Way to slack off on the blog Fuj...

Been getting a lot of that sort of commentary recently.

Fortunately now that the thrice-damned show is done and buried (Grease is the word... indeed...) I am starting to reclaim my shattered existence. Games have been few and far between (to be exact, I've not played for the last 3 or so weeks) but that is all due to change. In fact it has changed as I played on Sunday.

Since my last post (and pre-the show taking over my life) I got in a few more games vs the mighty Mike and his wandering Chaos lads. Since then Mike has taken the advice of other players much more seriously, managing his first win with a heavily Slaneesh-marked force. Congrats Mike! We played a game where he faced off against the Doofs and the next week I borrowed Carl's Empire and gave that a go (two wins there). Using Empire was interesting and I was really surprised at how much I could fit into the army! So many troops! So many units!

Sunday heralded my potentially triumphant return to the club and I was questionably lucky to dodge a bullet when I received a PM from Tony saying that he wouldn't be able to make our game. Tony beat me senseless a while back (Daemons vs Dwarfs) and I now greatly fear the threat of the Daemonic on the gaming field. Scary stuff and Tony's army is honed (he's also a really experienced general of course!).

Anyway, instead of Tony I got in a game in against Lezle's Vampire Counts.

I'd only previously played VCs once (vs Kyle using the Dwarfs) and they had singularly failed to impress. This time, using Lizards with 5 dispel dice and no scrolls, I was looking at a potentially different scenario. Lezle's army is startlingly different to Kyle's - Boss on Abyssal Terror (cool!), 2 Dread Knight Vamps, Varghulf, Zombie block, 2 skellie blocks, Black Knights, Bats, and a unit of the (justifiably) dreaded Cairn Wraiths (with Banshee). The battle see-sawed around the middle game as I struggled to bring my one static res block into the game (for some reason I deployed them on a flank). Magic was AWESOME - spell selection was fortunate to say the least. Cleansing Flare (?... top Light magic spell) did for multiple units. Beast Cowers stopped the Vamp boss until the Abyssal Terror was shot out from underneath him. The Jag-Vet tagged the Black Knights, caned them on the charge (then died to the Vamp in the unit). The Steg ran into a Grave Guard block, bounced and was run down by the Varghulf (erk!). The Skinks were LEGENDARY. The Salamanders were BROKEN-LEVEL LEGENDARY. In one turn they threw 24 shots in a zombie block and next turn smashed them in combat. I've not had a game where the Sallies haven't just eaten all their Skink handlers so this was quite exciting!

In the end I had 2 banners and all 4 quarters and Lezle had his boss on 2 wounds (thanks to the Carstein ring otherwise he would have died in a previous combat) and a hero Vamp on 1 wound. I had the Sallies, 4 Skink units, one Krox from a 4-strong unit and the Skink Priest and Saurus block with Slann. Good times and a good win for the Lizards.

Tonight it's a rematch against Antony's newly revised Dark Elves who by all accounts are hideously nasty with their brand spanking new Army Book. Ant's a tough opponent and great general so it's sure to be a ripper game.