Karnage Kup Round 2 : High Elves vs Skaven (again)

Round 2 of our annual local tournament was a 'Blood and Glory' affair, and having soundly beaten last year's winner Pete and his Skaven in the first round I found myself facing Andy and his Skaven army in the second.  As we were setting up Andy kindly informed me that out of the 7 years that this tournament has been run, he's won it six times.  And due to the bizarre rules that you can change your list inbetween rounds, he had set his army up to be high elf death personified.  Eeek!

My army list was covered in my last post, but basically I'd tried to secure magical dominance with life and shadow archmages.

He had (roughly):
Warlord, Grey Seer, Plague Priest on Furnace, Warlock Engineer, BSB, 2x 50 clanrats, 1 x 50 slaves, 30 Plague Monks, Doomwheel, Hell Pit, 5 poison Gutter Runners, 2 Warp Lightning Cannons.

It started well, I won the roll off for table halves and for deploying first.  And then for the first turn too!

I set up my sea guard in the middle of the board in a long thin line to use their fire arrows, and then placed my swordsmasters on the left and pheonix guard on the right.  I delayed placing my silver helms and lion chariot in hopes of avoiding his doomwheel, but it was not to be as Andy had more units than me.  Both went on the right, and so did his doomwheel!

In Turn 1 I sent my cavalry forwards to hopefully charge next turn, and apart from that kept everybody together in the centre.  I'd placed a lot of faith in my magic phase, and rolled up 4 power dice.  No channels.  One power dice from the banner of sorcery.  Great.  I threw all five at a boosted dwellers below, but failed to cast.  Ooops!
My shooting phase saw 4 clanrats die, as the hell pit abom was out of range of my archers.  So it was on to the Skaven turn.....
And the skaven moved forwards as fast as possible, Andy's doomwheel getting ominously close to my chariot.  The skaven magic phase was shut down very well by my mages, and in fact the skaven only got one spell through in the whole game!
His shooting phase was devastating.  The doomwheel opened up and took two wounds off my chariot, followed by a warp lightning cannon and it bit the dust.  The combined shooting of everything else then panicked my silver helms off the board. great.  3 fortitude left till my breaking point...

In Turn 2 I reformed the sea guard to ready it for second turn charges, and my swordsmasters pressed forwards on the left.  Magic was similarly useless as last turn, I failed to do anything with very poor dice rolls.  Shooting saw two wounds knocked off the abom, and there was no combat, so onto the skaven turn...
Where there was only one charge.  Andy didn't move his clanrats into my swordsmasters (as had been my plan) but instead pulled off a long range charge with his slaves.  Again, I shut down the skaven magic phase, but again his shooting phase wreaked havoc.  4 pheonix guard and 7 sea guard perished, along with 3 swordsmasters and 2 slaves (shooting into combat, so skaven!).  Combat went my way, with 16 slaves butchered for no return, but they stayed put against the swordsmasters due to steadfast and having the bsb in range of them.

Turn 3, and I at last took the initiative by charging my pheonix guard and sea guard into the horde of plague monks pushing the furnace.  The magic gods smiled kindly upon me this turn, allowing me to wither the plague monks down to toughness 1, and reduce their strength to 2.  With the furnace now only toughness 3 I plied as many attacks as I could at it, but it stubbornly clung to life with a wound remaining.  The toughness 1 monks died in droves however.  The return attacks didn't do much, but the plague furnace's toughness tests killed 5 sea guard and 4 pheonix guard (I had to re-roll my ward saves due to 'the other tricksters shard', rendering the normally reliable PG useless).  Despite winning the combat hugely, they were unbreakable.  In the other combat, another 15 slaves died for one swordsmaster, but again they were saved by steadfast.
Skaven turn 3 predictably saw the abom and a unit of clanrats join the brawl in the centre, and essentially that was it.  game over.  My swordsmasters were reduced to 3 models by skaven shooting, but still almost finished the slaves off, and my pheonix guard were destroyed by the hell pit/tricksters shard combo.  My sea guard ran and were chased down, I reached my breaking point and we totalled up the damage.

Skaven win, 2185 points killed
High Elves lose, 341 points killed.

Ouch!  I knew I should have just taken the dragons!

Well, I got it wrong, but I was definately up against it.  The loss of my chariot and silver helms turn 1 hurt, and the lack of magic was tragic.  Also if I'd managed to kill off the plague furnace (one more wound!), they wouldn't have been unbreakable and would have run, allowing me back into the game.
To do the game again I would definately only take 1 archmage, and drop a few other things to have four units of 10 archers with standards sat on my back board edge protecting my fortitude whilst the rest of the army took on the skaven.  Eagle's are a must, and maybe RBT's would have been better (I should have followed teh advoce of angryhatter!) than the chariot, but I would also be able to place key units away from his doomwheel.

Anyway, it was only 7.30 and we had the club hall till 10.00 so we had a friendly rematch.

It went very different, the winds of magic granted me 10-12 power dice per turn, and I managed to 6 dice dwellers below on every unit in Andy's army, killing his general and plague priest in the meantime.  I also managed to make my PG toughness 7 and reduced the abom to toughness 3.  My chariot died turn 1 again ( I got the impression that Andy didn't like white lion chariots!) But my silver helms charged headlong into a large block of clanrats and held them up for ages (2+ saves) before eventually succumbing.  My swordsmasters were turned into skaven by the dreaded 13th spell, and the miscast then sucked his grey seer into the realm of chaos.  My PG chewed through the abom, clanrats and plague monks, the slaves died to my lsg, who eventually fled the board.  A very different battle to the first!
A rough calculation but about 400 points of high elves left, and about 500 points of skaven left.  We awarded a minor skaven victory as they appeared to have slightly more than 500 left.  But, it could have gone either way, and without a failed leadership test at the end of turn 6 the high elves would have taken the victory. 

I'll take that though, my army wasn't the best and still nearly took a win against an ultra-competitive player.

Andy was definately a power gamer, but he was a thoroughly nice chap all night and I'd gladly try not to lose to him again!  I'd also like to think that I learned a lot from both games, and if like me you occupy the safe zone of 'a bit of fluffyness, a bit of competitiveness' with your armies and mainly just play your friends I'd definately suggest playing the ultra-fluffy players and ultra-competitive players every now and then.  It's a lot of fun.

So, I've won one and lost one, and will probably face skaven again in round 3  due to the plethora of ratmen involved!  I can't win now, but anywhere up to second place is still up for grabs with a convincing win and other results going my way.  I'll keep you informed as always!

Neil