Fujin's Gaming Blog

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2011-11-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

I refer you here for future posts regarding my involvement in a new (for me) and totally exciting and consuming gaming system. Warhammer gets a stern telling off and some time on the naughty step while I take a break and refresh my interest with WARMACHINE (rawr!).

NiCon Round Three - Paul's Skaven

2011-06-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Having 'randomly' drawn a fellow Aucklander and long-time gaming buddy in round two I figured I was due for some fresh meat. Before we picked up our draw I joked about drawing Paul next. Ha...

For those who don't know him, Paul is a champion wargamer. Not in the sense that he wins every tournament he plays in, but that every game against him is a sparkling example of Warhammer at it's best. He is without doubt one of my most favourite opponents. Paul smashes Sportsmanship regularly and is usually up there with the Best Sports votes (he was voted third for Sports in this very event). We've also developed over time quite a healthy competitive edge to our games as we are semi-regular opponents. Most recently I took the big guy to task with my Gobbos in a practice game which you can read about below. Having thrown the game and gone down fighting (or at least beating a hasty retreat!) in our previous battle I was highly motivated to get the most out of this game. Revenge would be mine!!!

One of the epiphanies I had this weekend, was that I found that I draw a lot of the basis for my response as a player from how my opponent behaves. This was really driven home over the course of this game and the following game in round four. What I mean is that if my opponent is energetic, talkative, enthusiastic etc I tend to be more extraverted in my approach to the game. As a result our table drew no small amount of attention this round as Paul and I whooped and hollered, wept and wailed at the hilarious and sometimes downright weird events that took place. I'm sure I got a few sideways looks with the amount of noise I was making and I know not everyone enjoys people being this loud - f*** 'em. I had a blast in this game and I'll be damned if I'll let anyone else temper the expression of my enjoyment playing the game I love.

Enough gushing...

Paul was running a flithy (is there any other kind?!) Skaven list along the lines of:

Seer
Chieftain with Fellblade (this is thoroughly representative of how damn cool Paul is)
BSB
Warlock with Doomrocket (I know right? I was totally surprised too!)
Assassin
Abomb
Doomwheel
Monks and Furnace
Lots of Slaves including a BIG unit of 50ish
One BIG unit of Clanrats
Stormvermin with Flaming banner

As we discussed on the drive home it's far from optimised. As we deployed we talked out the changes he had made from our previous encounter - no PCBs, no Cannon, no second unit of Gutter Runners. Very interesting!

Here are the highlights:

The Abomb, well afraid of the Firey Ring of Abomb Death (Ruby Ring), wandered backwards and forwards like a wuss. For his troubles he took 3 wounds from said Ring (IF casting ftw) and Mangler to the face, dying before achieving anything. Good.

One massive casting of Skitterleap (argh!) sent the el-cheapo Warlock into a forest behind my lines. Fanatics fly everywhere (I hate when they do that!). Doomrocket carved up some Gobbos (meh). Warlock took a Pump Wagon to the face and was splattered but he'd done his job brilliantly.

One shot, one kill from the Rock Lobber on the Doomwheel. Ace. By the end of turn two the Rats had lost their two killy Rare choices.

L4 and 39-block were forced to engage 50 Slaves with Death Frenzy. Slaves Netted and combat pretty much drawn (or I passed a shaky break test). Next turn I flank Slaves with Spiders. I'm thinking - flank, charge, ranks, banner, nets, carnage. Nets fail, Spiders smashed, Gobbos break, flank shattered, Slaves awesome.

Furnace mob not overjoyed at the prospect of moving through a mysterious swamp to get at the juicy bits of my army. Swerve to apply pressure to L4s block (they haven't died to Slaves at this point), flanked by Hoppers. Hoppers fail to hold them up and break. Furnace forced to charge Gobbo bows and smashes them.

Trolls awaiting Furnace see it swerve to avoid swamp and advance. Charged by Slave block and beat them up but end up outside of general's leadership. Pass Stupid on Ld4! Yussss! Reform ready to get stuck into the winning combat. Another Slave block JUST in arc to charge their flank. Trolls charged. Trolls whiff. Trolls break. $%&^!

Stormvermin barreling down the left flank and chase of 50 Gobbos (but fail to catch them). Lined up on Gobbo generals/BSBs unit. Gobbo counter-charge all ready to go. Something forces a Pani check on the generals unit. Rerolled 9s. Fail once. Fail twice. %$^&(! Flee through Furnace (which has engaged Gobbo bows). Stormvermin go nuts on unit ready for counter attack and smash them.

Hard to read from the so called 'highlights' but I (once again) had Paul on the ropes for four turns and I (once again) failed miserably to see this through to the end of the 6th turn. Paul ended up with a decent win, scraping through on the back of dodgy failed Panic checks from me but what an awesome and hilarious game it was!

NiCon Round Two - Reid's Dark Elves

2011-06-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Round Two saw me drawn against my good mate and traveling buddy Mr Reid Pittams. A previous tournament winner (from a number of different events), games against Reid are always tense (in a good way) and extremely enjoyable. In fact, I don't think I've ever won a game against Reid and often find I walk away with a raft of valuable lessons for 'the next time'.

We were actually not thrilled to be playing each other in the second round at NiCon. Despite approaching the TO and asking to be swapped in the draw, and despite the fact that it was confirmed that the draw was (at this point...?) random, we were still required to play each other. Apparently it was just too difficult for us to "randomly" swap with a couple of players on the neighbouring table.

This immediately put our game on the back foot and the decision was made to rush this one through and look for the early lunch. Reid was pretty miffed about the inflexibility of the (random) draw, and I'd already decided this tournament was (from a competitive point-of-view) a complete whitewash so with the pressure of having to check into the hotel at some point, needing to get some lunch, and needing to eat that lunch away from the convention venue we literally threw models at the table and piled things forward for a nice easy (and hopefully decisive) scrum.

Not much else to write about here. Dawn Attack forced me inadvertently into a refused centre with the Trolls failing Stupidity for the whole game on Ld4. On the left the combined might of all my blocks and magic did for the Black Guard, Harpies and a small unit of Crossbowmen. On the right an ambitious Mangler and Pump Wagon ate up a big unit of Crossbows and a lucky randomly moving Fanatic slapped some Cold One Knights good and proper. In the middle my cowering Spider Riders faced down a Hydra, Witch Elves, big Spear block with L4 (Shadows),Master on Pegasus, and some Shades.

Highlight of the game was 5 Spider Riders flank-charging the Spear bus, killing off the L4 and breaking the entire unit (won combat by one) even though they were Steadfast.

I came out of this with a solid win and a bitter taste in my mouth. Having played a regular opponent and having traveled a decent journey to attend the event, I hoped for the privelege of playing more Tron locals in the coming rounds.

NiCon Round One - Everett's Warriors of Chaos

2011-06-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

Stoked to have drawn a local first up and I met the exceedingly enthusiastic (and frequently apologetic) young Everett wielding your A-type Warriors of Chaos netlist.

Tzeentch Lord and Tzeentch BSB - check
Tzeentch Chosen - check
Warshrine - check
Hellcannon - check
Khorne choppy death - check

The only real exception to the standard list of Chaos-awesome was a (big) unit of unmarked Warriors with the Banner of Rage. Nice.

Everett plonked the blocks down centrally with the Shrine up the backside of the Chosen and the Hellcannon nearby. The one weirdness in Ev's deployment was that each flank was occupied by a unit of Warhounds each accompanied by one of the two characters (both riding Discs).

I placed the bow units and Spiders on the flank with the warmachines on the right in a corner opposite the Tzeentch BSB and then units variously in the middle. A big (very big... and very dangerous) forest somewhat hampered my deployment options so I lurked and waited for the Chaos lads to come get some.

Highlights:

Ev won the first turn and up they jogged with the Sorcerer Lord being particularly agressive in the face of some stern Squig Hopper opposition. The magic phase was centred around a big casting of Pandaemonium and I reluctantly scrolled it straight away - fear of a massive Panic-induced turn one flight from the Hellcannon's opening salvo (at Ld4!) driving my reaction. As it was the Hellcannon scattered off the board.

With a useful reroll the Hoppers charged straight into the Lord on the first turn and initiated a 10 round combat of epic handbagging and airswinging. At least the little fecker could Flicker my skimishers and Manglers now - ha!

The two Manglers almost annihilated the Khorne block by themselves - 6 rather miffed disciples of the Blood God survived the battle being chased mercilessly by a Pump Wagon which was frustratingly blocked at every turn by the Warshrine. The Manglers, having had their fill of Warriors and their crunchy armour, randomly moved through the advancing Hellcannon which was looking to end the embarassing stalemate combat between the Hoppers and Sorcerer Lord. 11 str6 hits later settled that little meet-and-greet leaving the Hellcannon a shattered wreck. Not content with this however a single Mangler then moved through the Hopper combat, deftly missing the Lord himself, but carving apart 4 Hoppers. As it's final devastating act this same damn Mangler died a happy and gory death after the Sorcerer Lord finally broke the Hoppers, failed to restrain, and pursued into it. The Mangler exploded the Lord in it's death throes. Very entertaining end to that little drama :)

Having survived Panic checks, a misfiring Fanatic, a Pump Wagon that rolled 1" short, and a consistently misfiring Rock Lobber, the Tzeentch BSB was finally splattered by an enthusiastic Doom Diver. Good.

Ready and waiting to delay the Chosen, 5 Spider Riders decided at the exact wrong moment to pick a fight with a neighbouring block of Night Goblins. They definitely came off worse after suffering a mighty 4 casualties! The single remaining (and quite shocked) Spider Rider was then run over by the Warshrine.

In the middle a long charge by the Chosen initiated the mother of all Fanatic traps. 24 Chosen waded through a grand total of SIX Fanatics - only 4 Chosen survived to make combat with the block of 50 Goblins. That's not the worst of it though. After a "tactical" 6-dice casting of Pandaemonium the 4 Chosen beat the Goblins in combat, the Gobbos failed their rerolled Ld5 break check and buggered off! This Panicked the nearby L4s bunker of 39 Night Goblins off the board. Argh! Useless gits!!!

The Trolls, having received the charge of the Unmarked Banner of Rage Warriors, and now bereft of the General's leadership (curse you Pandaemonium!!!), lost by 1 and predictably broke on Ld3. Sigh.

So a rocking good game where I was up by stacks and only just ended up with a winning draw by 30VPs. I managed to collar the 4 Chosen in the end (thank goodness) but that one damn spell certainly took it's toll. It was the beginning of a magically uneven weekend for me and I'm sorry to say worse was yet to come.

The end of the first round also brought with it the unwelcome surprise that the tournament organiser was... less than organised. Having forgotten to place a VP table in the players pack (!!) we were asked to write down the final VP totals for each army the difference between them (I think... still not sure we even did this right...) so a draw could be calculated.

The sports scoring instructions were also over-written (again, I think they were... this was all extremely unclear) with the 0-3-5 system being spontaneously replaced by a 0 through to 5 score. This caused no end of ill feeling almost immediately I am sorry to say and I felt the pangs of dismay eat away at my soul at what this might mean for the rest of the event.

Ev was a lovely guy to play though and even after the massive swing I was looking forward to the next round.

Feeling a bit peckish but silly me - no food at this convention. Best harden up like the rest of the Hamiltron hard men.

Thoughts pre-NiCon

2011-06-02T15:01:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is going to be a helluva day. Looking at a 5.30am start. Picking up Reid, Vod, Paul, and Big Show (Chris) at 6.30am. Hitting the motorway scanning for breakfast options (BP stop on the Southern or somewhere in Huntly).

Briefing is at 8am (we won't be there for this I suspect); first round starts at 8.30am.

I've got a weird feeling going into this event. I've run a few tournaments before (only a few mind) and there has been (and continues to be) some odd stuff happening regarding the Warhammer tournament at NiCon. Here are a few examples:

COMP - there is none. Fine, happy with that. The TO is running a series of "strict" guidelines. Ok. Except one of my mates received an email claiming he would receive a comp score of "0" and the list was "on-target". Wha? I've broken one of the guidelines (no double Rares), but the TO is ok with this in the context of the rest of the list. Ok... But no email went out to the registered players advising them of any of this or any update in the thinking around the guidelines shifting. Or a reversioning of the players pack. I initially thought they were hard caps until I asked (and realised the TO considers caps different from strict guidelines). Preparing myself for some dummy spits and tantrums tomorrow as players find they have misread the intentions of the TO :(

SPORTS - worth 20% of your score. Ok, sounds good. But it's scored 0-3-5 per game for a max of 30pts (when the players pack says it will be scored out of 40pts). Wha?

TIMETABLE - Round one starts at 8.30am. Ok, fine with that. Each round is 2.5hrs long. Good good. But there are four rounds on Day One with 1/2 breaks except between the third and fourth rounds when you only have a 15 minute break. Not good. Combine this with...

FOOD - there is none. Seriously - there is no on-site catering. And beyond that - there is no eating in the venue. Ouch.

So here's the plan. Drive down. Play Round One. Shoot out and book into the motel. Fly back to the venue. Round Two. Race like mad to find some food off-site, eat, race back. Round Three. Barely catch our collective breath. Round Four. Find more food, back to motel, bourbon, collapse.

I think the TO is going to have to be a little flexible on the round times - especially as the convention has no catering whatsoever (madness).

Something else has caught my attention - numbers. 40k has hit it's max players (50). Warmachine has 27, Flames 25. Fantasy has become the poor cousin of tournaments that it was outnumbering in years previous. Worse - as far as I can tell from the list of registered players (although communication in this regard has been poor and inconsistent - no updates from the TO or any sense of promotion of the event and a drive to get the numbers up) Reid, Daryl Painter from the City Guard and myself are the only players traveling from outside of Hamilton for the Fantasy event. I hope I'm proved wrong in this but given how close Hamilton is (1.5hrs by mostly motorway) this is quite a big disappointment.

I guess the silver lining is that I am that much more likely to play someone I've never (or rarely) played before - always a bonus at a tournament these days.

NiCon test game - Blue Moons vs Purple Whiskers

2011-05-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Paul came over for a game. Easy to summarise - I had him on the ropes for 4 turns then a Storm Vermin rampage combined with a failed Look Out, Sir! killed off:

- both big units of Goblins
- my BSB
- a L1 Shaman
- my General
- quickly led to the Rock Lobber getting smashed and the Doom Diver failing a Panic check

After staring down the barrel of a big win I stole defeat from the jaws of victory and lost by around 300VPs (probs a 12-8 loss). Honestly - a bit miffed about the turnaround. Highlights/lowlights:

- Doomwheel falls an inch short of charging a Pump Wagon bottom of turn one. Str4 shooting from Doomwheel lightning - only one wound from the 3 hits (each doing D6 wounds!). Lucky LUCKY Pump Wagon!

- Squig Hoppers vs Doomwheel (on full wounds). Drew combat in the first round (Squigs charging), Squigs killed it off in the second with the Boss and 2 survivors remaining. Extremely close run thing (coming down to 6s to wound from Goblins and 4s to save on Wheel)! Squigs retreated to the back my zone and ran out the clock.

- PCBs took a Pump Wagon to the face, Pump Wagon smashed in return, one PCB survived (curses!). He retreated to the back of Paul's zone and ran out the clock despite my best efforts to kill the little bastard. 100+VPs going wanting thanks to a consistently (and wildly) inaccurate Doom Diver and my magic missile being shut down in the magic phase (or failing to cast).

- Plague Priest (on Furnace) cast Vermintide. IF/miscast. Spell killed off two Fanatics and a bunch of Gobbos from two different blocks. Miscast result killed off 15 Plaguemonks! Carnage. Tried and tried and TRIED to kill off the rest of the Monks - 2 left at the end of the game with an immobile Furnace (not enough rats to push it around). Curses!!! Two models away from over 200VPs!!!

- Epic fail from the Gutter Runners trying to kill the Manglers. One Mangler fires through some Runners (deletes them) and Monks (didn't kill enough - poor rolls - we played that it didn't hit the Furnace too or randomise hits onto it - weren't sure about how this worked - any thoughts?), randomly moves back through Stormvermin and Slaves (kills a few), rides out the game. Other one falls short of a move against other Slaves (who have been charged by both Pump Wagons). Decides to wander back to hit A-Bomb. Rolls short but fortuitously blocks a charge from a big Clanrat unit (with Grey Seer) into a Gobbo unit. Clanrats charge anyway. Swathes of Clanrats pulped by Mangler (crica 12 dead rats?). Seer Skitterleaps out of the combat because he sees what's coming - Clanrats beaten but escape and rally.

- Abomb wanders around waiting for Manglers to die. Sucks down 3 wounds from Fireball ring and some more from shooting and running through a Fanatic (which should have killed him but I rolled suckage). Wades into combat with one wound left against General/BSBs unit. One impact hit. Rolls up result to direct 12 attacks at BSB (who only has a 5+ armour save!). Only gets through ONE wound (God bless those Nets!). BSB kills off the Abomb with a swift riposte. Paul's face nearly falls off. Massive disrespect for the ABomb. Massive props for weedy Goblin BSB.

- Warbanner Stormvermin against General's unit. IF Death Frenzy goes off. 10 Gobbos die. Epic fail on return attacks although my general does kills the Rat BSB with a mighty 4 hits/4 wounds. Down by big numbers. Fail to hold and already lost my BSB to a Scorch (and aforementioned failed Look Out, Sir! taking his second wounds after he survived the Abomination). Break. Centre demolished. Spirit crushed. Game over.

Devastated at the end after some sterling play in the 1st half and a very sorry 2nd half/late game. Consistently having problems with the end-game turns. Unlucky scatters for most of the game when the shots needed to count (cleaning out Monks/surviving PCB, chasing down fleeing Clanrats) and couldn't clean up the stragglers. Paul dialled up 3 magic phase where he had 10-11 power dice and I maybe channelled 3 dispel dice/power dice in the whole game and only had one big magic phase (the same one where I'd lost my L4 to a poor Animosity roll - nice). Struggling with the concept of managing to play 4 games in one day at NiCon (day 1 - 8.30am start, circa 7.30pm finish?). Fingers-crossed I see a heap of WoC armies (lol) but a rematch against Paul would be pretty cool now that he knows the power of the mighty Pump Wagons!

Paul played well and generally did the right thing but there were so many threats that when something didn't do it's job (WLC misfire, Gutter Runners with poison slings needing 7s to hit Manglers so couldn't double-tap for Poison goodness, Abomb taking more wounds than anticipated from IF Fireball Ring then epic failing to kill Gobbo BSB, Doomwheel fail against Pump Wagon) he was on the back foot. I think his magic was brilliant and definitely won him the game with that big casting of Death Frenzy and the obliteration of my centre as well as Scorches and Crack's Call against Trolls and blocks. Damn that Death Frenzy!

NiCon Goblins and thoughts...

2011-05-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

2400pts

141 - Goblin Warboss - Armour of Silvered Steel, Dawnstone, Great Weapon

Built to (hopefully) survive and primarily to dole out Ld9 with the BSB. He is able to hope to a unit that needs some choppy help if necessary, but ideally he's cheering from the back row. No ward save means he's a hot target for Killing Blow.

250 - Goblin Great Shaman - Level 4 upgrade, Talisman of Preservation, Earthing Rod

NOT a Night Goblin Shaman (1 in 6 chance of Mushroom induced spell failure!). I'm having a hit-and-miss time getting the most out of the Little Waagh! spell lore but by and large it's a quality deck.

79 - Goblin Big Boss - Battle Standard (Standard of Discipline), Light Armour, Shield

The magical standard is great but I tend to have to worry about him getting into trouble (he's a very soft target). Having said that, in one game he not only survived 12 attacks from a Hellpit Abomination but went on to take its last wound (Nets being awsomely synergistic in this case!).

80 - Night Goblin Big Boss - Spear, Light Armour, Charmed Shield, Giant Cave Squig

This guy is awesome fun and really effective (and would be more effective if I remembered his Stomp attack!). Obvious synergy with the Squig Hoppers but I need to investigate how the rules work if I want to charge him out of his unit.

75 - Night Goblin Shaman - Dispel Scroll

Ususally gets the default spell or the number 6 spell (suicide casting!) and good for a Channelling roll.

90 - Night Goblin Shaman - Staff of Channelling, Ruby Ring of Ruin

The Ring is wicked handy, the Staff is often useful.

265 - 50 Night Goblins - Standard, Musician, Netters, 2 Fanatics

232 - 39 Night Goblins - Standard, Musician, Netters, 2 Fanatics

124 - 23 Night Goblins - Champion, Standard, Musician, 1 Fanatic

85 - 20 Night Goblins - Bows, 1 Fanatic

85 - 20 Night Goblins - Bows, 1 Fanatic

An array of Gobbo blocks with the ever random Fanatics. The crazy little ball-swingers are a bit better now (especially if you have a knack for rolling averages) and combined with Netters can result in some nasty surprises for my opponents. Of course, they're still just Goblins, and without a decent hammer I've often found I can happily pin a unit against a massive Steadfast block but sit there for the whole game getting steadily butchered without any useful rebuttal.

70 - 5 Spider Riders - Bows

70 - 5 Spider Riders - Bows

I'm only persevering with these guys (over the superior - and cheaper! - Wolf Riders) because I have the models available (and don't have Wolf Riders). They can be useful though and I'm just waiting for a Spider-driven bowshot to take the last wound from something big and nasty :)

210 - 6 Trolls

Net-research indicates Trolls are best used either 4-strong running in 2x2 formation or going all out with 8-10 Trolls in one big feck off unit. I only have 6 :)

120 - 10 Squig Hoppers

Consistently inconsistent performers - combined with magic hexes and buffs they can be all sorts of awesome but I've still yet to sync a magic phase just right to get the combinations I'm looking for. Don't suffer from Animosity now though and can't be Stomped - current kills include a Steg and a Doomwheel. Hoping they will be underestimated.

80 - Doom Diver

85 - Rock Lobber

A couple of classics with an improved correcting move from the mad Diver.

60 - Pump Wagon - Spiky Roller

60 - Pump Wagon - Spiky Roller

Pure awesome with str5 impact hits and no charge reactions allowed thanks to Random Movement. Now being able to roll 3D6 for boosted movement they are very useful.

65 - Mangler Squig

65 - Mangler Squig

Runners-up for the most awesome/most useless unit in the army. Die like that (imagine me clicking my fingers) to most shooting (soft cover rule helps a bit but not enough) - an extra wound would have helped a lot (given they are two Giant Squigs chained together 3 wounds is a little disappointing). Opponents have to do something about them though and even if it means throwing Dogs or Wolves or Harpies at them they are almost earning their points back + taking a unit out of the game.

15 deployments (including warmachines and characters)

Fortitude of SIX

Lords - 16%

Heroes - 14%

Core - 39%

Special - 14%

Rare - 17%

Blog-o-mancy!!!

2011-05-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cautiously resurrect this blog and see how I go. Been spending a lot (a LOT) of time blog-surfing and really enjoying the reading time and absorbing player perspectives on various interesting facets of Warhammer and for the sake of my own reflection I think it's time I tried this blog thing again. Like a freshly built Zombie it might very well crumble without achieving bugger all, but in the meantime a couple of people might find it amusing (if not a little apathetic and uneconomical).

So much has happened recently in Warhammer both the game system and army books and for me personally the game has shifted considerably. After various extreme and highly polarised reactions to the release of 8th edition Warhammer the general international community appears to have settled down considerably. I'm heartened by the response of the local community with fairly steady numbers and attendance at tournaments and nothing like the drastic drop-off in numbers experienced during 'The Sundering' in Australia.

The community is now awaiting the release of the third new army book for 8th edition - O&Gs and Tomb Kings having now been released and the current Net-vibe indicating they are 'balanced' (don't get me started on the subjectivity of that word!), reasonably on-par with each other, and there has been some relief that the startling concept of drastically reducing magic items in army books (starting with O&Gs) has at least been followed-through by the TK release (albeit with a vast increase in the actual usefulness of the magic items in the TK book vs the O&G book).

On a personal level I am enjoying 8th edition immensely as a 'Friday night with mates, beer and pretzels' affair while having some difficulty with the game at a tournament level. This is not to say I'm not enjoying tournament games (I most certainly am!) but it still feels to me like a system that is best when played against like-minded peers who are willingly driving what is acceptable on the table as opposed to having restriction and caps forced upon them. Clearly the second option is the sensible and reasonable one as far as a generic tournament format goes, but the best and most exciting games so far for me have been the casual games against mates. Every game has a 'weird and wonderful moment' (and I don't mean 6-dice casting of Dwellers ending the game prematurely) and builds an exciting story and narrative. 7th edition is for me a very distant memory and I feel lucky to not have the weight of knowledge that participation in previous editions of Warhammer would influence and impact my expectations on where the game is at now. Is it less tactical? I'm really not sure - but I'm finding it more enjoyable and FUN.

I'm still toying with Vampire Counts but most recently an all-Goblin army has been consuming my painting time and imagination. This army was the result of two very fortunate conversations with gamers who were looking to off-load their respective Greenskin collections and I essentially ended up with a HUGE Goblin force (3000pts+) for easily less than $150. I'm now neck-deep in a repainting frenzy and, while I'm sure I'll eventually get sick of the colour green, am finding the little blighters an absolute joy to colour in. The battlefield successes and fortunes of the Blue Moon Night Goblins and their dubious allies Spider-riding Forest Goblin allies has to this point been somewhat circumspect but despite the fact that decent wins are a rare occurence they are enormous fun to play with (and lose with!). Hard to see how this has not had an effect on my adjusted attitude to tournament play...

I've probably had 7 games or so with the 8th edition (O&)Gs now and will post up my list for the next tournament on the calendar (NiCon) and some thoughts about how it's been going (and goes at the tournament).

FluffyCon 2011 - Best get in now...

2010-10-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

The players pack has been out for almost a couple of weeks. There are 40 spaces available at the tournament. Already I've been in close contact (i.e have received emails from) 26 players indicating they will be coming and have or are registering on the Battlecry website.

Of those 26 player I've seen draft lists from 14, signifying to me how seriously they are taking their entry and wanting to get in early and have time to communicate with me about appropriate list design.

40 available spaces, 26 players already keen. 4 months out from the event.

If you're hanging around and waiting to see how this pans out... I reckon get in now before you miss out.

Cheers.

FluffyCon 2011 - Players Pack

2010-10-10T00:38:00.001-07:00

The players pack (and sample army lists) have gone out to all the players on my email database. Given this database now includes over 100 players and there is a 40 player limit at FluffyCon (as carefully and clearly expressed in the enail) I hoped to get an immediate reaction.

Far out - I'm not disappointed.

With the pack going out last night I've already had 10 positive (i.e. "Sign me up - I'm coming!") responses, including one from a player who heard about FluffyCon from a friend! Excellent!

All the feedback and communication so far has been extremely encouraging - not just players congratulating and thanking me for the pack but also sending through some extremely neat and highly appropriate lists.

I must admit I was (somewhat) apprehensive about the reaction from the community. I'm really asking players to step out at this tournament and really try hard to get into the spirit of the event. Early evidence suggests to me this is potentially going to be far more successful than I had initially hoped. List feedback so far has been constructive, quick and efficient and the players are taking my advice on-board readily. Kudos to the players I've already had the pleasure of having an email conversation with - I'm extremely encouraged by your approach to this event. The lists so far are fluffy and AWESOME! Magic items are practically non-existent, full commands are flourishing and diversity within lists is huge... looks like the sample lists idea is paying off.

First time using Orcs and Goblins

2010-10-04T17:18:00.000-07:00

I played my good mate Mark McCall yesterday - Dwarfs (Mark) vs O&Gs (Me)

Dave's Orcs and Goblins

Black Orc Warboss with Shagga's and Armour of Destiny
L4 Orc Shaman - Talisman of Preservation
Black Orc Boss - BSB, Heavy Armour, Enchanted Shield, Dawnstone
Black Orc Boss - Ironcurse Icon, Heavy Armour, Potion of Toughness, Great Axe

40 Night Goblins - Netters, Full Command, 2 Fanatics
25 Orcs - Full Command
25 Orcs - Full Command
15 Arrer Boyz - Full Command
5 Wolf Riders
5 Wolf Riders
Goblin Chariot
Orc Chariot
Orc Chariot
6 Trolls
Rocklobber
2 Spear Chukkas
Giant

Mark's Stunties

Dwarf Lord - Shieldbearers, Dictionary (a bunch of runes) that gave him 5 attacks and some other stuff that didn't come up (translation: he didn't die)
Thane - BSB, 1+ save, flaming attacks
Runesmith - 2 Spellbreaking Rune (Dispel Scrolls)
Master Engineer

Bolt Thrower - extra strength
Bolt Thrower - extra strength, flaming
20 Thunderers (handguns) - full command
20 Quarellers (crossbows) - full command
20 Slayers - full command
20 Longbeards - full command, immune to fear/terror banner
20 Hammerers - full command, great weapons, +1 combat res banner

Mark deployed the combat units in the centre and a shooting blocks on either flank. The fast stuff, Giant (oh the Giant...) and Trolls were whittled down over three turns and never made combat. My shooting went into the Slayers and I managed to get through them in a couple of rounds with the General and his mates when we hit combat. I stupidly (after rolling a 6 for Animosity followed by another 6 TWICE) charged the Goblins into the Hammerers/Lord prematurely (should have let them charge me). Held out on Steadfast for a couple of turns and when I broke the Hammerers pursued and were handed a flank charge on my generals unit which had unwisely decided not to reform (having just finished with the Slayers) in anticipation of this. Dead Orcs/Gobbos all over the place, broken, run down, ashamed at my lack of intelligence. Realised with horror that, in using Orcs and Goblins, I was now playing like an Orc! In the same turn my other unit with Shaman and Black Orc Hero ran through the Longbeards/Dwarf BSB. Swings and roundabouts time boys and girls.

Chased the Runesmith off the board and magic got me the Master Engineer (squish). Smashed a Bolt Thrower in combat and the other one with a shot from the Rocklobber. The Arrer Boyz deployed in a building, failed Animosity twice on a 1, threw some near-awesome shooting into the Hammerers (killed 3 with 10 shots! Amazing!), then failed Animosity again,left the building and ended up charging the Hammerers and getting whipped.

A win to Mark in the end by about 300VPs. Good bash though - I reckon O&Gs are perfect for the Beerhammer that is 8th edition. We had a blast!

Things I learnt in summary:

- units of 20 Dwarfs are tough, doesn't matter whether they have. The 20 Thunderers saw off the Chariots and the buggers fled in the last turn, surviving under half strength
- two Hammerers survived the game. Starting to think twice about the lack of 1/2 strength and not gaining points for fleeing enemy units at the end of the game (Thunderers, Arrer Boyz were both fleeing at the end)
- Shagga's is awesome when it gives your character 6 str7 attacks
- Trolls are awesome. But even Trolls can't face down 20 Thunderers and two magical Bolt Throwers
- don't even risk Khemrian Quicksand. Easiest way to lose a Giant I've ever seen :(
- Fanatics are good fun. Even when they throw themselves into reverse and careen through your own troops
- I understand a bit more how people feel about Animosity
- I need to play with the army more to remember the toys I've given it (Preservation, Nets!!) and the instrinsic abilities (Choppas, Waagh! - good grief I completely forgot about it... Actually as I write this I realise Mark completely forgot Dwarfs have Hatred against Greenskins!!! Argh!)
- my goodness but Spear Chukkas suck
- str3 Stonethrowers are average. Took a toll (about 5 Slayers, Bolt Thrower... the rest of the time it scattered unfortunately) but nowhere near as much as it would have in 7th with higher strength. I can see multiple stonethrowers being more of a threat. Then again, I was shooting at Dwarfs :/

Keen to try the Greenies again - pretty hilarious if you can learn to laugh at your own crappy rolling and extremely mediocre troops screwing you with random movement :)

FluffyCon 2011 - What's Hot?

2010-09-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

That is indeed the question! In order to establish this I've emailed about 12 or so players in the community to gather some opinions. Hopefully this removes some of the absolute bias that I'm bringing to building the red flag list (i.e. it doesn't just become stuff that Dave hates) but rather is built on trends I can see in the responses of my fellow gamers.

With the relative newness of 8th edition this could potentially have been a difficult task but most of the obvious answers aren't rocket science. I'm looking for the 'hidden' awesomeness that players have experienced themselves either facing the or using them themselves.

Feedback is coming in thick and fast and I'm already seeing consistencies in the responses. Will post these up next week when I've got most of the replies in.

FluffyCon 2011 - Getting Closer

2010-09-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

Almost have a finished tournament pack. Starting to shape up like this:

Battle - 120pts
Composition 30pts
Painting - 20pts
Sportsmanship - 30pts

Battle - 120pts

6 rounds with the standard 20 points on offer for each round. Will be using most of the scenarios from the rulebook (not the length-wise one) with a couple of changes. Battleline (twice in rounds 3 and 6), Meeting Engagement, Dawn Attack, Blood and Glory, Watchtower...

Watchtower will become "King of the Hill" where the building is replaced by a terrain piece (hill or equivalent) in the centre worth a sizeable VP bonus to whoever is holding it at the end.

Looking at additional mission options tying bonuses to fulfilling certain other objectives each round. Things like Recon (getting into the enemy deployment zone), Tall Poppy Syndrome(bonus points for killing off enemy Special or Rare choices), Giantslayers (killing a Monster or Large Target - I don't expect many to turn up though).

Composition - 30pts

This needs to be substantial enough to be worthwhile aiming for but not so substantial or implemented in such a way that someone who gets consistently poor battle points results somehow pogos up the table to podium. Here's what I'm going for:

- each army scored on a sliding scale 0-5 by me
- '0' is the baseline equivalent of "normal tournament soft"
- your comp score compared to your opponents and this differential artificially added into the draw calculcation
- your comp score at the end of the event truly added to your final score to determine the final rankings

Example One - Tony gets a score of '0', Dave gets a score of '5'. Dave plays Tony and gets hammered 19-1 (obviously nothing to do with player skill and everything to do with the power difference between their armies!). This gets Tony 19 points and Dave 1 point but when it comes to calculating the draw for the next round Tony will still get 19 points, but Dave will get 6 points (1 for the battle itself + 5 for the difference between their two comp scores)

Example Two - Next round Dave (comp score 5) plays Nick (comp score 4). Dave manages a win (glory hallelujah!) and the result is 12-8. Nick carries his 8 points into the next round, Dave gets the 12 + a bonus 1 for the different in their comp scores.

This is a bit like what I encountered at DogCon earlier this year and it seemed to work out ok there.

At the end of the event each player gets their comp score added into their final score, multiplied by 6 for the games they have played (giving a total comp score out of 30). So Dave, with his awesome comp score of 5, gets an extra 30pts. Tony, with his lacklustre comp score of 0, gets no extra points.

This pushes Dave up the ladder (quite a bit! - remember though that most players will get a reasonable comp score and very few players are likely to get 5/5 for comp!) BUT the important thing is that Dave hasn't necessarily been able to lurk on the lower tables for the whole event playing bunnies - his comp score has forced him up the tables artificially to play some of the tougher armies and opponents.

At least I think it works! :/

With the comp system including a description of the above and a list of army red flags as well as a strong brief about the nature of the event and much open consultation from me I'm happy with how this looks. Also, at 15% comp it will add in enough of a boost to make a difference without (hopefully) adding in so much of a boost that someone can come from absolutely nowhere and nab first place!

I realise many players are happy (happier?) with hard caps so they know exactly how hard they can go before getting slapped. Fair enough but I'd like the choices and variety to remain open albeit with some personal guidance from me as TO.

Painting - 20pts

Scoring either 0/5/10/15/20 for no painting/some painting/half painted/mostly painted/fully painted. Most players will score either 15 or 20pts.

Sportsmanship - 30pts

5pts for each round. The standard Sports questions and tick boxes.

Next on the list - firming up those red flag/"what's hot" lists for each army. This will be based on what the current tournament environment demonstrates in terms of the most powerful/common choices for each race. Some of these will be easy (Hellpit Abomination/Hydra/Rumination/Cupped Hands for example), some not so much as they are a bit more situational.

Hoping to get some sample lists (of my own devising) up here soon.

FluffyCon 2011 - Restrictions?

2010-09-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

By their very nature gamers are devious little animals, many of whom will seek any potential advantage they can over their opponents by pushing the absolute boundaries of acceptability when it comes to building a tournament list. It's an almost recognised art form - how hard to push without getting an equivalent veto. I don't much like this attitude but it's an ingrained part of tournament gaming and looks like something we have to live with. I think my problem with it is that it reflects the general distrust of humanity - that if I don't tool up I won't be competitive with all the raving cheese-mongers and I can't trust the TO to provide a platform of well-intentioned moderation to ensure all lists will be on an even playing field.

So that got me thinking about FluffyCon and the tournament system I'll need to implement to attempt even a modicum of appropriateness from the lists that will be submitted.

In the past Nick has presented a pack with a long list of hard caps - 'x' amounts of shooting, magic, movement types, unit types, magic items etc - that basically put a dampener on the worst excesses of your average tournament player. So for example, everyone knows there is no chances of them seeing a Dragon or Greater Daemon at FluffyCon. Ergo the Empire players feel less inclined to field 2 Great Cannons (which there is probably a hard cap on anyway). In essence I feel that this worked very well - everyone was clear on what they wouldn't see. On the flip side it meant that you could also build right to the edge of acceptability and quite naturally this is where some players went straight away.

It was also difficult to see where the inspiration was for trying something really out of the box - taking items from your army book that were never used in tournament games, units that were extremely sub-optimal etc and trying to make them work on the pitch.

My thoughts at the moment are a REALLY strong opening statement about the unique nature of the event. Most tournaments preface their players packs with a blurb about having a good time and playing nicely with an appropriate list - I'm looking at spelling out what I expect more finely. The wording isn't exact yet but I'm thinking:

" Welcome to FluffyCon! This tournament is unique on the tournament calendar and should be recognised for promoting the use of armies and list builds that are much much softer than the standard tournamant list. Of all the events you could attend this year - this is the one to be trying something really different. Get far away from the net-listed omptimisation of your units and characters, forget the the equipment and items you always see from the army/race in question - take things we NEVER see in a tournament army! Units that are supposedly terrible in this edition of Warhammer. Magic items you normally ignore when looking for the most competitive selections. Get into the spirit of the tournament itself - celebrating our wonderful game with strategic thinking and tactical brilliance with clever play instead of relying upon scary toys/monsters/magic/shooting. It's time to get soft. It's time to tone it down. It's time to get fluffy!"

