Back again quickly! Not a rematch, but I am up agasint the
DEs again.
Zach was also heading to Lonewolf and looking to get more practice in. He’d pulled the Snotling Hard luck last year (I think at Bayou) and the prize was a battalion of
DEs. Many of the models were on his workbench still, hence all the empty bases in the photos. I know it makes things a wee-bit confusing, but I thought they’d still be better than a words-only report.
His list was bringing:
Dreadlord w/blood armor (the one that improves the more you kill), null stones, heartseeker in Black Guard
BSB Master on Cold One, w/Deathpiercer, Enchanted shield
Hag w/cauldron
Assassin w/Manbane and rending stars (in shades)
Assassin w/Rune of Khaine and Dark Venom (in Black Guard)
7 or 8 Cold One Knights
20 Corsairs, full command, War Banner
15 Black Guard,
ASF banner, full command
2 x 10 crossbows
5 shades, rxbs
War Hydra
2 x Reaper Bolt throwers
I brought the same list as last game, which you can see
here.
You can see the table below. This time I went with a super-tight deployment around the hill, putting warriors on the far left, where their flank was safe. The hammerers went down next to them to threaten anything that came after them, and the long beards had the dubious honor of facing off the flank. I liked their chances against any of the units on that side, but not more than one, and certainly not more than one at the same time. I planned to use the lord’s
MR of Challenge to make sure that didn’t happen. My lord and
BSB joined the hammerers, and the runesmith hopped in the longbeards, though I would have been better served putting him somewhere out of the way in retrospect.
The Dark Elves had a reaper on my left, with crossbowman covering the gap, cauldron centrally deployed and black guard, knights, and corsairs rounding out the center. A hill to my right had the other reaper, crossbows, and the hydra concealed behind the hill. Shades are barely visible in the far right
The Dwarf Lord surveyed the battlefield, noticed it was Dark Elves, and hollered over to the
BSB that they weren’t falling for it this time, and not to bother advancing. All the
BSB heard was “advance” and away they went. With not a lot of threats, I used strollaz to send a block right at the reaper, and move up slower with the rest. This is what things looked like right before the dice-off for first turn.
I won the roll, and decided I’d like the extra turn to shave some cold one knights off the unit before the cauldron popped up a blood-shield.
Turn 1
In my turn there was a little more movement, but for the warriors on the left who started picking up speed at the lone reaper in the corner, like a big hairy bowling ball. But moving slow, so a ball thrown granny style I guess. The gyro hopped up to disrupt and march block next turn. The organ gun pushed forward so as not to get obscured by the blocks.
In the very brief shooting phase, two shots from bolt throwers both missed the cold one knights.
The Dark Elves started with a bloodshield on the knights, who pushed forward, while the black guard started heading around the opposite side of the woods. Good news for me, as they’d be further slowed. Everything else moved up.
I lost a dwarf from the left unit, and took 3 wounds on the gyro from crossbowmen, saving one. Yikes- I’d been sloppy with positioning, mainly trying to hide from reapers. Speaking of which, the far one managed to kill two organ gun crewman.
Turn 2
I was liking the situation- the only potential next turn charge against me was going to be the cold one knights. If I had to, I’d burn the
MR of Challenge to take it on the hammerers, but only if they took no significant damage from shooting (otherwise, I’d be alright with the longbeards taking the charge too.
Further advances, and my toughest choice was what to do with the gyro. I considered hopping it back behind the battle line to save it, but elected to march block the black guard another turn. I could have accomplished this with a charge into the crossbows, but I was more than 10” away, and they’d get a stand and shoot. I didn’t want to risk getting shot down and not march blocking at all, so over I went for a steam gun along the black guard. My dragonslayer also made a break for the woods to help with march blocking and delaying purposes. Also to get a front row seat to the inevitable spectacular gyro crash.
