(Disclaimer: Since getting back I have been concentrating on Raze and Ruin 2015. There will be more on that in a future post, but it meant that this post is being written 2 weeks after the event rather than a couple of days! Hopefully I 'll be able to remember everything...)
Practice Game
To remind everyone what I was using, here is my final list:
I arrived on the Friday, and had arranged a game against the guy I was room sharing with and his Dwarfs. Admittedly, this game was never going to be the perfect practice - I'd never actually used this list in it's entirety before, and it had been a very long time since I had played any game at all! Here is what he was using:
That's what happened - the Oldblood challenged, the Lord accepted and just couldn't do any damage. Neither could I, the Slann was close so I passed the test, then the TG went in.
And after several rounds of combat, the Hammerers had died, as had the Oldblood. The Longbeards joined in, and it was going to be a massive grind that I think magic would have given me the edge in. I was however losing almost all of my support units. The Miners came on behind me and threatened Tetto and the Crossbowmen targeted the Basti.
We called it at the end of turn 4, and I think I would have probably lost, but maybe not by a lot. Possibly enough to keep it as a draw under the comp, depending on how much the TG could catch. It was good fun though, and a nice way to blow the cobwebs off.
Game 1: Empire
Saturday morning rolled in and I turned up prepared for my Empire match in Round 1. The draw had been done earlier in the week, and the lists had been released, so I knew what I was facing. Here it is:
The major threat was the Tank, and secondarily the Demigryphs. The Temple Guard could easily take either, thanks to the Phirana Blade Oldblood, but they couldn't take both at once. I also had to save the Potion for the Tank, so the Demis were going to be hard work.
I chose Hold Out as my mission, as I didn't think he was going to push anything forward except for the two units I needed to kill anyway. We rolled for spells and neither got what we want - I got no Dwellers, he got no Banishment. Suddenly this was interesting!
I Vanguarded up the Skrox and the Temple Guard, trying to keep him in his back field. I also won the first turn so puched up again. The Skrox went into a marsh within charge range of the knights, to try and tempt them to charge. They didn't, so I did in my turn 2. The mounted Oldblood pushed up towards these too, but failed the charge. He killed a lot of skinks, but the Kroxigor eventually ground through the unit.
In his turn 2 he put the Tank straight at the TG, but fell an inch short. So in my turn I obliged him! The Oldblood popped his potion, but only did 4 wounds. This could be trouble... I had diverted the Demigryphs a turn earlier, but they overran into the Basti and this gave them enough to reform and charge the flank of the TG unit in his turn 3. This turned into an epic grind, and magic swung it for me. That, and the Phirana Blade. :) Eventually, both Empire units went down.
With those two gone, I had won. The question was by how much. This was decided when the Halbardiers charged the mounted Oldblood, and after a few rounds failed a Leadership test. He ran them down, giving me a huge win.
I also managed my mission, held my Fortitude, destroyed his and kept him from doing his mission. Maximum points round 1. Ooops!
Game 2: Dark Elves
I did make it close though early on. I pushed through a Dwellers on the Black Guard unit, and despite adding +8 the dispel was failed. 13 died, leaving the unit much more vulnerable. Next turn I tried to send both the Skrox and the TG into them, hoping that I could take a challenge with a champion and break the unit through weight of numbers. If I made the charges and got through (a big if!) then the game was over. If I made neither, I was still set up for a counter charge the following turn as he would have to pick his poison. Unfortunately I only made it with the Skrox. They were butchered, and he then charged the TG unit.
Even then, I weathered the first round and came up with a plan in my turn. I would accept a challenge with the Slann, Potion up the Oldblood and destroy the BSB and the unit. Hopefully she would break on combat res. I played out the rest of my turn, got to combat, and promptly issued a challenge with the Oldblood.
*Facepalm*
From there, the result was predictable. I was slowly butchered, and as the TG were stuck the rest of my army was taken apart. Huge loss. I didn't get Breakthrough (obvious, but I always felt this was the toughest mission for me to do) and I couldn't get enough stuff to break his Fortitude. A tough game, but the result was fair.