Or words to that effect.

Next up would be a list of red flags or "what's hot" both generically and for each army race. Basically the same old boring predictable things you always see in tournaments. Level 4s with "those" Lores of Magic, template death, monsters like the Hydra, Abomination, and Ancient Stegadons. The usually toys and kit that everyone always takes. The reason why you aren't the least bit surprised to be facing a Lizardman army across the table in a virtual mirror-match :)

For each race I'll be asking players who specialise and are well-known for their use of those races in tournaments to share the best their lists can offer. This might be something like (but not necessarily limited to):

Skaven - Doomrocket, Abomination, Grey Seer, Brass Orb, Furnace, double Gutter Runners, lots of templates et al.

Lizards - Slaan, Rumination/bulk powers, Salamanders, double Saurus with spears, a BSB!

Vampires - big magic, Helm, not just Ghouls in Core, Barrows Grave Guard, Coach.

And other stuff besides. Obviously the idea here is to encourage players into getting stuck into the rarely seen units and options, try something different, maybe surprise themselves (and each other!) with some hitherto "inefficient/sub-optimal" units.

FluffyCon 2011

2010-09-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

I'm the TO for FluffyCon next year. This is a Warhammer tournament instituted by the Venerable Dreadnaught himself Mr Nick Buckby and run at the annual Battlecry convention at the ASB Stadium by the AMERICA club in February.

FluffyCon is unique. I think many tournaments offer something interesting and unique for their players but FluffyCon goes a step further. I was it think a response to what was at the time perceived as a 'hardening' of the attitudes (and armies) of many Warhammer players in our community. At FoB '08 (gosh, that seems like such a long time ago...) as a naive new TO I was inundated with some seriously nuts armies and, not knowing much better, a lot of horrible stuff turned up. This was the heady days of Vod's Terror-bomb Keeper Daemons, of Nurgle Daemon hordes led by Great Unclean Ones... and frankly of Daemons in general. I think in a field of 38 playes we have something like 8 Greater Daemons and 7 Dragons. I smashed Philfy's Star Dragon horror 20-0 our first ADC vs Ji-Dave grudge match. Scary times.

Anyway, Nick battled his way through that lot - coming across me in Round Five wielding the old Lizards supplied by Pommy Dave - with his very moderate Wood Elf list. Up to this point I didn't actually know Nick well at all (just one of those mysterious Warhammer veterans the aspiring noobs looks up to with a mixture of awe and fear I guess) but that game basically gave me a new lease on life in Warhammer. Looking back now it was an incredibly fortunate meeting! Through Nick I now have many great friends in the hobby whom I play, paint and converse with on a regular basis - fine players, but also just straight up great guys who love their hobby and the game and want to see the best of it evidenced in the community in general. Long-term players who have the experience and foresight to make calculated calls on where things are at. A big shout out to Reid, Mark, Skellie, Paulie, Paul and Big Nick himself - you guys are all awesome.

But enough of the Oscar speech... where was I?...

Oh yeah... so Nick waded through a bunch of crap at FoB and decided he didn't much like where things were at. So he started FluffyCon - an opportunity for players to 'tone it down' and go back to the roots of the game - theoretically solid strategic thinking and tactical play not centered around hideous combinations of toys and big scary feck off monstery badness.

Two years later Nick had done his dash and was looking for a break - enter yours truly; big FluffyCon fan, keen to put my stamp on the event. Then enter 8th edition.

Balls.

Quick post on GuardCon - Day Two

2010-09-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

On with the show...

Round Four - Brian Leigh - Vampire Counts (oh joy)

Ok... this again.

I'll go over Brian's list a bit later in a series of separate posts but suffice to say a L4 with Helm, Barrows Grave Guard with Great Weapons, Black Knight bus with Dreadknight Vampire, 2 big Skellie units, Black Coach (groan), Varghulf. A tidy litte package and I knew exactly what I was in for.

Brian was canny enough to run the Lord with Helm solo so I couldn't tie his unit doen with Bats in order to demolish what I wanted so I went for Plan B when it comes to facing the Helm - hit so much stuff that he can't help them all. I hit the Grave Guard first with the Skellie train and General and the Varghulf. As the GG were under influence of the Helm and would have it for at least one round before I could tie down everything else this was the best choice - the Varghulf's Hatred and Thunderstomp and the Lord's Hatred and Red Fury was still going to buy me some casualties. The plan kind of worked except in Brian's turn the Varghulf was flanked and killed by pathetic Skeletons. Sad face! However with both units of Bats stopping the Black Knights from achieving anything useful (incredibly Brian DIDN'T roll up Van Hel's!) I was able to chop through the GG while the Skellies, Wraiths, Zombies, Coach and BSB set to work on the two Skeleton units. My Grave Guard had the unenviable job of dying slowly to hold up his Coach and Varghulf. I managed to collect the Varghulf by the end of the game but the Coach finished chewing through the GG.

At the end of the game Brian had his Coach and General and I'd managed a decent win.

14-6 win.

Round Five - Daryl Painter - Dwarfs

Argh, stunties. Daryl had a nails list with magical artillery, Anvil, double miners, Longbeards and Warriors (Great Weapons naturally) and a potentially hideously annoying Daemonslayer. This scenario was Watchtower and though I won the roll to occupy it I chose not to, instead bunkering the boss and Wight Kings in the Grave Guard and running them into it first (thanks to typical Stunty slowness). That at least guaranteed me the bonus 400VPs and kept the Lord, characters and Grave Guard alive and well.

This left the rest of my unfortate host to suck down rear-charges from the Miners. Daryl had some bad luck with a couple of misfires that saved my bacon early on and by the end of the battle I'd collected an Organ Gun and Grudgethrower, both units of Miners and a stray Engineer for the loss of the little Skellie unit, Zombies, Varghulf and Bats.

12-8 win.

Round Six - Thomas Van Roekel - Lizardmen

"Ah, the much feared Lizardmen with Lore of Life Slann and bag of dirty tricks", I thought. "Surely they aren't as bad as all that?"

Top of turn two, Dwellers Below, Vampire Lord rolls a 6. Dead. Game.

Huh.

Gee, it's not until you've suffered this kind of thing yourself that you realise what it does to the game. To put it lightly it's a touch damaging to Vampires to lose their General in that way :)

With 5 turns to crumble and having a pretty good idea about how that would go I called the game. I'm not much into calling games and handing my opponent an auto 20-0 but this was going to be clear but and dammit I wanted to play some Warhammer! So we pretended he hadn't died and played on so we could have a game but Thomas kept the 20 points for the sake of the tournament.

And I smashed him. Gutted.

Actually I didn't smash him because he called the game in turn 5 with just a Saurus block and two Salamanders left having lost his other Saurus block with Scar-Vet, 2 units of Skinks, baby Steg, Ancient Steg... and Slann.

Gosh Warhammer is a funny old thing... :(

In the washup I cam in 11th. As always it's interesting to see the final spread of points. Looking back and seeing where you could have made up the points etc and trying to remember to carry those lessons through into future game and events is a big part of tournament gaming as far as I'm concerned. In this case:

- I was 18 points or so off first place (that pseudo 17-3-ish win over Thomas when we played through would have placed me second)
- I placed 11th despite losing two games 20-0
- If I'd looked at Jack's army in Round Two and considered the likelihood of Killing Blow going off on my boss (ok, I realised he was likely to die but was interested to see what could be accompnlished) I could have hidden at the back of the board and lost 8-12 or something
- If my Lord hadn't died to Dwellers in the last round :)

Those things considered I'm pretty happy and confident things could have gone a lot better. In fact I could have made the podium even if I'd still lost to Jack 20-0. That's pretty neat.

Experiencing the Dwellers catastrophe I think is important for where I go to from here with Warhammer and what I want to be involved in tournament-wise in the future. As a TO I'm not interested in altering the actual mechanics of the game, but I think this can't help but shape my views on Warhammer as a tournament.

And with FluffyCon coming up next February and with me at the helm it's deinitely an awful lot of food for thought!

Quick post on GuardCon - Day One

2010-09-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Might get round to a more comprehensive breakdown of these games but for now...

ROUND ONE - Old Man Kitson - Wood Elves

Antony is the player I credit with getting me involved in Warhammer about 3 years ago and we have a somewhat sustained history on the tournament battlefield. He's a clever chap, plays intelligently, and is usually keen to dish out the trash talk which I quite like. Kiwis seems to take themselves very seriously when it comes to Warhammer but Ant is happy to BS his way through grudge threads in the lead up to an event.

This grudge was the result of an earlier battle we had in the last round of Equinox this year (a tournament instituted by Phil Wu and run at/by him and the City Guard club). In that game my filthy Vod-designed Daemon list brutally steamrollered his Brettonians. Thanks to Antony generously rolling over 16-4 and Pete Dunn drawing a Nurgle wall of blech I won that particular event. Nice to win but far from my most glorious moment given the dirt I was throwing down on the table. Anyways... Ant decided at the start of the game to lay down a challenge - the winner could decide the army that the loser would use at the next tournament. So I won, 8th edition was released, and Wood Elves suddenly pretty much uber-sucked. So Wood Elves it was.

Antony followed this up by grudging me for GuardCon :)

Frankly going into this event I wanted two things - to smash Ant (again) and play 5 more games where I could learn more about 8th by playing different armies and players. So far, as I write this today, I'm sure I've done at least one of these things :)

Ant had a neat Wood Elf list (I'll post it later) and played well but the smashy VC Lord, constant Van Hel's casting from the Necro and my deadset stunning good looks did for him and he crashed and burned 14-6. Not quite the result I was hoping for (looking for a 15-5 or 16-4) but good enough to put him in his place (again!).

Big 8th edition learning curve - the banner giving Flaming attacks does not apply to magic weapons! So my str7 Vampire in the Skeleton unit with Banner of Hellfire was all for nought. Read the rules for Flaming if you don't believe me - great spot Ant. Pity it didn't help you :(

ROUND TWO - Jack Dunn - Dark Elves

Jack was at this stage the only Dunn I hadn't already played but I'd played the Darkies run by his brother Tom at FluffyCon earlier this year. Jack's a VERY smart guy (literally - he's an academic mega-brain) and a lovely chap to boot.

Unfortunately the game was a matchup whitewash. Odd really as VCs vs Dark Elves is usually a good pick for the VCs. This list was nails though and I realised quickly that Executioners + Black Guard + Hydra + double Shades + L4 and L2 was going to be a tough ask. Oh sorry, the crucial additive. The Cauldron. So, Killing Blow wherever you want it - cheers. Dodging bullets all the way in I ended up sucking down a Hydra to the face. 13 Killing Blow attacks later = dead Vampire Lord. Stink - still have three turns to play :(

End result - Jack: 2700VPs (everything!!), Dave: 270VPs (the Executioners).

20-0 loss/smashing/obliteration/annihilation

Big 8th edition learning curve - nothing. Sad really and not what I was looking for this weekend. I could have deployed on the base line, or thrown crap forward, hidden, lost 12-8 or something. Not interested thanks - would rather fluffyhammer and move on.

ROUND THREE - "Wild" Bill Shera

Oh cripes - Vampires vs Vampires. This scenario tends to end one of two ways. Either someone loses their General and gets vapourised, or we grind each other to pieces and end with a draw.

In the interests of fun and entertainment, I took a shot at Option A - kick Bill's Vampire's ASS.

This involved a BIG gamble where my Skellie train and characters would blow through an interposing Ghoul unit, tag the General's unit of Skeletons in combat, dispel/block the Shadow casting of a supporting Vampire (and in doing so stop that "Smoke and Mirrors" nonsense) and THEN suck down counter-charges in the flanks while my own General set his straight on who was in charge WHILE keeping his hitty stuff busy with my other blocks and junk.

The plan went off awesomely which I'm actually still quite amazed about! The Skellie bus and assorted mates smashed 20+ Ghouls on the charge and tagged the General, Bill failed to cast with the Shadow Vamp (and as a result couldn't attempt further casting), I sucked down the counter-charge, and 2 turns later the cavalry (or rather the second block of Skellies) arrived and the enemy Vampire ended up on thw wrong end of some serious combat res with not enough Skeletons to hide behind. Result!

In other parts of the field our Black Coaches (two on the field and they almost both finished the game fully charged!) ran amok (ok, mostly Bill's ran amok while mine hid), our two Grave Guard blocks beat other round the heads with their two Barrows banners, the Varghulf copped some Black Knights with a beautiful sacrifice (cheers Vargy).

Big 8th edition learning curve - Killing Blow + parry ward saves = lightsaber duels! My Grave Guard champion and Bill's Wight King BSB went hammer and tongs for two rounds clocking up and then parrying Killing Blow wounds. Was mean fun until my champion suddenly got too proficient and decapitated his supposedly superior enemy. Bonus VPS for killing an enemy character with a unit champion! Actually our Grave Guard causing immense Killing Blow casualties on each other for a couple of rounds was also pretty amusing.

18-2 win.

End of day one - 32 battle points. Swimming lazily in the middle of the pack (I hope). Aside from the abrupt and disappointing outcome of Round Two it's been a fun day :)

8th ed Vampires for Fields of Blood 2010

2010-09-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

Captain Nick is running Fields of Blood this year which means I finally get to play again! Boo-yah! Even better I've gone bunny-hunting and lined up the hilariously over-confident Antony Kitson using, as the result of a foolish bet earlier this year, Wood Elves (my choice).

I've taken a magic-lite, mixed bag Vampire list with a bit of everything (ok, not really... lots of different units though). This is my first 8th edition tournament so for me, aside from smashing Ant, I'm only interested in playing a variety of armies/players and learning more about the game.

Here's the list:

Vampire Lord - Red Fury, Infinite Hatred, Walking Death, Ogre Blade, Flayed Hauberk, Crown of the Damned

4 strength 7 attacks, rerolling to hit, and a further attack for each wound he causes. +1 to combat res from Walking Death. 2+ armour save, 4+ ward save. Stupidity (rerollable thanks to the BSB).

Wight King - Battle Standard Bearer, Gem of Blood, Glittering Scales

Wight Kings are the boss. This one is tricked out to dodge bullets more than anything else. Most Heroes/Lords will hit him on 4s thank to the Scales. Toughness 5 and 3 wounds is nothing to sniff at and of course will attempt to rebound a wound (now FAQ'd to rebound Killing Blow!) when he takes one.

Wight King - Sword of Kings, Nightshroud

Didn't use Wight Kings much in 7th but this one was quite popular so I thought I'd try him out. I was pleasantly surprised to be proved right in my assumption that there will be a lot of WoC armies at FoB - having to accept challenges against something that makes you initiative 1 and can KB you on a 5+ is going to be quite frustrating :)

Necromancer - Van Hel's Danse Macabre, Dispel Scroll

With the ridiculous new option to bung 6 dice at a spell regardless of level this guy was always going to make his way into my list. He'll likely burn his scroll against something trying to hammer me on the way in or on a hex to burn me in combat. Otherwise he's all about the multi-casting of Van Hel's on the Grave Guard or Skeletons (or Wraiths). How this happens is down to the vagaries of the roll for power dice in the magic phase. Against my first opponent who is using a L4 Mage with Wand of the Wych Elm (and no dispel scroll) it will be 5-6 dice casts where possible.

40 Skeletons - full command, Banner of Hellfire

Skeletons are crap - no doubts about that. 8pts for toss does not a bargain make. I am however quite proud of the models and I have a heap painted up (and no Ghouls - yet!) so they were always going to be the go-to-guys for some time. Banner of Hellfire gives them magical, flaming attacks as opposed to the cheeky 10pt flaming banner from the Common Items list in the BRB. Handy against Wood Elves. Coincidence? :)

20 Skeletons - full command

Necromancer bunker and a useful unit to hold another banner for Blood and Glory (or whatever that scenario is called where you need banners to no get your ass kicked).

34 Zombies - musician, standard bearer

More toss. I'm such a fluffy bunny :) Wish I could say there was a secret awesomenes hiding here but really it's just point on offer for anything that can be bothered spending a turn in combat. Something I'm suffering with until I get some Ghouls painted up.

20 Grave Guard - full command, Banner of the Barrow

A sweet choice for VCs but not quite optimal - theoryhammer and net-reading suggests a bigger unit with Great Weapons is the better buy. Still, combined with the two Wight Kings the unit is a massive threat for most stuff. Barrows is an especially nice buff for the supporting Wight King. Especially if they're the beneficiaries of a timely Van Hel's from the Necromancer.

3 Fell Bats

3 Fell Bats

These guys are looking to either hit warmachines and keep them busy or take advantage of the new charging rules in 8th edition but declaring charges against already fleeing enemy units (i.e. whatever is trying to get the zog out of the way of the Grave Guard or Vampire Lord). They're also a handy deployment drop that doesn't give anything away. Not seeing a lot of deployments/units on the table in 8th for some reason...

3 Wraiths

An experimental selection. They can hunt warmachines, tie down big stupid Steadfast units by themselves (especially with no +1 for Outnumbering a la 7th edition). They take up bugger all room in deployment (i.e. the 1" rule annoyance), can sprint like mad to get where they need to go, and with less magical weapons (or so it would seem) look to be slightly more survivable. With no Banshee they can't be challeged out and prevented from attempting a Mage assassination if I find any careless characters in units without something/someone to hide behind. All theoryhammer of course and I'll be interested to see what I can get out of them.

Varghulf

Poor old Vargy's been having a bloody tough time of it recently. I don't expect much from this guy but I so like the model I just couldn't leave him at home. Another (somewhat suicidal) warmachine hunter, Thunderstomp could be useful (if I remember it), Terror... not so much.

Black Coach

One of the big winners of 8th edition for VCs and going magic-lite an obvious choice from a defensive point of view. I've had mixed results from the Coach in combat with so many big units out there. Absolute gold against a small Frenzied opponent like Khorne Warriors though - force bait with Bats (i.e. charge the Bats, or restrain and wait around, or risk getting charged by something really dangerous), force the overrun, hit in the flank with the charged up Coach, laugh all the way to the bank. All depends on whether I see those lovely 6s in the magic phase though.

So a list with a bit of everything. Might write up some reports and post my feelings post-FoB. Good to be back. Someone's going to have to pick up the slack if Trent starts playing/writing about Warmachine. Yuck!

3 games, 3 wins; 4 half games, mixed bag

2010-01-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

More on the "half games" shortly.

The exceedingly talented and generous Nick Ng, having put together my custom movement trays as only an OCD Engineering Master can dropped them off last week and also dropped himself off for a game. This time a much more consistent and focused list with some familiar choices. Nick fielded:

Seer - Skalm, 2 Scrolls
BSB Chieftain - Warpstone Armour (reflects saved wounds)
Plague Priest - Pendant (5+ ward), Furnace

24 Clanrats - FC and Doomflayer
Same again
24 Stormvermin - FC, Warbanner
6 Giant Rats/Packmaster
Same again
20 Slaves - Muso
Again
Again
... Again
5 Gutter Runners - Slings

25 Plaguemonks - Standard, Banner of triple marching badness
7 Censers
Same again

Doomwheel
Warp Lightning Cannon

The game was characterised by magic - or rather the fact that neither of us could go a magic phase without miscasting at least once. In fact Nick miscast twice in two turns! First up I lost Wind of Undeath and a level. Then Nick took a wound. Then I gave him a free spell (fecking Scorch). Then he lost Warp Lightning. At this point I resorted to micro-casting out of sheer paranoia. Nick went on to lose Death Frenzy and Scorch - at the end of the game he was left with a Level 2 Seer with the highly threatening Skitterleap!

Painful experience (both my own and watching other games) suggests it's "bad" to let the Furnace rumble you wherever it wants so priority one was locking down that unit in combat in the flank. Nick and I went through our usual cagey opening turns of the Varghulf trying to catch the Censers and the Slaves getting in the way and being a right pain in the arse. A solo charge from my General into one unit of Censer Bearers caught Nick off-guard, they were butchered (partly by themselves from gas attacks) and the Vamp Boss overran behind a hill, forcing the Warp Lightning Cannon to flee (but just manage to stay on the table). The other Censer Bearers (derived of the Vampire General - Nick was hoping to stay in the first combat thanks to being Stubborn in close proximity to the Plaguemonks) went into the Varghulf - they 1/2 gassed themselves to death and the Varghulf ate the rest, chasing off the Doomflayers and copping a Doomwheel in his side for his troubles.

The Plaguetrain got clear of this mess and charged some Skellies but got bogged down. The Grave Guard and Wraiths needed no further invitation and spent the rest of the game chewing through the unit, finally killing the last of them in the final combat. The Doomwheel, having eaten the Varghulf in a couple of rounds (I got lucky with some Regen from shooting), hit the Grave Guard who were overhanging from the Monks but got soundly thrashed and fled. Freshly charged by another Skeleton unit it was beaten and caught.

The Strigoi Knights spent 3 very embarassing turns (6 rounds of combat) against one unit of Slaves who refused to be hit, die or flee. In the last turn, with the Stormvermin having hit the overhanging Grave Guard they went into the front and caused immense damage, chasing off that unit and capturing two standards.

After mucking around on the other flank the Unbarded Knights charged the Gutter Runners, fluffed, and were chopped from the saddle in reply!

End-game and Nick had the two Clanrat units, some Slaves and the Gutter Runners still going where I'd lost some Skellies, Wolves, Unbarded Knights and the Varghulf. A fairly convincing 15-5 win again characterised by dodgy dice in the magic phase.

Friday night and some of the lads got together at Ray's for a probably final stoush before DogCon. I drew Ray's Dark Elves first up. Winning first turn I motored across the field hell for leather. The cheeky Manticore tempted in my Unbarded Knights and I clocked up a Killing Blow, running down the poor Manti-Cow at the end of the combat. A buffed unit of Zombies held against the charge of two Cold One Chariots (one Zombie survived!) allowing the General and a unit of Skellies to get in and break them both, pursue into some Spearmen and cut them to ribbons.

We called the game at the end of turn 4 with the unharmed Varghulf about the eat the last Bolt Thrower and the last unit of Shades about to take a magical charge from the Vampire General and some Dire Wolves.

I think Ray was quite surprised at how fast the army moved - he had basically two turns to act. Not quite managing to get the Zombies really propelled my Skeletons and General into his stuff (the overrun to the Spearmen saved me a turn of movement).

On the table next to us Reid was taking on Paul Davison's Skaven. All looked in control until a cleverly rallied unit of Giant Rats allowed a Plaguetrain to charge some Ghouls and the Vampire General. Winning by 10 or so the whole unit (and character) exploded and it was downhill from there. We switched tables and I got ready to play Skaven. Again.

Paul's list had three interesting features.

1) Hell Pit Abomination. Good to face one because I don't have an immediate answer in my list (no Flaming Attacks etc)

2) Slaves with Slings (lots of shots at close range!)

3) Four casters = crapload of magic

I took a hammering from magic as expected and the game eventually came down to a charge from the Grave Guard and some Wolves into the flank of the HPA. I won on static res and of course Paul failed the Stubborn test. Great - solution to the HPA? Dumb luck. Nice.

The Plaguetrain (yes this list had one as well) was tackled by the Varghulf and Wraiths in the flank and eaten up.

The big surprise (for Paul) was one surviving Grave Guard model (with the Warbanner), the BSB and the General slingshotting into his Clanrats bunkering the Seer. One short and very brutal round of combat later and the Seer was a pile of blood soaked rags on the floor and the rats were off. This placed me in the unfortunate position of getting my General flank-charged by some Censer Bearers. True to form of the four that could attack 3 gassed themselves to death and the last one missed or failed to wound. The Vampire didn't miss and this caused a wandering Warlock to Panic off the board.

Last straw was the Doomwheel (yes there was one of those TOO!) charging the untouched Strigoi Knights on a hill in the last turn, causing NO wounds with either shooting OR combat, breaking and being run down.

It's a game of skill.

Half Games

Monday and Tuesday night Reid and I lined up against each other for a couple of half games - 3 turns of play and some theoryhammering of how the battle has gone up to that point.

I was up first playing a spam-casting WoC list with ASF Giant and mostly Slanneshi-marked stuff. The Giant was giving me a headache and I deployed the Wraiths poorly due to all the magic missile death bearing down on them. At the end of turn three I had one flank and the centre sewn up - some Khorne Ogres baited into Wolves overrunning into the Wraiths, and a chariot only having Wraiths as a charging option. On my right though two units of Knights and the Giant looked to be ready to eat the Varghulf and take on my General and a Skellie block. Very iffy game and the WoC list played well with a very efficient magic phase.

The second half-game was against a hellish Dark Elf list with 8PD and more shooting than you can throw a Wood Elf at. Simply awful. I belted forward with no other options. Lost the Varghulf early due to a stupid unsupported move that saw him get shot up. Managed a charge on the Hydra with the Grave Guard but couldn't break it and sucked down a flank charge from RXB Elves. Took them a while but they were getting through the Grave Guard nicely.

Elsewhere I had the Chariots in combat with Unbarded Knights and the Wraiths but it wasn't very convincing.

Tough list and the next night we resolved to turn the tables.

Game one using the Warriors against Reid's Vampires. A fun list for sure, especially when Pandemonium goes off and your Nurgle Sorcerer is pretending to be a magical stone thrower shelling Black Knights. I was cramped by a forest so after baiting the Black Knights in with some Slanneshi Knights (who fled) I hit them with Khorne Ogres but only contacted with two. The Giant and Chariot combo-charged into a Ghoul block but weren't coming up aces and Bats were annoying the hell out of my other Knights. On the flip side it certainly wasn't all going the Vampire's way and giving the comp break the Warriors get I felt pretty good about where things ended up.

Game two and I was relishing breaking out this horrific Dark Elf army. I had this one in the bag until two Ghouls charging the Hydra turned into 21 Ghouls charging the Hydra. Hydra fluffs and gets run down along with some RXBs who flee 3 inches. Varghulf also had the Dark Elf BSB and some more RXBs sorted. Good news though was that while this was going on the two chariots had broken through Zombies in one turn and come round the back of the Vampire General's unit. Faced with that threat the unit had to turn around and couldn't Van Hel's because it was too busy repairing casualties. We stopped the game before the charge went off but two Chariots and some magical goodness like Word of Pain and/or Steal Soul could have spelt doom for the Vampire army. Great fun and a learning experience for both of us in terms of an army we'd like to NOT face at DogCon :)

Heading off on Tuesday. The army is nearly finished (at least to a reasonable standard - won't be winning any awards; we'll leave that to Phil). Hoping to get some games in against the local.

There's also the small and insignificant matter of thrashing the Aussies in the Warhammer Bledisloe on Saturday night. Can't see us breaking a sweat against the B-Team led by the White Weasel Denison. Check out this thread for a fun discussion - Sledgehammer (http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=86897)

Why not Ghouls?

2010-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

I've been asked why I've taken Skeletons over Ghouls. Here are the reasons:

- Skellies "comp" better than Ghouls due to a perceived difference in their awesomeness

Ghouls are mad good for 8 points. Toughness 4, 2 (!) poisoned attacks each, as easy to raise as Skellies and of course you can get the Raise Ghouls power for more fun. Plus Ghoulkin if you want to be really dirty. By comparison the poor little bony dudes get a 4+ save from hand weapon/shield in combat and the ability to take a unit standard.

So Ghouls are better overall (assumed casualties caused might outweigh the pros - and cons - of a unit standard) in most scenarios. They give big stuff the willies (eat Giants for breakfast with the poisoned attacks). Given the horror that is the rest of my list I felt Skellies would be a more reasonable choice. I've gone the 'wall of bone' option - hit combat and grind while looking for strike options with faster stuff on the flanks.

- Skellies can take magic standards which might be important later on (I plan on sticking with Vampires long-term so will continue collecting and diversifying my lists)

This actually came up as a strong potential for DogCon - give a unit of Skellies the Flaming attacks banner or the extra combat res for 4 ranks banner. The point of the Flaming banner is not to give the Skeletons Flaming attacks. It's to give the Vampires bunkering in the unit Flaming attacks!

- I bought a bunch of Skellies

At NatCon earlier this year there was a lot of stuff on sale and the bring and buy and I picked up a LOT of Skeleton models from various ranges and editions. Made sense to go with Skeletons from a financial standpoint.

- I hate the Ghoul models

The most pressing issue - I don't like the look of the Ghoul models. I have no doubt I'll paint some Ghouls up at some point but it won't be the GW ones which means I'll have to look around (hard) for something appropriate. Definitely not in a hurry to do that when I've got so much more on the painting table after DogCon (Blood Knights, Corpse Cart, more Zombies, more characters, Winged Nightmare/Abyssal Terror).

Captain Nick's Equinox Elves

2009-12-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

Captain Soft Scores lined me up last night to be his first victim on his newly created table and I was happy to oblige. Nick (this is Nick Irvine from the City Guard) has earned the title "Captain Soft Scores" for a good reason - his composition, sportsmanship and painting are frequently exeedingly high. He's a fantastic opponent and great fun to play.

Nick's been playing Wood Elves since... forever, and has started to get quite experimental with his lists. The current incarnation is focused around trying to solve the immense problem Wood Elves have facing down big scary beasties like Dragons, Greater Daemons and so on. The foundation principal here is a L4 mage with Lore of Beasts (trying for Beasts Cowers and/or Wolf hunts) accompanied by 6 Wild Riders with Warbanner. The Mage Cowers the badness and/or propels the Cavalry into combat with Wolf Hunts, accepts challenge and deflects hits with the Annoyance (hit on a '6' in challenges), saving them with the Crystal Mere (3+ ward save until the save is failed). The static 3 Wild Riders shout encouragment of get stuck into any rank and file that are handy and in spear range. It's definitely an interesting combination!

For this game I tried a slightly different and more concise thought process of categorising enemy units into various groups. This leads quickly to a plan of attack for the game. I've read a bit about this online but really tried hard to put it into practice in this game. I've always had trouble with Wood Elves (elusive little buggers that they are) - the key is always to pin them in the right and most favourable combat. So for this game I identified:

- the Hammer unit (Wild Riders)
- the Anvil (Treeman)
- the Redirectors (Glade Riders)
- the Ranged threat (2 units fo Glade Guard)
- the Assassins (2 units of Wardancers)
- the Magic threat (L4 Mage with Hunters Spear - a magical bolt thrower! - and Wolf Hunts - 2D6" move towards an enemy unit; can be used on monsters and cav - and the L2 Mage with Treesinging and Fury of the Forest - D6 str 4 or str5 if within 6" of a forest magical attacks!)

I think subconsciously all (or most) players do this in a game. I felt that actively identifying these threats and units and keeping this description in mind was extremely helpful.

Previous experience against Wood Elves tells me that their shooting can melt a unit per turn if you aren't careful, that the Tree is difficult to deal with for Vampires without flaming attacks, that Wardancers have a silly number of attacks, that the whole army is VERY mobile, and that there is a LOT of magical attacks in the army. Running forward and trying to get into combat just doesn't work - you've got to give the Elf player a reason to advance. Of course with a poorer comp score the pressure is really always on me (playing Vampires) to hunt the points.

Nick spread his force across the board with 2 units of Glade Guard holding the centre, the Wild Riders on his left and everything else spread across the right. I deployed with a strong left hook, the centre held by the Grave Guard (who would cope best with the ranged threat - high toughness and armour - and also any flank charge trickiness from the Wild Riders) a Skellies block accompanied by the VC general. I knew Nick could easily redeploy his army but with a forest blocking shooting to almost everything except the Grave Guard (who could obviously be raised back as easily as everything else) he would have to move to find the points.

I held in the centre and pushed up on the left but the Tree was giving me a headache. I couldn't roll it in one turn (unless the banshee got really lucky and screamed 3 or 4 wounds off it) so I spent some time getting the Zombies into position to tie it down. A lucky Book of Arkhan casting propelled them into combat and while I didn't break the damn thing he was at least tied down by 33 Zombies. Next turn some Wardancers charged in - leaving me with 3 Zombies after that round of combat! Fortunately this left room for some Knights and by General to combo charge the Wardancers. The general was in turn counter-charged by the second unit of Wardancers. This went on for quite a while but eventually the Tree was left unengaged and at the end of the game with no good charging options (and misfired trying to Strangleroot some Knights in the last turn) and Wardancer units both broke and were run down. Next to this combat the Varghulf was epic failing to wound some Dryads so the Wraiths charged in (not ideal as Dryads have magical attacks). It took some time (and cost me the Banshee) but I eventually got through them. On this flank Nick was left with the Treeman and his BSB in a forest against 5 Unbarded Knights, a Skellies block, the Varghulf, and 5 Wolves. In the centre the other Skellie block charged a unit fo Glade Guard (with a banner). The Skellies were getting dealt to until the Knights that had run down the Wardancers hit the Glade Guard in the flank and auto-broke them with outnumber by fear-causers.

The Wild Riders glorious sweep around my flank looking for a magical rear-charge on the Grave Guard in turn 4 or 5 was rudely interrupted by 5 Dire Wolves. The Wolves were quickly dealt with but Nick tired of this little game when a second unit of Wolves got in their way again. The potential of an 80pt return for a 600pt unit didn't thrill Nick so he backed off and looked for another option. Unfortunately he found it the wrong way. Instead of using a Scroll to stop a Book of Arkhan charge he gambled a one dice roll supported by a one-use reroll for a dispel attempt granted by some of his General's kit. The gamble failed and the Grave Guard charged the Wild Riders! Being Immune to Psychology the Elves had to hold. In a show of ineptitude the Grave Guard only killed the Wild Rider Champion and lost one in return. They broke the Wild Riders who of course escaped.

I should mention Nick's Alter Noble at this point. This clever little git earlier charged the flank of the Skellie unit with the VC general in it. He was never going to hold but with Hatred on the VC general I had to pursue. The Alter escaped and now pulled the same trick on the Grave Guard, rear-charging them, breaking and I failed to restrain pursuit on Ld7 so instead of charging the Wild Riders again I was now facing the wrong way!

Nevertheless I reformed to face the Wild Riders. Nick rallied the unit and moved as far away as possible but it turned out he couln't get far enough away to avoid a solo charge from my BSB in the last turn. Deftly avoiding the damned Mage with her Annoyance the BSB skewered a Wild Rider and with his standard and Walking Death won combat by 2! (the Wild Riders had lost their banner/Warbanner when they were broken by the Grave Guard earlier in the game). Incredibly the Wild Riders broke - a 600pt unit and a now uncontested table quarter! Surely a big swing at the end of the game.

So in the end Nick had the Treeman, BSB, Alter Noble (grrr!) and a unit of Glade Guard. I'd lost 1/2 a Skellie block, 1/2 the barded Knights, a unit of Wolves and the Zombies. I had two banners (Glade Guard and Wild Riders), the Wood Elf General (the L4 Mage) and a two quarters. Nick had one quarter and the last one (with the Treeman) was contested.

This was a win to me by just over 1400VPs. Gut feel was a 15-5 win after the comp kicked in which I was very pleased with.

Cheers for the game Nick - a little bit of vengeance for that 20-0 thrashing you gave me at FluffyCon this year :)

Asian Nick's New Skaven - Version... 6?

2009-12-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

My good mate Nick Ng (Master Enginner Extraordinaire) was busy not working on completing a Skaven army for the last army book and with the newest iteration of Those Dirty Rats has continued to present totally bizarre and highly experimental list for our fairly regular games. Skaven can present something of a problem for Vampires - they are now an awesome leadership army, they have stacks of magical attacks, their focused shooting combined with magic and dodgy template rules (I hear this will be the norm for 8th edition Warhammer) can vapourise a unit in the space of one turn.

Nick's latest list - seemingly vomited forth from a random list generator:

Seer - 2 Scrolls, Skalm (restore all lost wounds once per game)
Cheiftain with Battle Standard and reflecting saved wounds armour
Plague Priest - level 2 on Furnace with various kit including Pipes of Piebald (leadership test for enemy wishing to charge his unit)

39 Feckin Plaguemonks who, when joined by the Priest (or rather, his Furnace) become Unbreakable. The newly dubbed "Plaguetrain from Hell" as it were
11 Censer Bearers (an unusual number)
2 units of 3 Jezzails (again HIGHLY unusual)

Doomwheel
Plague Claw Catapult

3 units of Slaves
1 unit of Clanrats (Mortar)
1 unit of Stormvermin (Mortar)

A really tiny Skaven list. I waved the frenzied Plaguetrain through with some Wolves and set to against the rest of the list. Poor deployment of the Wraiths (which is becoming disturbingly habitual) saw them survive the battle but cause practically no discernable damage). I lost 14 Grave Guard in the first turn to a casting of Scorch and 2 Plague Mortars which was pretty frightening from a psychological perspective. Any other army losing their elite tough-guy unit in one turn would have been in a heck of a position but I got an Invocation past Nick's defense and 6 of the previously fried Grave Guard sprang back to unlife.

I took the Varghulf in this game. Yes I know I know - it's mentally hard. To compensate I took out the Lynci Vamp. Putting a lot of thought into this at the moment - is taking the two rares balanced out by taking 2 characters and having less offensive and defensive magic ability. Potentially for Vampires less magic is a "bad thing" so I'm unsure at this stage.

In this particular game the Varghulf went nuts - blasted through the Censer Bearers in a turn, got stuck into the Clanrats bunkering the Seer forcing him to expend an entire magic phase escaping or risk getting eaten (5 str5 attacks with Hatred from the Varghulf will munch any magic user) - Nick cou't chance losing the PD/DD and scrolls so chucked 5 dice at Skitterleapand bailed. Curses! Old Vargy was joined by my boss 2 turns later and they cleaned up the Clanrats before turning their attention to the Stormvermin now hiding not only the Seer but also the Skaven BSB. With Dire Wolves in their flank and Grave Guard in the front (along with the VC general and Varghulf in the back) the Stormvermin auto-broke and were run down.

The Plaguetrain managed to trample a unit of Skellies, claiming their banner and holding a quarter and this was the only Skaven unit to survive the game. There was absolutely no way I could tackle the Plaguemonks so it was always going to be 600pts I couldn't touch and how much of my stuff I could stop them from killing.

