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Oh, hello.

It's been a while hasn't it? To be honest, I've been so busy winning all of the GTs and basking in the adulation of countless Warhammer groupies. You know how it is. To be a little more honest than that, big life changes meant I've only played 4 games since May of 2013. Three of those have been since Thanksgiving, though, so recently its been a relative hobby fiesta. I'm working on a Warriors Slaanesh cav list (to be posted soon). In the meantime, I figured it'd be good to get familiar with the goings on in the Warhammer community (both with changes since I last played and with the local area).

Specific to the latter- here in Madison, WI, the tendency is for out-of-the-book Warhammer: mysterious terrain, roll for scenario, closed lists.

So, I trotted out this list:

Runesmith (general), shield, rune of stone, 2 runes of spellbreaking (127 pts)
Thane, BSB, MR of Gromril, rune of resistance, MR of Challenge (165 pts)
Dragonslayer, 2 x rune of speed, rune of fire (65 pts)
Dragonslayer, rune of might (75 pts)

30 Warriors great weapons, full command (325 pts)
20 Quarreler rangers musician (285 pts)
25 Hammerers full command, MR of Grungni (380 pts)

Cannon engineer, rune of forging, rune of burning (145 pts)
Grudge thrower rune of accuracy, 2 x rune of penetrating (170 pts)
Organ gun (xxx pts)
Gyrocopter (xxx pts)

(1,997 pts total)


The intention here is to try to solve problems with war machines and retain enough combat power to slug it out when needed. The dragonslayers are an experiment in chaff and mini-tool kits for chopping up ethereals or hopefully scraping wounds off any monsters that make it in to my lines before they get their thunderstomp on.

We rolled up to the store and I ended up paired up against one Brian, who happens to be one of Wiscodice’s co-hosts. Brian was trotting out his Vampire Counts, and since I listen to their podcast, I should have had a good idea what was in the list, but… not so much. Here’s what I saw at the outset:

Vampire Lord: Level 3 <Raise Dead, Curse of Years, Invocation>
Wight King: BSB
Necromancer <Invocation>
Necromancer <Invocation>
Banshee Sweet, sweet harmonies
38 crypt ghouls Crypt ghast
30-ish zombies Rag on a stick, busted drum
30-ish zombies Stick on a rag, master-crafted viola
Corpse cart Bad sense of direction
3 individual spirit hosts
Varghulf
Banshee and her 4 backing vocalists

and... a skeleton bunker he forgot to deploy!


We diced up a scenario and got dawn attack- something I hadn’t played in years. I attached my BSB to the hammerers and runesmith to the warriors then diced up a very forgiving deployment. Brian’s was not as nice, but shy of disastrous.



Just like old times: my rangers volunteer for a daring mission deep behind enemy lines.



”Oh noes, we aren’t sitting in front of all the magical war machines. Super sorry, you guys.”


I’m liking how things look post-deployment, and courtesy of Dawn attack, there’s a 5/6 chance I’ll get first turn since I dropped first. Deployment had jammed his big bunker back behind the building, and effectively took the corpse cart and a spirit host out of the mix. There’s a lot of ethereal stuff and the varghulf, but between the slayers and machines I ought to be able to keep a lid on the worst of it.

Turn One

Indeed I do get the first turn. The gyro scoots up to behind the building to pick options for later. The cannon beheads the varghulf and the grudgethrower misses well wide of its target.

The VC army shambles forward, and its clear that the ghouls will go right through the building.



Real estate values plummet inexplicably.

A new zombie unit started behind everyone else, but otherwise nothing much of note. My dispel “strategy” was to not care about more zombies or raising and just make sure I didn’t lose combat power to a Curse of Years casting.


Turn Two

I skip the gyro out wide, faking like I’ll be threatening to flame template on blocks, but really hoping to catch a necromancer or the lone banshee with a charge. I also shimmy my blocks to make sure I have the option of charging in or backing off depending on what the VC blocks do. The GT misfires trying to thin the ghouls and the organ gun kills a handful. The cannon actually couldn’t see anything due to dwarf infantry and the woods, so it cracked off a shot at the (very surprised) corpse cart, and destroyed it.

The VC turn was spent jumping the ghouls into the building and then systematically ruining my glorious gyro plans.



Even my report writing is rusty. 8 years out of date pop culture references? Ugh. Just gonna post some lolcats and call it a day.

