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Well I fared pretty poorly this year, though I had a good start.

My list:

Sigvald the Magnificent
Sorcerer, level 4, Fury of the Blood God, Lore of Fire

Throgg
BSB, MoT, Helm of Many Eyes, Necrotic Phylactery, Bronze Armour of Zhrakk
Sorcerer, Level 2, MoT, Puppet, 3rd eye of Tzeentch

7 trolls
22 chaos warriors, extra hw, shields, full command, MoS, Razor Standard
5 Marauder Horsemen, throwing axes, musician
5 hounds
5 hounds

18 Chosen, halberds, shields, full command, MoS, Favour of the Gods, banner of Rage
Warshrine
Hellcannon

Game 1 was vs Vampire Counts. He had two lords, a wight king bsb, 2 varghulfs, 2 25-strong blocks of ghouls, one 25 block of skeletons, 28 graveguard with greatweapons, a block of 14 ghouls for characters to hide in, mannfred voncarstein, and a black coach.

This poor gentleman wasn't quite familiar with his army. From how the black coach worked to minor intricacies of the game like how to keep characters in units alive. Though the first scenario did mess with deployment a bit, he put both blocks of ghouls on the FAR flank, where they did little. I got off a Flaming Sword of Rhuin on my chosen and charged his graveguard with those and the trolls. They were obliterated in a single round. My army performed a spectacular sweep to the left that claimed his entire army, losing only the odd chaos hound and eventually the unit of 2x hw warriors when his general turned herself into a dragon and charged the flank.

Massacre, 24 points.

Round 2:

Round 2 I played VC again, my friend that I've been practicing with for months. We tend to annihilate or get annihilated, with very few close games. He wins more than me, but I thought I'd settled on a good list with good tactics against him.

It was not to be.

Turn 1 my hellcannon blew itself up. I tried to stay back, as in the best game against him the only way I managed to win was to get the 4+ ward save on my chosen block and take it into his graveguard after weakening it with fire magic. In game 1 a mysterious wood turned out to be the one that does d6 S4 hits, and my trolls spent two turns in it buffing up using mutant regeneration. This time, regeneration failed me and I lost two trolls before leaving the woods. My magic was dispelled totally and I did very little damage to the graveguard. By turn 3 I had lost my hounds, marauders, the hellcannon and the warshrine. I should have honestly stayed back at that point, attempted to kill things like the varghulfs and his small unit of already depleted blood knights, and gone for the minor. Instead I got ballsy and charged forward. In an impressive display of total failure, I sat two turns later with no army, and was massacred.

Round 3:

Round 3 I played Tomb Kings in the Escalating Engagement scenario. Lo and behold, my warriors and chosen with all the characters except throgg were in reserves in addition to a unit of hounds and the marauder horsemen. I knew this would be bad from the get-go. He had two bone giants, a large block of skeletons with the queen that gives poisoned arrows, 3 or 4 units of archers, 3 scorpions, casket and 2 catapults. I deployed the trolls and hellcannon center with the warshrine. He deployed the giants, scorpions, and queen's unit of skeletons in the center. He then stole first turn from me, to add insult to injury. With no wizards on the board, he freely cast whatever he wished, wounding some trolls and the hellcannon with shooting and sending one bone giant into the trolls. He tried both, but one failed. The trolls murdered the bone giant, but got hurt in the process.

My turn everything charged. I thought that, finally able to hit something on a 2+ and wound on a 2+, that the trolls combined with the hellcannon's thunderstomp would make a mess of the skeletons. Mediocre rolling later, the skeletons emerged battered but alive. Everything then piled in. Giant, all three scorpions... his constant influx of magic kept the unit bolstered with fresh skeletons, and the trolls gradually lost hitting power. My warriors came on and charged the rear of a scorpion, but in the same turn he killed the hellcannon and the trolls, and the pursuit led the skeletons and the bone giant into the warriors. The bone giant rolled well and the warriors were crushed, sending his forces past them towards the chosen. The chosen had lost sigvald to a failed Look out Sir! from a flaming catapult [every single catapult shot hit when aimed at sigvald, more on that later]. There was little they could do. They killed the bone giant and all the skeletons before running away. They were not caught, so on my turn I had one last shot to try to burn the queen alive with fire magic, but it failed me again.

