Battlefield Birmingham Recap, Day 2

And now, after a short delay, for Day 2.

If you can remember, I was sitting on 16 points at the end of day 1. However, points were not how I was going to judge success for this weekend as I was using a very silly list including a Vampire Lord on a Dragon. There were 3 aims for me - I wanted to win a game (which fortunately I had done!), I wanted to get to 20 TPs total, and I wanted the Dragon to be on the table for a total of 20 turns over the course of the weekend. Up to this point I had managed to keep the Dragon alive for 14 turns, meaning I needed 6 turns over the course of the last 2 games. If I could avoid a major shooting army, I could probably get there...


Game 4 - Martyn Furnival, Dwarfs

Balls.

This game was over very quickly, and doesn't need much explaining. Martyn had brought as much of a gun line as was allowed by the comp, including 2 Cannons, a Grudge Thrower, several shooting units, some Slayer speedbumps, a decent sized unit of Hammerers to put his characters in, and an Anvil.

The only lifeline I had was the scenario. We were playing Meeting Engagement, and that meant we had to roll for all of our units before they were deployed. If we rolled a 1, they would start off the table. Martyn proceeded to roll 1's for a cannon, his Anvil, his Hammerers, a unit of Thunderers and 2 units of Slayers.

Now, those people that know Martyn can probably guess his reaction at this point. He sulked. :-) He was all but ready to concede the game then and there, before actually checking what would happen to these units in turn 1 - which was that they would walk onto the board from his edge. As he had gotten to choose depolyment zone, this also meant he would go first unless I could roll a 6, which I didn't. All of this combined to mean that all he missed was half a shooting phase turn 1, and this was not enough for even my army to close the gap. I was not helped by the massive river that was crossing the board, limiting me to a normal move for half my units.

All that happened in the game, when we got started, was I moved everything up and then took all my toys off. Including the Dragon, who was hit by all the artillery and eventually copped it. Altogether it survived 1 of my turns.

Arse.

I did manage to kill a unit of Slayers though!

Final Score: 0-20
Dragon Turns Total: 15


In the several hours between my game finishing and the next game starting, I developed a massive headache and started to feel really ill. For those of you pointing and laughing, this was not down to a hangover! (I had driven home the previous evening rather than stay for the traditional after event drinking) I took some medicine which took the edge off the pain, but I have to apologize to my final opponent, as I doubt the game was that good for him.

Game 5 - Gareth Parfitt, High Elves

In the last game, I needed 4 TPs and for the Dragon to survive 5 turns. It was a long shot, but I was determined to give it a go.

Gareth was running what is becoming one of the two main High Elf lists you see at the moment - the Cavalry Bus. The Bus was made up of Dragon Princes, and contained the BSB, a Level 4 and Level 2 on High Magic and a Prince who was the General. In the rest of the army were some Reavers and some Bolt Throwers, a unit of Archers and a Frostheart Phoenix. I've not played against the Phoenix before, but I knew the capability of the Bus from my games against Simon. I knew that I didn't really have the tools to take on the Bus directly, unless I could isolate it for several turns and hit it with everything at once.

My plan was to try and pull the Bus onto the Ghouls and hopefully hold it up for long enough to kill a large proportion of the rest of the army. However, in my befuddled state I put the Terrorgheist in the wrong place turn 1 to scream at some Reavers and the Bus managed to charge it instead. This did pull him out of position, but cost me the most effective tool I had against the Bus. The Wolves and Varghulfs were running and charging at the Reavers and Bolt Throwers, and the Ghouls (freed up by the Bus's overrun) charged the Phoenix, trusting to poison to see them through.

Over the next few turns I killed 2 Bolt Throwers and a couple of Reaver units, and the Ghouls continued to hold up the Phoenix. The BSB was quickly despatched by a single bolt from the remaining Bolt Thrower as I put her in the wrong position, and on Turn 4 I threw everything I had into the Phoenix to finish it off. This included the Dragon, with the Lord drinking the Potion of Strength on the charge, a Varghulf and the other Vampire. Despite the Lord being Strength 9 on the charge and going before the big bird, she rolled four 1's to wound and it got to attack. Its attacks put a couple of wounds on the Dragon, but it was finally finished off by the remaining 3 Ghouls.

In Gareth's turn 4 he turned his full attention to the Lord and Dragon. If only I could survive this turn I could fly her off and keep her alive, pretty much assuring me of my objectives. But it wasn't to be. Between the brutal efficiency of the Magic Phase and the relentless shooting of the Bolt Throwers, the Lord eventually went down. In the resulting crumble, as is always the case, the Dragon rolled just enough to lose its remaining wounds and those objectives slipped away.