A win to the Vampires by maybe 500pts? (sorry Nick I've forgotten the details).

Just for Mike

2009-12-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Hi Mike :)

This is for you...

DogCon approaches. This will be my first Australian tournament (I hope the first of many) so I am super-excited - not just about the travel and playing new opponents but also hanging out for the weekend with mates and smashing the Aussies.

DogCon has a repuation for being a hard mans event. FluffyCon this is not. Soften up at your peril. To emphasise this point the composition scoring for the event has no bonuses for soft armies. You are either (in the judges opinion) on-target or hard. This has led to a "-1" kind of thinking; go hard enough to get a -1, make sure taking the negative comp score is worth it in terms of your choices, and be prepared to face opponents who have taken a similar attitude.

DogCon is big. More than 120 players? That's an enormous event by anyone's standards (and can only add to my childish excitement). This opens up the interesting and unusual possibility of getting a run of opponents where you might play well, win all your games, and still not see the best players because of the large numbers. Quite a few people could in fact win all their games at this event! I'm not under any illusions - barring sheer dumb luck of the draw I don't expect (or hope) to face any "named" players. I'm just keen to face 6 unfamiliar opponents and have us both do our best to beat the stuffing out of each others armies.

So what's the plan? Vampires.

Having done Dwarfs, lingered on Lizards, dabbled with Dark Elves, busted out Brettonians and exasperated myself with Empire I've finally succumbed to the dark (darker than Dark Elves dark!) side and gone undead.

I'm enjoying the army immensely but am still finding my feet and as a result haven't been demolishing my opponents like I've been led to believe VCs do without breaking a sweat, lifting a finger or using any brain power whatsoever.

The list I'm taking (or at least version 5; the current version which I might take) looks hard to me (certainly compared to Empire!) but I'm told by more experienced and well-travelled players is likely to be spot on (in a "-1" kind of way) for DogCon.

Looks like this (at the moment) with notes for Mike to understand what the heck I'm talking about:

Lord - Lord of the Dead (raise Skellies above starting strength and +1 to cast), Sword of Might (for a total of 4 str6 attacks), Infinite Hatred (rerolling misses in every round of combat), Dread Knight (mounted on a barded steed with heavy armour and a shield (for a 2+ save), Cadaverous Cuirass (not affected by Poison attacks or Killing Blow), Dispel Scroll, Book of Arkhan (bound 3 Van Hel's Danse which lets a unit get a free 8" move - gold)

Hero - BSB, Dread Knight, Black Periapt (lets the BSB store his power dice and use it as dispel dice in the enemy magic phase, or store a dispel dice and use it as a power dice - handy), Walking Death (an extra point of combat res), Helm of Commandment (gives his weapon skill to a unit within 12")

Hero - Talisman of the Lynci (9" move), Great Weapon, Hatred, 2+ save

20 Skeletons - full command
20 Skeletons - full command
21 Zombies
5 Wolves
5 Wolves
5 Wolves

20 Grave Guard (uber-Skeletons of dooooom!) - Full Command, Warbanner
6 Black Knights with a banner giving them Hatred
5 Black Knights with nothing

4 Wraiths and a Banshee (an awful unit really... very nasty)

So the army/list is FAR from soft and should go 6 rounds and give me a good result and some enjoyable games. I'm under no illusions at all for this event - I haven't a hope in placing or even making the top 10. I just want a really good time and 6 opponents who give me a challenging game.

I've had a fair bit of playtesting so far and now that I'm on holiday hope to do a lot more. The games have all been fun (had a cracker of a game against Orcs and Goblins recently - a real blast) and I've learnt more about the army and what it can do (and what I shouldn't do!) in every game so no complaints there.

Still thinking about making changes. Had a moral dilemma and moment of weakness where I put a Varghulf in there too (sort of a monster Vampire thing - can go a bit nuts and combined with the Wraiths is a bit silly) but was talked out of it thank goodness. Have some other options including some Spirit Hosts (ethereal ghosties - not as deadly as the Wraiths but can be a good matchup against some armies).

Hopefully now that I'm under some pressure I'll post up some more detailed reports of the practice games and a solid report on the tournament itself. We're really spoiled for events right now - I get back from Oz, wait three weeks for the next tournament (FluffyCon) then another three weeks before another event here in Auckland (Equinox) which is being run by the City Guard.

Life is good :)

The Fields of Blood - bwahahahahahahaha...

2009-06-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

Auckland will be awash with gore and spare body parts come late-September!

I'm running a Fantasy tournament as part of the annual City Guard "GuardCon" gaming convention called Fields of Blood. Looks like it's going to be a real ripper of an event with substantial player attendance forecast - looks to not only be the biggest Fantasy event on the gaming calendar but also potentially the biggest Fantasy tournament that NZ has ever had!

26th and 27th September at Takapuna Grammar School here in Auckland. If you haven't requested a registration and player's pack let me know. Flick an email through to:

fieldsofblood2009@gmail.com

2250pts, 6 rounds, fully painted armies only, tiered 8-judge panel composition system.

Check out http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=73641 for updates.

Experiences using Daemons and VCs

2009-06-05T19:40:00.001-07:00

Continuing with my habit of "borrowing" other people's armies I caught up with NZs own Skeletor - Glen Tibbles - for a couple of games using one of Reid's Daemons lists. Despite losing a big unit of Plaguebearers and Nurgle Herald to an horrific charge by a unit of Blood Knights with Hellfire Banner I came away with a comfortable win with just the VC General surviving the engagement. The night was young so Skellie cranked out more Skellies - this time the accursed Tomb Kings. Was sweating it as usual against TKs, losing a unit of Fiends to a chariot charge before a unit of Flesh Hounds at some Skeleton Archers and the Tomb King himself thank to some impressive ward-saving (and some poor luck on Glen's part). A short while later they were munching through the rest of the army and he had no answer to that or the Plaguebearers regenning the Chariot's attacks, or the Flamers barbecuing whatever they touched. Or the Bloodletters tearing the Bone Giant a new one. Brutal game.

Then I grabbed Ray's Daemons that he's using for Tin Soldiers. Ray and I had a already had a couple of games - one where he'd massacred a Warriors of Chaos list I'd thrown together (now there's an army book you need to practice with!) and one where I'd beaten him down with the dirty Runefang Dark Elf list. Thought I fancied my chances using the Daemons against Pommy Dave's Tin Soldier list (the High Elves masquerading as Wood Elves thing). Boy how wrong was I! Butchered pretty badly, only the Plaguebearers surived that little encounter! What really caught me was the lack of cheap redirectors and chasing units in Ray's list. I'd be a fan of having a couple of solo Fiends for those two jobs.

Next on the list of things to do was play Ray's Tin Soldier 2 Daemons using Reid's TS2 VCs - not a good matchup for the Vampires in this particular instance. Despite the bad matchup the Vampires walked away with a solid victory - the Daemons being left with 1 and 1/2 Flesh Hound (that's models, not units) in the end. What really made the game was a fresh and rather enormous unit of Zombies springing up which not only trapped some Flesh Hounds in combat but got right in the way of the Nurgle block who couldn't get into the action quick enough. By the time they touched something (Grave Guard) they were surrounded and the combat ended with Hellfire Banner Black Knights in the side, Ghouls in the rear and Grave Guard (and VC General in the front). Plaguebearers lost by 9 or so at one point and poof! Gone burger.

Last night it was decided Reid had better get a least one game in with his army before TS2 so he threw down against those damn dirty Dark Elves again. The Darkies put in a sterling effort and considerable overtime and the VCs were left with the Grave Guard and annoyingly unkillable Black Knights (and a BIG unit of raised Zombies). I'd lost the Black Guard and some Crossbowmen but looked on the board like a 15-5 win or thereabouts. This is all excellent stuff as I move closer to building/having/fielding my ownVC army later this year in preparation for DogCon 2010. Beating Reid is always pretty sweet too - once in a blue moon type stuff for me and a victory to savour :) I think he's got me 3-2 at the moment and one of those wins to me was sheer dumb luck (Empire vs Orcs - an unrecorded FluffyCon practice game where he failed a ld9 test in the last turn and a bunch of stuff ran off; basically I was on the ropes big time and the dice turned it around).

The Runefang Files - Blogspot ate my Fecking Posts!!!

2009-06-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

So I haven't been back for a while but had posted up reports of my games at Runefang 2. Thought I'd see if anyone's been reading the blog and left any comments. Lo and behold my posts for the other 4 games (!) have disappeared! What the hell?!

Had a little cry and decided I couldn't be assed rewriting the uber-essays that were the round 2-5 reports so here are the summaries (which hopefully stick to the site and don't randomly wander off into internetial oblivion).

Round 2 - Vampire Counts

Tough list with 2 Skellies block, big Grave Guard unit, 2 units of Zombies, 2 Corpse Carts, Wraiths with Banshee, big unit of Wolves. Drakenhof on BSB meant Grave Guard weren't going anywhere, Forbidden Lore on Vamp General meant magical fun times and an ethereal Vamp in the Wraith unit meant they had the potential to be quite a handful.

Cleaned up the Wolves first. Shot down one Zombie unit before charging it with Dark Riders and finishing it off easily (they had a banner so it was quite the bargain). Shot a Skellie unit to pieces and managed to shoot down a Corpse Cart. Manticore spent the game chasing around the Wraiths who feared the 5 str7 attacks I'd be inflicting in a challenge with either the Vamp or the Banshee. Black Guard discovered how hard the glass ceiling is - taking on the regenning Grave Guard was only going to end one way. Was a bit hacked off at my stupidity in this regard - should have bailed the BSB from the unit and hidden in a nearby forest or just led the Grave Guard around by the nose. Hydra and Spear block did for the other Zombie unit (and another banner). Last turn lost the Hydra to a barrage of fire magic from the VC General which was highly annoying (he just managed to kill it) but not before it had eaten the other Corpse Cart. Vampires were left with the unkillable Grave Guard bunkering the Lord and BSB and a unit of Skeletons. 12-8 win to me.

Round 3 - Anvil Dwarfs

2 units of Quarellers, Organ Gun, Rune of Forging Cannon, big Hammerers, little Hammerers, big Longbeards and a couple of small Warrior units and of course the fecking Anvil or Stupid Doom. Blew through some Warriors and the little Hammerer unit and the Back Guard buried themselves in the big Hammerer unit for most of the game, eventually killing them all off and chasing down the Dwarf BSB. Hyrda Terrored off the Longbeards and ended up eating them in a later combat. Useless DE General got stuck into the Runelord and after 4 rounds of combat managed not only to NOT kill him but also lose the Manticore and break. My last turn he fails to rally. Dwarf's last turn the powered up Anvil kills the remaining Black Guard (BSB left alive on one wound!), the Hydra (gah!) and a unit of Dark Riders. Ass. 12-8 win which could (should) have been a sweet sweet victory (had the Runelord died when he was supposed to it would have been in the bag I reckon... probably looking at an 18-2 win).

Round 4 - Lizards

Very nice and well-balanced Lizardmen list from Greg Rae who is just getting into Fantasy - good player and a very enjoyable game. Engine, Slann, 2 units of Terradons, lots of skirmishing Skinks, two one-Salamander units, 2 Krox units, 2 Saurus Spear units, Jag Charm Scar-Vet. Nice list but didn't help convince me Lizards should be in tier 4 :) Close game with some cagey play from Greg, lots of fleeing from charges. Good ol' three-dice leadership tests were awesome - reminded me why I enjoyed playing with Lizards so much. Made a big mistake with the Cow, charging the Engine (trying to kill the Priest). Fluffed big time and was fortunate to hold for ages after Saurus charged me in the flank but eventually broke and run down. Game kinda petered out a little in the end but otherwise very very good fun and probably the most enjoyable game of the weekend. 11-9 loss.

Round 5 - Dwarfs

Fast becoming NOT a fan of playing Dwarfs. This one had a Flame Cannon and Organ Gun, 2 units of Quarrellers, big blocks of Slayers, Hammerers and Ironbreakers, Shieldbearer Lord, BSB, Runesmith in a block of Warriors, Miners. Felt a bit sorry for my opponent as a dismembered a unit in each turn. Highlight was a combo charge against the Ironbreakers - Spearmen in the front, Black Guard in the flank, Cow in the rear. Won by 11 and ran them down with Black Guard hitting 5 surviving Slayers (after shooting casualties), Cow flew off the table, and Spears pursued ready to come around and hit Quarrellers later in the flank. Only thing left in the end was the Hammerers and Lord (was never going to try that one on) and 2 Miners. If the Miners had broken to the last charge it would have been 20-0. As it was happy to finish with a 19-1 win.

30% + tier 2 + hardass army meant I got absolutely comp-hammered out of any kind of contention. Maths was right though - a 15-5 win average would have seen me just about podium. As it was placed 24th out of 32 (?) players.

Was VERY flattered to receive Best Sportsmanship with 4 of my 5 opponents voting me their favourite player. This is an amazing award to get in a tournament as it is essentially the only element of the event judged by the participants themselves. Very very cool and very pleased to receive it. Nice to see an example of a bastard army not spoiling sports scores which is a theory put out by some people after recent events.

Overall had a helluva good time. Met some wonderful people down in Wellington and even the skin-heads (Hagen et al) managed to impress. HUGE thanks to Pete Dunn who put myself, Nick Irvine and Neil Williamson up in the palatial mansion that is Che Pete - very cool place. Kudos to the winners of the event - a great bunch of guys and I'd very much like to get down that way again in the future.

The Runefang Files – Round One GRUDGE vs Skaven (Pete Dunn)

2009-05-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well I was most surprised and a little flattered to find that Pete Dunn was keen to grudge me, ensuring that we finally met on the battlefield and wouldn't be dodging each other thanks to ill-luck with the draw in this tournament. Some serious research (reading his blog) and asking around (Reid) led me to predict what he was taking (for all the good it did me) with a high degree of accuracy. Outside of the absence of the ubiquitous Ratling Guns it was a fairly standard go at the Skaven horde concept replete with acres of crap to wade through (Slaves), ridiculous throwaway deployments (2 units of 2 Globadiers), the twins (2 Warlocks with kit including Storm Daemon and Dispel Scroll), and the Skaven Deathstar (term used lightly) – fully ranked Stormvermin with Warbanner and BSB with banner of +2 for outnumber (total of static 8). With a cowering Warlord reluctantly radiating ld7 (boosted via ranks to ld10) I wasn’t expecting much from Terror and Fear checks in this game and I think all up Pete failed just one Panic check in the whole game! Psychology schmychology!

Realising I would be finished deploying long before Pete had put anything worthwhile down I went for a central deployment, placing the blocks behind a hill and some light stuff and hitty monsters more towards the right. Pete practically castled his entire army in his left hand corner (barring a unit of Clanrats on the other flank who spent the game sneaking forward through a forest to contest a quarter), behind and around a couple of hills, one of which rather handily included a patch of forest for his Warp Lightning Cannon to hide in. I wasn’t exactly within striking distance of anything but was reasonably happy with how things looked. Tunneller markers went in front of the Reapers and to the right of a forest in my zone next to some Harpies and Dark Riders. On reflection I should have put the Hydra on the left flank and wandered through the forest but at least where it was he had to make a choice about what to shoot - the Hydra or the Cow.

I came forward like a bat (Harpy?) out of hell and motored straight up the guts with practically everything. Harpies flew to get in the way of Jezzail fire to save some Dark Riders while everything else pushed up the middle towards a hill behind which was lurking the aforementioned Jezzails, a BIG block of Plaguemonks and accompanying Censer Bearers, and of course some chaff (Slaves). A pittance of shooting culled a few Clanrats from the abundantly fleshed out hill-fortress on Pete’s left which he happily removed, safe in the knowledge there was plenty more where they came from. My Crossbow shooting was neutralized by several small hills on the left and a massive forest on the far left. In fact my shooting had (unsurprisingly) very little effect on the game but the Reapers and Crossbowmen did all survive so at least I wasn’t bleeding points (in that area at least!).

Pete hung back behind the hill and started to position Slave units for maximum annoyance value. Warp Lightning magic drew dice and probably a scroll while the Warp Lightning Cannon did what it said on the box – a tremendous str10 blast carving 4 wounds off the Hydra (feck! Ouch!).

Suddenly not rating my chances of the Hydra surviving beyond a few more seconds I chucked it forward and crossed my fingers. The Cow maneuvered to get a sneaky charge angle on some Clanrats and everything else hoofed it forward fast. A unit of Harpies and some Dark Riders whacked into the front of some Slaves who held and to my great dismay actually saw the Dark Elf forces off in the following turn ☹ I made quite an error at this point with the facing of a unit of Crossbowmen who were charged by some Slaves. With the Elf General and BSB nearby I had no problem at all holding and was able to counter-charge the Slaves with the other Crossbow unit and get rid of them but this cost the Black Guard a vital turn of movement.

In Pete’s turn the Slaves hit the Crossbows, stalling my advance which would cost me later. A mighty str2 shot from the Warp Lightning Cannon was enough to take down the Hydra (groan) leaving one Handler alive to play the diverting game. A unit of Tunnelling Gutter Runners came up and decided to play with the Shades, killing two before being butchered in return, the surviving rat forcing the Shades to pursue back towards my deployment zone. The other unit decided discretion was the better part of valour (or cowardice) and widely kept their heads below ground (Pete rolled a misfire – the rats didn’t come on and I didn’t get any VPs for them either. Kind of win-win). I managed to contain the Warp Lightning one last time at the cost of my second scroll.

Having suffered the attentions of the Reaper Bolt Throwers a reduced strength Clanrat unit took a giant Cow in the front. The Elf General laid about himself with wanton abandon but with the Skaven General and BSB literally an inch away the Clanrats didn’t budge. Bugger. With a unit of Censer Bearers looking to be in range (nevermind the Jezzails who were all too willing to shoot into the combat!) my General looked to be in a spot of trouble. A unit of Crossbows hit the Slaves that were tying up the other unit in the flank and broke them easily but in a quirk of fate the Slaves, fleeing from the highest unit strength, unit actually ran sideways along the length of the board, escaping the frustrated Dark Elves.

In went the Censer Bearers, only one having the range to actually make contact. The awkward conga line of lunatic flail-wavers hemmed in the Stormvermin who, as a further contingency to Skaven ineptitude, reformed to face the Cow should the Censer Bearers stuff things up. Shooting into combat Pete managed to take a wound from the Cow before the Bearer in combat whiffed. Both units took a beating from the Cow and Elf General but while the Bearers broke the accursed Clanrats held again. I had one more turn to make the magic happen and save my boss from a static 9 flank charge.

Sighting Slaves (both fleeing and non-fleeing) all over the place I declared a flurry of charges – Black Guard into one unit feeing from the previous combat who scarpered through their mates and of the board, Spearmen and Harpies into another who also scarpered off the board. By great good fortune this allowed the Harpies to hit the fleeing Censer Bearers who buggered off too before they could rally and cause me more grief. The sorely tested Dark Elf General finally broke the Clanrats (who needed 5s with a reroll – not a sure thing by any means) and pursued them off the board). Yay! This panicked the Warp Lightning Cannon which spent several turns fleeing in different directions before rallying itself in Pete’s last turn. The only serious concern I had now was that when he returned to the board my General had to choose between facing the twins and their warp lightning spells, or the Jezzails and their shooty death. Dang.

With the Harpies bearing down on them the decision of what to shoot was an easy one for the Jezzails and the flying harridans were annihilated in short order. Pete finally began pushing forward on the left with confidence in numbers canceling out his fear of my shooting the left flank. The rats milled around waiting for the Cow to make it’s grand entrance and face shooty/magic death.

I started my turning by sportingly asking Pete if I could just leave the Cow off the table. He declined ☺ and I decided to move it behind a hill so it was “only” facing a couple of Warp Lightning spells. The Black Guard crested the hill in Pete’s deployment zone ready to mess something up good in the next turn (we were at turn 5 by this point). I made my second really big mistake here and again it was to do with the facing of a unit. The Plaguemonks, being Frenzied, would be forced to charge the Black Guard on their hill. Likely to lose they would flee and I would have to pursue but unfortunately, while I was likely chase them off the board the pursuit wasn’t going to take me into the Stormvermin who I DESPERATELY wanted to get my hands on.

Pete’s turn and he was somewhat surprised (and disappointed) to realise the Plaguemonks had to go in. Taking 9 casualties on the charge they lost combat by something hideous (I think 14 - 3 ranks, standard, BSB, hill, outumber, kills vs 3 ranks and a standard or something like that) and broke. The Black Guard pursued and forced the Jezzails to flee the table too but the writing was on the wall at this point. The Stormvermin were not tempted in the slightest to try it on with the Black Guard and they finished the game a few inches away facing each other and hurling childish insults. On the flank my worst fears were realized and the Cow was gunned down by 12 (that’s a double 6 for hits people!) hits from Warp Lightning. The boss held the banner he’d captured and survived the game by skirting around the edges of a Clanrat unit.

In the end the battle kind of petered out and much jeering was made by onlookers of Pete’s decision not to fire the Warp Lightning Cannon in the last turn (sorry, it must have rallied in turn 5 – hazy memory) and by me because he wouldn’t charge the Black Guard with the Stormvermin (Pete’s not an idiot ☺). He’d dealt out a fair bit of damage and when the dust settled and the calculations were complete I’d snatchd up a 12-8 win (Pete's only loss of the weekend). Given the differences in our armies I’d say Pete did bloody well out of that little encounter! I enjoyed the game immensely – the army, the player, the mad dice – great Warhammer and an outstanding first game for the tournament!

I had the funny feeling I might have come off better in this encounter if I'd had my Empire lads with me. Sure did miss that Mortar!

The Runefang Files - Introduction

2009-05-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

Long-term readers of this less than esteemed and august blog will recall the disastrous non-trip to Wellington last year that “Pommy” Dave Grant and myself unwillingly endured. After we were done with catastrophic mechanical malfunctions (both auto and aero), postponed by inevitably misbooked flights, and I suffered a last minute lost (but not actually lost) wallet that pushed me to the brink of the limits of human endurance and sanity I was left with a credit with my favourite airline (not) for a flight that I had to book within a year of the biggest cockup in recent airline history.

I spent some time casting around for a decent event to attend while simultaneously fending off my wife who was quite keen to get her hands on a plane ticket for whatever heinous shopping exploration she had planned. Fortunately for me the Wellington lads felt it necessary to run a tournament at zero hour and I was able to book in at a reasonable cost a tenuously reliable flight to Wellywood to take part in Runefang II (there’s not a few sequels scheduled to come out this year including Tin Soldier 2, Horned Rat 2 and Skitterleap 2 – lets hope the traditional shoddy byproduct of an excellent original is not a trend set in concrete as established by Hollywood moguls interested only in making a quick buck with a poorly thought-out, ill-conceived epilogue to the real story that is any first movie… sorry… disgressus maximus…). Having also found a willing and gullible travel buddy in one Nick Irvine (aka Always Wood Elves Nick aka Captain Soft Scores) the weekend was shaping up to be quite the adventure.

4:30 bloody AM saw me up and at ‘em, pick up Nick on the way through to the airport. With Welly airport closed the previous day due to typically inviting weather and my previous experiences with Pacific Blue weighing heavily on my mind I was most surprised to actually make it to Wellington not only in one piece but only 15 minutes late. Nice! Half a paycheck worth of taxi ride through the mental rabbit warren that is the Wellington CBD and hill suburb of Khandallah later and we arrived at the obscurely placed Khandallah Scout Hall, filled to overflowing with keen gamers and as diverse a range of armies as you could hope to encounter. Feeling I was obviously at an advantage for already being awake for 4 hours (unlike the luckless locals who probably woke up 15 minutes before they needed to be at the venue – poor bastards) I set about conquering the Wellington upstarts, ready and willing to demolish anything that crossed my path with by far and away the dirtiest list I have ever (maybe will ever) take to a Warhammer Fantasy tournament.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the army:

As mentioned previously (and as evidenced by previous posts - take some time to have a read and wander through the archives if you’re new to all this) I’m quite the army whore. Don’t tell my wife (please PLEASE don’t tell her!) but I’m finding it extraordinarily difficult to stick to using one army (I recently tried a couple of games using Daemons – oh… my…goodness!). The upshot of having great friends who don’t mind (much) that you’re pilfering their prized plastic is that you get to experience the spice of life by playin a range of armies. Pete made the comment that (one) reason he quite liked Fantasy (compared to say… 40k) is that the armies really are VERY diverse and quite unique. It’s not just the fact that you don’t face Space Marines every other round – rather, between (and even within) army books you can encounter and experience startling differences resulting in innumerable subtle strategic and tactical distinctions. For this reason (and because Ray opened a cupboard at exactly the wrong moment, allowing me to see a choppy little chap sitting on a Manticore) I felt obliged to give Dark Elves a shot.

Having used Lizards, Dwarfs, Empire and Brettonians previously in both friendly and competitive games I found myself utterly compelled to have a hit out with something Elven in nature. Dark Elves naturally are one of the more recent flavours of the month and my good mate Ray happened to have a painted army on hand and was generous enough to allow me to use it. Sold.

I spent a week putting some list options together and playing a few games. Whether by universal design or newness to the list I found myself always drawn back to a couple of things:

- Hydras are absolutely f**king brokenly awesome. For 175pts you’re either mad or stubbornly fluff-driven not to take one. They should be coming in at 210pts plus (much better than a Giant in my opinion).
- Reaper Bolt Throwers are stupidly good. 4s to hit at long range? Str4 Armour Piercing? Ho-ly crap.
- Are Black Guard really that good? Yes, I’m afraid so (if they don’t get shot to pieces before they hit in combat). I had to take them. In fact I had to give them the ASF banner too. Oh, and a Crimson Death for the Champion. Oh and better put the BSB in this unit with a Great Weapon. Madness (I’d fallen right off the wagon by this point).
- Harpies are just about the best thing ever. 55pts for 5 flying, baiting and fleeing, two attack, march-blocking pains in the ass? Big yes. Two units please. Chuck in a couple of units of Dark Riders too while you’re at it.
- Failing 3 Stupidity checks in one game gave me reason enough to drop all the Cold One elements from the list.
- I’ve really taken a big flying Terror causer before. Ok yes I mucked around with a Hippogryph for a while when I was using Bretts but Hippos are shite. To be honest the Manticore wasn’t too much better but the Dreadlord on top with Pendant (broken) and Sword of Battle + Potion of Strength (to bust out 5 str attacks with Hatred when I feel the need) was/is the business and kinda sealed the deal. I ALMOST went with a Black Dragon. Almost. Damn but I was close to taking a Dragon. Scary how easy it is to compromise your morals with Dark Elves. Maybe I was just playing in character?

So what did I end up with? An army that pretty much ticked every red light box you possibly can if you’re taking Dark Elves! I felt a bit guilty using such a nasty list but given the 30% comp weighting at Runefang II also felt I’d have my work cut out for me needing to overcome the train wreck that would doubtless be my comp score with smooth moves, mad skills and a consistent performance on the battlefield. I’ve never been put in this position before as my comp score inevitably compensates for my shoddy generalship. Usually.

Here’s what I took:

Dreadlord – Pendant, Sword of Battle, Potion of Strength, Sea Dragon Cloak, mundane armour (enough to get a 2+ save vs shooting), Cow (Manticore)
BSB – 1+ save armour, Ring of Hotek (wait till you read about the game I had vs a Slann and Priest on Engine… at once awesome and hideously disappointing)
Sorceress with 2 Scrolls (caddy. Might have cast one spell over the 5 games)

2 x 5 Dark Riders – Spears, Uzis, Muso
2 x 5 Harpies
20 Spears with full command and Warbanner
2 x 10 Crossbowmen

15 Black Guard – Hag Graef (ASF), Crimson Death on Champion, no musician
6 Shades

2 Reaper Bolt Throwers
Hydra

Geez that was it. Damn it looks small now but there’s a hard core of badness in there ☺

On reflection I would have changed some stuff (I won’t be taking them to a tournament again so this is just wishful thinking and wistful musing):

- drop the Ring and try some more magic; it’s a fun Lore and I didn’t get to flex Power of Darkness at all
- put the boss on a Dark Steed – the Cow was dead weight and though it sounds naff I just found it to be too soft (looks good though!)
- take an Assassin. They look like wicked fun!

Other than that the list was great, I mean come on – I took all the best stuff right?

Next up... Round One GRUDGE vs Pete Dunn!

Where to from here?

2009-04-28T01:24:00.001-07:00

Time for something different I reckon. The Empire are still a strong option for me and I'm still having great fun with the list but for Runefang II it's going to have to be something really different.

Maybe... Dark Elves?

Of course it has to be Dark Elves! Reckoning that the bandwagon is still running hot and fast I've jumped on-board, borrowed Ray's sneering pointy-ears, bashed together a dirty list and sought as many play-testing games as I can before Runefang happens and my plans for world/Wellington domination blow up in my face like a shoddy and unreliable Great Cannon.

The list is certainly very different to what I would normally be using with the Empire (or indeed any army with which I've had previous experience). The Hydra is incredible (and great fun to use!), Reaper Bolt Throwers are almost unbelievable, Shades can be good value (not that I've discovered so far but I'm hoping I can figure out how to use them), and the characters have really supplied me with something quite beyond what I'm used to fielding. Harpies are a hoot - highly highly annoying Flyers that, combined with Dark Riders, give the army some much needed "chaff" (although it's hard to think of the excellent Dark Riders in such derogatory and expendable terms) that is not only incredible fast but also remarkably punchy.

I've managed a few test games - against my own Empire list (Cannons are good aren't they?!), Daemons (Banner of Hellfire - OW!), High Elves (3 units of Dragon Princes and a Star Dragon being an entertaining feature of that particular list), Chaos Mortals (losing just one Bolt Thrower while simultaneously annihilating the enemy army bar one cowering Knight in a forest), and a very solid win over another Dark Elf army that left just 3 Witch Elves and a 1/2-wounds Hag BSB alive at the end for my opponent.

Once I'd gotten my act together and had a rethink about the army and list I was intending to use I then sought out a game against Philfy's High Elf test list for Tin Soldier 2. Alas Philfy, fearing the wrath of Ji-Dave and another 20-0 thrash-annihilation, failed to show for our game (wuss!!!) but by great good fortune I was able to get a game against Capt Soft Score instead. Nick decimated my Empire in our last encounter so I was highly motivated to get some stabby Hatey revenge. The game went VERY well except for two things:

- poor placement of the Manticore led to it almost being magically charged by Wardancers (I was lucky Nick rolled low for the charge distance) but then the Manticore was shot out from underneath the boss by 7 Glade Guard (hitting on 2s, all randomised onto the Cow, wounding on 5s = dead Cow). With the boss now on foot and in charge range of the Wardancers I had to get stuck in. Their annoying 4+ ward saved them and he eventually lost by 1 in some later round of combat and I fluffed the break test. Worse I fled a subsequent charge and was but down by some handy Glade Riders.

- The Black Guard were happily eating into the flank of a big unit of Eternal Guard until a bad round of wounding rolls saw me lose combat by 1, fail the Stubborn and of course fail the reroll. Worse Nick caught them in the pursuit and cut them down. This panicked the Hydra (who was about 2" short of an overrun into the front of the Enternal Guard from a previous combat) which fortunately managed to rally in my last turn. Sheesh.

The first incident was bad play; the second dumb luck. It happens of course but otherwise I was very happy with how the game went (won by about 550VPs - would have been by over 1000VPs if the Black Guard hadn't broken) so no hard feelings there. Still struggling to use the Cow very well. Lost the Boss/Cow, a unit of Crossbows, a unit of Dark Riders and all the Harpies. Oh yeah, and the stupid Black Guard and BSB!

MVPs would probably be the Hydra (practically untouchable - didn't take any wounds and dealt out plenty of breath-weapony goodness; also crushed 3 units in combat) or the Harpies who march-blocked, ran down a big unit of fleeing Glade Guard, and stopped the Eternal Guard from fleeing from the Black Guard. Fantastic unit - incredibly versatile, lots of fun to use. It was also nice to face a somewhat more magic-intensive list - Nick was waving around 8PD so with 3DD and 2 scrolls (and due to placement the Ring never came into play) holding him off was never a sure thing (killing off the L4 helped a lot though!!).

The army overall has provided a useful gaming experience - if nothing else I feel I have a better chance against Dark Elves should I face them in the future - knowing what they are capable of is a big advantage (and the dangerous units are not always the most obvious ones). It's also a heck of a different army to what I would normally take - I dare say quite a bit harder than my usual choices but it's nice to mix things up in this regard too.

So... Runfang 2 this weekend and an exciting tournament right from round one as I've been grudged by the number 3 player in NZ - Pete Dunn! I've never played Pete before but based on reputation alone this is going to be a great game! I understand Pete is taking Skaven so it's great to know my experience having played Asian Nick's ratties is going to pay off and I've also sought advice from other players about what to expect and possible counter-measures. It's an interesting matchup for the Dark Elves, potentially a very good one, but Pete will be flooding the board with models and it will be a struggle to get through the chaff to the good stuff and the point sinks... Hang on... Do Skaven actually have any point sink units?...

Reports to follow next week :)

NatCon Summary

2009-04-28T01:18:00.000-07:00

Overall I would have to say I enjoyed NatCon more than any previous tournament I’ve attended. There’s a couple of good reasons for this – not least of all the fact that this was also my best performance in a tournament so far!

I played 8 excellent opponents, only one of which is a regular opponent (Mark). Despite the fact I played all three Brettonian armies (thanks again for that Philfy…) and two Dwarf armies I found every game enjoyable and challenging in its own unique way. The two Dwarf armies had some similarities in terms of army composition but the generals behind the army were VERY different players. Ken and Darren were both an absolute blast to play and I really hope to face them again at future events. The Brettonians, an army I have previously had enormous trouble dealing with, were all managed quite brilliantly (how’s that for modesty?).

Against Mark I suffered from a bout of karmic realignment with that blasted Paladin – if it weren’t for that I would have had him sown up nicely (sigh... more battle points go wanting).

Against Harry I was toast and the question was only by how much – beyond a shadow of a doubt Tomb Kings are my nemesis army, good general or not (Harry is, unsurprisingly, an EXCELLENT general!). Retrospectively I should have played cagey, denied points, sacrificed crap all over the place and eked out a minor loss if at all possible.

Against Joe I shouldn’t have obsessed so much over the bloody dragon and taken shots at his bolt throwers instead which more than earned their points back by eliminating my diverting options in the middle game (turns 3 and 4). I was unlucky to not killing the Dragon (one wound left… come on!!!) but it’s hard to blame the dice when you aren’t really thinking strategically (although I did roll up that ‘1’ for number of wounds on the first shot…). In fact I’m really disappointed about that last game – I should have known the placings would come down to a couple of points between 7th and 4th – the Flagellents died cheap and nasty and that was very poor play on my part. I’m also disappointed that I didn’t play Reid – obviously one of us needs to work a little harder to create that kind of matchup! I had a good run early on and got my wish – to play good players and to face off against challenging armies.

I very much liked that Phil gave everyone a copy of all the army lists in play. Made for some entertaining theoryhammer at the end of the day as we contemplated our matchups for the next round and also circumvented a lot of questions during the games. Damn good idea and something I’ll be stealing later in the year. The tournament overall was well-organised and ran smoothly (one misdrawn round aside – and that was quickly fixed before any damage was done). Congrats and cheers to Phil for his hard work and to the comp judges. No thanks for to Phil for drawing me against three Brettonians and two Dwarfs but that’s as much my fault as anyone elses :)

Having mentioned the comp judges I found the army composition scoring to be (as always) a focal point for further discussion. Having all the army lists available means you can actually try and make some sense of the comp scores people received. On the whole I’d have to say I like what I see but there were a few things that stood out that, while I wouldn’t directly question (far be it for me to question the judgement of a panel of vastly more experienced players!) and would like to gain a better understanding of for future events.

First, that Vampire Counts army. Harry made the comment in a discussion midway through the event that the Dixon clan had pretty much got together and created the hardest army they felt they could get away with. Ok, fine. Thing is though – they actually did get away with it! It received 25/60 for composition. It was not vetoed. This really drew significant attention from me because I am currently working on a VC army for the 2010 tournament season (starting with DogCon – fingers crossed!) so any comp dialogue or VC army lists gain my immediate notice. I couldn’t help but compare this to my Empire list (41/60 comp score). A 16 point differential could easily have been made up by a good player – I’m confident I could have done better with that VC list than I did with my Empire. Was it hit hard enough? Was it hard enough to warrant a veto? Rumour had it that only one list was vetoed and resubmitted (a magic heavy Daemon list) but I wonder how this list dodged the veto bullet or how close it came to missing.

The Star Dragon High Elf list – 34/60. Joe wasn’t pulling too many punches here.

Flying uber-boss, ItP (Standard of Balance – also cancels Hatred/Frenzy; useful against Dark Elves!) Dragon Prince bus, 2 bolties, mini-Swordmasters. Reminded me a lot of Philfy’s Fields list actually J The only thing he was light on was magic offense and defense and given the highly aggressive focus of the list this wasn’t likely to make much of a difference in most of his games if he had blasted through his opponent’s two major units by the end of the second turn. The list undoubtedly took a hit but with a differential between our lists of 7 points I guess I feel less bad (he was only 5 battle points ahead of me in the end). I suppose the lack of a magic phase from High Elves is a concession but this appeared to me to be somewhat counteracted by the ItP Dragon Prince unit from hell.

*****

Before I’d put some more serious and considered thought into how my own army went I was initially strongly considering taking a Steam Tank to my next tournament (Runefang II – one month away), however the more I thought about it the more I have become convinced that I don’t need to have a Stank to make the army work better and there were multiple opportunities and moments where I made poor in-game decisions or failed to take advantage of opportunities that my opponent presented that would have netted me a substantial points gain. The Rune of Challenge incident against the Dwarfs for instance – I should have fled the Rune-encouraged charge against the Ironbreakers (a guaranteed loss) and fled. Average dice may or may not have put me off the table (was probably about 12-13” away) but more importantly would have not only prevented the Dwarfs from gaining my Knight’s banner but also allowed the Flagellents to get a charge off on the Ironbreakers. While the Flagellents would never have broken the unit (or indeed caused much in the way of casualties) it would have meant gaining the initiative over the Dwarfs and possibly allowing the Flagellents to survive the game with a couple of models left. In real terms this is a points gain to me of 100 points at the very least (the captured banner), maybe as much as 205 points (banner + surviving ½-strength Flagellents). Had the Knights and Priest actually not fled the board then the points differential would have been even greater (potentially a 500+ points difference overall!!!). This sort of margin of difference would have changed my overall placing enough to move me to the podium! So, no Steam Tank for now and I just need to play better J My initial plan Empire was to become a much better player by utilising clever strategy and cagey decision-making, not by taking uber-units of doom and destruction (which is what, in Empire terms at least, classify the Steam Tank). I’ve included my original thoughts below for the sake of amusement and to illustrate the change in direction of my thinking on the army’s effectiveness over the last couple of days.

