Wednesday 31 October 2012

Half the size = double the game!

Hi All,

So straight back into the warhammery goodness after Skitterleap. The next event, Vermintide, on the 17th of November is 1200pts, so a great excuse to try my hand at smaller (faster), less-forgiving-of-mistakes games.

For those that dont stalk me on the Warhammer Empire Forum (Joelatron) this is the list I am looking at taking:

Warrior Priest (General) 2HW, HA
BSB: FPA, Ench shield
lvl1 (fire) ruby ring
38 Halberds: FC
5 Archer detach
5 Archer detach

4 Demigriffs: M
4 Demigriffs: M

Hurricanum

BOOM! minimal shooting, and lots of scary and the return of the halberds after a wee bit of time on the shelf.

So next step is to test out the list, so my willing subject (Ryan) was more than happy to test his Vampire list against mine. He had:

Vamp lvl2: Barded steed, HA, Sh, lance, opal amulet, scroll, something that allowed re-rolls
necro lvl1: ruby ring
4x20 zombies: banner...BRAINS...
5 doggies
2 fellbats
2x5 Hexwraiths
9 Black Knights: FC

SO knight bus, ethereal knights and brains.

Ryan set up table all "evil" and I rolled up blood and glory. 

Deployment:
So straight away you see my mistake...AND I HAVE AN EXCUSE...well, a bad one.

I rolled up flame sword spell, meaning I was pretty confident that my demigriffs could get magical attacks. It also meant my game plan going in (sit back, let him come forward and fireball the crap out of stuff) was thrown out and I didnt deploy the horde centrally. It also denied my left flank BSB cover, and removed the SCRes big scary from conseration. But, this is why we have practice games so we realise these things when change up lists.

So what happened was a didnt get rubyring off and quickly learnt what hexwraiths do...counter monsterous "SCRes lite" calv. In charged a unit and as I picked up my dice to make armour saves I found that Hexwraiths ignore armour...I hold. I did however use the hurricanum bound and forced the bus to swift reform to get back facing the right way hehe.

So what's a Vamp to do? charge in a 2nd unit, scroll flame sword, and throw the bus into the other unit.

 Now this is where I need to remember to keep BSB in range of EVERYTHING. Hexwraith combat with re-rolls from van hels (very, very, very bad dispel roll from me!) =  dead and run down demigriffs, which panics Hurricanum that flees to board edge. Bus vs Angry chickens? I'm rather angry at losing my +1 to hit, and only miss once and kill 5 knights. However, I fail all 4 armour saves I had to make, lose by 1 and flee
So what's a human to do? I try charging a hexwraith unit with lvl1 and co to try flame sword my way to victory...err they forgot how to run and fail charge, so the Halberd block goes over the doggie speed bump and looks at the sea of zombies and decides the get their Resident Evil on and go bash som heads!
The re-roll to wound prayer is solid gold, and the new crumble/over run rules saved the zombies from too much death (re-death?) as I had 2 turns left, so killed 2 units. So much fun wading through zombies!




So yeah, lost this game, but at least I can identify where things went wrong.
1) stick to game plan
2) stick to fireball
3) deploy BSB horde central

GAME 2: Woodies

So I'm trying to get my friend Alex to commit to Vermintide, so I wrote him an MSU list to use that I secretly really like:

Noble: Eagle (T4!): LA, Sh, Spear, Stone of Rebirth, Dragonhelm, Potion of foolishness

10 Glade Guard: M, SB
10 Glade Guard: M
4 Dryads
4 Dryads
4 Dryads
4 Dryads

3 Treekin
5 Wildriders (M)

Eagle

Yeah! gotta love a ballsy list like that. Very combat orientated, no magic (pah!), and lots of drops.

We deployed:

So a typical woodie deployment with shooting off to one side and a good middle section that can easily disappear to the flanks if need be. Ryan in the pic (got first turn) is measuring his super 16 inch zombie charge of WTF charge into my vanguarded Wildriders. Sadly, unlike the teddy bears going to the picnic, there was no good suprise for the zombies as 10 s4 and 10 s3 attacks before they even thought about doing anything crumbled the zombies from 20 to 3 for the loss of 1 wildrider!


I attempted to do the same with some dryads on a unit of hexwraiths, but my dryads aint that stupid! However a 6 inch failed charge move was all I was going to move them anyway (probably would have preferred a little less) as I set about setting the trap.

Ryan promptly retreated with the hexwraiths, and moved his bus up to force my hand. He also did a tricksy move on my right flank to set up his hexwriaths to kill some glade guard.

I guess the measuring arc is a bit of a give away, but 10 points to Gryffindor for guessing my next move...

...yeah dont you hate Wood Elves and how they NEVER engage in combat???? The one thing I forgot to do was charge the wildriders at the necro "free points" bunker that was 16 inches away. Though with everything on the line in the big combat, this was a mere technicality at this point. At an event I would have measured their charge range to everything every turn to look for those sorts of opportunities.


I initially thought throwing in the noble was a bit of a mistake due to been unable to decline a challenge, but it was actually the best thing to do as it tied up the Cres generator (vamp) in a combat vs better stats (and a 2++ once I lost 2 wounds) for the loss of 3 s5 attacks from a very silly looking treekin who couldnt strike the unit. Dice were thrown, saves were made and failed on both sides and after crumble things looked like this:

Ryan tried to turn the tide with a quick invocate to raise back another 3 knights and the doggies flank charged, but the extra knights just = extra wounds for me to take = vamp died and crumbled causing army crumble! This is where sniping the necro would have been really useful! Ryan's tricksy move worked though as his hexwraiths got into a unit of glade guard, won combat, and I failed my steadfast (double 6, so properly failed) and ran off board-pursued by hexwraiths. However at that point the game was over as I had the bulk of my army staring at the weak spots of what remained of his BRAINS






So a good solid victory for the hemp wearing un-showered hippy tree hugging vegan elves.











4 comments:

  1. nice write up Joel. my ogres look fwd to seeing you at vermintide. scary how many bodies some guys get at 1200

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  2. Two units of Demi Knights... Now Joel, play nice ;D.

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  3. You know you can't grab my ghost knights. What are you doing bro?

    Looking forward to playing with them in bigger games, have to put the together. Though the second game with the woodies show they can have some bad match ups.

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