One each Dave, there's a tiebreaker coming at some point! :P
Game 3: Warriors of Chaos
He did roll Final Trans, but he deployed badly - the Hellcannon was out of General and BSB range. I Vanguarded the mounted Oldblood straight at the Hellcannon, and predictably it failed its test turn one and charged at me. This meant it was out of the game turn 1, as I charged it in my first turn. Took a while, but it eventually went down. The Oldblood and the Camos also took the attention of a Warrior block as they tried to rescue their monster, and the General had to fly over that side too.
In the middle, I distracted the Knights, the other Warriors were typically slow, so it was the Chimera that was the threat. I talked this through with my opponent, just sort of chatting about the game, and told him in jest that Plan A to deal with it was for him to land it next to me and for me to poison it to death. He then does just that, breathing on the Skrox. I am confused, but don't look the gift horse in the mouth, reforming the Skrox wide and another Cohort to throw all the javalins in the world at it. Here is where it fell apart. It wouldn't die.
Start of his turn 4, he had a Chimera sitting right next to two skink units. He charged the Skrox, and went through them in two turns. They fled through Tetto's unit, who Panicked, and both were chased off the board by the Chimera. All that shooting, a Stand and Shoot, 2 rounds of combat including Kroxigor and I do 2 wounds through it's Regen.
He also left his General very close to my mounted Oldblood, who killed off the Hellcannon in his turn. I reformed it, charged his General and should have had a good shot at killing him. However, the Disc managed a hit against the Oldblood, wounded him and I failed the saves. With the 2 wounds he had taken from the Hellcannon, he died before he could swing. Hitting on 3's with Predatory Fighter, wounding on 2's and the Other Trickster's Shard in play, his General was in serious trouble. Instead, he gets a free reform to get him back into the game.
That turn killed it for me. No way back from here for the win. I could, however, pick up some points still. He was going to have to go some to Break me, as I had a Cohort hiding in a corner and the TG were untouched. I also had my mission, Expand and Conquer, and that was going well with the aforementioned hiding Cohort. I juts had to try and break his Fortitude. Best option was to take out a Warrior unit, and then either the BSB or the Knights. I got the Warriors (well, I got their standard as they fled from combat with the TG) but I couldn't catch them or get anything else.
A tough loss.
Game 4: High Elves
So, overnight I was sitting on 1 win and 2 losses. I was aiming for the top half, so I was hoping for 2 wins on Sunday to let me get there easily. Once the draw appeared though, and I saw what I was facing, I knew it was going to be a tough game.
There were 3 big obvious threats - the Dragon, the Frostie and the big Knight bus. However, I knew I could deal with them each individually with the Temple Guard. Neither the Dragon or the Frostheart would want to go near the Phirana Blade whilst he has the Potion, and the Silver Helms couldn't really hope to hurt the Temple Guard themselves. However, if any two of them went in together, and it was a much harder prospect. So the problem presented itself - how to ensure I only fought one at a time?
It actually proved rather straightforward. I Vanguarded the mounted Oldblood again (notice a pattern? ;-) ) straight at the Phoenix. I thought he was best placed to hold it up, or even do some damage with his GW and OTS. Even if it flew away, he was placed to get the Bolt Thrower on that side. He didn;t fly away though. I can only assume he had had a poor experience of Oldbloods in the past, as he seemed overly scared of him. Even with a failed Stupidity roll he didn't push it up.
The Camos dealt with the other, and in the middle I moved up a Cohort with the Priest to close to the Dragon. This would let me get into Dwellers range of the Bus (which I never even tried - lack of dice) and hopefully convince the Dragon to go into them. I shot at him, putting a wound on the Prince (which fit well with my Assassinate mission!) and he took the bait, charging in. The Bus went into the Skrox, which I was fine with - the TG were lined up for a flank charge on either the Dragon or the Bus if the Skrox broke. In the combat though, he left me with two ranks of skinks and left the Kroxigor alone. I put one into killing the BSB, doing 1 wound, and the rest went for knocking off the 4 wounds from the unit that would leave me steadfast. They did it.
