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So! After some playing around, I made the first significant change to the list I've used for Relentless in almost a year and a half. You can see some of the ponderings on those changes here.

For those not checking out the link, the list was basically:

Runelord 2+ save, steals a power die, dispel rune, destroy spell rune
BSB 1+ re-rollable save, immune to poison/killing blow, 2+ vs. flaming, and flaming attacks
35 warriors with shields, musician, standard
30 warriors with great weapons, full command
10 warriors with shields, musician
10 rangers with crossbows, musician
20 hammerers w/full command and 5+ ward vs. shooting to all within 6"
20 hammerers w/full command
Grudgethrower w/strength 5 splash and re-roll scatter
Flaming cannon that re-rolls misfires
Organ gun
Gyrocopter


It's been a long time since I made it out for a tournament- this would be my first of eight edition. As usual, a disclaimer needs to be put out that all lists and recountings are entirely from memory, so apologies for anything unclear or otherwise in error. We had 18 players, and after the first draw, I was playing...

Daemons of Chaos, as led by Jordan Braun (a.k.a. Captain America). Jordan stepped in to captain for the US at ETC last year, but took pity on us mere mortals and took quite a soft Daemon list that included:

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, flight, soul hunger, siren song
Herald of Slaanesh, steed of slaanesh, siren song
Herald of Tzeentch, Master of Sorcery (Shadow)
Herald of Tzeentch, 2 spellbreakers
Herald of Khorne, firestorm blade, BSB, perhaps armor?
30 Plague bearers, full command, re-roll wound banner
40 bloodletters, full command, +d6" charge
40 horrors, +1 to cast
5 Seekers of Slaanesh

We played a basic battle line with no bonuses available. With more drops, I was able to delay committing by putting down the chaff warriors and gyro first and then throw my deployment right to strand the plague bearers until late in the game.

I went ahead early when the rangers were siren songed into the seekers, but supported by a 13" charge from a hammerer block. Over a few combat phases (and thanks to some failed fear tests thanks to being pulled away from the main line) I lost 7 rangers and 10 hammerers before wiping snagging the herald and all the seekers. This actually worked in my favor; when the combat started going badly it drew out the demon prince with thoughts of saving the herald, but I finished just in time to charge the prince with both blocks of hammerers and take him off.

Over in the middle, there was actually enough LOS blocking terrain that I couldn't focus fire with war machines, and settled for cutting the bloodletters down whenever possible, and slowly reducing the horrors' ability to cast. Magic defense was quite stifling, though an irresistible pit of shades slipped through. The scatter saved me somewhat killing only 7 dwarfs. A firestorm on my 10 warriors went off, and caused enough wounds to create a single horror, who managed to tie up my organ gun for a few rounds as they tried to figure out how to kill the little bugger.

Still, the demon blocks had far enough to go and I had just enough redirect and bait to delay combat long enough to get the BSB to fail a look out sir, and die to a cannon, and then avoid combat with the letters. The plaguebearers managed a 14" long charge and broke my shield warriors on a steadfast, re-rollable Ld 9 to claw back points late. I also almost turned the whole thing in to a draw by fleeing a final charge from bloodletters without really doing the math, and missed giving up the win by one inch.

In the end, it was good enough for a 13-7 win that mostly hinged around the lucky early hammerer charge, and a mistake with the demon prince. Jordan didn't end up winning any other games (I think), so his list might have been a little too soft.

This sent me to...


Game 2

Against JWolf, better known in 40k circles, I believe. He was taking Warriors of Chaos, an army that I've really been struggling against in 8th. I don't remember all the pieces of his list, but it looked like:

Chaos lord on steed, with sword of might, Tzeentch, 4+ ward (for 3+ total) and the stubborn crown in...
5 Chaos Knights of Tzeentch with Blasted standard, musician

Sorcerer lord with three levels of Shadow in...
20 Tzeentch marauders with shields

BSB with enchanted shield, Tzeentch, favor of the gods, perhaps some other stuff and...
Nurgle Sorcerer with level 2, extra spell and...
Sorcerer with lore of fire, infernal puppet (this may have been elsewhere. I know it was there somewhere) and...
Sorcerer with lore of never-got-used all in...
16 warriors of Tzeentch with shields. One of their characters also had the ironcurse icon for a 5+ vs. warmachines...