Both banshees slip sideways to sing at the gyro and the necros manage to both bail into the (oh-so-briefly small) newly raised bunker, which is much better protected. A couple screams took a wound each, leaving the gyro hanging on by a thread.

I kept my anti-magic strategy geared towards preventing a curse of years casting (more on this later).

I have a picture here of the arrangement of forces with a subtle hint as to my next gyro maneuver.



Ooooo. Mysterious.

Turn 3

Looking at the movement phase where the stage will be set for a decisive turn 4 I gotta make a few decisions. The gyro can either bail out altogether (at 20” movement, even if the banshees march after me, I can stay safe and preserve points). I’d rather find a use, though and decide to try to jam things up by charging the flank of the spirit host in the center. This wasn’t all that clearly thought out- just kind of impulsive. Otherwise , I aggressively move both blocks and slayers forward. The slayers are going to try to chop ethereals and the blocks are getting ready to jump VC units as they come around/out of the building.

Side note: Despite no indications that the vamp lord is geared at all for casting (level 3, no other shenanigans indicated thus far), I’m still not realizing that this guy’s probably a combat beast. I’ve played against the new VC book, but always seen the combat lord be in a knight bus. So thought this guy might be different…

Shooting is okay. The cannon knocks out a spirit host, and the organ gun and grudgethrower combine to do some fair damage on the ghouls.

Unfortunately for the gyro, the pilot gets an ethereal punch right in his tenders from the spirit host and dies for no gain. Some traditions are still firmly in place, it seems.

For the VC turn 3, the remaining spirit host jukes my slayer and starts running for the backfield. The ghouls and vampire step out and the zombie blocks move to try to charge the flank of anyone who might go into the ghouls.

Magic heals ghouls up some, not much considering how much I let through, though. One banshee gets a scream off to no effect on the dragonslayer.



Somebody has somebody else right where they want them…

Turn 4

Some things you can’t (or can barely) see in the pic above- there’s a spirit host between the slayer and the woods. There’s another slayer just off the edge facing down the wraiths and solo banshee.

I wobble a bit here. My plan at the start was to just jump the ghouls when they came out, but I realize I could hammer them with more warmachine fire and delay engagement. And if I do go in, I could send the hammerers, and add a slayer (rune of might version), the great weapons, or both.

After some consideration, I chunk in the hammerers and the slayer, with the slayer pinning both the wight king and the vampire so they can’t make way to the hammerers. Elsewhere the other slayer fails a charge on the wraith unit and the warriors and rangers head in to start chopping zombies. The organ gun crew drags their machine backwards to try to make the spirit host’s charge a little dicier.

Shooting has the grudgethrower hit the near spirit host with a min-range shot, and the cannon keeps up the heat, knocking down the lone banshee.

But the real crux of things come from the combat phase.



Starting to get that sinking feeling.

In combat, an experimental challenge from the slayer and I’m reminded of the ASF, red thirst, ogre blade vamp build. With massive overkill on the slayer, and a whiff from the slayers (2 wounds), there’s virtually no crumble. The ghouls reform and get ready to bring the pain.

The other blocks get some good headway into their respective zombie blocks, with the warriors having a good chance at cutting free and coming in to assist the hammerers.

Unfortunately, the VC had different plans. Magic went off and the ghouls went up to full, nearly the same for the zombies fighting my great weapon warriors. On top of that, one of the necros is revealed to have the Staff of Damnation, and adds an attack to all the relevant combat blocks.

The banshee can’t scream the last slayer to death, and it’s on to combat.

The gatekeeper is chopped down in a challenge with the Wight King and the vampire cuts up 9 or 10 hammerers, and the ghouls get a few more. Given the huge stack of ghouls, I decide to bet on killing the vamp. Six swings get a wound through (and I get to discover the guy’s got a 4+ ward, no notable armor). Unfortunately, elsewhere the great weapon warriors can’t overcome the big raise phase gains and won’t be able to come to the rescue.

Turns 5 and 6

With everyone locked in to combats, the game plays out. The vampire lord buzz saws through all but one of the hammerers and the standard, back to back with his BSB fail re-rollable 9s. The warriors cut through their zombies a turn too late and get chewed up by the buzzsaw as well. (I had an opportunity to fleeThe only wounds that sneak through on the vamp are healed any time a VC magic phase rolls around.

