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So I played two 2000 pointers vs. Wehrkind the night before DakkaCon, to get him a bit more experience with fantasy before throwing him to the Dakkites. Both were good games and it was fun to play without the hellpit, and actually I missed my assassin more than the big monster - 2k for this list drops the hellpit, the assassin and a unit of gutter runners but is otherwise pretty much unchanged. Ultimately though Wehrkind’s horrific dice and inexperience meant he got stomped all over, even if there were some cool moments, like 30 clanrats beating and running down 30 shield marauders + ASF exalted, only to slam into the chaos BSB behind them and, after 6-8 rounds of combat, finally fail a steadfast break and get run down, leaving the BSB the only model on the table. Sadly neither of these games will be getting a batrep …

The BONEBREAKER series picks back up with my game vs. Jin on DakkaCon Day 2, a 2500 pointer played on the Sylvania table over in the Showcase bunker. We rolled up Battle For the Pass, but defaulted to Battleline as I had last played high elves in a pass (and was feeling lazy when it came to table sides).

SKAVEN 2500

L: Warlord - warlock-augmented weapon, charmed shield, talisman of preservation, bonebreaker
L: Warlord - ogre blade, armor of destiny, dragonbane gem, shield, bonebreaker

H: Assassin - weeping blade, potion of strength
H: Chieftain - BSB, banner of the under-empire, shield
H: Engineer - level 2, dispel scroll
H: Engineer - level 2, condenser

C: 30 Clanrats - full command, shields, ratling gun
C: 30 Clanrats - full command, shields, ratling gun
C: 30 Clanrats - full command, shields, ratling gun
C: 34 Slaves - pawleader, musician

S: 6 Gutter Runners - poison
S: 6 Gutter Runners - poison
S: 6 Plague Censer Bearers
S: 6 Plague Censer Bearers
S: 6 Poison Wind Globadiers

R: Hellpit Abomination
R: Warp Lightning Cannon

Same list as in BB5, still running the auto-hits banner on the BSB, though increasingly unimpressed - it ain’t no roar :’(

HIGH ELVES 2500

L: Archmage - level 4 (LIFE), +1 spell, ethereal, 4+ ward

H: Mage - level 2 (SHADOW), pick spells, +1 to go first
H: Noble - BSB, 2+ rerollable save, 5+ ward, gw

C: 33+ Spearelves - standard, musician
C: 24+ Spearelves - warbanner, full command

S: 10 Dragon Princes - HE banner of strider, ironcurse icon, full command
S: 18 Phoenix Guard - banner of sorcery, full command
S: 12+ White Lions - banner of flaming, fireball ring, full command

R: Great Eagle
R: Great Eagle

I often fight life or shadow but never life & shadow! So I was worried about the magic phase, but honestly not a lot else, particularly with no swordmasters to tear my T3 faces off.

MAGIC

Engineer (Condenser) - warp lightning, scorch
Engineer (Scroll) - warp lightning, death frenzy

Archmage - awakening of the wood, flesh to stone, throne, regrowth, dwellers
Mage - miasma, enfeebling?

TERRAIN & DEPLOYMENT

Table had a hill, a large impassable piece (haunted tower on a giant skull!), and four citadel forests, none of which were going to be mysterious if I had anything to say about it. [Note: looks like there was an impassable piece to the far right, but it never came into play.]



Archmage + BSB joined the phoenix bunker, and the mage hoped in the smaller warbanner spears.
Scroll engineer (+ hidden assassin) rode with the left-most clanrats, the general ‘breaker + BSB (in second rank) filled out the second clanrat bus, the LT ‘breaker used the third clanrats as his launch pad into the flaming lions, and the condenser engineer had his carpet of slaves to absorb inevitable miscasts.

Despite the elves getting +2 the skaven grabbed first turn and took it.

BATTLE
Turn 1


The hellpit begins by hurtling forward 10”, followed by a load of movement from the rest of the green things.



Magic opens with a strong winds roll (9+1 channel), and an immediate IF scorch on the mage’s spears. They take horrific casualties and fail their panic! In return 6 slaves are hit with a S10 template, and I roll …



… a single 2+ Other magic is inconsequential, and the WLC misfires while shooting at the dragon princes. Result? 6, so it lives



Jin mobilizes eagles in response, while getting the DP the hell out of the hellpit’s reach with a swift reform and moving everybody up a bit. The mage’s spears rally. Jin miasmas the breaker general’s unit down 2M, then powers an IF dwellers through onto it, and my dice decide to roll astoundingly high: 23 clanrats die, though the BSB and warlord are unscathed and pass their break test. Things suddenly got real

Turn 2


The hellpit lasers into the phoenix bunker, going 14” and into contact with the BSB, hoping for a feed if nothing else. The right PCB fail to restrain their frenzy and fail a charge on the great eagle, and in addition to some general movement - gaining ratter range here, breaker charge range there - the general and BSB bail out of the remnants of clanrats #2 and take over the scroll engineer’s unit, giving him the smaller bunker.

