Stoked to have drawn a local first up and I met the exceedingly enthusiastic (and frequently apologetic) young Everett wielding your A-type Warriors of Chaos netlist.
Tzeentch Lord and Tzeentch BSB - check
Tzeentch Chosen - check
Warshrine - check
Hellcannon - check
Khorne choppy death - check
The only real exception to the standard list of Chaos-awesome was a (big) unit of unmarked Warriors with the Banner of Rage. Nice.
Everett plonked the blocks down centrally with the Shrine up the backside of the Chosen and the Hellcannon nearby. The one weirdness in Ev's deployment was that each flank was occupied by a unit of Warhounds each accompanied by one of the two characters (both riding Discs).
I placed the bow units and Spiders on the flank with the warmachines on the right in a corner opposite the Tzeentch BSB and then units variously in the middle. A big (very big... and very dangerous) forest somewhat hampered my deployment options so I lurked and waited for the Chaos lads to come get some.
Highlights:
Ev won the first turn and up they jogged with the Sorcerer Lord being particularly agressive in the face of some stern Squig Hopper opposition. The magic phase was centred around a big casting of Pandaemonium and I reluctantly scrolled it straight away - fear of a massive Panic-induced turn one flight from the Hellcannon's opening salvo (at Ld4!) driving my reaction. As it was the Hellcannon scattered off the board.
With a useful reroll the Hoppers charged straight into the Lord on the first turn and initiated a 10 round combat of epic handbagging and airswinging. At least the little fecker could Flicker my skimishers and Manglers now - ha!
The two Manglers almost annihilated the Khorne block by themselves - 6 rather miffed disciples of the Blood God survived the battle being chased mercilessly by a Pump Wagon which was frustratingly blocked at every turn by the Warshrine. The Manglers, having had their fill of Warriors and their crunchy armour, randomly moved through the advancing Hellcannon which was looking to end the embarassing stalemate combat between the Hoppers and Sorcerer Lord. 11 str6 hits later settled that little meet-and-greet leaving the Hellcannon a shattered wreck. Not content with this however a single Mangler then moved through the Hopper combat, deftly missing the Lord himself, but carving apart 4 Hoppers. As it's final devastating act this same damn Mangler died a happy and gory death after the Sorcerer Lord finally broke the Hoppers, failed to restrain, and pursued into it. The Mangler exploded the Lord in it's death throes. Very entertaining end to that little drama :)
Having survived Panic checks, a misfiring Fanatic, a Pump Wagon that rolled 1" short, and a consistently misfiring Rock Lobber, the Tzeentch BSB was finally splattered by an enthusiastic Doom Diver. Good.
Ready and waiting to delay the Chosen, 5 Spider Riders decided at the exact wrong moment to pick a fight with a neighbouring block of Night Goblins. They definitely came off worse after suffering a mighty 4 casualties! The single remaining (and quite shocked) Spider Rider was then run over by the Warshrine.
In the middle a long charge by the Chosen initiated the mother of all Fanatic traps. 24 Chosen waded through a grand total of SIX Fanatics - only 4 Chosen survived to make combat with the block of 50 Goblins. That's not the worst of it though. After a "tactical" 6-dice casting of Pandaemonium the 4 Chosen beat the Goblins in combat, the Gobbos failed their rerolled Ld5 break check and buggered off! This Panicked the nearby L4s bunker of 39 Night Goblins off the board. Argh! Useless gits!!!
The Trolls, having received the charge of the Unmarked Banner of Rage Warriors, and now bereft of the General's leadership (curse you Pandaemonium!!!), lost by 1 and predictably broke on Ld3. Sigh.
So a rocking good game where I was up by stacks and only just ended up with a winning draw by 30VPs. I managed to collar the 4 Chosen in the end (thank goodness) but that one damn spell certainly took it's toll. It was the beginning of a magically uneven weekend for me and I'm sorry to say worse was yet to come.
The end of the first round also brought with it the unwelcome surprise that the tournament organiser was... less than organised. Having forgotten to place a VP table in the players pack (!!) we were asked to write down the final VP totals for each army the difference between them (I think... still not sure we even did this right...) so a draw could be calculated.
The sports scoring instructions were also over-written (again, I think they were... this was all extremely unclear) with the 0-3-5 system being spontaneously replaced by a 0 through to 5 score. This caused no end of ill feeling almost immediately I am sorry to say and I felt the pangs of dismay eat away at my soul at what this might mean for the rest of the event.
Ev was a lovely guy to play though and even after the massive swing I was looking forward to the next round.
Feeling a bit peckish but silly me - no food at this convention. Best harden up like the rest of the Hamiltron hard men.
No comments:
Post a Comment