In the end, lose both combat blocks, all my characters and the gyro, getting all his chaff, but not the ghouls or any of the characters (exept the lone banshee), resulting in a:

Dwarf loss ~675-1525

Ouch! Rusty play gets you rusty knives in the heart.

After game thoughts to follow…

Thanks for reading!

Fantastic read, complete with U2 reference! Awesome to see "rusty relentless" . Unrevealed lists is interesting. If you'd guessed the vamp was built for combat, what would you have done differently?

Run and hide? Haha blender lord is just nasty. Without an "unkillable" character to anchor him or a vast number of infantry to weigh him down, the vamp is gonna shred whatever you put into it.

I will admit, it is great to see you back on the boards! Missed the Relentless reports from back when I first joined Dakka!

Good luck getting back on the horse! (Slaanesh-all-cav army list pun intended)

good report zeke! Its always fun to read your exploits and commentary, my favorites of this report were:

"real estate values plummet inexplicably"
and
"the only joke for this pic are the maneuvers i elected to make next"

keep up the good grudge!!

Welcome back RZ! Pity on the death-by-vampire, but so it is in Life & 'Hams

Not to immediately sidetrack things, but did you ever get into Warmahordes afterall? I can't remember how deep you got into it during your square base sabbatical. I know I went heavy during my own time away from throwing all the dice ...

- Salvage

I approve of "Life & 'Hams" and "square base sabbatical"

Nice to see folks coming back to it now that 8th has settled in. I still think I would've preferred 9th to hit this summer, but at least it makes it worth getting into 8th now that the new edition won't be coming till 2015 likely.

@RiTides: Closed lists definitely requires a better mental "library" of common builds to help you guess what you're seeing. I kind of like it, though it puts a lot more onus on the bearer to remember if an item is supposed to come into play. As to alternative actions- if I had it to do again, I could've blocked the ghouls up from exiting for a turn (or more) by jamming up on the building with the gyro. I could have delayed by sacrificing slayers, all the while hammering with artillery. Or I could have gone all in with both combat units rather than one at a time (and use slayers to keep the zombies off my flank).

@Hermit: I agree with your assessment and thanks for the kind words. Good news- got a game in with a 1000 point version of the cav list.

@Kiwidru: Much appreciated, amigo!

@Boss: I'm not too broken up about the loss. It was a valuable reminder of one of the more common vampire count builds, the value of threat identification, and it was also a good game to get back in the swing of dispel strategy. I have a 50 point Skorne force, and probably played about 20 games. I started because my favorite opponents in TX had switched. Up here there's decent crowds for both games, but I got a more welcoming vibe from the Warhammer crowd. Nothing against the PP group- they're just a little more focused on higher end play than bringing up the newer folks. The other issue was that it didn't really scratch my hobby itch as much. Terrain was never placed in a "cool" way, painted armies were a rarity (unassembled and proxies galore) and a lot of the armies were weird merc/faction mixes that made sense competitively but didn't really "look" like an army. I still quite enjoy the game, but almost purely on the strength of the game mechanics, with other aspects lagging/missing. I'll certainly continue to play casually.

Ah yes, you play Skorne too, I had forgotten we have that in common The lack of hobby was a big drive for me to take a break from WM/H, particularly with Skorne being such a bad-ugly bunch of models ... That and I was pretty bored with how my red dudes played (it worked but it was mostly the same each time), likewise going up against only Khador + Menoth week after week. Again, with good results, but you can only kill so many conquests before you starting missing Yahtzeehammer and death by a million dice

But enough derailment, looking forward to the psychadelic cav games. Or hell, more dwarfs even!

- Salvage

I'm in the exact same boat as you guys... which is why I'm back here, too

Will we be seeing a write-up (or maybe just a summary) of the 1000 point cav game?

 RiTides wrote:
I'm in the exact same boat as you guys... which is why I'm back here, too

Will we be seeing a write-up (or maybe just a summary) of the 1000 point cav game?

Definitely a summary. No photo report since so much of my army was unprimed. Hopefully put the list and game notes up later today.

RZ-

Great to see you back in the hobby and looking forward to more Bat reps.

You going to go to Waagh Paca at the end of the month?

Hinge

hinge wrote:

Great to see you back in the hobby and looking forward to more Bat reps.

You going to go to Waagh Paca at the end of the month?

Thanks! I won't be competing at 'Paca this year, but I'm going to see if I can't sneak up for Fri night or during the day on the weekend to see things in action. Looks like you convinced Hastings to head out West- will be looking forward to hearing all about it!