12-15 Khorne marauders with flails
12-15 Slaanesh marauders with flails
Hellcannon
Warshrine

I didn't really "get" this list at first. I felt like if I could keep the knights from doing something nasty, and avoid getting huge gouges cut out from the hellcannon, there wasn't enough here to damage me. I'm alright with lots of casters, as I could hurt the dice to make things harder.

Unfortunately, my first turn shooting belly-flopped, killing a single marauder (go crossbows!). The knights moved aggressively up, and I only managed to kill one before they got in to a big stack of great weapon warriors. I totally forgot about the stubborn crown and comboed in to beat them with static- a pointless endeavor that lost my chaff warriors. I managed to scrape off another two over the course of the game, but they eventually tore through and killed my cannon and grudgethrower as well.

This all might be ok if I managed to remove the warrior block in the middle to get points back (with 4 characters!) but the buggers went stubborn, 3+ ward on turn 2 thanks to the warshrine, and that more or less ended my chances. His sorcerer lord in Tzeentch marauders fled a charge early and failed to rally for a turn, but all that did was put them out of range of any potential combats. I did kill the hellcannon in combat with a combo charge from hammerers and warriors, setting up what looked to be a great matchup against the warrior block with 3 wizards and a BSB. Of course, I'd gotten fixated on the 3+ ward, and forgotten that, in fact, they also came with stubborn on that result. So, with the advantage of numbers and dwarven toughness, I was able to win some 6 combats, thanks in part to some amazing parry saves from the 35 strong warrior block, but couldn't get them to fail their re-rollable 8, and I sure as heck wasn't going to kill many with their 3+ ward.

Magic also proved a problem- with an irresistible pit dropping one hammerer block to 4 strong, and a later irresistible Rot, Glorious Rot wiping them out. Another irresistible pit almost sucked my runelord down a hole but he nimbly leapt out of the way (initiative 2 for the win!). The puppet kept all these miscasts under control, and a collective 4 never did anything worse than the 7 on the table.

This ended up being a big 3-18 loss. In retrospect, the best bet was probably to focus fire at the knights to drop them to a small enough unit where they would need all game to go through a block and then just bog them down. I just hate shooting at 4+ ward save knights. Once the middle unit went 3+ ward stubborn, I was going to need some spectacular luck to get any significant points back. I don't see anything in the dwarf repertoire that can get around that unit- none of those uber spells to circumvent the ward.

Clearly I'd made some mistakes- I sent the gyro out wide to use the steam gun marauders, which meant that it wasn't available to help run down the sorcerer lord or to redirect knights, and forgot about both the crown of stubborn and the stubborn effect from the warshrine.

John sat on Table 2 all day, and never quite caught up with the 1 spot, so took second on the day.

So, down I plummeted to Table 5, where I faced Charles' dual Slann (a list I'd warmed up against earlier this week) in...

Game 3

Slann general, Focused Rumination, Lore of Shadow in...
20-ish templeguard

Slann BSB, Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery (shadow) and...
Scar Vet, with small magic items in...
30 Saurus warriors with full command

Engine of the Gods
4 single bases of jungle swarms
12 skirmishing skinks
2 x 10 chameleon skinks
2 x Salamanders

We were deployed almost directly opposite each other. I planned to drop his steg and reduce his saurus to manageable sizes (so that even if Occam's went off I'd be able to absorb the pain). Hopefully a miscast or two would also reduce the blocks. This is pretty much how things went. The gyro, rangers, and chaff performed brilliantly, clearing away skinks and swarms. I even sent the gyro into the salamanders to keep them from spitting, and with some help from the chaff warriors ended up breaking the buggers.

I weathered a lot of magic phases without too much damage. I even managed to destroy pit of shades from one Slann, but the other got it off irresistibly and dropped 21 great weapon dwarfs down a deep, dark hole. After swearing an oath to one day play an army that had a good enough initiative to not give a damn about initiative killer spells, I assessed the situation.

Miscasts and war machines had trimmed down the temple guard and saurus to about 7 and 11 respectively, and despite some poison, salamander, and pit damage, I still had all my blocks, though some were fairly mauled. I managed to get his general slann with great weapon warriors in the Temple guard flank, and chase after the last remaining guard. A good grudgethrower hit presented the opportunity to cannon snipe his BSB, but despite every re-roll possible, my cannon managed to blow itself up, but not before dropping the engine (with an assist from the grudgethrower).

