In the name of closure, here’s a little bit of coverage for the local tournament I brought the gribblies to a couple weeks back. A
LGS had listened to me and decided to give 2k a shot, and I at least was stoked. The sentiment may not have been universal though, considering a mere 5 folks showed up … Really there were a lot of excuses thrown about on all fronts, but 5 down from 16 last time? Yikes (*insert link to Gonads’ thread about waning interest in Fantasy*)
All the same, we at least were looking to play some square base, so the
LGS owner busted out his skaven (hell of a ringer!) and we got to it. Missions were based on the ‘Ard Boyz ones (semi-finals I think), with some tweaks for scoring and such.
I deliberated for quite some time about what support units to take, but in the end I went with the tried, true and undercosted WLC, leaving the doomflayers unbuilt and at home.
SEERBREAKER L: Grey Seer – seed of rebirth
L: Warlord “LT” – ogre blade, dragonhelm, talisman of preservation, bonebreaker
H: Assassin – blade of corruption
H: Chieftain –
BSB, enchanted shield, foul pendant
C: 30 Clanrats – full command, shields
C: 30 Clanrats – full command, shields
C: 30 Clanrats – full command, shields
C: 36 Slaves – pawleader, musician
S: 6 Plague Censer Bearers
S: 6 Plague Censer Bearers
S: 5 Gutter Runners – poison
S: 5 Gutter Runners – poison
R: Hellpit Abomination
R: Warp Lightning Cannon
Shot of the crew on their long
WIP display board. Note single unpainted model, very embarrassing
Closer shot of the nurgling core (big nurgs = clanrats, little nurgs = slaves)
GAME ONE: BEASTS L: Beastlord – biting blade, defensive stuff, etc
H: Wargor –
BSB, beast banner, gnarled hide, heavy armor, shield
H: Bray – level 2 (SHADOW), arcane item?, ahw
H: Bray – level 1 (BEAST), ahw
C: ~40 Gors – full command, ahw
C: ~40 Gors – full command, ahw
C: Tuskgor Chariot
C: Tuskgor Chariot
C: Tuskgor Chariot
C: 6 Unbows – musician
C: 5 Unbows
S: 18 Bestigors – flaming, full command
S: 5-6 Harpies – scout
Rock solid list, generaled by a skilled player and beasts veteran. Was more than a little concerned by those gor hordes, but I’ve been dismantling hordes throughout 8th, so I wasn’t totally unprepared. Real pity I didn’t snap many pics of this game, as I really dig his army, especially this current version with so many gors.
Terrain you’ll see in the second game – we placed and scattered terrain for the first match and then left it for the others to save time, and, Jabba-like, I actually never moved from the table I was on, nor did I switch sides
But it was: tower (treated as impassable), couple woods (only mysterious on a 1, in which case roll on the chart), central fence and a hill.
First mission was battleline with some
BP things, and also when any spell is successfully cast (bound, prayer, etc), on a 1 it misfires too. IF spells could potentially miscast twice
BATTLE! Saying this battle is a little fuzzy is a huge understatement! So a super quick recap will have to do …
Here’s a shot from some time in Turn 2:
First turn the hellpit hurtles forward (up to the fence), then gets itself charged by the beastlord/
BSB/gors and a chariot next turn. He flubs hard, loses by 1, fails his stubborn 8 and is run down, and the general /
BSB’s horde overruns into my seerbreaker unit, at least a turn ahead of schedule. Magic however saves our rancid green bacon: a Turn 1 plague had killed half of the general’s horde (!!), and in Turn 2 another plague drops a quarter of the other horde, then jumps to the bestigors and halves the unit,
and then wither drops the beastlord’s unit to T3.
Whoa.
Also by this shot, PCB or gutters are taking care of his ambushing unbows to the left, the WLC is about to kill a chariot near the tower, and the right gutters have run down another chariot. The harpies did something smart (neutralizing the other censers?) but I can’t remember what. Regardless, they didn’t blitz the WLC as expected.