In the last few turns I tried to snipe out the characters from the Bus, but as he had cast a load of High Magic spells they had a 2+ Ward from Magic Resistance - interestingly he didn't have the Banner, preferring to stack the Ward through the Lore Attribute. The last remaining Bolt Thrower then skewered the Vampire in the last turn, as again I forgot to put her out of sight. The Vargulfs failed to shift the Archers from their building and the game was done.

Final Score: 0-20
Dragon Turn Total: 19


Summary

So close! :-)

Overall, I finished 61st out of 62 players - a new low in my tournament performance. I have to say though that this was expected. My list is not optimized for tournament play (it had a Dragon in it for Pete's sake!) but it was a lot of fun to use. As I hadn't attended a tournament for some time, I feel that this is more important than getting a good finish. I also think that I had 4 great games (the Dwarf one doesn't count as a game...) and choosing my Most Sporting Opponent was tough. In the end I went for John from Game 1, with Gareth from Game 5 as my second place. Both of these guys put a lot of effort in to making the game enjoyable for us both.

The event as a whole had some teething problems that have been documented on The Warhammer Forum, mainly to do with the round draws being redone due to drop outs and issues with the food on the Saturday. Some of these issues were unavoidable, and some give them things to improve on for next time, but I don't feel the need to go into the negatives in a lot of detail. The real positive for me was the tables and the terrain. Having decided to provide all of this themselves, the tables looked really good and were quite different from what you normally see at an event. Some of the terrain pieces were a little small, but overall I felt this was a good selling point for the event.


So that's it!
My next tournament is something I'm taking a little more seriously - a Team Event using the Swedish Comp system in Stockport. I will try to take notes of how things go in that event, and hopefully I will be able to write a recap of that as well.

If you have enjoyed these last two posts, please let me know! I appreciate any feedback from those that are reading this blog, either as a comment here or on Twitter - you can find me @sandals_ajw

Til next time!

Battlefield Birmingham Recap, Day 1

Well the Battlefield Birmingham tournament has been and gone, and given that my list choices were put up on here for all to see it is only fair to let everyone know how I got on.

For anyone who hasn't read the last few entries, my list for this event is shown below. It's b no means an optimal tournament list, but I really wanted to use the dragon so I designed the rest of the list to support the dragon as much as possible.

2500 Vampire Counts

Vampire Lord: Charmed Shield; Talisman Of Preservation; Potion Of Strength; Quickblood; Level 2 Wizard, Lore of the Vampires; Zombie Dragon; lance; heavy armour. 616

Vampire: Enchanted Shield; Book of Arkhan; Dragonbane Gem; Level 1 Wizard, Lore of Death; Hellsteed; lance; heavy armour; Battle Standard. 207
Vampire: Sword Of Anti Heroes; Dragonhelm; Luckstone; Potion Of Foolhardiness; Quickblood; Dread Knight; Level 1 Wizard, Lore of Death; Hellsteed; shield; heavy armour. 231
Necromancer: Level 1 Wizard, Lore of the Vampires; Dispel Scroll. 90

36 Crypt Ghouls 360

15 Dire Wolves 120
5 Dire Wolves 40
5 Dire Wolves 40
20 Zombies: musician; standard bearer. 70

5 Hexwraiths 150

Terrorgheist 225
Varghulf 175
Varghulf 175

2,499 points 


So I rocked up on the Saturday morning with three objectives. I knew that with this list I wasn't going to win the event, but I wanted to win at least 1 game. I also wanted to score at least 20 Tournament Points over the course of 5 games (not a high target I know, but I should be able to pick some up as I lose!) and finally I wanted the Vampire Lord to be on the table for 20 of my game turns over the 5 games. If I could achieve this I would be happy, no matter where I finished in the overall standings.


Game 1 - John Humpage, Tomb Kings

I was drawn against John's Tomb Kings for game one, and whilst this is not a match-up I've played a lot it is a book that I know the capabilities of having played against it with my Ogres many times. John is someone I see at a fair few events, and I believe that I have played against him before - though I'm afraid (especially if he's reading this!) I don't remember a great deal about it.

John had gone for two Level 4's in his list - the Heirophant on Nehekhara and another on Death. He also had 3 Level 1 wizards on Light and a Casket, obviously hoping for a lot of versatility in the magic phase. He had several small units of skeletons and bowmen and a larger bow unit for his characters, and the traditional 2 catapults. Importantly though he had 2 units of 5 Necroknights and Ramhotep - these were obviously the workhorses of his list.

