Thursday 16 October 2014

It's the little things

Hi All,

Thursday night is Warhammer night here in Brunswick and I rocked up with my High Elves and found myself in a pick up game with Empire that looked like THIS:

Karl Franz with the Ghul Maraz
BSB
13 Reiksguard knights with swiftness banner posse
10 Archers bunkering 2 lvl2 light mages
Luminark
Hurricanum
...and oh yeah...SIXTY HALBERDS WITH 6 ARCHERS IN A DETACHMENT

So no artillery, no 1+as brigade...no shooting of any note.

In response I unpacked my 2000pts of Elfy goodness

Lvl4 metal, book of hoeth
SeaHelm BSB: Reavorbow, shield of 4+ parry
2x10 Silverhelms: FC - shields
28 Whitelions: FC - Banner of World Dragon
5 Shadow Warriors
Frostie
3x1 RBT
Eagle

An interesting match up. The light mages rolled phas, speed of light, net, and timewarp. I rolled up searing doom, glittering robes, enchanted blades and final trans.

We deployed;
Hopefully our respective tactics are rather clear. Empire looking to own the middle...I'm looking to encircle.

Anywho the Empire stumble up carefully. I let through Timewarp on the Halberds.

I then have my turn and make my fatal mistake (pic is beginning of Empire t2 checking the mistake)
First what I did right:
- I reformed the whitelions into "Seahelm abuse" formation.
- Knights and Frostie a pushing the flanks
- Shadow Warriors push into the archer detachment to stop them getting annoying

What I did wrong:
- didn't factor in 16 inch halberd march (not a biggie)
- Eagle should have blocked the knight bus BECAUSE
- Frostie was lazily placed and scrapped into the LOS of Karl Franz
- silverhelms on my right a little too close/under appreciated luminark charge

Obviously the eagle/frostie thing is an either place frostie better, OR place it better AND block with eagle (ie frostie with more view of the centre of the board).

So magic phase...6 dice monkey Final Trans and blow up the Reiksknight and kill Karl Franz! Shooting phase kills a few more knights and we call it. I WIN!

However we play on pretending Karl Franz avoided the final trans...and this is where all my mistakes kick in..

1) luminark charges silverhelms...queue all game hold up to allow Karl and the posse to clean them out
2) hurricanum charges eagle (holds), silverhelms flank in but fail to kill it...cannot overrun as this would mean rear charging karl franz for certain death...instead hurricanum flees TOWARDS the halberd combat.
3) frostie flees karl charge and is removed from the game as it gets out of position and cannot get back to help before dying.
3) not really mistake, but a consequence of losing 3 levels the lvl2's gain magic dominance and the halberds spend the rest of the game with ws10, i10, -1 to hit...Whitelions died horribly and didnt risk combat reform as I had no chance to use them offensively :(


So there you are!

Always check your LOS archs, always check your next turn threats, and try not to turn your lvl4 into a lvl1 t1!



Sunday 12 October 2014

New post, new country...

hey hey hey,

not a big update, but big news.

FIRST; fixed the Frosties!


Trip to hardware store, cheap hacksaw, cheap garden hooks...combine the 2, add drilled base and drilled frostie =

Frostie just balances on top...lean it slightly forward and it sits in that position. Not the prettiest fix, but it works and is game functional (ie the frostie can be easily removed!)

SECOND: CRACKS CALL


So the uber monster list was great fun. I got pulled apart by more serious lists, but I did smash face a few times! Worst part was losing a frostie (twice) to a flank charge from gyro, breaking and getting run down (4 attacks sucks). Even worse part was losing Blood and Glory t1 to a similar sneaky gyro move allowing my annointed to get picked off from a line of monsters :( Best part - smashing Glen's Quadruple scream list when my frostie saved 8 from 11 scream wounds and then smashed up the bus and crumbled the evil undead.