The losses are extremely heavy, but as you can see here LT and his clanrats do smash their way through the beastlord’s gors. Notice the scrawny thing with the spike head, center frame? That’s the assassin, which charged out in the first pic to take on challengers – he dropped the gor champ easy, and amazingly also took out the beastlord over many many rounds of combat, where the beastly general couldn’t wound to save his life (literally). Also, my 4+ dodges were NUTS
You’ll also notice in this picture that the grey seer (i.e. the unpainted thing) is gone. He miscast and got sucked into the warp
Other things of note, the slaves back there in the right corner were charged by bestigor and eventually ran them down (for the loss of 12 slaves, looks like)!
Shortly after this shot the assassin decapitated the solo-ing shaman (critical march block fail!), LT joined the
BSB’s clanrat bus, the WLC took out its second chariot, and the gors plowed into LT,
BSB and crew. They lost badly and were run down, maybe leaving some unbows alive? But loads of
VP and
BP to be had.
GAME TWO: DWARFS L: Lord – more strength vs T5, rerollable 1 or 2+ armor, 4+ ward,
ASF? @ high Initiative, shieldbearers
H: Thane –
BSB, rerollable 1 or 2+ armor, rune of challenge
H: Runepriest – destroy scroll, dispel scroll
C: 30 Longbeards – full command, great weapons
C: 12 Quarreller Rangers – full command, great weapons
S: 30 Hammerers – standard of 1 die break test, full command
S: Grudge Thrower – accurate, flaming?
S: Cannon – flaming
R: 5 Slayers
R: 5 Slayers
R: Gyro
All I remember, and there could very well be more and different runes on stuff. The lord was super tough, and I can’t remember if he had lots of attaks or
ASF rerolls, but while he hit a lot it was almost always S4 so meh.
Scenario was Blood & Glory, except that the game didn’t end once one side broke, but gave a
VP bonus to the breaker and continued on. The other side could get a smaller bonus for breaking the enemy back later.
BATTLE! 
Taken after the skaven movement phase, which opened the game. Despite the rune of challenge, green horde has moved up to get the seer into plague range (18”) of the hated stunties. Sadly it would be spell destroyed, making the seer a bit of a no show this game
To the right of this shot are the rangers – instead of sending the PCB to shred their faces off, I conga-lined them between the clanrats and sent the slaves to handle it. The slave thing made more sense before I moved general and
BSB away from them
Closer look at the dwarf center. Definitely a case of Old Metal Dwarfs
FTW 
Heavy gribble flank advances, and there are some scouted gutters marched into the face of the grudge thrower. That thrower would hit the hellpit in Dwarf 1, roll a 1 to wound, then get reamed by gutters. Meanwhile the WLC aced the cannon in Skaven 1, before it could shoot. And then the gyro in Skaven 2, before it could steam some clan-nurglings
Rangers jump on the slaves rather than take potshots at them, and the slaves steadfast (on their own
LD 5) long enough for the outflanking gutters to show up to throw poisoned stars into the combat. 1 dwarf dies, then the slaves break, shredding the gutters and making them panic back off the table. Guh!
With nothing to send back there (we’ll get to why the PCB are still not back dealing with the rangers), I let the WLC eventually get wrecked by the wee infiltrators. Thankfully it’s already done more than I could have asked it to!
Enough periphery stuff, back to the main event. The grey seer /
BSB / (assassin) / clanrat bus is rune of challenged into the longbeard horde, and the damage is significant …
… losing the skaven
BSB and eight nurglings, while the assassin merely erupted the longbeard champ. The reason the PCB are still in conga mode is because I tried to charge them in to assist the seer’s clanrats (not the best move, but I didn’t think horde dwarfs would deliver so much hurt!) You can see LT setting up to intercept the dwarf lord and hammer crew, with some slayers in the way. Those slayers charged in simply to clear up space for the hammer-star – so LT killed them all himself – and then the hammerers hit. Once again I was shocked at the damage output of horde dwarfs (admit it, you too are used to dwarfs being kinda crap in combat, just too few attaks / no rerolls), and for the first time ever, my LT breaker fell in combat, his skull caved in by the dwarven king in a second round challenge
Around that time the conga-lined censers failed their frenzy check and charged into the longbeard horde, getting themselves killed. Balls. On the upside, the assassin trashed the runepriest, then went to work on the
BSB, who was a much tougher nut to crack.
