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Well the preliminaries are over with and the semifinals are coming up!

That said, what did you guys think of the prelim scenarios, and what the heck is up with these?!

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1730397a_Fantasy_Ard_Boyz_2011_Semi-Final_Scenarios.pdf


The last one is actually something I like - it's the Blood And Glory mission without the very severe penalty of "lose a few banners and you LOSE" problem. Should your army be broken, you give the enemy 500 VPs but you can still get a solid win if you demolish them, which I think is a very good way to play it.

The first scenario, though, is......ugh. It's like round 3 of the preliminaries, where bad luck can mean you just take it to the face. I tell you what though, lifers will love it. Cast Throne of Vines and you can ignore those miscasts on a 2+! I'm also tempted to bring my WoC instead of my daemons to take the puppet and someone with the black tongue, to force LOTS of miscasts on my opponents and mitigate my own. I myself am wondering what to do about the problem with my daemons. I suppose on my end, I'll just keep it to casting a few very important spells per turn, rather than trying to spam a whole bunch of them.

Scenario two.....ugh again! That fanatic could have a long scatter in the beginning towards one player's line and then just be a huge thorn in their side the entire game! And to catch it, passing a strength test? Seems awfully risky. You could lose half of a warriors of chaos unit just attempting to do it. What about those battle points, though? Apparently you get +5 points if you captured him at ANY time during the game, so whether your opponent forces him back out or not, the enemy gets the battle points by the way it's worded.

And vampire counts and daemons once again gain an advantage in scenario 2. Since their units never run, you then HAVE to destroy them to a man in order to set the fanatic free again. And VC can just restore the models they lose by trying to capture him! Trying to pass the strength test in the first place, though....

So let's use this thread to discuss your opinions on the new set of scenarios and how you feel it's going to decide your army selection.

I don't think that Throne of Vines will ignore the forced miscast, the scenario states that you don't roll a miscast but you are simply forced to roll on the miscast table.

Same issue with Teclis, I don't think he would ignore the miscast from the rules either.

GW needs to address this pretty quickly and issue a ruling on that.

seems like a decent set up.



I will be bringing my Ogres so i might have to think about banners, but the 1st scenerio shouldn't be too bad. i can take risks with my Miscast table

and having reluctant magic users opposite me might be benificial.

if i have buffs up the Fanatic won't be super scary. one of each would mean the wounds wound be on 3s, and i have a 4+ regen against them. then its a 83% chance to catch him.

I feel sorry for elves though (not really )

So far I think my Fateweaver DOC list will be ok, I need to reduce my rares though I have been running 3X1 Fiends and Unit of flamers.

Also drop tormentor blade(had nothing to spend the last 10 points on) That will free up 175. Either add 5 flesh hounds, or 5 flamers. I have the flamers at least primed so due to that it does sway that way.

Secnario wise. I think Fateweaver's reroll will be strong in the magic phase, but I failed 3 of those rerolls in my last game. Will Horrors use their own miscast or the BRB one? if so a battle bus of horrors with skulltaker will be awesome yet again.

I do pitty the elves, hmm no. Mission 2 doesn't look bad, if you can use the highest S for the unit for capture. then I feel ok. Even daemonettes will have a 4 then. Flamers, with their movement and the oft overlooked S5 will be solid in this round.

You really wanna take 2d6 S6 hits on your flamers?

Well that scenario I won't have magic restrictions, and can use flesh to stone from life herald or Wildform from fateweaver, if needed. Also will likely take regrowth on fateweaver that round as well. Provided he's not deep on my opponents turn then I'm just going for massacre.

I posted this in another thread in "Tournament Discussions," but I thought it would be relevant here too.

"I just got an email back from GW customer service. The email told me to call them to chat about it. So, I don't have any written record of the conversation, but here's what he said.

The TO of the semi finals event that you attend needs to give the ruling on whether or not Teclis can negate the miscast, Throne of Vines, and Fateweaver, etc. for round one of the semis.

I asked for his personal opinion and he said if he were the TO he'd say no as the scenario rules trump everything.


DAH"

my ogres are happy in round 3. no rares

Looks like I will bring Cupped Hands just for the first round!
And Kroxigors instead of Stegadons!

Im torn on which army to bring for the next round. My Empire did so well in the first that Im really thinking of taking them to the next round. Of course Id also like to get some use out of my HE as they have been with my painter now for two months. I still would use Teclis (lore of life) and a level 3(lore of beasts) as this combo seems to really work well. I was pondering about taking the banner that makes a whole unit immune to magic but I dont use my phonix guard, I get more use out of swordmasters and white lions. Plus the HE list would be quite shooty and hit really hard, much harder then my empire could ever dream of hitting. Oh well I still have a month to make my mind up.