Thoughts:

Screw this, I'm going chaos daemons! My ranged options are hellcannon and magic, and both consistently failed me. Taking MORE magic is folly - there's only so much more wizards can do. Game 3 I rolled a 3 and a 1 for winds of magic three turns in a row. Severely limited, it made me wonder why the hell I took two wizards at all. The hellcannon would perhaps perform better in pairs, I'll admit that. But for the love of god things seemed against me in those games. I threw 6 dice at a flaming sword of rhuin in game 2 on the turn I charged the graveguard, because I knew he didn't have a dispel scroll and was ok with getting a miscast. I rolled stupidly low and ended up with a 16 to cast it, from all those dice. He just flippantly tossed some dice and dispelled it without a second thought, and that was it. I spent so much dice trying to simply cast ANYTHING in game 2 that his remains in play spells stayed and crippled my units. Should I go NO magic at all, and just use my dice to dispel remains in play spells that plague me? Seems like the way to go almost.

Poor Sigvald. My friends joke that he has the unwritten rule "Tragic Ending". He is always one-shotted, always. Anytime anything with killing blow manages to get an attack against him, it WILL get it, EVERY time. We've seen this in dozens of games. He was even killed by an assassin with the venom sword back when you could stack saves. Failing a 2+, a 4+ regen, and a 4+ ward, he died to one of the weakest character-killing weapons in the game. This time he again showed his voluntary death with the skull catapults. EVERY SINGLE SHOT aimed at him hit dead on, and he passed several LOS rolls before finally popping that 1 and taking one in the face. Every shot after? Scattered 8" away, missing whatever they tried to hit. Apparently it's just Sigvald.

A chaos daemons army would ensure I always get a save of some kind [no more bone giant rampaging through 13 chaos warriors on his own without a chance to save], allows me to do damage in the shooting phase as well as the magic phase, and comes with all kinds of special rules like flaming attacks and killing blow that are easy to get. And no more of that running away crap!

I'm just disappointed. Units with abilities like WoC shouldn't consistently die to a bunch of crap like skeletons, but they do. They simply have the numbers. Horde of warriors vs horde of undead, it seems the undead win every time. The casualties they cause on the warriors just add up and up until they're too weak to contend, meanwhile the undead just get summoned back. With a ridiculous number of power dice at the disposal of either tomb kings or VC, WoC can't keep up dispelling.

I will keep trying over this next year. Considerations of giving the chosen the flaming attacks banner with the Mark of Khorne to keep frenzy come to mind, as well as squeezing another hellcannon in somehow. I'll keep trying because WoC are my first love, but if leadership problems, lack of ward saves, overcosted wizards and inability to deal with enemy special units continue to haunt me, it'll be a switch to DoC.

Nice, concise summaries! (Unlike mine ). Looks like you did well to put yourself in contention, and had a few bad raps in the last two games.

Two thoughts on effectiveness: Doesn't it seem like chosen are a bit too expensive for what they do? I haven't seen the WoC players around here taking them.

Also, what do you mean by "With the ridiculous number of power dice at the disposal of either tomb kings or VC, WoC can't keep up dispelling." Where are they getting the extra PD from?

I think tomb kings could be pretty good, at least for these scenarios. Especially that last one I think gives them a good shot at getting around the edges with stuff. I guess he wasn't a fan of chariots, though? I played a WoC player with two of them, and they seemed to do well for him in his games.

Thanks for the reports!