What worked...um I was super mobile I guess and when I successfully rolled to hit, I smashed face
What didn't work: annointed is not choppy enough to beat face, but choppy enough to kill a unit champ = very vulnerable to challenges. No BSB sucked (lost last game vs Peter W's Vamps due to a failed ldship 8 test that left my general stranded in challenge with a vamplord minus the frostie who was there to beat up the black knights - he later rallied and cleaned them out and put the vamplord on 1 wound, but still!), and Dragon Mages are cool in fluff, but useless on paper and on the table. Seriously: don't even bother. There is NOTHING redeeming about them. For the cost I could have sneaked in 2+as BOWD BSB on horse, lvl2 with scroll and ring, and tweaked the core to have a massive bus of Silverhelms.

HOWEVER:

I did win the Jockey race!

Here is my Jockey "Dragon Tucker" (behave) winning:
I don't really know what my secret was...I took a lucky horseshoe (basically a free life if someone tries to gank you), a free re-roll item (great for all the crucial rolls on the fences), and an extra d6 movement OUO item (for the extra speed). I was the only one who sung "Sexual healing" at the Slaanesh wall for a shot at free health in return for giving up a turn of movement (instead of humping the wall as most people ended up getting...err "stuck" doing). This meant that once I shot out ahead (pro tip -don't stop to hurt people!) I could weather the attacks from those far enough behind to still be able to use the Nurgle wall benefit. 

Thank's Neil for a fantastic event with food, accommodation and Munch-kin.

40K stuff: Cities of Death campaign

As part of my tour-de-warhammer I played a round of Wrythhold's 40K cities of death campaign. I took Salamanders (obviously). Comp was 1000pts, no fliers or LOW/Imperial knights (unless the required tiles on the map were held), max 1 HQ, Elite, Fast, Heavy, min 1 troop.

I took:
Vulkan: command squad: 4 meltas, apocothary, droppod
Ironclad: H. flamer, Melta, assault launchers
2x5 Marines: Combi-melta, melta
2x5 Marines: Combi-melta, flamer
5 Scouts: Bolters, melta bombs, landspeeder storm - multimelta

So lots of objective capturing stuff (using 7th ed objective capture rules)

Editor's note: it was a mistake to take assault launchers on Ironclad over Combi Melta on the Scout sergeant. Always give scout sergeant melta bombs and combi melta for tank/building hunting fun :D

I was up against Glen's Nightlords Chaos Marines army. 7 objectives on the table. I won the roll for sides, but Glen seized initiative and promptly blew up the main centre building objective and my Ironclad (who I thought was hidden...found out the hard way Obliterators can move and shoot...). In return my command squad and Vulkan dropped down and along with some support shooting deleted the terminators. I made a huge mistake when doing this. I placed Vulkan to shoot his flamer, but I instead should have placed him to tank the 10 chaos tac marines with 2 plasma guns that I had aggressively placed to attack t2 (once terminators were toast). Instead his bolters magically became ap3 and gunned down the command squad along with Vulcan...I also learned what "torrent" means when his Jump pack commander burninated a few too many marines with his ap3 flamer! I got lucky as he failed the follow up charge, I shot out his raptor buddies, and murdersword face failed his charge AGAIN and got gunned down. In the end I was 1 hull point away from winning the game as my storm died t6 to some lucky snap shooting giving up the objective it was holding over the obliterators...and to make things worse Vulkan then died in the campaign! Oh well. Ryan who I was subbing in for is taking the narrative to heart and is changing the commander to a Master of the Forge (please note the very extending left field joke in that for all you 40k 6th ed BRB readers) and is looking to run a list heavy on the attack bikes and plasma cannons...

BIGGEST NEWS: I'm now in Oz

So yes, I now live in Melbourne. I managed to pack my High Elves (well most of them). I've signed up for Cancon in January (2400pts Swedish...must score between 10 and 16) and "Blood and Glory" in November (2000pts 5 game event with no comp, but TO subjective comp score). Should be fun and before Cancon and NZTC I have a wee bit of hobby to do as well, so once Ryan ships over my paints (hint hint), I'll be able to get started on that to give yous some hobby update posts as well!

Other than that there is Thursday night gaming at Shirts Off Warhammer (5 mins tram up the road boom!) for battle reports and stuff.