Seems I have been quite lazy here recently and for that I apologise,
Currently just hit a brief downward spiral when we drive the hobby too hard (we all know that feeling ;) ). But anyway just got back off a, well not really, relaxing 2 weeks holidays which backed straight onto a backyard tournament with me and some mates. It was really just an excuse for a drink and catch up but consisted of 3 slabs of booze, lunch on the Saturday and a bottle of Bourbon for the winner.
Being winter down in Melbourne the weather over the two days moved between sunny and warm to hailing and sideways rain, then back and forward between those polar opposites. Either way we had 2 tables in the garage and 2 under the rather large patio.
** Quick warning, this is going to be all about the wall of text, if you are interested in brief run down battle reports, tactics and thoughts, enjoy! If not, well thank you for reading but you may want to pop back when I put a post with pictures up ;) **
It consisted of 5 Rounds (3 on day one and 2 on day two), each round was played via rulebook missions minus battle for the pass. It was 2000 points using swedish comp which was then haved and added or minuses to peoples battle points. Things that were learnt that the shimmying of BP could really sting someone with a filth list going against a soft list opponent.
Anyway used a 2000pt list which consisted of:
Vamp Lord
Lv3 Vamps
HA, Shield
Red Fury, Quickblood
Ogre Blade, Tal of Pres, OTS
Necro
Lvl 1 Vamp
Book of Arkan
Necro
Lvl1 Death
Cursed Book
40 Skellies w/
FC and Lichebone Pennant
20 Zombies
Banner and muso
20 Zombies
Banner
5 Wolves
5 Wolves
5 Wolves
4 Varghs w/
Champ
4 Varghs
5 Blood Knights w/
Standard, Banner 'o' Flame
Varghulf.
So first game was against a mate running empire, was somewhere along the line of:
Lvl 4 Archmarge w/Light
Empire General
Sword of Might
Griffon
Warrior Priest
Warrior Priest
Empire Captain BSB
Crown of Command
40 Halberdiers w/
FC, 5x archer detachemnt, 20 Halberdier Detachment
10 Archers w/
5x Archer detachment
4 DemiGryphs
~36 great swords w/FC
So bless him he wasn't running any cannons or stank bless him and for some reason my memory of this match wans a bit but.
Essentially got up in his face quickly, knocked out the 20 man halb unit with a combo of blood knights and vamp bus.
Flanked heavily with varghs and killed his lvl 4 turn 2.
Turn 3 got a front charge off on his stubborn block with vamp bus, rear charge with varghulf. His demis then hit the varghulf, fluffed there attacks, got flanked by varghiests and, failed their leadership and got run down I think we pretty much called it then as I was just avoiding his griffon and gumming up anything else he had with zombies. 20-0 win to my self
Turn 2 was against my mates fluffy WoC army consisting off something like. this was dawn attack, I rolled 6's and 5's on everything except my block of zombies with the 2 necros in it. Deployed centrally with vargs and wolves sorting the flanks.
Nurgle DP w/
2+ save
Mark of Nurgle
Dawnstone
LVL 4
Flying
Exalted with hand weapon and shield
18ish Warriors w/
FC and MoN
18ish Warriors w/
FC, dual hand weapons, MoK
5 Chaos Knights w/
MoN
3 Skull Crushers
6 Chaos orgers w/
MoN.
This one was a bit of a white wash (kind of) also.
First tun I managed to gum up his Skull Crushers with wolves, and Blood Knights hit, broke and then wiped his Chaos Knights
He failed 2 charges with his warriors and his demon prince flittered around and looked pretty.
Threw a growing unit of zombies in the way of his warriors of Nurgle. Left varghs wiped out his orgres, right vargs fluffed their attacks and got wiped by blood crushers after a turn of combat (got a flank charge only got one wound through).
He didn't do much in his turn, cast a few spells with demon prince, charged block of zombies and set about wrecking them with DP and WoN.
Locked up WoK block with vamp/skele bus, unit of varghs and knights on the flank, killed them. Gummed up blood crushers again with some wolves.