DELETED BUT INCLUDED FOR AMUSEMENT - My own comp score of 41/60 is probably spot on. I can see how I could have gone softer but I’m not a good enough general to not have the Arch-Lector’s magic defense and survivability as an asset and the Flagellents as a block of reliable and guaranteed Unbreakable troops. Of everything else in the list the only hindrance to a more decent comp score is probably the two Cannons but quite frankly, Empire have to have something to deal with the various monstrousities that are out there! My strongest consideration at this point is whether I should lose the Flagellents and the Knights with Great Weapons (no comp bonus for that unit and definitely not worth taking in game terms) and get a Steam Tank. Gives me some more points to play around with too (33pts – 48 if I lose the Sigil of Sigmar on the Priest which never came into play). I know Steam Tanks are hideously vulnerable in the current game but the Flagellents guarantee the opponent such a vast amount of points so easily (anything that charges them, shooting, magic… you name, it kills them) that I really struggle to think of a game where they worked really effectively AND survived the game (I’m not talking ½ points – I mean at all!). With a plastic kit coming out, the Steam Tank is looking more tempting than ever! Taking a -1 comp hit for including it is easily worth not giving up points to my opponent AND the strategic value I get out of the model itself.

Other than that the army worked fairly well. The detachment system is great when it works but the army book has been around for so long that people are either wise to the counter-charge tactics or you are facing something so hideously brutal that the loss of ranks doesn’t hurt at all and you end up giving up combat res getting your detachments killed off. Three or four years ago detachments would have been awesome. They can still be very useful but you have to resign yourself to giving up a lot of points using them to divert and bait so to me it just reinforces the fact that a detachment-based Empire force bleeds points like there’s no tomorrow. However, given the models I’m using are the models I have available and the army wasn’t constructed and theoryhammered from the get go to be a killing machine I fell I did well. Part of that was luck of the draw in terms of matchups, part of it was down to some lucky artillery rolls, and part of it was down to my opponents (particularly the Dwarf and Brettonian players) getting frustrated to heck by all those little guys running around and getting in the way :)

Haven’t heard where NatCon is next year but based on my most recent experience I’d like to think I’d be in there again. Once again, congratulations to the prizewinners and place-getters and to Philfy for doing such a standup job of running the whole show.

NatCon Round Eight - Joe Dixon (High Elves)

2009-04-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

On the home stretch after a marathon 7 games (and very little sleep) and I drew that list. Dang.

Star Dragon with armoured up boss
9 Dragon Princes with ItP 'enemy no longer have Frenzy/Hatred' banner
BSB on Steed
2 bolties
10 Archers
Lots of Spears with Warbanner
2 x 5 or 6 Swordmasters
Tiranoc Chariot
2 Eagles

Like the battle against his brother I don't have too much to say about this game. The Dragon should have died - 4 consecutive Cannon shots yielded 4 consecutive misfires that stopped me from taking it's last wound. Or maybe I should have ignored (???) the Dragon and Cannoned the bolt throwers instead? The big lizard flapped around, roasted some Spearmen and beat up the Swordsmen. My Arch-Lector solo-charged the Dragon Princes and began steadily hewing his way through them but I was so tired I forgot to move the BSB in range to pass the break checks - got lucky for a couple of turns but broke eventually and was run down. Reckoned I could have taken them if I'd stayed in the fight! Shooting annilhated the detachments one at a time. The Flagellents hit the Spearmen in a compulsory overrun and I was obliterated by a ridiculous number of ASF attacks. The Knights fled from Panic before they could move... bah.

I felt I played this game really badly and was very disappointed - not the end to the tournament I had hoped for! The more I think about it the more the Cannons should have gone for the Bolt Throwers... sigh.

Looked to me like I'd peaked far too early in the tournament (end of day one, lol) and this in itself - my inability to play the long game - was probably the biggest learning experience of this game. Yeah, a little more luck (like, not getting 4 stupid misfires) would probably have sorted the Dragon meaning the Swordsmen would have survived and charged the Dragon Princes which might have sorted them out but then Warhammer is full of "what-ifs" :) Joe was a polite enough opponent but I think at this stage we were both feeling pretty tired and his army was a little more reliable than mine and maybe (maybe mind you!) he didn't have to think quite as hard about his play to make the magic happen. Actually this is an army I would quite like another game against (possibly will catch Joe at Runefang in a couple of weeks) as with a bit more (ok, a lot more) clear thinking I reckon I could take him.

NatCon Round Seven - Ken Hays (Dwarfs)

2009-04-28T00:50:00.000-07:00

The lads had talked up Ken as being one of the nicest guys to play and that I was lucky to be getting a game against him - and I wasn't disappointed! Ken lived up to all the hype and received my Best Sports vote (Mark the very close second option). This was another cracker game that was hard-fought all the way.

Thanks once again to the TO for the draw - my second Strollaz Dwarf army :)

Ken played a very sharp game - in fact he was simultaneously running a tournament using a different gaming system (!) - and made a couple of sterling decisions that kept the margin of victory very small for the Empire (in fact, victory was never definite). I on the other hand made a couple of really stupid decisions:

- leaping the Dwarf Lord from the Hammerers to the Ironbreakers Ken cranked up the Master Rune of Challenge on my Knights. Like an idiot I charged (definitely should have fled!). Charging a static 6 Dwarf block with 2+ saves that is housing a Dwarf Lord is nothing short of complete idiocy. Fleeing might still have kept me on the table and would not only have denied Ken the Knight's banner but also allowed the Flagellents to charge the Ironbreakers and pin them (and the killy Dwarf boss) down for the rest of the game. Instead the Knights charged, were beaten to a pulp, fled, lost their banner, couldn't rally, and the Ironbreakers overran into the Flagellents!! Bugger.

- not breaking the Hammerers. This seems fairly obvious up to the point where the Swordsmen who hit them in the flank caused Fear thanks to Shades of Death! Needing to take two wounds off the BSB in a challenge with the Arch-Lector I fluffed spectacularly and the bugger survived. Thanks to the Rune of flippin Stoicism I turned out to have the same unit strength as the Dwarfs so they weren't autobroken!!! The Swordsmen took a unit of Dwarf Warriors in the flank for their troubles and although they hung around for another turn (and I evetually managed to take out the Dwarf BSB) the writing was on the wall and the Swordsmen (and Lector) were broken. The only saving grace of this fiasco was an heroic charge into the newly turned flank of the Hammerers by the Spearmen detachment who not only managed to kill 4 Dwarfs in their second round of combat (taking them below 1/2 strength) but also held against the return attacks and survived the game.

In contrast to this I managed to take out a unit of Longbeards, some Quarrellers and a couple of bolt throwers which gave me a reasonable 13-7 win in the end. Tough game against the Stunties but a surprisingly exciting matchup.

NatCon Round Six - Mark McCall (Brettonians! Rargh!!!)

2009-04-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

WTF Philfy - why do you hate me so?

Oh well...

Mark and I are good mates and have played a couple of times but I'd not yet managed to best his Bretts. In our last game I had him lined up (and he was taking much stick from the onlookers for his "refused centre" strategy) but the blasted Hippogryph (and some handy lance action from 3 Pegasus Knights who really should have died a lot earlier) did for my BSB and Spears which of course triggered the traditional last turn tactical retreat costing me the Wizard and some other stuff. I was determined to make a good game of this and give Mark a real challenge. He's an excellent opponent and the game was played in great spirit despite the friendly competitive tension of the matchup.

Without going into massive detail after 3 turns I had Mark on the ropes. The Pegs were gone, a unit of Errants had buggered off before they had moved (Cannon), one of his big buses was under enormous shooting pressure and had been severely reduced.

Then, as does happen in some of my games it seems, the whole battle did a stunning 180. Three things turned the game:

- a suicidal solo charging Paladin hit the Flagellents in the front and took a wound for his troubles, losing combat by 5! Needing a 4 or less Mark fluffed the roll. He was about to run the Knight away when I realised his BSB was just in range (by mere millimetres). Of course he passed the reroll. Had the Paladin fled the persuing Flagellents would have hit his General on Hippogryph (2 wounds left on the Hippo after taking some shooting). They might have managed to actually kill the giant budgie but whether they had or not he would at least have been pinned down for the rest of the game. Instead the Hippo boss charged my General (who was wandering over to wave pom-poms and shout encouragement). In the inevitable challenge the Brett Lord was Van Horstmanns'd but the luckless Lector needing only to save a wound (failed) and dish out two in return (only managed one) to win the combat couldn't make the dice play. One auto-broken General later and I was a broken man!

- on the right we were giving each other hell thanks to a unit each of Fast Cav. Having gambled some shooting to reduce the BSBs bus unit (and failed) the Pistoliers fled and crucially failed to rally. This left his Yeoman to keep the Reiksguard contained well enough that they took a nasty charge from the hitty Knights in the last turn. The Reiksguard died horribly.

- having foreseen the death of the Reiksguard the Priest had bailed. Fancying their chances the same unit of Yeonman charged in and had the temerity to put a wound on him! They remained in combat right up to the end of the game. Crucially the single wound they managed to inflict meant Mark recieved 1/2 points for the Priest... this was just enough to give him a win by 3VPs. According to the (DogCon-inspired and frankly annoying) VP table that was an 11-9 win to my opponent!

Tiny VP-difference = 11-9 loss aside this was a fantastic game and I really can't begrudge Mark the fortune of that rerolled Break Check (damn!!!). This was as close to a draw as one could realistically hope to achieve and it certainly felt that way at the end of the game.

NatCon Round Five - Neil Williamson (Brettonians)

2009-04-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

It was with much amusement that I faced the father of my Round Two opponent. Having done for the younger Williamson and also dealt harshly to a Brettonian army the previous day I very much hoped to give Neil a good hard game. I also made a mental note to provide the TO with a 'coincidental' funtimes draw should he play in a tournament that I'm running in the future :)

Neil's Bretts were VERY different to Henry's. Peasant units to the max - I think I'd finished deploying my entire army before a single unit of Knights had been placed!

This game developed on three fronts. On my left flank Neil had rather curiously deployed a large Realm bus with BSB (the good old static 7 one with Virtue of Duty and Warbanner) against all my cavalry, the Crossbows and a Cannon. With good diverting and bait/flee options the Knights were outmanouevred, shot to bits and pieces and eventually pounced upon by the Reiksguard who ate them for breakfast (or at least a late lunch).

In the centre my infantry blocks were facing a two-pronged attack coming around a large forest in the middle of the table. A small Realm unit came around the left and hit the Spears. They were chased off by static res (7 from my guys including a detachment flank charge) and the Spearmen also dealt with a second mini-Realm bus, capturing their second banner of the game (but failing to catch either unit in pursuit).

On the right of the forest Neil was discovering how incredibly annoying Empire detachments are. With a combination of redirecting and fleeing his General's unit hit the Swordsmen and were smashed and fled (failed to catch them too though - bugger!). An extremely unfortunate unit of Mounted Yeoman hit the Flagellents (still can't figure out why) and were beaten to a bloody pulp. The Flagellents were then charged in the rear by a unit of three Grail Knights (three!) which kept them occupied for the rest of the game.

That left Neil's Pegasus Knights who took two cannonballs to the face. The suriving Knight charged at my suicide Wizard but the cowardly (and wise) sorcerer narrowly escaped and managed to rally.

Unfortunately, poised to decimate Neil's units with fresh charges from my blocks (into his Knights) and the Knights (into Peasants and the Treb) we ran out of time. Somehow we'd only managed to get through 4 turns! I found this very frustrating and realised immediately that I'd missed out on another couple of battle points (at least!) and that this would cost me in the washup. The next turn would have seen be grab another 300-900 victory points with the odds very firmly on my side (Brettonians REALLY don't like getting charged by static res 5-6 units!). A 14-6 win z9that could have easily been an 18-2) and ultimately a disappointing game despite the entertaining detachment heroics in the centre.

Having faced two Brettonian armies I had a little joke with my mate Mark McCall that I might as well face the third one at the tournament. Funny... the joke wasn't nearly as funny in reality...

NatCon Round Four - Bloody Tomb Kings (Harry Dixon)

2009-04-27T23:56:00.000-07:00

The reason I've been stalling on this report is for much the same reasons as I stalled on the 20-0 loss to Capt Nick at FluffyCon report. Turns out I didn't lose quite as badly in this game but the issue I have with the game and recounting it is that I'm really struggling to see how the outcome could have been that different. Tomb Kings are without a doubt my absolute nemisis army. Doesn't matter what I'm using, if I'm facing Tomb Kings the sharp money is on the other guy to beat the snot out of whatever I'm pushing around. Not just beat the snot out of my guys though - do it in style by losing bugger all of his own army.

Which is not to say I played extremely well. In fact I deployed poorly - the Knights and Pistoliers were almost out of the game and the Flagellents were perfectly lined up to get machine-gunned to death by Archers and Cav before being magically charged and smashed by Ushabti. If I were to have a go at this game again I honestly reckon I'd castle up to the max with a long line of Flagellents out front to take all the heat, and just hug the board edge in the vain hope that I might keep my rear/flanks safe from magical charges. I really should have done this. Really.

As it was I lost first turn in this game and the Crossbowmen were immediately vapourised by a large unit of Skeleton Archers hanging out on a hill. The Cannons had one turn to make a good impact so naturally they either misfired (against the sweet sweet flank of a unit of chariots and Tomb Prince) or overshot (against the Catapult).

The battle progressed largely exactly how Harry wanted it too. The Knights were kept well out of the game, the detachments were smashed, Scorpions ate the artillery, the Flagellents... died. The Spearmen and BSB ended up fleeing a charge and fleeing the board just to deny Harry the inevitable 200 bonus points to be gained from capturing their banners.

All in all it was a dark day for the Empire; an 18-2 loss and the harsh reality of aiming beyond the scope of my ability as a player (damn those three wins on day 1). Harry went on to smash everyone else - no joke, he didn't drop a game. His hardest matchup might have been against Reid (16-4?). Harry is probably the best Tomb Kings player in the country - he's been using the army for years and at the end of this event he was the clear winner; ahead of the rest of the pack by around 20 tournament points. No great shame in losing to him (although one was perhaps hoping not to lose quite so badly) and this defeat had the fortunate side-effect of sending me back down the rankings to play someone more on my level which was probably for the better :)

NatCon Round Three – Brettonians (Henry Poor)

2009-04-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

Prior to using Empire I had had enormous trouble dealing with Brettonians. Meaning I always lost. Always. While I still found them a challenge to face (frankly, everything is a bit of a challenge to face when you’re an Empire player ☺) the highly annoying and immediately abundant suicide-squad detachments make the job much more fun for me (and I suppose much more frustrating for my opponent). Although I’d been struggling against Bretts in some practice games leading up to NatCon I felt I was getting a better handle on how to deal with them.

Enter Henry Poor. I thought the name sounded familiar and it flippin was – Henry is an ex-student of the school I teach at! Small world stuff – time to see if the student has now become the master!

Henry had also just recently stumbled upon the fantastic WargamerAU forums, having posted his tournament list (already submitted) and keen to seek feedback about ‘where to from here’. By further coincidence I contributed to his thread (being a long-time sufferer of Brettonian lance-induced death I felt somewhat qualified to offer an opinion) so it was time for reintroductions with forum names ☺ I was very confident going into this game – the Empire really had the tools to deal with this one!

Brettonian Lord (General) – Barded Warhorse, Shield, Virtue of Confidence, Birth Sword of Carcassone, Gromril Great Helm, Gauntlet of the Duel (the reroll King!... or Duke…)
Paladin (BSB) – Barded Warhorse, Virtue of Duty, Banner of the Lady (big block death)
Paladin – Virtue of Empathy, Morning Star, Shield, Tress of Isoulde, Cuirass of Fortune
Damsel – Warhorse, 2 x Dispel Scrolls
Damsel – L2, Prayer Icon of Quenelles, Power Stone

Field Trebuchet

10 Peasant Bowmen – Skirmishers, Brazier
10 Peasant Bowmen – Brazier
10 Peasant Bowmen – Brazier
24 Men-At-Arms – Full Command
24 Men-At-Arms – Full Command
12 Knights of the Realm – Full Command, Warbanner
9 Knights of the Realm – Full Command, Banner of Twilight
9 Knights Errant – Full Command, Errantry Banner

Holy Brett-Bus Batman!

Well, seldom does a plan go as perfectly as it did in this game. The Reiksguard Knights and Pisoliers held the advance of the Lord’s Realm bus in check until I was ready for them to hit my Spearmen and BSB head-on (having ploughed through a detachment first) at which point the evil Brettonians were smashed in the flank. Hard.

The BSB's bus of doom was baited, redirected and harassed by the GW-Knights until they were charged (!) by the Flagellents. The good old Flaggies died to a man just at the point where the Swordsmen and Arch-Lector (having already seen off the Errants) got into one flank while the rallied GW-Knights hit the other. The evil Brettonians took another solid beating and buggered off.

After that the Pistoliers cleaned up some Peasants (those busy Spearmen and the detachments having taken care of the rest… ok, the Mortar might have helped with an awesome direct hit that killed 13 in one shot) and that was the game.

With the entire enemy army, the enemy general, 5 standards, and all 4 quarters held by the Empire it was probably the most brutal defeat I’ve ever inflicted upon anyone. Ever. I’d lost the Flagellents (which was an annoyingly recurring theme throughout the weekend and one of the reasons I make those rash suggestions in my summary in a later post) and not a few detachments.

To his absolute credit Henry took the loss well and was keen to learn what he could from the game. We had a good talk about deployment and army selection (a couple of small lances would be handy for sorting out those redirectors for example) and he's definitely someone I look forward to playing in the future (especially if he's not using Brettonians any more).

NatCon Round Two – Dwarfs (Peter Williamson)

2009-04-22T19:48:00.000-07:00

Someone, somewhere must have something against me because this is the first of two Strollaz Dwarf armies that I fought over the course of the tournament. One is unusual; two is downright disturbing. There were in fact FIVE Dwarf armies at NatCon which I think had everyone pretty much freaked out. W-e-i-r-d!

Peter is a young chap who came up from Masterton with his Dad (who was playing Brettonians for future reference). He was quite amusingly a typical Dwarf player – muttered under his breath a lot, grumbled about inadequate shooting/dice etc. His rather unique list was very light on killy stuff but rather abundant in terms of warm bodies.

Thane (General!) – Great Weapon, Gromril Armour (Rune of Stone), Shield
Thane (BSB) – Strollaz Rune
Thane – Great Weapon, Gromril Armour (Rune of Stone), Shield
Dragonslayer

10 Quarrellers – Great Weapons
10 Thunderers – Shields
16 Warriors – Full command, Shields
16 Warriors – Full command, Shields
16 Warriors – Full command, Shields
11 Warriors – Champion, Musician, Great Weapons
11 Warriors – Champion, Musician, Great Weapons
11 Rangers – Champion, Great Weapons

18 Hammerers – Full command, Rune of Stoicism, Shields
7 Miners – Champion, Musician
7 Miners – Champion, Musician
Bolt Thrower – Engineer
Bolt Thrower – Engineer

Gyrocopter

No. I’m not missing any runic items – that was it. I could see the list semi-working as a concept but in the grim reality of the Warhammer world where there is only war (wait a sec… that sounds familiar) I could also see him getting scuppered by heavy magic, shooting, hard combat troops, fear-causers and hordes of Gnoblars. Hrm.

My spell selection was really the biggest influence on this game – the Wizard managed to get Shades of Death (cast on friendly unit, unit causes fear, remains-in-play) and I immediately determined that the Flagellents would be the beneficiaries of this highly useful spell. Given the lack of anti-fear pokery-jiggery they would be having a field day.

My plans only slightly went south when, after getting the first turn, Peter’s Dwarfs were a mighty 12” away from my lines. I promised myself if I played another Strollaz Dwarf army in this event (yeah right! What are the chances of that happening?!) I would pay more attention to my needlessly aggressive depoyment. So Pete’s lads crashed forward and my detachments crashed forwards and got right in the way of everything. Having neatly put the kibosh on any hope he might have had to maintain a cohesive battleline I then added further misery by getting Shades of Death off on the Flagellents who proceeded to enact a grisly reenactment of Texas Flail Massacre 2. What was left of the Dwarf BSB and another nearby Thane was trampled underfoot by the Flagellents in their eagerness to get at the Bolt Throwers in Pete’s deployment zone. The massive beatdown the administered in combat was not the only benefit they garnered however. Poised to launch themselves into my harmless Spearmen block and cause all sorts of senseless atrocities, the Hammerers and Pete’s last surviving Warrior block (the other having some up short – haha – against my Swordsmen and Arch-Lector) both thought better of it and panicked sideways, tactically redeploying and saving my Spearmen the trouble of actually having to die in this game.

The Flagellents caught up with both Bolt Throwers and the Dwarf artillery met a messy (still Fear-causing) end.

I lost my Reiksguard Knights after I was forced into striking out at the Hammerers or being shot to ribbons by Thunderers (having inflicted Thunderer shooting on Knights myself I knew how that one would end) and the Crossbows also died having given their lives reducing the small Warrior units just in case Peter thought he might later be using them to flank charge my blocks. The Cannons also bit the dust having failed to make any impact on the game. The Mortar spent its time cowering behind a hill ☺

The end result of this fiasco was a 16-4 win to the Empire with bonus point claimed for nobbling Peter’s mostly harmless General who was no doubt left wondering why he’d neglected to arm himself with something from the Runic Weapons catalogue or indeed upgrade himself to a Lord and bump one of his mates up to Runesmith.

Pete wasn’t in the best of spirits for most of this game and unfortunately I couldn’t see his prospects improving massively for the next 6 games. He went on to place 21st out of 38 players with a most deserved comp score of 48/60 and 72/168 battle points.

NatCon Round One – Dark Elves (Darren Urquart)

2009-04-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been out of blogging for a wee while - just been struggling along with being on holiday. Tough life ain't it? :)

Anyways, finally got around to writing up a few reports from NatCon at Easter - superb tournament; great time. Only managed to finish 3 of the 8 rounds so far as I left my army list handout with my own army list/book/stuff in Reid's car and haven't managed to get it off him yet so the first 3 I've done from (hazy) memory. Hopefully the remaining 5 battles (all of them great) will be up over the next couple of weeks. Thanks to those who have been patiently waiting for an update and not kicked my ass over the lack of activity :)

On with the show...

Darren had a beautifully modeled and painted Dark Elf army and it was a real treat to face not only a fantastic battlefield force but also a wonderful guy and solid player – what great start to the tournament! A couple of models really stood out – the “Lolth-esque” Cauldron of Blood (giant spider-chick spewing blood – lovely) drew a huge number of positive comments throughout the weekend and I thought his General on Dark Steed (with converted antlers/horns) was brilliant. A superb aqua poppin-fresh paint job set the whole army off nicely and I have no doubt the force gained him not a few "Best Presentation" votes in the beauty pageant.

The list itself was by degrees both standard fare for Darkies and a little different. Hydra – tick. Two bolt throwers – tick. Black Guard – tick. Spearmen – tick. Dark Riders – tick. Two unit of Harpies – tick. There were however some interesting absences.

Master (General) – Heavy Armour, Sea Dragon Cloak, Dark Steed, Shield, Sword of Might, Ring of Hotek
Sorceress – 2 x Dispel Scrolls
Death Hag (BSB) – Standard of Hag Graef, Cauldron of Blood, Hand of Khaine
Assassin – Extra hand weapon, Hand of Khaine

Reaper Bolt Thrower
Reaper Bolt Thrower
War Hydra

17 Black Guard – Full command, Crimson Death (champion), Banner of Murder
5 Shades – Great weapons
6 Cold One Knights

5 Harpies
5 Harpies
5 Dark Riders – Musician
10 RXB Warriors – Musician, Shields
10 RXB Warriors – Musician, Shields
21 Warriors – Full command, Shields, Warbanner

This game and my 7th round against Ken Hays were the two best games of the tournament – it was a close battle from the word go and more than on stalemate situation developed. On my right 10 RXB Warriors held the Knights with Great Weapons in check (win for me keeping that amount of shooting out of the game). The ninjas-in-training (Archers) were far and away the men of the match – a heroic charge through difficult terrain saw them beat Harpies in combat (which surprised both of us!). Now deep in Dark Elf territory they did a sterling job of march-blocking the Spearmen, chipping away at them with bow shots. When the Dark Riders finally showed their noses the Archers were there again eventually helping to route them with the help of the Wizard and his magic missiles. The DE Spearmen were eventually tagged in combat by the Swordsmen and Arch-Lector and soundly beaten but managed to escape and rally on their board edge (curses!).

On the much more dubious left flank the Reiksguard Knights wondered why I had singled them out for guaranteed destruction at the hands of the Hydra and his Shade buddies. The wuss Knights put up a hopeless fight trying to stall the big beastie’s advance and were cut down in short order. Fortunately they died slowly enough to keep the Hydra out of the game for a crucial extra turn and incredibly it was eventually broken in a later combat in Darren’s last turn – unable to rally I secured myself a relatively painful 175VPs.

In the centre, with the realization that Darren’s General had neglected to take advantage of the 2-for-1 Pendant sales that Dark Elf Lords so often frequent the Cannons were having a field day trying to pin him down. His last mistake was to join an under-strength unit of Cold One Kngihts. Bereft of a “Look Out, Sir!” roll he found himself on the wrong end of a cannonball. 6 wounds later he found his last employ as battlefield decoration, strewn liberally across the field. Having received a firsthand demonstration of the dangers of running around in a unit with worrying lack of rank-and-file models the Hag BSB manning the Cauldron caught a cannonball in the chops in the next turn.

With Darren’s Sorceress clocking up the dreaded ‘double one’ on the miscast table he managed to finish the game without allowing any of his characters to survive.

The clever play of the game however belonged to Darren in the centre. I was largely miffed about the presence of the Cauldron but somewhat confused that it had been taken in an army bereft of Khainite troops to take advantage of it’s Stubborn-causing abilities. I needn’t have worried because at the most inopportune moment as Assassin popped out of the Black Guard unit in a head.ong charge towards the Flagellens. He missed by an inch but the Frenzied twits were forced to charge him in the next turn. Not only did he strike first with a bazillion attacks (7) but the little sod, being Khainite and all, was of course Stubborn thanks to the Cauldron (one accursed crew-member left at this point). Stubborn on 10, BSB or not, is one annoying pain in the ass. It did however mean that the exceedingly keen Hydra who got stuck into the Flagellents was pinned in place so that the Spearmen, having smacked through the last two Cold One Knights were there to watch it run off in the last turn.

The result of this tight little scuffle was a 12-8 win to me with a bonus pont gained for nabbing the enemy general.

The Cannons had a ripper game (they eventually both went down to the same Harpy unit – the surviving two Harpies doing for the second Cannon) and I knew I’d pay for their accuracy with some serious karma in a later game in the weekend.

Darren was an excellent opponent – looking forward to this game was well-justified and I hope we are lucky enough to draw each other for a rematch at another tournament this year. A worthy recipient of a grudge match if ever there was one!

Champagne Warhammer

2009-04-05T01:58:00.000-07:00

More than one spectator to this game made the comment that this battle looked like "classic Warhammer" - "champagne Warhammer" if I may use the term.

No "everyone has a 5+ ward nonsense". No "everyone causes Fear and is ItP" shennanigans. No "everyone has Hatred, Regen, 1+ armour saves, BS5, ASF, move through forests without penalty...". No "insert favourite recent army book buff that irritates the heck out of you".

Classic Warhammer - two good, honest armies beating the snot out of each other with sharp tactics and witty commentary the only cards held in the hand.

Well, except for Lezle's army... hehehe. Ok, no not really by he did have a Steam Tank and a War Altar. Those two things put the fear in me a little.

The end result of the game was around 900VPs in my favour.

- The Steam Tank took 4 wounds before it could move and was taken out in the last turn by a final cannon shot having dealt itself another couple of wounds through over-enthusiastic steam point generation. The Pistoliers also managed a wound before they were gunned down by the Steam Tank's engineer driver's repeater pistol (which really surprised me!).

- My cannons were on fire but the Mortar scattered with every shot (bah).

- Lezle received a firsthand demonstration of the awesomeness of Crossbows, losing two units of Handgunners without being able to effectively return fire. I received a firsthand demonstration of the stickability of a unit of Greatswords with BSB. Eventually my General got in on the act and his Hammer of Killy successfully bypassed the BSBs Meteoric Armour (failed toughness test = autowound with no save) and the Greatswords fled.

- The Flagellents died (slowly). The Reiksguard Knights (hoping to make up for their callow performance against Derick earlier in the week) leapt to their rescue, flank charging their opposite numbers who had hit the Flaggies in the flank the turn before. The Reiksguard fluffed tremendously and ran off but were able to rally and survive the game relatively intact (useless gits...).

- The War Altar took a cannon to the face and exploded. The Arch Lector - now on foot - was assaulted by my 3x3 Free Company detachment. Get this - play of the game - the bloody Free Company killed him! Brilliant stuff - might have to promote them to Swordsmen one of these days!

- Lezle's uber-Ritters (7 Pistoliers with Champ) did for my GW-Knights and also passed 2 panic checks after taking casualties from the Wizard (magic missile) and Cannon grapeshot. They went on to successfully panic my Handgunner detachment who rallied in the last turn so not much harm done there. Much.

This was a good fun game and I was thrilled to break a long losing streak - cheers Lezle. Yay! Now if only I face lots of "normal" Warhammer armies at NatCon :-)

The Best Laid Plans...

2009-04-05T01:40:00.001-07:00

Managed a couple of games this week, first one against me old mate Derick and his Warriors of Chaos army that he's taking down to NatCon. The army is a decent mix of a variety of marked units, most notably three L2 Sorcerers marked Slannesh (General), Nurgle and Tzeentch respectively.

A couple of things really stood out in this game and they were by degrees incredibly amusing and enormously frustrating:

- Hellcannon misfired the first TWO times it fired. BOTH misfires resulted in all Wizards on the table rolling on the miscast table. My own L2 deftly dodged a strength 8 hit (!) while Derick managed a series of fateful rolls that saw the Slannesh Sorcerer/General take a wound and deal one to all his mates in base-to-base (str6, no armour save - ouch!), then get killed off by a Burning Iron from my Wizard (enemy wizard gets a free cast); his Tzeentch Sorcerer eventually suffering the same fate. The Nurgle Sorcerer survived the game with one wound.

- Having done a superb job of baiting Frenzied Khorne Knights and with a fantastic rear-charge opportunity the Reikguard Knights and Priest predictably failed their Fear check to charge! With but one shooting phase to take a Knight or two out I managed to kill NONE. The last straw was Derick letting Soulfire from the Lector go off on the Knights, rolling up a '1' for the number of hits and of course failing to wound. The Khorne Knights quickly ate through detachments galore and both the Spear and Sword blocks (and Lector... and BSB... and Wizard). Vicious bastards - those flippin Reiksguard have a lot to answer for!!!

- The GW-Knights on the other hand... well, those bad boys busted through both Spawn and survived with a high enough unit strength to contest a table quarter.

- Having already failed me once the soon-to-be redundant (and now somewhat reduced from Hellcannon fire) Reiksguard Knights hit the Tzeentch Warriors in the flank. Incredibly they somehow won two turns in a row but sadly failed to break the Chaos toughies.

- Great Cannon fire hit the Hellcannon 3 times. All three hits turned up a '1' to wound.

Ended up with a loss by... geez I don't know... it was a while ago. Might have been something like 1000VPs - Derick can you remember? Felt like a 15-5 loss.

Bit hacked off that victory had been scuppered by one failed Fear check (hrm... that does sound familiar though) as I felt I had Derick on the ropes (both Spawn dead, Slanneshi block dead, dogs all dead, 2 characters dead... it was all looking so promising!) but it did remind me that Warhammer is, for some armies at least, inevitably a game of chance and risk - if the dice don't play ball then you're buggered (almost) regardless of clever strategy.

The last series of games have seen a completely sub-par performance from my artillery and I felt I was due for a turnaround in this department at some point. Lucky for me I was popping by City Guard today to drop off some Spearmen shields for Lezle and he invited me to stay for a game. Empire vs Empire bloodbath? Bring it on!

Watch out for those Flesh Hounds lads!... argh!...splatter!!!...dismemberment galore!!!!

2009-03-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hrm.

So that game against Reid was a quick one. Losing first turn gave me ONE shooting phase to make some sort of an impact. I think I managed to kill one Flesh Hound... Then he was all over me like drunk pub-crawling Uni student in a toga at orientation. Only in a much more unsubtly violent and clinically vicious way.

Not much to say about this game. Reid is a GREAT player. Seriously. The Daemons are of course a GREAT army (and his list was perhaps not particularly harsh for Daemons either). Combine those two together and poor old Fujin and his poor old Empire lads were in for an uber-ass-kicking.

Having said all of that, the game was a blessing in terms of learning experience and post-game conversation. Eventually I am likely to face a fast Daemon army and I need a stronger strategic paradigm than just looking sad and taking models off the pitch. Reid gave me heaps of advice afterwords about what I might have done to mitigate the absolute disaster I'd just experienced:

- Don't deploy the shooty stuff on the edge of your depoyment zone.
- Use the detachments better. "Skirmish" lines to disrupt the Daemon advance, force them to spend time getting into early combat, redirect units and/or pull them out of the battle line.
- Focus my shooting better - the Juggers are a lot less scary when they've lost even one model.
- Pick on one block and kick it's ass. Stop the others from getting into combat.
- Deploy better - don't just clump everything together so the Daemon player doesn't have to maneouver at all is able to concentrate his whole army on where ALL the points are on the table.
- Be prepared to lose stuff even if it means losing so that you won't lose as badly! (this is an excellent point that can apply to facing more armies than just Daemons!). Think about how you can turn a 2000pt loss into a 500pt loss by sacrificing units in clever places to survive the game.

Requires a different kind of thinking. I think.

We're back! And we have the princess!*

2009-03-27T18:33:00.000-07:00

* Spaceballs quote, accordingly Facebooked as one of the five movies I grew up with.

Crikey but it's been a while. Taken a bit of stick for my lack of blog activity recently but I have my life back (mostly) after a spate of Shakespeare performances and some temporary insanity (work-related).

Update time!

I was intending last night to make the journey to the AWC (Auckland Wargames Club) for a game or two but traffic conspired mightily against me (accident on the motorway, cars backed up for Africa). Fortunately I was stuck in traffic next to an offramp leading to Ray's place (which isn't too far from home). A quick bit of mobile/cellular action later and I was at Ray's house getting ready for a game. Reid turned up 1/2 an hour later and quite by chance I managed to get two games in against two fantastic opponents.

Ray is a champion bloke - gentlemen Warhammer player who's been pushing the toy soldiers around for years and loves the game. He's currently enjoying the Dark Elf bandwagon but has started shifting his lists around looking for something different from the standard stuff that's out there. I thought this list was great fun to play against:

Boss on Dark Steed with thrice-damned Pendant and probably some other toys (don't know... he only ended up in combat finishing off some Flagellents so it was a moot point) - oh yeah, the little bastard had his own bow too... that was really irritating!
2 Level 2s; one with Tome of Furion (extra spell), one with Darkstar Cloak (extra PD for that chick)
Bloody (literally!) Cauldron

2 x 10 RXBs
5 Dark Riders with Spears and Uzis
12 Black Guard
Biiiig block of Witch Elves
Block of Spears
Block of Executioners (!)
2 x 5 Harpies

Hydra

I had the upper hand (at least I thought I did) for the first couple of turns but throughout the game I had AWFUL luck with my artillery - might have killed a couple of Harpies in total with 2 Cannons and a Mortar. Shocking - we were so used to seeing misfires we were all really surprised when they actually didn't! Shooting went into the Witchies and Executioners to remove rank bonuses mostly. The Reiksguard Knights were fortunate - busting through the Spears and running them down on the right flank with a frontal charge (down by 3 at the start of combat from static res, Hatred made the difference) but then spent a couple of turns enduring 30 RXB shots reforming themselves for another fight (losing only one Knight from something like 70ish shots much to my amusement and Ray's - and Reid's - frustration). They managed to wipe out 10 RXBs and the Cauldron crew (who had earlier fled a quick scuffle) but not before magic (Doombolt) and combat (Hag Champ from Cauldron crew) had wiped out all (including the Priest) but the unit standard bearer. He hid in a forest and survived the game still holding the DE Spear banner.

The detachment chaff rampaged forward to divert the Executioners and bait the Witch Elves. After the fortuitous despatching of some Enemy-in-the-Waying Harpies the Spears hit the front of the Witch Elves and the Swordsmen (and Arch-Lector) hit their flank. Carnage ensued as the Witch Elves were butchered without mercy. Of course it was only as I was completing my charge moves (with the Executioners sitting on the flank of the Swordsmen ready to charge in should the Witch Elves hold) did realise that the Cauldron made the flippin Witch Elves Stubborn! Incredibly they still broke and were caught and chopped up. The Spears hit the Cauldron crew sitting behind, the Swords turned and smashed into the front of the Executioners! Result!

Ironically this is the point where I lost the game.

The Executioner Champion declined the Arch-Lector's challenge. Predictably the Lector could only kill off one Executioner. And of course the only one that could attack (with 2 attacks courtesy of the nearby Cauldron) only hit once. And of course Ray dialled up the necessary '6' on that one dice to killing blow my General.

F***.

The Swords broke in the next turn and were run down. The Spears hit the 3 Cauldron crew and may as well have hit a brick wall. The Empire BSB and the Wizard took a wound for their troubles and the Witch Elf crew passed their Stubborn break check easily. Next turn the Spears broke the crew but failed to catch them - this is around the time the surviving Reiksguard intervened and dealt to them.