I knew that I couldn't take on both of his snake units at once, so my plan was to draw one unit off to the side and deal with the other as fast as I could. I also wanted to threaten his bunker with something, and some of the fliers should be able to do this.

As the game unfolded, I did manage to draw out the second snake unit, and the dragon and the ghouls went into the first unit of snakes. I thought that the Lord should be able to do a huge amount in this combat, as she had two rounds of ignoring the snake's rerollable armour save. However, the dice let me down a little and though I killed the unit it took far too long. This left the Lord open to a chariot charge and a single Str4 Impact Hit took her last wound.

The crumble was relatively kind, and the Terrorgheist had a shot at the archer bunker. Unfortunately it couldn't quite do it on it's own, and though it killed lots (including 2 of the Level 1 Wizards) it was dispatched.

Final Score: 0-20
Dragon Turn Total: 4


Game 2 - Tom Cowlin, Dark Elves

Having lost 20-0 in the first round, I thought I would be relatively safe from playing any of the contenders. However Tom had been having travel problems and could not make it until the start of round 2, and I happen to line up against his Cold One Knight bus list that has been performing well for him over a long time. This would be my first game against the new Dark Elves, but thankfully there were not the large number of unfamiliar units I might have expected. Aside from a lot of Knights, Tom had brought some Shades, Dark Riders, a large block of Corsairs and 2 units of Warlocks. For the record he had a Level 4 on shadow, but she cast a grand total of 1 spell over the course of the game! ;-)

I knew from very early on when the bus went for the Hexwraiths that I wasn't going to be able to take it on. His characters were well protected and had a huge potential for dealing damage, so the best I could do was to avoid it and try and kill as much of the rest as I could. Unfortunately the mission was Blood and Glory, so once one of my banners had been killed I had lost an additional 500vps. This happened in about turn 4 as the zombies were thrown under the bus to keep it away from the dragon.

I don't think that there was anything wrong with the way I played this one, it was just an unfortunate match up in a bad mission for me. However a few better rolls would have maybe let me get some more points, but that is always the way. Suffice to say I lost as the Warlocks either Soulblighted key units or Doombolted my stuff off the board, and the bus ran around killing the rest. I did get the Corsairs and some of the chaff, but it wasn't enough. The Lord on the Dragon though survived the whole game, so I was pleased with that!

Final Score: 0-20
Dragon Turn Total: 10


Game 3 - Paul Lewis, Orcs and Gobins

After a slight organizational mis-hap, I found my third opponent was running Orcs and Goblins. This was not the expected Orc and Goblin list though - which you might expect as we had both lost 20-0 twice! He had an Orc Warboss on a Wyvern, 3 level 2 wizards, 2 blocks of Savage Orcs and a block of Night Goblins, 2 Doom Divers and a Rock Lobber, 6 Trolls, 2 Manglers and some wolf riders.

The Hexwraiths were the big unit here, as with their Vanguard and first turn move they were able to reach and sit on one of the Manglers. This also triggered the Fanatics from the goblins, leaving me knowing where all the problem units were. The Terrorgheist eventually screamed off the other Mangler after it fell an inch short of it the turn before. The Dire Wolves took out the artillery, and on turn 3 I decided to have a go at the Night Goblins. His BSB was out of range of them, and I thought if I hit the General with Doom and Darkness then I'd have a shot at breaking them even if they were Steadfast. The Dragon went in with the combat vampire and the Hexwraiths in the flank, but in the Magic phase I didn't get enough dice to draw out and dispels so D&D was stopped. In the next turn the Vampire was flanked by the Savage Orc Big'Uns, but surprisingly I rode the storm of attacks and was still standing when the Ghouls could subsequently flank the Orcs. This broke their Steadfast and they were run down.

Whilst this was happening thought the Dragon was taking wounds. It ended up having a single wound left, and the Orc Warboss sensed blood and charged the dragon, calling a Waaagh! This is what proved to be the undoing of the Lord - the Orc did nothing but the Wyvern snuck the final would through and killed the dragon, allowing it to Thunderstomp the Lord. This inflicted a single wound on her, and after the Waaagh was rolled, I had lost by just enough to crumble the Lord away.

Overall though, my army survived the crumble relatively well, and the Necromancer was safe at the back. The biggest loss was the Terrorgheist rolling a 10 and going from full wounds to dead in one stroke. I had slowly taken off the rest of the Orc army though for my first win of the event!

Final Score: 16-4
Dragon Turn Total: 14



So at the end of day one I was on 1 win and 2 losses. I think I had been playing the dragon relatively well, and even though I had lost two games I was having a lot of fun. In the next post, I'll recap the last two games of the day, and also give my overall feedback on the event. Hope you join me for that!