I think the key wording in the first scenario is "roll on the miscast table".

It doesn't say suffer a miscast.

I'll be checking with GW on it to make sure, but if as one of the other poster reported, and GW wants each TO to make a ruling, I''ll be going with the interpretation that the roll on the miscast table cannot be avoided by Teclis, Throne of Vines, or Cupped Hands. Everyone gets enjoy Tzeentch's little gift.

mikhaila wrote:I think the key wording in the first scenario is "roll on the miscast table".

It doesn't say suffer a miscast.

I'll be checking with GW on it to make sure, but if as one of the other poster reported, and GW wants each TO to make a ruling, I''ll be going with the interpretation that the roll on the miscast table cannot be avoided by Teclis, Throne of Vines, or Cupped Hands. Everyone gets enjoy Tzeentch's little gift.

I play Teclis and I bring life magic and I agree with you. I would say the scenario rules trump everything else.

I went ahead and sent an email to the TO where I will be playing at to verify. While it might not affect me directly that could change the army people bring so should be decided beforehand.

I agree with mikhaila on this one, but I would rather know early.

Side Note: Where are people thinking of playing. I will most likely be either Savannah, GA or Ft. Walton Beach, FL.

My group is going to go to Reno.

we don't feel like driving down all the way to Riverside from Sonoma and spending the night.

mikhaila wrote:I think the key wording in the first scenario is "roll on the miscast table".

It doesn't say suffer a miscast.

I'll be checking with GW on it to make sure, but if as one of the other poster reported, and GW wants each TO to make a ruling, I''ll be going with the interpretation that the roll on the miscast table cannot be avoided by Teclis, Throne of Vines, or Cupped Hands. Everyone gets enjoy Tzeentch's little gift.

I agree with this as well. my only question is that Tzeentch's Will still work for this. Since it occurs during the player turn not out side of it, I would argue yes. It even says "This can be used to avoid a miscast or cause IF" Even if the D6 roll to see if the miscast occurs after successful casting is caused is not part of the player turn, then at least the roll itself on the miscast table is.

I imagine it will most likely be an all/none situation. Either everyone can avoid it or no-one can.

Wargamejunkie wrote:I imagine it will most likely be an all/none situation. Either everyone can avoid it or no-one can.

Yep. Based on the 'lightning' in game 3 of last round, I'd be tempted to nothing alters the effect. It's a special rule that over rides everything else. Hopefully theirs some clarification from GW, but if not, I'd suggest you check with the TO of the regional that you are going to.

I am hoping to get two practice games in this week. One for the first scenario and one for the second.

Has anyone had any practice games yet that care to share their thoughts and experiences?

I'm still taking a magic heavy army. I'm taking the risk that only on a roll of a 1 will I have any issues in the first round and that only a few of the miscast rolls are really super bad.

I have played the 2nd & 3rd missions. Lost both with my Skaven.

I keep finding I am being out-deployed so I may have to switch armies or change things up considerably.

The squig moving every play turn means he can really get around the battlefield.

it's a fanatic, but yeah he can move.


I'll probably get a practice game in next monday.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:I am hoping to get two practice games in this week. One for the first scenario and one for the second.

Has anyone had any practice games yet that care to share their thoughts and experiences?

I'm still taking a magic heavy army. I'm taking the risk that only on a roll of a 1 will I have any issues in the first round and that only a few of the miscast rolls are really super bad.

I had the first practice game tonight. We played the first scenario. I'm not going to do a full on battle report here, nor am I going to detail my army out until I'm out of the running for 'Ard Boyz.

However, it was my High Elves vs the other guys Dwarfs.

Observations: The special rule about magic wasn't that bad for me. It only affected me on turn 1. It took a lvl from my lvl 4 archmage and took the regen spell. After that, neither Teclis nor the archmage was affected by it. I was casting anywhere from 2-4 spells a phase. The way we played it was that any time a mage tried to cast regardless of whether it was successful, they had to roll to see if they rolled a 1. Also, neither Teclis nor Throne of Vines was able to stop it. Because it doesn't say you suffer a miscast, it just says you roll on the miscast table and apply the results. Further, we played that even if mage did roll a 1 for the special rule, it didn't stop them from casting later in that phase because they didn't actually "miscast" they just had to roll on the miscast table. Unless of course, they rolled a result that on the table that said they couldn't cast anymore that turn. In my case, the archmage rolled a 1, then rolled an 11 on the table and lost a level and couldn't cast anymore that turn because of it. However, if it had just been a hit and a loss of power dice, he would have still been able to cast that phase.

