

**Smitty0305**

Red Corsair wrote:Impassible?! imagine tau crisis spam behind one of those.... Heck even passable those walls are their wet dream. Ha ha ha

If I had brought jetbikes I would have had a field day.

**Red Corsair**

Ha ha True that! Next time scout the event

**BlueDagger**

lol 17" Singing spear throwing threat range with zero fear of retaliation fire. That would have been absolute hilariousness. Tau crisis with missile pods also could have abused the hell out of that.

**Kingsley**

Yeah, wow. Truly bad terrain-- I'm all for Line of Sight blocking terrain and indeed think most people need to use more of it, but those gigantic walls are completely over the top, especially given the way their central placement dominates the battlefield.

**crazyredpraetorian**

Fetterkey wrote:Yeah, wow. Truly bad terrain-- I'm all for Line of Sight blocking terrain and indeed think most people need to use more of it, but those gigantic walls are completely over the top, especially given the way their central placement dominates the battlefield.

Bad looking, definitely...But it really wasn't that bad...and if anyone should be whining it is an IG gunline player. It was not much worse than the LOS buildings with no bottom windows that I play with locally. My real complaint was placement.

**Foda_Bett**

Thanks for the report Brad (and the opinions of my character) I was just messing with you on the buying me dinner comment. You just kept coming over and trying to put your head in my lap so I figured we should start with dinner.

One of my thoughts for our game was to just sit back and play for a totally boring draw, but that's not the type of game I play.
I thought about throwing all my stuff out front but I've done that to my detriment a few times. It seems with the knights I'm either overly cautious or overly aggressive. Very few times can I find the happy balance.

**Kingsley**

crazyredpraetorian wrote:
Fetterkey wrote:Yeah, wow. Truly bad terrain-- I'm all for Line of Sight blocking terrain and indeed think most people need to use more of it, but those gigantic walls are completely over the top, especially given the way their central placement dominates the battlefield.

Bad looking, definitely...But it really wasn't that bad...and if anyone should be whining it is an IG gunline player. It was not much worse than the LOS buildings with no bottom windows that I play with locally. My real complaint was placement.

A fair point-- placement is a much bigger concern from a playability perspective.

**Red Corsair**

Foda_Bett wrote:Thanks for the report Brad (and the opinions of my character) I was just messing with you on the buying me dinner comment. You just kept coming over and trying to put your head in my lap so I figured we should start with dinner.

Ha ha, you do sound like a good opponent! Well played sir!

OK, onto game 4 smitty0305!

**Spellbound**

I did mention while I was there that I preferred a large BLOS piece of terrain about the size of those two pieces put together along their long edges, then put slightly OFF center so that it could be fought "around" if someone desired to use it tactically that way, but also could be avoided if someone wanted to. When it's in the center, it really dominates the field.

I hear you about not playing for boring draws, Fodabett. In the league at Texas Toy Soldier, I've told a couple of the guys that are trying to gear up for tournaments when it gets to the point of "well, I could just fly away and make this a draw/unwinnable game for you - but I'm not going to, and will come your way instead".

They're learning a lot from me!

**Smitty0305**

Foda_Bett wrote:Thanks for the report Brad (and the opinions of my character) I was just messing with you on the buying me dinner comment. You just kept coming over and trying to put your head in my lap so I figured we should start with dinner.

One of my thoughts for our game was to just sit back and play for a totally boring draw, but that's not the type of game I play.
I thought about throwing all my stuff out front but I've done that to my detriment a few times. It seems with the knights I'm either overly cautious or overly aggressive. Very few times can I find the happy balance.

yea I knew you were kidding, It was kind of silly how many times I checked LOS, but it had to be done or my walkers would of all died.

**PeteGodwin**

Fun report to read, nice work.

I agree with some of the posters here - the terrain I see is junk. An nauseating eyesore. Depressing & shameful. It is right out of someones basement who stopped playing 40k after 2nd edition. What the hell is with the brown paper over the tables. Those BLOS walls? Blargh.

Might as well have climbed up onto the table and taken a dump, as that is what the paper suggests.

**Unholy_Martyr**

@Godwin

Guess you've never been to an event where they pride themselves in fair terrain distribution. The paper is their so they can outline the terrain pieces. In doing so, wheneer a piece is knocked around, you don't need a judge to put it back, you know where is was supposed to be.

You people complain far too much about the terrain from what I can tell...it either isn't up to studio standards or there is too much...ever heard of adapting and adjusting? Not everyone has access to breathtaking terrain, especially on a level for 10+ tables