An interesting point of discussion that arose during all of this was the removal (or not retrospectively) of the Cauldron model itself. The rules indicate that it is a warmachine with the exception that it cannot ever be hurt. So should we have removed it? DE units within 12" of the Cauldron are Stubborn so it could have stayed and later had an impact on the game.

While all this drama was going on the Black Guard and DE General along with their Hydra mate were taking a leisurely stroll down my left flank. The Hyrda was hit in the flank by the Flagellents after some clever (I thought) baiting and march-blocking (and a lucky passed Terror check) by the GW-Knights and Pistoliers. After their sterling performance against Phil's Hyrda in a previous game I had high hopes but the useless gits fluffed their martyr roll (gaining Hatred when I really needed at least a reroll for wounds too) and only managed a to kill off one of the handlers! In return 8+ Flagellents bit the dust. Next turn they were hit by the Black Guard and DE General = one surviving Flagellent (!). The rallied GW-Knights were all ready to charge the Hydra to remove the last crew member (to at least force a monster reaction test - could have made it wander off or go unbreakable and not move for the rest of the game) but an intervening Crossbow detachment that had failed to rally neatly moved right in the way (argh!). Bugger.

A unit of RXBs claimed a tower in the middle of the field. This little machine-gun nest smashed the Handgunners and a good number of Spearmen (and a Spear detachment) before the 5 Dark Riders (who I just could not kill!) made a daring last turn charge into the front of the depleted Spear block. They fluffed (kind of) but held in return (draw - we both had musicians) and that was the game.

Washup:

I had: 1/2 Crossbow unit, a cannon, 1/2 Reiksguard Knights, Spears block (just above half), and the Free Company detachment.

Ray had: Hydra, 1/2 Black Guard, General, both Sorceresses (one on half wounds), 1/2 Executioners (which if I'd killed 3 with my last turn of shooting would have been below 25% and unable to rally), Dark Riders, an RXB unit.

A clear and deserved win to the big guy and some hard questions being asked of the highly inaccurate artillery crew (awesome range-guessing, CRAP bounces and scatters).

Second game against Reid's Daemons coming shortly. And by shortly I mean the writing was on the wall at the end of turn one...

It takes me a long time to learn a lesson

2009-03-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

Played a great game against Derick earlier this week. And when I say 'played a great game' I mean the game was great but I played like sh!t.

The problem you see, is that my deployment was totally buggered thanks to two forests sitting just outside my deployment zone either side of the centre of the board. Actually that's not what buggered my deployment. What did it for me was deploying the Crossbows and Handgunners between these two forests and then putting the Spears behind the Handguns and the friggin Flagellents behind the Crossbows.

What the hell? Honestly I had no idea what I was doing either.

The result of this lack of strategic forward planning (or indeed lack of any planning at all) was that the vast majority of Derick's Chaos Warrior-heavy army happily rampaged down one flank, ignoring my shooting and totally stoked that they didn't have to waste precious time battering their way through the Unbreakable Flagellents. Bereft of any combat to get involved in the Flagellents were reduced to cheerlessly waving pom poms for the beleaguered Swordmen and Arch-Lector who were promptly cut to ribbons. A sudden lack of magical defense saw Derick then pummel what remained of my army with three L2 Chaos Sorcerers and it wasn't pretty. Something in the vicinity of a 15-5 loss ensued and I rued my inability to form a single cogent thought let alone the inability to play Warhammer in a sensible and logical fashion.

Having been down this path many times I'm really wondering what's wrong with me - why can I not learn my lesson and deploy... better?!

Later in the week Dark Elf Phil and I hooked up for a game. This was an exciting battle - a 10-10 result (draw) which we were both pleased with. These games (or the 11-9 or 12-8 games) are the best - things hang in the balance, moves are cagey, nothing is certain. On the flanks cannon fire did for the Chariot and an amazing 58" guess along the board nailed 3 Cold One Knights. Pistoliers caught Dark Riders after carefully using my own Knights as a meatshield. 8 Flagellents clocked up an incredible 4 wounds (and the two handlers) in a quick battle against the Hydra, running it down in pursuit.

In the centre despite my best efforts, 6 surviving DE Spearmen (from a unit of 20) blitzed through my shooting base. Bladewind is awesome against warmachines, much to the dismay of my poor Mortar crew :) The Witchelves blended the Swordsmen but the hugely frustrating Arch-Lector survived and held up the block of pyschopatic chickies for the rest of the game (although he fled in the last turn dammit). The Cauldron was fantastic!

In this game my deployment was much better but still the Handgunners were left without targets for most of the game (not necessarily a bad thing) and the Pistoliers spent some time wondering where to go and riding in circles.

I've been quite sick recently so have played less than I normally would. Time to get well, get re-energised, and get back into the 2-3 games a week I'm used to. Lord knows I need the practice!

The New Empire - 2250pt list for Nationals

2009-03-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

I've started throwing around some ideas for a 2250pt (standard tournament sized) list for the Nationals at Easter. Gotta say at this point - Army Builder is great!

Spent some time in deep conversation with some experienced players gathering ideas and getting opinions on changes and additions to the fluffy list of yesterweek. I'm limited by the models that are painted but my own limited experience and ignorance is proving something of a blessing in disguise (and I still have this fluffy-ish streak running through me at the moment).

There are a number of no-nos that I'm implementing, simply from a place of where I want to take my own game, the challenges I'm seeking, and the feeling out there in community of what sucks to face off against:

- no War Altar
- no Steam Tank(s)
- no Inner Circle Knights

Pretty easy to avoid that stuff, so here's my initial list that will be getting some playtesting love over the next month as I struggle to figure out how to use an extra 250pts of army without just handing it over to my opponent :)

Arch-Lector - General, Dawn Armour, Van Horstmann's Speculum, Hammer of Judgement, Barded Warhorse: Speculum looks like fun - you don't have to use it if you don't want to; 2 prayers is great - bit of Soulfire here, bit of Unbreakable there, or a bit of 4+ ward on the General; Dawn Armour is very cool of course; the Hammer is an interesting one - toughness test for each hit or wounded automatically with no armour save.

Captain - BSB, Sword of Might, Barded Warhorse, Icon of Magnus: the higher strength is much better than a Biting Blade although on the face of it the net effect is the same; hopefully a 2+ save keeps him alive!; the Icon will help in the real-world of tournament play with all that fear-causing nastiness.

Warrior Priest - Sword of Battle, Barded Warhorse: we sure do like our Barded Warhorses :); Sword gives him an extra attack, takes advantage of Hatred and is another magic weapon should the need arise; the Priest himself represents my 3rd bound spell.

Wizard - L2, Scroll, Wizards Staff: Mr Suicide is back! Hooray! Total offensive magic phase is now 4PD and 3 bound 4 prayers (not bad). Defense is 6DD and a scroll (adequate - I hope).

The rest of the list is my FluffyCon list with a couple of important additions:

- a 5-Archer detachment for the Crossbows
- another Great Cannon (3 warmachines in total)
- 5 more Swordsmen, making it a block of 25

So the army still particpates in all phases of the game. I'm told the Arch-Lector is mean so it will be interesting to try him out. Comes in with 54% Core, 28% Characters and 17% Special (I know that doesn't mean much to some people - percentages are far from the be all and end all of calaculating for the purpose of comp) and the choices I've made indicate to me that I should be receiving the base score for Empire or a small boost from some judges (agree or disagree?). At least, I'm hoping I don't get a minus!

I think most importantly I'm really looking forward to trying the list out and playing some more games using Empire - they're doing much better than the Dwarfs ever did in terms of my motivation to keep using them. Hopefully by the time I'm done with Empire (DogCon 2010 is currently the last tournament planned for these guys) those Vampires I occasionally mention will be about ready...

That's a Wrap - FluffyCon post-event thoughts and army analysis

2009-03-03T18:36:00.001-08:00

So where did I end up?

Well, setting the goal of a Top 5 was a big laugh. I was waaay off a Top 5 finish. Having said that I still maintain it's important to set a lofty goal even if you crash and burn. In a field of 38 having as your overall aim a top half of the field finish from the outset is really aiming a bit low. I'd revise that view completely in a 100+ player tournament however!

I ended up placing 18th out of 38 players - not a really poor start to the tournament season but admittedly lower than I was hoping. Tiebreakers were decided by comp score so while I was tied for 18th with 3 other people I get to claim the position as I was the one with the highest comp score. Good system :)

Full marks for painting - this wasn't fussy. If your army was fully painted to a table-top standard you got full marks. Easy.

Full marks for sports was flattering - not that I expected to get sports hits from my opponents but you can never quite tell. The mood I'm in might not be the mood my opponent is ready to cope with either way and a sports hit could happen for any number of (rightfully) subjective reasons.

58/120 battle points was very disappointing. If I'd managed a few more points (say breaking just over half battle points) I would have jumped up 4 or 5 places! That's how close it was in the middle of the pack!

Comp. Hmm. Despite feeling I was trying hard to build a 'soft' Empire army and despite the generous comments of some of my opponents (and various passers-by) I'd have to say the judges got it right in my case. It was a leadership 8 army - yes. But it still had warmachines, fast and heavy cav, big blocks including one big Unbreakable unit, lots of diverters, some magic, some magic eq. It participated in every phase in an ok way. Was it softer than a standard tournament Empire army? Yes - hence my NCM of +2. I'm happy with the comp score I received - kudos and appreciation to the judges for their scoring. Some armies received a 'soft card' for getting an NCM of +4 or more and some players were really questioning the logic of this - certain Daemon armies, a certain Lizardmen army with 1+ save characters (hehe) etc. I didn't really have a problem with this (despite giving the TO some stick about it at dinner on Saturday night) - after all the rules pack was VERY clear on how the scoring would work.

Having said that I think the 'soft card' system could be dropped in the future - it was an additional extra that didn't add much to the event but created some (at times) negative controversy. A good idea but one that could perhaps be let go I think.

Congratulations again to the judges and to the TO for their work with regards to comp - it is and likely always will be the bugbear of tournaments in Australasia - they did a great job! Good stuff lads! I thought Nick's card-shuffling Swiss Chess draw system was the stuff of legends - it worked great and was also very entertaining to watch :) The player's pack, registration details and information, paperwork on the day, communication with the community... all just bloody fantastic. Sets the bar high and is inspiring stuff for those of us interested in running our own events in the future. Good job old man!

A unit by unit breakdown of the Empire list I took goes something like this:

Captain (General) with Dawn Armour and Sword of Might

This guy was a bit of a tank (1+ rerollable) in a FluffyCon context, even with only two wounds. The extra strength from the Sword was useful but only having three attacks was pretty poor. The lower leadership was obviously a recurring issue but it taught me some important lessons about panic and psychology which I'm sure I will be greatful for in the long term. Having previously played Lizardmen (with the Cold-Blooded rule) and Dwarfs (with leadership 9 across the whole army) I learnt a lot about the careful placement of the General and his leadership bubble. Will be swapped out for a higher leadership Lord choice in a bigger army.

Captain (BSB) with Meteoric Iron and Biting Blade

Good save, sometimes struggled to survive (the danger of carrying a big flag I guess). The Biting Blade was pretty hopeless but gave him a magic weapon. Went in whatever unit the General wasn't in to give me some more leadership-enhancing goodness. Will try him mounted (to save points by not taking Meteoric Iron) with anti-Fear item.

Warrior Priest mounted with shield

Bare bones stuff. Hatred was pretty cool. Needs magic gear - a weapon at the very least. A higher points list will give me more options to equip him with a variety of experimental toys. ALWAYS went with the Reiksguard Knights. Always. Struggled to get the bound prayer off - a bigger magic phase would have helped this enormously (something else to think about in a bigger list).

L2 Wizard with Scroll and Wizard's Staff

I learnt not to worry about miscasts, gallantly chucking 4 dice at most spells with the Staff. Died a lot due to my penchant for having him wander around outside of units :) I didn't always choose his Lore wisely (i.e. game against "Soft Scores") and should be giving this more thought. Often realise post-game that Fire is the best because it usually gives me ranged options against Skirmishers that my shooting struggles to adequately deal with.

Reiksguard Knights

Mark swore by the Steel Standard (extra D3" to charge range) but I just can't gamble on that kind of roll. The Warbanner is a solid choice. Six seems a decent enough number (don't have the balls to run enough to get a rank bonus - so expensive!). Their save is awesome and with the Priest they have a measure of reliability (going into a combat with static 2 - banner/Warbanner - and Hatred gives you a decent shot at breaking something). I charged with them too often - the game against Ryan (and the doomed charge against the Quetzl Saurus) being a great example. Should be thinking about the threat of charging them, not just the actual charge itself.

Knights with Great Weapons (GW-Knights)

Good for a laugh and simultaneously managing to be extremely frustrating. A 100pt semi-throwaway unit. Good bait. Sometimes useful for a supporting charge (Cav in the flank is still Cav in the flank, even if they suck). They'll stay because my available models are limited.

20 Swords with full command, 5 Xbow detachment, 9 Spears detachment

Again limited by the models available. I'll be adding in another 5 Swords at 2250pts but won't change the detachments (even though Swordsmen/Free Company/Archers would be better) partly due to available models and partly because I like the thought that I'm doing something different (and also because the 9-man Spear detachment looks like a spikey little hedgehog which is awesome). The 4+ save on the Swords was great, their initiative of 4 surprised some opponents. Most semi-experienced players are well0aware of the Detachment rules but I maintain that if you play the game well enough they won't be left with any option but to charge (and get counter-charged in the flank) or get charged. It worked out well for me in most games anyway.

25 Spearmen with full command, 9 Handgunner detachment, 9 Free Company detachment

As above but Spearmen suck quite a bit more. The extra attacks for the spears in two ranks does not in any way justify the loss of the weapon skill and initiative. Often I found I would opt to use hand weapon and shield anyway (instead of the spears). Big block, difficult to remove the rank bonus. Usually accompanied by the General (for reasons I cannot fathom the BSB almost always ended up with the Swordsmen). A keeper unit selection but not a terribly reliable one.

20 Flagellents with Prophet of Dooooom!

A tricky proposition for most opponents because even with crap weapon skill and toughness and no armour they are still Unbreakable which means if I can hold someone for a crucial turn another block and some Knights can step in and cane you. If charged they died in droves. If allowed to get the charge they martyred themselves and usually caused substantial damage. The main issue is that they died off completely in 5/6 games which gives away 210VPs. They just don't survive the game and this loss is something I need to plan for more efficiently early in the game.

10 Huntsmen

Cheers to Bignic for lending me these. The good ol' Huntsmen were alternately totally crap and extreme wood ninjas. I took them mostly for the 'soft choice/concession' powers but they probably weren't worth it. Nice to have Scouts although this sometimes just got them killed off a lot quicker :) Dropped in the 2250pt list for a 5-Archer detachment for the Xbows and to get some points spare to upgrade the Captain to a Lord.

10 Crossbows

I guess a standard choice. Helped give me some shooting options. These guys get a little Archer detachment at 2250pts - hey, they've earned it :)

Cannon and Mortar

I was initially running a Helblaster too but thankfully dropped it for the event. Both of these warmachines are great but of course you are at the mercy of the dice. My ability to guess ranges is gradually improving which helps but I would sometimes find myself consistently guessing short (rather than long) and the bounce for the cannon was not always favourable. Neither of them self-immolated in the whole tournament! Amazing! Putting in another Cannon at 2250pts because they rock hard against monsters and other warmachines. The Mortar was surprisingly effective (the surprise being mostly my opponents) - I'll be keeping it for entertainment value if nothing else.

Pistoliers

Another unit I find difficult to use. I tend to get these guys killed off distressingly quickly - caught between wanting to get the most out of their shooting capacity (which was a rollercoaster ride in and of itself!) and their Fast Cav status which allowed them to bait, flee rally and move again. Will take more practice with these guys to understand them more but they are no doubt a crucial part of the army and will keep there place in a bigger points list.

Overall

It ain't an easy army to use and I'm very happy about this! I want to get better as a general and get better at the game overall. The army makes a contribution in all phases of the game (although quite light on magic by comparison to some) and gets me thinking ahead some of the time. It has holes and weaknesses but at the same time has the tools to deal with everything that's out there to some extent. Most importantly after playing with Empire for about 3 months I'm still mad keen about the army and excited about using them for the rest of the year!

Coming up next - Nationals and my 2250pt list!

Kennen Sie Meinen Vetter? Sein Name ist Hans* - FluffyCon Game Six (Mark Owen)

2009-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

Mark's WIP Empire army, soon to be painted in the outstanding Ostermark (purple/yellow) colour scheme received an almost mind boggling NCM of +3 (mind boggling in that I supposed it might get more and *gasp* even be thought of as fluffy!

Mark had:

Templar General with the Sword of That Guy is Dead Meat on a Stick Mate (Sword of Fate - important later...)
Mounted BSB
Wizzo with accursed Burning Head-toting bound item
Fluffy Engineer with Hochland (which was never shot because he was to busy firing off), Pigeon Bombs (which were apparently devastating in a couple of previous games)

The General was leading a unit trying for "Worst Deathstar Ever" award - 8 Knights of the White Wolf (aka Knights of teh Suck) - full command
Helblaster (Engineer goes here for Ballistic Skill funtimes)
5 Pistoliers that looked an awful lot like mine...

The rest of the army was 3 HUGE (30-strong) blocks of Swords/Spears/Halberds with a 15-strong detachment each of Halberds or Swordsmen (that is to say, no shooting troops).

Of great concern (in the grand scheme of things) was the "Deathstar" of GW-wielding Knights. With static 4 (rank, outnumber - possibly, banner, BSB) and some likely kills it was more than a danger to my fragile and mostly unskilled infantrymen.

Deployment was most amusing - the two Pistolier units hid from each other at opposite ends of the board (the premise being that he who gets shot first, dies first), the infantry lined up against each other for some informal playground bullrush and the Knights tried desperately to wait till the last minute to out-deploy the opposing hitty-smashy Knight unit. Fortunately I had more crap than Mark and managed to get the jump on his Knights by placing mine slightly to the flank of his so if they went for the guts of my army they would be hit (moderately hard) in the flank (the Flagellents initially moved to make this happen) by the Reiksguard. I placed by own GW-Knights on the opposite flank (mostly so that they didn't get any traitorous stirrings and nip off to join the opposition!).

Thanks to a handily located forest the Huntsmen rather adeptly ambushed the Pistoliers before smacking into the Helblaster (after the Cannon failed to take it out despite a palpable first turn hit). It took them a couple of turns (and one LUCKY break test at -2) but they eventually did for the Engineer and his apprentice buddies and kept themselves alive for the rest of the game.

The GW-Knights (mine) hid behind the aforementioned forest for 4 turns facing the flank of the enemy infantry. Their patience was rewarded when they got a flank charge on a block of Halberdiers who were engaged against the Swordsmen, Their charge was enough to break the resolve of the enemy and allowed everyone to pursue happily off into the sunset, avoiding a last turn charge by what was left of the rather disgruntled Templar Master and his 3 surviving mates. So how did the Knights end up in that position?

Well! Mark advanced rather cautiously, painfully aware of the Knights on his flank and the Flagellents lurking with a great lack of subtlety just itching to pin him down. Unfortunately for him this allowed my Pistoliers to have a field day sitting behind them and casually riddling 4 with bullets before they were even close to seeing some action (the long-term issue with this Deathstar was that with the Templar General tagging along they were Immune to Psychology and therefore couldn't panicked by a bit of shot and cannon). Mark had carefully explained how the Sword of Fate works and, being the lucky nominated target, my General was rather reticent to go anywhere near the unit (wounding on 2+, D3 wounds, no armour saves... good grief. He sounds like a bloody Vampire!). However this also meant I might be able to tempt the Templar out with a solo charge. The Wizard (Mr Suicide - TM) had the privelege of giving this a go first and succeeded in luring out the BSB. The Empire General took his chance - solo charging the BSB! He managed to dispatch his foe over two rounds combat, leaving just enough time to courageously bury himself in the Reiksguard formation as they turned to face the enemy knights, tempting them to charge. And charge they did! The brave Reiksguard Champion accepted the Templar Grand Master's challenge and survived. I lost a knight but somehow mananged to take two down in return (Hatred being the telling factor in this little skirmish). In the end the White Wolves were down by 3 and broke but sadly I failed to catch them (a turn of the dice I greatly lamented at the end of the game).

That's how they ended up on the other side of the battlefield :)

The Flagellents eventally contacted a giant Spear unit while the nearby Reiksguard Knights obliterated the Spear unit's hapless detachment in a fantastic display of overkill. The Flagellents died to a man - literally - only the Prophet of Doom survived the battle.

Mark's highly annoying Wizard was firing off Burning Heads left, right and centre. The last straw was when he managed to panic the Reiksguard (containing the Priest and General and holding two enemy standards). With one turn left to rally I was lucky to make the rally check and they ended up safe as houses behind a nice big forest, holding on tight to all those juicy victory points.

Totalling up the enormous amount of casualties I was both relieved and somewhat frustrated to end up with a 16-4 win (if only I had caught those blasted Knights and the General!). It was a great end to the tournament and Mark was a gracious opponent who I thought took a really soft army (even the "Deathstar" was soft... as Deathstar's go) and played well with limited resources at his disposal. He was happy to admit his OTT list (complete with Ludwig Schwartzenegger... or whatever his name is) was quite a bit harder and I held him in high esteem for giving this event a go with a largely infantry-based Empire list (especially a Templar Grand Master who, positioned on the flank, meant his infantry were all leadership 7!).

So the 16-4 put me just short of halfway - 58 out of 120 battle points :/

The next couple of posts will be my thoughts on the event, reflections on the performance of my Empire army and a look at my 2250pt list as I prepare for the next great event - Nationals at Easter (8 games! Woo-hoo!) which is only 5 and a bit weeks away! Yay!!!

* Do you know my cousin? His name is Hans.

Something in the Trees - FluffyCon Game Five (Nick Irvine)

2009-03-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

Nick Irvine (that's "Captain Soft Scores" to you!) is without doubt one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to play.

How's that for prefacing my most (recent) humiliating defeat - the 20-0 drubbing Nick handed out in my fifth game of the weekend.

Nick's Wood Elves (NCM of -2) list was a no-Spirits affair that looked something like this:

EDIT - check the comment at the end of this post for a more accurate version of the list from the man himself. Thanks Nick :)

Choppy boss Noble with 3+ ward and big stick (great weapon)
Choppy fast Noble (Alter Kindred) with great weapon
L1 Spellsinger with 2 scrolls

2 x 12 Gladeguard with full command (or just muso and standard?)
5 or so Glade Riders
4 Warhawk Riders

6 Waywatchers
6 Wild Riders with some kind of nasty trumpet-thing (?!) and full command
Biiiig block of Eternal Guard with full command
6 or 7 (maybe 8) Wardancers with Champion (and potentially a musician)

There were a couple of amusing episodes in this game (admittedly some more amusing for Nick than me):

- 6 Waywatchers burst out of a forest, annihilating the Pistoliers in a single round of shooting. This panics not only a nearby detachment but also the Crossbows (a "parent unit") who flee sideways down the board almost through me entire army and astounding 42" flee move! Incredibly no one else panicked (could have been a very quick game)! That must be what it's like playing Skaven...

- a peach of a cannon shot at an exposed Wardancer hiding (not so well) in a forest saw the cannonball land on the Spellsinger's head. She wasn't part of the unit so no "Look Out, Sir!" roll for her! Typically I follow this up with a "1" for the D6 wounds roll. Sigh.

- Funny business vis a vis Knights fleeing from the Alter Kindred saw him take a cannonball to the face. This time the cannon did what it says on the box and smeared him across the landscape.

- The Reiksguard, bereft of their Priest after some solo charging foolishness, ended up "forcing" the Wild Riders to charge them. Smart plan Dave - the Wilder Riders ran over them almost like they weren't there. The two surviving knights auto-broke, escaped and rallied but took another charge anyway in the following round.

- Between them the 2 units of Gladeguard and the Waywatchers managed to dispatch the Flagellents, the Swordsmen block and (thanks to a Killing Blow arrow) the BSB. This was definitely the worst part of the game - after a good opening shot the Mortar was taken out meaning I had no answers to the Wood Elves awesome shooting. Trudging hopelessly across the board into all that firepower (while being mostly march-blocked) was about as frustrating as it gets. Of course I should never have put myself in that position in the first place!

- As the sole survivor of the army the Warrior Priest charged into the Eternal Guard in the last turn. He did this for no other reason than the fact that I was feeling so sorry for myself I thought I might as well have absolutely nothing left at the end of the game. We didn't bother with the math at the end but I do wonder if, keeping him alive, I might have still scored a 19-1 loss instead of a 20-0. Probably not but seeing red and getting all depressed and sulky (and suicidal)wasn't the greatest decision (in a game of generally poor decisions).

I think I ended up taking the Warhawks to 1/2 strength, the Eternal Guard to 1/2 (maybe, possibly not), the Glade Riders (fled off the board after an unfortunate failed rally check) and the Alter Noble. So, bugger all then. In return Nick wiped me out, had 4 quarters and 4 standards. Brutal.

Post-tournament I approached smarter players than I on what they would have done. I realised in hindsight I had played either:

a) incredibly foolishly
b) like a total moron
c) worse than the newest newbie, or
d) all of the above

Why weren't the Knights facing off against the Gladeguard? Why weren't the Flagellents facing the Eternal Guard and Wild Riders? Why were my Pistoliers placed in the perfect position to get instantly vapourised and in doing so cause panic checks on units beyond the General's leadership? Why weren't my Swordsmen facing anything???!!

I reckon "d) all of the above" looks like not a bad selection!

I unfairly gave Nick a bit of stick afterwards about using a 40k army and really this wasn't justifiable - sorry mate. Fact is I was never in control of the game, placed my units in almost the absolute poorest positions possible, played right into his hands with duff maneouvering and basically (just like I did against Marcello in round five at Fields of Blood - egad! Maybe round five in my jinx round of death?) failed to give a great opponent a decent game. I felt like a right idiot from go to (almost immediate) woe and if you've ever been on the receiving end it's not a nice feeling. Total inadequacy - not something any man can admit to liking a good dose of.

Hopefully Nick plays at Tin Soldiers 2 later this year so I can grudge him and attempt to make up for my callow performance :)

This exciting experience left me needing an 18-2 win in the last round just to break even and get 1/2 battle points for the competition. You can possibly imagine my trepidation when I drew Mark Owen who had a podium finish at OTT the previous weekend and, oh dear... it looks like he's using...

Empire.

Time for some immature name-calling using our worst psuedo-German accents and some good old-fashioned civil war action!

Avoision (intentionally misspelt)

2009-03-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

The next report is coming but with a lot of procrastination. There's something unmanning about suffering a 20-0 loss and I'm fighting a lengthy battle against my shattered ego in order to get a fitting report written that somehow makes me look like less of a bad player and more the unfortunate victim of appalling circumstance. I also really don't want to demean my opponent - their skill or their behaviour - because he's infamously known as possibly the nicest guy in NZ Warhammer (and the blighter received by Best Sports vote darn it!) and is a great player too!

So, the next post is coming - likely tonight.

Saurus Are Still the New Black - FluffyCon Game Four (Ryan Simister)

2009-02-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

Egad. Lizards again. Hrm...

Somehow a draw in the previous round netted me a harder Lizard list in Round 4 :) In a way it was heartening to see the diversity between this list and the previous one. In a way it was disheartening to realise I'd played the odds and ended up facing a list that was going to annihilate me in the magic, shooting AND combat phases.

Ryan (brother of Russell - playing VCs at the same tournament) was (is) a lovely chap who I think played VERY well. His deployment was clever, he had a reasonable amount of luck but not so much that I consider it to be the determining factor in the game, he moved carefully, and he played to the strengths of the list. The stuff I killed off (which was really not much at all) was pretty much the stuff he wanted me to kill off. Good solid Warhammer on his part I reckon.

Ryan had:

4th Slann with Tepok, BSB and Warbanner (standard kit - very effective apart from not having the Banehead)
Scar-Vet with Quetzl, Sword of Might and Maiming Shield
Priest with Scroll

20 Saurus - full command
10 Skinks with Pipes
10 Scouts with Pipes
14 Skinks with Javs

20 Quetzl Saurus - full command
3 Krox
3 Krox

3 Salamander Packs

A decent list erring on the hard side (I'm guessing the magic and the Sallies) and as a result Ryan recieved a -6 NCM for his comp score.

A quick brain total told me that the Slann/Quetzl bunker was worth just over 1000VPs (assuming I kill it/catch it) and that it was quite beyond me to achieve this. That meant looking to kill everything else which was going to be unlikely given all the Skirmishing nastiness that was lurking around.

The Slann rolled up: Burning Iron (bah), Lead, Steed, Shades and Creeping Death. The Priest got 2nd Sign.

The Wizard rolled up Steed and the incredibly and undeniably awesome and yet totally crap Crown of Taidron. WTF is this spell about?! So the Wizard was neutered. This signalled the collapse of my brain functioning properly - why the hell I rolled on Shadows I can't honestly remember (Pit? Lurker? As if!!) when Fire would have been SO much more useful. Idiot.

Being the complete chicken I am most of my army hid behind a hill in my deployment zone, courageously pushing the shooting troops out in front to take the heat. My brave BSB and General hid from the Slann and his smoking gun (Burning Iron). As a result most of my army didn't participate in the game which was obviously a pity but good in that they also didn't die :)

Cockups:

- charged and scared away some Scouts with the GW-Knights who (just) hit a forest, forgot to move in my next turn, and were all smoked when the Frog clocked up 7 sixes with Creeping Death. Nice.

- The Knights surviving 18 Salamander shots, charging them, Sallies flee 5" and get away (8" and they would have fled the board). Knights flanked by Krox. Knights flee, fail to rally, get within 2" of the board edge. Knights rally deep in difficult to terrain. Knights survive but contribute nothing to the game.

- Cannon kills a Krox. they don't panic (way WAY away from the General's leadership). Pistoliers (and magic and other shooting) fail to kill another one (two wounds caused). Krox chase off Pistoliers, Cannon and break after charging Swordsmen. General solo charges and chases them off the board. Some bad luck not taking them out before they hit but also the fact that they absorbed the attention of so much of my army was annoying.

- Last turn the Handgunners and General hit the flank of a much depleted Saurus unit (NOT the Quetzl). General fluffs, 2 Handhunners die (from the one Saurus who could attack them). Empire lose testing at -1, standing right next to the Empire BSB). Handgunners pass. General fails. General fails break reroll. Here you go Ryan, let me just give you 250VPs. Dammit! It was a stupid idea in the first place - Lizards have to lose combat by 4-5 before they get worried about breaking (when the General/BSB is nearby). What a noob play that was!

In the end I lost the General (who was a complete twat and deserved to die), GW-Knights, Crossbows, Huntsmen, Flagellents (holding up the Quetzl block), Pistoliers, Cannon, Mortar and Ryan had a table quarter.

All I took off Ryan was a quarter, 1/2 the Saurus, 10 Skinks and 1/2 of the 14-Jav unit, and a unit of Krox. Difference in totals was 647VPs - enough for me suffer a 13-7 loss.

If I hadn't committed the General is would have been a 12-8 loss. That one extra point of my tournament score would have put me up one place. Need to think about this much more carefully in the future (sorry Trent - all those lessons... time for another reread methinks).

Interlude... interval... break time... something else...

2009-02-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

This is the part where you go out and grab some popcorn. Anybody remember when that actually still happened at the movies? I vividly recall seeing Karate Kid at the movies and getting a Crunchie bar during the interval. When I left the theatre my shirt was covered in chocolate - somehow I'd gotten it all over my hands and ergo, all over my shirt. What it is to be 6yrs old eh?

What kind of parents let their 6yr old watch the Karate Kid?! The number of times I almost broke my neck after that trying to do the Crane Stance...

None of that is really Warhammer relevant. But this next bit is...

Derick came over for a game last night. Must be something wrong with us wanting so much Warhammer in week (having just come out of a 6-game tournament) but anyway we got together last night some 2250pt action: Empire vs Chaos Mortals.

Derick is currently playtesting various formats of his Chaos army - heavily (literally) Warrior-based. Dangerous and TOUGH but very slow. Looked something like this:

Khorne Chaos Lord of STAY THE HELL AWAY! with sword of TERRORRRRR! and Enchanted Shield
L2 Nurgle - mounted, biting blade
L2 Slannesh - mounted. scroll
L2 Tzeentch - Blood of Tzeentch, Puppet

19 Tzeentch Warriors
13 Nurgle Warriors
18 Slannesh Warriors
21 Slannesh Marauders
2 x 5 Hounds

6 Choppy Choppy Chosen

2 Spawn
Hellcannon

Whole lot of hardness right there.

To my great disappointment my 2250pt army is not dissimilar to my FluffyCon list. Add in a Cannon, turn the Captain into a General of the Empire (who is CRAP), flick in 2 x 5 Archer detachments for the Crossbows and 5 Swordsmen to make it a block of 25 and that's about it.

That means facing the above I had 4DD and a scroll. Lovely.

Actually I managed to hold off the magic for most of the game which was a surprise (8 power dice, Tzeentch dude getting +1 to his rolls thanks to the mark). I thought the variety of spell options available with the 3 casters was awesome.

The Chosen were avoided for the duration of the game. They almost got the charge on the cheapo bait GW-Knights but never touched any of my dudes. I didn't need to get into a combat to find out how insane they are (even though there were only 6!).

The Tzeentch Warriors and their casty mate charged the Swordsmen, I elected NOT to counter-charge with their detachment (because it would have allowed the Chosen to Frenzy-charge in the compulsory moves phase) but incredibly the static res 6 Swordsmen (with the BSB) beat off the Chaos scum and chased them down! Hoo-yar! How hard are Swordsmen!!!???

Not very it turns out. Their pursuit gave the Swordsmen a rear-charge against the Slannesh Warriors who were busy carving up Flagellents. The Swords/BSB caused no wounds and the Slannesh Warriors casually turned around and chopped 3 of them to death. Combined with wounds against the Flagellents I lost combat by 4 (that's with static res of 8!!!!). The Swords managed to hold but lost combat in the next turn and broke with the death of the last Flagellent, getting run down for their tenacity.

One Marauder survived the game. The block took Mortar, Crossbow and Handgun fire but of course the Slannesh mark prevented them from panicking. Good stuff.

My Wizard bravely stepped out by himself, failed to get off his first attempted spell and took the Slanneshi 'fail a leadership test, take the number of wounds that you fail by' spell. Rolled a '3' on 2 dice to dispel it so it got through. Promptly rolled a 9 for his test. Out of range of the General = poof! Splat! Caned.

The Spears took a charge from the Nurgle block who got off a regen spell (which I let through assuming I was unlikely to get a wound anyway - hitting on 5s, wounding on 5s, saving on 2s...). Again the Spears broke them thanks to static res and the presence of the Empire General. For interests sake I placed them to take a charge from the Slannesh Warriors in the last turn but nothing much came from the combat (lost by one, passed the break check).

The Hellcannon Terrored the Reiksguard who rallied and eventually charged. They killed the Dwarf crew before being eaten by the Hellcannon and auto-broken. The Hellcannon was then fed 5 Archers to keep it busy in the last turn.

Despite "only" having the Slannesh Warriors and Sorcerer, the Chosen with Khorne boss, and the Hellcannon left, Derick won by around 300pts. Tough game, tough army. He'll be trying some other things out I'm sure (the Chosen were far too easy to avoid or bait). It's definitely a different pace of army and game from the Spider Riders but if anyone's earned the right to stack the odds a little I reckon it would be Derick :) I didn't play particularly well - really tired after the weekend and work is a bit rough but still an enjoyable game against an always entertaining opponent.

So, as per the plan from the previous post, next up - Lizardmen. Again :)

Saurus Are The New Black - FluffyCon Game Three (Carl Templeton)

2009-02-23T22:38:00.000-08:00

Round three saw me striving mightily (and it turns out somewhat brainlessly) against the prophetically afore-mentioned Carl Templeton (see "FluffyCon Predictions" in a previous post). Turns out Carl was not Charles Black in masterful disguise (thank goodness!). Also turns out he wasn't using Dwarfs...

Carl had:

Scar-Vet with Nikes and a big stick
Scar-Vet BSB
Priest - Level 2
Priest - Level 2

2 units of Skinks
1 unit of Scouts
5 Chamelon Skinks
Big Fat Steg
3 Terradons
1 Salamander
2 blocks of Saurus
1 block of mini-tanks (Quetzl Saurus)

My most immediate thought was - "If I kill ALL of the chaff and am left with the Steg and 3 blocks I'm still likely to be royally screwed in points. This game will be a draw if I don't stuff things up too much".

And that's EXACTLY what happened (except I stuffed things up and it was still a draw - haha).

Highlights:

- Sighting a nearby and incredibly comfortable-looking tarvern my Crossbowmen staked their claim, holding the bastion for the Empire for the whole game and raining death on the stinky Lizards. Unfortunately it must have been happy hour as they could barely hit the side of a barn-sized Steg.

- The Cannon ineptly missed the Steg for three turns before fleeing from Mr Big Boots.

- Stranded for lack of a unit that would take his charge the Nike-wearing Scar-Vet General took a wound from a magic missile before making over 16 armour saves from shooting (including several armour-piercing handgunner shots). He survived the game, not only chasing off the Cannon and Wizard but also doing for the GW-Knights who managed to NOT hit him in a cunning overrun by 2 inches (having obliterated 3 Skinks that rather foolishly stood in their way). Bugger. I thought that was some decent luck on Carl's part :) (saving on 3s or 4s 16+ consecutive rolls)

- The Terradons were the first (and only) ones to eat hot crossbow death after their Skink screen vanished in a puff of Mortar-induced smoke and ash. The survivors fled through a Skink Priest who hitched up his skirts, failed to rally, and fled the board. The Terradons promptly failed their panic check for casualties and buggered off. Yay - the Mortar is safe for a few more turns! Karma realigned later in the game when the surivivors of this initial barrage exacted a gruesome and terribly unfriendly revenge on the Mortar crew - three Skinks more than enough to take out the wussy crewmen in the last turn.