The TG then went into their flank, and the result of that was rather predictable. The Dragon was also held in place by successive Challenges, and lost the first two rounds. With Ld10 though, he stuck around. Eventually though he got to fight the unit, breaking them and getting free. He couldn't get far though, and in my next turn the Lore Attribute from Urannon's killed the Prince from the top. Mission complete. :D I then threw a load of shooting and magic at the Dragon, and it went down in the next couple of turns. The remnants of the Skrox chased down the Bus after it rallied and killed it in another fight, but the Level 4 survived.
The final moments of the game saw the mounted Oldblood finally catch the Phoenix. It wasn't going to affect the outcome of the game, that was already won, but I wanted to see what he could do. He charged the flank and did a wound, and it broke from combat and fled off the board. Good result! Final score saw me score my mission, but he also got his. I also broke him and stayed unbroken, so a big win, but not a maximum win.
Game 5: Daemons of Chaos
Although Daemons are a bad match up for Lizards, I was quite happy about this as it meant I played 5 different armies in the event (6 if you count the practice game!). However, once I looked at the list I wasn't so happy. I had no idea what the Wrath of Khorne version of the Bloodthirster did, but it looked dangerous. The big block of Plaguebearers were going to be a pain to shift, as were the Beasts. Kinda wish I'd brought the Flaming Banner now! Plus, a cannon and plenty of magic. This was going to be tough.
The best plan I had for the Bloodthirster was to tempt it into a small unit, and countercharge with the TG. I set it up, sacrificing the Priest for this plan as he gets a better charge against units with Characters. The champion did his job, and I even put a wound on with Stand and Shoot. The Potion went up next turn, and the TG went in. Dice deserted me though, and only 1 wound was caused. I also made a mistake here, as I knew I'd left my flank to the Beasts. That was fine, as I was Stubborn, but the mistake was not moving the Slann away from that flank. This meant he was in combat when they went in - oops.
On the flank, the mounted Oldblood had gone for the cannon and Daemon Prince. However, a failed Stupidity test saw him fail to charge. and the Dark Prince Thirsts hit him the next turn. he failed by 4, and failed all 4 Ward saves. So I wasn't going to get the cannon.
The fight in the middle ground on for ages. The Plaguebearers got in in his turn, then the Skrox got into their flank the turn after. He then sent the Horrors into another flank, so I sent the Basti into them. At the end of turn 5, the only things left were a few Plaguebearers, the Skrox, the Oldblood and the Basti - the Bloodthirster, Slann, Temple Guard and Beasts were all killed in the fight.
My mission was to hold the middle, so to Skrox had to stay there - they were then cleared up by the Daemon Prince in his turn 5.
The last turn saw me break his Fortitude by killing the other Horror block, and his last turn saw him fail to cast Choir, but kill the Basti with the cannon. Once we had added it up, he had won by about 400 points - a draw. I thought it strange he didn't shoot the Oldblood, and said so. He said he thought he had the Dragonbane Gem and hadn't bothered to check, despite it being Open lists. He didn't ask me to confirm, and I wasn't going to volunteer the information, but it must have left a sour taste in his mouth as he spent a while complaining to his mate about how bad his dice were throughout the game. He didn't roll well, but he had some really good moments to back this up, so I'm not sure his complaints were anything too drastic to mention so much.
Overall
So 2 wins, 2 losses and a draw. That gave me 52 points from games. I also picked up 27 points for missions, leaving my in 48th place - exactly half way up the standings.
I'm rather pleased by that. Despite being very rusty, I played my army well I think. I only made a couple of big mistakes - game 2 and game 5 being the obvious ones - and I lost one of them due to dice on the Chimera's Regen.
The event itself was fantastic. The atmosphere between the players, the space available in the hall, the facilities of the venue and the effort gone to by the team were all top notch. If it runs again I will absolutely be going.
As to my army, I think I made the right choices about what to take. Having looked through the other army lists, Ogres might have been a better choice from a Meta standpoint, as Skaven were popular and Warriors not - these are good conditions for Ogre players. I'm not sure my Ogre list from a few posts ago would have done very well though. However, the Vampires would have been the wrong choice by a long shot.
Hope you enjoyed the recount of the event, if it does run next year I would heartily recommend it to anyone. See you next time!
