NZTC battle reports

So the games:

My game plan:
I had the "fun" job of playing for a draw or better if (and only if) the opportunity presented itself. This meant lots of under the bus.


GAME ONE vs Nerdymen Thomas' Ogres

So...I start the event as I expected it to be-under the bus. Looking at the lists on offer I would have been happier with the vamps (Masters re-match) or the Demons, but meh.

We deployed and one of us went first. I made an error in not accounting for the scouting Maneaters (big mistake given they are in 99% of Ogre lists) and deployed a little too centrally = gave Tom an "in".  So I had to respond like so:

This was a game of "control the bus" given that my Demigryphs had the unit of 4 (quickly 3) mournfang under control and out of the game ("preserving points").

Dreams are free though as I quickly started to feel a little under pressure with my central deployment.

In the end I was forced to take action and charged the halberds in.

I made (another) mistake in this phase. In the bottom left of this pic you can see my lvl1....should have been my lvl4 buffing the halberds. However they put up a good show with +1 to hit and hatred. 9 hits on the slaughtermaster (the usual set up) resulted in a single fustrating wound.  BSB failed three 4+ armour saves in challenge with the unit champ, however I put out enough pain to win the combat (as expected)...but the stubborn crown held....and the Hellblaster fluffed resulting in...

dead halberds and a fleeing hurricanum.
From this I rallied the troops, finished off the maneaters and (I think) managed to run down the unit of 2 Mournfang (cant remember if the got away from waralter or not). 1 Ironblaster exploded and the knights put on a performance to sum up the game:

1 wound on the kitty = I had to charge it AGAIN (after it fled and rallied).

End result an annoying 18-2 loss I put down to bad mistakes  and crappy dice by me, a wised up quality opponent savvy enough to capitalise, and broken as "cookie cutter" Ogres (naturally :P).

Overall my team had an OK first round vs a very good team. Glen's vamp died at a crucial point, James had fun with the Demons and Sam did a number on the Highelves to compensate for my big loss.

We ended the round with a 35-45 loss.

GAME TWO vs Kapiti crushers Nick's OnG

STOP THE PRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this game involved movement restricting (and line of sight blocking) terrain placed in such a location that it...HAD AN IMPACT ON THE GAME.

Once again, under the bus. 6 fanatics, 2 doomdivers, 2 lobbas, trolls, smashy lord, and Savage big 'Uns.

My plan in this game was to pray very religiously to Sigmar that the can openers fail...and Sigmar listened and granted my wish. Nick for starters didnt get foot of gork, and all his artillery and fanatics did a single wound to me...wow. Dice huh? broken

So the board looked something like this:

Knights and flanking Demis sweeping AROUND (yes, not though) the terrain to engage the trolls while I hold up the Savage orcs and keep up the prayers to Sigmar. On the Right flank my knights did a "tactical retreat" once they had beaten up some gobbos to set up demis vs Trolls while everything else held back.

 Trolls charge in...

having lost 2 in my magic phase (gotta love magic missiles)...get the crap beaten out of them by the KFC, get food poisoning, vomit on me...and cause a single wound. Naturally this means I win and set up a flank charge on the savage Orcs

I kill the lvl4 (who had rudely sniped my lvl 4 turn 2) but lose combat and flee to safety. I forgot to take pics of the rest of the game but it basically resulted in the gobbo units all fleeing off the board, all the waaaghtillery dying, HURRICANIUM STORM SPELL GETTING A WOUND ON THE BSB!...and then my Demigryphs failing to take last wound and running off the board with the knights.

However when the points were tallied I was up 13-7. The rest of the team did very well. James had the pleasure of fighting demons again, Glen pulled a massive win over the 9 skullcrusher WoC and I cant remember how Sam did. Either way we won the round 60-20 (max points).

GAME THREE vs Von Trapp Jack's Dark Elves.

So game 3 vs the team that won the event. Well I got the "play for a draw" match up.

We deployed:

and then we both came to the same conclusion. If I go near him = Jack gets big win. If Jack comes near me = I get big win. So instead we decided to make a photo montage of Jack's crotch:

However I would like to point out that dice were actually rolled and spells got cast.

Heck, my engineer even died! my solution to this problem was to focus fire on the corsairs and (hopefully) kill them all. Cast net to stop movement and then magic missile and hellblaster the crap out of it. In the end I was an agonising 5 models short of an 11-9 win. My last magic phase...Jack had scroll...6 dice at Waralter banishment...no IF :(

The party line from us was that we were "playing for the team" so went for a 10-10 draw....however what I was really thinking was that a) beer sounded like a good idea, and b) so did pizza = quick game to get to the food and booze!

Overall the round went as well as it could have vs the Von Trapps. Glen got unlucky and lost the vamp lord again and went from small win to big loss, Sam played out a 9-11 loss with Pete and James lost big to "The Master". End result 27-53 loss

GAME FOUR vs Shaken not Stirred Alan's Empire

This round was the round we got the match ups wrong (I blame the booze and mental fatigue). I should have played Tim Joss and his Chaos dwarfs or the Orcs with no doomdivers, or the Lizards (my first preference). Instead, I had the pleasure of playing a fellow man of the Empire and had a really good time, but not the match up I wanted.