- Having cleared the chaff I should have called it quits and organised a steady retreat. But of course I didn't do that did I? Instead I decided to try my luck with the Saurus. Like a proper idiot I charged all three blocks (W!T!F!!!???) - the most tragic decision of all was front-charging the Quetzl Saurus with the Reiksguard Knights. I don't know what I was thinking either!!! If I'd just backed off I could have kept them out of the game. Instead the Knights were very lucky to survive with a model remaining (and the Priest). Dumb dumb DUMB! Must repeat to myself next time: you are not a Brettonian. You are NOT a Brettonian!

- The Flagellents died a slow, painful and depressingly hopeless death to another block while my Swordsmen stupidly stood by and watched them die. Totally misused both units.

- A last turn charge by the Swordsmen and Empire General into the front of the Steg saw me win the combat by 2 but of course with the BSB right next to it the Steg passed it's Stubborn break check. Oh yeah, I remember now. Stegs are awesome.

In the end the difference in victory points was 136VPS - very nearly an 11-9 loss* I was a point-blank idiot charging with the Knights, allowing the Spearmen and BSB to get into combat with the Lizard BSB's Saurus block (broke and escaped but lost 2 banners... sigh), and almost completely wasting the Swordsmen. Oh man!!!

The Saurus were FRIGGIN HARD! Like Dwarfs on crack. Goodness knows what will happen in the new book when they have two attacks each with spears, a better armour save, and all this for less points!!! I feel ill just thinking about 12 Saurus running 6 wide with spears putting out 24 attacks. Yuck. Quetzl Saurus are doubly hard and given their slightly off-centre placement I was a twit for even trying it on with them. Bah. Wonderful hindsight.

So the end of day one saw me riding the crest of half battle points - 35/60. At this point I felt I would be very fortunate to maintain this record in day two. Post-tournament this is one of the big learning points for me (excuse my preempting of the outcome of my tournament experience) - if I'd managed to get 1/2 battle points (say 60-62/120) I would have finished in the top 10! Something to think about for next time, especially given the results of the next couple of games.

Next up: round four and... Lizards? Whoa... deja vu! Oi! TO! Is that right!?

* Forgot to mention - round one against Daemons I was 3VPs away from a 10-10 draw. Rargh!

The Property of Ones - FluffyCon Game Two (Mr Kitson)

2009-02-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

See: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail39.html

Ok, we weren't drinking "Ones". But Ant sure was rolling a heck of a lot of them! In this case the bogus math theorem goes like this:

The SUCKitude of the army is directly proportional to the ROLLitude of the ONES.

Antony of course had his Dogs of War (NCM of +2) which I had previously smashed and drawn against in two playtesting games. I was looking forward to this match immensely as it was the first time we'd faced each other in a tournament. And he didn't have a Dark Elf Lord on Black Dragon which helped a bit too. Ant's list is in a previous post somewhere... The plan for the game was anchored around a handy piece of impassable terrain that would funnel his three blocks into the centre, onto my guns and waiting blocks and detachments. If I could knock out his (not inconsiderable) shooting base then my knights could hopefully smack his knights and come around behind the blocks to lend a hand. Just like the last game it almost worked out this way. Fortunately I didn't have the opportunity this time to fail any Fear checks :)

This game was ruled by my opponent's absolute and unerring ability to roll an increasingly ridiculous amount of '1s' on his shoddy and imminently retireable dice. In fact overall I'd say Antony's luck was pretty poor and I think this was the biggest contributing factor to what was an hilarious game for me but a bit of a wash-out for him. Examples include:

- "Look out, Sir!" on his General from a cannonball. Nopes. Splat.

- 9 shots with his Duellists = 2 hits. All of the misses were '1s'. Awesome.

- So many double ones for magic and combat... so many ones...

- I convinced him I would move my Reiksguard Knights so he could charge them with his knights (not that bad a plan when you have a 1+ save, Warbanner and Hatred thanks to the Warrior Priest - he knew it too). The Reiksguard moved into the face of an approaching (unbarded) knight unit who spoiled the grand plan by running off the board after losing two of their number to the Pistoliers.

- Nailed his baby cannon with my cannon on the first shot. Took his General in the next turn. Enfiladed his barded Knights in the next turn but in a twist of fate the champion (who I was required to wound seperately) survived and went on to take out the cannon and my wizard (curses!).

- the Mortar was AWESOME! Smashed Crossbowmen and Pikes all over the place. Absolutely devastating!

- Eventually Antony had no option but to charge some depleted Pikes (with a most regretful accompanying Wizard) into my Spearmen. The Pikes were shot on the way in by the handgunner detachment (supporting fire) and counter-charged by the Free Company detachment in the flank. The Pikes were soundly clubbed to death and escaped both units but then fled the solo charge of my Warrior Priest and ran into some nearby impassable terrain.

- In their haste to pursue the Spears hit the flank of the other Pike unit as they were attempting to finish off the Flagellents. The last Flagellent was killed off but immediately avenged as the Spears broke the foe, chasing them into the same impassable terrain that had killed off the recently deceased previous Pike unit. Loving the impassable terrain right now.

- with nothing left to do the Paymasters Bodyguard found itself surrounded by Swords in the front, Spears in the back and two detachments in the side. A last-minute charge by 6 Duellists failed to shift anything (lucky - my BSB had died to that wretched Burning Metal spell... grr...) although I managed to kill off the Paymaster in the process.

Somehow despite causing huge carnage I 'only' won the game 16-4 which was a bit disappointing. I'm guessing Ant was more disappointed than me though so we'll call it even shall we? :)

Luck played a part in the game (death of the General, Knight Champion surviving to kill off almost 300pts worth of stuff) but I felt Antony should have stacked both Knight units on one flank against my Cav to give himself more options and to avoid any cannon fire (there was a hill blocking a decent chunk of the battlefield). A couple of panic checks and some failed rally rolls later and I had one flank and his deployment zone under control. Pity I had to lose two characters on the way in though so good play on his part in that regard.

After two games I was now sitting on 25/40 battle points and was determined to end the day by staying above the 1/2 battle points mark. Next up, Lizardmen...

Too Early For This Much Regen - FluffyCon Game One (Alistair Dennison)

2009-02-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

Seeing my opponent's army on the tabletop I was overjoyed (... I'm not sure whether I'm being sarcastic here either...) to find myself facing a mono-god Nurgle Daemon list. I was quite chuffed about this (after a fashion) because I'd spent some time playtesting against Aaron's Nurgle Daemons and come away with some good results. This list looked surprisingly similar.

It wasn't.

I don't know who or what I managed to offend by drawing this army in round one but I knew with a glance at the army list I was looking at two options: a draw or a minor loss. It's weirdly satisfying knowing how accurate this ended up :)

The crucial (crucial) difference between Aaron's list and this one was the inclusion of an additional Herald. Roughly, here's the list:

- Herald General on Palanquin, L1 Sorcerer, Slime Trail, something else (I think something combat-related - don't know really. I avoided the unit containing this bloke like... the plague).
- Herald on Palanquin (the only way to travel), L1 Sorcerer, something that made my guys strike last? Shooty template of slimey doom.
- Herald with Shooty template of slimey doom.

- 3 big blocks of Plaguebearers

- 3 Beasts

- 2 units of 3 Nurglings

- 2 units of 5 Furies

I figured I could probably take the Furies and one of the Nurgling units but the rest was a great issue. Oddly enough I settled on trying for the Beasts (go figure!) and 1/2 a Nurgle block with maybe (maybe!) a charge onto something depleted late in the game. This is exactly what happened. Almost.

Highlights/LOWlights:

The Reiksguard and Priest charged the Beasts and did no wounds. The Beasts did no wounds back. Knights win by 1 (Warbanner). Beasts lose wounds to combat res. Rinse and repeat that scenario for 3 more player turns and the Beasts died.

Took out some Nurglings although it took some time to accomplish it. GW-Knights eventually did the job.

All of my shooting took one of the Plaguebearer blocks down to 4 models (a heck of an achievement!) and the Herald. While the Flagellents held off another one (and the rest of my army kept running away from the remaining block led by the Nurgle General) my Swordsmen (led by my General), fully ranked and ready to splatter the last of the depleted block, prepared for the charge. At this time I felt it was most appropriate that I fail a Fear check. Net result - last of the Flagellents die and the Swordmen are charged by the depleted block and a full strength block in the front and some more Nurglings in the back. Swordsmen die a messy death. I lose the game.

Loss 11-9.

Had the charge of the Swordsmen gone off we both agreed the game would have been (obviously) quite different. I was pretty gutted about the failed Fear check but the cookie doth crumble thusly so I just tried really hard to get over it and not sulk :) Happy with the result though considering the duff roll.

Alistair was a great opponent - coming up from Christchurch for the tournament gets a double thumbs up from me that's for sure! His army received a +1 Nett Comp modifier. I felt the extra Herald was a bit much but as Aaron and I discussed it's hard to see what else you could take instead without making it just as hard. Interestingly enough Philfy's Daemons scored him a 'soft card' (get a high enough Nett Comp Modifier - at least +4 I think - and you get a one use reroll thing) and he decided the best way to do this was to play with 1950pts instead of 2000pts. Created some discussion at dinner on Saturday night as those present theorised the possibility of taking a tiny number of insanely hard models and some teeny units worth say 1000pts (and getting a great comp score by 'handicapping' yourself) thereby automatically denying your opponent the ability to get 1000VPs worth of your army (because you don't have it on the table to start with!). Anyway, Al was a great sport and somewhat apologetic. He mourned the failed Fear check almost as much as I did and felt my pain.

Hopefully no more Daemons this weekend...

Mass post-FluffyCon posting incoming... Introductory comments

2009-02-21T22:40:00.000-08:00

It's done. FluffyCon is over and I'm scrambling over my thoughts (and written notes) hoping I don't start forgetting all the great moments and the heartbreak (although the heartbreak seems somehow to be much easier to remember...).

There's lots to talk about over the next series of posts: breakdowns of each of the games of course, a breakdown of the army and how it went overall, a summary (a long, LONG summary) of where I went wrong, a discussion on comp (argh! I know - you can skip that one if you like) and how I felt it applied to FluffyCon, and some thoughts on the tournament system itself and whether it achieved it's aims.

So, an introduction...

If you'd read much of the rest of this blog you would be aware that I've been preparing for a tournament called FluffyCon. The "focus" of this event (in my own eyes at least) was to encourage players to take "softer than normal" lists into a tournament environment. The TO - Big Nick - (after a wide and plentiful consultation) ensured the chance of this actually happening by imposing a set of restrictions upon the army lists. These ranged from limiting the number of power and dispel dice to limiting the amount of shooting to only being allowed one Terror-causing unit/thing (and no Dragons, Greater Daemons et al thank-you very much!). As such the armies one would expect to face (note italics) would be softer than the norm, right?

Right.

Comp-action aside there was the fairly usual tournament standard painting (TO appraised, players judging in a Beauty Pageant) and sports (out of five for each round, pick your fave for Best Sports). One thing I really liked was that the Sports score, Beauty Pageant vote and Best Sports vote were all stapled together (in order of submission) and presented to each player when they registered on arrival. A bit less handing-out required of the TO which is handy! Nick had the usual issues with some people not getting scores in on time (or promptly!) but on the whole the event ran very smoothly, everyone was well-behaved, and a good time was had by all. After all is said and done it is now up to the individual players to reflect on their own games but also on the success of the tournament as a whole. Was FluffyCon a success? Did the great social experiment in army composition bear fruit?

More posts to follow on this and many other topics - stay tuned!

Almost there...

2009-02-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

Two more sleeps. One more day of work. Roll on the weekend!

Pistoliers finished. Wizard based. All models magnetised. Movement trays finished. Army finished. Organised with wife to use breakfast tray for the ultimate in table-to-table army transportation (although nothing beats Asian Nick's use of Burger King trays last year = gold).

Extra lists printed. Dice polished. New tape measure.

Carpooling organised. Then disorganised and plans changed.

Dinner with the gang on Saturday night organised. Fingers-crossed Newmarket doesn't experience ANOTHER power cut (Auckland - the shambolic epitomy of national embarassment. Or is that Transpower?).

Only one thing left to do:

... lay out the Ji-Dave shirt... finish what I began last year - the complete, total and final destruction and utter annihilation of the ADC.

:)

All organisation aside I've been involved in a discussion on the City Guard forums that started with trash-talk (Pommy Dave won OTT smashing Philfy in the process. JI-DAVE!) post-OTT but ended being a meandering dialogue encompassing comp (always with the comp threads...), reflection on my "army-whoring" period (Lizards, Bretts etc), and a comparison and breakdown of what constitutes a "big flying nasty" (a flying, Terror-causing, rank-breaking piece of badness - my definition). The last bit mostly came up because Josh (TK Josh) is now taking Orcs led by a Boss on Wyvern (which may have drawn some disparaging remarks from me at some point).

Wild claims were also made about me using the awful Altar/Stank combination - these were quickly rebutted and refuted.

A couple of other people chimed in, most notably Simon with one concise comment (and I quote, "What a joke"). What is clear to me is that a FluffyCon-esque tournaments are NOT for everyone - fair enough. I think each to his own - if someone was running and promoting a no-holds-barred cheesefest event I'd be one of the last to show even a remote level of interest. I'm keen to see what happens post-FC with the middle-of-the-road events later in the year.

And if people want to be cheesey bastards then? Well, that's why we have 40k! :)

Such anticipation!

2009-02-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

4 days to go till the FluffyCon which will be held as part of Battle Cry at the ASB Stadium this weekend. That's:

- 4 days of work
- 5 Pistoliers (1/2 done - Brown ink for the win!)
- one Wizard's base

... until I'm ready to play.

I'm not so jaded a tournament veteran that I'm over the excitement of the buildup to a tournament. Pre-tourney trash-talk ("Phil-baiting") is one of my favourite pasttimes; players post on forums with increasing frequency debating who is going to place/win/lose/get the wooden spoon; and I find myself reviewing my army list (and rereading blog entries on playtesting battles) over and over, desperately trying to scratch together a modicum of a strategic ideal. Trent's School Lessons are getting a thorough reread, as is every IF article and any scrap of Warhammer-related tactical doctrine, information or theory on the 'net.

I'm driving my wife mad as I prowl around the house, fidgety and nervous, barely able to contain a growing excitement and enthusiasm for what I expect to be a simply outstanding weekend of gaming.

I've been to enough tournaments (both Warhammer and 40k) to know how it works. For me it's all about preparation. Have you ever watched a tennis game on TV and in the breaks the players have a bite of a banana, drink some Powerade (or equivalent) and chase that down with a sip of water. That's me at a tournament. For the life of me I can't see how anyone could down a beer (or pineapple and vodka) or five during a tournament and play straight. I'm as happy as the next man to sit back and roll dice with pizza in one hand and a Woodstock (best... drink... ever) in the other in a casual game on a Friday night, but in a tournament I'm just too... tense. A good kind of tense - fierce and determined and active and aware.

I've got what I consider to be some great mates coming along to play too. A Dogs Breakfast (the DogCon series) has helped me evaluate my priorities for this weekend. I want to win. I want to do well. But there's an excellent opportunity to spend quality time with a great bunch of guys and really, that's now the priority. Win or lose (and by the way, I say this now... Feel free to quote my happy-go-lucky attitude back to me if I get smashed) I'm just happy to play the game, spend time with friends, share some laughs, talk some more crap... True Warhammer. Real Warhammer.

Bloody great game isn't it?!

So, send-up placement predictions aside, how do I really think I'll go?

Well... I've set myself the goal of a Top Five finish. This is pretty huge (plan B is a Top Ten finish) considering the players that are going to be there and, to a degree, the army I'll be using. I managed 8th at Fields of Blood in a similar-sized field (albeit a field with more dirt than you could shake a skink at) but the Lizards felt like a more capable army. No, that's not the right word - Empire are damn capable. Maybe it's the feeling that the Lizards could generate a more rapid or sudden change on the game. I don't know. A Top Five goal puts me right up against some very serious players - not only that I'll have to beat them! Tony (Vod) for example, I've yet to beat. That'll be a tough game if it happens.

Maybe I'm over-reaching? I think it's important to go in with a goal and mindset though and try hard to make it happen. Not to be a dick. Not to sulk and cry if it doesn't all come together. But go in and (somewhat) realistically choose a place or a bracket of placement that you feel will push you and extend you as a player. Set the bar and try and reach it. I think most players do this unconsciously but the conscious decision has a greater impact on your overall play. Trent mentioned in one of the Lessons about tracking your score, in the game and across games, setting mini-goals (how many points do I need in this game, for example) based on army matchups. I think one of the big challenges I'll be facing is looking carefully at my opponent (and their army) and accurately gauging my chances of a big/medium/minor win. Or even a draw - looking hard at their list, considering my strengths, and maybe playing for a draw against a really hard army (not that anyone is taking a HARD list of course - this is still FluffyCon!).

This is a bit of a ramble now... bah. Well what the hell... it's my blog. I'll write whatever I want :)

FluffyCon predictions

2009-02-10T02:05:00.000-08:00

Looks like there are 37 players involved in FluffyCon - for NZ that's huge! Here are my predictions for the top 10 (the player list is somewhere on the City Guard forums).

16th - as try-hard wannabe top Dave I will waaaaay overreach in this event and my battle scores will alternately skyrocket and plummet as the dice see fit - my opponent's skill level will have absolutely NO impact on the game at all. All my theories about using a ld8 army will fly out the window on at least two occasions as the entire force flees the board. I'll miss round 3 while I'm lynched by engineering students (see below). I'll beat the crap out of Philfy's army when we draw each other accidentally on purpose due to Bignic's supposedly random draw philosophy. Beating Phil will (once again) be the highlight of my tournament. Phil will then be forced to stop posting on the WAU forums having lost all credibility with his so-called followers. I'll play Carl (see below) in round 1 and the thrashing I get in that game will convince me to go back to playing Dwarfs. Or 40k. Either way its boring as hell right?

10th - Derick Williams. Derick will have a roaring good time at this tournament as his army finally finds it's element beating on armies that are actually SOFTER than his! The only thing that will stop Derick placing 1st (or in fact, higher than 10th) is that his Shaman will miscast and explode himself in every game on turn 1, his Doom Diver will kill itself off too and he will forget his strike units are frenzied either failing panic checks he never had to take and fleeing off the board, or forgetting his extra attac in combat. Derick will beat Scott (again) without having to resort to dirty tactics and dodgy play. Good job Scott - you suck.

9th - Phil Wu the Jolly Asian will show Phil C the Daemon-loving Star Dragon wannabe that High Elves really are good even without a crutch. Shocking I know. 1/2 an hour into round 1 Phil's opponent will knock him unconscious because he won't stop bemoaning the fact he's using such soft toughness 3, 5+ armour save troops. A random City Guard forum member will pass by and curb stomp Phil while he's in lala-land because we are all heartily sick of him going on and on about his poor toughness 3 models. Harden the hell up, take a man up pill, drink some concrete, get in the chilly bin - try using troops that are toughness, have 5+ armour, DON'T have ASF (or chariots), can't hit a barn door at 5 paces and run away at the slightest whiff of a crippled Gnoblar.

8th - Reid Pittams will look a "low" top ten in the eye having won Orktoberfest but crashed at DogCon. Reid will threaten Bignic with a Brettonian Realm Knight to the throat if a round starts anytime but exactly on time (it's a DogCon thing). Reid will draw a bye in round 3 but rather than risk playing Nick he will interrupt the game on the table next to him and persuade both players to play a quick 4000pts of them vs 2000pts of him. Reid will score a 20-0 massacre in this game. His opponents will have been Phil Petry and Ray, further cementing what we all know - Dark Elves are teh suck.

7th - Nick Irvine, relying as always on his captaincy of soft scoring will cane everyone with top sports/comp and painting scores but will drop the ball and lose every game he plays. He will play me in round 2 as destiny finally catches up with him. I will smash him. After the game he will get his lethally dangerous engineering geek buddies to lynch me outside (explaining my absence in round 3).

6th - Nick Bucky. Despite being the TO and only playing as the ghost for bye-busters Ancient and Venerable Nick will still get enough battle points to place highly. As TO he will rig his own soft scores in order to place in the top 10. Nick Irvine could learn a thing or to from this sort of thinking - why be nice when you can cheat?

5th - Robbed of his safety blanket (read: Black Dragon-riding cheese-monkey Dark Elf Lord) Antony will break his opponent's resolve with a continuous and unrelenting whinge about how much Pikes suck (they don't), how soft his characters are (after he's vapourised your General with magic), and how hard it is to use Dogs of War without 9 Maneaters with Handguns. Antony will play Dave in round 5 and lose because frankly, without a Black Dragon on his side, he's not as good as Dave. Any Dave in fact. I will beat Antony in round 4 as he relives the horror of his first practice game against me and capitulates in turn 5.

4th - Tony Vodanovich. Similar to Antony, Dirty bloody Vod will find using an army without a hideous amount of leadership-reducing, magic-molesting, ward-saving, immune-to-psychology scaring, multi Flesh Hound wielding Daemons is much harder than everyone else is making it look. Not having a Greater Daemon of Brokenness to fall back on will cause him to spiral out of control in round 2 where he will be found under a table whimpering quietly and whispering prayers to Slannesh, Khorne or Karen (who must surely be one of the gods of chaos at this particular time). Unless Tony actually takes Daemons in which case we're all probably royally screwed.

3rd - Glen Tibbles. Enraged by last years abismal (not Abyssal) performance at Fields Glen will field the most broken fluffy list possible. Opponents will be run into the ground, horrified that he somehow managed to bribe the judges and talk his way into the tournament using a list that makes Limburger look (and smell) attractive. Glen will play Antony on day 2 and lose (again). His Heirophant will be assassinated (regardless of whether he's taken Tomb Kings or not). I will stand on the side-lines and cheer him on - Go Team!

2nd - Bouyed by his overwhelming confidence after a stunning (fortunate) series of games at the NZ Masters (dodging bullets) Dave Grant will smash 1/2 his opponents with his awful Wood Elf army. He'll have 2 close games and lose another due to rampant over-confidence with Waywatchers vis a vis being ninjas in combat (they are not). I will stand on the side-lines and cheer on a fellow Dave while Phil sheds a silent and bitter tear as he reflects on the lost cause that is (and always was) the ADC.

1st - Carl Templeton. No one seems to know this guy so I'm picking you'll all get put in your place by a complete unknown who will school everyone with unforeseen moves and skills that will amaze and astound. Carl will be using a Dwarf army with a single Master Engineer as the general (and no other characters) and the rest of the army will be Warrior blocks of unusual sizes - all with full command. The Horde Dwarfs will (slowly) crush all before them with a series of 20-0 wins against opponents who are completely unprepared for his incredible skills. We will ask for his autograph after the games. At the prize ceremony Carl will whip off his disguise to reveal he is actually Charles Black under cover, returned from beyond the Tasman to remind us all he won a NZGT in the distant past. NZers everywhere will bow their heads in shame and we will be ridiculed on forums across the world. Charles will win an enormous killy sword and won't be able to get it through customs. Rubber gloves will be involved and the Kiwis will have the last laugh at his expense.

This prediction thing is EASY!

"May the army with the most legs win" - final FluffyCon playtest game

2009-02-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

Or words to that effect is Derick's traditional "good luck" to his opponent when using his Spider Riders :)

Well, this post sees the last in a surprisingly long (and fruitful) series of game playtesting my recently acquired Empire army for the FluffyCon tournament to be held in Auckland in 3 weeks. This will likely be my last post for a similar amount of time as I'm back to work (and working my butt off) which means no more night games, no weekend time... no life. Hopefully the investment I've made in game terms reaps a decent reward at the tournament but essentially, win or lose, I've enjoyed the fluffy games immensely and I get the feeling the majority of my opponents have too. It's inspired me, in my look at a 2250pt Empire force to use at other tournaments this year (and early next year... DogCon 2010 has now become the long-term goal), to try hard to keep with a fluffy feel.

Anyway, the game...

Key to this battle was a house/building almost in the middle of the table. This made each of us divide our armies (not usually a great thing). In the opening turns thanks to some awesome dice skills (which blew away half of Derick's army and almost Derick himself) I quickly knocked out 2 Spider units and a unit of Squig/Spider Hoppers on my right. Derick generously self-destructed the Doom Diver and this resulted in my 5 Knights with Great Weapons facing down a Gobbo Spider Chariot and a Giant (spider of course). The Giant was exactly where I wanted him, deployed on the flank to hide from the Cannon. What really impressed me was that the Gobbo Chariot eventually charged the Knights (as predicted), only killed one (not as predicted), took a wound in return and broke (most unpredictable!). The Knights (taking advantage of not having to takea Terror test) overran into the Giant. They managed to take a wound of it before getting smashed. The surviving Knights fled the table.

The Flagellents, posted roughly on the same flank as the Giant managed to charge it as it ambled around a forest (still avoiding the cannon although the crew fled from a failed Terror test and over 3 turns never managed to rally). Killing off their mates the Flagellents (rerolling hits and wounds) dialled up enough wounds to kill the Giant in one round of combat and the good luck continued as he fell backwards, landing harmlessly (for me) on the nearby forest.

The Spearmen stuffed around trying to decide whether to take the building on the left or the right. The left was getting mighty crowded with the Swordsmen, various detachments and the Reiksguard Knights all looking for some action.

Play of the game was the Warrior Priest marching out to stand in front of the Orc General's unit of Savage Orc Boar Boyz. A pretty stupid idea until you consider that a) they had to charge him and, b) fleeing from their centre would force the Boar Boyz to hit the building with almost 1/2 their unit thereby stopping them from getting involved in the game for at least a couple of turns. The Warrior Priest was one lucky/unlucky SOB though - a Mortar shot at the Boar Boyz deviated right onto his head. Fortunately he only took one wound as a result and managed to heal this back later in the game. That was close!

Oversight of the game was that this still allowed two characters to get slungshot out into the Swordsmen. Runner-up for oversight of the game was getting all four of my characters within 12" of the Orc General with Shaggas. EIGHT strength EIGHT attacks later and my General was but ribbons of flesh on the floor. Incredibly (thanks to a Spear detachment counter-charge) I won the combat but both Orcs held easily. Even more incredibly I won combat again in the next round and both Orc characters rolled a double 6 and broke. The General escaped (for now...) but the other Orc Hero ran right into the Reiksguard Knights...

While this little drama was going on, despite attempting to divert me with a highly annoying surviving Spider Rider the Reiksguard (sans Priest and therefore a little less confident) charged into the Savage Orc Boar Boy Big 'Uns (cripes what a mouthful!). They did well, winning the combat for a couple of rounds. After some great shooting the "hit the house" Boar Boyz were reduced to two models and were able to flank charge them. Magical rerolls and my sudden inability to pass armour saves resulted in the unit evaporating. By this point I had several units nice and close (the Swordsmen and their Spear detachment chasing after the aforementioned Orc characters, some Free Company, the Huntsmen who had taken up residence in the building, the Wizard...). Everybody passed their Panic checks (amazing!) except the Free Company. A messy and very short (and brutal combat) ensued as the Swordsmen got up close and personal with the enemy. Unfortunately the combat was extremely unsuccessful and everyone flippin broke and ran. The Swordsmen were run down and the Spear detachment ran into the building (splat!).

The Orc General failed to rally and 11 hits from a Conflagaration of Doom sorted him out nicely before he had the chance to try again.

By this time (jumping around a bit now, sorry) I'd moved the Pistoliers from the extreme right flank to the extreme left flank and having taken care of a unit of Spider Riders on the way over they not only dealt with the two surviving Boar Boyz who had hit the Knight's flank but also a Gobbo riding his Giant Spider.

A nice fat Conflagaration finished the L4 Orc Shaman off in a most fitting (and fiery) manner and at the end of the game Derick was left with 2 bases of Snotling hiding in a wood in his deployment zone.

So what was the wash up?

I lost: General, Swordsmen, both units of Knights, all the detachments except the Handgunners and the Cannon. I had 3 quarters but thanks to better shooting than combat ability had no enemy standards. Killed an enemy Lord, three Heroes and (obviously) the enemy general.

Derick didn't lose (sorry mate): the Snotlings (contesting a quarter). He's also killed off my General.

VPs for Dave - 1960 (enemy losses) + 300 (character killing bonuses) + 300 (table quarters) = 2560VPs

VPs for Derick - 826 (enemy losses) + 140 (character killing bonuses) = 966VPs

A difference of 1594 = 17-3 win for the men of the Empire! (woot!)

Derick had some (very) poor luck with magic that contrasted with my excellent luck in magic and highly focused shooting (thanks for Lesson Four Trent!). I think I outdeployed him and was especially pleased with the luring of the Boar Boyz. Don't feel too sorry for old Derick though. Earlier that afternoon he smashed a cheesed up Orcs and Goblines (replete with dodgy calls and "tactics") with the fluffy Spiders - the army certainly has the goods!

And there it is - the end of an extensive series. Hopefully I've learnt something from all of this (and the lesson is not that I'd be better off using Dark Elves) and can get some exciting games at FluffyCon. The event itself is shaping up to be a cracker with a good sized field, some new players, and (I suspect) some quite radical armies.

Cheers for reading. In the interim feel free to read over older posts but check back again soon... I don't think I'll be able to wait till post-Fluffy to add to the blog especially now that I'm toying with lists for a 2250pt Empire list.

Trent's School of Warhammer

2009-02-01T17:41:00.001-08:00

I've signed up to an ongoing series of emails from the Golden Boy of Warhammer - Mr Trent Denison - a rambling but ultimately incredibly useful diatribe on some of the intricacies of the Warhammer game. To be honest it's bloody great and I've already come away from it (after three 'lessons') with a deeper sense of understanding about some of the 'hidden' elements of the game (usually hidden in plain sight but hidden nonetheless).

With Trent's permission (and all credit to him for this) here's some of the points I found most valid (so far):

- a review of the Four Stages of Competency (summarised as: you suck but don't know you suck and don't know why; you suck, don't know why, but acknowledge you suck; you suck much less and want to get better; you're good enough to not have to think about the mechanics of the game - ok, Trent put this a whole lot better than I just did).

- Results Focus. In line with the experience of some of my more recent games I am most interested in how to mitigate what looks to be a big loss - turning this into a minor loss or a draw with more conservative play and keeping track of the points balance throughout the game to gauge who is ahead, by how much, and what I need to accomplish in the remaining turns while keeping realistic and achieveable goals in mind.

- drawng on comments from Charles Black's article in IF4 - compulsory reading for all developing generals. The article goes through practically every element of the game in some detail. Awesome read.

- the idea that your preparation before anything hits the table equates to 50% of the game. Army design is a BIG part of this and was fortunate enough to get some great comments back from Trent about my plans for a 2250pt Empire list. As luck would have it he has experience with a list that has some startling similarities (which was immediately heartening) and was able to give me some GREAT advice. Thanks for that mate :-)

- a fantastic outline of various aspects of the movement phase and tactical applications of movment which, essentially, is what will win (or lose) you the game. Some of this stuff I'm doing but not well (at all). Some of it I'd barely considered (at least consciously) and have yet to actively put into play.

I sincerely hope the lessons continue as I'm really getting a lot out of it. Looking at next year I'm planning to get over the ditch for the first time for one of the big Oz tournaments (DogCon looks like the primo option) and I dare hope to be able to play some of the big names of the scene - surely this is where some of the best lessons in Warhammer lie! While I in no way under-rate the competition and player ability here in NZ there's something quite cool about the idea of playing a game against someone like Gav, Traishy, Andrew, Jeff... or Trent.

I highly doubt anyone reading this hasn't seen it but just in case you haven't go to Warpuppy Games and check out A Dogs Breakfast (Trent's vidblog).

Hey Big Boy - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-02-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

Venerable Nick invited me along to the AWC (Auckland Wargames Club) today to catch up with a few less regular opponents. I was very pleased to get a game in against John Matthews. A little less green and a little more thoughtful than when we last played I certainly hoped to give John's Ogres a good run for their money.

I faced down:

Bruiser General
Bruiser BSB
Butcher with Bangstick and Scroll
Butcher

5 Ironguts with Warbanner
4 Ironguts
2 x 3 Leadbelchers
3 Yhettees
3 x 3 Bulls
A Gorger

With the Butchers hiding in a Leadbelcher and Bull unit they got the majority of the shooting love. The Cannon managed to hit one and cause two wounds before self-immolating (hmm...) but hiding in a small unit turned out to be not such a bad thing as the rest of the shooting was randomised and I either couldn't panic the units by killing Ogres or couldn't wound the Butcher (needing 5s with the Crossbows and Handguns). The Pistoliers mucked around with a unit of Bulls, eventually killing two (after I forgot to shoot with them in one turn - dick), taking the charge of the last, winning by a musician, and being rescued by the Spearmen and General who...

... charged the Yhettees and took their sweet time getting through thanks to some handy break test rerolls from the Ogre BSB (in two consecutive rounds John need a '3' on the break test and managed it on the reroll). The Yhettees lost one and broke late in the game. I couldn't catch them and the jammy buggers ended up rallying saving John a stack of points and also contesting a table quarter.

The Flagellents did what comes naturally and ran straight at the nastiest unit in the opposing army - in this case John's fluffy Death Star - the Ironguts accompanied by BSB and Bruiser General. I managed to get the Swordsmen involved thanks to an overenthusiastic Butcher flanking the Flagellents. In turn the Swords were front-charged by some Bulls resulting in a messy looking combat. I managed to kill the Butcher (who had one wound left) eventually but of course in doing so lost the bonus for having a flank (gah!). The Bulls broke and were run down but the Swords rather awkwardly hit the back of the Flagellents. John rather amusingly (for me) ended up killing all but one of the Flaggies in one of my turns and of course killed the last in his turn allowing the Swords to get in a fresh charge. The Swordsmen promptly screwed up royally, fled and escaped but were unable to rally and ended up fleeing again. In good old Empire tradition they managed to panic the Wizard and Mortar. With no chance to rally I was stoked to just hand John another 250VPs. Nice.

The Reiksguard Knights, posted on the flank, mucked around waiting for John to get impatient and charge an extremely annoying Crossbow detachment. I tried to charge the detachment AND the Knights into the smaller unit of Ironguts. The Crossbow were overcome with cowardice (failed the Fear check) and thanks to my adept placement only the Warrior Priest and one Knight (NOT the Champion) contacted the unit, bringing two Ironguts (with Great Weapons) into the combat. Although John lost the opening round of the combat the Priest managed to take a wound. The Ironguts broke in the next round after the Priest made a fortunate armour save to stay alive. They were run down which I immediately regretted as of course if prevented me from charging into the Death Star on my last turn (the Swordsmen would surely have appreciated the support of a full unit of Knights with Warbanner and under the effects of Hatred - and Unbreakability - joining in their half-hearted combat). Dang.

The Gorger turned up late and snacked on a Free Company detachment. The GW-Knights tried for a rescue and although I didn't end up breaking the Gorger survived nicely (and of course being Unbreakable couldn't care less about losing any combats). I was surprised John wasn't directing attacks at the Knights (due to having Killing Blow) but he realised this after a couple of rounds of combat and mentioned it himself. As it was a couple of Free Company died each turn and this was matched by the outnumber and flank that the Knights enjoyed resulting in a happy stalemate.

EDIT! - thanks to John for pointing out it was actually a win to HIM by just over 200VPs! Way to miscommunicate Dave. So, after all that, an 11-9 loss :-)

Tomorrow night will be my last playtesting game before the tournament (3 weeks away but work is about to seriously interfere with gaming and I REALLY need to sleep when work starts up again - completely drained for a couple of weeks at least - call it system shock after 6 weeks holiday). Poetic justice demands I travel full circle so I've lined up a game against Derick's Spiders - a truly fitting end to this run of playtesting games.

Fluffy Daemons? - FluffyCon playtesting and Daemon comp

2009-01-27T01:53:00.000-08:00

I played Aaron (Aa7) again tonight against a different iteration of his Nurgle Daemon army. In a further attempt to soften it up for FluffyCon tonight he trialled this list:

Daemon Prince - Mark of Nurgle, Trappings of Nurgle (Regen and 4+ armour save), Winged Horror (Fly)

7 Furies
7 Furies
21 Plaguebearers - FC, Standard of Seeping Decay (reroll wounds)
21 Plaguebearers - FC
14 Plaguebearers - musician, standard

4 Nurglings
3 Nurglings

4 Beasts of Nurgle

So. Against this list I managed a 15-5 win. It's tough to get points off and a final charge from the full-strength Spearmen against 5 Plaguebearers from the non-Seeping 21-block failed to kill any so they not only survived (141VPs for the other half of the unit, 100 for their standard, 100 for the table quarter they were still able to contest... grrr!) but stopped me from netting some bonus points. Final VP difference was 937VPs.

The question at the end of the game was: has Aaron gone too far? Are these Daemons too fluffy?

Now, don't laugh too hard. Yes they all cause Fear, are Immune to Psychology and have 5+ ward saves. But what they don't have is:

- regen on the blocks (only on the Prince and the Beasts)
- decent leadership (the Prince is leadership 8! That sucks!!!)
- no BSB (this is huge)
- no magic (2PD and 2DD with no scrolls)
- no movement to speak of (Beasts are movement 6, everything else is movement 4 aside from the Prince)
- no shooting (i.e. no Flamers)

I would go so far as to suggest this is a list staring down the barrel of a +1 to the base score for Daemons. Could it get +3?

Anyway some of the happenings in the game:

- the Flagellents Frenzy charging Nurglings (deja vu?), smasherising them and overrunning into (just - we diced it because it was so close) the 21-block with magic standard. "Just" meaning only one hit on a corner. It took the Plaguebearers with the help of the Beasts and some Furies (who were reduced to 3 from their starting strength) 5 rounds of combat to kill the Flagellents off by which time I'd taken care of almost everything else. The Furies went on to sacrifice themselves redirecting the Reiksguard who (with the Swordsmen/General and GW-Knights) were lining up on the 21-block for a last turn insane combined charge.

- Lore of Light on the Wizard. Can't think why I didn't take this last time as the first spell is not only Flaming but is str6 against Daemons! Smokin'!