He managed to wipe the zombie squad. I jumped the vamp lord out of skeleton block and put him behnd the necro/zombie block so as not to be charged by the DP. The Varghulf, skeleton block, vargs and blood knights killed the rest of his warriors and blood crushers.
We called it then as I was just running circles around the zombie block with the vampire to avoid combat with the DP.. which made my opponent less than happy. Factoring in comp score it was a 20-0
Round 3 was against my mate with lizards, I fell he'd psyched himself out before the match had even begun.
He ran :
Slann, BSB, banner of discipline, rerolls first dispel a turn
Scar vet with sword of striking and a 2+ save, crown of command
30ish saurus with spears in a horde
10 skink skirmishers with javelins
10 skink skirmishers with javelins
5 Cold One knights
6 Chameleon skins
6 Chameleon skinks
Bastilidon
30ish temple guard
He deployed badly, managed to double tap 2 units of skinks with varghiests on turn one and killed fleeing chameleon skinks with dogs on turn one also.
Turn 2 got a unit of varghiests into his bastilidon, a unit of blood knights set up on his saurus flank, the original unit of ghiests going up another flank and the varhulf into the saurus block.
Turn 3 managed a double rear varhiest charge on the saurus block and a blood knight charge on its flank, had to manually kill it over 2 turns due to bloody stubborn.
Turn 4 vamp lord/skele bus hit his Temple guard unit and started hewing its way through that, had a unit of varghs and blood knights set up on the flank for an attack on that unit and he called it.
20-0 after comp.
Next up the only Draw loss I copped, was against a mate running the new wood elves his list was something along the lines of:
Durthu
Lvl 2 Shadowsinger on shadow w/
Horse
10 Poison Glade Guard
10 Poison Glade Guard
20 Trueflight Glade Guard
5 Way Watchers
5 Way Watchers
20 Dryads
6 Wild Riders
5 sisters of the thorn
4 Tree Kin
4 Warhawk riders
Great eagle.
This game he sat in a corner and just plinked from long range and played the avoidance game (fair dues). I managed to roll 6 magic phases of 5 and under magic dice while he managed to channel all the time and roll 5s and 6s every phase the bastard ;). Managed to kill a few things namely the dryads, wild riders (1 by zombie) sisters, shadowsinger, treekin and warhawk riders. He knocked off all the wolves, varghulf, varghiests (managed to miss 8 of 12 attacks with them on one roll...) both zombie blocks and the death necromancer. We had a draw (didn't realise that there is almost 750 points just in the vamp/skele bus alone!!) but he got the one up due to the difference in comp so a 11-9 loss for me.
Lastly was a mate with a brilliantly made (or in the making) high elf army, looks awesome and he was running:
Level 4 Archmage on high w/ Book of Hoearth, 4+ ward
Hand maiden with pot of strength and reaver bow
Noble BSB with a flame gem thing.
5 Ellyrion Reavers
5 Ellyrion Reavers
30 Spearmen
15 Sisters of averlorn
20-25 white lions
20-25 Eternal Guard
2 Reaver bolt throwers.
This was just a crap match up for Justin and the computer must of brain farted when it spat out the match ups.
It was over by turn 1 when I got a AOE Vanhels off on him and was in his face turn 1, turn two resulted in dead unit of Reavers, dead bolt thrower, dead BSB, Dead Spear block, who then paniced the whitelion/archmage blob who then got hit by over running blood knights, and another bolt thrower was held up in combat.... so that was over pretty quick and wasn't overly fun for either of us..
So overall a 89/100 victory, with Matt who I played first round coming a not far off second on a 78 I believe. Gil, who had a 20-0 loss on the first turn came back and scored a 3rd with his lizards with a carnosaur (such an awesome model).
Any way sorry for the ramblings, needed to get that off of my chest.
Will get some updates soon as I've got 1.5 months to get 5 hounds, 45ish zombies, 5 varghiests 6 blood knights and 3 characters painted in for the tournament in geelong!
Peace out...