So, in short, for all of you magic heavy armies out there, the special rule wasn't that scary for me in that game.

In the end I took 43 KP and he took 11 KP. I had a massacre and if it were VP I would have had about 2500 and he would have had about 1200.

I played a practice game of scenario 2 of the semis tonight against an 'ard Skaven list tonight.

He ended up crushing me, however, it could have gone differently.

Observations:

The deployment for the scenario can really ruin your day. It messed me up from the beginning. Although, I don't think it will be as bad at the tournament. Odds are in favor of a decent deployment.

Teclis is the keystone to my army and he was sniped by a warp lightning cannon. At that point, my army started to crumble.

The fanatic ran into one of my units twice, but it wasn't too bad. I tried to restrain it one turn and couldn't do it.

Played practic games wth secnario one and two this weekend. In secnario one, we only had the extra miscast happen twice. Once with Horrors lost 3, and once with a warlock engineer who took a S10 hit, and since he rolled boxcars for casting, another S10 hit and died. Total score was 49 to 21 my favor. The skaven player had total of 63 Kill points, to my 35.

Second game we played secnario 2 . That fanatic was all over the place. Turn one he went 14 inches away from the main units and out on a flank in HPA and Flamer land. I never got a core unit close to it to take the hits, and try to capture, but I used a unit of flamers to assist the fanatic from getting caught for the last two turns. (Killed an HPA, and unit of clan rats.) Ended up as a minor victory, as I couldn't break his storm vermin or other rat blocks until late in the game.

I just checked the scenario and it doesn't need to be a core unit to capture the fanatic. A good thing to remember in the tourney.

I'm sorry I didn't mean core, but rather big. I only have flamers, fateweaver and my blocks of doom.

It's all good. Sounds like you have a pretty compact army. I do too with my HE.

Here's a question on the fanatic one - if you take the damage from him trying to capture him and it causes enough damage to force a panic test, do you have to take one?

Also whats the guidance on if you play the second scenario and can't fit your units in the deployment zone you roll for? Say for instance my units of 85 night goblins in a horde formation - very, very big.

I agree on the first scenario on how it was played above - thats how we're running it in our local area. Every spell, no avoiding, transferring, etc. etc. on the miscasts.

I'm a little dissapointed in the TO decision piece though - that could be a big game changer and should be a set standard, not open to interpretation.

I don't know what happens if you fill your deployment zone and run out of room

presumably, you would have to reform a few units and try and play Jigsaw puzzle with them.

if Reserves are allowed i would put them in Reserves.


No one here playes true horde armies so i don't run into this problem.


as to the fanatic causing Panic. I don't know. My personal ruling would be that he doesn't cause panic as those hits are being done in the movement phase and that its a special scenerio rule.

I would say that if the unit that tried to subdue him was destroyed as a result then nearby units would have to take a panic test as normal.

On secnario one. Horrors are in a percular situation. In the DOC it just says remove D6 for miscast. It also states that for purposes of LOS/range nominate one model as the caster. Our Preliminary round TO made the decision that just to remove D6 as the intent is to hurt the magic effectivness over the course of the game.

Loosing magic levels don't really hurt horrors since they calculate theirs at the start of each magic phase as well. I'd personally think that the remove d6 is worse unless the miscast is rolled on a templete blast when you need a model in the center of the unit to cast gift of chaos.

I'm really hoping for explecit clarification before next round.

finally, 85 night goblins is quite obtuse. I think if it can't fit it has to go in reserve.

Panic question. I'd say yes. I think panic rules state iirc" more than 25% casualties in any one phase."

just finished a Scenerio 1 practice game.

Ogres vs Double Slann Lizardmen(one Life, one Light)


the scenerio special rule didn't do much. on turn 3 the Life Slann lost 3 Wizard levels and Flesh to Stone so that was the extent of that.


the Victory points were killer for the Lizards though.

at the end of the game, i had lost my Slaughtermaster, one unit of bulls, and one scraplauncher(misfired)

he lost a unit of Chameleon Skinks due to them getting eaten by a wildwood and a Bone Cruncher. one unit of regular skinks that speedbumped a unit of bulls. then a unit of 3 Salamanders were charged by my other Scrappie, they Fled and kept running over 2 turns off the board.

if his Salamanders had rallied he would have won.

that and we were rolling horrendiously for Magic, both winds and casting. his Light Slann on the last turn tried to cast the boosted version of Speed of Light(would have effected 2 Saurus units and a Temple Guard unit, all in combat with my ogres) and rolled 11 on 5 dice



If your army takes alot of Rare units, protect them. they can lose you the game if they die. if the Salamanders hadn't run away he would have gotten a Major Victory(although i was winning the combats i was involved in)