I closed up the gap in front of the organ gun to make sure it wasn’t charged, and bracketed the hammerers over to hit the flank of the cold ones if they charged my longbeards. Bolt throwers picked off a knight, and the organ gun crewman, with flashbacks of endless combat phases punching dark elves to death, decided to not misfire, killing 3 more, despite their 5+ ward. The gyro clipped a few black guard and that was it.
I elected to hang on to the
MR of Challenge for now, and the CoK didn’t like the distance to the longbeards, so no charge. Shades ran over to help shoot up war machines, and crossbows slipped around to shoot down my gyro.
The black guard, march blocked and maneuvering around the hill continued to be
slow. Shooting put two wounds on the burning bolt thrower and killed a crewman, but frantic firing of chaff and flares kept the gyro flying. Yeah!
Turn 3
The gyro was inside stand&fire range, so went in to the crossbows to avoid getting shot to bits. The dwarfs on the left were at a dead run for the reaper. Just as the crew thought of just walking away, miners strolled on to cut off escape. On the right, I shuffled a little further to set up a no-win for the cold ones.
Both bolt throwers missed the hydra, the organ gun crewman frantically reloaded, and the gyro landed on top of a crossbow to tie the combat.
The cold one knights took a killing blow blessing from the cauldron (Zach mentioned later that +1 A would have been a lot better) and went in to the longbeards. The reaper shot the engineer off the burning bolt thrower, and shades scratched up the polished gromril on the same machine. The assassin’s atomic throwing stars weren’t quite in range yet.
In combat, the
BSB Master and his cold one super-over-killed the veteran who was discreetly pushed to the front by the runesmith who was still trying to figure out what he was doing in this unit. Other casualties put me losing by 2, but in range of general and
BSB made it an easy pass. The gyro started to take off again, and decapitated a crossbow with the spinning blades.
Turn 4
The reaper crew was finally charged by the dwarf warriors after a tedious Launcelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail sequence. Hammerers went into the flank of the Cold Ones, presenting their flank to the corsairs (but with stubborn this didn’t seem like a problem). Slayers and warriors scrambled to get out of the way of the black guard, while the organ gun blasted a rank off. The bolt throwers managed to knock two wounds off the hydra, and it was over to combat.
Cold Ones lost by a ton, and fled off the board through the shades who held, while both units restrained pursuit. The gyro threw baggage overboard and crushed a crossbow. Warriors were far too winded from their run to hurt elves, but ran them off anyhow.
Dark Elf turn 4 was going to be the big one. Corsairs went into the flank of my hammerers, and I was able to Challenge the shades into the fight as well. They were so far away that only one would get to fight (not the assassin) and the hydra came along to help.
Shooting destroyed the flaming bolt thrower and wiped out the crew.
Here was the combat of the hour in incredible blurr-o vision:
The invisible war hydra and invisible shades with killing blow killed a fair number of hammerers, but on a re-rollable 9, I was staying where I was.
Turn 5 & 6
Longbeards went into the shades’ flank, won the combat by a huge amount and caught the last shade and hydra. Pursuit eventually ended up with corsairs along with a unit of depleted crossbows (thanks to a combat after a desperate and failed attempt to stand and shoot) and I’d cleaned up the middle.
I couldn’t quite keep the warriors away from the black guard, and he picked up the unit and a banner (should have fled to save the banner, and get a couple more war machine shots on the black guard). The gyro eventually ran out of fuel, but miners and dragonslayer came to retrieve the pilot and chop up the exasperated crossbow elves.
Final result:
Solid Victory to the Dwarves.
Post game: I missed a massacre by getting the warrior block caught, but otherwise everything pretty much went my way. I need to think a little more about how to use the gyro in an environment with that many shots. Toughness 5 is nice, but enough dice will get through to it.
It occurred to me on the way home that I could tweak the list again, dropping one of the warrior blocks to redirector status, pick my rangers back up, and have enough to put another spellbreaker on the runesmith. I may give that configuration a run next time around.
As usual, thanks for reading this latest installment of Relentless!
RZ