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Before I start- here's Brian's comments on the game:

DISTURBEDMACH1 wrote:
The game went very well for me, most notably because of good winds of magic rolls every turn, especially when it counted in those combat heavy turns. The biggest thing I took away was how well my game could be even losing all the chaff with no gain and some of which seems really expensive.

And my post game thoughts:

I had some huge gifts with the scenario dropping my army in a very charitable position, and jamming Brian's up behind the building. I could have more aggressively blocked up the building and made it very hard to get the ghouls out in any useful position, but...

The pivotal mistake in this game was misidentifying the vampire lord as a probably "blender" build. In open lists, this would have been spelled out for me, but even in closed lists, I had enough information that I could have made a pretty good guess as to the build. Knowing that, I needed to either commit to destroying the ghoul unit or commit to avoiding it.

If I was going to destroy it, I needed to:

Reprioritize dispel and shooting strategy around inflicting heavy casualties on the ghouls and then shutting down raising. If I save both scrolls, I can make sure no raising occurs in one round and get two full turns of shooting, and then make him commit to a charge without knowing what kind of magic support he would have. Curse of years was probably not that big a deal- the casualties would be unfortunate on any unit, but it would only ever result in one round of hits, since I'd certainly dispel in my own phase. Additionally, in this circumstance, the slayers hold up zombie blocks so that I can freely gang up on the ghouls with combat stacks.

If I was going to avoid it, I needed to:

Use the gyro to prevent the ghouls exiting the building in any useful position/formation. This meant not getting it so deep and subjected to dual screams in the first place, and certainly not trying that weird suicide charge. The ghouls were already jammed up on exit, and one more blocker would have made it very ugly/impossible. I feel pretty confident I could have at least only given up one combat block, bailed both characters to safe spots and won or tied by getting the rest of his chaff and units.

Review of the list:

Runesmith: Enough to ge tthe job done, a stout but not overwhelming magic defense. More might have been nice, but I feel like this was enough if I played smarter.

BSB: This is my third trial with the list and haven't used the MR of Challenge once (Nothing possible in Daemons and VC games, High Elf game had no charges he wasn't already going to do anyway). I think I'd like to bring back the preservation, furnace, and fire runes in exchange.

Dragonslayers: Fun! Maybe not the most cost effective, but fun. They had lots of stuff they *could* do this game, but didn't really do any of it. The one that made it into the wraiths and banshee whiffed up a storm. Still it was nice to have the magic weapons with all the ethereal running around.

Rangers: Solid, but didn't do a ton. One block of zombies and a spirit host doesn't get your points back, but I do like the unit.

Warriors: 30 GWs are enough to fight non-combat blocks but aren't beefy enough to go toe to toe with the heavy hitters. Just need to keep that in mind.

Hammerers: Just a great value unit, but might need to consider dropping the MR of Grungni. It really does have a lot of games where it doesn't do much at all, and it drives a very specific deployment of trying to protect the war machines.

War machines: I really wanna jettison these somehow. I might consider a super budget version without upgrades. (Ironic given that they essentially earned 75% of my VPs this game). Still, no matter how much I rune up a GT, I still end up with a 170 point war machine that will at the very least skip its turn 1/6 shots.

[b]Gyro:/b] Far too cavalier with this game. I still intend to include it as it gives me interesting decisions to make, rather than shoot and sit.

That's it, tip of the hat to Brian for persevering even as his chaff was folding like crazy and he got saddled with a rough deployment.

As for the list, I am reminded of some of the frustrations with the current Dwarf book- its just hard to dictate match-ups. If you try to make a unit that can fight with the best of them, you're prone to not seeing combat with that block at all. I'd like to bring the Dwarf lord back, but hopefully there'll be a whole new book of interesting options in short order.

 Red_Zeke wrote:

hinge wrote:

Great to see you back in the hobby and looking forward to more Bat reps.

You going to go to Waagh Paca at the end of the month?

Thanks! I won't be competing at 'Paca this year, but I'm going to see if I can't sneak up for Fri night or during the day on the weekend to see things in action. Looks like you convinced Hastings to head out West- will be looking forward to hearing all about it!



Well if you make it out there, say hello and lets tip a beer.

yep, should have some good mid west represantation at the Quake this year. Should be a good one.

Hinge