That silver lining was about to shine a lot stronger, as the hellpit
finally made combat. Once again he rolled pretty poorly – 1-2 impacts, feeding and then thunder-cuddling for 2 or something like that – but all the same the dwarfs couldn’t sustain having an abomination in the flank on top of 30 fresh clanrats to the front. They broke, leaving a single dwarf fleeing for the table edge. (At this point I sent all my units after that 1 dwarf, desperate for points but forgetting that he was rallying on snake eyes, and that I had some gutters back there to grab him anyway. My opponent let me take this back and reform instead, as it was going to have a huge effect on the game. You can see LT’s unit fighting the hammerers, but with LT gone that unit broke mere moments after this picture, meaning the hammerers could reform and – in their turn – charge down my general and both of my blocks. Once properly reformed I was able to flee the seer’s unit safely down the board, and let the heavies take on the hammer horde.)
Or that would have been the case had I also fled the fuller clanrat block too, when the hammerers redirected into them. For some reason I didn’t, which meant the hammerers connected, liquiefied them – if they got a steadfast check, they didn’t pass it – and then clipped into the hellpit.
Which didn’t work out too well for the hammerers, apparently! The ‘pit went apeshit, regened everything put into it, stopped feeding for a change and avalanched / t-stomped until all dwarfs had been destroyed. I felt a little bad about the abomination swinging another game for me … but not that bad. He had the flaming war machines to ace the ‘pit easy and put me 235 points in the hole, yet a combination of me being prepared with anti-war machine units and a handful of luck meant I was able to keep him in the game. And even then it took surviving a lot of rounds in combat for the beast to arrive at all, so I’m not calling this one an auto-win for the HPA
Do recall that this was B&G though. At some point in there I broke first (late game when those other clanrats bit it?), which gave him a ton of
VP and
BP. I had also bled
VP all over the place, meaning that the final score was something like 13-11
BP to me. Not sure it felt like a very minor win at the end, but I could dig it, and it was certainly a better way to play B&G than the ol’ insta-lunch version
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With two games down, I was sitting on 35 or so total points. When the final matchups were announced, and involved the beast player and dwarf player playing for second and me up against Overtninja the Fluffy Wood Elf Kid, we decided to just call it at that and casually play out the last round between those who wanted to. Beast man went home, dwarf dude took on a high elf lad to help him get to grips with his army and 8th edition, and I did take on the woodies, in the name of experience.
GAME THREE: WOOD ELVES L: Spellweaver – level 4 (BEASTS)
H: Wildrider Noble – hail of doom, some hippie magic weapon
H: Branchwraith – annoyance
C: 15+ Glade Guard – flaming, standard
C: 15+ Glade Guard
C: 10 Dryads
S: 9 Wildriders
S: 6 Treekin
R: 7 Waywatchers
R: Eagle
R: Eagle
Looks about right, but no doubt with various items and command sprinkled here and there. Frankly pretty cuddly even for woodies, though no complaints for me. (Can I note right now how much I love Beast magic? I’m a few dangerous steps from starting an army – any army! – that can take it, since none of mine can
)
Scenario was a strange one, not just for Fantasy. You got kill points for dead or fleeing units: 3 points for enemy general, 1 point for other characters, 1 point per core choice, 2 points for specials, 4 points for rares. On top of that, there were kegs of beer (!) hidden in all of the 5 terrain pieces, which a touching core unit could search in their movement phase and find on a 4+. Each beer token held gave another point, and if a beered unit failed a
LD test at the start of its phase, it dropped 2-3 in
WS &
BS while gaining 2 to S & T, for the rest of the game. You needed 10+ points more than the other guy to pull off a win. Ha!