On that note I proceeded to get outplayed in the last couple of turns. A clever magic phase got his BSB out of danger with a Steed of Shadows, and an ill thought out combat on my part left me with a scary central combat where a great weapon dwarf veteran and a saurus champion whiffed for three combat phases while the scar vet diced up warriors. To make things worse, my runelord was in this rapidly dwindling unit. I watched in horror as in the last turn the single fleeing temple guard rallied on triple 1s 1" from the board edge, and his scar vet dropped my warrior unit below 5 models to remove steadfast, while the saurus champ survived to hold his entire unit's points. It put me on a 6 to hold, which I got on the re-roll and so escaped with an 18-3 win. Given that it looked like a 21-0 at turn 4, and could easily have ended up a 10-10, I was quite relieved.

Overall it was good enough for a 6th place, 2-1 finish. Not on top of the world, but good enough after my game 2 drubbing.

Apologies for the lack of pictures, and the brief summaries, but there hasn't been time to give it the full treatment. Any comments on the list would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to figure out where to go with it.

I'll post thoughts and assessments on the list later today or tomorrow.

Congrats on 6th place, that's a good showing! I'm always surprised how hard character-heavy WoC armies with just a few units are to beat in 8th. It seems that they revolve around not giving up the points from that block... but with only 16 models plus characters, that still seems quite a risk for him to take. Counting on getting the 3+ ward, I guess!

I think the lizardmen player would also do better with one less slann... not enough dice to go around! And even your first opponent had lots of points in characters.

Something I'm really torn on... I tend to put very few points in characters, but a lot of tournaments lists I see going the other way for some reason... despite their relative vulnerability in 8th edition.

I think you're right RiTides. I recommended he drop to a single Slann. One Slann with Rumination and Mystery can easily use all the dice in any phase. I also think that you need to stay out of blocks if you don't have miscast protection (like life or cupped hands). Otherwise the miscasts are just too devastating and do most of the hard work for your opponent.

I think I'd take my chances in a re-match against that second list. I would never take it myself, because I would hate to play each game hoping for an 11-12 each turn on the shrine. Of course, he got it even faster in the second game, getting the uber-boost on the first roll. And he did place second, so... guess it worked for him.

I'm with you on characters. Unless you can do something like the reverse ward save, stubborn dreadlord that won't give up points, I keep feeling like there's more value in more models.

Of course, then I take an irresistible pit of shades every game which thins the numbers rather brutally...

Nice report, thanks. You definately played against some interesting lists. How have you been faring overall vs. irresistable castings of Dwellers and Pit?

- Blackbone

So, meant to get to the post-tourney thoughts earlier.

We'll start with the usual awards:

Dwarf of the match (tourney): Hammerers. Smacking hard and staying in the fight- killed a daemon prince, hell cannon, and slann.
Chump of the tourney: Not sure... rangers were kind of a whiff. But it's hard to condemn them for being used as a chaff unit.
Villain of the tourney: Shadow magic users. Pit of shades went off irresistibly every game. Against Daemons, it scattered far enough off to only pit 7 great weapons. In the other two, it crippled a block (21/30 great weapons, and 16/20 hammerers respectively)

I was surprised at how many people expected me to have an anvil. I've played with it a few times (in the distant past), and absolutely love the movement ability but hate:

a) The chance to blow up your own 400+ point model
b) The one in six chance of whiffing even if played conservatively
c) The fact that it dies instantly to certain spells- in particular (but not limited to) pit of shades and dwellers (because of the prevalence of those two lores)

What I liked about the list:

- Lots of models. I could absorb a big spell or two and still have the strength to keep rolling
- The ability to affect/impact match ups with quantity of units, chaff warriors, rangers, and gyro

What I didn't like about the list:
- Still can't fight some armies. All three games started with minimal movement and hoping my war machines would do something. Awfully passive, and not a ton of fun

What I'm unsure of:

- The magic defense. Should be pretty powerful, but still gotta take my licks from irresistible. That was frequently the only spell to go off in a phase- as 5-6 dice would go at one big spell, it would go IF, and I'd have a fistful of dice to throw against everything else. Not sure if I could get away with a runesmith with spellbreaker and spelleater for about 120 less points...

Not changing anything big in the near term, as I need more experience before I can draw any sure conclusions. Any thoughts are sure welcome though!

RZ