Magic kills the right eagle and perhaps a few white lions, and the leftmost ratling gun tags 2 wounds off of the left eagle. When it’s time for fighting the hellpit rolls 1 impact, which fails to wound, then takes 1-2 wounds from the assorted elf attaks. Smelling BSB, he chooses to feed, which sadly kills a single guard, as lots of wards are made, including the BSB’s 5+. T-stomp squashes a few more PG, but the hellpit loses by 1 (IMPACT FAIL!), breaks and is run down. I vomit vitriol and spleen all over the abomination, splashing some onto Jin in the process.



The upside however is that the phoenix bunker has been pulled into reach of my breaker bus and PCB. Jin recognizes this and backs up the PG, while also getting the spears up help and DP swung into something of a supporting position. The archmage regrows some PG but dweller is scrolled or power-dispelled.

Turn 3


Here we go! The breaker bus slams into the phoenix bunker (with the assassin revealing himself and lining up with the archmage), with some censers flanking in to support. On the other side of things, the LT breaker easily makes the charge into the lions, and though I try to restrain them the other censers frenzy charge the lions as well - they need 11 or 12, roll 6-6 and fly into the lumberjacks’ flank! Other movement sees gutters and globes scurry over to do terrible things to the eagle that’s landed amidst the skaven guns.

Magic lands a scorch into the other spear unit, crisping a lot of elves (9+) but no panic, and between warp lightnings and warp lightning cannons the princes lose close to half of their number. Rating guns open up on the warbanner spears and drop a few, but not as many as expected.

Combat however brings elven death. The white lions fail fear, manage two wounds on LT (2 2+ wards = 2 wounds!) but are completely wiped out in return. In the main event, the assassin caves in the archmage’s ethereal skull with his weeping blade, the general breaker disassembles the BSB, and some guard and rats die. The elves break and are run down, which puts the censers (3-4 left) in front of the princes and the breaker bus flank-able by the spears.



With his army quickly melting there is only so much Jin can do. The princes charge the censers, and both spears reform to face the incoming gribblies. In magic the shadow mage casts something on IF and then loses all his levels. The princes lose 3 to smelly PCB, but trample the toxic freaks before they can flail.

Turn 4


The breaker bus scurries the short distance into the remnants of the princes, with the assassin guzzling his potion of strength in preparation for opening some cans. LT and his censer friends charge the other spears in the front, and a lot of guns take aim at the other spears. Magic ends up with a few elves electrocuted but the scroll engineer goes IF and forgets that he’s a wizard too. Three ratling guns and the WLC drastically reduce the mageless spear elves.

As expected, the assassin pops all 3 princes, and the bus reforms to take on the spears next turn. The other combat however unexpectedly goes to hell in a hurry: 3 of 5 censers gas themselves (I had failed 0 6+ tests up to this point), the other two are poked to death, and shockingly LT is asked to make 2 4+ wards and fails them both! I am a very sad papa, with all of my favorite toys taken out by pansy elves :’(



Not that it matters too much. The mageless spears charge into the bus and are evaporated.

Turn 5


A world of bullets and lightning descends upon the remaining high elves, leaving just the brain-dead mage, dyed with blood and standing in a pile of gore.



Focaccia, High Elven mage and last of a dying race, gallantly charged the enemy general and his cohorts, screaming out the names of his ancestors and gods as he rushed in. Deigning to fight this noisy pest, Krth’grr’x the Bonebreaker nodded to his assassin-beast, who in the blink of an eye met the elf in mid-leap, and half a blink later detonated his frail body across the field. Krth’grr’x snorted derisively and idly took a bite of gamey elf meat.

Jin was a lot of fun to play, though I felt a bit bad once the deconstruction of his army had really gained momentum around Turn 3. Dwellers is of course sick, but not sure what he was supposed to do without more of the meatgrinder special slots, and against a HPA moving that quickly.

- Salvage

Wow, you remembered far more about this battle than I did

For sake of completeness, my list was:


L: Archmage - level 4 (LIFE), +1 spell, ethereal, 4+ ward

H: Mage - level 2 (SHADOW), pick spells
H: Noble - BSB, 2+ Dragon Armor, 5+ ward, gw

C: 33 Spearelves - standard, musician
C: 30 Spearelves - warbanner, full command

S: 10 Dragon Princes - HE banner of strider, ironcurse icon, full command
S: 18 Phoenix Guard - banner of sorcery, full command, +1 to go First
S: 18 White Lions - banner of flaming, fireball ring, full command

R: Great Eagle
R: Great Eagle


It was a fun game! Got my ass handed to me, but I feel like I gleaned some useful insights into what I do wrong (frequently). Unfortunately for me, you had far more unit drops than I and I knew that I'd have to deal with unfavorable pairings across the table. The poor Roll to go first didn't help matters much . I suspect I spread myself out a bit too much in deploying and may have been better off castling a bit more in a corner than how I ended up.