Anyway, there was fighting …
BATTLE! 
Battlelines form up!
Wood elves tentatively move up, the hellpit gets hail of doomed for a couple wounds (not bad!) and one of LT’s nurglings dies, and then the little monsters respond (in the pic above). The right censers have to charge the waywatchers, who flee and don’t rally until they’re at the table edge a few turns later (!). Some dryads die to a weak plague and a treekin is burned down by the laser cannon. Note that the slaves and the dryads have both found some booze!
Wildriders fade to the center as expected, a particularly giant eagle plops down near the hellpit and the woodies shuffle about. Magic charges up and the beastweaver suddenly notices the strange formation that the censers are in …
“Is that … the dreaded Conga Line of Doom?”
10-9-8-7-6-5 and a single amber spear aces the lot of them
Thankfully the hellpit has his head in the game, flanking the eagle, mashing it into bird pancakes and heading towards where the action is. But wait, is that
another unit of congaing censer bearers??
It is! What the crap is wrong with me?! (His spellweaver IF’d that amber spear and forgot the spell, so I wasn’t being totally stupid … just mostly
) Anyway, Overtninja is pointing to where I scorched his ‘weaver’s unit.
Scorch: Killing Elves Since 2010
I think the point here is that another couple treekin got electrocuted. Also, the dryads managed to get themselves DRRRRRUNK this turn, becoming WS3 S6 T6 tree wenches
A world of bad things have happened to the woodies by now. The treekin charged into the hellpit, everybody fluffed and held, but then the a-bomb turned it up, splintered two of them and chased the last one down. Here we see him cruising for the wood elf high command. Meanwhile LT led his depleted unit of clanrats – facing a couple dozen glade guard ought to dwindle some ranks – into the drunk dryads. After feeding a clawleader to the annoying branchwraith, LT bashed the survivors into submission, chasing them into the backfield here. The spellweaver bailed out of her scorched guard and into the flaming guard, but that unit was slammed with scorch as well, losing a similar 10 or so. Also, something terrible happened to the wild riders: the warp lightning cannon fragged a couple, then they charged into LT and bounced, losing just about everybody.
Speaking of backfields, the cannon was sacrificed to the eagle, who was going to be insta-gibbed by some censers shortly afterwards.
Overtninja called the game at this point, after LT and crew smoked the blitzed branchwraith and pushed the wildrider noble and his command off the table. He does have four flaming arrows that could knock the last two wounds off of the hellpit, but things do indeed look grim for the flower children.
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It goes without saying that a lot of stuff worked really well in the list. And it also seems pretty obvious that the hellpit is
really strong at 2000 especially ... though my monster fetish means I'm gonna keep the guy around, sorry to say. I have a conversion ready and waiting for a gribbly doomwheel, yet the unit leaves me pretty cold, and I don't really need it's shooting attak when the WLC is around. I guess double dooms would be cool in place of HPA + WLC, but that's extra converting, since I'd have to make two of the blighters.
Clearly the real emphasis of the SEEBREAKER sage is running a grey seer for the first time ever, and you can count me impressed. Plague is just as sexy as I remember it being back when my vermin lord was rocking it every game, though the seer himself makes the rest of the plague lore fairly so-so, as there's only so much you can cast from the second rank and at range, meaning that there just aren't enough spells to saturate the magic phase. My plan without a level 4 is to go IF or not cast; unfortunately I found myself pretty much going IF or not casting with plague anyway. Also, when not up against a level 4, my own level 4 really shown; when up against another level 4, it was Overtninja's inexperience that let me cast what I wanted when I wanted; and the game against dwarfs shows how limited my magic is when I don't have plague (I literally stopped casting, with no wither to back up plague).
Magic still leaves me unsatisfied, when I know for a fact what 250 points buys me: another bonebreaker! So yes you're not just hearing things, BONEBREAKER is on its way back. I have a new 2k list ready, with doomflayers
and warp lightning cannon
and a little bit o' plague magic too, now just need to find some time ...
- Salvage
, but then it is skaven so whos complaining right?