Also in my "happy" state I forgot to take pics after deployment. To be fair in my defence 4 games in 1 day is very, very, very taxing!



So we deployed:

And then had a game...after spending far-too-long-for-a-tournment-game coming up with a fluff justification for our provinces to be at war. Not to bore the non-Empire players out there, but basically Alan's army was made up of rural Stirland bumpkins and my civilised forces were in the area "cleansing" it of evil. We confused their "accents" for demonic possession and hence the battle.

Basically he got first turn and I was 1 cannon down. Then my remaining cannon did 2 wounds over 6 turns to his cannons...I however managed to kill his chaff, both his knight units and (thankfully) one of his cannons exploded. I was pushing to get his demigryph unit, however I couldnt quite catch them once I had successfully lured them outside of hellblaster range. On my side I lost a cannon, 5 archers, and super fustratingly my Knights paniced off the board costing me the game.

End result 9-11 loss (thank you knights and non performong cannon!). Due to bad match ups (and not winning our games obviously!) we went down this round 28-52.

GAME FIVE vs Capital Crushers Ben's RAF Brets.

This round was awesome because we got to play the guys who travelled all the way from Oz, making it a truely international event for us. I got a fantastic match up  (especially since there was no line of sight blocking terrain for him to jump between) vs a great guy who had original, original men at arms models (ie metal ones!).

Pics after vanguard:

I get first turn: Cannon off his BSB, 2 wounds on the general and take out a unit of peg knights with hellblaster and magic (large template explosion IF kills 10 halberds).
His turn 1-fortune favours the brave and a unit of peg knights pull off a 22 inch charge vs my engineer...but has to clip my archers (steadfast from halberds :D)

Demis then flank in, archers and demis charge the general.

IF timewarp on demis (1 more dead halberd) and the general drops dead and the archers overrun into the lvl4. A unit of Peg knights makes it to a cannon with another 22 inch charge (cue comments about underarm bowling from me):

Archers get run down, cannon crumbles and peg knights vs demis = dead peg knights.
Demis then flank lvl4 (dead), halberds reform to bus and catch the peg knights in a combat (win). My Knights chase down a unit of knights while the other gets halblaster to face and flees off board.

End of turn 4 I say that I dont have enough turns to get my units to his Men at arms with foot paladin and lvl1 unless he wants to come at me and try his luck = we call it there. Result: 19-1 to me.

The rest of the team had a huge round too. We ended up winning 53-27. We were in a competitive 5th place at the end of this round. All we had to do was have an OK last round and we would be sweet...

ROUND SIX vs NZ Hammered John's Lizards

I was actually quite happy with this match up. Looking at our lists it had "Draw/minor loss or win" written all over the match up if I didnt play his chaff up game. However he then rolls comet for his lvl1...

We deploy:

Nice defensive position for me to sit in and say "come at me bro" from for 6 turns. Dispel the magic missiles and I'm home sailing. (and no, that is not movement and LOS blocking terrain, that is my drink bottle!) However John gets first turn and...

IF's comet right in my lines = my first turn is spent engaging in his game sigh...bad news for me.
The comet comes down in my next turn:

Comet does 4 wounds to the hurricanum, kills 3 halberds, obliterates the engineer and gets 17 hits on the hellblaster (5 of them LoS! from the engineer)...and fails to do a single wound! In the top part of the pic above you can see the terradon flee trap forming. I go "what the hell" and declare the hopeless first charge...

and naturally his saurus block + 2 scarvets + slann decide to flee! and that wasnt the only re-roll ldship 9 test failed that day.

Basically the rest of the game looked like this in various forms:

With me getting no where. My cannons and hellblaster were doing nothing, my magic phases were good (as in got plenty of dice)...but I was rolling as if Charlie was table watching. 5 dice...roll an 11. Get banishment off...4 hits...1 wound etc etc etc. Eventually my knights got surrounded and died (not before waralter smashed in to collect some salamander points) and the big swing was when my central demis fled off through my archer bunker who paniced (that re-roll ldship 9 thing...) off as well along with the lvl4 and 1. That was my fault. I forgot they were fleeing and the other demi unit declared a charge on a skink unit that was blocking the saurus block charge. Then realise what I had done. Demis rally (naturally), flee the saurus and roll huge distance to flee sigh.

Oh well, what can you do. So the draw/minor win or loss match up turned into a 2-18 loss. The rest of my team suffered a similar fate and we picked up the pity points (20-60) and dropped to 7th place.

OVERALL RESULT FOR ME:
Playing for the draw or better I managed that 4 out of 6 games (9-11 loss counts as a draw in team match ups!). The 2 big losses were not ideal, but at least I wasnt tabled and I know where I lost the game.

I really like this Empire list and look forward to seeing its slow evolution over the year as new books get released and/or different comp packs call for variations on my theme....basically I want to avoid SCGT comp this year as it seems to target my specific build! I like the fact that I can just sit back when get bad match ups, but also have the ability to push for big points where I need to. Obviously battleline is only 1 of 6 missions, but as this list is simply an evolution of my Homecon III list I'm rather confident it can handle the scerarios comfortably...probably better than it does battleline.

I very much recommend anyone that didnt attend NZTC to get a team together for next year. Team warhammer is the best warhammer!