- The Prince hit the Reiksguard in the flank with a max range charge (he was 19 inches away), contacting the Priest who was on the side. With 5 str5 WS8 attacks he managed to cause not a single wound, taking one in return and (being down by 4) another 2 wounds from combat resolution. The Priest died in the next round after Aaron stopped Soulfire (spoilsport!) but the Prince still lost by 1. Aaron dialled up '12' for the break check and the sneering, smelly Daemon vanished in an explosion of slime and ichor.

- 3 Nurglings charged the GW-Knights who beat them off over 2 rounds of combat, taking no casualties.

- We had an interesting charging situation at one point. The Wizard fled 10" from a Fury charge and escaped (they were charging into a forest on foot). He fled into the path of a Plaguebearer block and the Beasts who were charging a diverting 5-man Crossbow detachment. The detachment passed it's Fear check from the 'Bearers but auto-fled from the Beasts. The 'Bearers redirected into a nearby Spear detachment who fled so they failed charge. The Beasts redirected into the already fleeing Wizard who fled again in a new direction. The Beasts redirected again into the Swordsmen but were too wide to fit through the gap between two Plaguebearer blocks. We're pretty sure we got it right but there was a fair bit of rulebook reading to figure it out (the issue being the order of charge declarations, making sure you can choose to redirect multiple times etc).

- Having killed off the 14 'Bearer-block the Swordsmen competely forgot to move to engage the flank of the Plaguebearers fighting the Flagellents or the rear of the Beasts fight the Flagellents in the flank.

- the Mortar fired twice but spent the next four turns caving to peer pressure and not shooting for fear of killing off their mates with friendly fire.

Proactive Colonialism - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-26T02:14:00.000-08:00

I promised myself before this game I wouldn't unleash the powers of Dave against a fellow Dave. Unfortunately my dice had other ideas...

Dave brought along a version of his fluffy Wood Elves - acquired over the last few months and seeking a couple of coats of paint. The current iteration (Dave gets bored quickly so the list sees frequent changes) looks like this:

L3 Mage with reroll leadership-based tests and some other kit of little consequence
BSB on horse with Fimbelwinter Shard (argh!) and Sword of Might
Alter Noble with Sword of Continual Missing (ok, it was just a Great Weapon but Dave rolled so badly - 4 attacks, 1 hit in each of 6 or so rounds of combat) and D6 str2 hits Sprites

20 Gladeguard - FC
2 x 5 Glade Riders - muso
2 x 8 Wardancers
15-ish Eternal Guard (BSB is here)
3 Warhawk Riders

10 (count 'em) Waywatchers

Deployment saw the Gladeguard in the middle (ended up on a hill in the centre in his deployment zone), Eternal Guard next to them sneaking about in their forest and on each flank a unit of Riders and Wardancers. Deployment of the game goes to the Waywatchers who deployed almost on top of the Huntsmen and Handgunners (they can deploy in terrain and still be in LOS).

Pommy Dave lost the roll off for first turn... and the Waywatchers died.

Ok, they didn't die straight away. They actually broke in his next turn allowing their attackers not only to cut them down but also shoot to bits a Rider unit that had come along to investigate. Understandably upset about this the Huntsmen were set upon by Hawks and Dancers, ripped to shreds easily. This panicked the Pistoliers who fled but rallied and eventually did for the Hawks along with the Handgunners (who were charged by them but beat them off).

The Dancers chose NOT to pursue because they were much more interested in intercepting the Reiksguard and Priest who were hooning up the middle going for the Gladeguard and Mage on the hill. Two rounds of shooting failed to kill a single Knight (Dave was understandably miffed about this) although one did die to stand-and-shoot when they managed to charge. With Ariel's Blessing the Gladeguard survived and passed their break check. By the end of the game the Mage (sole survivor of the unit) was broken and run down, half the Knights and the unharmed Priest surviving to take a table quarter (and hold the banner they had captured).

The Flagellents went straight for the Eternal Guard, getting charged and dying in droves. The Swordsmen later hit the flank of the Eternal Guard who held easily. The Swords didn't manage to hold so well when the Dancers on their flank rear-charged and killed 11 (damn...). The Swords broke but rallied (Dancers failed to catch, Eternal Guard restrained). The Wizard reduced them to 3 before they recharged the Swordsmen, killing one and dying to the return attacks. Nice.

The Alter Noble with the broken sword took the whole game to kill off 10 Crossbows and the 9-Spear detachment - poor sod. The Spear block (and BSB) themselves took a charge from the other Dancers, lost 3 and wiped them out in a pursuit, escaping from the then free Eternal Guard.

In the end I still had - the Cannon, Mortar, 1/2 Reiksguard, Priest, BSB, 1/2 General, 1/2 Swords, Spears, Free Company detachment, Handgunner detachment, Pistoliers and 1/2 Wizard. Also had 3 quarters and an enemy banner.

Dave had a wounded Alter Noble and his BSB hiding in a forest and 5 Eternal Guard contesting a quarter.

Had Dave won the first turn - different game. Waywatchers smash the Handgunners and Pistoliers and Huntsmen and march block everything while casually shooting Knights with Killing Blow arrows. The Alter Noble was appallingly bad. The Flagellents survived just long enough to hold the Eternal Guard up to stop them hitting anything much at all.

And the Reiksguard Knights were incredibly fortunate not to take casualties for the first two turns of the game. Nice one.

Unlikely to be a 20-0 victory but a substantial one nevertheless and the first time I've beaten the previous Top Dave.

Of course he was very tired so that's probably why I won. Too much sun + pasty English bodies proving to be a less than useful combination :-)

Thanks for coming over for a game Dave - I sincerely hope to smash you should we meet at FluffyCon.

Ewww... what's that smell? - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-25T19:43:00.000-08:00

No, it's not Pommy Dave. Actually as I was finishing the previous post I received a PM from Aaron (Aa7 on the forums) asking if I was free for a game against his fluffy Nurgle Daemons. I think Aaron can accept I use the term "fluffy" very loosely in this context - we both agreed making a fluffy Daemon army was more than a little challenging. Especially as he was trying to go mono-god.

Despite my initial misgivings about his list the game turned out quite well (barring a big mistake on my part - well.. at one point Aaron had too many options and I didn't have enough answers) - a draw 130VPs in his favour. And that was with the mass-failing of Fear-checks left/right/centre (mostly left and centre).

The list (bearing in mind he's trying for fluffy here):

Herald (General) - Level 1, Palanquin, no flank/rear bonus gift thing, enemy strike last gift thing
Herald - Level 1, bound 3 spell that's quite nasty

21 Plaguebearers - FC, Standard of Grossness (of whatever)
14 Plaguebearers - FC
14 Plaguebearers - FC
7 Furies
7 Furies

4 Nurglings
3 Nurglings

4 Beasts of Nurgle

Over the course of the game I managed to take out one of the 14-"man" blocks and 1/2 of the other (just three left - curses!), one unit of Furies (three left in the other - dammit!) and all of the Nurglings. In return I lost a crapload of guys including the unfortunate loss of the Swordsmen and General after some Furies blew through their Spear detachment and overran into their flank to join the Beasts who had hit their flank. Thanks to the Furies (who caused 3 casualties - the Beasts only killed 4 guys from their 14 attacks!) I auto-broke and had some major issues.

Aaron won the roll-off for Scouts and placed some Nurglings in a central forest. I was worried the Flagellents would end up Frenzy-charging them and be drawn into the forest which is just what happened but they didn't overrun too far and managed to get back into the game (took out one of the 14-strong blocks). Didn't even bother going for the 21-block.

I completely wasted the Knights (both units) who didn't die but also couldn't find a combat to get involved in that wouldn't see them hideously crushed.

I also lost half the Flagellents and the Wizard who fled from the last 3 Furies (failed Fear check) after Aaron discovered (thanks to me measuring for a Fiery Blast) they were just in charge range. If it weren't for that he would have won by less than 30VPs.

Got to say - I'm pretty damn happy with a draw result against Daemons with this Empire army!

I recommended he think about submitting a list with just one character - a Daemon Prince. Plaguebearers will be a lot less frustrating without Regeneration! I learnt that Beasts of Nurgle are quite insane - toughness 5, ward, regen, Slime Trail. Blech. Also learnt that the Lore of Fire is tasty against regenning badass mofos.

List submitted for FluffyCon - breakdown

2009-01-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

Have submitted my list for FluffyCon so I thought I'd recap and break it down MC Hammer styles. How have the lads been doing and my feelings after the playtesting so far...

Characters (466)

Captain (General) – Dawn Armour, Sword of Might, Barded Warhorse, Shield

Captain (BSB) – Armour of Meteoric Iron, Biting Blade

Warrior Priest – Barded Warhorse, Shield

Battle Wizard – Level 2 upgrade, Wizard’s Staff, Dispel Scroll

Core (1242)

6 Knights – Full Command, Warbanner

5 Knights – Great Weapons, Musician

10 Crossbowmen

10 Huntsmen

25 Spearmen – Full Command, Shields
9 Free Company (detachment)
9 Handgunners (detachment)

20 Swordsmen – Full Command
9 Spearmen (detachment) - Shields
5 Crossbowmen (detachment)

20 Flagellents – Prophet of Doom

Special (289)

5 Pistoliers – Outrider Champion with Repeater Pistol, Musician

Great Cannon

Mortar

Total Points: 1997
Power dice: 4
Dispel dice: 4 + one scroll
Models in army: 145

The "Breakdown"

General
This guy's a chump. He'll get pasted by any serious character and likely Killing Blowed at the drop of a hat. But that's in a "normal" game. In FluffyLand he's a tank with the rerollable save and 3 str5 attacks is pretty reasonable - especially against standard infantry. The leadership doesn't do anything if he's with the Knights but it can boost the centre if he deploys with one of the big parent blocks.

BSB
Like the General this guy is pretty much outclassed by serious fighters. he's really there to add a kill or two against an enemy unit. He'd rather not risk accepting challenges but with some luck will survive a hitty character for a round - almost enough time for me to get some more guys in the fight.

Priest
Obviously there to provide Hatred for the Knights with Warbanner so they can be a half decent hammer unit. I need to try him in one of the blocks - Hatred and a timely Unbreakable in the Spears for example could prove quite useful. Or the Swordsmen to help with a Fear-causing enemy.

Mr Wizard
This poor bugger is pretty hopeless but it lets me roll some dice in the magic phase. Rarely doesn he have a major impact on the game and I'm a bit gutless to use the Wizard's Staff for fear of the all-to-common miscast (and I don't roll up many decent high level spells). Has tended to go with Fire or Death but should really try look into Heavens and Metal more often. Has a tendency to suicidally wander around outside of units. Dies a lot (often partially self-induced).

Psuedo Knights
Brettonians these guys are not. While the Warbanner and Priest are undoubtedly helpful (going up against a full static res block down by 3) they still struggle when hitting anything front on. Getting the flank charge is obviously preferable but I've had problems setting these up with some many models in the middle (infantry traffic jams thanks to the detachments). The GW-Knights compete with the Battle Wizard for 'Most Useless Unit'. They hit like a wet bag in combat (oooh yay... great weapons... str4... how will I control my glee?), run away a lot, panic their mates... a fluffy choice because the models (converted from Flagellents - Flage-Knights) are great.

Crossbows
The Handgunners were originally the parent shooting unit until Antony pointed out that was stupid and I switched them - a much more sensible choice. Decent shooting but inconsistent and not to be relied upon to get it right (ever). Anything they pick off is a bonus.

Huntsmen
The Scouting Ninjas! These guys are great - not because they have an impact on the game but they're full of character and their ineptitude (and the rare moment they do something right) is incredibly amusing. Infrequently find themselves able to march-block by Scouting.

25 Spears and detachments
Good static res and if joined by the BSB or the boss is nearby they're leadership 8 (not sure why I'm so pleased about that). Fighting in an extra rank can surprise some people (that's right - fear my extra str3 attacks! Rawr!). What's more surprising of course is the supporting stand-and-shoot without penalty Handgunners and the counter/supporting charge Free Company with 2 attacks each. And no one falls for this - too easy to counter.

20 Swords and detachments
Good combat unit with the 4+ save in combat. BSB often goes here. Crossbow detachment tends to inconveniently get in the way a lot. Spear detachment looks good and pointy but is horribly ineffective.

20 Flagellents
Incredibly important if the plan is to succeed. The anvil to the army. Devastating if they can compete a charge, never lose Frenzy, can kill themselves for combat bonuses (often the key to their success or failure), str5 in the first round of fighting. On the downside - WS2 and no armour means they drop like flies. Their success or failure often determines the outcome of the game.

The Folly of Youth (Pistoliers)
These guys are VERY hit or miss. They tend to run away badly (getting caught or getting in the way). Fast Cav status is fantastic but I have trouble using them to the best extent. Usually die quickly.

Cannon
Boom! That's about it really. Blows up a lot but sometimes saves me from chariots, Giants and Treemen :-)

Mortar
The truly awesome and underestimated Mortar is a real boon in a tournament encouraging lots of basic troops and fluffiness. Practically a guaranteed frustration for Skaven, Elven and Goblin enemies. Not too bad at guessing so usually very useful.

Starting to look beyond 2000pts now - considering Nationals and likely Runefang later in the year. Want to stay fairly fluffy so at this stage I'm thinking:

- add another Cannon
- change Priest into Arch-Lector and give him the current General's gear (swap weapons with the BSB)
- add in another L2 Wizard
- add another 5 Swordsmen to bulk them out to 25 (good for sucking up some hits before losing a rank bonus)

Game against Pommy Dave tonight - will be tricky as I'm honour bound not to unleash my Dave powers on a fellow Dave. He'll have no compunctions about doing so and I will be inundated with an ongoing, relentless and persistent (and heavily accented) commentary on the game, state of my play, his awesomeness at Warhammer etc. And I'm playing bloody Wood Elves again! Argh! :-)
-

Bad habits - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-24T16:35:00.000-08:00

Nick and I managed two games on Friday night.

The first, against the Dwarfs, was really quick - to be expected I suppose when the opposing army only particpates in the movement and combat phases (if any). The Flagellents did a good job of tying up two Warrior units and one was reduced to half strength. Almost one Warrior unit went down (left a single survivor that I didn't have the resources to chase down) and 1/2 the Miners who didn't make combat thanks to some judicious "tactical retreating" from the Mortar and Handgunners.

The Slayers died before making combat.

Unfortunately I struggled to make an impact on the three tough blocks and despite a last turn charge Nick passed rerolled break checks for all three (Longbeards, Ironbreakers, Hammerers) and the end result was (surprise surprise) a draw.

Fortunately he'd also brought along yet another fluffy incarnation of Wood Elves so we got another game. This one proved to be much more interesting.

2 x L1 casters (one is the General)
BSB
7 (?) Wardancers
10 Gladeguard
10 Scounts
2 x 6 Wildriders
2 x 10 Dryads
4 Treekin
Treeman

In short I was mercilessly crushed (a 16-4 loss; once again pleasantly surprised that even when you're getting your butt kicked all over the pitch it's possible to make up/conserve enough points to mitigate a complete thrashing). A handy IF Fiery Blast coupled with a daring cannon shot did for the Treeman on the one occasion he put himself in LOS to the cannon (hehehe) and after a tense combat a depleted unit of Wildriders and the Wardancers fell to the Swordsmen and Empire General.

Fear and Terror were a big issue - I lost the Reiksguard and Priest to Terror from the Treeman and a subsequent chasing charge from some Wildriders hounding them off the board before they could rally. Shooting from the Scouts was intense as I quickly lost the Crossbowmen. The Huntsmen fell to an uber-Eagle of Doom although with some satisfaction the surviving member of the Mortar crew hit it over the head with a sack of gunpowder and killed it (just before he buggered off thanks to some outnumbering, Fear-causing Dryads).

The BSB and Spearmen were led into a lovely trap whereby they took Treekin in the front and Dryads in the back - autobreaking as a result of outnumbering by the Fear-causing enemy (and the 11 casualties they inflicted with their charge!).

The Flagellents were REAMED by the Wardancers - totally and utterly creamed. Makes me look forward to playing against two units of 8 when I play Pommy Dave on Monday night. Ick.

Post-battle discussion highlighted two things which have become a worringly bad habit:

- thinking Empire troops are on par with... anything. They aren't.
- needlessly baiting/fleeing when I would be better off just charging (with GW-Knights) or redploying (with Pistoliers).

Of course Nick is a great player so no shame in taking such a significant loss (I had my share of bad luck but that'll happen sometimes - can't blame the dice!) but I was a bit miffed at my lack of form. Made a LOT of mistakes that he had to pull me up on - might be getting Warhammered out I think.

Thank goodness work is starting again shortly :-)

Dodgy Dwarfs - pre-game FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Nick was kind enough to supply me with his list for our game tonight and I thought I'd bust out a quick breakdown and some thoughts on a plan (which he will read, counter, and crush me with). So...

Nick is King Fluffy as this list fairly soundly demonstrates. Fairly.

Master Engineer - General; Great Weapon; Gromril Armour
Thane - Gromril Armour; Battle Standard
Runesmith - Great Weapon; Gromril Armour

19 Longbeards - Heavy Armour; Shield; FC
3 x 19 Warriors - Heavy Armour; Shield; FC
2 x 10 Warriors - Great Weapon; Heavy Armour; Musician
14 Hammerers - Great Weapon; Heavy Armour; FC
14 Ironbreakers - Gromril Armour; Shield; FC
10 Troll Slayers
9 Miners - Great Weapon; Heavy Armour; Musician; Prospector

Dispel Pool: 5
Casting Pool: 2
Models in Army: 153

Total Army Cost: 1998

Well the first thing that strikes me is - that's a crapload of Dwarfs right there. Seriously - 153 models? Damn but that's freakin' HUGE man!

Next - no shooting or warmachines. Interesting tact given the army is led by a Master Engineer (questionably fluffiness actually Nick - what the hell is he doing there in the first place?). Anyway...

A good sized basic dispel pool - large enough to cause me anti-magical concern - and what I would expect from Dwarfs at FluffyCon. It's big enough to worry most armies who decided to invest heavily in magic (max 8PD at this tournament).

So what strengths does it bring to the table?

- numbers (I'm actually outnumberered for goodness sakes!) thanks to points saved from not taking toys and magic standards (not a dumb move by any means in a FluffyCon context)
- static res up the wazoo
- flankers/diverters (GW-Warriors, Trollslayers, Miners if they don't use Underground Advance)
- warmachine hunters (Miners)
- variety (some Stubborn - Hammerers, some exellent armour - Ironbreakers, some Unbreakable - Trollslayers
- as per Dwarfs: great toughness, armour and leadership
- lined up next to each other it's difficult/impossible to get a supporting charge with a detachment

Weaknesses?

- no shooting
- short, fat and slow
- possible to traffic jam them because there are so many big blocks (look for viable and advantageous terrain choke-points)

Hrm...

Well all those Warrior blocks spread out will make flanking the force with Knights difficult and a head-on charge is akin to suicide as I could only hope to win by 1 or 2 and rerolling on ld7 or so for a break test means the Knights are flanked and dead. Ok.

Hammerers, 10-man units and Trollslayers get shooty love first - anything I definitely cannot bust through with a charge needs to die and the 10-man units, being most mobile for the flank charge will wipe the floor by cancelling my valuable and important rank bonus (which I will definitely need as kills are going to be almost non-existant). After that (yeah right... after I've killed off the Hammerers and Trollslayers... ha!) I'll be going for the Longbeards where there is a serious points investment. I've got a funny feeling the Dwarfs are going to be the ones doing the charging in this game.

Magic rolling will be on Shadows - not to get Pit of Shades but rather Unseen Lurker or Shades of Death (a Fear-causing unit of Spearmen will sort those small Elite blocks out (except the Trollslayers).

The Flagellents will go for the middle of the line where they will hope to tie up as much as possible - if they can charge two units at once and tie them down for a few turns it will help immensely. They'll die, but hopefully they'll die slowly.

I'll lose a warmachine to the Miners if they come on behind my lines but really I don't see the Cannon or Mortar achieving much anyway (especially the Mortar).

So it looks like this:

- tie down multiple units with the Flagellents and/or just get the hell in the way of something
- try and reduce the Longbeards to 1/2 strength
- Hammerers, Trollslayers and 10-man units suck down the shooting
- magic will try for Shades of Death or Unseen Lurker but pretty much anything else in the list will be fine. Even Steed of Shadows on the Wizard will be fun (keeps him out of trouble). Soulfire will have it's uses in combat (especially against the Ironbreakers!) if the opportunity arises (and Unbreakable doesn't take priority
- pick on ONE unit of Warriors to get behing enemy lines
- try for the Dwarf BSB if I have the option

Nick's a clever player but his normally conservative Wood Elf approach has to be totally cast by the wayside. Seeing him play ultra-aggressively with combat Dwarfs will be very entertaining.

The Green Machine - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-22T02:01:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a tragic and humbling loss (read: smashing) to get the mind focussed. Mark was able to make a game at my place tonight and lucky for me (?) was able to provide just that - the annihilation of a good portion of my army! Mark is a 'six degrees of separation opponent' - I actually teach his son at school (small world ain't it?).

I've been having issues fighting Orcs and Goblins. Yes I know they're supposed to be utter crap but somehow I consistently have enormous problems dealing with them. Mark's army is actually a real challenge to play against despite the lack of a Giant or much in the way of ItP troops that some Greenskin armies seem to depend on (and a fairly moderate 6PD magic phase) - I'm fairly certain this little lot is looking at a +3 for comp from most of the judges:

Ld 9 Orc General on Ironback Boar (NOT a Black Orc Boss)
Gobbo BSB on Wolf with Wollopa's Wun Hit Wunder
2 x L2 Gobbo Shamans - one has the Itty Ring, the other has some kit (can't remember - maybe the -3 armour save pointy stick thing)

2 x BIG units of Common Goblins with FC (like 35-40 strong)
Big unit of Boyz with 2 Choppas
Big unit of Boyz with Choppa/Shield
13 Arrer Boyz
20 Night Goblins with bows and 2 Fanatics
2 x 5 Wolf Gobbos

2 Boar Chariots
3 Trolls
Rocklobber
1 Spearchukka
2 bases of Snotlings

Turn one the Rocklobber misfired and destroyed itself. I quickly noted I would likely return the favour and Mark laughed it off. I did - the Cannon blew up turn one. Nice.

The main game revolved around a damn annoying building that stopped either of us from bringing our many units to bear. Fortunately for Mark that didn't matter as the Trolls and one chariot quickly accounted for not only my Reiksguard Knights, Priest and General (thrown away in a stupid and fruitless experiment - chariot hit their flank alone and I thought the General who was sitting on the flank might absorb the damage and break it on static res with maybe a wound into the bargain - would have fled through both Orc blocks and taken the Knights into the Orc General's unit) but also the entire Spear block (with some help from the Orc General with a solo charge and some handy Gobbos for static support and cheerleading) and the Flagellents (thanks to the horrible Trolls). I went into damage control and managed to take out the Gobbos (and Shaman) with the Mortar (which spent 4 turns out of action due to misfires!) and the Trolls with the BSBs Swordsmen and Spear detachment in the flank (having already previously failed a Fear check to charge them).

Mark ended up never using an entire Orc block or a Gobbo block at all!

One unit of Wolfboyz was gunned down by Pistoliers but the other played absolute havoc in the midst of my lines, scooting between gaps, avoiding being charged or shot, and basically being a right pain in the ass.

Spell of the game was Gork'll (or Mork'll - whatever) Fix It - all rolls of a 6 become a 1. This stopped the Spearmen from hurting the chariot at all (needing 6s to wound and those 6s becoming 1s). Beyond frustrating I assure you.

Despite some quirky animosity (the Gobbos who died to the Pistoliers rolling a '1' twice for the two turns they were alive; both his Orc blocks rolling '1' in the same turn holding up much of his advance) Mark played really well and thoroughly deserved the win. To be honest I'm not sure what I was thinking going into the game - there wasn't much of a plan, I ended up with a huge infantry block traffic jam, and I needlessly gambled away my strike unit and characters (which of course I would never do in a tournament game... would I?). Bit of a write-off really and I'm sorry I couldn't give Mark a better game.

In the end a 16-4 loss to the Empire as I attempted to conserve points and break some stuff to make little gains. 34Vps away from a 15-5 and if nothing else reminds me that even a loss need not be that bad if you can manage to (eventually) play smart in the end game.

Biggest lesson - moving a 5-Crossbow detachment 2 inches in my last turn would have contested a quarter making it a 15-5 loss. Just lost my brain somewhere along the way and stopped thinking eventually. Sigh...

Venerable Nick's Dwarfs tomorrow night - tough little buggers I know from experience so sure to be an interesting and challenging game.

When it all goes to plan... - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-21T02:44:00.000-08:00

There's nothing quite like a good plan coming together. Can you actually believe most of what I said in that previous post actually worked out? Unreal I know! And here I was thinking it was all bull####!

The Flagellents ended up directly opposite the Black Guard, got the charge, killed some (didn't break them though), but more importantly kept them in combat for almost the rest of the game. Nice.

Dark Riders on the flank were dealt to very harshly by the Pistoliers (dead before the Outrider Champ could even get a shot off!).

The Cold One Knights (on the same flank) failed Stupidity in turn one (did I call it? yes I did! Making daisy chains!) and were eventually charged by the Reiksguard Knights (just in). The combat went badly for the Elves when they took four casualties (including 2 from horses!) and dealt none in return, breaking and being run down.

My General is a tank. First he failed a charge at a unit of RXBs (and their accompanying Sorceress friends). Stand-and-Shoot did nothing. Then he was shot in their turn - nothing. Then he charged, supported by the Huntsmen in their flank; stand-and-shoot - nothing. Beat them up, ran them down (taking out one Sorceress - the Huntsmen did for the other at short range while she hid behind the Black Guard/Flagellent combat). Took another round of shooting from the other RXB unit before charging them supported by a Free Company detachment in their flank. Both units caused enormous casualties, broke them, failed to catch the 4 survivors but charged/killed them in the final turns.

The Swords and their Spear detachment did for the Spearelves on the other flank.

The Empire Spearmen took an IF Black Horror (ouch) losing 1/2 their number but this was long after they had dealt with the Corsairs and DE BSB (thanks to the GW-Knights in their flank in support).

The Cannon hid from the charge of the Elf General and Harpies. The Mortar died - overall quite hopeless with the two shots it managed to get off.

There were only two big issues:

- the scary Elf General who can charge 18" with a 3+ save and Pendant dishing out 4 str6 attacks. Yikes. Not sure what to do about this - he can take small unit and warmachines with ease and could hold a ranked unit up quite nicely (Ld10 proving very valuable).

- I muppeted in my last turn, charging the Black Guard in the front with the Reiksguard/Priest. By this point the Black Guard were buddied with the Elf General. It was a gamble to reduce the Black Guard to below 1/2 (120pt gain). I lost combat by ONE and of course broke giving Ray the unit's banner and also returning the Cold One banner. And of course I couldn't rally so counted as destroyed. The brain-fart was not moving my BSB into range for the break test reroll (which I easily could have done). The Black Guard/General were the only things left on the board and admittedly in a tournament I wouldn't have taken the risk but it was fun to try anyway in a practice game.

In the end I lost the Mortar, 10 Crossbows, 9 Handgunners, the Flagellents, 1/2 the Spears, Reiksguard and Priest and had 1/2 wounds on the Wizard. Had 3 quarters (one contested) and 3 banners (Corsairs, Spears and BSB). We didn't do the maths but with 240 for the Black Guard and likely around 200 for the General I was up in kills. The Black Guard had a captured banner.

Looked pretty convincing to me. Might have been a 16-4 or 17-3?

For those who are not aware - Black Guard are feckin' horrible. And these one's DIDN'T have the ASF banner or killy gear on the champ. Yuck.

Ray has a good list - no Rares, decent shooting and magic, combat blocks, bait, warmachine hunters, an anvil (the Black Guard obviously) and a hammer (Cold One Knights) that causes Fear to boot. Hopefully we meet at FluffyCon where I'm sure he'll play a tight game. Ray's a gentleman gamer - thanks for having me over to your house mate :-)

Nasty, stabby, hatey Elves - pre-game FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-20T17:36:00.001-08:00

Have a game booked against Ray tonight and his fluffy Dark Elves. I've only played Ray once - an enjoyable game and a hard lesson for me at the Tin Solider tournament last year. He's a lovely chap not entirely averse to kicking your ass if the opportunity arises (in the niecst possible way).

A little sneaky research (sorry Ray) revealed what was in his list and got me thinking. For your amusement (at my lack of knowledge and tactical acumen) here's a breakdown:

Lord on Cold One (or horse - this was tricky to establish - either way the bugger moves) - Pendant (FluffyCon eh Ray? :-)) and Crimson Death (which sounds awfully nasty)
BSB - 1+ armour save and Great Weapon
2 x level Sorceresses with a scroll each - one might have the Seal

20 Corsairs - FC, champ has shooty handbows or something
20 Spears - FC
2 x 10 RXB Warriors
5 Dark Riders - musician (I assume), probably shooting and spears and whatnot
5 Harpies

6 Cold One Knights - FC, Warbanner
20 Black Guard - FC, Null Talisman

So how is it shaping up?

Well the first thing that strikes me is magic is pretty much out - 4PD and a bound won't cut it against that defense. It will also seriously (seriously) stretch my own meagre defense to breaking point. Key - one or both of these tarts need to die in the opening 1/2 of the game! (suicide Knights for the win!)

The Flagellents have a pretty clear goal - motor straight up the guts towards the Black Guard and tie them down for the whole game! Hopefully with judicious use of annoying detachments I can get the charge on the ItP, Stubborn blighters. I imagine the BSB will cower here and a Sorceress might too until they look like they are going to hit combat. Might even try a weak flank charge (GW-Knights) to stall them or better yet lure them sideways with a Hatred-inspired pursuit. In terms of actually killing the unit - that's way down the priority list.

There's a good shooty core to the list - 20 repeater bows is a LOT of shots (especially when you're toughness 3 with not much armour)! Even the Knights aren't safe due to the sheer amount of firepower coming out. Might try for a ranged duel as the Crossbows have the range over them. Except the Crossbows are a bit worried about letting the Dark Riders wander down a flank and hitting me where it hurts.

The Mortar - as always - is going to be a very powerful tool and could be the key to a win. Toughness 3 no likey Mortar pie-plate! The opening targets are the Spears or Corsairs - whichever one is closer to the flank I want to strike down (and/or furthest from the Elf General). I imagine the Black Guard will be in the middle flanked by the other two blocks or the Black Guard will hinge a refused flank (so I have no option but engage them and be tied up). The Mortar will cower between two of my blocks enough room to see its target but hopefully not enough to get charged by those annoying fliers.

The Cannon will sit out by itself on a lonely flank doing it'd best to be an inviting target for Harpies or Dark Riders - the Mortar must survive!

So that just leaves the blasted Cold One Knights. Urg. Aside from the Cannon obviously wanting to have a go I'm not terribly sure what to do about these. The biggest issue is the fear - I can't rely on my Knights being able to charge them. Of course if I do I'll only be up by one (outnumber - if I place a character in the Knights) and with Hatred and the Cold Ones not sucking in the manner of horses... it'll be a close run thing.

So to summarise my ingenious and totally flawless plan is:

- engage the Black Guard with Flagellents, trying to get the charge by baiting using a detachment, kill front rank and with a shedload of luck break them, run them down and panic the rest of the army off the board (the last half of that being a tad optimistic)
- shoot the bejeebus out of the Spears or Corsairs (Corsairs sound more expensive so might end up being them)
- Crossbow a unit of RXB Warriors without fear of imminent shooting reprisal
- hide the Mortar between some blocks
- assassinate a Sorceress if the opportunity arises (even if they are in a block - they'll get dragged out of the line unsupported thanks to Hatred if I'm fortunate)
- hope the Cold Ones are Stupid for the whole game and sit out on a flank making daisy chains

Actually it also occurs to me that with a 24" range on the RXBs Ray will have to come to me to engage so might hold back and make him jostle a bit.

Of course - Ray might very well have read this by the time we play and be wise to my tricks so it's probably all out the window anyway :-)

Dirty Dogs Take Two - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-19T03:06:00.000-08:00

The night was young and Antony was keen to make amends for his poor generalship by giving me the pleasure of an immediate rematch. Full of heady confidence and with a head swollen with self-importance and egomania I gladly accepted.

This turned out to be a MUCH closer game - a draw in fact!

Antony took out a unit of Duellists and replaced them with heavy armour for the blocks and bulked up the other Duellist units a bit (2 x 10 in this game). He refused flank with the blocks and barded knights on his left, shooting in the centre and some annoyance Duellists and unbarded Knights on the right. I worked hard to hold back on my right (his left) with the Swords and Reikguard while the Spears and Flagellents sped around an intervening forest.

In turn one our Generals were in combat - his failing a charge against the Huntsmen and accompanying Wizard and taking the charge from mine. Even flanked by some Duellists my brave General hung in there, gradually allowing the Spears and Flaggies to close. Then Ant killed him with a Steal Soul (failed to dispel on 3 dice) and Rule of Burning Iron (FAQ'd and now allowed to be cast into combat). Dammit. I knew his cheesey 6PD magic phase would give me trouble :-)

The right flank turned to custard, the Swords eventually run down by the Barded Knights after they were flanked by some Pikes (couldn't break the Knights quickly enough). The Knights scored the unit banner and Battle Standard but in their pursuit almost met the Flagellents. They fled the subsequent Flagellent charge, failed to rally (needing 10) and hit the Reiksguard who had eventually charged the Paymasters Bodyguard in the front (having previously fled their charge). Excellent.

But there was better to come. In a challenge (over three rounds of combat) my Reiksguard Champion killed the Paymaster - woo! The Mercenary General legged (yay!) but rallied in the last turn (boo!). The Bodyguard lost combat and broke, the victorious Reiksguard, having reclaimed the fallen banners of their comrades, were only too happy to collect the enemy unit's standard and Battle Standard.

In the end I was up by about 70VPs, clearly a draw. At one point I had more units running away than standing so it was nice to recover from a few disasters along the way!

Hoping to catch up with The Big Man's (Ray) Dark Elves this week and of course Big Nick (lots of big around at the moment...) and his Dwarfs on Friday.

What it is to still be on holiday (just)!

Dirty Dogs Take One - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-19T02:56:00.000-08:00

So Antony turned up for a couple of games as planned. We popped out for Fush and Chups for dinner and discussed his list. My apologies, the earlier list in the previous post was somewhat outdated. His list was (and this is still "ish" and from memory) thusly:

Mercenary General (Lord character) - barded warhorse, flail, shield
Paymaster (which as it turns out I was right - a BSB, makes the Bodyguard Stubborn, Panic check if he dies - excellent!) - Enchanted Shield
2 x Level 2 Hired Mages with a Scroll each

2 x 20 Pikes - FC, light armour
2 x 8 and 1 x 9 Duellists - musicians
6 Knights - FC, barding
6 Knights - FC
2 x 10 Crossbows

Baby Cannon
19 or so Paymasters Bodyguard - FC, light armour, Warbanner

It's a pretty soft list unless you charge the Pikes in the front. Then you die.

I'd like to spare Antony the nostalgia of this game by simply saying the Empire won and he capitulated at the end of turn 5 so we could play another game. I played awesome, he played like poo. My dice skills were beyond compare, he couldn't roll his way out of a wet paper bag.

Etc.

Sorry that's not much of a report. It was a pretty brutal game. I came away with this:

I learnt that if you kill the Paymaster (say by forcing the Bodyguard to charge your Swordsmen and counter-charging with a detachment and then hitting the other flank with a unit of... oh I don't know... let's say Flagellents... then you kill BUCKETS of Bodyguard models and he fails Stubborn on 8 twice. Oh and let's also say he charged his General into the combat too - solo - and he broke and ran) then most of the army will just run away.

I also confirmed that Duellists are the huge pain in the ass that I thought they would be. Bah.

Huntsmen (when you actually deploy them) can make a difference!

Panic sucks. Ok, I already knew this but it kind of hurts to watch someone else lose a unit of Knights off the board to a failed Panic check.

20-0. 'Nuff said.

Kitson's Dogs of War - pre-game FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-18T14:13:00.000-08:00

With the wife (and kids - yes!!!!) away, the husband shall play! I have a number of games organised this week while Jenni is away down in central Shebangabang (South Island) and the kids are at Nana's place (sometimes Mothers-in-Law are worth it!).

Game one is tonight against Antony Kitson's "fluffy" Dogs of War.

2 x 20 pikes - FC, heavy armour
2 x 10 Xbows
2 x 10 duelists with pistols and musos
2 x 6 cav, FC, 1 with barding
19 bodyguard, FC, heavy armour, Warbanner
Baby cannon
Mounted general
Paymaster on foot
2 x lvl 2 mage, 2 x scrolls, 1 x powerstone

There are some details left out on the characters of course. I've got to have some surprises!

Now for Kitson this probably really is rather fluffy. Compare if you will the list above to his Dark Elf list which he's been bullying people with for the last wee while (and hasn't lost a game for ages I believe). This might be a little inaccurate, but you get the picture:

Boss on Dragon with Pendant and killy lance/sword thing
BSB on horse with Seal and killy lance thing
L2 Sorceress with probably a couple of scrolls
An RXB unit of two
Maybe some Spears...
Blackguard
6 Cold One Knights with FC and Hotek
2 Chariots
2 x 5 Dark Riders
5 Shades (maybe GWs)

Now compared to that abomination his DoW are uber-flufftastic!

I don't often get the chance to seriously look at a game before I see my opponent's list so this provides some interesting opportunities.

2 x 20 pikes - FC, heavy armour

Charging this little lot is akin to suicide. Pikes strike in 4 (count 'em) ranks against chargers with ASF (and I think str4 against cav and chariots). Damn. So it's a manouever game to force him to charge me. This ability of course doesn't work against units charging the flank - key. Wonder if they really don't have shields or if he just casually forgot to mention...

2 x 10 Xbows

Good shooting core - Kitson loves his damn Crossbows. This trumps my meagre shooting base fair effectively - goodbye Crossbows and Handgunners. Handgunners will probably be placed for counter fire on a flank against Cav or to lure in infantry placed behind a forest/hill. We'll have short Crossbow-on-Crossbow duel which he will win. Lots of str4 shooting will hurt my infantry.