Chosen get the statline of a chaos warrior but with WS6, and a roll on the eye of the gods for 3 points more. The command is what costs them so much more [for no good reason, as far as I'm concerned] but that EotG roll is amazing. In game 2, it earned them stubborn and a 4+ ward save. It could also be +1 attack, which for a frenzied unit means 4 attacks per model! You're talking a unit of hero-level characters for around 20 points each!

Tomb Kings get the power pool dice, but don't use them except for bound spells. That means they can toss as many dice as they like at the handful of bound spell items they have, almost guaranteeing they go off [because you'll probably be using your dice to cancel their normal incantations]. Their normal incantations ALWAYS succeed, so there's no losing concentration and ending the turn for a wizard. This means you too must ALWAYS spend dice to dispel, since it's succeeding even if it's a power level 1. On top of that, you have to roll a minimum 3 to dispel, so if you chance 1-dicing it, you chance rolling a 1 or 2 and preventing that wizard [probably one of your higher ones] from dispelling anymore that phase. Thus, you're probably using 2 dice to dispel each incantation. With a hierophant, a priest or two, he's casting 6 or so incantations using 2 or 3 dice for each. So good luck dispelling 6 incantations with the number of dispel dice you have - and THEN he'll use the bound spells! He could also just use the power pool for dispelling remains in play spells - without losing ANY of his incantation-casting power!

VC on the other hand can easily have a couple characters with the "add 2 dice to the power pool" ability. Only those vampires can use it, but if it's on lords then all the better! These dice cover their nehek or dispelling remains in play needs, giving them plenty left over to cast.

The worst turns for me against VC are when they roll snake eyes or something else incredibly low for power dice. So they get 2, and I get....1. But they they add 4 for their two vampires with Master of the Dark Arts, and in my friend's case he has a sacrificial necromancer that takes the Forbidden rod, which does d3 wounds to himself [like he cares, he's 45 points] and gives d6 power dice. So he can end up with potentially 12 power dice on a turn where I have 1 dispel die. Calamity ensues. This is in fact the same problem with the tomb kings - they still roll power dice to decide how many dispel dice I get. On a turn where I get perhaps 2 because they rolled 2 and 2, they're still casting 6 incantations.

I ran my Chosen x17 with favor, MoT, Halberds and wailing banner (Terror)

Game 1 I was +1 Att and 3+ ward by turn 3
Game 2 3+ ward with insane number of rerolls
Game 3 3+ ward on first roll (rolled an 11)

With the terror as pointed out in some other threads it is almost a guarantee to get +4 ward and stubborn. if not on first turn than with the mandatory warshrine in later turns.

My Chosen walked through everything they touched (although it took a bit to chew through 30 Saurus with Lore of Life support.)

I ended up first after facing Dwarfs (balanced list no anvil), Standard Life Lizzards, and Monster heavy DE (3 hydras indeed do suck)

Against DE the chosen took fire from a bunch of DE x-bows, a flank S5 hydra Breath weapon (hit 15 out of 17 models) and took a charge from a CO chariot and master on dark peg..... after all that I lost 2 models 4+ armor 3+ ward for the win!!!

I may have to go with the Tzeentch mark on mine for that. Never thought about giving them the terror banner to allow further rerolls. Means I'd only need one warshrine then too.

Spellbound wrote:I may have to go with the Tzeentch mark on mine for that. Never thought about giving them the terror banner to allow further rerolls. Means I'd only need one warshrine then too.

I would like to take credit for the idea but cannot. there was a post over on warseer about it.

Betcha GW did not think of this when adding the Terror banner to general magic items

I was really happy with my block of 20 Tzeentch HW Shield Warriors (FC & Razor Standard). I put my Sorcerer Lord, lvl2, and BSB in this unit and out of three games I didn't lose more than half the unit. I put the Ironcurse Icon on the lvl 2 so they have some good protection against Warmachines. I was also running one Warshrine and if I got a good roll I would leave it on them and let the Warshrine go play.