Thanks for updating the list! Indeed, no rerollable 2+ on the BSB, and I'm surprised you had so many lions and spears in those other units, I guess I hit them early and often with magic & guns to thin them out. I was actually fairly concerned by the ring of woods that my army had to deploy in, assuming that you'd engage me in them and I'd lose my steadfast and get run down, but as it turned out the only clanrat block that did anything was so loaded with characters that it was able to roll the phoenix bunker and get well clear of the woods.

- Salvage

Great report! I will avenge you, Jin!!!! I hereby challenge Boss_Salvage's skaven to a grudge match, at our next meeting

Although now that I've said that, I've always had rough games vs. skaven... best I've ever done is a draw, and that was with the trolls. Not sure what I would do against you...

No love for the magical woods, eh? Those are the only real magical terrain that I like... they seem pretty reasonable!

Looks like Jin got stuck trying to get around that piece of impassable terrain- in hindsight, if the DPs could've stayed out of range of the hellpit, it sure would've been nice to have them with the flank angle on your incoming blocks.

I am currently trying to bribe Jin to send me the pictures of our game, if I succeed I will post up a bat rep of our matchup, too

I'm always aghast at how small High Elf armies look on paper. Thought it was problem times when the Hell Pit went down, but it looks like that was just a small bump in the road...

Very cool to see the assassin continuing to do what he does too.

Thanks for the report.

That was a pretty cool game to catch parts of; glad you posted the whole thing so I could see the parts I missed. I remember seeing set up, leaving for 20 minutes, and coming back and seeing the HPA sitting in the corner with a dunce hat and wondering what the hell happened to him.

Oddly, I remember about as much about our game as you do. One long, hideous montage of rage and shame, with the bright point of the BSB holding out past the bitter end. I also remember learning the hard way that an Exalted can not deal with a slave block all by himself, no matter how impossible it is to kill him :(

Boss Salvage wrote:Thanks for updating the list! Indeed, no rerollable 2+ on the BSB, and I'm surprised you had so many lions and spears in those other units, I guess I hit them early and often with magic & guns to thin them out. I was actually fairly concerned by the ring of woods that my army had to deploy in, assuming that you'd engage me in them and I'd lose my steadfast and get run down, but as it turned out the only clanrat block that did anything was so loaded with characters that it was able to roll the phoenix bunker and get well clear of the woods.

- Salvage

Heh, if anything, I'm running relatively 'few' White Lions in that block. Most people opt for 20+.

I probably should've pushed forward a bit more to have my units just within the forests. I keep thinking to myself, "Oh, I'll lose steadfast" which is silly since I should be more concerned with making _other_ people lose Steadfast. Whoops . But yes...that Clanrat block was quite fearsome, and your assassin did exactly what his job entailed Shame I failed so many of those 4+ Wards (and yet the 5+ Ward BSB somehow managed alright). I suppose that overall I still play too cautiously, especially since my list is geared to be more aggressive. I'm thinking that I could probably change up one of the Spear blocks to be LSG, which might help me at least whittle down some ranks before getting into CC.

RiTides wrote:
Looks like Jin got stuck trying to get around that piece of impassable terrain- in hindsight, if the DPs could've stayed out of range of the hellpit, it sure would've been nice to have them with the flank angle on your incoming blocks.

Well, the problem with the DPs was that I had them on the flanks but Salvage very astutely deployed his HPA directly across from them. In retrospect, I really should've castled up around that Skull Tower and used it as a natural flank guard. Also, I was incredibly nervous about the PCBs hitting the DPs since that would've been a lot of dead 30 point models on a 4+....

Ah, that makes sense!

Just a note, you only lose steadfast if the majority of the unit is in the forest... so getting just in (and keeping most of it in front of you) would've been pure genius if you could've pulled it off! Pretty easy to see coming, though...

Jin wrote:Heh, if anything, I'm running relatively 'few' White Lions in that block. Most people opt for 20+.

I recently did a GT where I had a block of 24 Sword Masters, and 15 White Lions, and found it was a very effective combo. The White Lions worked wonders on hitting smaller units, or flank charging what the Sword Masters where fighting. Knights, Marauders, and Treekin all fell to the axes with little difficulty. despite their "smaller" numbers.

I've also learned that if your going with an Archmage with Life, then SM's are the way to go instead of PG. T7, and 4+ regen makes them just as survivable as the PG, and still more killy.

The other thing I realized is the lvl 2 just isn't worth it. I had a Lvl 2 in my list as well, and the only time he ever cast a spell was when the lvl 4 was dead. The life buffs are so important to get off, your going to use all your power dice on them. Using his points for more bodies, or for a killy noble would have been much more effective IMO.