Call to Arms 2012
So an exciting Call to Arms. It was my first time
attending, but Warhammer is Warhammer-venue don't change that!
As per my previous post I thought I would give the High
Elves a run around since the woodies had their turn last event and the Empire
are sitting on the paint table.
My list was rather unsubtle:
Dragon Prince with re-roll 2+/4++ GW and other
trickster's shard
lvl2: high, scroll
BSB: GW, Dragon armour
38 Spears: FC-flame
2x10 Archers: M
26 Whitelions: FC-amulet of light
26 Whitelions: FC
2 Eagles
SO dragon, 52 Whitelions, steadfast spears and chaff
(sorry archers).
My Plan going in was to use ASF to my advantage as either
a Jarl Axe wall, or get my Berserker mode on and Panzer strike the lines.
GAME ONE: Orcs and
Goblins - blood and glory
An interesting list full of monster goodness.
Warboss on foot (general)
warboss on Wyvern
lvl2 orc
lvl2 gobbo
30 something normal boyz board and sword
30ish big uns 2hw-flame
2 gobbo chariots
6 trolls
Giant
Aranknarok
doomdiver
Very excited to come up against this list game 1. For
starters I played Nick at the last event and got a very unsatisfying draw
(thank you warping lvl4...), but also because he was a laugh to play-so always
good to go in with a game I will enjoy.
My plan was to dragon the big spider then pull across to
the blocks, spears into trolls, archers shoot off chariots, eagles get
doomdiver while whitelions get everything else.....and that is pretty much
exactly what happened. Only thing that was different was that his Wyvern
decided to come play with the dragon...warboss and wyvern dead in 1 round of
combat. Wyvern had taken 1 wound from archers (woot!). Prince finished it off
allowing dragon to stomp all over warboss. I lost 1 whitelion block who got
caught with an awkward clip on the big uns (to allow other block to have enough
spare bodies to also kill giant as well as the boyz). Dragon was 1 turn late
saving the day, but oh well, 20-0 to me.
Game two: Warriors
of Chaos-random deployment.
Right on to game 2. I had a pretty favourable deployment.
I was up against:
usual disc lvl4
BSB with stuff
lvl1
block of Tzench warriors hw/sh (lvl1 here)
block of nurgle warriors halberds (bsb here)
7 knights
2 warshrines
hellcannon
The warriors stole turn 1 and backed up (dwarf like play
if I ever saw it!). I rushed forward. Dragon aimed at the knights (dead). Dragon
then got hit by hellcannon killing the Prince-though the dragon carried on. Whitelions
were a bit more cautious. The tzench warriors presented a tricky target that I
had to pull out of position. Dragon bluff meant I got a frontal charge with 1
unit while the dragon jumped after the warshrines. The other whitelion unit
wore a couple of gateway wounds (not a good day when stopping treason to let
gateway through...) and were mindful of where the nurgle warriors would appear
(had hopped into building). I took out the tznch guys over a couple of rounds
and then hit the 2nd warshrine (dragon got stuck on 4++), broke it and went straight
into hellcannon (dead). The Nurgle combat was a bit more tricky as I didnt rate
my Whitelions to win it (re-roll hit on 4's, 2's to kill vs hit on 3's, 2's to
kill and more attacks). However I brought my Spear block+ BSB up to give
re-roll stubborn...which I failed, ran 4, got run down and exposed the spear
flank to the (depleted) Nurgle warriors. Lucky this was LATE game as my spears
held until the very last turn to break (killing BSB in process due to new flee
rules), but escaped. All he had left was Nurgle, BSB, and lvl4, which was
enough (having lost 1 Whitelion unit and BSB + eagles) to pull it back to a
13-7 win to me.
Game 3: Demons of
dumb: diagonal deployment.
So Tom and I met again on the field of battle...meaning
both our wizards would be dead/lvl0 by end of turn 2 as per usual... his list
was:
Billy the blood thirster: KB, 7 attacks (probably usual)
3+, scroll
lvl2 tznch: loremaster light and scroll
2 korn heralds with 3+, flame sword thing (yeah-duplicate
gifts were not comped...)
2x29 bloodletters
2x5 furies
2x3 flamers (last hurrah for pre Wdwarf update)
2 blood crushers
2 fiends.
Basically my list without having to pay core tax and a
5++ on everything and more chaff.
