Sorry about the lack of updates about Call to War but too be honest I was distracted by painting a army in a week. Yes I painted a full 2400 point army in a week (well in reality it's more like 2500/2600 but I didn't need that). Originally I was taking my Daemons but I decided that because I was painting a army from scratch that I could do another one in the same amount of time and chose Lizardmen.
So with little experience of the army I came up with the following list under the ETC comp...
Slann Mage-Priest: (General & BSB), Cube of Darkness, Blood Statuette of Spite, Standard of Discipline, Becalming Cogitation, Higher State of Consciousness, Lore of Light
Saurus Scar-Veteran: Cold One, Great Weapon, Light Armour, Dragonhelm, Dawnstone, Venom of the Firefly Frog
Saurus Scar-Veteran: Cold One, Light Armour, Burning Blade of Chotec, Charmed Shield, Dragonbane Gem, Potion of Strength
27 Saurus Warriors: Full Command
10 Skink Skirmishers
10 Skink Skirmishers
10 Skink Skirmishers
10 Skink Skirmishers
9 Cold One Cavalry: Musician, Standard Bearer, Huanchi's Blessed Totem
5 Chameleon Skinks
5 Chameleon Skinks
1 Ancient Stegadon
1 Ancient Stegadon
Total - 2398
I'm not going to go into great detail about how I did at the event because quite simply I was rubbish! Out of 100 players, I came 99th and missed out on the wooden spoon as well! I lost five out of my six games, with four of them being big defeats, one a minor one (literally it was 50 victory points away from being a draw) and one massive win (although my opponent had already decided that 8th edition was rubbish and hamstrung himself with a 7th edition no magic Dark Elf army).
I think I can sum up why I was so rubbish in the following...
1.) Experience - This year I have probably played about 12 games, with half of those being at the tournament and the other half many weeks apart from each other. Whilst I have a okay grasp of the rules, I don't have the experience and knowledge of them working in practice. This is my biggest issue with how good a player I am at the moment, and I'm hoping to try and get a game a week now to try and improve my generalmanship.
2.) The Army - The Lizardman book is one of the best books at the moment but the build I selected wasn't the best. I think the main issue was quite simply I ignored one of the biggest strengths of the book, which is the skink units. I should have included some Terradons and Salamanders and seen if I can get another combat unit in such as a mixed unit of Skinks and Kroxigor.
3.) Being Aggressive - I think my play style doesn't match up 100 % with the list I have chosen. As a player, I'm quite aggressive by shoving my units forwards and relying upon the natural skills of the units to carry them through. This is very wrong and I need to become a bit more cautious and think more about what I'm doing.
4.) Not Reading the Rulespack - This cost me 20 points. I can't explain how annoyed I am with myself about the fact I was docked 20 points for sending in an illegal list. The reason for this was quite simple: The tournament uses ETC Comp and as such only allows up to three identical CORE choices. I took four. I made this mistake by getting distracted by the fact that there was additional comp about the number of skink units and the fact that the ETC comp rules are a bit tricky to follow as it's almost a massive block of text on the warhammer forum.
So what are my future plans? At the moment I'm not too sure. I've played eight games with this army (including a variant of different magic items and magic lore) and I've lost seven games. I want to play another three or four games with the list to see if I can get any more wins out of it but if I'm honest, I am already thinking about another army. I will either be painting up a new lizardman one with the intention of it looking pretty or starting something completely new.