The problem with winning in Round One is that you immediately go on to face all the other hardasses who mashed their first opponents. I had horrible visions of facing Tony or Kitson in round two (both of whom have crushed me before) but managed to bullet-dodge both (as I did all tournament) and ended up drawing John Matthews. I had not met John previous to this. He is ex-GW in a VERY high up sort of way (previously overseeing the management of 26 stores; casually name dropped throughout the game and in a previous phone conversation we had about his army "When I had lunch with Gav [Thorpe] 3 months ago" and "When I played Rick Priestly" and so on) which impressed me greatly. He clearly had years and years of experience under his belt so I immediately felt I was on the back foot playing against someone who is almost a professional (John now works for Battlefront) - certainly he knows the game better than I do!
John's army was one of the ones that as TO I had requested he resubmit but due to some time issues and a points miscalculation with his version 2 list I wasn't able to get it rescored in time for the event so he just went with the first list.
From his 12,000+ points of Vampire Counts army he chose to take the following:
Vampire Lord - goddam kitchen worth of appliances (Dread Lance, Red Fury, Zombie Dragon, Dark Acolyte, Summon Ghouls, Night Shroud)
Vampire - Nightmare, Summon Ghouls, Dark Acolyte, Balefire Spike, Cadaverous Cuirass, Dispel Scroll
Vampire - Nightmare, Arkhan, Sword of Might, Dark Acolyte
12 Ghouls - Ghast
12 Ghouls - Ghast
10 Ghouls - Ghast
10 Ghouls - Ghast
Corpsecart - Balefire
5 Blood Knights - hatred banner
5 Blood Knights
It did not take a professional player to figure out that his characters and Knights were worth the majority of the points in his army.
I won't go into the details of this game because we had an unfortunate incident in the third turn that really changed the game. Basically John got the Lord into the flank of the Saurus block with Slann BSB. I challenged with the Cold One Scar-Vet and he saved EVERYTHING that the dragon and auto-hitting str7 Vampire general could throw at him. John lost the combat by 5 after I charged some Skinks into his rear and then the game-changing error was made. John declared 1 of the 5 wounds he was taking from combat resolution was going on the general and 4 wounds were going on the dragon.
Now, straight away this didn't seem right to me. I don't know - it was a gut reaction I guess but it just felt dodgy. I asked him if he was able to split wounds between the mount and the rider and he assured me it was legit. I'm not a Vampire player, I don't know the army but I sure as hell expect my opponent to know their rules so I took his word and we moved on. The Dragon took 4 wounds (1 wound remaining) and the general took 1 wound.
Next turn the Blood Knights charged some Krox who were JUST in front of the Zombie Dragon - fleeing would mean autokilled running through the Dragon (this is what I should have done). Instead they stupidly took the charge, got minced, Blood Knights overran into the Skinks, smashed them, Scar-Vet Cold One dude took a wound and I was suddenly testing at minus heaps. I held but eventually died/was run down. The Slann ended up in combat with the general and the DRAGON killed the Slann. Unit auto-broke and was cut down. DRAGON moved around and charged the Steg in the flank. The DRAGON's wounds were restored over the course of the rest of the game and the rest of my army was completely destroyed. Game.
Here's the problem: AFTER the game we read the rule and discovered that ALL combat res wounds go on the mount first. The Dragon should have died. Had the Dragon died the Krox would have fled (I wouldn't have given it a second thought). The Vampire general would have died from combat res in the next round (in a challenge and facting static res of 8 even 4 wounds against the SCar-Vet wouldn't have saved him). Then all the Ghouls are testing every turn. The Dragon dead means the Slann would have survived. The Steg would have survived. I dare say I would have come away with a pretty awesome win.
Instead I lost 20-0 which after discovering the rule oversight John changed to 19-1.
Hmm...I was pretty gutted about that. Well, if nothing else, lesson learnt. Make them show you the rule next time. Don't assume they know their army. John was pretty upset too (no one like making those kinds of errors) - he's been playing so long that the various army book editions have begun to merge together and admittedly that rule is one of the subtle changes from the previous VC book and I guess easy to overlook.
I'd like to emphasise that the reason behind highlighting this error (and going on and on about it) isn't to demean John as a player - he's a bloody great guy who played a good tight game with a fast, hard list. The incident is highlighted for my sake; to reference the things I need to get right in future games and the lesson(s) I need to learn. Players make mistakes and it's not a lack of trust but rather a complacency on my part that I need to take another look at.
Anyway it worked out well because my next game was against someone I've always wanted to play... (and John took two bullets on my behalf - Antony's Dark Elves and Reid's Daemons)
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