I opted for the Jarl Axe wall approach and castled up
(deployed first) only 1 eagle failed to arrive. I picked the corner that meant
due to a building his force would be split coming at me. My plan was spears and
1 block and 1 eagle handle 1 part, and dragon, whitelions block and Eagle deal
with thirster approach. This was a game where I feel I out played Tom, but it
didnt pay off. My biggest mistake was not deploying spears 5 wide (instead of
my usual 7). Basically I killed all chaff except for 1 blood crusher. Pinned
Billy on a unit of whitelions (overrun so combat in his turn), flanked with
dragon...prince dies to KB (had to make 4 KB wardsaves....passed 3) and billy
takes 2 more rounds to kill the dragon. Meanwhile bloodletter block come up
rear of dragon/into whitelion flank and that collapses. On other flank I pinned
Bloodletters on spears and used combat reform to get Whitelions for a flank
charge....nope. Spears fluff 22 attacks...Bloodletters roll AMAZING and I flee
(with BSB out of unit this time!) get run down so whitelions not so safe to
charge! In the end I lost 4-16, but a good game none-the-less.
Game four:
Bretts-watchtower.
Neil had opted to try not using HKB on a hero and brought
the Greenknight. His list was something like:
Greenknight
2 lvl2 (1 on foot)
BSB
2 Paladins (one with charmed shield, the other with
dragonbane gem).
unit of 10 knights errant
2x8 Knights of Realm
2 smaller Realm knight units
10 skirmish archers
5 Yeoman
3 Peg knights
Trebuchet
I put 10 archers in the tower to get closer shooting on
the treb! Basically this game was defined by
1) dragon hiding from trebuchet...because'
2) it rolled a hit every time it fired (even when
misfiring to explode)
3) 2+/5++ is amazing vs s6-I struggled to kill knights
4) 38 spears was a really, really good idea as too many
bodies to lose watchtower
5) greenknight is really, really, really annoying
6) at least once a tournament leadership tests have to be
failed on mass with a "high leadership" army.
SO yeah-greenknight couldnt kill all the spears (even
after wearing a hit from treb), dragon only killed 1 Paladin in a challenge as
spent most of game hiding then got trapped on Green knight. Whitelions let me
down by failing to kill a single Paladin "speed bump" that resulted
in it getting wiped out. Other Whitelion unit failing panic test taking it out
of the game for 1 turn = couldn't come to the rescue in time. They eventually got 1 unit of knights, some peg knights, and heroicly saw off a last turn charge. BUT when we added
up points I had lost 130 more than Neil, but with Watch Tower it became a 12-8
win to me. MISSION FTW!
Game 5:
Lizardmen-battleline.
Going into this game I needed an 18-2 or better victory,
and Sam needed to get tabled for me to break into top 3. So I draw Bo's Lizards
that looked a little like:
Slann-discard my 6's to cast, gets extra dice when
casting, loremaster life, BSB
lv1 skink priest on Engine of the Gods
Scarvet on foot with stuff
38 Saurus hw/sh
2x10 skink cohort with javelins
2x10 skink skirmishers with blowpipes
20 templeguard-banner of discipline
2x5 chemeleons
2 salamanders
1 salamander
So I actually managed to out deploy someone with fewer
drops....Basically I deployed Dragon on my left = all the poison goes over
there...then swing round to right flank for double whitelion, dragon panzer
strike on his lines...while the poison only has archers (and lvl2) to kill. I
breezed through the chaff which I felt wasnt used as well as it could have
been, but I did have overwhelming force + flying monster, so it was never
really going to be an issue. My big "break" was when the Slann (with
throne up btw) miscast and killed 15 templeguard = all magic got diverted to
keeping them alive instead of dwellering me (ie what I thought was going to
happen for 6 turns). I got a massive strike on him that won it for me. Spears
into flank of templeguard with dragon in front (did nothing for a round while
everything was t8, but then finished it off when that all went away) and
whitelion sandwich on the saurus (in front and flank). I was ONE kill short of
breaking steadfast on 1st round. Then again I had allocated 8 attacks on to
scarvet and 3 onto champ (both died), so didnt really help with that. Engine
came crashing in, but died to 10 axes and the saurus got finished off.
Adding up the points I won 18-2...looking across to Sam
he got 5 points...
End Result
The results were tallied and I came 4th...Sam beating me
by 1.95/100 points! After the event Pete told me that my army came 2nd in the
beauty pageant (Sam's Orcs coming first), so a very, very, very good outcome
for me. My best ever placing at a 2 day event (not counting Homecon where I
also came 4th last year). Hopefully my Empire can do the same come Skitterleap!
Thoughts on list:
The list worked as intended. I was a little
miffed at it bouncing off the demons, but there was not much else I could have
done. This list (and the event in
general) has cemented by belief that reliance on magic is not a game
winning proposition. The only game where my mage was very,
very, necessary (and ultimately let me down) was vs the Bretts where I needed
to kill the trebuchet to free up my dragon-however I worked around that, took
the hits and played the scenario to win. Something to hurt Billy was nice, but
wouldn't have helped turn the game when it fell to me not bussing the spears
and 4KB wounds on Prince.
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