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.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
FluffyCon 2011 - Players Pack
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.
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.
Monday, October 4, 2010
First time using Orcs and Goblins
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 :)
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 :)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
FluffyCon 2011 - What's Hot?
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
FluffyCon 2011 - Getting Closer
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.
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.
Friday, September 24, 2010
FluffyCon 2011 - Restrictions?
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.
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
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.
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.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Quick post on GuardCon - Day Two
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!
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!
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Quick post on GuardCon - Day One
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 :)
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 :)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
8th ed Vampires for Fields of Blood 2010
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!
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!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
3 games, 3 wins; 4 half games, mixed bag
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)
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)
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Why not Ghouls?
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).
- 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).
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