2 x 10 duelists with pistols and musos

Huge pain in the ass for sure. These little bastards pack a punch with pistols (mustn't forget stand-and-shoot!). A decent charge will send them off but of course they will be bait/fleeing all over the show. God I hope they can't Scout too! Argh! I generally hate playing against Skirmishers (shocking I know after using all those Skinks in the Lizardmen army :-) ).

2 x 6 cav, FC, 1 with barding

With full command these guys have to be respected. One has a slightly longer reach which I should forget at my peril. Flanks are at a premium but I suspect these guys will be held back to force my engagement with the nasty blocks. This won't actually happen because Antony, like any good Brettonian, will just put them on a flank and run them at me fast, forcing the issue and problem onto me. Or up the centre. He's a pretty aggressive player.

19 bodyguard, FC, heavy armour, Warbanner

Are these guys Stubborn with the Paymaster still alive? Ick. Surely they also have shields making them a headache in combat (against all my stuff which of course mostly str3). This will be run forward in the centre flanked by the Pike blocks on each side and the Cav maybe stacked on one flank. Crossbows will fit around this for maximum Paymaster effect.

Baby cannon

A D3 wounds job - on anti-Knight duty, probably on an extreme flank to look for the enfilade shots. Worth bugger all points I imagine making going after it a painful and annoying distraction.

Mounted general

Gear? Potential issue if not for just the leadership. Will probably hand out with a Knight unit (whichever one is closest to the blocks) for temporary leadership and some extra hittiness in combat. I expect an Enchanted Shield to be here (or on the Paymaster) along with a Sword of Might.

Paymaster on foot

Don't know my DoW rules too well but I reckon this guy has the effect of a BSB and makes the bodyguard unit Stubborn or somesuch. Geez - where's a nice big unit of Skeletons when you need them?! :-) Might have some toys but less likely. Priority is to keep him alive (Panic check for the army if he's killed?).

2 x lvl 2 mage, 2 x scrolls, 1 x powerstone

Goodbye magic phase. Gah. I hate being outmagicked. All that antimagic (4DD and 2 scrolls) and a boosted spell (powerstone) will cause some pain. Will probably be holding my scroll for the uber-cast. Antony will go for Death, trying for Doom and Darkness with both guys and happy to take pretty much anything else (some good missiles in there, Fear-causing big units would be handy etc). Will be hard-pressed to hold this off. Each Pike unit will probably get a Wizard buddy.

So what's the plan? Well the Duellists have to go - they are devastating and easily underestimated. Whoever is furtherest from the General will get some magic missile love and maybe even some shooting if I don't feel like having a go at the Crossbows. The Mortar will be handy here. Cannon will look for Knights or character sniping if a Wizard decides to go for a wander and picnic in the woods. The Huntsmen will be looking for the Cannon.

I've spent a couple of games now screwing around with my deployment. I'll be looking force the charge on the Pikes but the presence of the Warbanner/BSB in the Bodyguard and the lurking Knights will make this tricky. Magic will be decisive, especially if he gets the spells (spell) he's after. Leadership 8 is already difficult enough - nevermind being leadership 5!!! There's a lot of fairly tough (for me) static res there. I'll also have to advance or risk losing rank bonus to the enemy Crossbows which is annoying. Flagellents will be important and might even end up charging a Pike unit (they will probably end up having to) if only to keep them out of the way. They'll get butchered but should hold for a crucial turn or (with poorer rolling) two or three (bit hopeful there). Might try using the 9-man Crossbow detachment as a meatshield.

Anyway, Antony's going to try and get here early-ish so hopefully we'll get a couple of games in and you can all learn twice from my mistakes :-)

A Hunted Man - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Asian Nick is out for my blood - he wants the win and last night (Wednesday) he damn near almost got it. Our rematch from Monday ended up being a draw 93VPs in his favour - a really close game indeed!

As is becoming habit I'm using the playtesting games to try new (for me) and usually stupid things with the Empire. This time I weighted one flank with the infantry and the other with the cavalry and artillery. Yeah - that'll work. In fact it might have gone ok if my Reiksguard Knights (and General) hadn't panicked right off the board when the Hunstmen fled through them. That's right, I finally remembered to deploy the Huntsmen and look what it got me! The Pistoliers survived long enough to take out the Jezzails (just) before dying to poisoned globes of green gassy death but the eventual death of the Huntsmen left the Great Cannon facing off against the full strength Plague Monks and Plague Censer Bearers. On the positive side, with the additional sacrifice of the GW-Knight unit it kept the awful Plague Monks out of the centre.

Combined with some good luck and the quite frankly awesome Mortar of Impending Panic Checks I managed to turn the game. This time the Rat Ogres panicked away (thank-you Burning Head) along with almost two Clanrat units (the BSBs unit panicked but managed to rally, the other fled the board). Taking on the Flagellents the Skaven General's Clanrat unit took a right beating and broke. I failed to catch them but miraculously they also failed to rally in the last turn, panicking off the Globadiers into the bargain and essentially securing me the draw.

On the other flank the Swordsmen felt the wrath of an operational Ratling Gun, losing 10 men in one round of shooting! They eventually took a charge from the full-strength Giant Rats who fluffed trememdously, lost by one and were run down in the last turn. Nice.

Pretty much everything else survived although I lost the Wizard (fled a charge and failed to rally) and the suicidal Warrior Priest who at one point (after beating on some passing Gutter Runners) took on a unit of Slaves and the General's Clanrats (in his flank) singlehandedly. The stupid git failed both of the 2+ saves he was required to make and died to a Slave's rusty blade. Good job - loser.

Anyway, maybe next time I won't try experimenting with deployment in weird and not so wonderful ways when I play Nick. He's really getting the hang of the Ratties and I'm just pushing my luck too far with stupid play.

In the post-battle discussion Nick expressed his dismay at the difficulty he has reacting to the opponent when he encounters a scenario he's never experienced - essentially a difficulty with improvising and formulating a plan when some surprising happens. This is clearly something that one develops over time with more play and experience (I readily admit I too am learning about this still) but I thought more about this later and really, does anyone ever really improvise? If you encounter a situation in Warhammer that you've never experienced maybe you don't improvise as such but rather draw relationship to a similar experience and just alter your reaction based on that and the differences to the experienced situation.

Or not. Maybe the most experienced generals have just seen it all and nothing surprises them any more.

The point of pre-tournament playtesting games - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

As Trent said in a recent episode of A Dogs Breakfast, one of the great things about playtesting a list in a friendly game (i.e. outside of a competitive tournament envrionment when fame and pride are on the line) is you have the opportunity to try things you would otherwise not normally do. Usually this involves playing the odds attempting a risky manouevre that could pay dividends if it works but if it doesn't will most likely hamstring you for the rest of the game without significant luck or uber-generalship coming to your rescue.

I was able to implement a risky manouevre against Asian Nick* last night in what looked to be a close game but resulted in a win to me by a little over 500Vps (I'm finding most FluffyCon games to be close - rarely are we seeing 20-0 massacre wins and the reduced participation of uber-characters and units - and VCs and Daemons - is really levelling the playing field enormously). The highly experimental risk was charging a unit of Slaves with the Reiksguard Knights accompanied by the Warrior Priest (Slaves fled) and in turn allowing them to be charged by a unit of Plague Censer Bearers. Ordinarily (in fact, in this game too) this is suicide. PCBs force every model in base contact to take a toughness test which if failed results in a wound with no armour save. Then each PCB gets a terrible amount of Frenzied, Hate-filled str5 attacks. Things pretty much went pear-shaped as I lost 5 Knights but in return 3 of Nick's Bearers gassed themselves to death and the surviving Knight (Warbanner-toting Standard Bearer) and Priest accounted for 2 more. The remaining PCBs broke and were run down but unfortunately the damage was done - I had 2 cav models remaining and the whole point of the exercise was to have at least 3 leaving me with the crucial unit strength of 5 to cancel ranks. The plan was to bust through to the Skaven rear with a US5 unit and get a rear charge on either the Warlord's Clanrats or the BSBs Plaguemonks (who went on to cause horrific problems for me). Ok, the plan backfired and although the remaining models survived the game (just) I was still pleased to have given it a go - had it worked out Nick would have had major problems sorting them out and keeping his units safe. The other benefit is this would have allowed a strongish force to get at those cowardly Skaven characters hiding at the back of their units.

The Rat Ogres saw combat in this game, charging the Swordsmen with Empire General. I held just to make things interesting - usually the Rat Ogres have run away and never see combat, so I was interested to see what they could do. With a massive number of attacks the Rat Ogres only lost the opening combat by 1 but with some superior armour saving and skill lost the next round by enough to break. They rallied and took a charge from the Swords and Reiksguard/Priest, broke and were run down which carried both of my units to safety.

The Spearmen saw off a Clanrat block and two units of Slaves but Nick cleverly retreated his Jezzails to prevent them from being charged in my last turn - keeping them alive a far more valuable prospect than shooting at the full strength Spear block.

The Wizard was pretty hopeless, mostly because he was stuck on a flank away from the units I wanted to fry with magic missiles (Poison Wind Globadiers and Gutter Runners).

The MVP of the match without any doubt was the Mortar. It spent two turns raining death on Slaves before turning it's attention to two units of Clanrats who were getting close to charging it. It managed over three turns to cause BOTH units to panic and they never rallied. This also caused a nearby Ratling Gun to flee the board. Nick was beyond frustrated at my incredibly good fortune and the stunning Empire artillerymen managed to earn their points back almost 6 times. Outstanding work chaps! Compare this to the cannon - almost devoid of useful targets against a Skaven army and misfiring constantly - and this was definitely the unit of the match.

Incidentally, I forgot to deploy an entire unit. Again. Yep, the good old Huntsmen didn't see the pitch once more. Sheesh. What an embarassment!

* much like "Phils" and "Daves" there seems to be a preponderance of "Nicks" in Warhammer. To clear this up for future blog entries:

- Asian Nick - Engineering Master (Master of Thesis Extension that is) Nicholas Ng who plays Skaven (regular opponent, figures probabilities by means of an internal calculator, yet to beat me at Warhammer, given to bizarre diagulous diversions at the most inopportune moments mid-game)
- CSS Nick - Captain Soft Score Nick Irvine who plays Wood Elves (I've only played this Nick once a LONG time ago when I borrowed Antony's Dwarfs to learn how to play Warhammer. Nick's been hiding from me ever since)
- Venerable and Ancient Nick - the wise and cynical Nick Buckby who in his time may very well have played every army in existence and some that no longer exist (who I've played a couple of times - smashed his Woodies 19-1 at Fields of Blood then my Dwarfs took a pounding from his recently acquired Orcs and Gobbos at Doug's Farewell)

Does the first game of the year define your chances of making it to the Masters? - FluffyCon playtesting

2009-01-09T19:58:00.001-08:00

Derick popped over for dinner and a game last night which was great because:

- Derick's a great guy
- Derick's army is a lot of fun to play
- Derick thrashed me last time we played and I've been looking for the opportunity for REVENGE!

Fortunately I've fluffed my list up even more since our last game and as we all know, he with the fluffiest list will always win in the end. Yeah right.

There were a couple of key moments in this game which led to a close win (by around 500VPs) to me:

- The Reiksguard Knights and accompanying Warrior Priest got a sweet flank charge off on the Orc General's unit of Savage Orc Boar Boyz. The Orcs lost by 3 and fled, getting run down and allowing me an overrun in the Savage Orc L4 Shaman sitting in a forest next to them. He got taken out in short order and the Knights took a charge from the remainder of the other SO Boar unit (the Champion and a character) who failed to make a dent and were crossfired by some conveniently placed Pistoliers.

- My inability to deal with the Giant quickly and cheaply cost me two blocks. I hate Giants. Passing Terror and then a Fear check my Spearmen led by the General charged into the lumbering brute and caused 2 wounds (Sword of Might for the win!). The Giant promptly rolled up 'Yell and Bawl' (wins the combat by 2). Of course I failed the break check and was cut down. The Swordsmen took a beating a few turns later and were wiped out - fortunately the BSB saw it coming and bailed at the last moment.

The GW-Knights proved their fluffiness dying to a Goblin chariot after running out of room to run away from it. After all my worrying about the accursed Squig Herd I managed to kill the eventual survivors off completely thereby negating their expected explosion, which was a pity as they were placed nicely to obliterate two Spider Rider units in their death throes.

I completely forgot to deploy an entire unit (Huntsmen). Newb syndrome. Ugh.

I'm having a great deal of trouble with Orcs and Goblins at the moment and despite the fact I triumphed in this game and had a lot of fun my confidence is not wholly bouyed by my recent success.

I've started thinking further afield about the Empire army - beyond FluffyCon to what else is on offer this year. The plan is to make at least one Wellington tournament so a 2250pt list will eventually need some close consideration. Derick proved his awesomeness by giving me a swag of Empire stuff he's just brought back from Oz including 30 Swordsmen, 4 Knights and a smattering of bits to make up some detachments (and a bag of other stuff too! Legend!) so it's time to look at painting up some more stuff (another block of 25 Swords and buffing up the current unit to 25 would be sweet). Problem is I just can't see what I would add and I really dont want to cheese up the army to compete in a regular tournament environment having worked so hard with the comparitively "toned down" list.

I'm wondering if it might be possible to win with a Captain-led Ld8 army in a standard tournament? With no Rares.

Not kidding myself too much though. I'll definitely be taking another Great Cannon!

EDIT - woot! First post of 2009! Does anyone still read this rubbish? :-)

The Turn Four Plan - FluffyCon playtesting

2008-12-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

If you haven't read the backlog of excellent IF online magazine articles, do so now.

Ok. You are now probably a better player.

One of the things that I believe (as per one of the articles in said mag) is that as one improves as a player, the more one is able to think ahead. When I started out I was really micromanaging and agonising over every little decision (long-term opponents will recall this method of play which nearly led to me being nicknamed Indecisive Dave or D-d-d-d-Dave because I kept changing my mind) without a view to the overall battlefield and flow of the game. Sooner or later you move from this stage into looking at the bigger picture of the whole turn where you attempt to impose a plan on the enemy. Then you start thinking about your opponent's turn.

Then... a long way down the track... you start thinking 2 or 3 turns ahead. About this time you've started to realise how incredibly complex this game can be and how good the top players really are!

In my most recent game I achieved it - the Zen of Thinking Three Turns Ahead. And it was a beautiful, glorious thing.

I played DE Phil (hereafter known as Phil3*) yesterday at his place (which was awesome - we played in his carpeted garage in front of a masive projection screen as SA shattered Australian cricket by winning their first test in Oz EVER - excellent). For the first two turns I looked to be in the red but stuck to my guns. Phil3's army is a fluffy covering with a solid and deadly centre of 2 Chariots and 24 Witch Elves with the Cold One Banner accompanied by a Hag BSB with the Standard of Slaughter (+D3 to combat res). The whole plan involved taking a charge with Unbreakable Spearmen, counter-charging on one flank with the Free Company and charging into the other flank in the next turn with the Flagellents in turn 4.

Miraculously that is exactly what happened! Except that, one their way in the Flagellents beat the snot out of some interposing DE Spearmen and the Free Company, instead of hitting the Witch Elves, ended up beating up some Dark Riders.

While the Reiksguard swept majestically into the Shades and Assassin and then, shortly after, the RXB Warriors my brave lads went to work on the Witchies. A dead Hag BSB and a score of dead Witch Elves later and they were headed for the hills. With a chariot and 10 Corsairs remaining (the victorious Flagellents and Spearmen would have overrun into the surviving Sorceress) Phil3 called the game.

Of course, he also helped things along immensely by miscasting with his General and rolling the legendary double 1s. Nice work Phil :-)

What was extra great was that I played this game with version 3 of the fluffy Empire list in which I've dropped the Arch-Lector and Helblaster for a Warrior Priest and 10 Huntsmen. The list worked really well - practically the whole army is Ld8 (characters spread around parent units and Knights - parent units providing leadership to detachments). Ld8 is NOT awesome, but in this game it worked remarkably well. Further playtesting will prove the folly of this assumption I'm sure but for now things are humming along nicely :)

Now if only every game consistently had a turn four plan...

*Phil1 - Star Dragon Phil aka Philfy aka self-proclaimed establishing leader of that shoddy ADC outfit
Phil2 - other High Elf Phil, shortly to be Wood Elf Phil, aka Wouster7 aka Jolly Asian Phil
Phil3 - Dark Elf Phil... what the heck is it with guys named Phil playing various Elven races???

Playing catch-up with Skaven - FluffyCon playtesting

2008-12-30T16:30:00.000-08:00

The Lone Asian is one of my favourite opponents - the fact that Nick has yet to beat me actually adds an extra edge to our games as he is going for the throat and I often find myself desperately fending him off. The games are usually close and the turning point is generally in my fourth or fifth turn when I take advantage of a terrible mistake Nick has made.

This gamed turned history on it's head. Nick did make a mistake - in deployment when he placed his Rat Ogres and Globadiers (this is FluffyCon list; hence the Rat Ogres) on almost the opposite side of the battlefield from his General. The Rat Ogres quickly proved their reputation, fleeing the board after my Reiksguard Knights impaled and ran down a unit of nearby Giant Rats. The Knights (reduced by an irresistible Warp Lightning and Globadier fire) then spent the rest of the game running away from a Clanrat unit they could not hope to beat. They managed to assassinate the Warlock before being dragged down by the innumerable Skaven.

Oddly enough the same situation was happening on the opposite flank with the GW-Knights against another Clanrat unit but this time there was no one to assassinate. When it came time to finally charge (left with no other option) the Knights fluffed fantastically and were run down.

Artillery put the fear in Nick (aside from the Helblaster which, true to form, catastrophically annihilated itself shooting at a valuable target - Slaves). The Mortar rained death from above with alarming regularity, quickly reducing the Skaven Warlords Clanrat bodyguard to a point where he was no longer interested in charging the Spearmen (he spent most of the game trying unsuccessfully to reach the Plaguemonks and ended up dying to a gallant last turn charge by the Pistoliers!). The Cannon was frustrated by the lack of solid targets (which is of course what I expected playing Nick). I foolishly let slip my cunning plan to snipe the Assassin (who was hanging out with 3 Tunnelling Rats) so Nick tucked him away safely. My one shot at the Skaven General overshot. The Cannon also comprehensively nailed a Jezzail before the Handgunners finished them off is a superb display of shooting skill.

The 3 Tunnel Team rats spent 4 turns in epic combat with the Free Company detachment the lone survivor (a rat) then charged the Crossbow detachment in the flank and was soundly clubbed to death. Amusingly, much like the Knights, this was mirrored in another part of the battlefield as a single surviving Gutter Ruunner tried his luck against the single file flank of the Handgunners. He died a similar fate.

The Plaguemonks drove all before them, obliterating the Flagellents in a gruesome display of extremely capable dice rolling. In return the Spearmen detachment cleverly sacrificed themselves charging the flank of the Plaguemonks. Frenzy meant they had to pursue and while the Spearmen were caught it also meant the Plaguemonks were forced to charge the full strength Swordsmen unit with accompanying Arch-Lector and BSB in the last turn. After wiping out a unit of Slaves the Pistoliers hit the Skaven General, causing a wound and taking none in return. Having conveniently cross-fired the Boss Rat the Swordsmen then beat down the Plaguemonks after Nick's dice turned on him and chased them off in the last turn.

The end result was a hard fought for draw which could have been a defeat for me had Nick deployed better. Problem is he learned his lesson so the next game is sure to be even more of a challenge! Great game Nick - let me know when you have that table at your place and I'll come over for a game and return the favour :-)

When karma realigns... Dark Elves die - FluffyCon playtesting

2008-12-18T15:40:00.001-08:00

Funnily enough I'd actually met Phil (not Stardragon Phil... or other High Elf Phil... this is another Phil) at Tin Soldier earlier in the year. He popped along as a spectator and was so impressed by the Dipped Dwarfs of Disastrous Decimation that he resolved to immediately dip an army of his own. Phil's good mates with Ray and getting back into serious Fantasy, having played since... well, almost before I was born (jokes... but certainly for a while!). He even had a 2nd edition reference card which used the same modifiers and many of the same charts.

Old school!

Anyway, Phil brought his 'fluffier than thou' Dark Elves:

Sorceress on Dark Pegasus
Sorceress on Cold One (one of these chicks had an extra spell thing)
Hag BSB

24-ish Witch Elves
20 Spear Elves
11 (?) RXB Elves
2 Cold One Chariots
6 or 7 Dark Riders
2 and a bit ranks of Corsairs with 2 hand-weapons
5 Shades hiding an Assassin

It was so fluffy that no one had Hotek or the cheese-ward and the RXBs and Spears didn't have shields! Flufftastic!

By contrast I felt like the cheesemonger that I am with my Empire lads. And unfortunately they were about to prove how effective Empire can be (my dice rolling was... off the charts).

- cannon nailed a chariot turn one, 5 Witch Elves turn 2

- Mortar rained death on the Spears

- Helblaster left one Spearman alive after 22 shots translated to 8 dead Spears. The survivor fled the board.

- Handgunners and Pistoliers combined to smash the Corsairs at range. The two survivors fled the field

- the Wizard and Crossbows all but wiped out the RXB Elves. The surviving Elf charged the Reiksguard Knights, miraciously holding them up for a turn but getting run down in the next.

- Flagellents Frenzy-charged the Shades. Assassin popped out and was forced to accept a challenge by the Prophet of Doom. Prophet died (one wound). Remaining Flagellents martyred a friend to get Hatred and wiped out the Shades. Assassin broke, escaped and rallied which was fine as he then caught 8 wounds in the face from a Fiery Blast courtesy of the Wizard.

- Wizard went on to roll an IF 2D6 Fiery Blast against a riderless Dark Pegasus (Sorceress died to Pistolier fire, Peg chased off the Mortar). 12 hits later it was a smoking corpse.

- The Spears took 7 wounds from the charge of the remaining Cold One Chariot, held (Unbreakable). Broke it in the next turn.

- GW-Knights charged the Dark Riders (who did stand-and-shoot, other option was to flee the table - awkward placement). With 5 attacks from the Knights and 5 from the horses they killed all the Dark Riders off on the charge.

- Cold One-riding Sorceress shot down by Pistoliers

- eventually left with "just" the Frenzied, BSB-led Witch Elves - they were lured around by the Crossbow detachment, then the Spear detachment (who were caught) but then flank-charged by the Swordsmen unit. Witch Elves managed to hold for two rounds but in turn 5 took a charge in the other flank from the GW-Knights who killed 4 and combined with static res broke the Witchies despite their reroll. The Witch Elves were damn scary but after losing Hatred and Frenzy definitely much less so. Trent is right - Dark Elves without Hatred... not so good.

End result? A sound thrashing for Phil who was an absolute gentleman throughout the game and a stand up good sport.

Empire losses - Spear detachment, Cannon, Mortar, 1/2 the Flagellents (to magic)

Dark Elf losses - everything plus I got 4 quarters, 2 standards (maybe 3, can't remember if the Dark Riders had one), the General, and bonus points for the Heroes*

VPs for Phil = 328
VPs for me = 2820

So a convincing 20-0 win for the Empire and the universe can again sleep easy after the butchering I recevied from Derick's soft Spiders a couple of nights ago :-)

Game organised against Nick's (The Lone Asian) Skaven on Saturday night (another unit of which I have finished painting).

* Taking Heroes/Lords at FluffyCon is a scary proposition. Each Lord killed gives away an additional 80VPs (that's on top of being the General if they are) and each Hero gives away an additional 40VPs on top of their normal cost. Makes taking a Lord and 3 Heroes less appealing!

The continuing issue with playing Empire - FluffyCon playtesting

2008-12-17T14:22:00.001-08:00

You must have experienced one of those games where very little goes your way - the dice are against you; for some reason you couldn't strategise your way out of a paper bag; your models are armed with rainbows and hugs instead of swords and fiery magical doom and need some serious fitness training for lack of catching opponents IF they somehow miraculously manage to break them.

Not to take anything away from Derick (who is just a lovely guy) but come on - how broken is his Spider Riders army!?!?! :p

Derick's army is pretty well known around the place because frankly no one else is mad enough to field an army made up in the majority of models that are T3, 5+ save with shortbows and no ranks or banners. Unfortunately Spider Riders don't make up the WHOLE army - the juicy core of Boar Boyz, Boar Boy Big 'Uns, hitty characters with Shaggas et al, a L4 Shaman and the fact that everything Orcy is also Savage... that little lot can hurt if you don't take care of them quick smart.

Which is exactly what I failed to do.

Here are the high/lowlights of this extremely self-destructive game.:

- first shot, cannon blows up

- first shot, first barrel, helblaster blows up (again)

- just because Spider Riders usually miss doesn't mean they always will. Pistoliers take 2 casualties and Panic through the brave Reiksguard Knights. Fortunately the Pistoliers rally (eventually taking the Giant to 1/2 wounds and destroying the Goblin Chariot. Then they died to one of the many Tapdances that Gork was wont to do in this game). Unfortunately the Knights panicked from the Pistoliers little jaunt through their ranks. The Knights fled the board.

- on the opposite flank the GW-knights met a sticky end at the hands of a Squig Herd.

- the Orc Shaman, being Frenzied, was forced to charge the Flagellents. He lost the combat and ran (failed to catch him). Then he auto-fled my charge in the next turn but failed to go far enough to get off the board (by a couple of inches). Then he rallied. Then I was magically annihilated. The Flagellents then took a flank charge from 5 Spider Riders who beat them twice, keeping them still long enough for the Shaman to Fist of Gork them and the Squigs to rear-charge.

- MVPs the Swordsmen took a charge from some Spiders and Gobbo Boss on Giant Spider. BSB wailed on the Boss in their challenge. Combination of ranks, standards, numbers and the supporting flank charge by the Spear detachment broke both units. Spider Riders caught. Boss caught in a charge in the following turn. Actually the Spear detachment are the MVPs - caught the Gobbo boss, took out the Doomdiver, fled another charge but rallied to contest a quarter. Swordsmen played no further part in the battle. But they did survive which pretty much set them apart from almost everyone else.

- Spear block and Lector smashed multiple times by Boar Boyz with two attached characters. Derick eventually tired of the combat, dispelled Unbreakable and caused the survivors (Lector on two wounds and the standard bearer) to flee.

- Wizard's first spell miscasts (rolling triple ones). Derick gets a free spell (Tapdance). By the time Derick rolls up the same miscast result later in the game (it occurs to me we referenced the general miscast table instead of the Greenskin miscast table - oops!) my Wizard was dead from the mighty Tapdance. Sigh.

- last straw - two Spider Riders charge 8 Crossbows, beat them and force them to flee in the last turn.

So, I had the Swords and BSB and Spear detachment left at the end of the game. Derick had - L4 Shaman, Squig herd, 2.5 Spider Rider units, Boar Boyz, two fighty characters (including General and a hero on 1/2 wounds), 1/2 strength Boar boy Big 'Uns, 1/2 strength Giant.

2112VPs to Derick. 888 VPs to me. 1224VP difference.

16-4 loss for the Empire to the mighty Spider Riders!

Bah.

The continuing hilarity of playing Orcs and Goblins - FluffyCon playtesting

2008-12-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

I have three games over the next three days (what it is to be on holiday) and last night finally managed to play Aaron who I've wanted to play for ages! He was using an O&G army that looked like this:

Blorc General with kit
Blorc BSB with kit
Gobbo Shaman
3 x 22/23/25 boyz with choppa/shield and FC
2 Night Gobbo blocks with 2 Fanatics each, one with bows, one with spears
5 Spider Riders
Giant
Doomdiver
2 bolties
10 Arrer Boyz
Squig herd of random exloding death
Boar chariot

This was an EXCELLENT game (a very pleasing pattern as of late) with so many brilliant, hilarious and downright weird moments. Here are the highlights:

- First shot, first barrel - Helblaster explodes. Hrm.

- First shot, cannon misfires. Second shot overshoots the Boar Chariot by an inch but doesn't bounce quite far enough to hit the Boyz behind. Third shot (having lost two crew - see Squig Hoppery Death later in this summary) hits the Giant with an absolute peach of a shot and takes 5 wounds off him! The Giant is finished off by the Crossbows (who only wounded once!) which in turn not only saved by GW-Knights from the Giant but also ended up resulting in the death of not only a bolt thrower (taken out by the GW-Knights) but also the 25-Orc block on the other flank (flank-charged by the GW Knights). The Cannon's last shot, at the Goblin Shaman who had abandoned his unit, falls short by an INCH! Grrr!

- The Mortar reigning death onto Goblins before helping me understand how incredibly crap it is against toughness 4 Orcs.

- the GW-Knights fantastic tour of the battlefield taking out the Arrer Boyz, watching the Giant drop dead right next to them (as opposed to on top of them), surviving two enfilading bolt thrower shots, taking out one of said bolt throwers and finally, hitting the large Boyz unit in the flank and running them down.

- the Reiksguard Knights luring out a Fanatic (that's what I'm calling it anyway), failing (along with the Pistoliers) to break the bow-armed Gobbo unit on the charge (Insane Courage/Insane Stupidity Gobbos - nice one Aaron!), breaking them in the next turn, running them off the board, returning and taking out the Doomdiver and remaining bolt thrower, taking the big Orc block in the front, holding, and (with the GW-knights) running them down in the last turns of the game.

- useless git of a Wizard failing to cast spells then thinking "surely there's no way that Fanatic will come this way AND roll high enough to reach me". Splat!

- The Boar Chariot charging the Flagellents in turn 2, taking 5 turns to kill them off (only just). Bit gutted the last guy died as the chariot was eventually flanked by the Swords and BSB who failed to kill it (had one wound left by this point). Chariot killed the Flagellent, broke thanks to the Swordsmen in the flank, and ran through the same Fanatic who killed the Wizard. 6 impact hits on the Fanatic = splat. 4 Fanatic hits on the Chariot = smash!

- Squig Hoppery Death. Oh man, how awesome was this?!! Hoppers hit the Swordsmen and are counter-charged by their Spear detachment. Hoppers lose combat and explode. 12". As in, everything within 12" takes D6 str5 hits. Result? 6 out of the remaining 7 Spearmen from the detachment die. 5-man Crossbow unit dies. 2 Swords die. 2 Cannon crew die. 1 Mortar crew and a wound on the Mortar. 4 Spearmen from the big block. 3 Orcs, a wound on the Board Chariot (lol) and 2 Flagellents. Carnage!!!

- the surviving Spearman from the detachment passes his Panic check and totally gets in the way of the two remaining Orc blocks in the centre, preventing charges and annoying the hell out of Aaron :-)

- charge of the Spearmen and solo charge of the Lector into the Orc BSBs block of Boyz. Empire lose the combat and hold. Lector flank-charged by the Orc General's unit in the last turn - they wave pom-poms as the Lector is busy in a challenge with the Orc BSB. Spears break. Lector is Unbreakable and ends the game continuing his challenge against the BSB, surrounded by 40+ angry Orcs and the "unable to attack anything" Orc General.

A win to me by 230VPs which I think is an 11-9 but really pretty much a draw - an outstanding game against an opponent interested in the win but more interested and amused in the just plain ridiculous goings on throughout the game. My anticipation in playing Aaron was totally justified.

Tonight I'm back to killing off the Greenskin menace but this time it's Derick's Spiders again - more magic, more speed, less static res and here I am with no toughness and no armour.

Now... where did I put my Dwarfs?... :)

Just kidding - Empire all the way baby!

Training for fluffiness - an extreme step sideways

2008-12-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Well, not too extreme but a sideways step nonetheless. With the recent purchase of a complete Empire army I now have my sights set on entering FluffyCon with an altogether more dynamic, exciting, varied and psychologically fragile force. After no small amount of asking around various experts and posting a few lists on WAU (for those that at least consider themselves experts) I settled on the following list for a series of practice games starting with one at the City Guard today:

Arch Lector - Dawn Armour, Barded Warhorse, Biting Blade
Captain - BSB, Armour of Meteoric Iron, Sword of Might
Wizard - Level 2, Wizard's Staff, Dispel Scroll

20 Flagellents - Prophet of Doooom!
25 Spears - FC, Shields; Detachment - 9 Crossbowmen; Detachment - 9 Free Company
20 Swordsmen - FC, Shields; Detachment - 5 Crossbowmen; Detachment - 8 Spearmen (shields)
10 Handgunners
7 Knights - FC, Warbanner
5 Knights - Great Weapons, Musician

5 Pistoliers - Musician, Outrider Champ with Repeater Pistol
Great Cannon
Mortar

Helblaster Volley Gun

4PD + 2 bounds
5DD + 1 scroll
138 models

Comments back essentially describe it as a standard Empire army. FluffyCon is using the panel-judged, tiered-comp system and I'm told to expect the base score for Empire, possibly a +1 but not likely. The Arch-Lector setup is not optimal (no Speculum for example) but otherwise it's straight-forward. I'm ok with this as I see the army as a lot of fun on paper and today's game proved it was a lot of fun on the field.

Research and friendly passer-by commentary suggests that Empire have psychological issues (i.e. low leadership) and spend a lot of time running away or cowering in fear. This will undoubtedly prove challenging (and it did today!) but will also make things amusing and interesting so that's fine. The Imperial Banner is an option (rerolls for psychology tests including Panic) but I'd like to avoid that for FluffyCon at least.

Anyway, the game...

Tony contacted me by email requesting a game which was very flattering and of course I immediately had my suspicions why he'd chosen me :-) Turns out my suspicions were well-founded - Vod was trying out his Werewolf themed Warriors of Chaos list (as a potential FluffyCon list) and it was something to be feared. Vod was running:

Lord on Disk with 2+ armour and 3+ ward vs mundane attacks (5+ ward vs magic)
6 Nurgle Knights with Banner of Always Frenzied
4 Nurgle Ogres
3 Dragon Ogres
2 Spawn

Followed up closely (or preceeded by):

20 Slaanesh Marauders
12 Slaanesh Warriors
4 x 5 hounds
5 Marauder Horse with Spears
Hellcannon

So some fast scary (Fear-causing) hitty stuff with lots of chaff and some good anvils to boot.

This was a great game - here are the defining moments of what was a tight, cagey and well-played (by both of us I'm happy to say) battle:

Centrally deployed, the Helblaster unloaded on turn 2 on the only thing it could see - 5 damned annoying Marauder Horsemen. 6 shots on the first barrel, misfired on the second. Result? Remaining two barrels fire off 10 shots each and the Helblaster is consumed in a (self-inflicted) fiery inferno. The Marauder Cav are but a smear on the ground.

On the other flank, Vod's Hellcannon is not to be outdone. It's first shot results in a Chaos Dwarf crewman getting eaten. It's second shot sends it rampaging forward. It's third never happens - the Hellcannon fails it's leadership test at the start of the turn and rampages forward some more (into a forest). It spent the rest of the game in combat! (seeing off the GW Knights and in the last turn meeting up with the Arch-Lector and his mates - more on that later).

The left flank was a shambles - facing off against the recently deceased Marauder Horsemen and a subsequently panicking unit of Hounds the large Knight unit first failed a fear check charging against the Dragon Ogres, then fled their charge, then panicked as the intervening Pistoliers were cut down attempting to divert another charge from the Dragon Ogres. In the final turn the brave Knights managed to charge some Hounds (the ones who had panicked earlier) and run them down. Way to go lads - 226pts well spent :/

In the middle my glorious 25-strong unit of Spearmen were stuck behind 9 Crossbowmen (comments about deployment issues ringing in my ears). They spent most of the game shooting at Hounds and the Nurgle Ogres but panicked when the Flagellents (who had sacrificed themselves trying to slow down said Ogres) died to a man. The Spears took the Ogre charge, ably supported by their Free Company detachment but both units broke from combat after losing by 1 (the Free Company auto-breaking, the Spears fluffing their break test). The Spears failed to rally and fled the table.

Moving further to the right the 10 Handgunners took a serious toll on the Marauder block and killed one of the Spawn. They survived the game almost making them my MVPs...

but that award goes to the Swordsmen, Arch-Lector and BSB. Sighting an opportunity for glory (or at least, glorious sacrifice) they charged into the Nurgle Knights (who were baited by a 5-man Crossbow detachment). The Lector killed one in combat and one with Soulfire. Miraculously the Swords survived much of the return attack and even more miraculously the Knights broke and were run down! Ye-ah! In their rush the Swords ploughed into the reduced Marauder block behind. They took a flank charge from the Warriors but thanks to the Lector's prayers (making them Unbreakable) held nicely despite taking punishing casualties. Tony managed to dispel the unbreakability in my next magic phase but didn't stop the Wizard's Transmutation of Lead on the Warriors. Now hitting and wounding on 4s (!) they failed to cause ANY damage. The Marauders similarly fluffed! Thrashing around them mightily the Swords, Lector and BSB killed enough Marauders to win the combat by one! Thinking this would buy me a little time I was thrilled to see the cowardly Warriors break (yes!!!) and run far enough to impale themselves on the nearby Spearmen (who had not yet run away). The Swords were rear-charged by the flying Chaos General who failed to harm the Arch-Lector in their challenge. This broke the Marauders who failed to rally in the last turn. Thinking they saw the light at the end of the tunnel the Swordsmen waved their pom-poms as hard as they could, cheering on the Lector as he once more survived the feeble attacks of the Chaos Lord. The Lord (who had by this time taken 2 wounds from Soulfire - excellent) broke but escaped. Having come all this way, seeing off the Warriors, Knights, Marauders and Chaos General they took a charge in the final turn from the surviving Spawn and the wretched Hellcannon.

Having played a great game all the way through and looking at a draw (which against Tony I would have been very proud of) I lost the combat and promptly failed the break test and reroll. This panicked the nearby GW Knights (who had fled and rallied after fighting the Hellcannons earlier). 3 sucktastic dice rolls = 700+ point swing.

Glorious.

It was a great game and I really felt like, having done so well despite several failed fear checks and the disastrous break test at the end, I had somehow and somewhat proved my mettle as a Warhammer general. Do not fear gentle readers - I have a LONG way to go! But losing the game (by a bit less than 1000VPs) when until then it looked like a very minor loss against Vod and against that army... gosh it felt like a real achievement.

And as good as I might get one day, I don't think I'll ever be able to control the evil cubed arbiters of fate.

Games against Phil (yet another Phil!) and hopefully Aaron later in the week.